Willie Dixon
Willie's Blues

It is not easy to review an album by Willie Dixon. Partly because of this artist’s significance, partly because he should be listed as one of the pillars of the genre and too often he is forgotten, and partly because you don't see a singing double bass player in Blues every day. Chicago Blues owes a lot to him, and he owes much to Chicago Blues. Just think of the many songs that would eventually become bread and butter for the upcoming Rock groups, like the unmissable Led Zeppelin, the Doors, and the Yardbirds, but also the Allman Brothers.

Willie is a big man born near the Mississippi, of great stature (did someone say B.B. King?), to the point of starting a boxing career. Trouble for him if he had been successful in that field, as he would have deprived us of one of the greatest interpreters of Blues music. It seems he was even imprisoned for refusing to take part in the Second World War. But let's get back to us. 1959. Willie Dixon is about to release his first album, with the help on the piano from a friend and another great artist, Memphis Slim, so much so that the original title of the album also includes his name. It is Willie's Blues, which already presents itself with a black cover, black like the mood of the singer/double bassist, a mood that would be unleashed through a warm, black, and melancholic voice like only Chicago Blues could offer. In the bottom right of the cover, Willie emerges prominently at the microphone. What strikes the most at first impact is the extraordinary sonic cohesion and the incredible balance among the instruments, let's talk about the bassist's double bass and Slim's piano, but not only that, Al Ashby's saxophone and Wally Richardson's guitar. 12 tracks, no song is underwhelming. The album opens with Nervous, featuring a startling vocal performance due to Willie's stuttering, highlighting a confused state and indeed of nervousness. Great episodes are the lively That's My Baby, the instrumental Slim's Thing and Go Easy with an extraordinary Memphis on the piano, the heart-wrenching ballad Sittin' and Cryin' the Blues, and the Hooker-like talking blues in I Got a Razor.

In short, an album that feels much less dated than others from the same year, just remember House of The Blues by John Lee Hooker, also from 1959, where there is a strong stylistic and sonic discrepancy compared to Willie's Blues.

Willie died in 1992 of a heart attack, only two years later he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, representing perhaps alongside Muddy Waters one of the most influential artists for the emerging Rock 'n' Roll that there has ever been, and that without even realizing it, we find in all the Hard Blues Rock groups of the following decades.