Looking For ‘Real’ Blues? Cotton Delivers
The question of authenticity hangs over blues musicians like December fog on the West Plains.
No matter how good the player, there’s always someone who’ll question the roots.
That’s not a problem for James Cotton: He is unimpeachably the Real Thing, from his Mississippi childhood to his six-year stint with Muddy Waters - and that’s back when Waters was playing the roadhouses, back before white people knew about the blues.
No, Cotton is a bluesman’s bluesman, as he expects to prove one more time when he appears at Bolo’s in the Valley Wednesday night.
If Cotton’s recorded work has been bothered by trendy inconsistencies, his live performances hit the mark night after night. He’s a big-chested harp blower who makes enough sound to more than hold his own with the guitar players.
By all accounts, his voice is a weathered instrument these days but nobody ever paid to hear Cotton sing; his harp is the tool that pays the bills.
Cotton learned harp from his mother, Hattie, who taught him how to make train sounds and the like. That’s all he thought the harp was good for until he heard Sonny Boy Williamson’s “King Biscuit Time” on radio station KFFA out of Alabama.
When Cotton was just 9, Williamson took him under his wing as he headed north to find his estranged wife. Cotton’s next big break came four years later when Junior Wells jumped ship from the Muddy Waters band during a swing through Florida. Waters came to Memphis looking for Cotton, and the two started a partnership that lasted 12 years.
“Well, I loved Muddy very much,” Cotton told Blues Revue, “because he was sort of like a friend, a father, whatever you wanted him to be. He was always there for you. And I tried to do his music to the best of my ability. I feel I played with him, not for him.”
When Cotton finally decided to go his own way, he landed in the middle of a blues revival. White musicians like Paul Butterfield were pointing middle-American kids toward musicians like Cotton. As a result, Cotton shared the bill in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s with such popular acts as Janis Joplin and Blood, Sweat and Tears.
His most recent studio record, “Living the Blues,” was a Grammy nominee, and his upcoming CD, an acoustic record featuring jazz bassist Charlie Haden, guitarist Joe Louis Walker and pianist Dave Maxwell, is due out this summer.
Over the past quarter-century, Cotton has come to be known as one of the hardest-working bluesmen around. Despite damage to his throat, which caused him to retire from the road for a period, Cotton remains an energetic and forceful disciple of the blues, and there can be no question of his authenticity.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CONCERT James Cotton will play at Bolo’s in the Valley Wednesday at 8 p.m. General admission tickets are $15, with premier seating available on a limited basis. Day of show tickets are $17.50. Tickets are on sale at Bolo’s or by phone at 891-8995.