Chicago Tenor Saxist One Of The Greats
“Howlin’ Wolf shouted and moaned like a man large enough to whip any demon. But this blues hero also possessed incredible control, and in the 1960s and ’70s he relied on saxophonist Eddie Shaw’s arrangements to support his unmistakable voice,” Aaron Cohen writes for the Tribune.
“If you write something, you have to put it together right,” Shaw said about arranging. “You can make a presentation to a woman and put it in a way that’ll make her say, ‘I don’t want to speak with this guy no more.’ Or you can use the same words, put them in a correct order and she’ll want to hang with you.”
“Shaw has lived fully enough during his 77 years to devise an array of such metaphors, which he revealed over cups of tea at a Mexican diner. This month, he is being recognized for his life’s accomplishments as an inductee in the Memphis-based Blues Hall Of Fame.”
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“The powerfully constructed tenor saxist has rubbed elbows with an amazing array of luminaries over his 50-plus years in the business,” Bill Dahl writes for AllMusic.
“By the time he was age 14, Shaw was jamming with Ike Turner’s combo around Greenville, MS. At a gig in Itta Bena where Shaw sat in, Muddy Waters extended the young saxman an invitation he couldn’t refuse: a steady job with Waters’s unparalleled band in Chicago.
“After a few years, Shaw switched his onstage allegiance to Waters’s chief rival, the ferocious Howlin’ Wolf, staying with him until the very end and eventually graduating to a featured role as Wolf’s bandleader.”
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Eddie Shaw Tour Dates.
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Eddie Shaw & The Wolfgang.
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George Thorogood’s Induction Message.
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Thorogood & Shaw, 2006.
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Little By Little, April 2014.
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With Black Joe Lewis at the Double Door, 2011.
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Riding High, 1964.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on May 7, 2014