Willie Dixon is the man who changed the style of the blues. As a songwriter and producer, the man was a genius. If you wanted a hit song, you went to Willie Dixon. Played it like he said play it, and sing it like he said sing it, and you damn near always had a hit. Willie Dixon taught bass players how to rock 'n' roll. Listen to him on Chuck Berry's Chess recordings of "Rock and Roll Music,''and "Reelin' and Rockin''. He took big band music and Mississippi blues and melded them into something new, opening the door for Motown and others to walk in and take it even further. Features 8 super tracks, biography, image gallery and much more!
WILLIE DIXON
• July 1, 1915 William James “Willie” Dixon, blues musician, songwriter, arranger, and record producer, was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Dixon was first introduced to the blues as a teenager while serving time on Mississippi prison farms. In 1936, he moved to Chicago, Illinois and took up boxing and won the Illinois State Golden Gloves Heavyweight Championship. After four professional fights, Dixon quit boxing to pursue music. During World War II, he was imprisoned for ten months for resisting the draft as a conscientious objector. By 1951, he was an employee of Chess Records where he acted as producer, talent scout, session musician, and songwriter. From the late 1960s until the mid-1970s, Dixon ran his own record label. Dixon is considered one of the key figures in the creation of Chicago blues, working with Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Bo Didley, Koko Taylor, Little Milton, and others. In his later years, Dixon became a tireless ambassador for the blues and founded the Blues Heaven Foundation to preserve the blue’s legacy and to secure copyrights and royalties for blues musicians who were exploited in the past. Dixon was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980 and in 1989 he won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Recording for his album “Hidden Charms.” Dixon died January 29, 1992 and was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. Dixon published his autobiography, “I Am the Blues: The Willie Dixon Story,” in 1990.
via thewright.org