In Very Good Company

It was sad to hear a few days ago of the passing away of James Cotton – a name synonymous with the blues harmonica. Cotton wailed with the greats – Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters – and played on countless recordings and gigs.

Playing the blues harp is as much about raw emotion as it is about technique. I occasionally get the chance to put down my sticks and play harmonica with Russ Payne and Unison Bends, and much as I love the drums, I always leap at a chance to try to emulate the likes of masters such as Cotton, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Paul Jones and Bob Dylan.

It was also quite a big kick to find that a track from our new album, 'Liquor and Iron', was going to get big exposure from being on the playlist at Digital Blues this week – alongside a couple of tracks by James Cotton. Now that is a real musical honour...

Whole Lotta Love And Theft

It's not entirely surprising that it's being claimed someone who wrote the basis of the music for a Led Zeppelin song was not onboard the Zep.

It's alleged that a significant part of 'Stairway To Heaven' was lifted from a song by Spirit.

There are fine lines between inspiration, paying tribute and stealing. Bob Dylan knowingly entitled an album which seemed to borrow musically and lyrically from a variety of sources 'Love And Theft'.

But he didn't credit Muddy Waters for his own take on 'Rollin' and Tumblin'' – although on a later album he did feel obliged to credit Willie Dixon for the Chicago blues riffing of 'My Wife's Home Town'.

Led Zep have previously been found out for lifting chunks of their classic 'Whole Lotta Love' from elsewhere. And one of their best-known vehicles, 'The Lemon Song', with its single-entendre stuff about squeezing lemons, was obviously taken from Robert Johnson's 'Travelling Riverside Blues'.

But then, where did Johnson get it from?

A line in a Summerley/Derbyshire song by our old band Shark Dentists, called 'Murakami's Blues', included the line 'All the lonely people, where do they all come from?' If it had become a major hit (it hasn't yet), then Paul McCartney might have complained to us... although the words have a different melody to that of 'Eleanor Rigby' and were deliberately used in this tribute to author Haruki Murakami to reference the importance that he has always placed on music and lyrics (as well as cats, sheep, wells and bizarre sex).

I'm not a devotee of Led Zeppelin (although whenever Russ Payne and Unison Bends play our version of 'Since I've Been Loving You', it always seems to go down rather well) nor am I a fan of 'Stairway To Heaven'.

The best version I ever heard of it was when I saw Frank Zappa do an epic and apparently amiable version of it on stage... then topping off the climax with the da-da-da-diddy-da-da-daaaah line from'Teddy Bears' Picnic'...

That seemed to say everything there was to say about 'Stairway'... whoever wrote it.

Baby, They Wants To Be Loved*

Like writers, like musicians... they're only as good as their last gig. I think I'm a good writer, but there are times when I think I'm never going to get another commission.

I know a leading musician who has more gigs and recording sessions to his name than can be fully remembered, and yet he too has anxieties about whether there will be more work.

It can be tempting sometimes just to chuck it in and apply for a job at Tesco. But the problem — for musicians as well as writers — is not the money (although they need it) but the fact they need someone to approve of them. They want to be loved... and you probably won't get that working on the checkout.

(* With apologies to Muddy Waters)

PS You couldn't make it up... Immediately after finishing this post, I got a new commission.

Man Talk

The only man apart from Robert Zimmerman (www.bobdylan.com) to instil such power into the phrase "rolling stone" was McKinley Morganfield, aka Muddy Waters: "I'm a man. I'm a full-grown-man. I'm a man. I'm a natural-born lover's man. I'm a man child. I'm a rolling stone. I'm a man child. I'm a hoochie coochie man..."

No apologies for reproducing the whole of the chorus of Mannish Boy. When Muddy sang this, his whole being seemed to quiver with passion. For a black man in 1950s America to point out that he was not a B - O - Y but an M - A - N was as much a revolutionary political statement as it was a sexual provocation. You don't call me "boy" and you don't kick me around any more... was the sub-text.

I saw Muddy in the 1960s and he was part of my own growing-up process. We weren't going to be kicked around any more, either.

In June this year Russ Payne and the Shark Dentists (www.sharkdentists.co.uk) will play support to Mud Morganfield (www.mudmorganfieldsite.com), eldest M - A - N child of Muddy Waters. The phrase "bringing it all back home" springs to mind...