Big Road Blues Show 9/10/17: Seems Like A Million Years – Willie Nix & Friends

Show Notes:

Willie Nix, Monroe, LA, 1960. Photo by Paul Oliver.

Willie Nix (Nicks) was born in Memphis in 1918. Nix’s recorded work includes only a handful of titles recorded between 1951 and 1953, but it is all first rate, in which his insinuating vocals are put to excellent use on cleverly written lyrics. As Steve LaVere wrote: “His abilities as a drummer and vocalist are superb and his few existing recordings are all superior examples of post-war blues.”

He began his career as a tap dancer at age twelve, joining the Rabbit Foot Minstrels at the age of sixteen, in 1938. He toured with the group for five years, in an act that combined dancing and cracking jokes, and then performed for the Royal America Show for another three years. During World War II he served in the Army. After the war, Nix joined Sonny Boy Williamson’s band, where he was taught to play drums for the group. After Williamson left the group, Nix and the other members, singer Willie Love and guitarist Joe Willie Wilkins, formed a group that was featured on a radio show on KWEM in West Memphis, Arkansas. Nix took over the lead spot in 1950 after Willie Love left. His show lasted more than a year. In 1951 Sam Phillips heard Nix and recorded him, with sides going to RPM (1951), Checker (1952), and Phillips’s own Sun label (1953), the latter released under the name of Memphis Blues Boy. At Sun, Nix backed several artists in the studio including Walter Horton, Joe Hill Louis, Earl Hooker and others.

In 1953, after Nix committed a murder (according to Steve LaVere it was a triple murder committed in Goulds, Arkansas in 1953 ) in Arkansas under unclear circumstances, he moved up to Chicago, where he stayed five years, drumming behind such blues greats as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Elmore James, Aleck Miller ‘‘Sonny Boy Williamson,’’ and Sunnyland Slim.He backed Muddy on a four-song session for Chess  in 1953. On rare occasions he fronted his own group in the clubs, notably at Smitty’s Corner. Nix recorded two singles for Art Sheridan for his Chance and Sabre labels. His best side was on Sabre called ‘‘Just Can’t Stay,’’ based on a classic Mississippi country blues, ‘‘Catfish.’’ In 1958, Nix returned to Arkansas to settle his legal problems from the murder (he ended up serving more than four years, according to Floyd Jones). After leaving prison he never returned to the music business. Nix passed in Leland, MS in 1991. As Jim O’Neal wrote in his obituary: “It was a sad and lonely end for a proud and once-famous man. But he left us with some great music and unforgettable memories-Willie Nix was a true entertainer all his life.”

“Satchel Paige”, saxophone; Jerry McConkle, guitar [seated at piano]; Joe Willie Wilkins, guitar; Willie Nix, drums/vocals; unidentified musician seated at drums; Billy Adolph Duncan, saxophone

Today’s program features all the sides Nix cut under his own name, issued on RPM, Sun, Checker, Chance and Sabre. In addition we play just about everything he did in a session role, backing Sun artists such as Walter Horton, Boyd Gilmore, Pinetop Perkins, Joe Hill Louis, Earl Hooker as well as backing Gus Jenkins and Muddy Waters at at sessions for Chess.

Paul Oliver caught up with Willie Nix in Monroe, Louisiana in 1960: “One time I had it real good-you know, I had my own band in Memphis and we played some rockin’ numbers. Had a ball in those days. That was oh, about ten years ago I guess. So I made it for Chicago, tried my luck there. It was a bit hard goin’ at first but I started playin’ one night a week at Smitty’s Corner, you know, where Muddy Waters had his band? Well he used to go over and play a one-nighter at Gary, Indiana, so that gave me a chance and I held that one-night spot down. Then I had my break; my real break come when Muddy Waters went to England, went on that trip. The band broke up for a while or somethin’-maybe went on toure; anyway I had Smitty’s to myself then, and I really packed ’em in! Oh man…Bit it’s been a bit tough of late. You know, O lost that job, played a few clubs on Wentworth and Rush and Lake-did the rounds. So then I guess my dice didn’t play so I decided I’d cut out. I’m on my way to the West Coast now. Monroe ain’t my home. I don’t belong in Louisiana-it’s just that the rattler I was on brought me here!”

Willie Nix’s wife, Patty, and her cousin Nevada (in white dress) in a cotton field, ca. 1951. Delta Haze photo archive.

As Bengt Olsson wrote in Memphis Blues and Jug Bands: “Nix has always been a traveler, but periodically he returned to Memphis, where he was born. He rides freight trains round the country, looking for wok; when Paul Oliver found him in 1960, at Monroew, Louisiana, he was planning to go west, to Bakersfield, California, for the pea-picking. Upon Muddy Waters’ visist to Europe in 1957, he took his place at the Chicago club Smitty’s Corner; but when Waters returned Nix found Chicago less rewarding, and retired southwards again. The author looked for him in West Memphis in 1969, but Nix had recently left for Missouri; possibly he is back now. On his visits to West Memphis he usually stays with James Springer, who has a record store on the corner of 10th and Polk, and has helped Nix to find gigs. The store is decorated with posters announcing Nix’s recent dates in town, playing with Big Amos. It is said that Springer issued a single by Willie Nix not long ago, but the record could not be found anywhere.

Willie Nix, Sonny Boy Williamson II and Robert Lockwood, Memphis, 1949.

Willie’s musical career began about 1950, when he played drums with Sonny Boy Williamson, Willie Love and Joe Willie Wilkins during their residence in West Memphis. When the other three ventured into West Arkansas and other country areas, he generally stayed behind. The quartet played for many dances, and advertised on behalf of beer companies, cotton machines and so on. Later Nix sat at the drum-stool for B.B. King; then he decided to run his own band, and engaged James Cotton, a young harmonicist from West Memphis. He continued playing the drums, most of the time, since his skill as a guitarist was somewhat limited. At this period he was living in Hollywood, an area of North Memphis. He was also playing, now and then, with Thomas Coleman, the accompanist of Joe Hill Louis; and with a character named Dacey. He had found himself a nickname, too: ‘The Memphis Blues Boy’.

Towards the end of the ‘fifties Nix joined Willie Cobbs’ band, at the request of the leader, who had met him in Hughes, Arkansas. The association did not lasr long; there was a difference of opinion between Nix and Sammy Lawhorn, Cobb’s other guitarist, over the lead guitar role. Nix was the one to go. In 1968, when Cobbs cut Don’t Worry Me (Made in the Sun studio, but issued on Riceland), he met Nix on Beale, ‘drinking his wine like never before’. He brought Nix along to the session, however, and the older man was allowed to record a few songs. There were still people in West Memphis who liked to hear Nix’s old hit Truckin’ Little Woman.” As Floyd Jones noted: “Willie, he kept work. Willie Nix, je sure drew a crowd …[Even when] he hadn’t done no recordin’ or nothin’, he played on the air, see, and everybody would come lookin’ for Willie Nix.

The bulk of Nix’s recording work, as a lead artist and session drummer, was done for Sun Records. As Peter Guralnick wrote in Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll: “Nix had come to Sam’s attention originally through his radio show on KWEM at just about the same time he had first heard the Howlin’ Wolf, but he appeared to be as drawn to the life of the open road as to any form of professional advancement. …Nix had come to Sam’s attention: Sam recalled possibly running into Willie at the Home of the Blues record shop on Beale a little earlier, but it appears to have been the radio show that brought him to the forefront of Sam’s consciousness. …’Willie was not the subtlest of drummers,’ Sam commented, ‘but he drove a session along.’ ….Just the manner in which he conveyed the simplest facts of his life showed an imaginative flair that suggested not so much that he was ‘fantasizing about things that could never be,’ in the elegant formulation of blues historian Jim O’Neal, as that ‘in his mind he was simply stating what ought to be.'”