JIMMY REED: GOD'S OTHER SON BY JAMES "THE HOUND" MARSHALL I do not believe that it has yet been suggested that Jimmy Reed was a genius, but, hey, that's why I get the big money. Jimmy Reed's genius was not unlike that of Shakespeare--he could take a complex body of emotions, experiences and innuendo and reduce it to something both deceptively simple and unfathomably deep. Yet no other bluesman has been more maligned by writers and historians, most notably the Englishmen who have taken it upon themselves to be the guardians of Afro-American musical history. But let us pay no mind to those silly tea drinkers. Our hero, born Maphis James Reed, was the son of dirt farmers from Douleith, MS. Jimmy did farm work, listened to Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) on the radio out of Helena, AR and soon, with the help of boyhood chum Eddie Taylor, was messing around with the harmonica and guitar. He was drafted at age 18 and served in the mess hall in California. After being discharged in '45, Reed returned to Mississippi, where he settled long enough to take a wife, Mary "Mama" Reed, and start a family. They soon moved to Chicago, where Reed reunited with his old pal Eddie Taylor, and they began developing their sound. Using a homemade harmonica rack, Reed played guitar and harp and sang while Taylor seconded him on guitar, usually playing a loping bass line. They formed a small circle of musicians that included John and Grace Brim, pianist Blind John Davis, guitarist Floyd Jones, drummer Albert Nelson (who would later switch to guitar and find fame as Albert King) and, most intriguingly, Willie Joe Duncan, who played a unitar and would soon record his classic "Unitar Rock." This merry band played few real venues, but were well known on the streets and in the open-air markets of Chicago and Gary, IN. Soon Reed cut a demo tape and, armed with confidence, he approached the Chess brothers, whose family of labels dominated the Chicago blues scene of the '50s. The Chesses passed on Reed, who soon found his way to Vivian and Jimmy Bracken's Gary record store. This couple was about to launch their Vee Jay label--later to become second only to Motown as America's biggest black-owned record company. The Brackens auditioned Reed, listening to him play for over seven hours until he hit the riff that would become his trademark, calling card and payday. "Da-doom, da-doom, da-doom" went the riff, and on September 3, 1953, his first single was issued (first on the tiny Chance label, then soon reissued on Vee Jay). That disc, "High & Lonesome" b/w "Roll & Rhumba" was an auspicious debut. "High & Lonesome" shows Reed to be a sly lyricist with a droll delivery. The instrumental B-side, "Roll & Rhumba," highlights Reed's simple but effective guitar and harp style. The disc sold poorly and Jimmy wound up at Armour meatpackers "cutting up cattle." A second session from December '53 brought his second disc, "Jimmy's Boogie," a brutally distorted rocker coupled with "I Found My Baby." Again, these sides did not find an audience. It was possibly the crystallization of his studio band--adding Eddie Taylor on second guitar and Earl Phillips on drums--that helped Reed's sound click commercially. Together, they created a mesmerizing, hypnotic throb. His third disc, "You Don't Have to Go," issued in December of '54, hit the R&B charts and rose to #5 by March of '55. It remained on the charts for nearly three months. For the next six years Jimmy Reed was rarely off Billboard's R&B charts. From February '56 to September '61, he had 16 R&B hits, nine of which crossed over onto the pop charts. It was Reed's pop sensibility and knack for a hook that made him so popular. His best-known tunes--waxed by everyone from Elvis to the Rolling Stones--include "Honest I Do," "Baby What You Want Me to Do," "Big Boss Man," "Bright Lights, Big City" and "Ain't That Loving You Baby," to name just a few. Reed spent much of his time on the road. Extremely popular with college fraternities, at sock hops and on rock'n'roll package shows, Reed was surely the first blues singer whose audience included a large percentage of white teenagers. Jimmy drank, and the tales of his excess are legendary. In 1959 he hooked up with producer/manager Al Smith, who did his best, but to little avail, to keep Jimmy sober. Eddie Taylor remembered that, "After you'd get to the job, you had to watch him all the time." Still, the hits kept coming and soon Vee Jay was issuing LPs to cash in on his fame--I'm Jimmy Reed, Rockin' With Reed, Tain't No Big Deal--It's Jimmy Reed and The Best of Jimmy Reed are classics, chock full of hits, misses and B-sides from his best years. By the early '60s, Jimmy had deteriorated quite a bit. The booze had given him epilepsy, and he had trouble remembering his own tunes. From the early '60s on, you can often hear Mama Reed recite the lyrics to Jimmy before he sang them. After the demise of Vee Jay, Jimmy went on to record for Bluesway and Exodus. These recordings were inferior to his Vee Jay output in every way. His last chart entry was "Knockin' at Your Door," a lackluster #39 in the summer of '66. Jimmy's final years were spent on the road, where he was usually very drunk or in the hospital. Tales of a second neck rack to hold his bottle are probably unfounded, but not far from the mark. Towards the end, he split with Mama and became depressed and erratic. He died of an epileptic seizure on August 29, 1976. Jimmy Reed's legacy was quite healthy, however, even in the years of his slow demise. He was a huge influence on bluesmen like Slim Harpo, Lazy Lester, Juke Boy Bonner and Arthur Gunter, and a list of white rock acts too numerous to mention. The Vee Jay recordings of Jimmy Reed have been endlessly repackaged, although CD reissues always substitute inferior alternate takes of many of his best early singles. His classic above-mentioned LPs show up in used record stores often enough, however. .