Casey Jones: What to play, and when to play

The 1991 Living Blues interview

Publicity photo from Alligator Records.

(This article was originally published in Living Blues issue #96, March / April 1991. It is reprinted here with minor editing.)

It was his ability to adapt to different musicians’ styles that made him one of Chicago’s most sought-after drummers, Casey Jones will tell you. He wasn’t always the drummer backing Ablert Collins with the Icebreakers, but he always had work.

“I played a little differently behind a Howlin’ Wolf or Magic Sam or Muddy Waters,” Jones said by way of explaining his approach to drumming. “You gotta know know what to play and when to play. You gotta play differently behind B.B. King than Albert King. You have to mesh, and blend in. I’ve been so fortunate with that so many times, that ability to mesh.”

He was often called in to a recording session after it began because the original drummer was not working out.

“I never had any problems playing behind anybody. It doesn’t matter if I like somebody – I’m going to do what I’m supposed to do. Give them what they want and then you’ll always be called for work.”

Jones’ greatest fame may have been gained during his decade with Collins, but his accomplishments extend from backing Waters and Wolf to fronting his own band as vocalist. Currently, it is as vocalist that Jones tours and plays local gigs around Chicago, but he still loves to drum and will sit in with friends on occasion.

His association with Howlin’ Wolf in the mid-1970s began in typical Casey Jones fashion: Wolf’s drummer had passed out, and another member of Wolf’s band suggested Jones. “I got called to the job about 10:30 one night. I got a call [from] Eddie Shaw. [He] said, ‘Casey, we need ou.’ The gig was at the Burning Spear in Stony Island and the show didn’t start until 11 or 11:30. Their regular drummer was drunk, passed out. I had heard Wolf was real hard on musicians and I didn’t want to get embarrassed. I wasn’t nervous, but it was in my mind because everyone had talked about how mean he was.”

But Wolf invited him back for the next night, and Jones became the regular drummer. “I played with Wolf for over a year. I quit about eight months before he died [in 1976].”

Jones was born in Nitta Yuma, Miss., and raised in Greenville. He moved to Chicago in 1956 with his mother and family. Just out of high school, the 17-year-old Jones had played bass drum in the marching band at Coleman High School in Greenville. As a present to a young man n a strange new city, his older sister (who, along with her husband, had moved the family north) bought him his first drum set and enrolled him in the local musicians union.

“I learned everything on my own,” Jones recalled, with evident pride in his voice. “The band directors [in school] never tried to teach me anything, and I resent that. I was just told to show up for practice. I learned by watching and I bought a drumming book. It just came naturally – I never did try to copy anybody. I never did want to sound like anybody. Actually, I knew how to play before I was in the band. I had practiced by slapping my leg to keep the beat to songs on the radio.”

With his union card, and despite his primitive equipment and lack of experience, Jones was soon called for rehearsals.

“During my first rehearsal, I only had a snare, a tom-tom, a cymbal and bass. I didn’t have a hi-hat at first.”

Jones evidently impressed his peers, for a gig soon followed those rehearsals.

“My first job was at Spruce’s Liquor at Garfield Boulevard and State Street. I got five dollars for the night.”

It was only a few years later, while Jones was playing the Chicago club scene, that he became a professional singer. And it was an accident.

“It was at the 1959 Club at Damen and Roosevelt,” Jones remembered. “One night, the piano player / singer, Herman Owens, was picked up by the police and they put him in jail. I used to sing behind him to myself, and I was the only one in the band who knew three songs: ‘Pretty Baby,’ ‘Next Time You See Me,’ and ‘Woke Up This Morning,’ by B.B. King. I started singing that night. We played a lot of instrumentals between those three songs!

“I started singing and found out I could holler like Little Richard. I had long hair with a process and curls back then. They used to call me Lucille after a song I sang, because of my hair.

“I was singing from the drums then. Now, I’m out front singing. I’ve been dong that off and on for 18 years. I’m no stronger to being out front.”

But drums remained Jones’ first love for many years, and he resisted singing. “When I first started playing drums, I only wanted to play drums or trumpet. I dind’t want to sing.”

But while working Chicago during the 1960s, he sang as well as played drums for the likes of Ricky Allen, Otis Rush and Magic Sam.

“Wolf always tried to get me to sing, but I wanted to do R&B then. My favorite music was stuff Fats Domino and Little Richard were dong. I’m a real Little Richard fan, Most of his songs I can sing just like him.”

If Jones resisted singing, he really avoided traveling.

“I didn’t hit the road until I was 30. I never did want ato travel. I do it now because it’s my living. I first started traveling around 1970 with a friend of mine, Ernie Terrell, the ex-heavyweight champ whose sister Jean Terrell replaced Diana Ross in the Supremes. We had a show in supper clubs and appeared on Johnny Carson. After that, I traveled some with Howlin’ Wolf.”

Jones, though is living proof that one needn’t travel to play with great artists – at least if one lives in Chicago. In the years before he began traveling, Jones worked small lounges and clubs around town with the likes of Muddy Waters, Freddie King, Earl Hooker and Fenton Robinson.

In 1959, Jones’ brother-in-law Otis Luke hired him for his first regular gig, playing with Luke’s band, the Rhythm Bombers. It was here he met saxophonist Saxie Russell, whom he has played wtih many times through the years.

“I met Saxie in ’56. He just heard us play one night and asked if he could run home and grab his horn and sit in at the gig. I spent two years [1957-59] with Morris Pejoe. He would always sit down to play [guitar]. He wasn’t crippled or anything, he just liked to play that way. Then I played with Jimmy Johnson’s trio for five or six months.”

Perhaps it was here that Jones’ versatility was born, for he had to change styles when switching bands. “It was different: Morris Pejoe played more of a nasty type of blues than Jimmy did.”

It was in the ealry 1960s that Jones first came to front his own band, Casey Jones and the Cannonball Express, as vocalist. At the same time, he was sitting in with Allen, Rush and Magic Sam, as well as working local gigs with Freddie King and Earl Hooker among others.

From 1965 through 1967, Jones played with saxophonist Dave Mitchell’s band. “We played real mixed-up stuff; songs like ‘Harlem Nocturne,’ Wilson Pickett stuff, whatever the club wanted.”

Around this time, Jones also got to know guitarist Fenton Robinson, whose work he greatly admires. “Oh, man, that cat could sing, too. He had a voice as clear as a bell.”

During the late 1960s, Jones played a half-dozen gigs with local country and wester bands – a distinction which underscores his versatility. “Man, that’s so long ao I can’t even remember their names. They called me up and asked me to fill in. I understood what they were dong and could paly the music. But I was never into country and western, like I am with funk and blues.”

In the early 1970s, Jones first started playing with keyboardist Allen Batts, yearsbefore they played as the Iceabreakers with Albert Collins. Also in the band were Aron and Larry Burton.

Publicity photo from Alligator Records.

“Alligator Records brought Albert to Chicago to record in 1978. Bruce Iglauer decided he wanted to record him. He had done Lonnie Brooks on record already. Bruce called me and Aron and Larry Burton and Allen Batts and we went in and recorded. Bruce said he was putting together some tours for Albert and asked if we wanted to tour. Collins had no band then, because he’d gone back to driving trucks for a few years.

“I had a beautiful relationship with Albert. We got along so well. We would play jokes on people, switching names as we walked up to the stage.”

From a personal standpoint, Jones lists his career highpoint as being the first time he was involved on a recording. “It might have been with Muddy Waters. It was a 45, maybe ‘Sweet Black Angel’ and ‘Bird’s Nest On the Ground.’ It was in the ’60s. I don’t remember for sure – I just remember the feeling.

“My favorite recording I’ve been involved with was Lonnie Brookes’ ‘Bayou Lightning.’ I was satisfied with all of the band’s work. He had some songs I really liked, such as ‘Two Headed Man.’ Just a great feel.”

One of the aspects of his playing that Jones feels has made him successful is his ability to adapt to circumstances as well as artists and styles. For instance, when playing for a recording, he tries to temper his natural exuberance because what works in a live setting doesn’t always hold up on a recording.

“Being on the bandstand and being in the studio is like night and day. You can make a mistakeon the bandstand, but you have to be cautious in the studio tonot overplay. You can be really funk and aggressive on the bandstand, more than you can in the studio. But sometimes a bad feeling comes out okay. I’ve played on records where I did something I wasn’t supposed to do and it came out so beautiful. Sometimes a mistake can be great.”

It is this difference that makes recording “live” albums so tricky. “I did two live recordings with Albert. It was great, but you have to be careful to get the best out of the songs you’re recording.”

In November of 1990, Jones played on his first movie soundtrack. The film, “V.I. Warshawski” (about a female police detective), was distributed by Buena Vista Pictures. “It was blues; I liked it a lot,” Jones said, adding that he also appreciated that the star, Kathleen Turner, took time out to meet the musicians.

As of 1991, Jones had recorded three albums as leader, the two most recent being blues albums. His 1987 release, “Solid Blue,” was issued by Rooster Records; the others Jones released on his own Airwax label. (His first album, “Still Kickin’,” from 1983, was an R&b outing.)

It was frustration with trying to get that debut recorded that led him to start Airwax Records.

“I got tired of trying to get people to record me. I got fed up with that shit. I’d been on so many records of others, but they wouldn’t put me out there where I could get a reputation for myself.”

One of his goals for 1991 was to record another artist for Airwax. “I’m looking at about three local artists now. I know I can’t record all three at first, so I have to choose one.”

While this planned release will be a blues album, eventually Jones would like to have Airwax record and release artists from other genres. “I don’t want Airwax to be a label with just one type of music. I don’t believe in that. I like it all; if it’s good, it’s good.”

Having a record production and distribution company gives Jones a security that performing cannot. “I want to have Airwax in case I get so old I can’t play or sing.”

His immediate plans call for Jones to continue leading his own band. And he also promises that he’ll keep playing drums, even if it is no longer every night.

“I’m gonna keep making records until I get lucky and get a hit. My first love is those drums; I’ll keep playing them. And I don’t do it because I have to, but because I want to. I’ve got nothing left to prove.”

But, eventually, Jones would like to branch out from the blues, at least for awhile. It seems he’s never really gotten Little Richard out of his system, and he would like to record another R&B album.

“I Love that shit. I like playing it and I like singing it. But I probably won’t record any for a long time. I’m trying to get the blues down now. Blues is the mother of everything. Everything else is in between, just syncopated differently.

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