THE BLUES STEAL MY LIFE

... And it was even greater good fortune for me, from the first moments of my elopement with the blues that I found myself actually performing with these incredible world masters on the South Side of Chicago. The amazing happening is that this was not a case of two young white blues hopefuls begging to sit in with their idols. Jim Schwall and I were hired to be in residency as the house band on Thursday nights at Pepper's Show Lounge for heaven's sake! And Pepper's was one of the most renown blues clubs in the world! And it was our idols that were coming to sit in with us! Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon. What this meant was that every week we got to be up on the stage performing with a large number of our idols not just for a few songs - but all night long for heaven's sake!

As a 22 year old just learning to play music - could I have been expected to realize at the time how really amazing this all was?

This is how it happened. My partner Jim Schwall and I who were students at Roosevelt's Chicago Musical College, put together a blues repertoire. We had no thoughts of a career in music. We did it cause we loved it. And we fell head over heals in love with the blues. When you fall head over heals in love do you need an explanation? At the time our repertoire was inspired completely by mostly three recording artists; Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters (with Little Walter on Harp) and Jimmy Reed.

1965: Jim and I would wander around on the south side of Chicago just looking for black bars where we could set up and perform. This followed an earlier practice back in 1963, when I was playing tenor sax, of looking for black jazz clubs to play at with my R & B trio of friends. I think the great social/political contradiction of the day forced me (both consciously and unconsciously) to want to be on the good side and "join" that culture. Of course there was also the natural pulling on my heart for the beauty, soul, and purity of the culture.

Jim and I had a two man band. I had drums under my piano and I would play the bass and high-hat while I pounded the left hand of the piano and held a harmonica with my right hand. Jim played guitar and sometimes would also play the drums with his feet. What a sight this must have been!

One afternoon we stumbled upon a bar on 43rd and Vincennces, walked in, and asked the owner if we could play there. He said we had to audition. So we auditioned right there and he hired us to be his house band every Thursday night. The owner was Johnny Pepper. He owned the renowned blues club Pepper's Show Lounge. He liked the two man band but he said this would never do for his club. So he hired us a bass player and a drummer. I think the first people he hired for us was bassist Bob Anderson and drummer Billy Davenport. Each week we would have different famous rhythm sections when their groups (Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Junior Wells and Buddy Guy, James Cotton or whoever) were not performing that night.

The Thursday nights went something like this: The first week Little Walter came and sat in with us. Also Hound Dog Taylor, Detroit Junior, Willie Dixon... the next week Muddy Waters, James Cotton, Otis Spann... the next week Howlin Wolf, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy... and that's the way it went for months and months.

Johnny Pepper and these great blues masters took us under their wing and taught us everything they knew. The people there in these "dangerous ghetto blues clubs on the South Side of Chicago" were warm and welcoming and they made us feel right at home and gave us their hearts.

This all happened in 1965 and it was early 1966 that we auditioned at the north side blues club, Big Johns. Paul Butterfield had just left his residency there to go on the road and Big Johns needed a replacement band. We won the audition and begin playing at both Big Johns and Mother Blues on the North Side of Chicago. This is where we were honored one night when Howlin Wolf came by to sit in with the new Siegel-Schwall band. He told me that he loved the group, he loved the fact that we were not just imitating, he liked the jug band feel and the simplicity, and the dynamics that we had just begun to experiment with. Understand we were just learning to play but there must have been something going on. When I listen to the first recording from 1966 it sounds like these young guys had great spirit, energy and that's probably what the appeal was.

Soon after we would find ourselves performing at the Cafe A Go Go in NYC with Wolf and I would have the unbelievable pleasure of taking walks with him every morning for a week through the Village.

Later (1966) Maestro Seiji Ozawa began hanging out for the Siegel-Schwall performances at Big Johns and Mother Blues and suggested a blues/classical collaboration - and this began a whole parallel book in our musical lives know as "Symphonic Blues." See: "How Classical Met the Blues." An interesting angle here is that while the young white blues players were helping to spread the blues and the knowledge about the blues masters to a wider and whiter audience the Symphonic Blues phenomenon was dumping the blues right in the lap of the whitest most corporate and high brow America - an unlikely group - and the people loved it! A New York Times HEADLINE read: "They Love Corky Siegel in Lincoln Center." This was the headline from a review of a performance of Three Pieces for Blues Band and Symphony Orchestra with New York Philharmonic in 1969. It should be known to the supporters of the blues that this juxtaposition of blues and classical has helped not only spread the word but break down walls for hundreds of thousands of people who otherwise may have never had any direct exposure to the blues.

But it was also in 1966 that Amet Ertigan from Atlantic Records came into Big Johns to sign Siegel-Schwall. Sam Charters from Vanguard Records was also there to sign Siegel-Schwall. As the story goes, Sam Charters told Ertigan that we were already signed. Of course this wasnt the case. So Sam Charters offered us a contract and we signed with Vanguard. It wasn't until the 70's that I found out from Amet Ertigan about the truth. After our stint at Big Johns we followed in Paul Butterfield's footsteps and went on the road.

There was not a moment when Jim or I decided that we were going to be professional musicians. We just played for the fun of it. And now we are thrown into the world of the music industry where the bottom line was money and a certain amount of the business motives were spiced by greed. This was all so strange for some young musicians who just played music cause they loved it.

PART THREE: The Symphonic Blues