RIP EDDIE C CAMPBELL

Nota extraída del Chicago Tribune, escrita por Howard Reich el 22 de noviembre de 2018.

Chicago bluesman Eddie C. Campbell wasn’t as widely celebrated as some of his West Side colleagues, such as Magic Sam and Luther Allison. But considering that at age 12 Campbell sat in with Muddy Waters and later performed with Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, Jimmy Reed and Willie Dixon, the singer-guitarist could be considered a fully pedigreed member of Chicago blues royalty. Campbell died early Tuesday morning in Oak Park at age 79, according to Dick Shurman, who produced several of his recordings, and a Facebook posting by Campbell’s ex-wife and manager, Barbara Mayson. “I think he was known for two things,” said Shurman. “First, he was a very individual and flamboyant artist. Early on he had a huge head of hair and wore exotic outfits — a real individualist. “At the same time, he was also one of the true and last torchbearers of what they call the classic West Side sound. He was one of the great Magic Sam interpreters, close to Luther Allison and Otis Rush and that whole school of people who came up from Mississippi and formed a little more progressive version of Chicago blues than the straight Delta blues.” Meaning that Campbell’s music carried streaks of funk and hints of rock. “He wasn’t a purist,” Shurman said. As such, “Eddie was one of the last of the generation of great West Side Chicago blues guitar heroes,” said Bruce Iglauer, founder of Chicago’s Alligator Records label. “He created a body of recorded material that will stand the test of time with the best of West Side blues.” Born in Duncan, Miss., on May 6, 1939, Campbell came to Chicago with his mother when he was about 10. They were part of the Great Migration of African-Americans to the north, including musicians who transformed rural, Southern acoustic blues via a tougher, harder, electrified urban sound. Campbell’s mother knew Muddy Waters and made it possible for her prodigious son to sit in with the master, said Shurman. But it was young contemporaries who influenced Campbell most deeply. “Most of the cats that you listened to, back in the ’50s, lived on the West Side,” Campbell told the Tribune in 1993. “That’s where the name came from, West Side blues.” Out of that emerging West Side sound, Campbell developed a singular approach. “I had my own style since I was about 15 or 16,” he said in a 1994 Tribune interview. “It’s all in the fingers. Jobs were easy to get then, and I led my own little bands.” Campbell went on to make a splash with his 1977 album debut, “King of the Jungle,” its popularity surprising even him. “That was done without a really proper rehearsal,” Campbell said in the 1993 Tribune interview. “But blues is sort of easy to go into, if you’ve played with the guys before.” Campbell left Chicago in the early 1980s, spending roughly a decade in Europe in hopes of elevating his career. “It’s just like with Jimi (Hendrix); he had to go England before he was recognized in the States,” Campbell told the Tribune in 1994. “Same with Louis Armstrong. In Europe, they love black culture. I do a date in Germany, it’s like Mick Jagger’s coming to town.” Nevertheless, Campbell knew from firsthand experience that certain glass ceilings would not be shattered. “If there’s one thing I learned from Muddy, who’s really a legend, it’s that playing the blues doesn’t give you the (media) coverage that rock ’n’ roll gives you,” he said in the 1994 Tribune interview. “White guys copy the black culture, and they get all the attention, whereas if B.B. King plays a concert, you would hardly even know it. That’s why the blues guys are driving Fords while the rock ’n’ rollers drive the Porsches.” Campbell returned to Chicago in the early 1990s, after about a decade on the Continent, soon recording “That’s When I Know” (1994) and, later, “Tear This World Up” (2009) and “Spider Eating Preacher” (2012), the last two produced by Shurman for Delmark Records. “I think he came back with a better sense of who he was and where he fit in, not only to the blues picture, but the world, in terms of his roots and his origins and his whole identity,” said Shurman. “He got a whole lot of context by traveling the world, and that was reflected in the recordings he made after he came back to Chicago. “I think it was (blues musician) Willie Kent who described Eddie as being all about the pocket — he had a really strong groove. His sense of time and rhythm were really infallible. He was the most finicky artist I ever worked with — if the music sped up or slowed down even imperceptibly for an instant, he would want to address that.” He also was unafraid of reveling in reverb. Campbell suffered a heart attack and stroke while touring Germany in 2013, which “was really the effective end” of his career, Shurman said. Still, Campbell continued to make occasional appearances locally, playing guitar and sometimes harmonica with his left hand, singing the old tunes. When Delmark Records founder and former Jazz Record Mart owner Bob Koester opened Bob’s Blues & Jazz Mart on West Irving Park Road in 2016, Campbell dropped by to say hello and sing. Judging by that impromptu performance, there was no question that the fires still burned within. “We’ve had some great music here today,” Koester told the crowd, summing up Campbell’s cameo and, in effect, the entirety of his career. A memorial service is being planned.