It’s been almost 30 years now since I ran into Carey Bell. He was touring through Europe and was gracious enough to sit down and talk for awhile about his friends, his life in music and the road he travelled. Immediately after our conversation, in his typical workingman’s approach, he stepped on stage and proceeded to blow everyone in that Italian theater against the back wall. He was a remarkable talent and genuinely funny human being.

Born in the winter of 1936 and raised on a farm in Macon, Mississippi, Carey Bell Harrington grew up working hard. He laughs, “Damn sure did!” I heard you taught yourself harmonica? “Yeah! I got one for Christmas and started blowin’ on it.” Your mother sang in church, do you think that was your first musical influence? “Yeah, I guess so. That’s what they all say.” He laughs. “I haven’t the slightest idea, you know? 

What was life like for you in a small community like that? “There wasn’t too much to it, I just didn’t want to work on the farm, so I ran away. I learned how to play the harmonica and when I thought I was good enough, I went to Chicago.”

Talk a little about working in Bobby Shore’s Tavern in Meridian? “Oh yeah, that was great! It was a restaurant and a tavern and I was selling bootleg, moonshine whiskey.” (laughing) “But I drank too much! (laughing) Were you playing blues there? “No, Western and Country music and that was great, too! Yeah, that was the first thing I learned but after blues came along, I got into that.”

You grew up around Lovie Lee. “Yeah, he’s still hangin’. But working with him I felt it was too slow because I wanted to get up real fast, you know? Who were some of the people you listened to on the harmonica? “You mean the people I liked?” I nod. “Oh I listened to Sonny Boy, Big Walter, Little Walter, Sonny Terry, Jerry McCain, Junior Wells, James Cotton. They were playing way before I was…Cotton is old as Moses!” (laughing) “Junior, too!”

Like most bluesmen of the era, Bell would busk on street corners; sometimes alone, sometimes with others. “Yeah, I played with a band, Robert Nighthawk, Honeyboy Edwards… shoot, a lot of peoples.”

You played in a place once called the Cadillac Baby Bar with Little Walter, what was that like? “That was okay.” What did you do? “Nuthin’!” (laughing) C’mon, running with Little Walter had to be a high point in your career? “No, it wasn’t.” (laughing) “You see when I went to Chicago I was too young to get into the clubs, I had to go in the back door. I had to sneak around and people would sneak me in.”

I had always heard that Little Walter Jacobs was a scrappy little guy and would fight anyone at the drop of a hat, but Carey set me straight. “Naw, everybody tells that same lie.” Then he says. “Well, I guess he would if somebody would jump on him, but everybody have to defend themselves, you know? There was no doubt that he was an unbelievable harp player. “Yeah he was, he’s gone but he’s still has stuff out, it’s still great stuff.”

I was looking at some of the people you’ve played with and it’s unreal. You’ve played with Big Walter, Earl Hooker, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters… and the list of venues, what was the rowdiest club or bar you’ve ever played? “The only place I remember was a house party in Mississippi. They got to fightin’ and I went up under the house.” (laughing) “Yeah, under the house, the guitar player got in his car and left. Yeah, people got beat. That was about the rowdiest.”

Charlie Musselwhite and Otis Rush both told me about a place called the ‘I Spy Lounge’ in Chicago? “I didn’t hang out in the ‘I Spy’ that much. I always heard about all the fights and stuff going on in there, that’s one of the reasons I didn’t go in there!” (laughing) You and Charlie Musselwhite are pretty good friends. “Yeah, we used to hang out together, every day almost, every Sunday playing on the street. He’s crazy, though.” He’s settled down now a little bit, haven’t you? “No!” (laughing) “I just ain’t as fast as I used to be!” (laughing)

You toured a great deal with Willie Dixon’s All Stars. “Yeah, he’s a good friend of mine. I was his main man. We used to cook in the hotel, and we’d get busted for it.” (laughing) “Hot dogs, pork chops, potatoes.” You mean like a hot plate in the room? “I had one of those big, old Hoover electric frying pans and we had a good time. They told us to quit but then the hotel manager would sit down and have a bite with us. Willie was good at starting a conversation. After we finished the guy would leave and tell us, ‘Well, you guys don’t do it every day or just put something at the bottom of the door so the smell doesn’t go all over.’ You know those white potatoes and onions you could smell them a country mile…” (laughing) “And the band wouldn’t help round up food with us; we’d sneak off to the grocery store and they’d be sleeping and when they’d wake up they’d smell the food and Willie would lock the door and wouldn’t let them in.” (laughing) “Oh, we had great fun!”

You’ve been on the road a long time, you ever tire of it? “Un-uh!?” Carey shakes his head. “It’s my life…I love it! You know why?” He smiles. “I don’t want to work!” (laughing) Isn’t it tough sometimes? “It ain’t like work!! Man, work would KILL me! If I had to go back to work punching a clock and here come somebody telling me, ‘How come you’re late? I’m docking your money. Well, you’re fired!’”

What kind of work did you do, outside of music? “Oh man, shoot. I worked in junk yards, nursing homes; washing cars…you know that work? I put on a rubber suit at 7 o’clock and wouldn’t get through till 5 in the evening, keeping that yellow suit on. It was yellow. They had those little pads you stick your hands in. Man, I used to say if I ever get out of this here… man that was something else.”

Describe Carey Bell’s blues? “I just DID!” (laughing) “I just did!” (laughing) “The first wife I had, we moved from Mississippi to Chicago with Lovie Lee and a whole band. I didn’t know the city and I had to go look for a job and at that time that had old junk carts that they pulled through the alley picking up scrap and stuff. Her mother’s old man built me a wagon to pull. Now, I had been plowin’ with a mule in Mississippi and man, when I get to Chicago they go and make a mule outta’ me! Owww!” (laughing) “Un-Uh! They put me out! Yeah, that’s when I met Honeyboy (Edwards). Honeyboy took me in. If it hadn’t been for Honeyboy I’d probably woulda’ been dead or something, or in jail!”

You’ve played with everybody, do you have a favorite session or recording that you truly enjoyed? “My favorite was with Muddy, the London sessions. Oh, we had great fun. With Sammy Lawhorn and I can’t remember the other guys. Only three of us left Chicago and went to London and they had musicians there in London. They were big guys but I can’t recall their names.” That album was loaded with talent including Rory Gallagher, Rick Grech, Stevie Winwood, Mitch Mitchell and many more… I totally understand why it was your favorite. Other than the talent, what made it so special for you? “Muddy was funny. They didn’t want to give me no whiskey. Muddy said, ‘you don’t give that boy no whiskey, he ain’t gonna’ play!” (laughing) “You better go out and get him some. It was real funny. And we’d lay up in the hotel all day and do the session at night. It took us a week. In the hotel, we’d order anything we wanted, Champagne… anything we wanted and we didn’t have to pay for it.”

The results speak for themselves.

We lost Carey Bell in Chicago on May 6, 2007 from heart failure. He left us with an incredible library of music. (Check him out — Carey Bell; I know you’ll like it.)

The post Carey Bell Blues appeared first on Traveling Archive.

‘MOZ LIVE’

The lineup is a veritable who’s who in the Southern California blues community. “The musicians,” Fast says. “Include Steve Wilcox and Dana Duplan on guitar; Don Skelton and Troy Sandow on bass; drummers Al Schneider and Marcus Bashore and Jonny Viau on saxophone.” And of course, Chris Fast on harp and vocals.

Although the band is widely known for their live shows, when we spoke about the project, I was curious if releasing something ‘live’ made the recording more…or less stressful? “What was especially nice,” Chris told me. “Was that we paid no attention to the fact that we were ‘recording’, we played with our total focus on the performances and connecting with the audience. In that way, the songs on ‘Moz Live’ are a completely honest representation of, and a clear snapshot of what the Chris Fast Band was doing at this particular point in time…complete with the mistakes and audience chatter that you hear at a gig. The music is allowed to breathe, and I find it refreshing! You don’t get that when you do a studio album.”

And of course it’s a Chicago style blues “…real Chicago Blues.” Chris says. “The songs are all covers with the exception of “Seven Steps to Heaven.”

A couple of Little Walter Jacobs tracks stand out… “Chicago blues has always been a love of mine. We’re playing a lot of Little Walter material just because it’s challenging. When I was younger, everybody was playing Little Walter stuff and it doesn’t seem to be that way now. People my age started playing music in the ‘60s when the blues invasion rolled through. When I was in high school we heard the Stones playing some blues and then we started investigating and found out about the guys that originated the music. There was a huge wave of people that were blues enthusiasts at that time.”

Social media has changed some of that… “It’s all over YouTube.” Chris agrees. “Back in the day when I was starting, I had to borrow records. Rod (Piazza) gave me my first Little Walter record and said, ‘Hey, Listen to this!’ And I listened to it and it was weird to me, because it was a whole different style of playing. Of course, Rod was totally off into it and then I started learning it.”

Growing up near and getting to know Rod Piazza was a very fortunate happenstance in your musical direction, was it not? “Yeah, I was lucky he lived in town and talk about a great model to have, you know, as an aspiring harmonica player. Rod has always welcomed guest players; if he thinks you’re halfway decent he doesn’t have a problem getting you up there. In fact, he welcomes it because for one thing, he can take a break. And then when you’re done he can say, ‘Okay, I’ll show you how it’s really done.’” (laughing) “It’s a good little foil for him. Rod, of course has played with everybody. He played with the real guys. We’re just trying to get a good sound and all that stuff, but he was really there with all the guys that were out in L.A.”

Where did your love of blues originate? “My father gave me a harmonica when I was a young boy. I was a little kid and I’d walk around playing this silly harmonica so I was always oriented toward the harmonica. In Junior High school I think the folk music thing was going pretty good and some of my friends decided to put together a little band and I was going to play the harmonica, we had a couple of folk guitars and we played at a talent assembly and that’s where it kind of started.

I got into some rock bands early on, but we’d play some blues tunes as well and it just sort of evolved from there. I remember we had some jam sessions in the summertime and Rod Piazza was involved in those and there was a core group of musicians that would meet every week and I would go down there and play. I started hearing what he was doing and we developed a friendship and as I got older I was playing in blues bands around town. I used to play in a band with Bob Newham and Willie Brinlee and the guys that went on to back Bill Clarke and growing up in Riverside we were always playing Chicago blues. Later, because I knew all the harmonica songs, Rod needed a guitar player and I could play some guitar, I never considered myself a very good guitar player…and I proved it every night.” Chris laughs. “I could play okay, just enough to back him. I learned a lot, night after night sitting there behind Rod. He would pick me up at my house and take me into L.A. where he was playing in these black clubs. It was a great education for me.”

Who were some of the people you saw and played with in those early days? “We backed up Big Joe Turner and Pee Wee Crayton was playing with us at one time. We opened shows for John Lee Hooker and later on I was able to work with Percy Mayfield and Big Mama Thornton.”

Talk a little about Percy Mayfield? “He was just a real sweet guy. Talk about a songwriter, he was the best. Nobody wrote a song like Percy Mayfield. I don’t think anybody was better. Nobody!”

What is it about harp players? Not to frighten you, but most seem to have a very short life span? (laughing) “Little Walter was crazy.” Chris laughs. “Rod told me Walter would seek out the worst people he could find, and that’s who he would hang with. You’ve probably known people like that. They just can’t resist and that’s the people they seek, the lowest common denominator and that’s what they enjoy. I don’t know, there’s a physical quality to the playing, it takes strength to play the harp, it takes a little energy, I think.”

Outside of the Chicago sound, or blues in general what other music appeals to you? “I listen to a lot of jazz. If I’m listening to music, I’ll be listening to jazz. I appreciate that, I imagine if I was a better musician or more educated in music, maybe I would be a jazz musician perhaps, I don’t know. I like the sax players like Coltrane and all those guys.”

I’ve heard people make the comparison with Walter’s amplified harp and saxophone lines. “Right, to get the instrument to sound bigger, to sound like a saxophone, Walter was playing…of course swing music was big at that time in the early ‘50s, Louis Jordan was having a lot of hits as an alto player and people would learn his lines and play it in their music. It really had more of a swing to it.”

Now that the new album is out, what’s next for the Chris Fast band? “Since they recorded every night that we played (at the Mozambique), there’s a lot more material in the can. Can you say, ‘Son of Moz Live’?”

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