Tribute To The Queen, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #121

June 8, 2009 Mike Gold 10 Comments

From time to time, it dawns upon me that I’m one of the luckiest people on the planet. Here’s an example.

For many years, I wrote for an underground newspaper called The Chicago Seed. Its circulation peaked at about 58,000, so I’ll side-step the definition of “underground.” It was housed in various locations: one of America’s first head shops, an office right between a Chicago police station and the Moody Bible Institute, and an old bar in a building owned by an ancient member of the Industrial Workers of the World. There’s a bunch of stories in each of those locations; today’s tale is set in the next-to-last and most long-lived venue, the one that occupied the entire second floor above what was then Chicago’s best-known blues club, Alice’s Revisited.

Everybody played Alice’s. Everybody. Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Charlie Musselwhite, Otis Rush, Sunnyland Slim, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Hound Dog Taylor, J.B. Hutto; youngsters like Mighty Joe Young, War, and Styx… even jazz legend Woody Herman, who used to record at Chess. There were a lot of other greats, but you get the point and I don’t have a time machine.

The backstairs down from The Seed went straight to Alice’s tiny backstage, and – since there was nothing anybody could do about it anyway – we were allowed free passage as long as we didn’t invite a ton of friends that were unwilling to buy beverages. So I saw and heard the best of Chicago blues: the very best, by the people who made it electric. I can’t begin to tell you which performances I enjoyed the most at Alice’s and at similar blues clubs across Chicago, but I can easily tell you which performer knocked me over each and every time I heard her. That would be KoKo Taylor.

Her title was “Queen of the Blues,” and that one’s hard to dispute. But in order to understand her stage presence – a presence that carried over to each of her 16 albums – I’ll tell you what she really was.

KoKo Taylor was a Force Of Nature. That’s the name of an album she recorded in 1993 when she was in her mid-sixties. Ask anybody who had seen her work. Ask anybody who had ever been in her band – she worked hard to get that sound, and she worked her sidemen just as hard. It paid off. She sold records for Chess and Alligator, she won 25 W.C. Handy Awards (a record; pardon the pun), and she packed them into the blues clubs. She even appeared in Blues Brothers 2000.

When KoKo stopped singing, there was a vacuum in the air. She had used up all the sound, and the air’s very molecules had to rest and regroup. Power. Attitude. Talent. All combined in one amazing human being.

KoKo Taylor died last week at the age of 80. Services were held at Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Push headquarters. Her last record came out less than two years ago.

I sure hope there’s an album worth of tracks in the vault somewhere. I’m not ready to let go.

Mike Gold will be hosting a tribute to KoKo Taylor this coming Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern on his weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind show at www.getthepointradio.com. The show is replayed each week on the following Thursday at 10:00 PM Eastern.

Likewise, his Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind rants pop up every on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday exclusively at www.getthepointradio.com. The regular Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind rants continue every Monday and Friday on The Point podcasts, available right here at www.michaeldavisworld.com, as well as at www.comicmix.com, www.getthepointradio.com, www.zzcomics.com, and www.ravenwolfstudios.com. You can subscribe to The Point podcasts at iTunes by searching under “The Point Radio.”

Gold is also a regular contributor to www.comicmix.com, and edits their online comic book content. Check out John Ostrander and Timothy Truman’s all-new GrimJack: The Manx Cat #1, now being solicited in this month’s Diamond catalog.