Harmonica Great goes to world stage

" Charlie Musselwhite One of the Best. "

By Norm Shaw

When Charlie Musselwhite talks about why he learned to play music, it all seems so simple.

Growing up in Memphis "wasn't no piece of cake," Musselwhite says. His father traveled a lot, so he was raised by an aunt. He began working early in life, taking a job in a mill at age 12. Music was a release.

"In the beginning I didn't even know I ever would be a musician. I was just playing music 'cause I really loved it," Musselwhite says by phone from London. "I listened to it, and it made me feel good. And then I got the idea to just play for myself 'cause I thought it would feel even better, and it did."

Growing up in Memphis in the late 1950s exposed Musselwhite to a variety of musical styles. The blues, though, were the most natural.

"I just always loved blues. I liked all kinds of music growing up in Memphis. I liked hillbilly, gospel and I liked blues too," he says. "Blues just seemed to really strike a chord in my heart, it just seemed to make a lot of sense. It just seemed so logical. "When I started to learn to play music, I had tried to play some hillbilly music, but I just couldn't get the hand of it. But blues, it just seemed the easiest thing in the world. It just came natural. I started on guitar and harmonica, but later when I went on to Chicago, there were so many guitar players, it was easier to get work as a harp player. That's why a lot of people didn't even know I played guitar - until recently (laughs)."

Will Shade and Furry Lewis are but two of the Memphis legends Musselwhite learned from as he spent time downtown and on Beale Street. It was on the streets that he picked up a lot of his musical education.

"I used to go downtown and see street singers. There I could watch people play guitar and see how they made chords. Then I'd go home and work on that," he says. "I got to know Furry Lewis and Will Shade. Willie Borem. A whole lot of different musicians that I learned from. I didn't know I was preparing for a career, I just thought I was having fun (laughs)."

The idea of making music a career didn't occur to Musselwhite until he moved to Chicago in 1962. In Chicago, he quickly found Maxwell Street, home of numerous blues clubs. As in Memphis, he was one of the only young, white people hanging out in mostly black bars and neighborhoods. He continued to hone his craft on streets and at flea markets, not sure music would be more than a personal outlet.

"It was just because of a series of accidents that I got into (the music business). I never went there or had any goals of being a professional musician (in Chicago)," Musselwhite says. "Somebody knew I played, and this one night this waitress told Muddy Waters, 'You ought to hear him play harmonica.' He had me sit in, and then word got around, and other people had me sit in. And then people were hiring me. That's when I started taking it serious."

Waters took Musselwhite under his wing, as he did with several young players.

"He really loved people," Musselwhite says of Waters. "He was really outgoing, and liked to help people. He was real supportive. A lot of the musicians in Chicago were that way. They were real flattered that a young kid would know their music. By then, blues was almost out of fashion. This was in 1962. Muddy's heyday was in the '50s. He was still putting out singles, but they weren't in the top ten, like they had been. But he was real helpful. And flattered, too.

"I wished I'd been paying more attention. I didn't even realize how great it was. I was crazy about this music, and I really liked him as a person, I wish I could relive it all. And I wish I had taken pictures, recorded things. You just didn't have tape recorders like you do today."

Through Waters, Musselwhite met and worked with a virtual who's who of Chicago bluesmen. After appearing with Big Walter Horton on a Vanguard Records anthology, Musselwhite released his first solo record, Stand Back!, on Vanguard at age 22.

While on the road in support of the record, Musselwhite was booked to play the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco with Cream and Paul Butterfield. He immediately fell in love with the area, and has called it home ever since.

Since that time, Musselwhite has established himself as one of the preeminent blues players. He has released 16 more records under his own name, been a part of several anthologies and been a guest artist on nearly 40 other records with everyone from John Lee Hooker to INXS.

That wide variety of experience is very evident on Musselwhite's latest release, his first for Pointblank Records, called Rough News. The record was made at three different studios - in Chicago, New Orleans and Los Angeles - and combines straight blues with touches of rock, Brazilian blues and New Orleans swamp stomp.

"First, we went to Chicago. Dick Shurman was the producer there. I was acquainted with Dick. He'd done producing for Pointblank before, so it just seemed like a natural choice," Musselwhite says. "We did an albums' worth of material there, but then after that I did two more sessions, one in New Orleans and one in L.A."

The original idea was to only use the Chicago sessions, but the other work was just too good to ignore.

"In New Orleans, a friend of mine had a studio in his home, and we were just fooling around in the studio and came up with some things that belonged on the record, almost by accident. In L.A., Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos has a studio in his garage. So we had a session over there, and two of those tunes I used. They were just things that happened. They all seemed to go together and make sense, and there they are."

Musselwhite was left with too much music for one record, so the hard part was deciding on which songs to put on the record.

"There are a lot more tunes than what's on there," he says. "Between Pointblank, my manager, the booking agency, Henrietta my wife, and I, we just kept going over and over the lists, and comparing lists with each other. We then narrowed it down to those tunes, and then we had to figure out what order we wanted them in. We went round and round then, too. It was a process of elimination."

When he's asked what happens to the other songs, Musselwhite sighs and says with a strong laugh, "Well, you never know. Right now I don't even want to think about it." He says they may end up re-recorded later, or become part of some future outtakes/boxed set project.

For now, he's just thinking about life on the road for the next several months. He returns to the United States on May 6, and continues to tour the country. He will be performing in Memphis at B.B. King's Blues Club on Beale on June 12.

Musselwhite says he tries to plan an off day for Memphis, but this time the schedule didn't work out. And even though he says he misses Beale Street, the sunsets, barbecue and the drinking water ("Memphis has great water"), there's still a hint of bitterness in his voice when he talks about Memphis.

"It's kind of disturbing to see how they almost obliterated Beale Street. Somebody, I believe it was Abe Schwab, said Memphis has torn down more history than most places have. It's really a shame the things they've done there. You know, if the French Quarter had been in Memphis, it'd be gone a long time ago. They'd a plowed that thing down. I'm glad that what's left is there, it's a shame they tore down what they did. That's the sad part of it."

But what those streets taught Charlie Musselwhite lives on, even if people and places on them do not. His memories may not be the fondest for Memphis, but they made Musselwhite who he is - "one of the best bluesmen around," according to the Encyclopedia of the Blues. And for that he is grateful, as we all are.