ON MR SLIM'S 112th NATAL ANNIVERSARY - Put “Chicago Blues” into an online Musical Assistant and you
get some darn good music. But Sunnyland Slim would caution: “Chicago was never
the Blues”. The meaning there is hard to understand. Sunnyland spoke in
parable, sometimes a bit garbled. You have to dig in with him and learn the
rest of the story to know this is his way of saying that the blues was invented
in the South. Listen to this recording of Rollin and Tumblin, which he performs
here as a study in the rudiments of the blues. What he might call “Dudlow.” A music to represent conjuring a small town on a rail line where W.C. Handy may have
discovered the blues -- that Handy would go on to notate and expand. Sunnnyland came from near Tutwiler, where Handy had his epiphany - where the Southern crossed the Dog. Here. Slim knocks this
one out using his Wurlitzer electric piano, a convenience for club dates, from
which he obtained an incredible sound, that was seldom to be recorded. But you
got it here! In the patter leading up to the music Sunnyland talks with open
disdain about “Dixon and them” as the purveyors of the “Chicago as the blues”
myth. Dixon was not a favorite, and this complaint, which Sunnyland frequently
shared, may have been a save public way to let off steam when Slim may have at
times gotten steamed up. - Jack Vaughan, 2019 (A3 Sunnyland Slim / Johnny Shines / Backwards Sam Firk - Rolling And Tumbling...)
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