Elmore James
Elmore James, born Elmore Brooks in 1918 in the Mississippi Delta, was a prominent African American blues musician known for pioneering the electric slide guitar. Growing up in a sharecropping family, he developed a passion for music at an early age, even crafting a one-string instrument from household materials. Influenced by legendary figures such as Robert Johnson, James became known for his innovative style, which combined traditional Delta blues techniques with electric amplification. His iconic recording of "Dust My Broom" in 1951 solidified his place in music history and showcased his ability to blend heartfelt vocals with powerful guitar riffs.
With his band, the Broomdusters, James became a key figure in the Chicago blues scene, contributing to the evolution of rhythm and blues music throughout the 1950s and 60s. His musical legacy is marked by his distinctive slide guitar work and an energetic stage presence, influencing many guitarists in both blues and rock genres, including B.B. King and Jimi Hendrix. Throughout his life, James faced personal challenges, including health issues and a tumultuous lifestyle, which ultimately led to his untimely death in 1963. His contributions to music continue to resonate, establishing him as a foundational figure in the development of electric blues and rhythm-and-blues music.
Elmore James
Guitarist
- Born: January 27, 1918
- Birthplace: Richland, Mississippi
- Died: May 24, 1963
- Place of death: Chicago, Illinois
American blues singer-songwriter, bandleader, and guitarist
James is a vital link between the pre-World War II acoustic country blues of the Mississippi Delta and the postwar electric blues of Chicago. A master of the electric slide guitar, he brought the idiom, intensity, and even guitar licks of such Delta blues legends as Robert Johnson into the urban rhythm-and-blues era.
Member of The Broomdusters
The Life
Elmore Brooks was born in the Mississippi Delta in 1918. He was the illegitimate son of fifteen-year-old Leola Brooks and took the surname of his stepfather, Joe Willie “Frost” James. He was raised on a sharecropping farm but early decided to become a musician. Without money and with only a fourth-grade education, he gravitated toward blues music. He constructed a one-string instrument using old broom wire and a lard can (a “diddley bow”) and practiced assiduously. By the time he was able to buy his first guitar, he had already become a skilled musician. By the age of fourteen, he was performing in juke joints, in roadhouses, and at catfish suppers, supporting himself during the week as a radio repairman.
Around 1936, James met the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, who may have taught him the rudiments of slide guitar. James married Minnie Mae around 1942, Georgianna Crump in 1947, and a woman named Janice (her surname is unknown) around 1954. The legal status of his three marriages is uncertain but produced, it is believed, seven children, including musician Elmore James, Jr. From 1943 to 1945, James was in the U.S. Navy, stationed in Guam during World War II and rising to the rank of coxswain. When he returned to the Delta after the war, he adopted the newly popular electric guitar. In 1946 he was diagnosed with a weak heart.
James’s career took off with the release of his classic recording of “Dust My Broom.” He moved to Memphis and then to Chicago, the center of the burgeoning electric blues music, and formed his band, the Broomdusters, which became one of the top Chicago bands. Although performing regularly, James suffered recurring heart problems that slowed his career. His medical condition was aggravated by heavy drinking and a tempestuous lifestyle. Then, because of unpaid dues and contractual difficulties, he was blacklisted by the Chicago Musicians’ Union for three years. In 1963, while James was staying with his older cousin, “Homesick” James Williamson, and preparing to join the American Folk Blues Festival tour in Europe, he died of a heart attack.
The Music
As he was growing up in the Delta, James played in Delta juke joints with such legendary musicians as Sonny Boy Williamson II (Rice Miller), Robert Lockwood, and Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup. It is also possible that he performed with the bluesman most influential on his music, Robert Johnson, before Johnson’s untimely death in 1938. Shortly thereafter, James formed a partnership with his stepbrother, guitarist Robert Earl Holston, and began leading his own band, with Holston on second guitar, Precious White on saxophone, Frock O’Dell on drums, and Tutney Moore on trumpet.
By the early 1940’s James was already known for his electric slide guitar—the most important contribution he would make to modern blues. Delta musicians such as Johnson played acoustic slide or bottleneck guitar, with the neck of a broken bottle or a metal ring gliding across the guitar frets, producing sustained, bended notes. James was one of the first musicians to add electric amplification to the slide guitar. A radio repairman by trade, he experimented with various amplifier hookups, making his guitar not only louder but also capable of tonal distortion and echo effects. Even on his early release “Please Find My Baby” (1952), James can be heard playing a raucous, powerful synthesis of slide guitar and electric amplification.
“Dust My Broom.”Perhaps no blues musician is as heavily identified with a single song as James is with “Dust My Broom (I Believe My Time Ain’t Long).” The legendary Johnson was the first to release a recording of “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom” in 1937, which he had adapted from various sources. James recorded his own version on August 5, 1951, on the Trumpet label with O’Dell on drums, Leonard Warren on electric bass, and Sonny Boy Williamson on harmonica. When it was released in early 1952 it hit the Top 10 on Billboard’s rhythm-and-blues chart. James sings with a raw quality reminiscent of the Delta holler
I’m gonna get up in the morning,
On his 1937 recording of “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” Johnson had played four sets, and a truncated fifth set, of high-velocity, high-note triplets. Johnson had repeated the triplet figures on “Ramblin’ Blues” but with slide guitar. James begins “Dust My Broom” with these high-note triplets over Williamson’s blues harp, but now playing electric slide guitar.
This riff has become one of the signature sounds of the electric blues guitar. Thousands of blues guitarists have since played some version of these repeated triplet notes and motifs at the twelfth fret of the guitar. When combined with boogie lines on bass and piano, this sound would become one of the building blocks of rhythm and blues. James’s biographer Steve Franz gives his own reason for the prevalence of the “Dust My Broom” riff in modern blues. The blues was based on the call-and-response of both religious music and the field holler. In modern blues, according to Franz, the sung verse serves as a two-measure call and the high-pitch triplet riff represents a one-measure response, echoing the traditional call-and-response.
“I Believe.”With the success of “Dust My Broom,” James formed his electric blues group the Broomdusters at the end of 1952. The Broomdusters would become one of the best known of the Chicago blues bands, rivaling the groups put together by Muddy Waters. Although the band personnel would vary, the heart of the group consisted of James on lead electric guitar, with his cousin “Homesick” James Williamson on electric bass (and sometimes second lead guitar), Odie Payne, Jr., playing drums, Johnny Jones at the piano, and J. T. Brown on tenor saxophone. One of the Broomdusters’ first releases in 1952 was “I Believe.” A James composition, “I Believe” picks up where “Dust My Broom” left off, featuring variations of the high-pitch triplets run: “I believe, I believe, my time ain’t long/ Dust my broom this mornin’, I know I treat my baby wrong.” In early rhythm and blues, the guitar and saxophone competed for the lead, and here Brown’s saxophone has replaced Williamson’s harmonica in the introduction. The rhythm section follows the introduction with tightly crafted and energetic support. James’s singing is raw and energetic. James concludes with a linear, single-note slide solo that soars over the rhythm section.
“Hawaiian Boogie.”In 1953, the Broomdusters released “Hawaiian Boogie.” This instrumental shows the cohesiveness and precision of the Broomdusters, as well as their versatility. James begins with an explosive guitar lick. Brown’s saxophone honkings, Jones’s barrelhouse piano, and the insistent bass playing of Ransom Knowling add a jazzlike groove. Both Jones on piano and Brown on saxophone play succinctly and impressively, while James fills the song with intricate guitar runs.
“The Sky Is Crying.”“The Sky Is Crying” was James’s most popular song in the 1960’s. It made the rhythm-and-blues charts and sold 600,000 copies. This slow, haunting blues piece features an evocative title and refrain:
The sky is cryin’, look at the tears roll down the street
James’s slide guitar sounds especially lyrical. His singing is dramatic and decorated with glissandi notes.
“Madison Blues.”“Madison Blues” was the last recording by the Broomdusters, capping a collaboration of more than seven years. Inspired by a then current dance, “Madison Blues” is a rollicking rhythm-and-blues number. It illustrates how the electric amplification, the boogie bass line of the rhythm section, the lead guitar riffs, and the squawking saxophone transformed the Delta blues sound of the 1930’s and 1940’s into 1950’s and 1960’s rhythm and blues.
“Shake Your Money Maker.”“Shake Your Money Maker” would be one of James’s most popular and most often covered songs. While retaining his intensity on vocals, James leads his band in an up-tempo, danceable rhythm-and-blues number. Except for twanging a few well-placed blue notes, James’s slide guitar is submerged into the rhythm section.
Musical Legacy
Elmore James is one of the foremost architects of the electric blues and rhythm-and-blues music emerging from postwar Chicago, and he may well be the most influential electric slide guitarist in blues history. He played with great virtuosity, embellished by his fierce, heartfelt vocals. He was sought after on the blues circuit for his renditions of “Dust My Broom.” He was also an accomplished bandleader. His Broomdusters band was perhaps second only to the Muddy Waters bands among Chicago electric blues groups.
Without diminishing his unique contributions, it is fair to note James’s place as a transitional figure. He was profoundly influenced by the prewar Delta bluesmen, especially Robert Johnson. When Johnson had fallen into obscurity in the 1940’s, James continued to pay homage to such Johnson recordings as “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” “Crossroad Blues,” and “Ramblin’ on My Mind.” James would make use of Johnson’s “turnaround” guitar technique between verses. After a verse, Johnson would often play a dominant seventh rather than resting on a tonic chord like most blues guitarists. This technique added tension and propulsion to the song’s movement.
Most notably, James electrified Johnson’s slide triplet riffs on lead guitar. James also took the boogie bass lines that Johnson played on the lower strings and assigned them to the piano, drum, and bass guitar rhythm sections. With the bass guitar now driving a one-two beat and the lead guitar playing various riffs, James’s electric band helped pioneer the precursors to rhythm and blues. Moreover, when polished and smoothed out, this basic vocabulary would help form both soul music and early rock and roll. James’s experiments with guitar amplifications demonstrated not only that electric blues could be loud enough to reach the back of any crowded juke joint or concert hall but also that he could distort and twist the aural sound—effects that would be heard again in psychedelic rock. James’s slashing, single-note guitar technique, amplified sounds, and high-intensity vocals influenced Chicago blues guitarists such as B. B. King and Albert King and rock guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Duane Allman, Eric Clapton, and Johnny Winter. James’s influence can also be heard in such blues-rock bands as the Butterfield Blues Band, Canned Heat, and Fleetwood Mac.
Principal Recordings
album:Blues After Hours, 1961.
singles: “Dust My Broom (I Believe My Time Ain’t Long),” 1951; “I Believe,” 1952; “Please Find My Baby,” 1952; “Country Boogie,” 1953; “Early in the Morning,” 1953; “Dark and Dreary,” 1954; “Hand in Hand,” 1954; “Blues Before Sunrise,” 1955; “Dust My Blues,” 1955; “I Believe My Time Ain’t Long,” 1955; “Cry for Me Baby,” 1957; “It Hurts Me Too,” 1957; “Make My Dreams Come True,” 1959; “I Can’t Hold Out,” 1960; “Knocking at Your Door,” 1960; “Rockin’ and Tumblin’,” 1960; “The Sky Is Crying,” 1960; “Look on Yonder Wall,” 1961; “Everyday I Have the Blues,” 1965; “My Bleeding Heart,” 1965; “Standing at the Crossroads,” 1965; “Shake Your Money Maker,” 1966.
Bibliography
Dixon, Willie, and Don Snowden. I Am the Blues: The Willie Dixon Story. London: Quartet Books, 1989. The Chicago blues leader’s autobiography.
Franz, Steve. The Amazing Secret History of Elmore James. Saint Louis, Mo.: BlueSource, 2003. The definitive biography of James, with an exhaustive discography, bibliography, and musical references. An entire chapter is devoted to the phenomenon, covers, and musical structure of the song “Dust My Broom” and its signature riff.
George-Warren, Holly, and Patricia Romanowski, eds. The Rolling Stones Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll. 3d ed. New York: Fireside, 2005. This A through Z reference work archives James’s influence as a precursor to rock and roll.
Kimora, Edward. The Road to Robert Johnson. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard, 2007. A musical discussion of Johnson’s blues that examines his influence on James’s electric guitar.
Palmer, Robert. Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta. London: Viking Penguin, 1982. A seminal history of the Delta blues, by the late New York Times pop and rock critic. Emphasizes James’s transitional role.
Rowe, Michael. Chicago Breakdown. London: Eddison Press, 1973. This history of Chicago blues includes firsthand accounts of James’s life and death.
Wald, Elijah. Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. New York: Amistad, 2005. An excellent musical biography of Robert Johnson, explaining how Johnson’s innovative guitar work laid the ground for James and other urban blues and rhythm-and-blues musicians.