Marquise Knox seemed to discover early what musical direction he wanted his life to take. The bigger challenge was how to make it happen. Growing up, the blues tradition flowed directly through the family roots and Marquise credits his grandmother Lillie, and his Uncle Clifford for his introduction to the guitar. But it was while living in St. Louis and barely a teenager that he fell under the tutelage of the Grammy award-winning bluesman, Henry Townsend. And that would change everything.
Later, during trips back to the family home in Mississippi Marquise would be given the opportunity to meet a few of the early blues originators and occasionally sit in and perform with those very same legends. Names like Big George Brock, Honeyboy Edwards, Pinetop Perkins, and Hubert Sumlin to mention but a few. Not only was Knox learning about the music, but he was absorbing the depth and significance of ‘blues’ from artists that had actually lived them.
We started our conversation with his early life in the musical hub of St. Louis. Was there blues or jazz music around you all the time? “All the time!” Marquise says. “You know I grew up in mostly an all black community called Robinson, Missouri. The north side of the airport, then in ’92 or so they purchased the neighborhood and people moved into town on the other side of the airport to Berkeley. So for my grandmother and them the blues was always playing; Lightnin’ Hopkins and John Lee Hooker, B.B. King and Albert…all of them. You know St. Louis is a beautiful place.”
Did I read it was your grandmother that really encouraged you in your music and love for the blues? You learned guitar from her? “I did, from my grandmother. My school teacher said Marquise do you want to play for the Black History program? I was just doing the ‘air’ guitar; I didn’t know what I was doing. It just looked good.” (laughing) “I ran home to my grandmother and said ‘Grandmother you got to help me.’ She just smacked me, ‘get outta’ my face!’ So I go out in the yard and stay awhile and I could see the Pepsi sitting on the window sill and Kool cigarette smoke coming out, well she’s got to be thinking about it. And then she started playing the guitar, she got the old Supro out of the chifforobe. That guitar was purchased by my uncle, my mother’s oldest brother sometime in the 60s for selling candy. It was purchase for like $13 dollars when he was 10 years old. That guitar stayed in the family from that time. Back and forth, from my Uncle Clifford who had some tires that my grandfather needed, so they traded the guitar for the tires. Grandaddy had something that Uncle Clifford needed so they traded the guitar back and forth and it finally wound up with my grandmother and that is what I learned on. And it’s still in the family. It’s an old Supro Dual Tone and still in the family.”
Did it come out of a Sears catalogue or something? “No, they went to a little pawn shop with his candy money and he didn’t do nothin’ with it.” (laughing)
Did you ever experiment with the one-string front porch diddley bows? “Oh yeah, we tried. My grandmother stayed with the tradition, they didn’t lose any of it coming up north, you know?”
Being a young person in the era you grew up in, there were all kinds of musical influences. Pop music, rap, soul, rock; a lot of which by the way, you integrate into your ‘live’ shows…what motivated you to hold the blues so close to the heart? “It was a family tradition; my grandmother played the guitar, my great uncle. Though, I don’t remember when I discovered my grandmother played the guitar, but Uncle Clifford would always come around the house and perform. So, some of my earliest memories were Uncle Clifford being at the house and playing the guitar. I remember one night they were playing the tape, he made a cassette at home and I jumped up out of the bed and I ran in there and looked around and Uncle Clifford is in there but there’s no guitar. There’s nothing. So from then on, I must have identified with the blues and like I tell people, it must have passed into me through the blood. It’s real and how I feel, you know? …through the family…through the blood.”
Your band on this particular night in Southern California was stellar; Michael Battle on drums, David Grelle on keyboards, Dave Hawkey on bass and David Gomez on saxophone really had people on their feet. That musical combination of diversity and intensity; we heard some Rufus Thomas, Clarence Carter, a little Tyrone Davis, some Lightnin’ and Howlin’ Wolf…but it all seems to come out like Marquise Knox! “Well, that’s who I am. Those sounds live within me. Southern Soul, you know I grew up in that. You know, I know most blues people leave that out but that’s the next step to the blues; Southern Soul. I’ve got to stop there and listen awhile and move on.”
How old were you when you met Henry Townsend? “Oh, I was playing guitar then, I was probably about thirteen…maybe twelve.”
He’s being inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in Memphis this year. “He is. I’m going to be there, along with Bob Stroger and Henry’s son, Alonzo Townsend.”
Did Henry ever talk to you about some of the people he used to run with; like John Lee ‘Sonny Boy’ Williamson, Robert Nighthawk and Roosevelt Sykes? “Oh, yeah…Roosevelt was his cat, man. He and Robert Jr. Lockwood had a real tight friendship, and Honeyboy. Mr. Townsend, I consider him the best bluesman, ever! And probably the most recorded bluesman in the 30s. All the people he accompanied, all the music he was on in every decade from 1929 to 2006. And won a Grammy after he passed away, that was sad. But Honeyboy and Pinetop were able to enjoy it, though. Henry Townsend passed away in Grafton where he started his career, to me that was a full circle. My career starts here and it ended here, a love story couldn’t be written that good.”
You seem to get back to your roots pretty regularly, how did you meet Sam Lay? “I went down South with a friend from St. Louis by the name of Dave Beardsley. We were going down to Helena, Arkansas for his work and he said, ‘Marquise do you want to go down?’ I said why not? And we were staying at one of the B&B’s in Helena and one of the lady’s there said, ‘this is a battle site from the Civil War and this house is haunted by a soldier,’ and I didn’t think nothing of it. The lady goes downstairs and it gets late in the evening and Dave and I are sharing this big old room. Well Dave goes downstairs and the door latches behind him and he starts knocking on the door. And I’m going what the hell is going on? I’m scared to go out.” (laughing) “We go to bed and sometime in the middle of the night we hear this loud screaming like a woman being murdered or something.” (Marquise starts wailing) “Aaarrrhhhhh! And I go Dave, do you hear that? And Dave says, ‘Marquise, just go back to sleep!” (laughing)
“The next time Dave brought me down to Mississippi and this time we were down for the Paul Butterfield Foundation and Paul’s son, Gabriel was there. Chris James and Patrick Rynn who live out here in California and are a blues duo, they were down there. They’re my brothers and I learned a little guitar stuff from them and we were all down there as was Sam Lay. It just so happened we went out that night and Sam was playing the guitar that night. I knew Sam as a drummer, and as he was playing they said, ‘Marquise can play,’ and he gave me the guitar. I started playing some Lightnin’ Hopkins and he jumped up and said, ‘What!?’ He was just so excited and we stayed close and around each other the whole trip. When we got ready to leave that Sunday he said, ‘you know, I’m going to introduce you to a guy named, Chad Kassem at APO Studio.’ And from then, I made my first national recording ‘Man Child’ with Michael Burks. And all that was launched thanks to Sam Lay. My career has been blessed, man.”
Talk a little about Michael Burks. “Oh man, that was my blues father. I’ve got two of them, Michael Burks and John Primer. Michael Burks, just about every day he would call me; ‘Son, what’s going on?’
‘Empty Promises’ is on constant loop in my head. “And the last one we played on the show tonight from the album…’Feel Like Going Home.’ That one takes me…”
How did you get involved with Bluesmasters at the Crossroads? “That was with Sam Lay, as a matter of fact when I went there that’s where I met Pinetop Perkins and Honeyboy Edwards, well I’d known Honeyboy…I met Honeyboy and Louisiana Red through Henry Townsend. Me and Louisiana Red had a real good relationship, he fell in love with my cousin.” (laughing)
In your show you pay homage to all those early guys; Hubert Sumlin, Willie Dixon…you covered Willie’s ‘You Need Love.’ What draws you to a specific song? “I don’t know, man. Maybe I was inspired a little bit by Boo Davis. He had a song called ‘Can Man.’ I was caught in between and had some lyrics, you know I think I like it like this…and Mike asked if there was anything you want to try? We went out on that one.”
You gained a lot of recognition right out of the gate for ‘Man Child.’ “But you know what, I hated that. Because I feel like, I don’t know I always wish I was never nominated. It was too soon. Although the nomination was great, I just felt it was too soon.”
Your discography count is up to what five recordings now, and a lot of it is original material. Can you talk a bit about writing music; do you have a process in your creativity, do you write with an instrument? “Like I said, I was blessed that Henry Townsend and I were good friends. I would go to his house and stay for eight or nine hours a day…all the time. Sometimes I would spend the night or weekend, whatever. And we would always be singing and making up songs. And he would always say, ‘if you like it you better tell me know, ’cause when it’s gone, it’s gone!’ And so being with him in that kind of improve situation and listening to him…I was raised by a lot of older people so those sayings and the little things like that, the way they talked, I always wanted my songs to represent the culture in that way. So it seemed legit and I think that’s where my songwriting comes from. It came from the heart and from what I was witnessing so it was easy. The lyrics just come to me, man. I don’t even need music.” He smiles at me. “There’s always music playing in my head, you know?
Tell me a little about opening for B.B. King? That’s better than any award, I imagine. “Oh, that’s life changing when you play with someone you admire.” How old were you? “I was 16 years old!” You opened for B.B. King at 16? “Twice!” (laughing)
I’ve noticed you give back to your community; how did you get involved with ‘Blues in the Schools?’ “The Dyson’s in Dallas, Texas have something called the Blue Shoe Project. They’re the ones that recorded Henry Townsend, Robert Jr. Lockwood, Honeyboy Edwards, and Pinetop Perkins for the record ‘Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen.’ So, when Mr. Townsend passed away Mike and his dad, Jeff came to St. Louis and we kind of made a connection, right then and there. Hawkeye Herman, with Dave Berson and Bobby Greenshoes Parker were already doing it and they said, ‘Marquise, you want to give it a try?’ So we sat down one evening and came up with a program and it was mostly around the stuff I was comfortable with doing. You know when you put something on the paper and its somebody else’s idea; it doesn’t flow as well as if it were yours. But I was at home and we started doing that all over Texas; Dallas, Abilene, Lubbock, Lyndon, Austin, Houston, I mean all over Texas playing for kids. I think now I’ve probably done Blues in the Schools for over 100,000 kids.”
Sharing a sense of community seems to come very natural to you. “Well, I come from a big family and we were multi-generational living in the same household. You have that sense of togetherness and that’s what the blues preaches. Some of my family are very religious people. I wasn’t raised in the church, but I have a reverence for the good book and the only difference between the gospel and blues is God and baby and that’s it.”
You also are connected to the Center for Artistic Expression. “Yeah that’s my drummer, Michael Battle’s non-profit. Sometimes we go inside at-risk youth homes and find out they like to rap and we break it down. You know going to the microphone is one part and teach them how to build a track and produce the music. You know you have a lot to deal with and everybody may not be able to rap but you can find something on the production side or other fields around the music.”
Speaking of the discovery process and opportunities, your music was exposed to a massive audience when you opened for Cheap Trick and ZZ Top. What was that experience like? “That was very humbling, man because those guys are just like the legends of the blues, they are legendary in what they do. Being out there on the road and becoming friends with those people…Dusty (Hill), drummer Frank…Billy (Gibbons) and Cheap Trick, man. Rick (Nielson) and his son, those guys treated me like they’d known me all my life.”
How did that connection even happen? “There was a lady in Salina, Kansas who asked me who I’d like to open up for and I said, B.B. King. She was booking the Stiefel Theatre there in Salina and she called me up and I opened up for B.B. Then one Thursday night I got a call, she said ZZ Top is coming to Salina tomorrow, do you want to come and open up for them? The day before! I said, well…? She said I’ll give you a thousand dollars and you don’t have to do but maybe thirty minutes, maybe twenty minutes…and we’ll give you a hotel room and gas. I go up there and do the show and as I’m performing Billy (Gibbons) comes on the side of the stage and when I got through he was still standing right there! He said, ‘Man, we play old records in general, we play those songs but they just sound like the record.’ And he took me on the bus and gave me a pre-amp and all this stuff and he said, ‘man, you know we’ve got to keep in touch.’ And his tour manager, Pablo said we’re gonna’ figure out how to get you some more.’ And then the opportunity came up and they said, ‘you wanna’ do the 50th Anniversary Tour?’ I said sure! And the first one was the Starlight up there in Kansas City and I’m sitting in my dressing room and there’s this guy saying, ‘Where’s Marquise Knox?’ And it was Rick (Nielson) from Cheap Trick. I say…What? How does this guy even know about me?” (laughing) “Then I opened up, Cheap Trick comes on and those guys called me up on their set. They’re waving me up, ‘C’mon!’ And we did ‘Surrender.’ (Reliving that moment Marquise breaks into song) “Your momma’s alright, your daddy’s alright; they just seem a little weird! Surrender Surrender! I said, man I’m living the life, I’m making so much money selling my CDs because I would do my set, go sell CDs and then Rick Nielson and them would call me up for the last 15 or 20 minutes of their show and I’m up there the whole time and then I go sell a bunch more!” (laughing)
Tonight onstage you were playing a very special guitar; Little Milton’s guitar. What’s the story behind that? “From one of my blues brothers, Frank Robinson; Little Milton was his godfather. His daddy was Frank ‘Scrap Iron’ Robinson Jr. who was Little Milton’s tour manager. So along the way the brother wound up with the guitar. And that was a blessing for him to show up tonight and come in like that.”
You play around the world for some audiences that don’t even speak the same language, yet everyone seems to relate to what you do and appreciate the music you share. How does that happen? “I think people know that when I come and am in the room and I’ve got them for that moment, that people know I’m giving my absolute all. I’m not saving nuthin’ for the show next week, I’m not saving nuthin’ ’cause it’s Monday night, I need to get to Friday night…I don’t think about that. I’m giving the people…I’m treating it like I’ll never perform again. I can go off of this stage and anything in life could happen to me, I want to make sure for myself, that I left it all out there.”
