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Delta Bluesman
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Charlie Musselwhite always has one foot in the Delta but he also has found time to make it into the movies. By Brian Wise.
The Delta is truly in Charlie Musselwhite’s blood. Born in the hill country of Mississippi just over 65 years ago, the veteran bluesman finds himself increasingly drawn back to his roots.
“When you go there you feel like you’re coming home,” he says of Clarksdale, MS. “It’s where the blues came from. Well, nobody really knows where the blues came from but a lot of people think blues singers either were born there, passed though there, lived there at one time or another, and played there. So it’s got a huge long history connected with blues and they’ve got a bunch of blues museums there. I have memories up there that go way back.”
Though he left Mississippi for Chicago at a young age to pursue his music career, the State keeps drawing him back. Earlier this year, when we were in Clarksdale, he played at the Delta Blues Museum to open a photographic exhibition and was an owner of the Delta Hardware Store building (he now owns another).
Musselwhite’s story after he originally left Mississippi is well detailed. He got his blues education playing harmonica in some of the toughest clubs on Chicago’s South Side, playing with people such as Big Joe Williams and meeting the legends that populated the music scene there in the late 1950s. After recording for Vanguard in the mid-‘60s, he moved once more – this time to San Francisco, where he has been living ever since. He is even said to have convinced his friend John Lee Hooker to move out to the West Coast.
Musselwhite has now released more than 20 albums and guested on albums by many other musicians, such as Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt, The Blind Boys of Alabama and even INXS. He has also won 14 W. C. Handy Awards and had six Grammy nominations as well as other awards. He recently won the Living Blues magazine Readers Poll and Critics Poll for Most Outstanding Harmonica Musician. While he signed to Alligator in 1990 his past two albums, Sanctuary and Delta Hardware have both been released on Real World Records and have garnered him some of his best reviews ever. His latest album, Rough Dried: Live At the Triple Door - which he has released independently and will be selling when he is here - was named as one of this year’s best blues albums on About.com.
“It’ sort of an underground album, it’s not actually officially released,” says Musselwhite of Rough Dried. “I just sell it at gigs and on the website. We played in a club that was set up to record in Seattle, so we just recorded it and put it out on our own label and it’s been doing really well. At the same time I have been working on a new album that I hope will be out next spring and all the tunes I have written and we will be recording probably in September.”
“Well, it’s been a long haul,” he says when I mention that his latest albums have been receiving some of the best critical acclaim of his career. “I’m glad they like them. We are just having fun. I figure if you’re having fun with what you’re doing, people are going to enjoy and somebody is going to like it too.”
“I have been doing it for forty years or so. I’m healthy and strong and feeling good and loving life it’s all good,” responds Musselwhite when I mention that he could be taking it easy instead of touring so much.
“I’m real busy all the time,” he says, “working on my place in Mississippi and touring around the country. There is a movie coming out that I’m in but I don’t know when it’s going to be out. It’s called Pig Hunt and it’s a horror movie.”
The $6 million indie film, in which Musselwhite plays a country storeowner, is about a group of San Francisco friends who go to the woods hunting a 3,000-pound pig and run into life-or-death trouble with the mountain folk and a hidden cult. The music is by former Primus bass player Les Claypool. “It’s a lot of fun,” laughs Musselwhite and adds, “many people get hurt in that movie.”
“It’s quite a movie, “ he continues, “with a lot of laughs. It’s got bikers and dope dealers, hippy girls and cults and a wild 3000-pound killer pig. It’s one for the whole family.”
“I play a little harmonica and then in the background in the sound track I’m playing some stuff. I’m actually playing a wooden four-string instrument that I found at a flea market in Brazil in one part of it. I think there are some other harmonica in there somewhere.”
As a frequent visitor to Australia, Musselwhite is looking forward to coming back for the Blues & Rockabilly Festival and other dates.
“I love Melbourne, it’s a soulful city and I look forward to playing there,” he says when I mention his date at The Corner Hotel. “I still recall vividly playing at the Corner Hotel with ah, um, who is that guy from the Rolling Stones? Mick Jagger.”
I recall it vividly too because I went down to the gig and found 2000 people outside who couldn’t get in! Jagger was doing an Australian tour in 1987 without the Stones and as Musselwhite recalls it, “He called up one day and said he was coming and they wanted to know if they could come down. I said sure, come on down. It was supposed to be a secret gig and nobody was supposed to know that they were going to be there. Oh boy, it was so packed. I use to wear glasses (I don’t wear them now) but it was so packed I couldn’t wear them there because they steamed up immediately just from all the body heat in that room. It was just amazing!”
Charlie Musselwhite appears at the Great Southern Blues & Rockabilly Festival. Check gig guide for other dates.
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