It’s now more than 60 years since the groundbreaking slide guitarist Elmore James died from a heart attack at the tragically early age of 45. In this article, writer and musician John Phillpott looks back at his life, recording history, and unique stylistic legacy that has influenced countless blues guitarists down the decades.
THERE are very few occasions when something can justifiably be termed as being life-changing experience… but my first encounter with the blues guitarist Elmore James most certainly falls into that category.
Not that my own personal damascene moment was particularly unique to me. For during the mid-1960s, thanks to a burgeoning interest in electric blues, countless guitar players across the Western World – mainly young, it should be noted – were first investigating and then invariably attempting to emulate his open tuning ‘bottleneck’ style of playing.
Unknown to many at the time, this distinctive technique already had enjoyed a long tradition among black musicians. But to the white blues rockers of that era, this was indeed their very own exciting voyage of discovery.
That’s not to say the journey wasn’t occasionally storm-tossed. For to begin with, the guitar had to be changed from being in what was regarded as regular tuning to that in which the six unfretted strings formed – in the main – either the chords of E, D or G.
For decades, banjos had been tuned in any number of configurations, but outside black areas in the United States, guitars had steadfastly remained in the E A D G B E format.
But in America’s black communities, the open-tuned ‘slide’ style had been used for many years. There is some dispute about how slide or ‘bottleneck’ originally came about, but some writers and folklorists believe it dated back to a growing interest in Hawaiian music at the beginning of the 20th century.
Black players soon realized that when the strings were played with a knife blade, a hollow piece of smoothed metal, or the broken-off top of a glass drink’s bottle, the result was an unearthly, haunting sound that perfectly conveyed the ‘blue’ sound they were looking for.
By the 1930s, men such as Robert Johnson, Tampa Red, Booker (Bukka) White and Son House were not only playing bottleneck style, but also extending its range thanks to the growing American recording industry.
Sadly, Robert Johnson – ‘discovered’ by white collector John Hammond – did not live long enough to gain the rewards of his genius. And other players would have to wait until they received the recognition that they richly deserved.
This would come about thanks to those who had been passed the torch by Hammond senior and the father and son Lomaxes, who performed groundbreaking pioneering work in recording and thereby acknowledging the work of musicians until then known only within their own communities.
All of which leads us back to Elmore James. Born in Mississippi, James grew up in the Delta, cutting his musical teeth during the 1930s and 40s performing with Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller), Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup and – prior to his death in 1938 – is rumored to have played with Robert Johnson.
At some stage, James embraced amplification, often using an acoustic guitar with a pick-up fitted over the sound hole. It was at this point that his fortunes abruptly changed.
Recording his trademark song Dust My Broom – also immortalized acoustically on wax years earlier by Robert Johnson – on the Trumpet label, the number became a coast-to-coast rhythm and blues hit.
James subsequently moved north and was rapidly absorbed into the growing Chicago electric blues scene, the undisputed king at that time being Muddy Waters, aka McKinley Morganfield, also a former Mississippian.
With the formation of his supporting band The Broomdusters, Elmore James led one of the tightest blues bands in the business, recording more than 40 sides with this highly acclaimed ensemble.
Plagued by ill health, James’ Chicago career ended in 1960, when he moved back to Mississippi. Legendary Harlem record producer Bobby Robinson continued to record James throughout the early 1960s in what would become the artistic zenith of his career, cutting tracks such as The Sky is Crying, Shake Your Moneymaker, Something Inside of Me, and One Way Out.
Poised to make a comeback in the spring of 1963, Elmore James returned to Chicago, only to die a short while later of a heart attack at the age of 45. Tellingly, the final verse of Dust My Broom carries the line ‘I believe my time ain’t long.’ Did he have some portent regarding his own tragic destiny? After all, his later remake of that track featuring Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) also carried those words in its title. We may never know.
His tragic passing might have come long before his time was due, but his influence can still be felt to this day. The baton he dropped was soon picked up by players such as Hound Dog Taylor, John Littlejohn, J B Hutto and Homesick James, the latter widely believed to have been Elmore’s cousin.
A brief discography reveals the extent and vast diversity of Elmore James’ recorded output. It Hurts Me Too (Fire label); Wild About You (Modern); I Can’t Hold Out (Chess); I Believe My Time Ain’t Long (Ace); and Cry for Me Baby (USA Records).
However, these are just a few of the labels that featured his work. Others include Déjà vu, Eclipse, Kent, Charly and – posthumously – the British Bell, Buddah and Blue Horizon labels.
This writer, blues enthusiast, guitar and harmonica player and record collector, became interested in Elmore James via various long-playing recordings on the Sue label during the British ‘blues boom’ of the mid to late 1960s.
At the same time, the first incarnation of Fleetwood Mac, showcasing the work of men such as Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer, somehow achieved the exact sound of Elmore’s guitar with the release of their album Mr Wonderful, which covered several Elmore James tracks.
More than half a century later, guitarist Spencer’s uncanny note-for-note accuracy continues to perplex the listener, for back then the number of tonal options for the electric guitar was far more limited than that which is available for players today. Truly a case of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.
John Mayall, Britain’s leading and consistently most faithful adherent to classic blues, also recorded Dust My Broom on his 1966 album A Hard Road. And not to be outdone, in the same year The Yardbirds’ Jeff Beck delivered a blistering re-working with a track on the band’s Yardbirds album titled The Nazz Are Blue, once again introduced by that high-powered, tortured, telltale Elmore James arpeggio riffing.
Elsewhere, there was perhaps no greater evidence of total adulation than that displayed by the young Brian Jones, who in Cheltenham and London, prior to founding the Rolling Stones, had styled himself as ‘Elmo Lewis’.
His slide guitar work on early Stones albums, culminating in the number one chart position the band achieved with Little Red Rooster in early 1965, was testimony to the coming-of-age of what once had been merely a regional style restricted to a few corners of America.
Today, the legacy of The Three Kings – Albert, Freddie and B B – have arguably exerted the greatest influence on several generations of white rock and blues guitar players.
Nevertheless, there remains a hard core of guitarists throughout the world who not only venerate the style of Elmore James, but also keep his memory alive today with a choice of repertoire that reflects this fact.
And there can be no greater tribute to his legacy than this… the only pity being that the great man never lived long enough to see these fruits of the musical revolution that he had first sown during the 1930s back in rural Mississippi.
Author: John Philpott
Author and journalist John Phillpott has written for many newspapers and magazines during a career that spans more than 50 years. His latest book Go and Make the Tea, Boy! is a memoir of his days as a young reporter.