THE VICKSBURG BLUES SOCIETY  

Vicksburg, Mississippi

Home Of Willie Dixon

 Willie's Blues Heaven Foundation 

Born the seventh of fourteen children on July 1, 1915, in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Willie Dixon's life and work was virtually an embodiment of the progress of the blues, from his humble beginnings to a recognized and vital part of America's musical heritage. That Dixon was one of the first professional blues songwriters to benefit in a serious, material way -- and that he had to fight to do it -- from his work also made him an important symbol of the injustice that still informs the music industry, even at the end of this century. A producer, songwriter, bassist and singer, he helped Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter and others find their most commercially successful voices.

By the time he was a teenager, Dixon  was writing songs and selling copies to the local bands. He also studied music with a local carpenter, Theo Phelps, who taught him about harmony singing. With his bass voice, Dixon  later joined a group organized by Phelps, the Union Jubilee Singers, who appeared on local radio. Dixon  eventually made his way to Chicago, where he won the Illinois State Golden Gloves Heavyweight Championship. He might've been a successful boxer, but he turned to music instead, thanks to Leonard "Baby Doo" Caston, a guitarist who had seen Dixon  at the gym where he worked out and occasionally sang with him. The two formed a duo playing on streetcorners, and later Dixon  took up the bass as an instrument. They later formed a group, the Five Breezes, who recorded for the Bluebird label. The group's success was halted, however, when Dixon  refused induction into the armed forces as a conscientious objector. Dixon  was eventually freed after a year, and formed another group, the Four Jumps of Jive. In 1945, however, Dixon  was back working with Caston in a group called the Big Three Trio, with guitarist Bernardo Dennis (later replaced by Ollie Crawford).

During this period, Dixon  would occasionally appear as a bassist at late-night jam sessions featuring members of the growing blues community, including Muddy Waters. Later on when the Chess brothers -- who owned a club where Dixon on occasionally played -- began a new record label, Aristocrat (later Chess), they hired him, initially as a bassist on a 1948 session for Robert Nighthawk. The Chess brothers liked Dixon's playing, and his skills as a songwriter and arranger, and during the next two years he was working regularly for the Chess brothers. He got to record some of his own material, but generally Dixon  was seldom featured as an artist at any of these sessions.

Dixon's real recognition as a songwriter began with Muddy Waters' recording of "Hoochie Coochie Man." The success of that single, "Evil" by Howlin' Wolf, and "My Babe" by Little Walter saw Dixon  established as Chess's most reliable tunesmith, and the Chess brothers continually pushed Dixon's songs on their artists. In addition to writing songs, Dixon  continued as bassist and recording manager of many of the Chess label's recording sessions, including those by Lowell Fulson, Bo Diddley and Otis Rush. Dixon's remuneration for all of this work, including the songwriting, was minimal -- he was barely able to support his rapidly growing family on the $100 a week that the Chess brothers were giving him, and a short stint with the rival Cobra label at the end of the '50s didn't help him much.

During the mid-'60s, Chess gradually phased out Dixon's bass work, in favor of electric bass, thus reducing his presence at many of the sessions. At the same time, a European concert promoter named Horst Lippmann had begun a series of shows called the American Folk-Blues Festival, for which he would bring some of the top blues players in America over to tour the continent. Dixon  ended up organizing the musical side of these shows for the first decade or more, recording on his own as well and earning a good deal more money than he was seeing from his work for Chess. At the same time, he began to see a growing interest in his songwriting from the British rock bands that he saw while in London -- his music was getting covered regularly by artists like the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds, and when he visited England, he even found himself cajoled into presenting his newest songs to their managements. Back at Chess, Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters continued to perform Dixon's songs, as did newer artists such as Koko Taylor, who had her own hit with "Wang Dang Doodle." Gradually, however, after the mid-'60s, Dixon  saw his relationship with Chess Records come to a halt. Partly this was a result of time -- the passing of artists such as Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson was part of the problem, and the death of Leonard Chess and the sale of the company called a halt to Dixon's involvement.

By the end of the 1960s, Dixon was eager to try his hand as a performer again, a career that had been interrupted when he'd gone to work for Chess as a producer. He recorded an album of his best-known songs, I Am the Blues, for Columbia Records, and organized a touring band, the Chicago Blues All-Stars, to play concerts in Europe. Suddenly, in his 50s, he began making a major name for himself on stage for the first time in his career. Around this time, Dixon  began to have grave doubts about the nature of the songwriting contract that he had with Chess's publishing arm, Arc Music. He was seeing precious little money from songwriting, despite the recording of hit versions of such Dixon  songs as "Spoonful" by Cream. He had never seen as much money as he was entitled to as a songwriter, but during the 1970s he began to understand just how much money he'd been deprived of, by design or just plain negligence on the part of the publisher doing its job on his behalf.

Arc Music had sued Led Zeppelin for copyright infringement over "Bring It on Home" on Led Zeppelin II, saying that it was Dixon's song, and won a settlement that Dixon  never saw any part of until his manager did an audit of Arc's accounts. Dixon  and Muddy Waters would later file suit against Arc Music to recover royalties and the ownership of their copyrights. Additionally, many years later Dixon  brought suit against Led Zeppelin for copyright infringement over "Whole Lotta Love" and its resemblance to Dixon's "You Need Love." Both cases resulted in out-of-court settlements that were generous to the songwriter.

The 1980s saw Dixon  as the last survivor of the Chess blues stable and he began working with various organizations to help secure song copyrights on behalf of blues songwriters who, like himself, had been deprived of revenue during previous decades. In 1988, Dixon  became the first producer/songwriter to be honored with a boxed-set collection, when MCA Records released Willie Dixon: The Chess Box that included several rare Dixon  sides as well as the most famous recordings of his songs by Chess's stars. The following year, Dixon  published I Am the Blues (Da Capo Press), his autobiography, written in association with Don Snowden.

Dixon  continued performing, and was also called in as a producer on movie soundtracks such as Gingerale Afternoon, and La Bamba, producing the work of his old stablemate Bo Diddley. By that time, Dixon  was regarded as something of an elder statesman, composer, and spokesperson of American blues. Dixon  had suffered from increasingly poor health in recent years, and lost a leg to diabetes several years earlier, which didn't slow him down very much. He died peacefully in his sleep early in 1992. ~ Bruce Eder,  

The blues is a musical style created in response to the hardships endured by generations of African American people. It originated in the rural Mississippi Delta region at the beginning of the 20th century.

Itinerant singer/guitarists (or harmonica players), generally men, traveled from one community to another singing about love, freedom, sex, and the sorrows of life.

Important early musicians include Charlie Patton, Son House (who developed the bottleneck slide technique), and Robert Johnson.

Capitalizing on the increasing popularity of urban blues, the music industry began publishing and marketing arrangements for blues compositions such as W. C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" (1914). These songs became so successful that many popular songs that were not actually blues simply added the word blues to the title to ensure their popularity.

New York vaudeville singer Mamie Smith's 1920 recording of "Crazy Blues" launched the "race recording" industry, which targeted blues and jazz directly at the African American audience. These recordings proved popular with a larger American public as well, and blues recordings by performers such as Bessie Smith, "Empress of the Blues," Jelly Roll Morton, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, and Louis Armstrong dominated the musical landscape.

Throughout the country blues could be heard in small dance halls, barrooms, rent parties, and juke joints, where new styles such as "barrelhouse" and boogie-woogie were performed by pianists such as Clarence "Pine Top" Smith.

Electric Blues After World War II, the center of blues activity moved to cities such as Chicago, where musicians such as Muddy Waters, Riley "B. B." King, and Buddy Guy intensified the sound by amplifying the guitars and adding more emphasis to the drums.

Although much of the energy of blues has been channeled into rock and rhythm and blues styles, traditional blues musicians such as John Lee Hooker,

Etta Baker, Junior Wells, and Buddy Guy enjoy successful careers. Blues has also developed into a major force in contemporary music through the rock-edged style of Robert Cray, as well as roots-oriented jazz by musicians associated with

Wynton Marsalis (see Marsalis, family), the zydeco sound, and some rap groups.

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