“The blues is the roots, everything else is the fruits.” – Willie Dixon
By SHARON EBERSON
Pittsburgh actor Sam Lothard will channel blues pioneer Willie Dixon in the premiere production of Blues Is the Roots, a biomusical by actor, activist and Penn State professor emeritus Charles Dumas.
With Muddy Waters, award-winning musician-songwriter-producer Dixon is recognized as the chief shaper of the post–World War II Chicago blues sound, He also is considered to be a link between the blues and rock ‘n’ roll, having worked with rock legends, and was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Dixon died in 1992, at age 76.
Dumas, an actor and, briefly, a lawyer and Democratic candidate to the House of Representatives, is professor emeritus in the School of Theatre at Penn State, where he was the first African American to receive tenure. Dixon was his great uncle.
“He worked with Chuck Berry, was one of the inspirations for Mick Jagger, and he went to England for the American Folk and Blues festival in the early ‘60s,” Dumas told Penn State’s Daily Collegian in 2021. “There was this guy who hung around with uncle Willie, ‘cause he loved blues music. He was this guy named Mick Jagger.”
Dumas’s play recounts Dixon looking back on his life, including his days as a producer and sideman at Chess Records, where he performed with and/or wrote for many of the giants of blues, rock and folk, including Bo Diddley, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Jeff Beck, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Howling Wolf. Dixon was a co-writer on Bob Dylan’s “My Wife’s Home Town.” We also hear songs from Waters, Berry, Etta James, Koko Taylor and more.
Among Dixon’s studio albums is “I Am the Blues,” released in 1970, leading to the title of his autobiography, with co-author Don Snowden.
A well-known August Wilson quote, about the playwright’s own relationship to the American musical art form, was, “I’m not influenced by the blues. I am the blues.”
For Blues is the Roots, Herb Newsome directs a cast including Lothard as Dixon, Michelle Bankole (Marie, Etta James), Kevin Brown (Lionel, Howlin’ Wolf, Otis Rush), Mils James (Little Walter, Chuck Berry, Sonny Boy Williamson), Lance Joos (Jim, Mick Jagger), Jenny Malarkey (Sara, Recruiter), Cole McGlumphy (Leonard Chess, Crush), Nickolas Page (Muddy Waters) and Angelique A. Strothers (Daisey, Koko Taylor).
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Blues Is the Roots runs with no intermission, February 8-18, 2024, at New Horizon Theater’s home for the season, the Helen Wayne Rauh Rehearsal Hall of the Pittsburgh Public Theater’s O’Reilly Theater, 621 Penn Ave., Downtown. Tickets: https://www.onthestage.tickets/show/new-horizon-theater/.
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