Digital Interviews: You didn't look at music as a career goal?

Charlie Musselwhite: No, I never thought about that. I just liked music, and it felt good to play it. I didn’t have this goal, “Someday I’m going to make a record.” It just happened to me.

DI: Did your family play instruments, just for fun?

CM: All the Musselwhites, pretty much, play something, but not professionally. My father played guitar and harmonica. My mother plays the piano, and there was a guy who had a one-man band in the family.

DI: Did you learn to play through your family?

CM: No. Playing music was not looked on as something to pursue. It was fun to do around the house, but there’s other stuff to be paying attention to. So, I didn’t learn from my family. I learned from hanging around guys in Memphis that played, and street singers. I’d watch them, their fingers, and go home and figure out what they were doing.

DI: How old were you?

CM: I was a teenager.

DI: Who were some of the people that you played with at that time?

CM: In Memphis, Will Shade, Furry Lewis, Gus Cannon, a guy named Royal Bell, and Memphis Willie B. -- he made two albums for Prestige. He played the harp on a rack, and a guitar. Red Roby was around there then -- a lot of names that wouldn’t mean much to anybody. Abe McNeal was a blind street player, guitar player. There was another guy. People called him the Scott Street Blues Singer. I never knew his name, but he lived not far from me, so I saw him a lot.

DI: But professionally you were running moonshine and laying concrete?

CM: [laughs] Yeah, I did both of those things.

DI: When you moved to Chicago, was it because of the music?

CM: I didn’t know anything about music in Chicago. I’d see friends of mine going up what we’d call “Hillbilly Highway,” Highway 51 to Chicago, just a straight shot. They’d be leaving in these old jalopies, and they’d come back to visit a year later in a brand new car. [laughs] They’d get that job in the factory that paid 3 dollars an hour, big dollars in those days. I was making a dollar an hour digging ditches, so this looked good to me. It was the wrong time of year to be looking for a job in Chicago. It was pretty close to Christmas, and it was cold. Every place I’d go, they weren’t hiring. I was running out of money. I was going to take my last walk around town before we drove back to Memphis. I saw a little sign in the window that said “Help Wanted,” and I thought I saw somebody sitting in there. It was a Sunday. I didn’t figure you’d get a job on Sunday, but I went back and looked again. There was a guy in there, and I went in and talked to him. He was an exterminator, and he wanted somebody to drive him around Chicago. So, that was my job -- the perfect job, because I learned the whole city real fast. I’d see posters up, saying Muddy Waters or somebody’s playing, and I’d pass by clubs that had the signs in the window -- “Elmore James is playing here,” and I thought, “Damn.” [laughs] “This could be an adventure.” I’d make a note of where these places were, and at night I’d go down there to hear them. There they were. Everybody was there -- I’d been listening on the radio and had their records. Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and Little Walter and Sonny Boy -- it was great.

DI: Tell us about the Jazz Record Mart.

CM: People hung out there. It was at the corner of State and Grand. There was an L stop and a bus stop, a lot of people. There was a bar there called Mr. Joe’s. I hung out in that bar a lot. [laughs] Between Mr. Joe’s and the Jazz Record Mart, a lot of musicians would just stop by on their way to somewhere else. So I got to meet a whole lot of people there. Big Joe Williams was there a lot. I had accidentally found that place when I was looking for a job. I was at that corner, going from the bus to the L, but it was early and they hadn’t opened up that morning. I made a note to come back, because I’d never seen so many blues records in one window of a store before. In those days, you couldn’t hardly find a blues record -- they might have a couple in the corner somewhere, you know.

DI: How did you get to sit in with Muddy Waters?

CM: I was playing around with Big Joe, and guys on the streets like John Lee Granderson -- they made some tapes of him, but they only came out on a CD in the last year. We played for tips; we’d have a cigar box. This waitress told Muddy, “You should hear that boy play harmonica.” Muddy was a big name. He was putting out singles, and that was quite a step up from playing on the corner. [laughs] He asked me to sit in, and I guess he liked it, because he’d always have me sit in whenever I came to see him after that. Other people saw me sitting in with Muddy. They would offer me jobs, to come play with them. That was the beginning of it opening up. I forgot all about looking for that factory job, you know.

DI: Did you also play the folk clubs in town?

CM: Sometimes. The only other blues that you could hear in Chicago, if you didn’t go to the South side to hear the electric bands, would be folk blues in the little coffee houses. Big Joe would play in these places. You’d see other people like Reverend Gary Davis. He would come to town and play. John Hurt. Gus Cannon came up one time.

DI: Who are some of your favorite artists?

CM: It was really great to play with Muddy Waters. Howlin’ Wolf was great to play with, too. Little Walter, it was fun to sit in with his band. He’d just give me the harp and the microphone and say, “Play, boy.” He’d just take off and go do some drinking, or talk to some women that he knew. It was an interesting time. Playing with Big Joe Williams was really great. You learned how to anticipate, because Joe didn’t play regular 12-bar blues. He would change when he felt like it. From playing with Big Joe, now I can play with anybody. I was in Norway one time, and there was this guy who plays this folk fiddle style. He didn’t know I could play with him, but I just followed him, no problem. He was amazed, because there was another Norwegian harmonica player there that tried to play with him, and just couldn’t do it. But we were just perfect. [laughs]

DI: Tell us a bit about your friend John Lee Hooker.

CM: We first met in Chicago. He was living in Detroit, but he’d come through. We just became immediate friends, and stayed in touch ever since. I stayed at his house a lot, in between wives. [laughs] When I moved out to California, I told him how great it was out there, and it might have had some influence on him moving out. We still talk on the phone, and go by the house and visit. He’s an old friend.

DI: After a while you put out your debut album, 1967’s Stand Back! Here Comes Charley Musselwhite's Southside Band. [sic]

CM: That put me on the road. [Producer] Sam Charters would come to town from time to time. He knew I played, and he knew that I knew where everybody was. I would take him on a little tour, and I could safely get him in and out of these places, you know.

DI: He felt safe with you.

CM: Yeah. “He’s a friend of mine. He’s okay.” Elektra put out the Paul Butterfield album, and Sam thought Vanguard should put out a Musselwhite album. Elektra asked me to record for them, but I thought it would be better to be on a different label than Paul, so I went with them.

DI: When did you first hear that this was really burning up in Northern California?

CM: Yeah, they weren’t playing it in Chicago. California had the underground radio thing going on, and the hippies. Things were more relaxed and open. I kept getting calls from different parts of the country about coming there to play -- but I did, at this point, have a factory job. [laughs] It was really hard to make a living in Chicago playing music, unless you were Muddy or Wolf. There were so many bands. The club owners would say, “We’re just going to pay you this little bit, and if you don’t want it, there’s another band that’ll take your place.” Bands would go to the club owners and say, “Whatever you’re paying those guys, we’ll work for less.” Also, in those days the factories were really easy to get a job in. You could walk in and go to work right then, so there was a big turnover all the time. You’d work in the factory until you’d get another club job. You’d work in the club for six months or a year, and then there’d be a shooting, and they’d close the club, and then you’d go back to the factory.

DI: So you had to make a decision to move to California.

CM: I kept getting these offers, and finally they offered me a whole month’s worth of work for better money than I was making in the factory. I thought, “I’ll take a leave of absence, go out there and get that money and come back.” But when I got to California, I saw there was tons of work, and they didn’t know that those musicians worked for nothing. It was great. I played the Fillmore. I’d never seen a place with so many people in it. I’d only been in these little bars. This was like, “Wow, these people like us.” [laughs]

DI: Was it different playing at a blues club as opposed to playing a regular “show” in a place like the Fillmore?

CM: It was interesting, for several reasons. First of all, I was thrust into the music business. In Chicago, nobody had contracts. They didn’t watch their time -- 45 minutes and then you take a break. Although, there was one club I worked at. We played seven sets a night, 45 minutes on and 15 minutes off, all the way ‘til four in the morning. Then, here you are in a place like the Fillmore. You played one set, and there were two or three other bands, and they were all completely different. You could go to the Fillmore and see Count Basie and Ravi Shankar and Albert King all on the same bill. It was great. I had to learn the business, which was the trial-and-error method, because I was totally new to that concept. [laughs] It was great. People loved it. They were dancing and taking acid and getting real high. Everything worked. It was all right.

DI: In 1979, you released The Harmonica According to Charlie Musselwhite. People have likened that album to a master class.

CM: It was made to go with the book. It was recorded in London. The book kind of went on the way. It’s on CD now, and people like it. Different styles and, on at least one tune, I used all different harps for the same key. I knew the guy that owned Kicking Mule, and I saw that they put out books with records. I thought, “Well, that’s something I’ll do.” It went okay.

DI: You really give the players in your band the chance to play. Many headliners cover the other musicians up.

CM: I won’t mention any names [laughs], but I know harmonica players that it’s just “all harmonica, all the time,” and the rest of the band is just there to back them up. They could be great musicians, but all you’ll ever hear of them is keeping time. But in Chicago, you’d pass the solos around, and make it more interesting to the listener, and more fun for us, too. I never cared about being the center of attention, which led to my drinking problem, which I don’t have anymore.

DI: Fighting that has been a real inspiration to people. How were you able to overcome the blues lifestyle?

CM: You mean, how did I quit drinking? [laughs]

DI: Yeah. [laughs]

CM: At one point, when I realized that I really was sick and tired of it, I didn’t know how to quit. I’d never been on the stage sober. I thought, “I’ll start cutting down.” I remember getting all the way up ‘til noon one day without a drink, and that was a big event. I just kept cutting down, until, finally, I never drank at all, except when I had to go to work. I just couldn’t get on stage sober. That was the last hurdle. So, when I’d go to work, I’d go really early and “get a good parking place,” but actually to get to the bar. One night I’m driving to work and I’m listening to the radio, and that little girl named Jessica McClure fell in a well in Texas. I felt really bad about her being down in this dark well. This little kid, how brave she was being. She was singing nursery rhymes to herself. I thought, “Man!” My problems were [small] compared to hers. Why couldn’t I be even half as brave as she’s being? I thought, “That’s it. Until she gets out, I’m not having another drink.” It was a form of a prayer for her from me. By the time they got her out, I was out, too.

DI: You experienced a tremendous career resurgence in 1990.

CM: Well, I quit drinking in ’87. Then I signed with Alligator, and that turned everything around.

DI: Were you surprised at the success you had?

CM: It made sense. It’s a good company, and I knew they knew how to sell records. It took me about a year to convince [founder] Bruce [Iglauer] that I was sober and worth recording. He didn’t just jump on the idea right away.

DI: Do you still enjoy touring?

CM: Oh, yeah! It’s different than when I was young and single. [laughs] It’s really rewarding to look out and see all the smiling faces, and especially if you’re dancing. If you’re dancing, I feel like I’m really doing something. It’s great to travel the world, and to get to see all the different cultures, the different foods, the languages and the customs. A few weeks ago, I was in Switzerland and I saw this castle up on a hill, and I climbed way up there, and it was deserted. I climbed all over the thing, and there were some real spooky places down these steps. It was really far out, you know, like a nine hundred year old castle.

DI: Your latest release, Continental Drifter, has a Cuban flavor.

CM: Just for that record. I listen to all kinds of music from all around the world. I listen to anything that’s got heart in it, or feeling from anywhere -- Sufi music or Balkan music or flamenco or gypsy music -- so I was familiar with Cuban music. But this one group, Quarteto Patria, really stood out to me because they were so down home. They weren’t from Havana, they were from Santiago -- the other end of the island -- which I found out later is where they think all the music really comes from. It’s like the Delta to the United States; it’s really the source. And the guys in Havana would rather you didn’t know about the guys from Santiago. It turned out that I was going to be playing at a festival in Bergen, Norway, the Blues and Roots Festival, and they were going to be there. I thought, “Wow, this is great.” I was so caught up in their music, I had to go to Cuba to hear them in person. I was going to go; I had to go. I was going to borrow a DAT player. Just in case, if it would happen, that I got to sit in with them, I wanted to be able to have a tape of it, if they’d let me. Well, the Pope came to Cuba, and the Cubans said, “No U.S. passports allowed.” There went that. Right after that I found out about this festival. I called up Norway and said, “Is there any chance that maybe we can jam together?” They said, “Sure, we’ll work it out.” I thought, instead of taking a DAT recorder, they’d probably have a studio there. Maybe they’d be interested in recording. I know all their music. Through a long series of communications, we got it worked out. We met them there, and they were all for it. They knew nothing about blues. I mean, they’d never heard of B.B. King. Never heard of Muddy Waters. [laughs] But they were up for it. We tried blues -- that didn’t work. So I said, “Look, it’s okay. You play what you play, and I’ll play with you.” They said, “Great.” My wife produced the whole thing -- found the studio, got an engineer, got the tape, negotiated the deal. Everything worked out. I asked them about harmonica in Cuba. They said, “Well, it used to be in our style of music. It was traditional to play harmonica, but there’s no harmonicas left in Cuba.” Well, when a harmonica finally gives out, that’s the end of it. You can always put new strings on your guitar, but you can’t fix a bad harmonica. I hope someday I can go down there with a box of harmonicas and find the old players, because I’d love to hear what they sound like.

DI: Is there a feel you get from blues music, that you get from these other types of music?

CM: Yeah. I think almost every culture has its own music of lament, of loss, of lost love, of lost youth, of the meaning of life. [laughs] “What’s going on here?” It’s all right from the heart, and it’s a human condition. I look for that in music. It’s interesting how, being a blues player, when I hear that music, I can play right along with those guys, even though we might not be able to speak. I heard it in Istanbul one time, at a flea market. I heard this music, and I thought, “What is that?” I’d wade through this crowd, and here’s these two blind guys. One of them had some kind of weird stringed instrument, and the other one had this drum. They were both staring at the sun with these blind eyes, playing this gut wrenching music. I don’t know what they were singing about, but it had to be about hard times. They had a hundred people there in the palm of their hands. There “it” was. [laughs]

DI: How are you able to play so many emotions, so many styles, on an instrument most people use as a rhythm instrument?

CM: I just try to play what I feel, and what I believe in. I don’t do tunes like “Yummy, Yummy, I Got Love in My Tummy.” Any song I do, on some level, it means something to me. I know that there are artists always trying to think of “the hit” -- what’ll hit, what people want. I think you can never figure that out. I just play what I like to play, and I figure if I’m having fun and enjoying it and doing it, and the band is enjoying it, then the audience will enjoy it. Just to keep it honest.

DI: What are your future plans?

CM: Just keep doing what I’m doing. You’re always holding the trip, trying to make it easier and better.

DI: How does the blues bring out such joy in your audience?

CM: The spirit of blues -- times are hard, but the spirit of it is, “We’re going to get through this. This isn’t the end of the world.” In [country] music, this guy’s singing about “My old lady left me, and I’m going to jump off the bridge.” In blues, you’d never jump off the bridge. You’d get yourself a new old lady. [laughs]

DI: Do you have any advice for a young blues player?

CM: Follow your heart. Play the music. Everybody has a song in them. Find your tone. Find your phrasing. You can do that by listening to other people but, in the end, you ought to have your own style, which you’ll have if you follow your heart. I only know one tune, and I play it faster or slower, or I change the key, but it’s just the one tune I’ve ever played in my life. It’s all I know.