Welcome to Blues Nexus
You have reached the Crossroads. Please feel free to read our in-depth Blues History, get a different perspective with our Blues Timeline, browse through hundreds of Blues Artist biographies and discographies, watch thousands of videos and listen to hundreds of songs. And be sure and sign up for our Free Newsletter.
Willie "Big Eyes" Smith Dies at 75
Willie "Big Eyes" Smith, 75, died of a stroke on Friday, September 16, 2011, in the University of Chicago Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois, said his son Kenny "Beedy Eyes" Smith. He had lived in Chicago for about 58 years.
Smith grew up with his grandmother in Arkansas, but his mother lived in Chicago. "He came to visit his mother," said his son, also a blues drummer. "The story is she took him out to a club and he met Muddy. After that, he asked her for a drum kit."
In the mid-1950s, Smith, playing harmonica, formed a trio that played in the Chicago area. He switched to drums in 1957 with another trio but also began sitting in with Muddy Waters' band, filling in on drums and playing for recording sessions. Waters asked Smith to join the band in 1961.
In 1964, Smith decided to leave music. "He wanted to take a break — he was burned out," his son said. But by 1968, he decided to return. "He got bit by the bug again is how he put it to me." After reconnecting with Waters, Smith returned to the band.
It was Waters who gave Smith his nickname. "His eyes were always big when he played, or when he laughed," Kenny Smith said. "He had this humongous laugh."
Smith left the Muddy Waters band in 1980. With Perkins and a varying roster of other players, he formed the Legendary Blues Band. "If you wanted to see authentic blues guys, they were it," said Steve Cushing, host of "Blues Before Sunrise."
Kenny Smith said his father loved being on the road and touring, even as he grew older. "He was a 'road dog,'" the younger Smith said. Chicago bandleader Nick Moss played bass, then guitar in the band for about four years, learning about music and life from Mr. Smith. "Some of the best times of my life were spent in that van with Willie," Moss said. "He had horse sense. He could be profound without preaching."
Moss and others said Smith's death has hit the Chicago blues community hard. "To me, Willie's sound is the sound of Chicago blues — that behind-the-beat feel," Moss said.
Last spring, after switching from drums back to his first instrument, the harmonica, Smith shared a Grammy award for best traditional blues album for his collaboration with Joe Willie "Pinetop" Perkins on the 2010 release Joined At The Hip. Perkins died earlier in 2011.
Smith is also survived by his wife of 42 years, Ilene; sons Kerry, Andre, Javik and Willie Jr.; daughters Sally, Jacqueline and Cassandra Smith, Barbara Miller, Patricia Morris, Joyce McNeil and Darlene Lipsey; and 30 grandchildren.
Hubert Sumlin Dies at Age 80
 Hubert Sumlin, a blues guitarist whose soulful licks and crackling solos were featured on scores of hits for singer Howlin’ Wolf during the 1950s and 1960s and who influenced later work by Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan, died December 4th at a hospital in Wayne, New Jersey. He was 80. His agent, Hugh Southard, said Mr. Sumlin had congestive heart failure.
Sumlin was among the last of a generation of musicians who helped modernize the blues with the electric guitar. Although his was not a well-known name, Mr. Sumlin was considered a blues legend whose virtuosic guitar-playing inspired the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and the Allman Brothers. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 43rd on its list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.
Born to a sharecropping family in Mississippi, Sumlin played his first tunes on a length of hay-baling wire tied tautly between two protruding nails on the side of his home. It was on that “diddley bow” that Sumlin began to develop the warped and quivering style that became his signature.
“Other guitarists are inspired by him,” Muddy Waters band member Bob Margolin once said, “but nobody sounds like him.”
Back to Top
 |
