Eddy Clearwater's Long, Blue Road Out of Chicago Worth the Drive

Sunday News
Published: April 13, 2008
by JOHN DUFFY, Correspondent

Eddy "The Chief" Clearwater was something of a late bloomer. On the West Side of Chicago in the 1950s and '60s, at the height of the blues explosion, Clearwater was packing folks into clubs and dance halls. He remained a top attraction for years without generating so much as a hit single. "I was patient. I knew my time would come eventually," Clearwater recalled in a recent telephone interview from a hotel room in Angola, Ind.

Born Edward Harrington in Macon, Miss., in 1935, Eddy moved with his family to Birmingham, Ala., where as a teenager he began playing guitar in churches for local gospel groups. In 1953, he moved to Chicago, where he still played predominately gospel music, then as Guitar Eddy. He worked as a cab driver and dishwasher, but would spend countless hours watching the city's best-known blues players: Otis Rush, Magic Sam, Muddy Waters and B.B. King.

After hearing Chuck Berry, the young Harrington added a distinctive rock n' roll rhythm to his playing. He recorded "Hillbilly Blues" with an "A Minor Cha-Cha" B-side for the Atomic H label, owned by his uncle. It was then that he began using the stage name Clear Waters, an obvious homage to, and stab at, Muddy Waters, the undisputed blues king.

His shows would build into rousing celebrations of all things related to the blues. Clearwater kept one foot rooted in West Side Chicago blues, but could easily pivot into soul, funk, country and straight-ahead rock 'n' roll. "I didn't want to get bored really," he said, laughing. "I would always look for different ways to express myself, to show what was in my heart. How can you really show people how you feel if you sing the same way?"

Clearwater likens his approach to music to his appetite for food. "One day you might want steak, the next day bacon and eggs, or the next day gumbo ... you know, lots of different flavors at once." Singles for La Salle, Federal, Versa and his own Cleartone label followed. In the meantime, while Waters, Rush, King, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf and Buddy Guy toured the world, Clearwater kept the home fires burning in Chicago. "I knew I could get the attention they were getting," Clearwater said.

Most of the cream of the Chicago players had a few years on him. Muddy Waters had been recording electric blues as early as the 1940s. "And good for them. They were all my mentors." A sort of one-man blues welcome wagon, Clearwater often was the first performer blues pilgrims would try to see when they hit town. He would appear in a kitschy headdress and dubbed himself "The Chief" in celebration of his family's Indian lineage. "I never had a problem finding shows. I did play quite a bit locally, and had all the work I could ever really want."

In the late 1970s, he got a chance to perform at high-profile (and high-paying) blues festivals in Europe. His debut album for Blind Pig followed in 1979, and while he's jumped labels a few times, he has consistently recorded and toured ever since. Clearwater still plays his Gibson ES-335 - the same model popularized by Berry - left-handed. It's a right-handed guitar that he plays left-handed. The low strings are on the bottom, the high on top, exactly the opposite of the standard arrangement.

Clearwater said it can be difficult teaching other musicians new songs with his guitar strung this way, but most of the cats he hires can manage. "I was trying to show Ronnie Baker Brooks [son of legendary bluesman Lonnie Brooks] a certain chord I wanted him to play - a C minor sixth or something like that - and he kept turning his head upside down to try and figure out how I was fingering it." Once Brooks gave up, he nailed it just by listening. "That's the best way to teach someone: Just have them listen to it."

In 2003, Clearwater recorded his most popular album ever, "Rock n' Roll City," backed by Los Straitjackets, the best surf/garage rock band in the world (the members of which wear Mexican wrestling masks and use pseudonyms). "I told my manager I wanted to do something a little more rockabilly. He called a friend of his in Nashville and they suggested Los Straitjackets."

Clearwater went down to Music City to meet Straitjackets guitarist Eddie Angel, and if there were ever any doubt about the impact of Clearwater's multi-genre approach, it was removed that day. The members of Lost Straitjackets were fans. "They had even played a couple of my songs in their repertoire." "Hillbilly Blues" was one of them. "The second time I went down, we went straight into the studio."

That album proved a commercial highpoint for both the band and Clearwater. And though he wasn't sounding the least bit slow on the previous year's "Reservation Blues," "Rock n' Roll City" gave Clearwater a spark and helped to reaffirm his love of the music. Clearwater's latest offering, and his debut for blues giant Alligator Records, is titled "West Side Strut."

While the South Side gets all the credit as the birthplace of electric blues - the place where blacks by the thousands migrated from the South between the world wars - it is the West Side, Clearwater said, that holds the heart of the Chicago sound. "West Side blues is a little more raw, a lot more tunes in minor keys, two guitars and drums without a bass ... loud harmonica, while South Side blues is a little more sophisticated." "West Side Strut" takes the energy of "Rock n' Roll City" and puts it squarely in the middle of one of Clearwater's club gigs. That is to say, the album covers all of his favorite bases.

He dabbles in a little Elmore James on "A Good Leavin' Alone," some Chuck Berry in a duet with Lonnie Brooks called "Too Old to Get Married" and some gospel on "Do Unto Others." He throws in an antiwar plea on "A Time for Peace," and generally tears the roof off the place. "That's the West Side way," he said.