Motley Moose – Archive

I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in “Cheers & Jeers”.

OK, you’ve been warned – here is this week’s tomfoolery material that I posted.

ART NOTES – a retrospective on the works of perhaps the most renowned living US artist, in an exhibit entitled Jasper Johns: Regrets is at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, through September 1st.

ALTHOUGH academic freedom is still limited, the new president of Iran has made positive changes, with visiting Western scholars now allowed in … and sought-after by students.

BRAIN TEASER – try this Quiz of the Week’s News from the BBC.

THIS PAST WEEKEND saw a convention held in the eastern Spanish city of Valencia that brought together those with the rare condition of albinism – which affects nearly 1 in every 17,000 people worldwide (to some degree).

THURSDAY’s CHILD is Max the Cat – a California kitteh who survived a 60-mile highway journey … atop a twelve-foot trailer.

SIGN of the APOCALYPSE – portraying King Herod in an upcoming US touring production of Jesus Christ Superstar will be none other than John Lydon – yes, the former Sex Pistols singer Johnny Rotten – who admits, “I don’t do nothing easy, right?”

TIME MARCHES ON – a judge who became persona-non-grata decades ago in South Carolina was J. Waties Waring – the dissenting (2-1) vote in the 1950 South Carolina Briggs vs. Elliot desegregation case (in which one of the plaintiff attorneys was Thurgood Marshall). His belief that separate-but-equal was impossible caused him to leave the bench and move to New York City (though he was buried in Charleston after his death in 1968).

At the time of his decision, the head of the local NAACP wrote to him, “The people of my group have thanked God for you in the past. America will thank God for you in the future, and at some later date the South will raise a monument to you.” The last part seemed most implausible … until this week .. over sixty years later.

HAIL and FAREWELL to the singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester – whose songs have been covered by everyone from George Strait to Tim Hardin, and who was the focus of a 2012 tribute album featuring James Taylor, Elvis Costello, Jimmy Buffett, Rosanne Cash, Lucinda Williams, and Vince Gill – who has died at the age of 69 … and the former NBA star Lou Hudson – whose career with the Atlanta Hawks began when they still played in St. Louis, and who is believed to have been the first African-American elected official in Utah – who has died at the age of 72.

FRIDAY’s CHILD is Hamish McHamish the Cat – a Scottish 14-year-old stray kitteh who has been immortalized by his adopted town … in bronze.

   

YUK for TODAY – Yesterday’s edition of Saturday Night Live opened with a skit of two leading GOP figures addressing the audience at the Coachella festival – and the video is a hoot.

WHO WOULDA THUNK that a 31 year-old Hungarian who had been the deputy head of the right-wing extremist party Jobbik – which he also represented in the European Parliament – would transform his life upon learning that he was … of Jewish descent.

SEPARATED at BIRTH – Pulitzer Prize winning author Gail Caldwell and the late author Nora Ephron – who as well was a playwright, screenwriter and producer.

   

….. and finally, for a song of the week ………………………… if you are a fan of the electric blues – and especially the Chicago version – then someone whose work has shaped your enjoyment was Walter Jacobs …. better known as Little Walter – on harmonica. Tired of being drowned-out in accompanying an amplified guitarist, he cupped a microphone to his blues “harp” and plugged-it into his own amplifier. He was not the first to ever do so, but was the first to do so regularly. And he was the first musician – period – to drive-up his Silvertone amplifier (intentionally) to distortion levels, which had long been avoided by musicians. Although he also played guitar and sang: he is the only person inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on the strength of his harmonica playing alone.

Born as Marion Walter Jacobs on the first of May, 1930 in rural Louisiana, he was a somewhat unruly child who made his way as a twelve year-old to New Orleans. And like many future blues musicians: he made-his-way up the Mississippi River to Chicago (although unlike others, he settled in places like Memphis and St. Louis for a time before reaching the Windy City in 1946).

He fell into the Maxwell Street blues scene, eventually performing with another Delta emigré – the more well-known Muddy Waters – in 1949. For three years, the two (along with a rhythm section) became one of the hot nightclub acts in town, signing with the Chess record label. And it was on Muddy’s 1951 recording of Country Boy that Little Walter was first recorded with an amplified blues harp.

Little Walter left Muddy Waters in 1952 to start his own band – although the two sounded so good together, label owner Leonard Chess always asked Walter to be a sideman on Muddy Waters’ future recordings. Thus, if you have never listened to any Chess recordings other than Muddy Waters (such as Hoochie Coochie Man and Trouble No More) … you probably have heard the sound of Walter Jacobs, anyway.

Signed to the Chess subsidiary label Checker in the early 50’s, Little Walter recorded a #1 (on the R&B charts) song entitled Juke – the first (and only) harmonica instrumental to top the R&B charts. His back-up band became known as The Jukes: whose members over the years included future blues stars such as Robert Jr. Lockwood and Luther Tucker on guitar. Other songs that he had hits with were Sad Hours, Blues with a Feeling … and the 1955 Willie Dixon song My Babe – based upon the Gospel tune This Train – that is among his best-known songs by the rock and roll generation (as it even reached #106 in the pop music charts). In fact, from 1952 through the end of the decade, Walter had fourteen Top Ten hits on the R&B charts … more than Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and any other Chess Records hitmaker.

Alas, the advent of the 1960’s would prove to be the downfall of Walter Jacobs. In part, this was no different for other blues and R&B artists (as the British Invasion and Motown explosion ate into their audience). But while many were able to have a renaissance (years later) after successive generations re-discovered their music … Walter Jacobs was not around to benefit from it.

And that is because Little Walter had (a) an alcohol problem, and (b) a short temper …. which led to (c) street fighting and (d) bouts with the law. He became an unreliable performer (with his face showing the scars from his fighting) and it affected his once-prodigious abilities both in concert and on recordings. He was invited to perform on two European blues tours in 1964 and 1967 (although reports that he opened for the Rolling Stones are untrue). This helped boost his star among many future British blues-rock band members, but most critics deem his post-1960 recordings – even one in 1967 with both Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley – as of lesser achievements.

It was such a street fight in early 1968 – on a break during a Chicago performance – that a fight injured him enough to aggravate prior injuries, and Walter Jacobs died in February, 1968 at the home of a girlfriend … at the age of only thirty-seven.

His influence can be heard in the sound of many blues harmonica players (such as Junior Wells, James Cotton and Carey Bell) to more modern blues-rock performers (such as Charlie Musselwhite, Kim Wilson, Paul Butterfield and John Popper of Blues Traveler.

His songs have been recognized by the Blues Hall of Fame (Juke and My Babe) with the Grammy Award foundation also recognizing Juke … as well as awarding his compilation album Chess Masters 1950-1967 a Grammy for Best Historical Album. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted Little Walter in 2008 (as a sideman) and Rolling Stone named his Best of Little Walter as #198 on its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. A biography of Walter Jacobs entitled Blues With a Feeling was published in 2002.

His daughter Marion (shown with him in the photo below) today runs the Little Walter Foundation – dedicated to supporting music education and helping to preserve the blues. The second annual Little Walter Festival takes place next month in his native Louisiana, and a documentary film on his life – entitled Blue Midnight – has long been a work-in-progress of Boston film-maker Mike Fritz (with help from an NEA grant).  

The Chicago bluesman Buddy Guy in his recent autobiography summed-up Little Walter thusly:

No one could put pain into the harp and have it come out so pretty. No one understood that the harmonica – just as much as a trumpet, a trombone, or a saxophone – could have a voice that would drop you in your tracks, where all you could say was “Lord, have mercy.”

   

And forty-five years after his death, Walter Jacobs continues to influence. The 2008 film about the Chess label entitled Cadillac Records saw him portrayed by Columbus Short, and the 2009 novel Under the Dome – by Stephen King – had a character named Little Walter Bushey, named after the musician.

Fortunately, if one views his grave in the town of Evergreen Park, Illinois – you will see the headstone (photo below) that was paid for by music fans in 1991 – thus ennobling a grave that had gone unmarked for twenty-three years.

If you’d like to hear his breakthrough song, here is a link to his 1952 hit Juke – but of all of his work, my favorite is another song that blues-rock fans will recognize.

Key to the Highway – written by Charlie Segar and (the more well-known) Big Bill Broonzy – was first performed in 1940 … and Little Walter’s version reached #6 in the R&B charts in 1958. It has subsequently been performed by a multitude of blues and rock stars – among them The Band, B.B King, the Derek Trucks Band, John Lee Hooker, Steve Miller and Eric Clapton. And below you can hear Little Walter Jacobs sing it ….. and, of course, play the blues harp.