[Harp-L] Rhythm Willie

["Mick Zaklan" <mzaklan@xxxxxxxxx>]

  Like a lot of guys, I started out with the Tony Glover book.  Around
1968.  There was nothing else out there.  Didn't actually get much out of
the book; but it was written in such a hip way and the names sounded so
exotic that I felt like I had joined a secret, very cool club.  I
immediately went out and bought a copy of "The Best of Little Walter".  I
remember my dad, a music and hi-fi equipment nut, wearing his earphones and
seizing the record out of my hand.  He threw it on the turntable and gave
each track about 5 seconds.  "The greatest harmonica player I ever heard was
Rhythm Willie.  This guy's no Willie"; he said dismissively, handing me back
the platter with a big thumbprint on it.
  It was a putdown I would hear over and over again during the next couple
of decades. Everytime I brought a harp album into the house--"He's no
Willie".  Since I had never seen Willie's name in print or anything recorded
by him, I assumed the my old man was off his rocker.  I worked construction
with him for several summers and I always made a point of asking the older
African-American laborers about Muddy, Wolf, both Walters, etc.  And
Willie.  Only found one guy who had seen Willie.  As I grilled the
old-timer, it became apparent to me that Willie had been playing standards
in a swing jazz style on a diatonic harp.  I got the impression that he was
sort of a Black version of Johnny O'Brien and was part of the house band
review at one of the Southside Chicago nightclubs.  My dad frequented those
clubs as a young man, particularly the Club DeLisa.  I'm guessing that
he might have seen Willie there.
  I vaguely remember someone, possibly Rick Estrin, asking about Rhythm
Willie in an old issue of the American Harmonica Newsletter.  That
immediately gave him some credibility with me.  It was the first time I ever
saw Willie's name on paper.  Of course, later Kim Field mentioned him in the
Heavy Breathers book.  At the Memphis S.P.A.H. convention, Pete Pederson
asked if he could walk back to the hotel with my buddy and I (it was
downtown after dark).  It was the only time I was ever able to converse with
Pete.  Knowing that he had lived in Chicago in the 40's, I took the
opportunity to ask if he knew Willie.  "Sure", he said.  "There were lots of
Willie's back then, 'Shoeshine Willie', etc., etc.".  I remember that Pete
wasn't too impressed.  It was like "he was alright" or "yeah, he was good".
I couldn't make up my mind whether he was bullshitting me or if Willie
was just an above-average player who Pete barely remembered.  Or if Pete was
showing a chromatic bias.
 Was trading blues harp tapes with a guy named Boogie Bob Pitz in the mid
to late 90's.  Every couple weeks Bob would send me a package and I would
retaliate with some of my rarities.  One day, at the tail end of a long
tape, there were 4 or 5 cuts listed under the name "Rhythm Willie".  I can't
tell you how excited or emotional I got or the memories that came streaming
back to me at that moment.  It brought back the whole father-son thing, our
musical disagreements, and growing up with Django Reinhardt, Leadbelly,
Jimmy Rodgers (the father of country music), Billie Holiday, and Enrico
Caruso being blasted out of my dad's speakers daily.  Never realized how
lucky I was to have that soundtrack until after he was gone.
  Anyway, Willie's harp work was first-rate.  The cuts I heard were all
blues tunes, which puzzled me.  But that's probably what was selling and
what the producer wanted to hear.  Most of them sounded trumpet influenced
and played in 1st position.  One might've been in 4th--which would have been
pretty damn sophisticated for that era.  Willie was a helluva player and it
saddened me that my dad wasn't there to hear the tape with me.
  I had heard that Scott Dirks was working on a piece about Willie.  I
think Joe Filisko told me about it and also said that someone, possibly Dave
Myers, had told Scott that Rhythm Willie was the only player that Little
Walter truly "feared".  Great to see that the article was completed and that
there are a bunch of other Willie tracks out there.

Mick Zaklan