This is the latest from The Bluesmobile’s C.C. Rider, who spends her life venerating the founding fathers of the blues. She’s walked the crooked highways of this singing country to resurrect the voices of the past. With the dirt of the Delta on her hands, she sleeps in the shadow of the giants on whose shoulders popular music now stands.
Willie Dixon
(July 1, 1915 – January 29, 1992)
You probably don’t realize it, but you’re speakin’ Shakespeare. Thousands of the words we use everyday were coined by the Bard. But when it comes to American music, the true Bard of the Blues was Willie Dixon. He penned so many tracks you can find whole websites that are nothin’ but lists of his songs. So even if you haven’t heard of Willie Dixon, if you’ve heard any rock or blues at all, you’ve heard his stuff.
“I Just Wanna Make Love to You,” “Hoochie Coochie Man,” “Little Red Rooster,” “Spoonful,” …I could take up my whole air time just reading off the list of Mr. Dixon’s songs. Just check the first two Led Zeppelin albums. His songwriting credits are all over that. Well recently, anyway…
What was his secret? Willie Dixon tells it like it is.
My old man always told me that the blues was the true facts of life.That’s expressed in words and songs and experience and understanding. And he explained also that lots of times when people would hear someone singing the blues they always said that these people was lonesome is the reason why they called it lonesome and blue. And so they called it blues because they felt like people that sung certain blues was lonesome while they sung em. But he always felt like the reason that they was really singing the blues was because it was a true fact of life and these people was singing about their experiences that they had in life. Whether it was good experience, bad experience or what type of experience and they sung and made songs according. And that’s why I wrote so many songs because I been writing about the true facts of life that exists today, and yesterday and for what I hope will be tomorrow a better future.
