There are not too many opportunities when a blues fan can just kick out the jams with a full band and a bunch of the greatest harmonica players out there. While busy with his own touring and recording and slowly becoming one of the newer top blues harpists in the world, Hummel began producing his yearly event to give due recognition to the harmonica players he had met and played with over the years. The guest list changes every year, with this tour including harp masters Kim Wilson, Billy Boy Arnold, Rod and Honey Piazza, and Rick Estrin.
The show will also feature Hummel with his band, The Blues Survivors, and special guest, Rusty Zinn. The musician with the most blues seniority of these veteran performers is 71-year-old William "Billy Boy" Arnold, one of a small group of Chicago blues legends who are still touring and recording. In a recent phone interview from his hometown of Chicago, Arnold talked about his experiences with the blues scene of old and his career today.
Arnold learned harmonica from the original John
After several attempts to catch him at home, Williamson was finally home one day and invited Arnold into his apartment. After being invited back for a couple of lessons, Arnold learned that Williamson met his untimely death. As he explains it, "I moved on to play on street corners with a guy named Ellis McDaniel, later to take the name Bo Diddley.
" He then ended up recording with Diddley on his earliest sessions, including the classic tune "Bo Diddley," which he co-wrote. In the mid-'50s, Arnold moved from Chess Records to VeeJay Records, making classic cover tunes and writing lots of original tracks, accompanied by an all-star band made up of Jody Williams, Otis Spann and Syl Johnson. His notable records at that time were "I Wish You Would" and "I Ain't Got You.
" which Eric Clapton's Yardbirds later covered when the British blues scene exploded in the 1960s. "I didn't realize I had a hit record with the Yardbirds," Arnold says, "until VeeJay defaulted in the mid-'60s. I didn't know that guys like Eric Clapton were playing our music.
It must have been around 1970 when I heard their record of my song and I called and they finally sent me a check for $700 for royalties saying that that amount of money was all they could give me for the use of the song because it had passed some kind of accounting deadline or something. But those British kids made some hits out of my songs. It would have happened years before, if white audiences would have been able to hear our records because once people hear the boogie they start to move their feet.
" In 1992, Arnold roared back into the public eye with an album for Alligator Records, "Back Where I Belong," and since then he has been in constant public demand. He's played clubs and major festivals in the United States and Europe, including England's Burnley and Germany's Breminale Blues Festivals, the Montreal Jazz Festival, the Chicago and Long Island Blues Festivals. He recently released his Electro Fi Records debut, "Consolidated Mojo," which was produced by Hummel and with backing by the Blues Survivors.
Recorded in San Francisco in 1992, the 14 songs on the album were intended to be Arnold's comeback release but due to an Alligator Records offer, the record was shelved until Electro Fi brought it back to life. It is a good follow-up to the next release Arnold says he is doing, which will be devoted to the sound and songs of his boyhood mentor, Williamson. Says Arnold, "The harmonica is a little humble instrument but in the hands of guys like John Lee Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, Big Walter Horton and even Sonny Terry, it always blew people away.
You can really get hooked on it, just like myself. It can steal a show. It also makes a beautiful magnificent sound, so much soul and feeling comes out of that little thing.
I love the harmonica, so being on these shows with all of these guys is simply spending time with my friends and favorite harmonica players." When: 7:30 p.m.
News RSS