
Since 2005 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.
If you remember the Secret History of Chicago Music’s Winter Blues series, you know I used to cover the blues mostly in the dark, icy months. Lately, every month has felt pretty dark, as our country falls deeper into fascism and escalates its war on the disenfranchised, so I’m writing about a Chicago bluesman in July. Guitarist Jimmy Rogers—perhaps best known as an early Muddy Waters sideman—played a part in practically the entire history of Chicago blues. He was here for its inception in the 1940s, played a part in its growth, and helped drive its revival in the ’60s and ’70s.
James Arthur Lane (or possibly Jay) was born June 3, 1924, in the Dougherty Bayou, near Ruleville, Mississippi. He took the last name of his stepfather, Henry Rogers, and he was raised by his grandmother in nearby Vance, Mississippi. As a kid he played in a harmonica quartet with his friend Snooky Pryor, another primordial bluesman who’d later help define the Chicago sound.
In his early teens, Rogers moved to Charleston, Mississippi, where he picked up the guitar. He worked his first gig in Minter City and began playing country blues around the Delta with the likes of Howlin’ Wolf and the second Sonny Boy Williamson (aka Rice Miller). He traveled widely and lived as far afield as Atlanta, Saint Louis, and Indiana before settling in Chicago in the early 1940s. In short order he was running in the same circles as several blues legends, including Memphis Minnie, Tampa Red, Robert Lockwood Jr., Big Bill Broonzy, and the first Sonny Boy Williamson (aka John Lee Williamson).
Like many blues artists newly arrived in Chicago, Rogers immediately began sitting in at Maxwell Street, the famed open-air immigrant market that was also ground zero for Chicago blues. (Founded in the 19th century by Jewish immigrants, it became a bustling multicultural hub, with large Black and Latine contingents. Today it would probably get raided by masked ICE agents.) Rogers jammed with Pryor, another recent transplant, as well as with harmonica lord Little Walter and the king himself, Muddy Waters, who’d moved to Chicago in 1943. Of course, Waters wasn’t yet a star, and in the mid-40s, Rogers helped him with his guitar playing. In his first band with Waters, Rogers played harmonica with second guitarist Claude “Blue Smitty” Smith and drummer “Baby Face” Leroy Foster. When Smith left, he was replaced by Little Walter—then still a teenager—and Rogers switched to guitar. This group, with Rogers, Walter, and Waters, was nicknamed the Headhunters or the Headcutters. They liked to show up at other people’s gigs and “cut their heads,” getting onstage and outplaying them—which often meant they could take the job if they wanted it.
In 1996, Rogers gave an interview to Jas Obrecht, at the time an editor at Guitar Player magazine. Rogers talked about how he and Waters would introduce songs they’d written to each other. “That’s where we got Walter into arranging songs like Muddy and I would do it,” he said. “Walter would be there, but he wouldn’t say anything. He just be listening and be there, and we’d be sittin’ down. He wasn’t much of a songwriter, Walter wasn’t, but he was a good player. . . . He might get up and walk out or something, and go on wherever he had in mind to go, and we would still be doing this, working on arranging this stuff.”
Rogers made his first solo recording in 1946, playing harmonica on “Round About Boogie,” a 78 for the small Harlem label that was miscredited to Memphis Slim & His House Rockers. The following year he appeared uncredited on a single by Little Walter and Othum Brown, “Ora-Nelle Blues” b/w “I Just Keep Loving Her.” In the late 40s, Rogers cut several more sides, but they wouldn’t be released till much later, after he’d become a notable artist.
In 1950, Rogers had a watershed year. He appeared on singles by Waters, the Little Walter Trio (which also included Waters), and the Baby Face Leroy Trio. The Waters record had come out on Aristocrat, owned by Leonard Chess, and that same year Leonard brought in his brother Phil and renamed the imprint Chess Records. Rogers released his first recording as a bandleader, “That’s All Right” b/w “Ludella,” on that brand-new label, which would grow into one of Chicago’s most famous and important.
“That’s All Right” became one of Rogers’s signature tunes and something of a blues standard, recorded by dozens of artists. He stayed in Waters’s band till 1954 and continued to work with him after that, and the relationship he forged with Chess would last for more than a decade. The sides he cut for Chess over that period include many with Waters and lots of solo material (including “Going Away Baby” and “The World Is in a Tangle”) that shows off his spindly licks and clear, mournful tenor voice.
Rogers also loaned his raw but dextrous electric guitar to Chess singles by Floyd Jones, Eddie Ware, and Howlin’ Wolf (as well as Atlantic Records releases by T-Bone Walker). But the Waters tunes are definitely the most notable: Rogers appears on the iconic “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man” and “Mannish Boy,” cut in 1954 and ’55.
Several of Rogers’s singles were successful too, albeit not to the same degree. “Walking by Myself” from 1956 featured some real heavies: guitarist Robert Lockwood Jr., pianist Otis Spann, harmonica player Big Walter Horton, and bassist Willie Dixon. The 1954 single “Chicago Bound” b/w “Sloppy Drunk” has a proto–rock ’n’ roll sound, and the backing bands (different on each side) include Waters, Spann, Dixon, Little Walter, and pianist Henry Gray.
Like many blues artists newly arrived in Chicago, Rogers immediately began sitting in at Maxwell Street, the famed open-air immigrant market that was also ground zero for Chicago blues.
In the early 60s, Rogers began playing in Wolf’s band, but that only lasted a year or so. The popularity of the blues was waning, and Rogers decided to take a break from the music business. He drove a cab and ran a clothing store that burned down in the unrest following Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968.
Acoustic blues had been enjoying a revival since the early 60s, and late in the decade electric blues got a boost from white hippie fans whose favorite rock bands had borrowed heavily from blues artists. Rogers returned to the music business in 1969, just in time to catch this wave. He toured Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival in 1972, alongside the likes of Big Mama Thornton, T-Bone Walker, and Jimmy Dawkins. (A live double LP recorded at two German dates collected tracks from 11 different artists.)
Rogers released his first full-length album, Gold Tailed Bird, on the Shelter label in 1973. The title track shows off his slow-burning vocals and biting ax tone, with production from JJ Cale and backing from godly drummer Fred Below and his bandmates from the Aces, guitarist Louis Myers and his brother, bassist Dave Myers. Rogers also supported Waters on his 1978 album I’m Ready, part of a string of successful “comeback” records produced by Muddy’s friend and fan Johnny Winter.
Rogers put out an LP with Left Hand Frank in ’79 and another with Hip Linkchain in ’82. In 1988, he appeared on the Wild Child Butler album Lickin’ Gravy, which was mostly a reissue of his 1976 LP Funky Butt Lover. The band on the original record was nothing to sneeze at—it featured drummer Sam Lay—but in 1986, Rooster Blues added a couple new tracks and new performances from Rogers and pianist Pinetop Perkins. Lickin’ Gravy came out in 1988, and blues scholar David Whiteis reviewed it for the Reader in 1990. “Jimmy Rogers’s guitar is a bit more uptown than the rest of the arrangement,” he wrote, “but it’s got a roadhouse echo and a fuzzy distortion that likewise evoke the atmosphere of a late-night club jam.”
The album Ludella followed in 1990, recorded in Austin, Texas, and released by Antone’s Records & Tapes. Rogers is backed by blues aristocracy such as Calvin “Fuzz” Jones, Bob Stroger, Hubert Sumlin, Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, and Pinetop Perkins. Rogers’s last recordings appeared on two 1994 albums: Blue Bird (with harmonica player Carey Bell) and Bill’s Blues (with harmonica player Bill Hickey). He passed away on December 19, 1997, from colon cancer.
Rogers’s work has been turning up on compilations since the late 1960s, and the most recent I can find that’s devoted entirely to him is the 2016 CD compendium of Chess recordings Chicago Bound. His legacy is also carried forward by his son, Jimmy D. Lane, a blues guitarist, producer, and engineer.
In a perfect world, “Chicago Bound” would be a Windy City anthem as famous as “Sweet Home Chicago,” “Take Me Back to Chicago,” or (ugh) “We’re All Crazy in Chicago.” So let’s all start putting it on playlists and bugging DJs to spin it!
The radio version of the Secret History of Chicago Music airs on Outside the Loop on WGN Radio 720 AM, Saturdays at 5 AM with host Mike Stephen. Past shows are archived here.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)