Look up “authentic blues man” in the dictionary and you’ll find a picture of Charlie Musselwhite. He was born in Mississippi, raised in Memphis, and came of age on the south side of Chicago. His half hour interview with WBGO’s Dave Popkin is just the tip of the iceberg of his blues odyssey. During that chat, the GRAMMY Award winner talked about Mississippi Son, his most recent (and accidental) album for Alligator Records that was taken from a series of pandemic-era recordings in a local studio near his home in Clarksdale, Mississippi. “It was just kind of a lark. We didn’t set out to make an album.” The listener can envision a couple friends sitting around on the front porch at sunset, pulling out some down-home blues tunes. It’s an intimate, stripped-down, timeless record.
Musselwhite is the Forrest Gump of the blues. He saw W.C. Handy live, partied with Elvis, and recorded a seminal album with John Hammond and The Hawks (So Many Roads). He roomed with Big Joe Williams, rode the buses from Chicago to New York with Mike Bloomfield, acted in the Martin Scorsese 2023 film Killer of the Flower Moon, and performed with Jaime Robertson (“I don’t know when he changed his name to Robbie.”). Dan Aykroyd based The Blues Brothers’ look on him. He’s played with everyone from Buddy Guy, Hubert Sumlin, and Elvin Bishop to Cyndi Lauper, Eric Clapton, and Dr. John. John Lee Hooker was the best man at his wedding to Henrietta. “The original blues guy,” he said of Hooker, “Nobody sounded like him on guitar or singing…it still fascinates me…he really captures the blues in a real deep way.”
His big break came in Chicago when he met up with the great Muddy Waters. “Muddy thought I was a fan. I would hang around and we’d talk and request tunes. A waitress I knew told Muddy, ‘Oh, you ought to hear Charlie play harmonica.’. That just changed everything. He insisted I sit-in and other guys heard me sitting in with Muddy and they offered me gigs. I thought ‘Wow, you’re gonna pay me to play this harmonica?’. That really got me focused. It was my ticket out of the factory.”
What was the inspiration for his signature harmonica tone? “I really liked the way the first Sonny Boy sounded, John Lee Williamson, and I still love his sound,” Musselwhite said, “Some simple things that cannot be reproduced. The idea is just to play your own blues.”
His Clarksdale home is near Robert Johnson’s “crossroads.” “You can just feel the blues in the air around here. It seems to rise-up from the ground. It just saturates the whole environment. The blues is alive and well right here in Mississippi.”
As he approaches his 80th birthday, is he going to keep playing the blues? “I don’t have anything else to do,” he said with a chuckle. “I love the blues and it loves me. It keeps me going and it’s endlessly fascinating and I’ve got lots more to do.” With an autobiography the works (with Jim O’Neal, co-founder of Living Blues magazine), a new album in the mixing stage, a potential new blues album with Ben Harper on the horizon, and an ongoing radio show, Charlie Musselwhite is living up to his word and keeping the blues alive.
“Blues Up The River” by Charlie Musselwhite from the 2022 album Mississippi Son:
“How Blue Can You Get” from the movie Blues Brothers 2000, featuring B.B. King, Charlie Musselwhite, Bo Diddley, Eric Clapton, and many other blues legends:
“I’m In I’m Out and I’m Gone” by Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite from 2013’s Get Up!:
“So Many Roads, So Many Trains” by John Hammond, featuring Charlie Musselwhite, in 1965:
“Key To The Highway” Charlie Musselwhite, recorded live in 1986:
