Barrellhouse Chuck And The All Star Blues Band
Sound Check
Katjusa Cisar | Posted: Saturday, September 12, 2009 5:00 am
In 1979 at a club called B.L.U.E.S. on Halsted, Chicago blues piano player Barrelhouse Chuck found himself sitting next to Eric Clapton. He tried to stay cool in the presence of the famed guitarist, who was looking disheveled and unshaven. No one recognized Clapton or his gorgeous girlfriend Pattie. Barrelhouse felt something on his feet, and looking down, realized awkwardly that she was massaging his feet under the table.
Then, over the course of the next half-hour, three blues legends came up and hugged Barrelhouse: Big Walter Horton, Hubert Sumlin and Sunnyland Slim (who exclaimed "My son's in the house!" when he saw Barrelhouse).
Floored by all the attention his neighbor was getting, Clapton turned and asked, "Who are you?"
"I'm nobody," said Barrelhouse, then 21, "but I know who you are."
Thirty years later, Barrelhouse (aka Charles Goering) is carrying on the legacy of Sunnyland and the many other Chicago blues greats who mentored him in his early years - Big Smokey Smothers, Big Moose Walker, Pinetop Perkins. His own improv-heavy style is steeped in the traditions they taught him, with "some cool Farfisa (organ) stuff from the '60s."
He's performing at the fall kick-off to the Chicago Blues Tuesdays series at the Frequency this week. It's one of many small club shows he's picked up around the Midwest, when he's not jetsetting off for a weekend show in Spain. He did that last week as part of the band he played with on the soundtrack for "Cadillac Records," the film about Chicago label Chess Records, starring Adrien Brody and Beyonce.
That's the incongruity of his touring schedule, which lists gigs at The Hody in Middleton and a suburban Chicago VFW hall as well as shows in Switzerland, the House of Blues and Barack Obama's inauguration ball in Washington, D.C.
He shrugs it off. They're all gigs, no matter how big or small.
Barrelhouse has collaborated with many Madisonians and appreciates the hunger here for the blues in comparison to "spoiled" Chicagoans: "The people in Wisconsin seem to really listen."
Barrelhouse was lucky enough to catch the previous generation of blues players before they passed away one by one in the '80s and '90s, leaving the Chicago blues scene a shell of what it once was. In the '70s, he followed Muddy Waters around like a Deadhead, hanging out with him backstage, talking about records and going out for breakfast after the shows.
Most importantly, he listened. Little Brother Montgomery, born in 1906 and full of anecdotes about piano wars with Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller, advised him to learn lots of standards in addition to traditional blues: "The blues are the bottom of the barrel. Once you've just just played the blues, they put that stamp on you and that's as far as you go." Little Brother kept an incredible 5,000 songs jangling around in his head, says Barrelhouse.
"They all wanted me so much to have it, whatever 'have it' means," he said. "They were like my parents, my grandparents and my best friends. I play all their songs. I've written songs for every one of them."
Barrelhouse tries to pass on a love for the blues whenever he can.
"There's a few kids I show some things to," he said. "I try to tell them, 'Skip Stevie Ray Vaughan.' They really need to hear about the originators, you know? Not the rock guys, the blues guys."
Posted in Music on Saturday, September 12, 2009 5:00 am Updated: 12:44 pm. Barrelhouse Chuck Sound Check
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