Willie Dixon
The producer, bassist and immensely prolific songwriter was responsible for some of the blues’ – and popular music’s – most enduring hits.
The producer, bassist and songwriter was responsible for some of the blues’ – and popular music’s – enduring hits.
Ever had a browse through Willie Dixon’s songwriting credits? It’s a sobering experience. A Rosetta Stone of popular music, it’s crammed with hits that anyone with half a grasp of blues, soul, rock, pop and even punk history will recognise: You Shook Me, I Just Want To Make Love To You, Hoochie Coochie Man, Bring It On Home, Talk To Me Baby, Whole Lotta Love (co-credited to Led Zeppelin), I Can’t Quit You Baby, Evil… songs that have been immortalised by Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Muddy Waters, Etta James, the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Canned Heat, UFO, Grateful Dead, Johnny Thunders, Tom Petty, New York Dolls, the Jesus And Mary Chain, Greta Van Fleet and many more.
Arguably it was the Rolling Stones who turned the wider world on to Dixon’s most pivotal song. On November 20, 1964, the Stones appeared on British TV pop music show Ready Steady Go! to perform their ninth single, Little Red Rooster. In what has since become an iconic clip, Mick Jagger stalks the stage, alternately mouthing lyrics and blowing his harp while Brian Jones minces a sideways glance into the camera as he hits the song’s slide lick on his Vox MK III ‘teardrop’ guitar.
Even if they’d been hip to the blues, the teen girls screaming their lungs raw in the audience couldn’t have cared less that the song was originally called The Red Rooster, or that it had been recorded first by blues behemoth Howlin’ Wolf. Distracted by Jagger’s tight trousers, it would likely have made little difference to the hormonal front row that the song had actually been written by a portly 6ft 5in, 250lb black man then hurtling towards his 50s.
Bassist, producer and the blues’ most prolific songwriter, Dixon was well accustomed to his songs achieving a higher profile than him. For years he’d been spinning gold for Chicago blues artists like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley and others. He’d also played bass on many of the Chicago blues sides that we now cherish. And in an electric blues-obsessed 60s Britain, his tunes would fatten up the set lists of just about every R&B band playing to mods in the capital and the provinces.
You might suppose that the Stones and other English groups lifted Dixon songs from imported Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Little Walter 45s. That did happen, but, as Dixon revealed in his essential 1990 biography I Am The Blues, written with Don Snowden, he made tapes of his music to help kids like Brian, Mick and Keith in their blues studies. “Kids would come and say they liked our music and want to sing our music,” Dixon said. “Sometimes I’d write it out for ’em. Sometimes I’d put it on a tape. That’s how the Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds got their songs.”
The great man died of heart failure in California on January 29, 1992. He never did become as recognisable as all those artists he helped to break through – Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Doors and the all rest – but everyone knows his songs.
‘He never did become as recognisable as all those artists he helped to break through, but everyone knows his songs.’
Killer Track: Evil