4-29-2015

Mississippi born Charlie Musselwhite is one of the most revered blues musicians in the world, so casual, soft spoken and friendly in conversation. But unleashed on stage, under the spotlight, in front of a packed crowd, those "entertainer instincts" take over and his whole persona seems to subtlety shift, to take on something deeper, harder, tighter and louder. Hunched over a bit, hands cupped around a harmonica and microphone, he starts blowing like a human blast-furnace, rocking forward and back as he wails, spurred on by the tense grooves of his excellent backing band. The harmonica master, also a respected singer and songwriter in his own right, has won countless awards during his legendary career (see below) and collaborated with innumerable musical giants of the past 50 years including Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Big Joe Williams, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Tom Waits, Eddie Vedder and John Lee Hooker, to name a few.
Most of his tunes are uptempo shuffles and boogie grooves, and listening to his harp you can almost imagine how it might have sounded echoing his own loneliness off the backstreet blues clubs of Chicago’s south side. “The blues sounded like how I felt growing up" Charlie says. "Too many people think of the blues as sad, but many of these tunes are fun, dancing tunes that lift your spirits. I often tell people that the blues is your buddy in good times and your comforter in bad times. It empowers you to keep going. It is secular spiritual music, the gospel blues. It’s music from the heart instead of the head.”
Born in Mississippi, Musselwhite arrived in Chicago in the early sixties, just in time for the epochal blues revival. In 1966 at the age of 22 he recorded the landmark "Stand Back! Here Comes Charlie Musselwhite’s Southside Band" to rave reviews. Moving to San Francisco in 1967, where his album was being played on underground radio, found him welcomed into the counterculture scene around the Fillmore West as an authentic purveyor of the real deal blues. More than 20 albums later he is at the top of his game, a revered elder statesman of the blues nowhere near ready to hang up his harp belt, his depth of expression as a singer and an instrumentalist unexcelled and only getting deeper.
With music as dark as Mississippi mud or as uplifting as the blue skies of California, in an era when the term legendary gets applied to auto-tuned pop stars, this singular blues harp player, singer, songwriter and guitarist has earned and deserves to be honored as a true master of American classic vernacular music.
2010 Blues Hall of Fame Inductee, 7-time GRAMMY Nominee, 27-time Blues Music Award Winner, 8-time Living Blues Award Winner, 2013 Living Blues Awards (Most Outstanding Musician (Harmonica), 2012 Blues Music Award Winner for Traditional Blues Male Artist of the Year and for Best Instrumentalist Harmonica, 2011 GRAMMY Nominee for Best Traditional Blues Album – The Well, 2011 Blues Music Award Winner for Best Instrumentalist – Harmonica and Traditional Blues Male Artist of the Year, 2011 Living Blues Awards  (Most Outstanding Musician (Harmonica), 2009 Mississippi Blues Trail Marker Honoree, Beale Street Brass Note Walk of Fame Honoree and in 2008 Charlie’s marker was placed outside of BB King‘s Nightclub in Memphis, TN.