When someone recently asked me to recommend the most essential Elmore James album, I answered, “Any and all.” I’ve never heard a bad Elmore cut, and I’ve heard nearly everything he recorded. Everybody knows that he set the standard for slide guitar in electric blues, but he was also a fantastic singer and wrote some true classics of the blues repertoire. It doesn’t get more anguished than, “The sky is crying, look at the tears roll down the street.”
James was born in Richland, Mississippi, in 1918, and first recorded with Sonny Boy Williamson, II (Alex “Rice” Miller) as co-guitarist with Joe Willie Wilkins. That 1951 session for Trumpet Records’ producer Lillian McMurry yielded “Eyesight To The Blind.” The same year, he cut “Dust My Broom” as Elmo James – again for Trumpet, with Sonny Boy on harmonica (every blues artist I’ve talked to called him “Elmo,” and prior to forming the Rolling Stones, guitarist Brian Jones briefly went by Elmo Lewis).
All Elmore James albums are compilations of singles, and only one was released during his lifetime – Blues After Hours, issued by the label-head Bihari brothers on Crown in 1960. Spanning 1959 to ’63, an expanded reissue of Hits & Rarities contains 36 tracks recorded for producer Bobby Robinson. As singles, they were originally issued on the Fire and Enjoy labels and are arguably the strongest of his career.
Photographs of Elmore were rare until more popped up on the internet. They show him playing two main guitars – a Kay K-6000 flat-top with a DeArmond pickup, and a Silvertone 1361. It’s likely he used various amps; Ry Cooder believes he used a Valco-made Harmony H440 for the Fire sessions because it was a house amp at Robinson’s New York studio. But he’s also shown with a Magnatone (possibly a 280 model). Homesick James, who backed him on rhythm guitar or bass, stated that he used a Gibson GA-53.
Elmore followed with “I Believe” using the same signature riff, which he borrowed from Robert Johnson’s “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” from ’37. But, whereas Johnson played that riff fretted, James used a slide and played the shuffle in open D. He would recycle the riff over and over – on Big Joe Turner’s 1954 hit “TV Mama” and his own tunes such as “Coming Home,” “Dust My Blues,” “I’m Worried,” “Sunnyland Train,” “So Unkind,” “Make A Little Love,” “My Baby’s Gone,” “Going Back Home Again,” “Make My Dreams Come True,” “Talk To Me, Baby,” “Happy Home,” “Blues Before Sunrise,” “Please Find My Baby,” “Wild About You,” “Baby Please Set A Date,” and “Early One Morning.”
In a 1977 essay for Guitar Player that has often been misquoted, Frank Zappa wrote, “Even though Elmore tended to play the same famous lick on every record, I got the feeling that he meant it.”
When I asked Zappa about this in an interview for Musician in ’79, he offered, “Here’s what that stuff is like: It transcends music and gets into realms of language. Reedledeedeedelee-deedelee-deedelee-deedelee-deedee transcends the music and gets into another realm. Then maybe a million guitar players want to go reedledeedee.”
As for the inherent social function surrounding blues (as opposed to other idioms), Zappa added, “I think a lot of that stuff is just that the guy wants to play that and wants to make that noise. That’s his message; he’s condensed his whole aesthetic into reedledee-deedelee-deedee. That’s where he’s at, and he’s not too concerned about whether or not somebody in a college someplace is going to perceive it as being a viable force for social change.”
Of course, James had other licks and rhythms in his arsenal. “Elmore’s Contribution To Jazz” employs slide over a quasi-mambo groove. He also didn’t always play slide, as evidenced by the instrumental “Up Jumped Elmore,” using Muddy Waters’ “Got My Mojo Working” as a jumping off point. Just some of the artists who have covered “Dust My Broom” include ZZ Top, Johnny Winter, Canned Heat, Howlin’ Wolf, Ike & Tina Turner, Otis Spann and James Cotton, Taj Mahal, Freddie King, Etta James, Albert King, Chuck Berry, and Dr. Feelgood.
Other artists dipped into Elmore’s catalog, such as Jimi Hendrix (“Bleeding Heart”), Stevie Ray Vaughan (“The Sky Is Crying”), Paul Butterfield Blues Band (“Shake Your Money-Maker”), the Allman Brothers Band (“One Way Out”), Eric Clapton (“It Hurts Me Too”), Fleetwood Mac (“I Held My Baby Last Night”), Earl Hooker (“Anna Lee”), the Yardbirds (“Done Somebody Wrong”), Hound Dog Taylor (“Hawaiian Boogie”), Charlie Musselwhite (“Cry For Me, Baby”), Ron Thompson (“Standing At The Crossroads”), and George Thorogood (“Madison Blues”).
Tragically, the man died of a heart attack in 1963 at 45 years old, too early to benefit from the ’60s blues revival. A few months ago, I snapped up a six-CD set with 94 tracks for 30 bucks. Even with all the stuff I have on CD or vinyl, it’s worth it to keep in the car and pull out some Elmo whenever the mood strikes me – which it does often.
© 2025 Dan Forte; all rights reserved by the author
This article originally appeared in VG’s May 2025 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
