Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol. 37, No. 10. May 22, 1974

Direct from Chicago Willie Dixon

page 15

Direct from Chicago Willie Dixon

I noticed when (was down at (he D1C the other day booking for Osibisa that hardly anyone has booked yet for Willie Dixon. Which is a shame. It's nice to think that there are places left like New Zealand where these old guys can still earn a little bread. God knows Willie Dixon deserves it; he's written some of the finest songs of the rock era: 'Spoonful', 'Back Door Man', 'Bring it on Home to Me', 'Little Red Rooster' and dozens more. So how come there is so little response at this stage to Dixon's visit?

I think some of the answer lies hidden at the bottom of the promotional guff Barry Coburn sent to Salient. Hidden among the usual raves is an important statement; "Willie Dixon is back on the road for the first time since the 1940s". Get that straight, Dixon is famous as a songwriter, not as a performer. You may like to keep that in mind before you lay down your money for the show. No one questions the man's contributions to the blues, but I think enough people have been scared stiff by our lack of knowledge of just how well Dixon can cut it as a performer of his own songs. I mean, how much would you pay to go and see Bernie Taupin?

If Willie Dixon does finally bomb at the box office it may teach promoters that the NZ blues audience is a little more discriminating than anyone would have thought from past efforts. It will show perhaps that you can't grab just any old black performer cheap and push him out in front of a local audience with your return guaranteed. In the past that formula has worked out of a combination of musical starvation, curiosity, ignorance and a sense of duty. That could be ending.

But from the start it was a little strange. Could anything be further removed from the living contexts of the blues than the stage of the Wellington Opera House? That's quite a way from the clubs, the small crowded rooms where dancing was done to the clatter of bottles and a hum of conversation so loud that the singer had to shout to make himself heard. In short, the music and the performer were treated pretty casually as one ingredient in an atmosphere of people getting together to have a good time.

How different things become when these guys perform for a white audience. They personally meet a respectful, almost reverent welcome, and their performance is received with an undiscriminating admiration that must stifle any real contact between the musician and the audience. The whote setup reeks of the tomb. And it's a sign of how dead the blues really is. Soul music took the black audience away from the blues nearly 20 years ago. And among white people it's become a cultural artifact, just like those Australian aboriginal dances, something to be pored over by scholars, admired and preserved, but kept "alive" only through the desire of white liberals to dip their toes in a little lusty folk simplicity every now and then. As 78-ycar-old bluesman. Furry Lewis put it "Our time done been, won't be no more".

So if you can accept the terms, the Willie Dixon show could be a good night out. As a cultural slum it will probably entertain you more than those pathetic Aborigines. And whatever misgivings there are about the star attraction, he is bringing with him a pretty solid backing group. I suppose Carey Bell Harrington on harp is the same Carey Bell who's put down some fine albums for Delmark. Bell will probably emerge as the star of the show; he's been described by Rolling Stone as having 'control, a warmth of feeling and inventive wit which have been absent from blues harp since the death of Little Walter Jacobs.'

The rest of the band is Freddie Dixon (electric bass), Lafayette Leeke (piano). Buster Benton (guitar) and Clifton James (drums.) According to my information Willie Dixon will be playing the Opera House on May 29, but the local newspaper ads have been mentioning June 19. The early date sounds more likely.

Willie Dixon