Willie Dixon

Without ever establishing a style as distinctive as those of the artists with whom he worked, Willie Dixon became one of the architects of urban blues on the strength of his skills as a songwriter, bandleader, musician, arranger, producer, and diplomat. In these roles, Dixon reigned supreme at Chess Records in the 1950s and early 1960s, when he worked in one capacity or another with every significant artist on a label blessed with an abundance of them. Even a cursory listing of his many songwriting credits indicates the breathtaking scope of his contributions to American music and to the language of the blues: "My Babe," "You Shook Me," "Back Door Man," "Little Red Rooster," "Spoonful," "Wang Dang Doodle," "I Can't Quit You Baby," "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man," "You Can't Judge a Book By Its Cover," "The Seventh Son," "I Just Want to Make Love to You." Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Bo Diddley, Lowell Fulson, and Jimmy Witherspoon are only the most prominent of the musicians in Dixon's debt. They and others are heard on the two-CD The Chess Box collection, which is an essential blues overview. It's impossible to listen to the 36 tracks and then understate Dixon's stature -- even the abused term giant seems insufficient considering the magnitude of the man's achievements. Other examples of Dixon's early postwar blues work can be found on Mr. Dixon's Workshop. This disc is less focused on Dixon's classics than on rare and obscure sides that showcase some terrific performances and outstanding artists. Jessie Fortune's "Too Many Cooks" features a young Buddy Guy on guitar, along with Big Walter Horton on harp; Guy turns up again on "Sit and Cry the Blues," a solo recording from 1958. "My Babe" is here, not in its classic Little Walter version but in a furious rockabilly reading by Jerry Lee Lewis's cousin Mickey Gilley, years before he found success as a mainstream country artist.

Oddly, Dixon's solo work was the least of his accomplishments. As a musician and producer, he was beyond reproach. Vocally, his was a genial, even moving, voice on occasion, but he never sounded as completely immersed in or defined by his material as did, for example, Muddy Waters or Howlin' Wolf. The zone these and other artists inhabited, in which passion, pain, and technique came together in one explosive package, is one Dixon visited in other capacities, but not on his own releases.

That said, it should be added that Dixon's recordings have some stirring moments. The earliest of these, Columbia's Big Three Trio, finds Dixon near the outset of his career, joined by Leonard Caston and Ollie Crawford in a trio purveying blues-tinged popular music in the style of the Mills Brothers. Among the interesting tracks is the Dixon-Caston-penned "If the Sea Was Whiskey," the first verse of which has shown up in countless songs, most notably "Rollin' and Tumblin'." Poet of the Blues takes a then-and-now look at Dixon's career in 16 tracks, nine featuring the Big Three Trio (actually a quartet, with Charles Sanders on drums) from the late '40s through the early '50s and seven of Dixon's monuments ("Back Door Man," "I Can't Quit You Baby," "Spoonful") recorded in 1970 in Chicago and issued on the I Am the Blues long player. His band, the Chicago Blues All-Stars, included Sunnyland Slim on piano, Johnny Shines on guitar, and Clifton James on drums.

Bluesville/Prestige has reissued Dixon's first album as a bandleader, Willie's Blues, recorded in 1959 and featuring the redoubtable Memphis Slim on piano. Imbued with a dark, after-hours ambience, the album is by far Dixon's strongest solo recording. His stuttering vocal on "Nervous" is one of his most effective on record; one of the better tracks is the loping "Youth to You," a thinly disguised reworking of "I Just Want to Make Love to You." Dixon's fruitful if short-lived association with Memphis Slim is further documented on the fabulous live disc Baby Please Come Home, recorded in Paris in 1962 with Phillipe Combelle joining the duo on drums and adding vocal support on the rousing set-closer, "All By Myself."

I Am the Blues features Dixon's own interpre-tations of nine of his best-known songs, and for this reason alone it becomes a good companion volume to the Chess box and the other extensive MCA overview, The Original Wang Dang Doodle, with tracks cut between 1954 and 1990. "The blues is about life," he once said. "If it ain't about life, it ain't the blues." When death brought an end to his remarkable career, in 1992, Willie Dixon had walked it like he talked it, staying true to his own maxim right up to the end of his days. (DAVID MCGEE)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide