Blues drummer worked with Butterfield, Dylan
Sam Lay, a drummer whose shuffling sound and locomotive power helped propel blues records by Paul Butterfield, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter and Muddy Waters, and who laid down the beat when Bob Dylan went electric during an epochal performance at the Newport Folk Festival, died Jan. 29 at a nursing facility in Chicago. He was 86.
His label, Alligator Records, confirmed the death in a statement but did not cite a cause. He died two days before another veteran Chicago bluesman, guitarist Jimmy Johnson.
Lay was part of a group of musicians who helped fuel a blues-rock explosion in the mid-1960s, bringing a hard-edged Chicago blues sound to American popular music. While many of the singers and guitarists he performed with became household names, some concertgoers found that Lay — with his dynamic range and rollicking stage presence — was at least as engaging as the headliners he backed.
“Sam doesn’t play the drums. He sings the drums,” his friend and musical collaborator Corky Siegel once told the Chicago Sun-Times. “It is very melodic and changing. It’s not about holding the groove and playing a certain rhythm. It’s about going where you need to go.”
Raised in Birmingham, Ala., Lay grew up attending a Pentecostal church where the sanctuary was filled with the sound of hand claps, tambourine beats and electric organ lines. The rhythm of the hymns inspired his signature “double shuffle groove,” which he employed on songs including “I Got My Mojo Working,” from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s self-titled 1965 debut. (Lay, who also sang and played guitar, performed the track’s gruff vocals.)
“To hear it, you think he’s got six hands, but somehow he’s all over those drums,” said filmmaker John Anderson, who directed a 2016 documentary about the drummer, “Sam Lay in Bluesland,” that took its name from Lay’s 1969 debut as a solo artist. He added that the drummer’s double shuffle “gave the blues a different taste, a different color.”
Lay performed at major blues festivals in the United States and Europe, toured with his own Sam Lay Blues Revival Band and recorded with a host of blues masters, including Carey Bell, James Cotton, Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin’ Hopkins and Magic Sam.
He received some of his greatest acclaim for his work with Butterfield, a singer and harmonica player whose group helped introduce the blues to White audiences. The Butterfield Blues Band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015, with Lay enshrined alongside bandmates including guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop, bassist Jerome Arnold and keyboardist Mark Naftalin.