By SHARON EBERSON
Willie Dixon stands as tall in forging the foundation of American popular music as a certain “ten-dollar Founding Father” did in paving the foundation of our country. But unlike that other guy, Dixon comes with a ready-made catalog of hit songs.
In a premiere production by New Horizon Theater, Charles Dumas’ Blues Is the Roots tells Dixon’s often gut-wrenching, always inspiring, music-filled story.
The title comes from the Dixon quote, “The blues is the roots, the rest is the fruits.”
Ripe for the telling and befitting Dumas’ background as an actor, emeritus professor at Penn State and social activist, the biomusical is told from a historian’s viewpoint. With several among the cast of nine rotating as narrators, Dixon’s life and contributions are revealed within the context of his times, from the Jim Crow South, to the Great Migration and the heart of the Civil Rights Movement.
Had Blues is the Roots been billed as a concert on the history of American music from the 1920s to the 1970s, with this cast and these voices, that alone would be worth the trip to New Horizon’s home for the season, the O’Reilly Theater. But framed in the context of Dixon, a man who helped define 50 years of music and social activism – from the Delta Blues to the Chicago Blues, from chain gang to heavyweight boxer to conscientious objector, from the British invasion to a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – the show serves a higher purpose, along with its parade of classic tunes.
Not familiar with the name Willie Dixon? You may know his songs from the white artists who covered them, several initially without credit or compensation. The Rolling Stones – who take their name from a Muddy Waters song – had an early No. 1 UK hit with Dixon’s “Little Red Rooster.” Mick and the lads were often the exception in giving the writer his due. For example, Johnny Rivers may have had a hit with “The Seventh Son,” but Mississippi native Dixon was the seventh son, and among the seven of 14 siblings in his family who survived childbirth.
Eric Clapton covered Dixon songs throughout his career, and Led Zeppelin eventually paid a hefty price – settled out of court – for cobbling “Whole Lotta Love” from the Dixon songs “You Need Love” and “Bring It on Home.”
Singing the blues came naturally to Dixon, whose hardscrabble early life hardened him to injustice.
Sam Lothard channels the imposing, 6-foot, 6-inch songwriter, from a mischievous child in his church choir to pioneering songwriting machine and producer, to championing the rights of Black musicians vs. the white recording industry.
As a teenager, Dixon was arrested during a time when many Black men were railroaded to prison farms and forced into unpaid labor. Projections of historical mistreatment of young Black men, including lynchings, are shown, while Angelique A. Strothers breaks our hearts with a soulful version of the folk song “Another Man Done Gone.”
(Image: Courtesy of New Horizon Theater, Inc.)
Dixon, depicted by Lothhard as escaping the work farm in an effective slow-motion dash, soon came North. With his imposing size, he became a boxing heavyweight, winning an amateur title and finding work as a sparring partner to Joe Louis. He quit the profession after four fights, in a dispute with his manager.
Dixon was not one to settle for less than he was due, and the blues were his ticket to more.
“We would be invisible in the world without the blues,” he declared.
Dixon was singing with a group that mirrored The Ink Spots, deliciously portrayed in the show, when he met lifelong friend Muddy Waters (Nickolas Page) during a recording session, and found his way to Chess Records.
The duo made the white-owned studio a Chicago hit factory, with one of the Chess brothers (Cole McGlumphy) declaring that his company creates dreams, “and Willie is the chief dreammaker.”
In 1977, Dixon would sue the record company over royalties due to Chess’s “grossly undercompensated” Black artists.
Michele Bankole plays Dixon’s wife, Marie, the woman with whom Dixon settled down until his death in 1992, at age 76. Among several characters, Bankole memorably lets loose as Etta James, with a voice that growls or purrs or belts on command.
Bankole and Strothers, who also owns the spotlight in a Koko Taylor solo, are standouts in a production filled with them.
Lothard anchors the show with his commanding presence and sweet vocals, while exuberant Mils “MJ” James struts and leaps and pulls classic moves as Sonny Boy Williams, Chuck Berry and nearly a dozen characters, including a scene where we discover how Berry’s hit “Maybelline” got its title.
For Dixon’s days at Chess, we mostly see Lothard with clipboard in hand, pulling out page after page of hit songs on an as-needed basis. Muddy Waters, despite the artist’s greater name recognition, is portrayed mostly as the beneficiary of Dixon’s songwriting prowess.
Blues Is the Roots is told as a flashback, starting with a courtroom scene and an explanation to a young white couple (Jenny Malarkey and Lance Joos) as to who originated a certain song – Eric Clapton or the Rolling Stones? They are schooled by Pittsburgh stage veteran Kevin Brown, whose roles include Chicago Bluesmen Howlin’ Wolf and Otis Rush.
The narrative and music then move in a linear fashion from Dixon’s childhood and back to that courtroom, where we learn the fate of the suit brought against Chess, and a later case, brought against Led Zeppelin.
The impressive parade of songs comes at you in waves, although there is no list or musical director noted in the program for the show.
The cast excels within the confines of recorded orchestrations, timed seamlessly by sound director Wayne Gaines. Scenes flow one into the other with narrative bridges allowing for the ensemble to go through quick character changes. For example, Malarkey puts her long hair up in a hat when portraying men, blonde McGlumphy dons a loose black wig to portray a rock ‘n’ roller.
Blues Is the Roots unfurls on an unadorned two-tier stage, fitted into the far end of a former third-floor rehearsal space, where the walls are now covered in photographs of the artists influenced by Dixon. A single line of tables at the foot of the stage extends the action and a feeling of immersion in the intimate space.
Director Herb Newsome has designed elaborate sets for some New Horizon shows, but in this case, he lets the performances unfold with just those costume changes or signature moves defining characters, and projections that indicate relevant moments of racial injustice and musical history.
They help tell the larger-than-life tale of Willie Dixon, and the debt Black artists and music fans owe to his talents and tenacity.
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The performance was dedicated to the late Jean Bryant and inspirational ancestors of the cast and creative team, listed via projection at the end of the show
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In the floors below the New Horizon production, the Pittsburgh Public Theater is presenting the one-woman show Dragon Lady. On opening night Thursday, with Blues starting a half-hour before it was curtain-up on the final preview of Dragon Lady, there wasn’t much crossover of theater-goers or parking issues. Blues is the Roots runs under two hours with no intermission. Fridays and Saturdays, however, may be a different story, including another opening right next door – Pittsburgh CLO’s premiere of the musical The Perfect Mate.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Blues Is the Roots runs with no intermission, through February 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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