DATE: Fri, 02 Dec 1994 20:31:18 CST From: Dan Enright Subject: EDDIE BURKS INTERVIEW
Well,
Eddie got a lot of bad press in blues/harp -L recently so I thought I'd post this interview I conducted for the Pocono Fest. I had the conversation with him before a performance in Utica NY, and he seemed welcome at this club. I thought the show (and his performance) was good and didn't notice any outstanding foul-ups. He's not outstanding, but he certainly is a journeyman musician (they can't all kick ass).
This interview is for the personal use of blues-l and harp-l subscribers only. It may not be published (print or electronic) in whole or part without permission from 2/3X-PERTS. Permission is granted to publish the interview (along with this copyright notice) in the archives of either mail-list.
EDDIE BURKS INTERVIEW by Dan Enright (c) 1994 by 2/3X-PERTS
Eddie Burks' quartet kicks into an up-tempo instrumental intro, a lock-tight rhythm section supporting two young *gunslingin'* guitarists. Suddenly a harmonica rips through the jam, first playing in sync with the guitar, then trading riffs as a bear of a man saunters into the club setting the tone for the entire evening.
He makes it look so easy and natural. But it's been a long journey from the Rising Sun Plantation near Greenwood Mississippi, where Eddie was born in 1931, to entertaining blues fans 63 years later. Eddie still remembers hearing the blues when he was six. "The first blues I ever heard was on the juke boxes, _Milk Cow Blues_ by Robert Johnson. That's around '37. That and Sonny Boy Williamson's _#1_." The impact was immediate, "I was putting music together when I was a little boy down south, before I'd come to Chicago." He moved to Chicago in 1946 and found work in the steel mills. He also started attending the Greater Harvest Baptist Church and singing in the choir. "Willie Wills and Robert Anderson, they was the choir directors, they began to teach me when I was 17. They teached quite a few good singers that came up from Chicago." Indeed. People like Sam Cooke and Mahalia Jackson to name just two.
Even though Eddie was working in the mills and singing Gospel music, he couldn't quit playing the blues. "I never did leave the harp. Every once in a while I would go down on Maxwell Street. I used to set a cup up in front of me and people walking by would give me a tip for playing. A lot of musicians had to come up that way because they didn't have no stationary gig."
That continued until Eddie was 38. Disgusted, he left the steel mills. That's when his career as a musician began. "I wanted to play the blues. I had to go back to my harp and singing the blues, and I left the church."
He started working around Chicago, playing with anybody he could. "Sometimes I had my own band, sometimes all us cats over the West side used to pitch in together on the weekends." That led to him playin' with the Wolf Gang. "Wolf and Muddy would always let me sit in. I used to go down and mess with the Wolf a lot and that's how I came to know Eddie Shaw. Well, when Howlin' Wolf passed, Eddie took over the Wolf Gang. They worked about a year and then I began to work with them around '78. I worked with him off and on for a good six or seven years. I worked with Jimmy Dawkins after I worked with Shaw up until I come out on my own. I learned the business part of music from Jimmy. He's the one who taught me about how to be prosperous - how to make sure I got paid, how to make sure I protected my music when I record, and how to go about the business part of music."
In 1990 Eddie decided to start the label _Rising Son Blues_ to release his music. "About four years ago I recorded _Vampire Woman_, my first recording for Rising Son. That's when I sat down and began to organize this blues thing of mine. You have to be careful. It takes a lot of money to put out a good CD. It's nothing to spend $10,000 cash to get it going. It takes a lot of studio time to get your music decent. The up-beat, high energy boogie - that's the one that costs a lot of money and that's the type I play, not the lonesome, cry blues. I play some of that but I don't play it all night. The low down blues - 'My woman's got another man' - that's the kind of blues it don't take much to record because it's such a simple beat. A lot of cracks and holes you don't have to patch up. But if you have high energy blues, every crack that shows you have to work on."
Work on it he does. Whether _Comin' Home_ (his most recent) or his previous "Dead Or Alive" (recorded live in Rochester, NY at PK's), high energy is what this bluesman is all about. "I'd been asked by a lot of people to sing some dirty blues. So on the second CD we've got _Shake It For Me_, _King Bee_, _Mojo_, and _Stop Breaking Down_, the kind of tunes that's old favorites - classic blues - that everybody loves to stop and listen to."
He's featured in the National Geographic special "Blues Highway" which was shown on TBS this summer, and is currently on tour in support of his most recent album "Comin' Home," on which he's written songs about issues important to him. "On the new CD I've got a tune called _Sugar Hill_. It's mostly about drug deals and people killing people for the fun of it. I saw so much of that in my life. I lived in neighborhoods where you could see people getting killed. And I discovered that when most people kill there's drugs involved. Somebody's fighting for turf and taking peoples lives for a couple of dollars. That's why I wrote _Sugar Hill_. It's a dream everybody wants to take. They want to leave the ghetto and move to Sugar Hill. They want to leave the drug dealers behind and go out and do something good for themselves."
In another song, he pays tribute to a part of his past that's disappearing. "In Chicago they're moving away Maxwell Street. They've got a college taking over the ground, so I recorded a tune called "Maxwell Street Jump." That was about the Maxwell Street Market moving out of Chicago. Most of your big musicians, when they'd come to Chicago with no place to play, They'd go down there. A lot of them got their agents there."
After years of performing, financial and critical success is finally coming Eddie's way. But even if it wasn't, he'd still be a musician. "I love music so much I will do anything to play. If I get paid I'd do it and if I see there ain't no money , I'd still do it. To try to say I'm just going to play music for money - that's a hard thing to say when you've been playing music all your life."
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