There's
simply no sound in the blues as easily digestible, accessible, instantly
recognizable and as easy to play and sing as the music of Jimmy Reed. His
best-known songs -- "Baby, What You Want Me to Do," "Bright
Lights, Big City," "Honest I Do," "You Don't Have to
Go," "Going to New York," "Ain't That Lovin' You
Baby" and "Big Boss Man" -- have become such an integral
part of the standard blues repertoire, it's almost as if they have existed
forever. Because his style was simple and easily imitated, his songs were
accessible to just about everyone from high school garage bands having a
go at it to Elvis Presley, Charlie Rich, Lou Rawls, Hank Williams, Jr.,
and the Rolling Stones, making him -- in the long run -- perhaps the most
influential bluesman of all. His bottom string boogie rhythm guitar
patterns (all furnished by boyhood friend and longtime musical partner
Eddie Taylor), simple two-string turnarounds, countryish harmonica solos
(all played in a neck rack attachment hung around his neck) and mush
mouthed vocals were probably the first exposure most White folks had to
the blues. And his music -- lazy, loping and insistent and constantly
built and reconstructed single after single on the same sturdy frame --
was a formula that proved to be enormously successful and influential,
both with middle-aged Blacks and young White audiences for a good dozen
years. Jimmy Reed records hit the charts with amazing frequency and
crossed over onto the pop charts on many occasions, a rare feat for an
unreconstructed bluesman.This is all the more amazing simply because
Reed's music was nothing special on the surface; he possessed absolutely
no technical expertise on either of his chosen instruments and his vocals
certainly lacked the fierce declamatory intensity of a Howlin' Wolf or a
Muddy Waters. But it was exactly that lack of in-your-face musical
confrontation that made Jimmy Reed a
welcome addition to everybody's record collection back in the '50s and
'60s. And for those aspiring musicians who wanted to give the blues a try,
either vocally or instrumentally (no matter what skin color you were born
with), perhaps Billy Vera said it best in his liner notes to a Reed
greatest hits anthology: "Yes, anybody with a range of more than six
notes could sing Jimmy's tunes and play them the first day Mom and Dad
brought home that first guitar from Sears & Roebuck. I guess Jimmy
could be termed the '50s punk bluesman."
Reed was born on September 6, 1925, on a plantation in or around the small burg of Dunleith, MS. He stayed around the area until he was 15, learning the basic rudiments of harmonica and guitar from his buddy Eddie Taylor, who was then making a name for himself as a semi-pro musician, working country suppers and juke joints. Reed moved up to Chicago in 1943, but was quickly drafted into the Navy, where he served for two years. After a quick trip back to Mississippi and marriage to his beloved wife Mary (known to blues fans as "Mama Reed"), he relocated to Gary, IN, and found work at an Armour Foods meat packing plant while simultaneously breaking into the burgeoning blues scene around Gary and neighboring Chicago. The early '50s found him working as a sideman with John Brim's Gary Kings (that's Reed blowing harp on Brim's classic "Tough Times" and its instrumental flipside, "Gary Stomp") and playing on the street for tips with Willie Joe Duncan, a shadowy figure who played an amplified, homemade one-string instrument called a Unitar. After failing an audition with Chess Records (his later chart success would be a constant thorn in the side of the firm), Brim's drummer at the time -- improbably enough, future blues guitar legend Albert King -- brought him over to the newly formed Vee-Jay Records where his first recordings were made. It was during this time that he was reunited and started playing again with Eddie Taylor, a musical partnership that would last off and on until Reed's death. Success was slow in coming, but when his third single, "You Don't Have to Go" backed with "Boogie in the Dark," made the number five slot on Billboard's charts, the hits pretty much kept on coming for the next decade.
ALBUMS
1958 I'm Jimmy Reed 1959 Rockin' With Reed (Collectables) 1960 Found Love Now Appearing 1961 Jimmy Reed at Carnegie Hall 1962 Just Jimmy Reed 1963 Jimmy Reed Plays 12 String Guitar Blues Jimmy Reed Sings the Best of the Blues T'Ain't No Big Thing But He Is...Jimmy Reed 1964 Jimmy Reed at Soul City 1965 The Legend: The Man 1967 The New Jimmy Reed Album/Soulin' 1968 Big Boss Man/Down in Virginia 1971 Found Love 1974 Best of Jimmy Reed 1976 Blues Is My Business
SINGLES
1956 "Ain't That Lovin' You Baby" 3 - "Can't Stand to See You Go" 10 - "I Don't Go for That" 12 - "I Love You Baby" 13 - 1957 "Honest I Do" 4 32 "Honey, Where You Going?" 10 - "Little Rain" 7 - "The Sun is Shining" 12 65 1958 "Down in Virginia" - 93 1959 "I Told You Baby" 19 - 1960 "Baby, What You Want Me to Do" 10 37 "Found Love" 16 88 "Hush-Hush" 18 75 1961 "Big Boss Man" 13 78 "Bright Lights, Big City" 3 58 "Close Together" - 68 1962 "Aw Shucks, Hush Your Mouth" - 93 "Good Lover" - 77 1963 "Shame, Shame, Shame" - 52
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