Willie Dixon's Blues Alive in White World

A SONG can't stop a bullet. Music can't make the killer go away. And yet, for black people in America, the blues was a survival mechanism.

Willie Dixon maintains that without the blues "the black man couldn't have made it--the blues was his only defense.

"The blues taught the black man to relax to his conditions," the Mississippi-born composer and performer notes; "It taught the black man to bide his time."

The music was a way of saying, "(White man) you got me today but you won't have me tomorrow," Dixon continues. It was a way of sustaining the hope that a better day was coming.

Dixon claims he was born with blues, and that he's been singing them for as long as he's been on this earth--58 years. He's written over 400 songs including: "Little Red Rooster," "The Seventh Son," "Spoonful," "You Can't Judge a Book By It's Cover," "Back Door Man," "Wang-Dang Doodle," "Hoochie Coochie Man," and "My Babe."

Willie Dixon was last in Boston several weeks ago, performing at Joe's Place in Cambridge.

Dixon started his songwriting career when he was a young boy. He wrote love poems, which he set to music and sold to record scouts that passed through his community.

"When I first started, I used to sell (my songs) outright, for ten or fifteen dollars, anything I could get," he recalls. His songs were not copyrighted, and and he did not receive any royalties. For a time, he and his partner, Eddie Cooper, made nickels and dimes as schoolboy pornographers. Dixon wrote the dirty verses and Cooper drew the cartoons.

THEIR LITTLE comic books told the story of the Signifying Monkey, a devilish animal who's always instigating fights. The Signifying Monkey, Brer Rabbit, and Anansi the Spider are part of the same West African folk tradition. All three are small creatures that use their wits to survive and to cause trouble.

In 1946, Dixon recorded a version of "The Signifying Monkey" for Columbia Records. The first verse went like this:

"Said the Monkey to the Lion, on a bright summer day,

'There's a big, bad cat, living down your way,

He talks about your folk in a heck of a way,

A lot of things I'm afraid to say.'"

Dixon didn't say how well the Columbia recording of "The Signifying Monkey" sold, but he did note that the "dirty" version was quite successful.

Dixon, who now weighs 300 lbs. and stands 6 ft., 2 1/2 in., says that when he was a teenager, he was big for his age. He developed strong legs from walking behind a mule and plow all day, and strong arms from "totin' logs." I thought strength did everything," he notes, "and I was big and strong and hard." When he was 17 years old, he left Mississippi for Chicago with some 100 songs that he had written, and the dream of becoming a professional fighter. Dixon had a few pro-fights in Chicago. He was Joe Louis's sparring partner for a time, and one year, he won the Golden Gloves Championship. After a while, he started "drinking, and hanging out," and he soon forgot all about his boxing career.

Dixon says that his manager didn't care about his decline because he "just wanted a fighter to cover up his dope racket." The officials called Dixon's last fight a draw, but, he says, "the way I felt afterwards, I didn't really feel like going into the ring again." His boxing career ended, and with a one-string tin-can bass, he began his career as a performer. Later, a big-time gambler bought him his first upright bass, and he started performing at Martin's.

While he was in the Windy City Dixon had several groups of his own, including the Big Three Trio and the Four Jumps of Jive. Sometimes he sang the blues, and sometimes he sang spirituals, depending on which one meant a job.

He stayed in Chicago until 1959, writing, performing, and producing records for Chess Record Company. He produced records for such performers as Robert Nighthawk, Otis Rush, and Jimmy Weatherspoon.

One day in 1959, he and bluesman Memphis Slim decided to go to New York.

"I bought a car--well, it was supposed to be a car; it only cost $100--and we took off," he recalls.

The car just barely got them to the Alvin Hotel, "the raggedyest hotel" in New York, he says.

"We drove up to the hotel, got our baggage out, and they had to tow the car away," he says.

Neither he nor Memphis Slim had any money; their suitcases were just fronts so that the hotel manager would let them stay, Dixon points out. They called a number of record companies and charged the calls to the hotel. Dixon recalls that the man from Prestige said, "Come on over. Let me see what you got."

"We didn't have any songs when we called," Dixon says, "but by the time we walked over to the studio, we had plenty." Dixon and Memphis Slim made their first money in New York at that recording session.

Since 1959, Dixon has travelled all over the world, singing and performing the blues. A black man who lived during slavery might have had the blues over the slave master raping his wife. His song might have been, "Cap'n, Cap'n, you better leave my woman alone/ If you don't Death Valley's be gonna be your home." Dixon feels that wars, police brutality, riots, dope, and pollution are giving people the blues now. "A lot of people have the blues and they don't even know it," he says, "(because) everybody is dissatisfied with conditions one wav or another."

The illustration on Dixon's newest album indicates how Dixon views the condition of the world. He explains the symbolism this way:

The red, black, brown, and yellow stripes in the background represent the dark races of the world. The white dove of "peace" is sitting on top of an egg, the world. The white man (the "dove of peace"), Dixon explains, is only a small portion of the world's population, but he's trying to rule the world. To stay on top, the white man has to use many tricks.

How does the white man control black people in America? Dixon points to the word--DOPE.

There are wars, he says, because the white man is trying to get material for nothing. But he's doing a double job, because he's destroying the darker people at the same time. The white man's "egg" is hatching, and the snakes ("Cambodia," "Rhodesia," "the KKK," and so on) are coming out.

Dixon says that the white dove of "peace" is crying bloody tears, because she's created something that she "can't get rid of, without destroying herself."

For Willie Dixon, the blues are still with us, because oppressive conditions are still with us.