Recently I was in my hometown of Seattle for a gig. I walked around downtown and dropped in at the Pike Place Market. I made my way past the guys flinging monstrous salmons and headed for the back of the Market, where a piece of my personal history hangs about sixty feet above Western Avenue.
When I started playing music in Seattle in the early 1970s, there were only a couple of clubs that regularly hired blues bands—the Place Pigalle (aka “Pig Alley” or “the Pig”) in the Market and the Boulder Lounge right around the corner on First Avenue. I was in a band led by the great guitarist/singer Isaac Scott, who held down the regular gig at the Pig. Tom McFarland and his group were the mainstays at the Boulder Lounge.
The Boulder Lounge was furnished with black and red leather booths and featured not only Tom and his band but Korean go-go dancers of vague immigration status dancing in cages. The Pig was one of the last remnants of Seattle’s wild, bare-knuckle waterfront past. It was a ramshackle wreck of a place with an ancient bar, an even older wood stove that barely kept the interior from icing over in the winter, and a sort of a stage against the back wall. The base clientele were neighborhood derelicts and winos, but on when we played on weekends the core crowd would be augmented by aging beatniks, young wanna-be hipsters, and guys off whatever Navy ship happened to be tied up down the street. Most of the time the Pig was just a harmless dive, but fights could break out in a hurry and it could get really weird in there. I once saw two guys break the ends off of beer pitchers against the bar and go at each other with the jagged pieces, and another night some inspired patron hurled a keg of beer out the window and crushed the roof of a car parked down below on Western.
One night in August in 1975 I was playing there with Isaac’s band when a group of well-dressed folks came down the rickety stairs and into the club. Any kind of stylishness stood out in that venue, so we noted their arrival. The band took a break and I headed to the bar. One of the sharply dressed guys came up to me and introduced himself: “I’m so-and-so from Ada Records in Bellevue, and I’m here with the world’s greatest harmonica player. He’s in town for a big show tomorrow and we were wondering if it would be okay with you if he got up and performed a couple of tunes and plugged the show.”
This announcement put me at ease, because these people were obviously crazy, just like the rest of the people in the Pig. This was not a venue that the world’s greatest harmonica player would home in on, no legitimate record-company executives would be caught dead in there, and none of the people in the club could have afforded a ticket to some big show.
“Hey,” I told him, “If the world’s greatest harmonica player wants to give me a half-hour break, I’m all for it.”
So I cleared it with Isaac and a few minutes later this edgy guy with a pony tail got up on stage with the band and launched into a couple of tunes delivered with a level of dynamism that was not usually experienced by the Pig’s patrons. And sure enough the guy did play some nice harp, in a kind of souped-up style. Afterwards, Mr. Energy and his entourage said some hasty thank yous and disappeared into the Seattle night.
The next day I attended a blues festival held in Sicks’ Stadium, Seattle’s old minor-league ballpark. It was an unreal lineup of acts, including Howlin’Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Albert Collins, and Margie Evans. Early in the show the emcee announces “Please welcome, from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Aces, Straights, and Shuffles featuring the great Kim Wilson,” and out comes a band fronted by the pony-tailed guy from the Pig. They did a powerful set, and I filed away the name “Kim Wilson” in the memory banks.
Flash forward to two years later. After spending time in Memphis, New Orleans, and Lafayette, Louisiana, I finally ran out of money in Austin, Texas. (I think I had subconsciously planned it that way.) I scored a day job and a cheap apartment and went looking for the music. I asked some people I had met what there was in town in terms of blues, and they recommended that I check out this young guitarist who had just put together his first band—Stevie Ray Vaughan. I checked out Stevie with the Triple Threat Review (Stevie, W.C. Clark, and Lou Ann Barton) at the Rome Inn. During the break I followed Stevie, introduced myself as a harp player from Seattle, and asked about sitting in.
"A harp player, huh?" he said. "Do you know Kim Wilson from the Fabulous Thunderbirds?"
I told Stevie that I had been hearing about the T-Birds on the blues grapevine, that I didn’t know that Kim was their harp player, but that I had met and heard Kim a couple of years before in Seattle. Stevie asked me what I thought of Kim's playing. I told him that he was really good but maybe a little busy, or words to that effect. Stevie gave me a confounded look. Then, as if I was a character in an improbable scene in a cheesey movie, Kim Wilson, just returned from the T-Birds first tour of the Northeast, walked through the door a few minutes later.
So it was Kim and not me who sat in that night. Kim pulled out a chromatic and threw out an insanely huge harp sound on George Smith's "Juicy Harmonica" instrumental. After that ear-opening triumph, he leaned back and launched into the incredible vocal intro to 'Otis Rush' "I Can't Quit You Baby." At some point I slipped quietly out the side door.
I got to know Kim pretty well during my time in Austin, and he inspired me to really put time into my own harp playing in those days. Since then I see him when I can. Over the years I’ve had the thrill of seeing Kim play with Muddy Waters; trade licks with Walter Horton; and catch him on tour with the T-Birds, his blues-only bands, and with an Antone’s West junket that included Buddy Guy, Luther Tucker, and Jimmy Rogers.
Kim has a monster work ethic, impeccable taste, and unsurpassed chops as both a singer and a harp player. I can testify to the fact that the legendary blues performers are among his biggest fans. I recently spent time in Chicago with Billy Boy Arnold, who got harmonica lessons as a twelve year old from John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson and who has heard every harp player since. Here’s what he had to say about Kim Wilson: “There are lots of dynamite harp players. Kim has everything Little Walter had but he’s Kim. He’s got his own thing. Kim can play all night without repeating himself, and that’s what makes Kim the top man.”
Turns out that guy from Ada Records back in 1975 was dead right after all.
(Click here to read my profile of, and interview with, Kim Wilson from my book, “Harmonicas, Harps, and Heavy Breathers.”)