Episode 3 Jimmy Reed

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Episode 3 is about the life and musical career of Blues Master Jimmy Reed.  A native of the Mississippi Delta, Reed has had a huge impact on my career.

 The titles of my releases the songs are taken from in this episode include Too Much is Not Enough and Too Raw for Radio on my label Big Guitar Music.  The tracks from On the Jimmy Reed Highway were recorded on Ruf Records and used with permission.

 The musicians featured in the tracks on this episode are Barry Bihm, Bruce Jones, Derek O’Brien, Gary Clark, Jr., Gary Primich, Jake Dykes, Jay Moeller, Jimmie Vaughan, Jon Hahn, Kim Wilson, Lou Ann Barton, Richie Price, Ronnie James, and Wes Starr.  I am on vocals and guitar (except for On the Jimmy Reed Highway).

 Omar’s Picks for further study of copyrighted music not used in Episode 3 are More of the Best of Jimmy Reed on Vee Jay Records and Jimmy Rocks on Bear Family Records.

 Special thanks to Thomas Ruf from Ruf Records for granting permission to use tracks from On the Jimmy Reed Highway.

Visit my website for more info  www.omarandthehowlers.com

 Thank you to Matthew Garza (Upwork.com) for his work mastering this podcast.

Transcript

Omar Dykes: I'm glad you tuned in today because today's episode is about the life and music of Jimmy Reed. I'm going to have to do a disclaimer here because I'm a nut about Jimmy Reed. We get to talking about Jimmy Reed and I'm liable to drift off into fantasy land because I can't be objective about Jimmy. I like him so much. I know the reality of his playing and his career, and I know the chronological things that happen, but when it comes to talking about Jimmy Reed, it's like being in a dream world for me ‘cause I grew up listening to him and love his music so much that sometimes I can't sort it out. I become just a regular old nut.

 I'd like to talk about me and Wakefield Coney, one of my local heroes in Beartown playing Jimmy Reed. 15 years old. Wakefield was a great guitar player. He played most of the lead. I played a little bit. I knew five notes of lead, but he did most of the lead and I played rhythm and we both sang.

 Wakefield was respected by everybody, and they probably wondered what is that kid up there doing? But I could sing pretty good, and I had the concept to playing guitar. I wasn't quite there yet, but Wakefield had that covered, and he knew every Jimmy Reed song there was. I knew some, I was learning them. He'd call out a song and off we'd go or either I'd just take off on one. We always kind of prided ourselves on our Jimmy Reed presentations, which were loose and crazy.

We tried to avoid harmonica. It was guitar based with us. We didn't have harmonica. You didn't want to pull the harmonica out in the juke joints we were playing, cause once you did somebody'd grab it, that was full of alcohol, and it would not be a pleasant sound. It would be scary. So, we avoided the harmonica and just did it, tried to do it all with two guitars. It worked out pretty good. Everybody liked it. Everybody danced. Every job we played was happening 

Here's one of Jimmy Reed's hits, “Big Boss Man”, with Kim Wilson playing the harmonica. It don't get no better than that.

 I want to tell you about Jimmy Reed. The way I see it. I never thought of Jimmy Reed as a Delta musician, although he clearly was born in the Delta. They say either in Leland, Mississippi or Dunleith, Mississippi. I've heard both. And when you talk about the blues, it always gets like that. Birthdays change, birthplaces change, but I've heard Leland and Dunleith. On September the 16th, 1925. That's when he was born. I never knew anything about his Delta upbringing and his musical life from that time. I didn't know about it. The Jimmy Reed sound I know and identify with is the urban style of the hit songs recorded for Vee Jay Records in Chicago. After he migrated to Chicago in 1943 is when he started doing all this. Some of his best-known songs include “Big Boss Man”, “Baby, What You Want Me to Do”, “Bright Lights, Big City”, “Honest I Do”, and a slew of others. These songs were delivered with a mush mouthed Southern drawl over a lazy, hypnotic beat. I'm telling you, that's the truth. That was totally mesmerizing to me. I just listened to it and went, how do you do that? I think I learned how to do it in my own way in later years. I learned how to play the guitar sort of like I pretended like I was Eddie Taylor and Jimmy Reed at the same time. And then my friend, Jimmie Vaughan, that was in the Thunderbirds, he could do that better than anybody. He could play the rhythm and the lead at the same time, and I used to love to hear him do that too. Jimmie Vaughan and Jimmy Reed. Can't beat it.

Jimmy Reed had no technical skills, but he managed to outsell all the prominent Chicago stars on Chess Records combined. And that's saying something. This included Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, and Sonny Boy Williamson. This was an amazing accomplishment considering these artists are the most flamboyant and successful showmen of the genre. Reed was able to accomplish this with a flat note, nonsense delivery and a minimal, but captivating dance beat. Jimmy Reed could not be stopped.

 When you talk about Jimmy Reed, you got to go down the Eddie Taylor road, too, cause Eddie Taylor was always important to Jimmy Reed's music. Eddie Taylor had his own thing going. He was like one of the premier guitar players in Chicago. He played with everybody. There wasn't anybody in Chicago that didn't want Eddie Taylor playing the guitar with whatever they did ‘cause it was just fantastic, and he was a really big part of Jimmy Reed's sound.

Now when I was growing up, listening to Jimmy Reed, at first, I didn't know who he was. I played songs by Jimmy Reed, but I didn't know I was playing Jimmy Reed. Cause I was too young, and I wasn't hip yet. I may be hip now, in my own way, I hope so. But anyway, I always thought that Jimmy Reed was the one going, da da da, da na, na na, na na, na na. That was Eddie Taylor. Jimmy was playing the do do do do do do do do do do the ornamental part of the beat. Jimmy was playing the ornamental guitar, playing the harmonica, and he was singing. Eddie was keeping it together with playing, I guess what they would call the bass line. He was playing the bass line, but he's playing it on the guitar instead of a bass. He kept the dunta dunta going. And I didn't find that out the way later in life. But like I said, by the time I figured it out, I tried to do both parts. Well, anyway, I wanted to say my part about Eddie Taylor, cause it's important. Eddie was the man.

Jimmy Reed was born Mathis James Reed in Washington County, Mississippi in 1925 to Joseph Reed and Virginia Ross. Jimmy was the youngest of 10 children, and the family worked on the Collier plantation, about 10 miles northeast of Leland, very close to highway 61. Leland was known as the hell hole of the Delta because of the bars and juke joints where you could drink and let your hair down. It was a town with a lot of violence, especially on the weekends when there was lots of musicians on the street corners and the saloons were hopping. 

I'd like to talk about Jimmy's daddy, his family, his close friends, they all called Jimmy 'Mack'. I thought that was cool. They liked that was his nickname. His dad said he was loved by everybody, and his family used that name as an affectionate handle for him.

Jimmy grew up with his childhood friend, Eddie. Jimmy learned the basics of the guitar and harmonica from his extremely talented running partner. Jimmy stayed in the Delta playing music with Eddie until 1943, and all of a sudden, he decided he wanted to move up to Chicago. Soon after arriving in the big city, he was drafted into the Navy. That was during World War II, and he served there for two years. After being released, he went back to Mississippi to marry his girlfriend, Mary, who became known as Mama Reed to all his blues fans in later  years. After remaining in Mississippi for a while, he abruptly moved back to Chicago to find work to support Mama Reed and his ever-growing family.

 Jimmy Reed said that he wrote “Big Boss Man” when he abruptly left Mississippi. He got into it with the foreman on the plantation, and everything got so bad that Jimmy thought the best way to deal with this is leave. So, he took off for Chicago. 

He then relocated to Gary, Indiana after finding a job in the steel mill there. You got to work, you got to support your family, and he wasn't doing it with music just yet, so he was working in the steel mill. While in Gary Reed joined a band with a collection of members that floated in and out on a per job basis. These musicians known as the Gary Kings included John and Grace Brim, a husband-and-wife team, Albert King, later of guitar fame, he was playing drums. Think about that. Also, Johnny Littlejohn and Eddie Taylor on the guitars. Jimmy was playing the guitar, singing, and playing his harp like he always does. 

This song is called “Roll n Rhumba” from Too Much is Not Enough. This has Gary Primich featured on the harp, Derek O'Brien, Barry Bihm, Jon Han and me playing the guitar. It's an instrumental. Really good one.

At this time, Jimmy was playing out on the streets too with a guy named Joe Willie Duncan, who played a homemade instrument called the Unitar. It was supposedly the one string instrument. I'd like to heard the Unitar. I don't think I've ever heard it. I think there's records that exist of that, but I hadn't heard them. 

Around the same time, Jimmy was offered an audition with Chess Records in Chicago. Jimmy had some 78 record demos he had made of a few of his songs, and Leonard Chess was somewhat interested. But when Chess proposed that Jimmy record with Muddy Waters on guitar, Little Walter on harp, and some of the other Chicago studio musicians, Jimmy turned the opportunity down. He didn't want to do that. Jimmy said he wanted to play his own harp, and he wanted Eddie Taylor to play the guitar. That was the end of the audition, and Jimmy was on his merry way.

Following the audition, Jimmy got a great job with the Armor Meat Packing Company in Chicago. This made it possible to bring Mama Reed and the children to the Windy City. Not long after that, Albert King took Jimmy over to a new record company named Vee Jay, which is starting up, Vee Jay Records. The Vee Jay Record label name was created by combining Vivian Carter for the  V, and her husband was named Jimmy Bracken, and that was for the J. Vee Jay. That's how it came about.

And Jimmy was signed to the label in 1953 and stayed with the company until it's abrupt closing in 1965. Jimmy was with Vee Jay Records from the start to the finish and the hits poured out during its entire existence. Jimmy was illiterate and could not read or write anything, but his own name. When he went to Vee Jay Records, they asked him, had he written any songs. He said he hadn't, but he had made up some. That meant the songs were not on paper, they were in his head and that worked good. Didn't that work good? Think about all the songs Jimmy Reed did.

In December of 1953, Jimmy cut “You Don't Have To Go” for his third single, and he'd found chart success then. Other hits followed quickly included “I Don't Go For That”,” Can't Stand to See You Go”, “Ain't That Loving You Baby”, “You Got Me Dizzy”, and there were many others. It's just too numerous to list. Although critics dismissed Jimmy Reed's songs as repetitive, the public could not get enough of him. During his career, he placed 14 songs on the R and B charts, and 11 songs on the billboard top 100 pop charts. Not even an artist of the magnitude of BB King could top this. Think about that. That's saying something, too. Jimmy Reed was a hero, and totally loved by the people.

In 1966, Jimmy Reed had one last hit called “Knockin' at Your Door”, and it was on Exodus Records which I heard was a last straw attempt to resurrect the Vee Jay label to bring it back one more time, but it, didn't stick. During this time, Jimmy struggled with alcoholism, and it was so severe that Mama Reed had to help him with the lyrics to the songs that he was recording. She would sit in a chair and whisper the words in his ears because he couldn't remember his own songs, and he couldn't read 'em off paper. He couldn't write 'em down. 

Vee Jay allowed Jimmy to be drunk in the studio because the songs were so good and the musicians were so great that even though he was drinking, he still had hit records. But that did not help his health, and his condition worsened. Reed also suffered from epilepsy and that went undiagnosed because doctors assumed the condition was a result of the DTs from his drinking. 

 I want to talk a little bit about things he accomplished around that time. Jimmy Reed spawned the swamp blues sound of Louisiana artists as Lightning Slim, Lazy Lester, Slim Harpo, Silas Hogan, and Jimmy Anderson. Jimmy Anderson really was almost the guy that tried to copy Jimmy Reed, but because he was from Louisiana, it sounded different. Not only did these artists pin their own songs with a Jimmy Reed twist, but they also put the swamp rock slant to Jimmy Reed songs they covered. This caught the attention of Jay Miller. He was the premier swamp pop and blues producer from Louisiana. After establishing a well-documented catalog by these artists, Miller was able to connect with Excello Records label in Nashville, and it became the top swamp sound label.

Jimmy Reed's impact on the British Invasion is remarkable too, and the artists he influenced are important. These artists include the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Yardbirds, The Kinks, the Pretty Things, Them with Van Morrison, and there were many others.

His immense popularity in Britain during the invasion, and the pure number of covers of his material is astonishing. Everybody was playing Jimmy Reed. They all loved it, and in England was rocking with Jimmy Reed. He was surpassed in these areas, perhaps only by Chuck Berry a few years later, and even then, it's up for discussion. No doubt. Jimmy Reed was a huge success in Britain and Cub Koda, the music critic, said Jimmy Reed is perhaps the most influential blues man of all time. American artist under Reed's spell included Elvis Presley, Johnny and Edgar Winter, the Grateful Dead, Steve Miller, Delbert McClinton, and Jimmie Vaughan and me. We all were Jimmy Reed people.

This is a song from On the Jimmy Reed Highway that I wrote with Steve Callif, and it's called “On the Jimmy Reed Highway”.

In 2007, I started to record a tribute to Jimmy Reed on Ruf Records out of Germany. My plan was to invite guests and ask artists to play on the selective cuts. Jimmie Vaughan came by to play guitar, and we had so much fun he asked me to be part of the project. My idea exploded into an extravaganza of great artists, including Gary Clark Jr, Derek O'Brien, Lou Ann Barton, James Cotton, Kim Wilson, Delbert McClinton, George Rains, Wes Starr, Ronnie James, Gary Primich, Jay Moeller, Barry Bihm, and my son Jake Dykes, who was 13 years old at the time. 

Jake played the drums on a song I wrote with Steve Callif about Jake's mom, Lyn, called “You Made Me Laugh”, and it's on the record, which is called On the Jimmy Reed Highway.

 This amazing Blues Revue was a featured episode of Austin City Limits. It was called “A Tribute to Bluesman Jimmy Reed”. During the encore, I looked over my left shoulder and I saw Kim Wilson, James Cotton, and Delbert McClinton standing in a row playing harmonica. Now that was a sight to see. If you're a harmonica player, it don't get no better than that. We took the Jimmy Reed show tour to Dallas, Texas. We went to Long Beach, California, and we took it to Notodden, Norway. We sure had a good time.

 I released a second tribute to Jimmy Reed on my label, Big Guitar Music, in 2012. The release includes a disclaimer stating that I know I already recorded a Jimmy Reed tribute. This resulted in the title Too Much is Not Enough. This release featured my friend, Gary Primich. Other artists on the record are Ronnie James, Jon Hahn, Derek O'Brien, Gary Clark Jr., Barry Bihm and Jay Moeller.

 Here is a song called “I Ain't Got You” from my release Too Much is Not Enough featuring Gary Clark Jr.

Continuing to the latter part of Jimmy Reed's career with the demise of Vee Jay Records, Al Smith, who had been Jimmy Reed's personal helper, took over his business affairs, and became his manager. Al quickly signed Jimmy to the newly established ABC Bluesway Record Company, and they had just signed BB King and John Lee Hooker. I think that's a pretty good little label myself. His first recording with the Bluesway label was called the New Jimmy Reed album, which was released in November of 1966. He continued to record for Bluesway and several small labels for the better part of the next decade with varying results.

On a personal note, I would like to comment on some of these latter recordings with Jimmy Reed on Bluesway. These recordings came out and I thought the critics were overly harsh, but then I realized this was due to their affection for his Vee Jay output. In my humble opinion, the latter recordings retain Jimmy's distinct signature sound. However, do I think they are better than Vee Jay recordings? No, the Vee Jay recordings were wonderful, but there's something about the Bluesway stuff I like too. I don't think that they were better, but they are still very, very good.

In the early seventies after Bluesway, there was an attempt to update Jimmy's sound with funkier songs, wah wah pedals, and funk style drums. In spite of the new production with Jimmy, if you have Jimmy Reed playing vocals and blowing the harp, the music still has his stamp on it, that's just the way it is. Jimmy plays harp and guitar and it's Jimmy Reed.

On his 50th birthday in 1975, Jimmy played at Antone's Blues Club on 6th Street in Austin, Texas. Clifford Antone had a birthday cake made for him and threw Jimmy a party to celebrate. Jimmy said, " This is the first birthday party I have ever had." Reed planned to embark on a worldwide tour to reinstate his career after he had quit drinking. His last performance was in 1976 at the Savoy in San Francisco, California. After the performance, Jimmy Reed died of respiratory failure in his sleep in Oakland, California, eight days before his 51st birthday. He died on August 29, 1976, and is buried in the Lincoln Cemetery in Blue Island, Illinois.

A list of his honors and accomplishments include a European tour in 1968 with the American Blues Festival. And then he was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. There is a Mississippi Blues Marker with his name on it in Dunleith, Mississippi. It is the 44th Blues Marker and it was unveiled on June the 19th, 2008. His children attended the marker placement ceremony. Loretta, Rose, and Jimmy Jr. He had a name for Jimmy Jr. He called him Booney.

They'd ask Jimmy what kind of guitar he played. What kind of guitar do you play? And he went, "I don't know. Ask Booney." What kind of strings do you use, Jimmy Reed? This was in Guitar Player Magazine. He said, "What kind of strings do you use?" He said, "I don't know. Ask Booney." "How often do you change strings, Jimmy Reed?" Reed replied, "When they break." I always thought that was great. I used to put two sets of strings on my guitar in one night. Jimmy Reed used strings til they break. I love that. We could all learn from that.

His children have followed their father's legacy of music by playing and performing themselves. The Jimmy and Mary Reed Foundation was established to support blues artists and students by awarding scholarships, by providing information and support about the music industry.

This part of the podcast is called Omar's Picks. These are songs that I have personally chosen to be clear examples of the Blues Master discussed in the episode. I am unable to use this material in the podcast itself because the music is copyrighted. These are songs that you should listen to if you want more information about the Blues Master's work. Most of this music is available on any digital music site. For this episode, Omar's picks are More of the Best of Jimmy Reed on Vee Jay Records and Jimmy Rocks on Bear Family Records. These are album collections, or CD collections, and they're packed full of wonderful stuff. 

 I started recording Jimmy Reed style songs on my second release I Told You So, and it followed all through to the end of my career, even to, my recent recording What's Buggin You? I use Jimmy Reed style songs on my records, but my vocal delivery was more like Howlin' Wolf. Jimmy Reed was laid back and I sang his style more intensely. I kind of always pretended in my head, I was singing Howlin' Wolf style while I was doing Jimmy Reed because it fit me better. I had my own Southern drawl, but I couldn't get that drawl that Jimmy Reed had, but I could kind of do the intensity of Howlin’ Wolf. 

This song I've been playing my entire career. It's called “Down in Mississippi”.

I released 16 records with Jimmy style songs, three tributes to Jimmy Reed, and over 40 songs on my releases throughout my career. These songs were written with Jimmy Reed in mind. 

One of my fondest memories is when I was around 12 years old. I would walk downtown to Hinton's music store in McComb, Mississippi, my hometown. I would take the Telecaster guitar off the wall, and I'd play “You Got Me Runnin'” and “Big Boss Man” for hours. Finally, the store clerk, this happened, every time, and I went there pretty often too. The store clerk would come up and say, "Are you going to buy that guitar, that Telecaster? And I told him, "Someday I will." I never did. I wound up being a Stratocaster man. But little did I know I would be spending most of my career playing homage to Jimmy Reed for the rest of my life.

Thank you to Thomas Ruf and Ruf Records for permission to use the tracks from On the Jimmy Reed Highway. Be sure to join me for the next episode. I appreciate you and I appreciate you tuning in. Thank you. Until next time.