From Nigel Dixon To Willie Dixon!

Anyone with the slightest interest in the blues [Koen writes] will sooner or later encounter Willie Dixon’s name, whether as bass player, producer, writer/composer, or vocalist…

For me, it was probably the first 3 that piqued my interest and it wasn’t until I found a second-hand EP with 4 tracks from the American Folk Blues Festival that I heard him singing as well, in this case on "Crazy For My Baby". But any album I saw at the (pre-CD!) time featuring his name usually had his compositions sung by Muddy, the Wolf, and the other usual suspects of the Chicago blues scene.

In my early 80s travelling days I was pleasantly surprised to find a cassette of his 1969 I Am The Blues album in Malaysia of all places!

But after that not much happened until I discovered that in 1989 Don Snowden had written a book about Dixon:  I Am The Blues… I requested a Dutch friend to get me a copy and in 1995 I was reading it, a riveting story!

Later during the Napster and Audiogalaxy (remember those?!) days I finally managed to get some (low quality, 128 kbps) mp3 tracks of his songs, pretty cool, although truth be told Dixon was an average vocalist, at least compared to Muddy & the Wolf, but it was pretty cool to hear more of him.

Chess issued a 2 CD Willie Dixon Box in 1989 which was an interesting mix of his production work and compositions, but again, not much of his singing.

1988 saw a new Dixon album, produced by T-Bone Burnett: Hidden Charms, which rightfully won a 1989 Grammy Award.

In 1995 a 14-track single disc compilation was released: The Original Wang Dang Doodle: The Chess Recordings & More, which focussed on the man’s voice and even included some unissued tracks at the time, starting with his own first 1954 version of Wang Dang Doodle and ending with the 1990 Rob Wasserman collaboration Dustin’ Off The Bass.  Brilliant, I bought a copy immediately and still have it in my collection.

Fast forward to the present, various Willie Dixon compilations are widely available but most shoddily put together, usually mixing anything and everything without proper liner notes and just presenting all tracks under his name. Chances are very high that "Wang Dang Doodle" on one of those is the Howling’ Wolf’s version and not Willie’s, irritating to say the least! Therefore compiling a new collection seemed not a bad idea, a kind of The Original Wang Dang Doodle disc 2!  

What have we got? We start with Koko Taylor: her 1969 album was produced by Dixon and had several of his compositions, including 3 on which he sang as well, plus a single, "The Egg Or The Hen".  On Howlin’ Wolf’s "Going Down Slow", Willie does the introduction.

We have a couple of live tracks from various American Folk Blues Festivals, recorded between 1962 and 1966.  To get a better idea of Willie’s bass-playing skills, check out the 1966 live performance of Bassology.

Chuck E. Weiss recorded in 1970 a cover of the old "Down The Road A Piece" with Dixon, which only saw the light of day in 2002.  A semi-bootleg concert with Johnny Winter recorded at the Liberty Hall, Houston Texas on May 9th, 1971, gives us a cool performance of "Spoonful"!

For his 1973 album Catalyst, he recorded a slightly different version of "Wang Dang Doodle".  I selected one song each of I Am The Blues and Hidden Charms.

For the 1986 soundtrack of Scorsese’s The Color Of Money, Robbie Robertson got Willie on board and together with Hiram Bullock (g), Delmar Brown (keyboards), Mark Egan (b), Kenwood Dennard or Ricky Sebastien (d), and Gil Evans (arranger), recorded "Don’t You Tell Me Nothin’". This is a slightly different version of "Don't You Tell Nobody", which Willie recorded with Memphis Slim years ago in 1960 for Willie’s Blues…  Recycling the blues!

Finally, we return where it all started in 1949 with The Big Trio’s "Signifying Monkey".