Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,819

This is the grave of Willie Dixon.

Born in 1915 in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Dixon grew up very poor. He was one of 14 children in the family. He got into music very young. By the time he was 7, he was following the pianist Little Brother Montgomery whenever he could see him. Like so many young Black kids, he was picked up in the Mississippi prison system early on, for whatever reasons. He was placed on work farms and started to learn the new style of the blues while with his fellow inmates. Dixon started writing poetry as well and after his release, sang in a local gospel quartet. So he had a variety of musical experiences as a young poor kid.

Like so many Black people from Mississippi, Dixon got of the state as soon as he could. This was in 1936, when he moved to Chicago. He was a huge man. 6’6″, at least 250. So he became a heavyweight boxer when he went north. He became a Gold Gloves champion by 1937. He briefly became a professional and was a sparring partner of Joe Louis in the late 30s, but after his manager ripped him off, he quit fighting.

But one day at the guy, Dixon met Leonard Caston. A fellow Mississippian, he was a blues pianist and guitarist. They started to sing together and Caston convinced Dixon to be a serious musician. Dixon had a low voice and so it seemed to make sense for him to play a low instrument, thus he picked up the bass. Dixon would later become one of the only big blues leaders who was a bassist. He started to play and was in some local bands.

Then Dixon’s musical career came to a halt. He refused to fight in World War II. He claimed to be a conscientious objector. He had a damn good reason–America was too racist to fight for. That was his justification. He just wouldn’t fight for a nation that treated Black people so poorly. Good for him. He paid the price too–prison for ten months.

After the war, Dixon started some additional bands, but his real break is when he started to work for Leonard Chess, head of Chess Records. He was signed as a recording artist with them, but really became more of a talent scout and songwriter. But he recorded plenty too. In fact, you really can’t get your head around the Chicago blues scene in the 50s and 60s without centering Willie Dixon’s songs. Some of them were made much more famous by Muddy Waters, but they are Dixon’s compositions. “Hoochie Coochie Man” is a great example. Dixon wrote this and Waters recorded it first, in 1954. This was a big hit for Chess and it was great for the careers of everyone involved. It helped make Chess the leading label for blues, it put Waters at the top of the blues map, and it secured Dixon steady work as a songwriter. This is such a male song, an example of a man putting his dick front and center in the music and as such, it has inspired generations of male singers ever since. Waters kept playing the song for his whole life.

“I Just Want to Make Love to You” is another example of the Dixon/Waters partnership at Chess. Waters also recorded this in 1954 and it was a big hit, getting up to #4 on the R&B charts. That was damn good for a blues song. Dixon played bass on the recording, as he did on so many of those Chess cuts, whether he was leading or not. He wrote “Little Red Rooster” in 1961 for Howlin’ Wolf. Sam Cooke would later cover that one. “Spoonful” is another Dixon composition that Wolf made his own, this time in 1960. Naturally, Dixon borrowed broadly from the history of Black songs for this stuff. He wasn’t reinventing the wheel here. Take “Spoonful,” for example. Dixon knew the whole history so well that he had enormous resources at his disposal, especially for that time when deep knowledge of older music wasn’t so available as it is today. But he borrowed from Charley Patton’s 1929 “A Spoonful of Blues,” itself a borrowing of songs from early in the 20s. The idea of the spoonful–drugs, women, booze, whatever–was common lingo in these songs and easily adaptable to the early 60s, which was more clearly about women than the earlier tunes.

Dixon’s compositions and recordings also became popular with rock singers, especially the white British bands looking for inspiration from a country with a much, much better music scene than the UK. The Rolling Stones topped the UK Singles Chart in 1964 with their version of “Little Red Rooster.” They covered “I Just Want to Make Love to You” as well on their debut album. Everyone from Etta James to Foghat covered that song as well. Cream would have a big cover with “Spoonful,” which is undoubtedly my introduction to that song, so long ago now.

Later in life, Dixon became a force in blues history. He worked to remember artists and create institutions to promote their legacy. He also took on the horrible contracts that blues musicians had signed in the day. By the late 70s, Chess songs were owned by a company called Arc. Dixon, Muddy Waters, and a few others sued Arc for not paying proper royalty rates. A lot of people got rich off the blues but not very many of them were blues musicians. He also sued Led Zeppelin for blatantly ripping him off without attribution on “Whole Lotta Love,” which of course they had turned into a gigantic hit. The band settled out of court with Dixon in 1987. I hope he got a lot of money from them. He also started the Blues Heaven Foundation to protect and promote the music’s legacy. He stated, “The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits. It’s better keeping the roots alive, because it means better fruits from now on. The blues are the roots of all American music. As long as American music survives, so will the blues.”

By the 1980s though, Dixon’s health was declining. He had diabetes and eventually lost one of his legs to the illness. Still, he lived until 1992, dying at the age of 76. In the end, it was heart failure that killed him.

Let’s listen to some Willie Dixon.

Also, I haven’t seen this documentary, but here it is:

Willie Dixon is buried in Burr Oak Cemetery, Alsip, Illinois.

If you would like this series to visit other legends of the blues, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Robert Johnson is in Greenwood, Mississippi (there is some dispute here but at least one legitimate claim) and B.B. King is in Indianola, Mississippi. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.