Blues Revival Leads Cotton Out of Dead End

By the early 1970s, James Cotton was spending less time playing the blues than he was living them.

After distinguishing himself as the king of the blues harmonica through a quarter of a century of touring and recording with such legends as Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, Cotton’s career was at a dead end.

Most of the early blues greats were gone, and the ones who were left, like Cotton, were reduced to playing tiny honky-tonks and roadhouses, mostly in the South.

But in recent years, the success of such upstarts as Stevie Ray Vaughn, the Fabulous Thunderbirds and the Robert Cray Band has sparked a worldwide blues revival.

Cotton credits that revival with resuscitating his own flagging career. Last year, he celebrated the release of his first album in more than a decade and spent several months touring Japan and Europe with his eight-piece band.

And today, Cotton is again on the road, performing in concert halls and major nightclubs with such fellow old-timers as Buddy Guy, Albert Collins, Jimmie Rodgers, Luther Tucker and “Pinetop” Perkins.

The current tour, which includes a stop at the Belly Up Tavern on Sunday, was packaged by Clifford Antone, whose Austin, Tex., nightclub, Antone’s West, is a regular stomping ground for Cotton and the rest of the roadshow cast.

And so far, every night has been a sell-out, Cotton said enthusiastically.

“Music kind of goes in cycles, and it just seems like it’s our time again,” Cotton said. “People say the blues will never die, and it’s true.

“Even when times were hard, us old guys kept at it. To us, the blues will never go out of style because the blues is music that comes from the heart.

“And it’s nice to see that people finally want to hear us again.”

Cotton’s love affair with the blues began when he was just a child, growing up in Tunica, Miss. At age 9, he left home to seek out renowned blues harpist Sonny Boy Williamson, whose records he had heard on the radio. Before long, Cotton had mastered the instrument himself.

“Whenever Sonny Boy played somewhere, I would sneak in and catch what I could,” recalled Cotton, now 52. “He started showing me a few things on the harmonica, and after a while, on nights when he had been out having a little too much fun, I would fill in for him.”

For the next six years, Cotton continued to hang out, and frequently perform, with Williamson’s band until his reputation was such that he landed a regular job backing Howlin’ Wolf on the road and in the studio.

He’s featured on several of Wolf’s early 1950s recordings, including “Saddle My Pony,” one of the first blues songs to become a national hit.

Two years later, in 1952, Cotton left to form his own band. He moved to Memphis and cut several rockabilly singles for the Sun Records label, including “Straighten Up Baby” and “The Cotton Crop Blues,” before joining Muddy Waters’ band in 1954.

“I stayed with Muddy for 12 years, and it was the most wonderful musical experience of my life,” Cotton said. “He laid the groundwork for a lot of things you hear today in popular music, and everything he did was pretty inspiring.

“We just ran around the country, playing to packed houses everywhere we went, and one of the reasons why the tour I’m on now means so much to me is that a lot of the guys I’m playing with were in Muddy’s band at the same time I was.

“There was me on harmonica, Jimmie Rodgers on guitar, “Pinetop” Perkins on piano, Calvin Jones on bass and Willie (Big Eye) Smith on drums.

“It’s just like old times, except that Muddy’s no longer with us. But it’s still a lot of fun, all of us playing together again after all these years.”

After leaving Waters in 1966, Cotton toured and recorded with various rock ‘n’ roll artists, including Johnny Winter, Steve Miller, Paul Butterfield, Boz Scaggs and Janis Joplin.

“A lot of those kids had grown up listening to our stuff, and when they had the opportunity, they came to our shows and introduced themselves,” Cotton said.

“From time to time, they would ask me to do a little jammin’ in the studio, and then one thing would lead to another. I had been playing nothing but straight blues all my life, and eventually I decided to open myself up a little and try something different.”

By the early 1970s, however, the blues had fallen from grace and Cotton was one of the victims. But with the 1975 opening of Antone’s West nightclub, he once again found steady work, and with the recent blues revival, he said, “things have been getting better all the time.”

“There are only two types of music, good and bad, and it all comes from the blues,” Cotton said. “And what’s kept me alive all these years, through good times and bad times, is my love for the music.

“It’s as simple as that.”