Elmore James - The Sky Is Crying
Rare indeed is a musician that was so inexorably influential on his chosen instrument that everyone to follow in his outsized path bears his musical stamp.
When it comes to electric blues slide guitar, Elmore James was just that monumentally important. The indelible template that he established with his immortal rendition of “Dust My Blues” (actually, several renditions) can be heard in an entire school of Chicago-based acolytes that were his generational peers as well as a phalanx of long-haired young blues-rockers that gleefully followed in his wake. Muddy Waters was the only bottleneck specialist of that era with a similarly high profile in the electric blues arena, but his lacerating approach didn’t impact other blues guitarists in quite the overwhelming manner that Elmore’s did. When you hear those followers’ solos, you’re generally hearing Elmore once removed.
What’s amazing is that Elmore’s resonating legacy was constructed over slightly less than a solitary decade. He got a late start on his recording career, making his debut in the recording studio in 1951, and a 1963 heart attack killed him at the tender age of 45. Yet during the course of that truncated timespan, he produced an incredible number of seminal recordings that belong in any self-respecting Blues Hall of Fame. James engaged in his share of label-hopping during that era, eventually landing at Bobby Robinson’s Harlem-based Fire Records in 1959—and that final period of his career is the sole focus of this expansive retrospective.
The slide wizard was never more experimental than under Robinson’s watch, surrounding himself with various musical combinations during sessions held in Chicago, New York, and New Orleans that pushed the creative envelope again and again. Depending on whether he was backed by his trusty Broomdusters in the Windy City, a more downhome combo that he assembled himself for a date in the Crescent City, or a horn-heavy Gotham crew put together by Robinson, Elmore fashioned his viciously hard-hitting blues at Fire and its sister Enjoy label to fit whatever musical combination was at hand as well his own mood. His highly impassioned vocal delivery and crashing fretwork never wavered for an instant. It’s safe to say Elmore James never made a bad record, at Fire or anywhere else, and this riveting collection is proof positive of that.
Born January 27, 1918 in Richland, Mississippi to unwed mother Leola Brooks, Elmore eventually adopted the surname of his stepfather, Joe Willie James. For a time, the little family settled in Canton, Mississippi, then moved again to Belzoni. There the couple adopted Robert Earl Holston, born four months to the day after Elmore. The well-matched pair played homemade guitars together as they grew up and became polished enough on their respective axes to perform in local juke joints, including the Midnight Grill in Tchula, another small Mississippi town where they were living and working on a plantation. Playing guitar wasn’t James’ only skill; as time went on, he grew adept at making moonshine, a talent that probably generated a steadier income than his musical exploits.
Elmore crossed paths and did some rambling with immortal Delta bluesman Robert Johnson, the original 1936 source of “Dust My Broom” as well as another James perennial, “Standing At The Crossroads.” A little less than seven years older than James, Johnson was obviously wicked with a slide, the searing sound rubbing off on Elmore during his formative years. But Johnson didn’t live long enough to record with an amplified guitar. James would.
Despite the fact that John Lee Williamson had already laid claim to the moniker up in Chicago, harpist Aleck “Rice” Miller adopted the same alias of Sonny Boy Williamson below the Mason-Dixon Line. He and Elmore worked as a musical duo around the Delta during the late ‘30s. Miller found stardom when he began broadcasting over KFFA radio in Helena, Arkansas in 1941 for King Biscuit Flour (Elmore reportedly visited him there on occasion), but the harpist generally used Robert Jr. Lockwood, Johnson’s “stepson,” on guitar. World War II was raging in July of 1943, when Elmore was drafted into the U.S. Navy. James had a rough go of it, serving in the Pacific and experiencing some rugged action, prior to being discharged in November of ‘45.
Things had changed when Elmore got back to Belzoni. His mother was living in Chicago, and Robert had launched his own radio repair store in Canton. What’s more, despite only being in the neighborhood of 28 years of age, James’ health was already failing—heart problems forced him into treatment in Jackson. But he recovered, moving back to Belzoni and reuniting with Sonny Boy to occasionally broadcast regionally, their sponsor an elixir of questionable validity known as Talaho. Then it was back to Canton, where James sometimes gigged with pianist Willie Love.
The turning point finally came when Lillian McMurry launched her Trumpet Records in 1950 after learning just how much demand there was around Jackson for rhythm and blues 78s when she established her Record Mart on Farish Street. By April of 1950, McMurry was in the record business herself with a session by the St. Andrews Gospelaires, and in early January of ‘51, she expanded into blues by bringing Sonny Boy into Scott Radio Service for his debut session (Williamson got an even later start with his recording career agewise than James did). Sonny Boy brought Love and two guitarists along with him, the estimable Joe Willie Wilkins and Elmore. One of the songs Williamson waxed that day, “Eyesight To The Blind,” was the A-side of his Trumpet debut and proved a regional hit, although a second version had to be cut without James a couple of months later when a blaze consumed the original masters at the Chicago mastering facility that McMurry utilized.
All the principals reconvened at Scott on August 5 to lay down more sides for Trumpet, Sonny Boy cutting enough material for three singles including “Do It If You Wanta,” “Stop Crying,” and “I Cross My Heart.” There was enough time left over at the end of the date to give Elmore a shot behind the mic, with only Sonny Boy and bassist Leonard Ware sticking around for musical support. James responded with his first seminal treatment of “Dust My Blues.” Johnson had cut his original solo acoustic version of “Dust My Blues” for ARC in November of 1936, and Arthur “:Big Boy” Crudup beat Elmore to doing the first revival of the song in 1949 for RCA Victor, followed by Lockwood’s remake for Mercury in late ‘51.
McMurry later claimed that Elmore had nothing else prepared that was worth recording that day, so only the one master was captured for posterity. When she decided to release the song on Trumpet, McMurry chose a tune waxed a couple of weeks earlier by guitarist Bobo Thomas with the same backing pair, “Catfish Blues,” as a plattermate for “Dust My Broom” and issued the single on Trumpet under the name of Elmo James. “Dust My Broom” took off, making a one-week appearance on Billboard’s “Best Seller” R&B listing at #9. McMurry wanted to bring Elmore back to Jackson to record a followup, but much to her chagrin and despite a signed contract, that would never happen.
In January of 1952—three months before “Dust My Broom” dented the R&B hit parade--Modern Records honcho Joe Bihari had come across James at Holston’s radio repair emporium in Canton while on one of his frequent swings through the South in search of fresh blues talent. Bihari wasted no time recording his latest find; with Joe’s right-hand man and occasional chauffeur Ike Turner hammering the 88s, Bihari hooked up a portable recorder at Clarence Chinn’s Club Bizarre in Canton and cut a stack of masters over the next few days.
Bihari and his brothers Jules and Saul got ready to press up Elmore’s sizzling “Lost Woman Blues” on Modern’s Flair subsidiary, but McMurry threatened a lawsuit if the single saw light of day. Elmore made sure that McMurry wouldn’t find him by heading for Chicago (her heartfelt entreaties to come home went unheeded). By June, he was a member of the local musicians’ union, and he put together a spectacular band. Pianist Johnny Jones, bassist Ransom Knowling, and drummer Odie Payne, Jr. were longtime cohorts of another noted slide specialist from an earlier era, Tampa Red. Knowling also played his swinging upright bass on many of Crudup’s best-known RCA platters, while Jones had his own 1949 78 on Aristocrat, “Big Town Play Boy.” Tenor saxist J.T. Brown had a distinctive braying sound and a handful of 78s as a leader for Harlem and United already gracing the shelves. Elmore christened his new combo the Broomdusters, and he used them on his next session for the Biharis that November. The date was held at Universal Recording in Chicago, where McMurry couldn’t say a word about it.
Reverting to his bread and butter theme, Elmore waxed a raw, slide-permeated “Dust My Broom”-oriented takeoff entitled “I Believe” at Universal that was summarily dispatched over to brother Lester Bihari’s brand-new Memphis-based Meteor logo. In February of 1953, it made its own #9 showing on the very same Billboard chart that had previously announced the emergence of “Dust My Broom.” Joe Bihari’s patience had been rewarded with a national hit.
Before long, James joined the Chicago musicians’ union and found himself some club gigs up north. One of his strongholds was Silvio’s on West Lake Street, where he shared a bill with his old pal Sonny Boy in early October of ‘53. Elmore wasn’t altogether loyal to the Biharis either; he engaged in a little moonlighting for Checker Records in January of ’53, but his tentative single was canceled after Modern complained (there was already bad blood between the Chesses and Biharis, having previously quarreled over the rights to Howlin’ Wolf and Rosco Gordon).
After “I Believe” crashed the charts, Elmore’s output would appear on Flair. His next few sessions were held at Universal; a spring ‘54 get-together had Jones and Payne joined by none other than Ike Turner, newly switched over to guitar from his usual piano stool, and Ike’s primary saxist, Raymond Hill. But hits were proving hard to come by for James since “I Believe.” So in late summer of 1954, the recording action shifted to Modern’s in-house studio in Culver City, California with the Biharis’ favorite bandleader, tenor saxist Maxwell Davis, leading an all-L.A. band for James’ rendition of Robert Johnson’s “Standing At The Crossroads,” Elmore’s own “Happy Home,” and four more. Davis was joined by two more horns and a full rhythm section, the biggest studio band Elmore had ever fronted up to that point.
When none of those platters went national, the Biharis booked Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Studios in New Orleans in August of 1955 and tried again. One of the highlights that day was an immaculate remake of Elmore’s signature theme, this time released as “Dust My Blues.” The crisp rhythm section—pianist Edward Frank, bassist Frank Fields, and drummer Earl Palmer—were busy backing a plethora of rock and rollers back then, but their command of blues was impeccable as well, and a vocal group was brought in for the smooth “Good Bye” (the only time James was ever backed in the studio by harmonious voices).
A year or so after his final date for the Biharis, this time for the parent Modern imprint, at the dawn of 1956 back in Chicago, the brothers downsized their roster, and James was one of the many casualties (Modern, RPM, and Flair were all mothballed in favor of the new Kent label as the artistic focus in Culver City shifted primarily to rock and roll and doowop). But Elmore had options in Chicago. He signed on the dotted line with Mel London’s fledgling Chief Records.
London had made a local name for himself as a songwriter, composing Chicago blues classics for pianist Willie Mabon (the clever “Poison Ivy”) and Muddy Waters (“Sugar Sweet”) on Chess prior to taking the plunge as a label owner in the spring of ‘57. He even tried his hand as a singer for Chief’s debut offering, the calypso-based “Man From The Island.” It didn’t do any business, but next out of the box was the unusual London composition “The Twelve Year Old Boy” by Elmore James, which presumably did since far larger Vee-Jay Records picked up national rights to the single shortly thereafter. In a world of cocksure blues singers, “The Twelve Year Old Boy” was a departure—Elmore dejectedly sang of losing his woman to a pre-teen!
Vee-Jay picked up Elmore’ two Chief followups as well. The first was “It Hurts Me Too,” a gorgeous revival of Tampa Red’s 1949 chestnut “When Things Go Wrong With You” sporting an exquisite slide introduction (London may have dreamed up the whimsical title for its instrumental flip, “Elmore’s Contribution to Jazz,” actually a tough blues workout). James capped off his brief Chief stay with a very modern “Cry For Me Baby” that skittered along over a West Side-style guitar riff supplied by young Syl Johnson. “They looked me up. I didn’t look them up. He was trying to get me to record with him,” said Johnson. “He was just kind of quiet, nonchalant. He was a nice guy. I went on some gigs with him too.”
Heart problems continued to dog James during this period; it’s been reported that he suffered a pair of heart attacks, and for a time he returned to Jackson, where he worked as a deejay on WRBC. Fortunately, he had an ardent admirer he didn’t even know about, way out East in Harlem. Bobby Robinson’s record shop, located just down 125th Street from the legendary Apollo Theatre, was a mecca for visiting R&B stars and the fans that wanted to own their music. Robinson knew how good Elmore’s platters had been over the years, and he wanted to locate him but had no idea where to look.
Born in Union, South Carolina on April 16, 1917 and raised primarily on gospel music, Robinson had migrated to New York City and opened Bobby’s Record Shop at 301 W. 125th Street in 1946. After learning the retail side of the business, the logical next step was to launch his own label, Robin Records, in 1951. He nailed a quick hit with the Mello-Moods’ “Where Are You (Now That I Need You).”. But the diminutive Robinson was forced into a quick name change when a Tennessee label of the same handle complained, so Robin became Red Robin. The logo built a strong vocal group roster over the next few years with the Du Droppers, Vocaleers, Velvets, Scarlets, and Rainbows sitting pretty alongside stellar blues and R&B by Champion Jack Dupree, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Tiny Grimes, and saxist Red Prysock.
By early 1956, Red Robin was history. But Robinson was just getting started. His partnership with Jerry Blaine at short-lived Whirlin Disc Records didn’t work out despite the label pacting the Channels, but once Bobby went back on his own with the Fury label at the beginning of ’57, things turned around swiftly for him. Fury’s first artist was little Lewis Lymon, younger brother of the celebrated Frankie Lymon, who led his own vocal group, the Teenchords. They were joined at Fury by the Miracles (not Smokey Robinson’s group), the Federals, the Kodaks, and the Du Mauriers. But it wasn’t until Robinson began setting his sights on solo artists that Fury began racking up hits.
1959 was Fury’s breakthrough year. Robinson struck gold with Wilbert Harrison’s revival of Little Willie Littlefield’s “Kansas City,” which topped both the pop and R&B hit parades but engendered lawsuits aplenty as Savoy Records boss Herman Lubinsky claimed Harrison was still under contract to his label and Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller demanded proper credit as the hit’s composers (Littlefield’s original was titled “K.C. Loving,” and Wilbert’s remake cited no songwriters on its label). Further, there were a spate of soundalike covers. Bobby responded by launching a subsidiary while Fury was tied up in court; his fledgling Fire Records scored its own number one R&B smash in the spring of 1960 with the thoroughly blues-soaked “Fannie Mae” by whooping Georgia-born harpist Buster Brown.
In order to promote his latest Fury and Fire releases, Robinson did his share of traveling across the U.S. He was in Chicago—one of his frequent destinations—plugging “Fannie Mae” in November of 1959 without so much as an inkling that Elmore made his home there, or that he gigged locally on a fairly regular basis. So when Bobby drove past a basement joint with a placard tied to its façade advertising James as its headliner act that evening, he slammed on his brakes and eagerly investigated, unsure whether the real thing would mount the stage.
Drummer Payne and Elmore’s cousin Homesick James (Williamson), who played bass lines on his tuned-down electric guitar, were sitting at one table in the joint, and Elmore was off by himself at another. Robinson announced that the drinks were on him that night—beer if Elmore was a fake, Scotch if he was legit. Bobby must have run up a hefty bar tab that joyous night, because it only took a few notes to convince Robinson that he’d stumbled across the bluesman that he’d avidly searched for all those years. They went to breakfast, eagerly discussing recording plans and setting up a rehearsal for the very next day.
Jones, Brown, Homesick, and Payne remained Elmore’s loyal Broomdusters when they convened. Everything had come together so quickly that James didn’t have any fresh material to record. It was a rainy day, and Bobby noted all the precipitation falling from the clouds when the two glanced out the window. James responded, “Yeah, it looks just like the sky is crying.” Just like that, they found the inspiration for Elmore’s first national hit in seven long years. In only a few minutes, “The Sky Is Crying” came together with Robinson penning the lyrics and James brainstorming the arrangement. Bobby got on the horn to a local recording studio to book some time, and after a dinner break, they headed in at eight p.m. to roll some tape.
In all, five masters were cut that evening. Bobby reported that “The Sky Is Crying” was the first title to be waxed, and a storming slide-soaked instrumental with a catchy melody line that briefly quoted Gene Ammons’ “Red Top” before going its own rollicking way that James had been getting a good reaction on from the bandstand came soon thereafter. Elmore named it “Bobby’s Rock” to honor his producer. The grinding downbeat blues “Held My Baby Last Night” was another highlight of the session, along with the hard-driving shuffle “Baby Please Set A Date.” A fresh treatment of “Dust My Broom” was done for good measure.
Despite his obvious enthusiasm for “The Sky Is Crying,” Robinson oddly didn’t press it up first. Instead, he chose “Bobby’s Rock” as half of Elmore’s Fire debut, inexplicably ignoring the other four fresh masters he did in Chicago to bootleg James’ Flair version of “Make My Dreams Come True” as the opposite side—a bizarre move that still baffles all these years later. Naturally, it’s not on this compilation.
When that didn’t attract any chart attention, “The Sky Is Crying” came next—and this time blues fans took notice. The number climbed to #15 on Billboard’s R&B hit parade during the spring of 1960, indicating Elmore’s comeback was fully underway (“Held My Baby Last Night” adorned the flip side). As was often the case with James, any existing contract with Fire was ignored in April of ’60 when Elmore decided to throw his lot in with Chess Records. Unlike the previous time he flirted with the Chess brothers, a coupling of “I Can’t Hold Out” and “The Sun Is Shining” (a natural answer to “The Sky Is Crying”) was released on Chess. The houserocking “Madison Blues” would have to wait nearly a decade to see light of day.
James’ second stint at Chess was scarcely longer than the previous one, and by the spring of ‘60 he was back recording for Robinson at Fire. Instead of returning to Chicago to undertake his followup session, Bobby brought Elmore to New York to record at Beltone Studios, located in Manhattan ay 31st and Fifth Avenue. Robinson brashly called the studio and told the proprietors to cancel whatever they had going from eight p.m. on, despite having no rehearsals with Elmore ahead of time. As it turned out, they worked for 12 solid hours and emerged with 10 or 11 finished masters.
Homesick was apparently on hand once again with his makeshift electric bass, but the rest of the supporting cast this time was strictly New York-based. Second guitarist Jimmy Spruill was one of Bobby’s favorite session aces, having played on Harrison’s “Kansas City,” Brown’s “Fannie Mae,” and plenty of other notable Robinson productions. Belton Evans was probably on drums, and baritone saxist Paul Williams, who had topped the R&B hit parade in 1949 with “The Huckle-Buck,” was likely in the horn section.
A rip-roaring revival of the Delta standard “Rollin’ And Tumblin’,” introduced way back in 1929 by Hambone Willie Newbern as “Roll And Tumble Blues” but best remembered through two-part amplified renditions by Baby Face Leroy Foster and Muddy Waters at the dawn of the ‘50s, was the first thing Robinson pressed up from the session, flipped with a broomdusting “I’m Worried” boasting typically pungent slide work from an impassioned Elmore amidst sawing horns. The exciting, quirkily tempoed rocker “Done Somebody Wrong,” again permeated with delightfully nasty slide work, was half of Elmore’s next 45, coupled with the straightahead romp “Fine Little Mama.”
Everything else done during that bountiful all-nighter was tabled by Robinson for later release on various albums and singles, much of it buried until after Elmore’s death. Best of all was the exquisite five-minute slow blues “Something Inside Me,” a four-in-the-morning tour de force containing some of James’ most adventurous slide playing ever and a hair-raising vocal shot through with pure, agonized passion. “I Need You” was another gut-wrencher, the horns riffing steadily yet unobtrusively behind Elmore’s emotional pipes and crunching guitar work.
The driving “Early One Morning” at times recalled Big Joe Turner’s “Wee Baby Blues” lyrically, while a spicy rhumba rhythm kicked “I Can’t Stop Loving You” along adroitly, Elmore peeling off buzzing low-end slide excursions. “Strange Angel” settled into a relaxed mid-tempo groove, James eschewing the slide this time. Elmore’s bass string runs on the instrumental “Strange Angel” were reminiscent of his licks on “Bobby’s Rock,” and “My Baby’s Gone” (aka “She Done Moved”) opens with a gorgeous descending run before segueing into another attractive “Dust My Broom” variant.
Robinson told Williams to expand the horn section for Elmore’s next session at Beltone in late 1960 or early ’61, and Paul responded by bringing in jazz great George Coleman on tenor sax, trumpeter Danny Moore, and trombonist Dickie Harris. Two more of Bobby’s regulars, pianist Johnny Acey (perhaps best-known for his rocking Fling single “I Go Into Orbit”) and guitarist Riff Ruffin (whose label hookups as a leader included Leiber and Stoller’s Spark as well as Mambo, Cash, and Ebb before he split L.A. for New York), were also on board.
The churning rocker “Stranger Blues” was chosen for release as a Fire single (though not until the summer of ’62), its highly danceable rhythmic thrust no doubt factoring into that decision. It was paired with the elegant slow blues “Anna Lee,” Elmore harking back to the repertoire of another Southern slide wizard, Helena, Arkansas native Robert Nighthawk (Moore’s riffing trumpet provided melodic counterpoint to Elmore’s raucous vocal). Once again, the remainder of the session was left to trickle out on vinyl as time went on, including the after-hours blues “Bleeding Heart,” the stop-time rocker “My Kind Of Woman,” a stomping “So Unkind” and the swaggering “Got To Move,” and remakes of Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson’s “Person To Person” and Johnson’s ever-popular “Standing At The Crossroads,” the latter having not changed much since Elmore waxed it for Flair back in ‘54.
James provided a splendidly frantic vocal to the torrid “One Way Out,” inexorably associated over the years with Sonny Boy thanks to his 1961 version for Checker. The sloppy ending on Elmore’s rendition, which predated Sonny Boy’s (albeit not by much), may have given Robinson pause about issuing it (what a shame he didn’t go for one more take and beat Leonard Chess to the punch). Although it’s listed as being from the same session, the stripped-down and thoroughly crunching “Find My Kinda Woman” sure doesn’t sound like it, with only James, a very Homesick-sounding electric bass, and drums in aural evidence.
Born in Laurel, Mississippi, Sam Myers played in the Southern edition of the Broomdusters during the mid-‘50s, more often on drums than on the harmonica that he later found fame with. The legally sightless Myers was with Elmore for a session in the summer of 1961 at Cosimo Matassa’s studio in New Orleans that produced the relentless “Shake Your Moneymaker,” contributing kicking drums to the track. On the rest of the date, King Mose handled the timekeeping behind James; his Jackson, Miss.-based Royal Rockers had backed Myers on his 1957 debut for Johnny Vincent’s Ace label, coupling “My Love Is Here To Stay” and “Sleeping In The Ground.” The rest of the band behind Elmore consisted of bassist Sammy Lee Bully and pianist Johnny “Big Moose” Walker, who waxed his first single in 1955 for the L.A.-based Ultra label prior to moving to Chicago and making his name as a sideman with Earl Hooker, Junior Wells, and other notables.
James threw Sam a curve when he told him to whip out his harmonica for a staunch revival of James “Beale Street” Clark’s “Look On Yonder Wall” (Clark’s 1945 rendition for Columbia was titled “Get Ready To Meet Your Man;” harpist Jazz Gillum’s RCA Victor version the following year introduced the more familiar title for the song). Myers’s intricate harp work also graced James’ “Go Back Home Again” from the same session, but he sat out a fresh rendition of “Sunnyland Train” and the tough “Mean Mistreatin’ Mama.” There was also time for Myers to unfurl his booming pipes on a pair of numbers that Robinson never did get around to issuing, “(Poor Little) Angel Child” and “Little Girl,” with Elmore returning the favor as his sideman.
Elmore’s final sessions were done in late 1962 or early ‘63 at A-1 Studios in New York. Its owner, Herb Abramson, had been a founder of Atlantic Records in 1947 along with Ahmet Ertegun before going his own way a little more than a decade later. Other than pianist Walking Willie, the sidemen are unknown (Robinson recalled them being from Mississippi, where Elmore was spending a fair amount of his time). James’ single-string lead licks came bathed in echo for “I’ve Got A Right To Love My Baby,” though he applied his slashing slide to Lowell Fulson’s warhorse “Every Day I Have The Blues.”
Its inclusion hints that James may have been a wee bit short of material--he also revisited “Dust My Broom,” “It Hurts Me Too,” “I Believe,” “Talk To Me Baby,” “Hand In Hand,” and “The Twelve Year Old Boy” from his meaty catalog. The spicy “Can’t Stop Loving My Baby” and a deliberate “She’s Got To Go” were also familiar commodities (“I Gotta Go Now” was different theme). Instrumentals were one of the orders of the day; Elmore blasted out “Pickin’ The Blues” (a “Bobby’s Rock” offshoot) and “Up Jumped Elmore” (also known as “Blacksnake Blues,” it was basically a wordless “Got My Mojo Working”). “You Know You’re Wrong” (aka “You Know You Done Me Wrong”) is attributed to this session as well, but it’s considerably more polished than everything else, so that could be a misnomer. Finally, James cut a fresh and uncompromising version of “Make My Dreams Come True” for Robinson so he wouldn’t have to borrow the one on Flair anymore.
Once again, Elmore did a little sideman work at one of these sessions, backing a singer named Marshall Jones on the blistering “You Can Do It If You Want To” and a deliberate “Woke Up Happy,” neither seeing light of day until Capricorn plumbed the Fire/Fury vaults for unissued material three decades later. It’s been alleged that the vocalist was actually Homesick James and that Bobby simply misremembered when the tapes resurfaced, but we’ll likely never know for sure. The snippet of between-songs conversation known as “Back In Mississippi” gives us a taste of James the man, as he discusses the quality of the women in his native state and a recent overabundance of snakes there.
Elmore deeply influenced a school of up-and-coming slide guitarists during the 1950s, most of them Chicago-based: J.B. Hutto, Hound Dog Taylor, Johnny Littlejohn, Joe Carter, and of course, his cousin, Homesick James. More than a few blues rockers fell under his sway too. Fleetwood Mac’s Jeremy Spencer could transform himself into a virtual James clone; Eric Clapton, Michael Bloomfield, and Duane Allman proclaimed their allegiance with tributes, and George Thorogood proudly wore his Elmore influence on his sleeve.
Unfortunately, James wouldn’t live to see any of the latter slidesters. He didn’t fare well overall during his last couple of years of the planet; his squabbles with the Chicago musicians’ union over nonpayment of his dues limited his gigging possibilities, and he retreated to Jackson for considerable stretches of time. But Windy City deejay Big Bill Hill was in the process of helping him remedy his beef with the union in the spring of 1963, and James repaid the favor by headlining Hill’s new blues joint, the Copacabana.
Elmore was rooming with Homesick’s family on the near North Side when he suffered his fatal heart attack on May 24, 1963, not long before he was to head out to his gig that evening. Even though he was gone physically, James’ influence was bigger than ever—witness the fact that his remake of “It Hurts Me Too” pressed up on Robinson’s Enjoy logo, dented the R&B charts in the spring of 1965, two years after he departed the planet.
Blues slide guitar would have never been the same without the spectacular innovations of Elmore James. These three CDs will tell you why in profoundly eloquent fashion.
--Bill Dahl
SOURCES
Blues Records 1943 to 1970—A Selective Discography, Volume 1 A to K, by Mike Leadbitter and Neil Slaven (London: Record Information Services, 1987)
Chicago Breakdown, by Mike Rowe (New York & London: Drake Publishers, Inc., 1975)
Joel Whitburn’s Top R&B Singles 1942-1988, by Joel Whitburn (Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research, Inc., 1988)
Trumpet Records—An Illustrated History with Discography, by Marc Ryan (Milford, NH: Big Nickel Pubs., 1992)