Charlie Musselwhite - Deluxe Edition [CD]

Like the great bluesmen that preceded him, Charlie Musselwhite's roots lie deep in the South. Though he's often mentioned in the same breath as the other young, white players who introduced the blues to a worldwide popular audience in the mid 1960s, Charlie is really cut from a different cloth. He didn't learn the blues from records or the radio, or by taking pilgrimages to South Side Chicago clubs from his middle class home. Born in the Mississippi hill country in 1944, he grew up poor in Memphis. His first blues teachers were the acoustic bluesmen who had been local stars in the 1920s and '30s, like guitarist Furry Lewis and Will Shade, the harmonica-blowing leader of the Memphis Jug Band. Charlie played country blues guitar and harp as a teenager, but that wasn't how he made his living. Instead, he ran moonshine from the backwoods to Memphis at $50 a trip. After a brush with the law, he headed to Chicago for the same reason as other Southerners-to find a better job.

Living in the heart of the South Side ghetto, Charlie toiled as an exterminator while sitting in with the great Chicago bands, jamming regularly with Johnny Young, Robert Nighthawk, Muddy Waters, Big Joe Williams, Otis Spann and Floyd Jones. He was tutored on harp by another pupil of Will Shade's--the immortal Big Walter Horton, whose melodic sound became part of Charlie's style. It was with Horton that he made his first recordings, in 1966 on Vanguard Records' groundbreaking Chicago!/The Blues!/Today! series. Charlie won a contract with Vanguard and broke onto the national scene with his 1967 Stand Back! album. Leading a series of all-star bands, he hit the road, and ended up moving to California. But he's spent most of his life on tour, cementing his position as one of the finest harmonica players in the world. He's introduced jazz chord voicings, Cuban rhythms and the lyrics of Americana singer-songwriters into blues. Over his 40-year career, Charlie has cut two dozen solo albums. Between 1990 and 1994, he recorded three of his finest for Alligator, ACE OF HARPS, SIGNATURE and IN MY TIME.
 
For this collection, Charlie gave us an unreleased track 'Lotsa Poppa,' from the IN MY TIME sessions. He also donated an early 1960s home recording of Will Shade giving him pointers on guitar and then singing with the teenage Charlie accompanying. As Charlie recalls: 'Will Shade lived near the corner of 4th and Beale St. He played guitar and harmonica and I loved hanging out at his place. We would spend the day talking and passing the Golden Harvest Sherry wine around as musician visitors would come and go all day and into the night. They were all stopping by to pay their respects, have 'a taste' and jam. Will was an important harp player, one of the first to start playing blues harp as an instrument instead of a toy to make sound effects. I feel very privileged to have known and learned from Big Walter Horton and Will Shade. It's like getting the 'transmission' or the secret handshake.'
--Bruce Iglauer