The wisdom of the blues - defining blues as the true facts of life: an interview with Willie Dixon

African American Review, Summer, 1995 by Worth Long

I got together with two or three groups before we got together with Baby Doo. One of them was with a guy called Bernard Dennis. He used to play with me and Little Brother and Brother Radcliff, and we'd name a different group a different thing every two or three weeks. But we never got a chance to record with him. And first thing I ever actually recorded was this thing called the "Bumping Boys." That was with me and my brother and my nephew and another fellow and Baby Doo. We always got together and did some things on Decca for J. Mayo Williams. After that we had the Five Breezes, and after that we had a group called the Four Jumps of Jive. Most of the time we consisted of some of the same guys, and then we cut it on down to the Big Three Trio. We began making a little noise for Columbia, doing background for people like Big Bill and also Rosetta Howard . . . folks like that.

My mother used to write all types of poems and things, and I'd always tell her that I was going to sing them when I got older. She made a lot of little poem books when I was a kid. They consisted of nothing but spiritual ideas and things out of the Bible. Some of them I remember. Then I had a whole book of poems that I wrote as a kid.

I never was good at art, but I always did like poems. Poems of everything, of anything. There's room enough in the world for everything, and there's more ideas in the world than your head can hold. Get these ideas together and make them into verses so people are interested. My mother always tried to put the verses in a poetic form.

Many people have something that they would like to say to the world and would like the world to know about. But most people never get a chance to say these things. And then, you're going to try to make them see something in a song that individuals can't see for themselves. Like the average man has his own feelings about women or love or whatever - what's in his heart or what's in his mind. All of a sudden, here comes somebody that's singing it out right. You know good and well what he's talking about, and he knows what you're talking about. Then that gives you an inspiration because here's a guy who's saying just what you wanted to say. That's what makes hit songs, things that are common to any individual - and it's not a complicated thing. It makes it easier for life, easy to express, easy to say. Blues songs are facts of life, whether it's our life or somebody else's.

The songs that I like the best are generally the ones that I am writing on as of now. I try to keep my songs up to the condition where they can be educational and provide understanding to the audience that's listening. I feel like the audience today doesn't know the value of peace. I made two different songs on peace. "You Can't Make Peace" speaks for itself:

You take one man's heart And make another man live. You go to the moon And come back thrilled.

You can crush any country In a matter of weeks, But it don't make sense When you can't make peace.

Most of the songs I write offer wisdom, and this is why I say most of them are considered as wisdom of the blues. I made this song up about "Evil, Ignorance and Stupidity." When I say "evil, ignorance and stupidity," I mean that everything that's been done wrong on the face of the earth happens because of