Chicago's quirky hero of blues and jazz in NYT

The one entry on your essential Delmark list which I would give a rousing endorsement to is Otis Rush's "A Cold Day In Hell". Other reviewers prefer his earliest work, but this one is a full-blown tour de force of heartfelt vocals and soulful guitar of a magnitude that is rarely accomplished. On my list, I would also place Jimmy Dawkins' "All For Business", another classic blues album. By the way, I for one would like to hear more of your tales of JRM experiences as you mentioned Dawkins with his "hungry-looking German Shephards".

HM: I was at one of the sessions for "Cold Day," heard Otis record the swinging "Motoring Along" and the operatic title track.As for Dawkins, I recall him coming to the JRM with those dogs in the back of his station-wagon-like vehicle, which had a mesh metal cage separating them from the drivers' seat. They looked threatening to me, not a great dog fancier, and Dawkins was just as the title of his record, all for business -- very upright in bearing, serious of demeanor, not immediately expressing warmth or humor. He and Bob talked privately, I don't know about what -- he could have been asking for a check or another record date or passing the time of day. Anyway, Dawkins didn't let the dogs out of the car, far as I recall, so it was just the *idea* that he brought them to show off or be seen.

Let me be clear: Bob Koester wasn't in need of being scared to pay musicians or anyone else. He is not a greedy man by any stretch, though he doesn't mind making a buck; he may be cheap because he doesn't have a lot of money or expect to have a lot of money, but I never heard anyone accuse him of profiting off of their work unfairly, or holding out on them. Stretching what he had to cover what he needed, yes. . .Who in the blues & jazz world hasn't done that?

Bob has his unaccountable favorites and has made some dud records.I don't think much of the Mighty Joe Young album -- at least not enough to have listened to it for years -- and I don't care about most any of the revival trad bands he holds in high regard. The responsibility he gave musicians to produce themselves was sometimes more than they could handle, and he sometimes trusted collaborators to do what would look like the "producing" (running the session): Chuck Nessa and Steve Tomachevsky were two of them during my closest years around that scene, and athe records worked out pretty well. But what Bob is unparalleled at is gathering lots of wacky, original music lovers around him, his store, his label, his likes and dislikes, having a place where Mike Bloomfield, Charlie Musselwhite, Washboard Hank the Crank, Kalaparusha Ara Difda, Jim deJong, Larry Birnbaum, Debbie Nathan, John Litweiler, J.B. Figi, Terry Martin, Blind Arvella Grey, Harriet Choice, Josh Berman, B. Ruby Rich, Marguerite Horberg, Sparrow, Jeff Vega, Ray Townley, Erwin Helfer, Pete Crawford, blues poet Wes Race, my photo buddy Marc PoKempner, Juan Montenegro, Jim Neumann of Beehive Records, Peter Margasak, me and Koester's sterlingly patient wife Sue among countless others were drawn to, to work or hang and talk, buy records, plot to enjoy and advance the music we were and are accountably or otherwise drawn to.

Magic Sam - West Side Soul - the dog's bollocks!!!!!!

HM: Quite so -- Black Magic and Magic Sam Live at Ann Arbor are also stellar -- I went for Sweet Home Chicago due to its having Magic Sam AND Luther Allison cuts, as well as some other Delmarkians. There are more than 12 masterworks from Delmark (Art Ensemble Live at Mandel Hall, Jimmy Forrest playing All The GIn is Gone," Braxton's For Alto, Otis R's So Many Roads, Sykes' Feel Like Blowing My Horn," Dawkins' All For Business, pianist Jim Baker solo, some rare Earl Hines. . .

Oh yes and Koester, always an old movie nut too, has launched the good idea recently of issuing full length videos of the performances on record. Quite a feat for musicians these days to pull that off, whether we appreciate it yet or not.

Made a point of dropping in this past Memorial Day to the store's current location, just a couple blocks from my hotel on the Mag Mile. Ended up going back...and back...spending more money than I care to admit. The guys working there knew their stuff, of course, but what really impressed me was that they bent over backwards to help. When I mentioned something I wanted that I couldn't find in the bins, they showed me where else to look; they checked their backstock; they practically turned the store upside down with "I KNOW we have it" aplomb.

My influencer? Jim Steele, who for nearly 20 years hosted a Friday night show called "Jazz Place" on the NPR station in my hometown (Winston-Salem, NC). It's where I first heard John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Bill Evans, the Marsalises...all the music that changed my life. Jim's retired now but the show lives on; sometimes I even tune in on the web from D.C. when I'm home on a Friday night.

P.S. So was Koester right about Muhal Richard Abrams and Sleepy John Estes?

HM: No, I don't think he was. I listened seriously and obsessively to AACM music as soon as it was issued, in part because it was so unusual, wherever it was from. I was interested in creativity of such dynamic drama made so close to home -- I was able to hear the AACM big band, hear them play in small groups, and it was listening music (as opposed to the folk blues being hootenanies and the electr blues being bar music -- I was still underage). I didn't realize blues played a huge part in it; as we understand it now, blues was so throughout it music could sound like anything else, too. Muhal's released (even the mix-problematic Levels and Degrees), Jarman-Mitchell-Braxton releases and non-Delmark Atlantic, ESP, Impulse!, Blue Note and occasionally Columbia records, ostensibly experimental, extremely expressionistic -- that's what I wanted. It may have taken me a while to understand what was them deemed far out stuff -- of course it did -- but I didn't come to my understanding of it by way of Delta blues. The AAACM spoke to me of modernism, transformation, intensity, intelligence, determination, originality, irony, sarcasm, lyricism, rhythm, musical twists I'd never imagined but that let me imagine and understand many more -- all together, formidable power. That was not something I heard in Sleepy John's blues (or Big Joe's, Arthur Crudup's, others of the esteemed elders Koester had on sessions).

Koester's influence was responsible for my digging the blues itself, though. At his urging I bought the battered used copy of the Legend of Sleepy John I've still got, and listened to it occasionally, eventually getting into it. It was a break from the rest of my faves. I liked the Speckled Red because I'd taken piano lessons and could sort of imitate himt; I liked a Chess anthology album misleading named "Folk Festival of the Blues" (reissued eventually as Bill Bill's Blues Show, Live at the Macombo). But my real blues breakthrough listening-wise came from Delmark's Hoodoo Man: Junior and Buddy and the Aces making it up-to-date Latinate dark mixed street Chicago. Better than rock 'n' roll, bluer than Butterfield or the Blues Project, much slicker than Dylan, dirtier than the Stones, prior to Hendrix, tastily mixed as Rubber Soul, tight like that.

Which made me trust and investigate the blues, onto attending the first three Ann Arbor Blues and Blues & Jazz Festivals, one day hearing afternoon sets by Bukka White, Dr. Isiah Ross, Fred McDowell and Sykes among other old-school exemplars, and T-Bone Walker followed by a fantastic Luther Allison in the evening (if I remember that rightly -- I'm sure the real sched is up online. . .)