Harmonica Legend Sugar Blue Talks Recording With The Rolling Stones Ahead of Tonight's (Oct 26) Blue Note Gig

Aside from being a Grammy Award winner and a famed collaborator of The Rolling Stones, Sugar Blue is also a sweetheart through and through. During a recent interview with the Beijinger ahead of his show this evening at Blue Note, the 67-year-old star harmonica player, best known for his vibrant solo on the Stones’ megahit “Miss You,” was quick to laugh and eager to describe his family’s talents, some of whom have joined his current band. His successes and time in the industry hadn’t seemed to jade him or inflate his ego as he warmly regaled us with tales about performing with Mick Jagger and blues legend Willie Dixon and having Billie Holiday for a godmother, along with dishing details about how to avoid tour burnout even as he gets long in the tooth.  

What can we expect at your Beijing show?
We’re gonna play songs from three or four of my different CDs, or should I say albums? No one does CDs anymore! I’m dating myself now.

I’ll have my drummer from home, a guitar player that we’ve recorded with very often. And my lovely wife, who is a bassist as well as the love of my life, and our son. Her name is Ilaria, and it’s really a joy to work with her, to write with her, to raise a child with her. She’s, what can I say, man? She’s the greatest joy of my life, aside from my boy James, who steals the show drumming and singing and dancing onstage.

Sounds like a wonderfully musical family. Your mother was also a famous musician, did she mentor you in the same way you’ve guided your son James?
Well, my Mom was a singer and dancer in the fabled Harlem theatre back in the early ‘30s, long before I was even an idea. When she started having children she left all that behind. I would’ve liked to grow up backstage. But I did get to meet many of her musical friends from the old days.

Billie Holiday, for instance, was my godmother. My mom told me, right after I was born, Billie came by the house. She was going to perform at the Apollo that night and stopped by to see me, the new baby. She was wearing this lovely silk dress, dressed pretty much for the stage because she was going to leave the house and do her gig. And wouldn’t you know, Mom had just finished feeding me, I threw up pabulum on the front of her dress. Billie usually wore a gardenia, right, and there’s a photo of her in that dress with the gardenia on the left breast, right above her heart. And that’s because of my gift to her!

So you were even making a musical impact as a baby!
(Laughs) Yes indeed. I never got to know Billie, she passed away when I was only a baby, though I would’ve liked to.

When you got into music yourself, was your mother encouraging?
She told me: “Don’t do it.” She had been on the road in the Jim Crow days, and it was really rough. That was the last thing in the world she wanted me to do. But hey man, I fell in love with the music from the time I was seven or eight years old. I remember listening to one of Mom’s records, Lester Young, and he was playing a song, “PC Blues,” and I used to play it over and over. My Mom would say: “If you scratch my record, boy, I’ll kill you.”

How did you get into playing music then?
Well, I tried playing saxophone in school. My band teacher gave me an alto saxophone. I loved it, and took it home and played it. After about a week my mother said, “I love music, but I can’t stand hearing someone practicing. You can stay, or the saxophone can stay, but you can’t both stay at my house!” So that was the end of that, but my aunt bought me a harmonica, and I’ve been in love with it ever since.

Your Mom didn’t object to that? Because it was quieter than the sax?
Well, it disappeared after a few weeks. So I went out and bought one, and hid it, thinking “No way Mom, you’re not getting your hands on this one!” And as I got older, and started hanging out, the 60’s were happening, and I’d go play in Sheep Meadow in Central Park, everybody there seemed to play an instrument of some kind. My harp would fit in perfectly with any and everybody who was playing.

At some point, I got serious and started practicing. I’d play folk music, and then I got into rock and roll, and when the British Invasion came along, I started listening to the Stones and the Beatles. There’s a song called “Little Red Rooster,” on one of the Stones’ records, and I looked at the liner notes to see who wrote it. When I saw it was Willie Dixon, I went to the library to look him up and found out that he was the songwriter, and an A&R guy, and a producer, and that’s when I discovered Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and the whole blues scene that birthed the rock & roll I loved.

Speaking of The Rolling Stones, I read that Mick Jagger met you while you were busking on the streets, and recruited you then and there. Is that true, or more of a legend?
Hey, go with the legend man (laughs). Yes it’s true, as unbelievable as it seems. I was so excited to tour with them, and I was really proud to have been a part of the recording of “Miss You,” because it was the biggest song they’d recorded. It was great because when I was boy, I’d sit down and use their records to practice with, never even dreaming I’d get to work with them. So one never knows!

The Stones have such a notorious reputation. What was it like to tour with them?
Well, all that partying, bad boy stuff got ‘em press man. That’s what it was all about! And I’m sure they had their share of fun. I came to find out that their publicist, Jackie, was responsible for a lot of that stuff, that he’d say, “Let’s do something, because we need some press.” They’d tell me all about that stuff from the old days. And by the time I got with them, they were too old for that shit anyway. I mean, it’s all fun and good to party when you’re young, but once you reach a certain age you better chill out, or they’re going to put you in a box! And being wise old Brits, they behaved accordingly. It’s not for nothing that they’re one of the last British Invasion bands still standing.

You mentioned Willie Dixon a moment before. What was it like to work with him?
I worked with him on his only Grammy-winning album. I’ve been very blessed to work with such people. Dixon mentored me before he even knew me because I’d practice along to his records as a boy. And when I got to know him better, he became a father figure as much as a mentor. Above all, he helped me become a writer and a better performer.

How so?
Well, I’d ask him how he wrote this song or that, and he’d always say “Boy, have you got nothing but questions?” I’d worry him to death (laughs). He’d tell me about arrangements and writing, and he showed me ways to play the harmonica that I never even knew. He was a multi-instrumentalist and a master. For instance: I never knew it was possible to play all ten holes at once. He said, “I bet I can do it!” And I tried to beat him to it, trying and trying, stretching my lips as far as I could. And I never managed to get it done. I said, “You’re just pulling my leg, Dixon!” And then he showed me how, and I was flabbergasted. He was full of wisdom and tricks about all kinds of instruments, and how to put it all together into songs.

Now your stature is comparable to Willie’s and you’re mentoring musicians and becoming a veteran of the road. That makes me wonder how you keep yourself in your prime. Most 67-year-olds couldn’t keep going you are!
That’s true. I try to get in a minimum of four hours a day of practice. Just to keep my chops together. And I also try to always expand my style of playing. Sometimes that comes easily, and sometimes not – it has a lot to do with the songs I’m writing, and the way I approach solos for new material. I try to write great songs and play within the context of what I’m writing. I have to keep it fresh because I hate to repeat what I’ve done before!

Sugar Blue will perform at Blue Note tonight, Oct 26, at 7.30pm. Tickets start at RMB 280, for more information click here.

Photos: Black Swamp Blues Society, courtesy of Sugar Blue