Living Legend: Charlie Musselwhite by Eric Steiner

Living Legend: Charlie Musselwhite

By Eric Steiner

Photo by Ÿ Marilyn Stringer

I first discovered Charlie Musselwhite in the 1970s while working at WGLT at Illinois State University. At the time, I was a work-study undergraduate student earning about $1.30 per hour. I was lucky because I had landed a good job in college radio with a seemingly endless library of long-playing records I could borrow and play in my dorm room. Since then, WGLT affiliated with National Public Radio and has developed award-winning, world-class blues programming that streams 24/7 online.

To this day, I still play those early blues records that I found in the WGLT record library, especially Charlie Musselwhite’s seminal 1967 debut on Vanguard Records, Stand Back: Here Comes Charley Musselwhite’s Southside Band. It was simply a delight to celebrate the 10th anniversary of that LP on the air!

While this Living Legend portrait may admittedly be more personal than earlier articles in this Blues Festival Guide series, I want to show readers how Charlie Musselwhite’s music has continued to inspire me since those early days as a college radio DJ. Perhaps more importantly, Charlie Musselwhite’s music has taught me the importance of being open to new cultural opportunities, learning from elders who have come before me, and appreciating the rich diversity and potential of blues music.

Musselwhite was born in Kosciusko, Attala County, MS, on January 31, 1944. His father was an itinerant musician who did odd jobs to help his young family, and when Charlie was three, they relocated to Memphis. Charlie’s parents divorced after their move, and then Charlie focused on joining the world of work as soon as he could. While he lived in Memphis, an important cultural touchstone of his life was AM radio. Specifically, Charlie tuned in to WDIA, billed as “Your All-Colored Station” that featured Rufus Thomas’ nightly blues program with a theme song by African American harmonica ace Sonny Terry, “Hootin’ Blues.” I’d like to think that Sonny Terry drew young Charlie Musselwhite into the blues tribe as an impressionable teenager.

Legend has it that Charlie ran moonshine in a 1950 Lincoln with a flathead V-8, and worked as a construction worker around Shelby County and in predominantly African American communities around West Memphis. Often, he was the only White worker on the jobsite. He earned the moniker “Memphis Charlie,” as he learned to play the guitar and harmonica, and discovered early country blues through the work of noted blues scholar Samuel Charters. Local blues elders like Furry Lewis, Gus Cannon and Son Brimmer each mentored Musselwhite in his Memphis blues apprenticeship on guitar and harmonica.

Like many of his fellow Mississippi-born bluesmen after World War II, Musselwhite came up from Memphis to the “City of the Big Shoulders” in the early 1960s to seek a higher paying (meaning $3 per hour!) job in a factory. He quickly joined other White bluesmen, including Elvin Bishop, Nick Gravenites, Mike Bloomfield, Harvey Mandel and Paul Butterfield, as they learned from masters like Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf, Big Joe Williams and Elmore James at fabled blues venues like Magoo’s, Kelley’s and Big John’s. As blues fans, we are all supremely blessed for Muddy Waters’ mentorship of Charlie Musselwhite as a 22-yearold newly arrived bluesman in Chicago. Muddy noticed an uncommon spark in his latest South Side protégé and introduced him to a very rough-and-tumble club scene.

During his five-year residency in Chicago, Charlie, like many aspiring bluesmen, gravitated toward Bob Koester’s legendary Jazz Record Mart on Adams Street, where he met blues writer Pete Welding (who later contributed liner notes to his

Charlie Musselwhite plays with bandmates Matt Stubbs (guitar) and June Core (drums) on the Edmonton Blues Festival stage in 2019. Photo by Ÿ Marilyn Stringer

debut album). In the 1960s, Jazz Record Mart was a veritable graduate school of the blues as it attracted many blues fans, such as Bruce Iglauer, who would go on to record Hound Dog Taylor and The HouseRockers for his award-winning Alligator Records label. One of Iglauer’s first jobs in Chicago was a clerk at Bob Koester’s store.

In Chicago, Charlie’s blues life came full circle on his debut record in 1967. Not only did Pete Welding write the liner notes for Stand Back, but Samuel Charters produced the album, which featured a who’s who of bluesmen who played with Charlie in South Side clubs, including the exceptional engine room of Bob Anderson (Koko Taylor, James Cotton) on bass, Fred Below (Little Walter, Muddy Waters) on drums, Barry Goldberg (Chicago Blues Reunion, The Electric Flag) on keyboards and Harvey Mandel (The Snake, Canned Heat) on guitar.

Musselwhite left Chicago in 1967 for the San Francisco Bay Area. Nearly 15 years later, he encouraged John Lee Hooker to move to California, and shortly after that, Hooker was best man when Charlie married his wife Henrietta. That was more than 40 years ago. Charlie’s current band includes Matt Stubbs (James Cotton, James Harman) on guitar, June Core (Mark Hummel, Elvin Bishop) on drums and Randy Bermudes (Rusty Zinn, RJ Mischo) on bass. Musselwhite divides his time between homes in Sonoma County, CA, and the Mississippi Delta in Clarksdale, MS.

Musselwhite’s performances on record and on stage stand out for their passion, complexity and unpredictability – whether it’s updating traditional blues forms on songs like “My Road Lies in Darkness” from Sanctuary or “Church is Out” from Delta Hardware, or revisiting “Cristo Redentor,” the song that ends each one of Charlie’s set lists. Charlie’s music is deceptively simply. Sure, it generally starts with basic riffs on his Seydel brand harmonica… but then, chord changes – like a boxer’s right hook – hijack the melody in service of the song.

A live Charlie Musselwhite show always features some world music that is surprisingly close to American blues. For example, on “Feel It In Your Heart” from Juke Joint Chapel, Charlie takes us down to South America and introduces us to forró, a genre of music unique to Northeastern Brazil that features an accordion, zabumba bass drum and a metal triangle. As Charlie sings, “Forró’s played with heart, about every day and place/ For people of every color and all their daily cares/ Christo Redentor’s stayin’ on Corcovado’s heel/ He beckons you to come on down to Brazil.” Corcavado is a mountain in central Rio de Janeiro known for the 125-foot statue of Jesus atop its peak; Cristo Redentor or Christ the Redeemer.

Charlie Musselwhite has released 34 albums on a variety of record labels, including many stalwart roots and blues outlets like Alligator, Telarc, Vanguard and Arhoolie. He’s also worked with some of the more entrepreneurial imprints that tend to feature a wider range of music than traditional blues, including Peter Gabriel’s Real World, Virgin Records’ Point Blank, New West the Ford Brothers’ Blue Rock’It and the revitalized Stax label. His releases on his own label Henrietta – named in honor of his wife and producer – are exceptional documents of a master at work, especially 2009’s Rough Dried: Live at The Triple Door and 2013’s Juke Joint Chapel. I’m particularly biased regarding that live recording at Seattle’s Triple Door because I was there.

Photo by Arnie Goodman Photography

His versions of classics like “River Hip Mama” and “Cristo Redentor” were bucket list blues performances for me.

Throughout his career, Musselwhite has been linked to a number of genre-defining blues performers. I was more than a bit skeptical when I first learned 10 years ago that he’d join Cyndi Lauper on a worldwide tour promoting her 11th studio CD, Memphis Blues. My skepticism, however, evaporated after just one listen. Musselwhite does what he does best on the Little Walter classic, “Just Your Fool,” and Memphis Blues also includes such notable blues guests as Ann Peebles, Allen Toussaint and B.B. King. Memphis Blues was recognized as Billboard’s biggestselling blues CD of 2010, having sat atop the blues charts for 13 weeks, and the album’s tour played 140 dates worldwide, surpassing Lauper’s earlier tours.

In the last few years, Musselwhite has continued to tour. Some notable performances include The Blues Foundation Hall of Fame Tour in 2015, in which Charlie teamed up with James Cotton and John Hammond. I hope that The Blues Foundation will continue to

Musselwhite (ctr), Matt Stubbs (lt) and Randy Bermudes (rt) bring the blues to the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City, February 2020. Photo by Arnie Goodman Photography

Photo by Ÿ Marilyn Stringer

convene artists of their caliber to not only provide work for such accomplished blues artists, but also to bring live blues to new audiences. In 2017, Musselwhite joined William Bell and Bobby Rush for the Take Me to the River Tour, updating classics originally recorded on Stax and Hi Records. Most recently, prior to the arrival of COVID-19, Jimmie Vaughan, Charlie Musselwhite and Buddy Guy played Oakland’s historic Paramount Theatre on March 6, 2020.

Perhaps no other touring blues performer, apart from legendary blues guitarist Buddy Guy, has garnered as much recognition as Charlie Musselwhite from blues fans and peers alike. In his career spanning six decades, Musselwhite has received 31 Blues Music Awards, many Living Blues Awards, 13 Grammy nominations and his first Grammy win in 2013 for Best Blues Album, Get Up! with Ben Harper. He received the 2000 Mississippi Governor’s Arts Award and was inducted into The Blues Foundation’s Blues Hall of Fame in 2010, as well as into the Memphis Hall of Fame in 2019. Collectively, these accolades recognize Musselwhite’s lifetime contributions to blues music. At an age when many of his septuagenarian peers have long been retired, Musselwhite continues to record and tour worldwide.

I’ll leave the last words to Charlie. Backstage at the Grammy Awards with Ben Harper, he was asked about his motivation for Get Up! “If you think I’m going to make this music to win a Grammy – that’s not the spirit of the music,” said Charlie. “You know we’re playing the music from our hearts and with love and happiness and – you do that first – then you see what happens – see how people like it.”

Eric Steiner is the editor of the Washington Blues Society Bluesletter and past president of the Washington Blues Society in Seattle, WA. He served on the Board of Directors of The Blues Foundation from 2010 to 2013, and in 2009, the Washington Blues Society received a Keeping the Blues Alive in the affiliate category.