Charlie Musselwhite: The King of the Metal Harp
Charlie Musselwhite
Live Music Alert: Sunday, August 9, 3:30-4:35, Premium Beer Stage, Bayfront Blues Festival, Duluth MN
This article first ran in the now defunct print magazine, An Honest Tune, in 2006. I spent an hour and a half on the phone with this blues legend. After the interview was over, Charlie Musselwhite said to me: “This sure didn’t feel like any interview I’ve ever done before. It was like sitting down and just talking.” Well, I’m proud to say that on that day I did my job right!
Charlie Musselwhite will make a very rare appearance in the region at the 21 st annual Bayfront Blues Festival on Sunday, August 9. Also appearing at this year’s fest are Cyril Neville, Coco Montoya, Big Walter Smith and the Groove Merchants, Otis Taylor Band, Los Lobos, and the Legendary Rhythm and Blues Review featuring The Tommy Castro Band. For a complete schedule of all artists, please go to: http://www.bayfrontblues.com/perf-sch-web.pdf
No one can play blues harmonica like the master, Charlie Musselwhite. Over his 40 years in the business, he’s played with just about everyone, on albums, live performances, and late night jamming. Though he sat at the feet of the greats like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and John Lee Hooker, he has added his signature harp style to recordings and tours with Bonny Raitt, Ben Harper, The Blind Boys of Alabama, INXS, Tom Waits, and Government Mule. Musselwhite has earned 18 W.C. Handy awards and six Grammy nominations. This May [2006], he released his 35th album, Blues Hardware, on Real World Records.
A true native of the Delta, Musselwhite was born in Mississippi but grew up in Memphis. “I spent many of my summers around Cosesko and Clarksdale. I still have relatives all around Mississippi,’ Musselwhite says. And the devastation of Hurricane Katrina last year hit him deeply. “Of course where my relatives live, they didn’t get that kind of damage,” he says. “They were greatly inconvenienced, but not like down on the Coast. That was really horrible. And, it’s a long way from over.”
That destruction inspired two songs on his new album, both he co-wrote: “Black Water” and “Invisible Ones.” These are modern tributes done in the talking blues style, detailing the struggles of the people who survived Katrina. Those lyrics hit right to the core. That’s the nature of Musselwhite’s version of the blues. It’s raw, earthy, and always real.
Musselwhite found blues and roots music first in the deep South and later in Chicago and California. “In Chicago and in the South, I liked all kinds of stuff, like blues of course. I liked old hillbilly music, gospel, and everything. It all had something to say,” he says. “Then Chicago was kind of like more of the same only a little more uptown.”
He also started collecting music. “I used to go around to all the junk stores in Memphis, buying old 78s,” Musselwhite says. “I didn’t know that anybody in the world was buying them but me. Anything that looked interesting, I’d get it because they were so cheap then. Because I didn’t know that they were worth anything, if I had two of one, I’d just keep the best one and throw the other one away. I threw away some valuable records.”
Those thick scratchy records with the inherent hiss were actually recorded history. To Musselwhite, they were a direct connection with these old time performers. As he listened, he played, and went out to listen to live musicians. But he never had any real plan to become a professional musician. “It just happened to me,” he says. “I liked music and I learned how to play, but I didn’t have any dream of making records and touring. That just came with it.” But he does admit, that the plan was there. “When you look back, it’s like a pattern, but when I look forward I never could see a pattern. I just did whatever I thought was the best thing to do at the time, based on what I was presented with, and kept moving.”
That certainly made him flexible and kept him from being disillusioned by the music business. “The only plan I ever had was when I was a kid. I just wanted to roam and ramble. I wanted to go everywhere and see the cultures, the music, the languages, the food, all the folkways of different people. That’s sort of what’s happened. And the music provided that.”
Musselwhite has definitely seen the world. “I’ve been in China, Turkey, Japan, Brazil, New Zealand, all over Australia, and all over Europe and Scandinavia. And I ain’t through yet.”
But his entry into the world of professional blues musicians came in Tennessee. “In Memphis, I just was hanging out with musicians that I had met,” he says. “In their homes, they’d have jam sessions. I still wasn’t thinking of it in any way professionally at all. I was interested in learning to play and meeting the people who made the music and hanging out with them. It was more in the category of a hobby than anything else. I just really loved the music, but I didn’t know that I was preparing myself for a career—or I’d have paid way more attention!”
While in Memphis, Musselwwhite also had a side job, running illegal whiskey in a 1950 Lincoln that he bought for $99. Moonshine runners always had fast cars and often found themselves in harm’s way. “Well, I never felt like I was in any danger,” Musselwhite says. “Only once, I saw the police followed me and my trunk was loaded. I know that they were following me because every time I turned, they turned. I’d go all the way around the block, and they’d go all the way around the block. They weren’t just passing by…. Right after that, I just went to Chicago. I thought it was time to move on.”
That’s where he discovered Chicago blues, an uptown mixture of Delta influences and amplified instruments. Later, Musselwhite moved to the Bay area of California where he currently makes his home. There, he found other musical influences.
“In California, all kinds of stuff was going on. You go to the Filmore and instead of having a lineup that was all blues or all hippy music, you might have Count Basie and Ravi Shankar and Doc Watson. It would be a real wide range, and it all seemed to work.” That exposure to music began to filter into his own music.
“It always has been fun for me to see how I could apply blues to other forms of music. To me, it kind of makes better music,” he admits. ”It puts some taste into it, some new flavor, spicing it up.”
His early experiments with other forms of music began when he was in Memphis. “I used to get music books from junk stores like the Salvation Army, anything that looked halfway interesting I’d take it home and read it. They were a nickel or a dime. A lot of them were exercises for trumpet or violin or anything in the treble clef. I taught myself to read music, and I thought it would be interesting to see how this stuff sounds on harmonica. I think it kind of revealed more to me about the harmonica than just listening to what you hear on blues records.”
That kind of improvisation, using instruments and genres differently is a hallmark of the jam music scene. Musselwhite has yet to perform in venues with other jam musicians. “That would be a perfect forum,” he says. “Improvisation is what I do all the time, of course, and that’s what jamming’s all about.”
He has played outdoor blues and jazz events. “I enjoy playing those festivals because of all the people that come. It’s like whole families will be there. It’s in the daytime and people feel safe. It’s a nice setting usually, and there are bunches of other groups, too. It’s so different from when I first started out, playing these rough little bars,” he says.
Veteran bluegrass fiddler, Vassar Clemens, who died last year, recognized that musical genres weren’t sacred and ventured himself into the jam festival scene, playing regularly with the band, The Recipe. He was constantly asked to sit in on concerts and recording sessions with jambands. His one response to critics was “Well, music’s music.” Musselwhite echos that. “I agree totally. I was on his last album. I played on one or two tunes.” That album was produced by David Grisman who has been crossing genres for decades. “I don’t see anything wrong with that,” Musselwhite says. “The purists get all upset because they think you’re destroying their music. I say, ‘Blues is tough. You can’t destroy blues.’ The way I look at it is if you attract somebody to blues who hadn’t heard it before, you might have a new fan there.”
And Musselwhite has helped spread the gospel of blues, dispelling a lot of preconceived notions about it. “Sometimes people say, ‘I don’t want to listen to blues. It’s such sad music,’” he says. “No, it’s to get rid of that feeling.” To him and other blues lovers, blues is cathartic like church music. You go to church, you sing the songs, you praise, you dance if you feel like if the Spirit moves you, and you come back home stronger and better able to cope. Blues does that, too.
“Blues is about everything,” Musselwhite adds. “It’s about good times and bad times. It has a spirit of saying, ‘OK. Times might be tough, but we can get through that.’ It’s never about giving up. It’s the spirit of keeping on and keeping on.”
And, very fitting to use it as a vehicle to uplift the plight of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Musselwhite did benefit with Tom Wait last fall at New York City Radio City Music Hall.
Working with someone like Wait does pose its own challenges. “I really have to change my approach when I’m playing with Tom. It kind of reminds me of just brush strokes, tones, instead of playing all over the harmonica. I just add these colors,” he says. “What’s going on is just him and his lyrics, and you’re supposed to be there to make that better.”
Musselwhite’s own recordings and tours are both experiments in genre influences as well as straight up blues. Sanctuary, the album before his most recent recording, had a real gospel feel to it, though the songs were far from being church music. Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama made guest appearances on it. Musselwhite also included a talking blues tune called “I Had Trouble.” “It’s kind of an autobiographical talking blues,” he says. But unlike the regular country talking blues that Woody Guthrie made popular and that eventually gave rise to talking blues, Musselwhite’s version doesn’t have the customary constant guitar lick that repeats with the expected talking blues cadence. It is more on the line of spoken word, a precursor to rap.
The new album, Delta Hardware, has sprinkles of talking blues songs in a number of songs. One pure talking blues is the Katrina song, “Black Water.” The initial cut, “Church Is Out,”one of four Musselwhite originals on the disc, is another. “Gone Too Long” combines the talking style with roadhouse blues.
But it still is his traditional Delta blues tracks that stand out. “One of These Mornings” is a driving blues tune that steams across the disc like a freight train. “Sundown,” another original, is pure Musselwhite, and “Just a Feeling” is traditional Delta blues at its best, both with the shouts and whoops of that plaintive deep southern blues style. On the latter, Musselwhite shines both vocally and on harmonica. “Blues for Yesterday,” an original, is a straight up blues tune that begins with harp and leads right into Musselwhite’s raw vocal. It’s just a perfect traditional blues piece.
There are also two surprises on this album. One is Musselwhite’s rendering of the blues staple, “Clarksdale Boogie,” using a drum and bass loop as a foundation for his harp and vocal. It’s unexpected. And, then there is “Town to Town,” an original walking blues tune with Musselwhite’s guitar work and his vocals but no harp at all.
After four decades playing the blues, what is in store for Charlie Musselwhite? “Well, pretty much the same thing,” he says. “I just hope it gets better. I’ve never had a plan. It just keeps happening to me, and I just keep responding to what happens to me.”
And his advice for young people wanting to make a living playing music? “I think you ought to just try to have fun,” he says. “Don’t set yourself up to get disappointed. Having a hit record is great, but not everybody gets one. A lot of it is luck, where you are and who you know. Just because you’re a great player doesn’t guarantee you’ll have a success in the music business. You can just play for yourself. If something happens, great. If it doesn’t happen, that’s great, too. Just being alive and doing what you like to do is as good as it gets.” And he adds, “I think that if you’re doing something that you like, you’ll get good at it.”
Charlie Musselwhite certainly likes what he’s doing, and he’s gotten to be the best out there.
