Willie Dixon Induction Year: 1994

Willie Dixon

Induction Year: 1994

Induction Category: Early Influence

Willie Dixon has been called “the poet laureate of the blues” and “the father of modern Chicago blues.” He was indisputably the pre-eminent blues songwriter of his era, credited with writing more than 500 songs by the end of his life. Moreover, Dixon is a towering figure in the history and creation of Chicago blues on other fronts. While on staff at Chess Records, Dixon produced, arranged, and played bass on sessions for Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson, and others. In no small way, he served as a crucial link between the blues and rock and roll.

Born in 1915 in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Dixon began rhyming, singing and writing songs in his youth. He was exposed to a variety of music - gospel, blues, country & western - which served as the seeds for the symbiotic music he would later make in Chicago. Moving to the city in 1936, he had a brief career as a boxer and then skirmished with the U.S. Army, refusing induction on the grounds he was a conscientious objector. His early forays on the Chicago music scene included stints with the Five Breezes, the Four Jumps of Jive and the Big Three Trio, all of which made records. The Big Three Trio, in particular, are noteworthy for having brought harmony singing to the blues. Dixon really found his niche at Chess, where he was allowed to develop as a recording artist, session musician, in-house songwriter and staff musician beginning in 1951.

Some of the now-classic songs he wrote for others during his lengthy tenure at Chess include “Hoochie Coochie Man,” “I’m Ready” and “I Just Want to Make Love For You” (Muddy Waters); “Back Door Man,” “Spoonful” and “I Ain’t Superstitious” (Howlin’ Wolf), “My Babe” (Little Walter); and “Wang Dang Doodle” (Koko Taylor). Though he didn’t write for Chuck Berry, Dixon played bass on most of his early records. For a few years in the late Fifties, he also wrote for and worked with artists on the crosstown Cobra label, including such fledgling bluesmen as Otis Rush, Buddy Guy and Magic Sam.

Dixon returned to Chess in 1959, and the Sixties saw the full flowering of his talents there. In addition, to writing and producing some of his greatest works during that decade, he recorded a series of albums in a duet format with Memphis Slim on the Folkways, Verve and Battles labels. His first album as a solo artist, Willie’s Blues, appeared on the Bluesville label in 1960. In his capacity as staff producer at Chess, he wouldn’t get around to releasing a followup album under his own name until I Am the Blues appeared on Columbia Records in 1970. Albums followed from him at more regular intervals in subsequent years, culminating in the 1988 release of Hidden Charms, which won Dixon a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Recording.

In his later years, Willie Dixon became a tireless ambassador of the blues and a vocal advocate for its practitioners, founding the Blues Heaven Foundation. The organization works to preserve the blues’ legacy and to secure copyrights and royalties for blues musicians who were exploited in the past. Speaking with the simple eloquence that was a hallmark of his songs, Dixon put it like this: “The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits. It’s better keeping the roots alive, because it means better fruits from now on. The blues are the roots of all American music. As long as American music survives, so will the blues.”

Willie Dixon published his autobiography, I Am the Blues, in 1989 – a year after Chess Records released Willie Dixon: The Chess Box, a two-disc set that included Dixon’s greatest songs as performed by the artists who’d made them famous – Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, Bo Diddley, Lowell Fulson – and Dixon himself.”

TIMELINE

1937: Willie Dixon wins the Illinois State Golden Gloves Heavyweight Championship (Novice Division).

1940: Willie Dixon makes his first recordings, for Bluebird Records, as part of the Chicago-based Five Breezes.

1941: Willie Dixon is jailed for refusing induction into the armed forces. Military personnel escort him from the stage of Chicago’s Pink Poodle club. “I told them I was a conscientious objector and wasn’t gonna fight for anybody,” said Dixon.

1946: Willie Dixon forms the Big Three Trio with pianist/singer Leonard “Baby Doo” Caston and guitarist Bernardo Dennis (replaced a year later by Ollie Crawford). They sing blues and standards and travel widely.

March 27, 1948: “Ebony Rhapsody,” by Rosetta Howard, enters the R&B chart, where it will reach #8. Backing Howard is the Big Three Trio, featuring bassist/songwriter Willie Dixon.

March 13, 1954: “Hoochie Coochie Man,” written by Willie Dixon and recorded by Muddy Waters – with Dixon playing bass – enters the R&B chart. It will reach #3, which will make it the highest-charting of Waters’ 14 Top Ten R&B hits.

March 12, 1955: “My Babe,” by Chicago blues singer and harmonica player Little Walter, enters the R&B singles chart, which it will top for five weeks. The song was written by Willie Dixon, who also plays bass on the track.

September 10, 1955: Willie Dixon cracks the R&B charts as a recording artist for the one and only time in his career with “Walking the Blues,” released on Chess Records’ sister label, Checker.

1959: Chicago blues legend Willie Dixon returns to Chess Records after a three-year hiatus, during which he produced an impressive roster of blues artists – including Buddy Guy, Otis Rush and Magic Sam – for crosstown rival Cobra Records.

1960: Howlin’ Wolf records “Spoonful” and “Back Door Man” - two classic blues songs, both written and produced by Willie Dixon – for Chess Records.

1962: Muddy Waters records Willie Dixon’s “You Shook Me,” a classic blues that will later be covered by Led Zeppelin on their self-titled debut album.

April 16, 1966: Koko Taylor’s recording of “Wang Dang Doodle,” written and produced by Willie Dixon, enters the R&B chart, where it will peak at #4.

1977: As the result of a legal settlement, Willie Dixon is set to receive “increased publishing royalties and the gradual return of the copyrights on all of his songs,” according to biography Don Snowden.

1984: Willie Dixon founds the Blues Heaven Foundation, a nonprofit organization designed to promote the blues and to provide scholarships, royalty recovery advice, emergency assistance to blues musicians in need.

1988: ‘Willie Dixon: The Chess Box’ - a two-CD, 36-song box set spanning the songwriter, bassist and producer’s Chess Records years - is released.

February 22, 1989: Willie Dixon wins a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Recording for his 1988 album ‘Hidden Charms.’

May 16, 1990: Thanks to Willie Dixon’s Blues Heaven Foundation, the former Chess Records Office and Studio at 2120 S. Michigan Avenue in Chicago is officially recognized as a protected Chicago Landmark.

January 29, 1992: Willie Dixon dies of heart failure in Burbank, CA.

January 19, 1995: Willie Dixon is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the ninth annual induction dinner. Chuck Berry is his presenter.

1997: Through the efforts of Marie Dixon – the late Willie Dixon’s wife – and others, the Blues Heaven Foundation moves into the restored Chess Records Studios at 2120 S. Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois.