By JACK WALTON, Tribune Correspondent
South Bend Tribune
September 16, 2005
When it came time to release his sixth album of blues piano playing, Barrelhouse Chuck Goering decided to ransack his vast archive of previous sessions, dating back to 1980.
His long list of collaborators numbers many underrated players as well as such bigger names as legendary drummers Willie "Big Eyes" Smith and S.P. Leary. Some are long dead, and Goering wanted to document his playing with them.
Released on Goering's own Viola label, named after his mother, Barrelhouse Chuck's "Slowdown Sundown" required a lot of legwork on the artist's part, forcing him to find equipment that can play some out-of-date recording formats.
"I had to track down tape machines that aren't available anymore," Goering says. He then fed the signals into modern mixing equipment and fixed any sound flaws with the popular Pro Tools program.
Before he started to play music himself, Goering educated himself with his vast record archive.
"I have some of the rarest collector's records," he says. "The records that every fan wishes he had, I always seem to find."
He then took to playing the piano and proceeded to learn the rest of what he knows on bandstands, often alongside his idols.
Goering spent so many hours with blues titans behind the scenes that he caught a side of them that many fans never see: bluesman as critic.
While listening to Jimi Hendrix's version of Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor," Wolf's guitarist, Hubert Sumlin, shared his opinion of the Hendrix version with Goering. "He got a little of it, but he didn't get it all," Sumlin said to Goering.
Another time, while driving in a car with pianist Little Brother Montgomery, Goering played him a tape of the then-recently deceased Otis Spann doing a Montgomery track.
"Little Brother shouted, 'He didn't play that right! Maybe if he had played that right he'd still be alive today,' " Goering says.
Although most of his mentors doted on the young Goering, an encounter with harmonica player Walter "Shakey" Horton was a reminder of the volatile nature of many of his predecessors.
"He was this crazy, incredibly nervous guy with a look of fire in his eyes. Unshaven, a little drunk, but he seemed to like me," Goering says. "But if you would say something wrong, or touch him wrong, look out. One time, I baited him a little bit, and he pulled a knife out of his back pocket that quick."
The cover of "Slowdown Sundown" shows a partially demolished piano on the back of a pickup truck. Goering's aggressive style of play often leads to his pianos falling victim to broken strings and hammers. Goering signature "karate chops" also wreaked havoc on the instruments he used as a young man.
"I looked everywhere for pianos to play," he says. "I even broke into some churches to get a chance to play their pianos."
"Slowdown Sundown" concludes with a collage of messages that some of Goering's famous friends left on his answering machine over the years.
Although most of them are included for the humor value, one from Sunnyland Slim is a particularly touching call from a hero.
"I just called to check out how my boy is," the crucial architect of the Chicago piano sound says. "God bless you, and take it easy now."
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