Eddie Cotton: I Can Tell by the Way You Watch Me That You Are a Guitar Player

By Dr. Barry Lee Pearson

Eddie Cotton, born in Jackson in 1970, represents a thriving Jackson, Mississippi blues community. Cutting his teeth as music director of his father’s church in Clinton, he combines the skills he acquired playing guitar in the Church of God in Christ tradition, the jazz program at Jackson State University and 25 years of blues experience on the local jook scene. His outstanding blues credentials include blood ties to the Mississippi Sheiks and mentors and cronies such as Grady Champion, Zac Harmon and King Edward.

Interview with Eddie Cotton, Salisbury Maryland, September 8, 2019

Eddie Cotton: “I grew up in the Church of God in Christ which started up over in Lexington, Mississippi, under Bishop Charles Harrison Mason. I’m from Clinton, which is Hinds County. That’s the city between Jackson and Bolton, Mississippi. My people lived in Bolton and Jackson. That’s how we ended up in Clinton. We moved to Clinton.

The Church of God in Christ or Cogic has never been conservative against any kind of instrument. If you have an instrument you bring them to the Cogic church and play them. My dad was in the ministry and from a child I’ve always been fascinated by instruments having been introduced to them at such an early age through the church. You know they just always fascinated me and I wanted to be part of that.

First, all of us start out on drums. We always had musical instruments in the house. Actually, I started playing piano before I started playing guitar because we had one in the house. Later on my dad bought me my own guitar. So between drums, piano and guitar, I diddle daddled with all of them pretty much around the same time. He bought me an old harmony guitar and a National amp, which now I know what it is but then I didn’t know. It was a National tube amp and the guitar had those little up and down switches on it. That’s pretty much what I started on.

My dad opened up his church in 1978. I was playing in church before that but he opened his church in 1978 and I’ve been a church musician’s leader since 1978 and I’m still minister of music. He died in 2009 but I’m still the church’s minister of music in the church ministry. Cogic church is very musical. Music is a big part of that church. We used to have this thing called testimony service when everybody used to just get up and sing out and testify and so if you were a musician you had to use your ear to try to play behind anybody. Some of them you could and some of them you couldn’t, you know. But if you couldn’t play behind them they said you couldn’t play.

And when you are arranging the offering we were taught that’s just as much a part of worship as anything else. Using liturgical music, that’s what they call it, you had to be aware you couldn’t always play the same thing at the same time. You had to know what part of the service you was playing in so when they begin the worship of giving, depending on the situation, a lot of times it’s upbeat. Other times it’s a little solemn playing that B-3 organ, which is probably the lead instrument in the Cogic church. Once it was guitar, now most Cogic churches want a B-3 organ. Hammond B-3 or C3 or a smaller Hammond.

Rosetta Tharpe and BB King came out of the Cogic church. If people play guitar like them, they probably had been affiliated with the Church of God in Christ because it was the only church that allowed electric guitars. They welcomed them. Back in the ‘40s, ’50 and ‘60s, people were very conservative but the Cogic church welcomed the guitars.

I’m actually kin to the Chatmons. I didn’t know the Mississippi Sheiks, they were before my time. I might have could have met Sam Chatmon but I didn’t because he was living when I was a young buck. But I know that I’m kin to the Chatmons’ bloodline. Even though my dad was a preacher, I still lived in what we consider the hood. So when you come out of the church everything that a person could be exposed to is still around. You used to hear blues all the time even if it wasn’t no more than hearing my music or hearing other people in the neighborhood play blues. So we always heard it.

When I was six years old I studied music at the YWCA in Jackson on Farish Street, and I was introduced to some blues by my teacher at that which you all know was Zac Harmon. Zac Harmon was the teacher. He would play blues every now and then when I would come for my lesson. When I heard him play some Delta blues, it felt real good to me. I had heard blues in the neighborhood that sounded good. It had the same kind of feel. But I’m not talking about so much urban blues. I would hear Howlin’ Wolf, BB King, Elmo James. Blues stations touched down on that stuff more so than they do now in the black community.

We were at church one day and my sister recorded me just like you’re doing now and she took it to Jackson State. She was going there at that time and she played it for some friends that she knew. And when they heard the tape they gave me a full scholarship to come play guitar in the jazz band. Dr. Russell Thomas gave me an opportunity.

He said, “I want you to come play guitar for me in my jazz ensemble.” And so that opened up a whole new world of theory to me. I was playing certain things but I didn’t know what I was playing and through reading charts I got acquainted with music theory the way music works, the mathematics of it, and I’m very thankful for that.

So I went on and when I became a young man, 21 years old, I had a friend which was 60-something and he was an ex-Marine by the name of Bob Edda and he played that old standard jazz, “Polka Dot Moon Beam,” and all that kind of stuff. And what interested me in what Bob was doing, he had those beautiful jazz chords and I wanted them. I wanted them to put with what I do.

He would take me to parts of town I didn’t know, where you just walk in and hear live musicians. He took me to a particular spot called Sam’s Westside, which at that time had Sonny Rydell and JTS Pressington playing blues and I enjoyed it so the next weekend I wanted to go back. See, I thought I was gonna see the same thing. I didn’t understand that they rotated bands. King Edward was there that night. So I sat there and watched King and he told me, “I can tell by the way you watch me that you are a guitar player. Come on up and sit in.” And we just had fun. I played with him and he enjoyed what I was doing and so he invited me to the Subway Lounge to play rhythm guitar for him and he hired me. So he got me started in the blues business and how it worked. King Edwards showed me the ropes. I watched him and learned this is how you make a living playing music out here. He was from Chicago, him and his brother Nolan Struck had migrated there. So King has been a little bit of everywhere and I listened to him.

I play in the pocket which is mainly catching a groove. It’s not gonna be many chords involved in it. It mainly keeps one chord. One of the masters of it is James Brown. James don’t have a lot of chords and things in his music. He goes on one thing and he works it, works the ticket. It works in your mind and works in your soul. And after a while you can’t help it. You cannot help it if the pocket is deep. If somebody is playing it correctly, it’s a groove, it’s a feel. And I don’t care who you are, gonna feel it. Any style or genre of music can have a pocket if somebody can play. Some people don’t play in the pocket, but I play in the pocket. That comes from playing in the church, playing services. My daddy didn’t want you all over the place so he can minister to the people. So you had to be very disciplined and clever with it. So that’s what we reach for now: the pocket, the groove. My drummers, they use combinations but they have to be clever where they put them because for the most part you just want that strong back beat.  There’s little differences between blues and church music. It takes the same mindset to play because you just can’t play, you have to feel. It’s very important that there’s a feeling and a certain delivery. It’s not a whole lot of difference.

So songs are based on fiction and non-fiction, just like stories, but all songs are telling a story or mean to tell a story of something; what I’m saying it’s education, if you listen to it.  As far as the church goes we are singing of religion, not so much religious experiences that people experience in life. If you listen to some testimony that I have heard in my lifetime, it wasn’t nothing but the blues. People in the church are going through the same thing people in the secular world go through. People are people. See you can build a building, as long as that building is empty, all you have is a building. What makes a difference is the people. When the people come whatever the situation is, then it’s gonna be different. When people come people pray and they do what people do, good and evil. Whether they’re in the church, well, you’re still dealing with people. Everybody thinks that if you go to church you’re perfect. No. The church is for the sin-sick soul, to help people through situations the same as people, you know, out here going through situations in the secular world. The church may be the answer for it. It’s not always about religion. Our leaders show you ways out of things, where God shows you the way out of things. Some people go to the streets or to psychiatry, but you can save some money if you just go get some guidance from some people that have overcome the same situation that you had. If it’s nothing else, it’s a message in what they’re singing about.

Son House sings that song, “Death Letter.”  A lot of us haven’t been there yet, when you have to bury a woman that you were in love with. But it’s letting you know that in time it’s gonna happen. They gonna put you in the ground or you gonna put her in the ground. A change gonna come. That’s got to be a hurting thing. I heard one man say, “When I lost my dad, I felt it but when I lost my mama, he said it was different.” Different feelings. Death Letter Blues, he sang that song with such emotion. He is putting you in that situation. Of course he was a preacher at one point and his problem was he couldn’t, from my understanding, he couldn’t separate the two because people have styled the blues as the devil’s music. You can’t play the blues and be in religion too. You know what I’m saying.

Well, I don’t have time to argue with a fool and let me tell you what I’m saying. If you open up your eyes and try and see then you will see that they are one and the same. Hear what I’m saying? But if you are trying to be judgmental through religion, I have learned that I don’t have time for that. I don’t have time because you’re not looking: your eyes are not open. That’s just your opinion other than if you’d had studied or whatever, you’re not qualified to make that judgment no way. I’m qualified to make that judgment. I’ve done both of them. And I’m still doing both. I have met good people in the secular mode. I’ve met good people in the church. I’ve met bad people in the church and I met bad people out. But we’re still dealing with people. I don’t have time for some nut trying to give his opinion or what somebody told him. I really don’t. so that’s who I am.

Cogic, it’s a church that has I guess what you call freedom of praise. It’s not strange for somebody to get happy and express themselves. Matter of fact, it’s strange when they don’t. that’s in the Cogic church. church of God in Christ. It’s mostly come to the altar, repent and let’s get it on. From that point sin no more. You can do that over and over. There was a scripture in the Bible talks about forgiveness and one man asks “How many times am I supposed to forgive thou?” Just as many times as God has forgiven you and God forgives them over and over with Grace and Mercy.

An old bluesman told me one time, said, ‘No, Eddie, gospel, if you listen to gospel, gospel sings of the future. It sings about the afterlife. Do you know anybody other than Jesus that ever died and came back? Do you know anybody? That ever died and came back? I’m talking about got embalmed, after they put that needle and pull all the blood out and come back? So he told me, say, “Eddie, you have past, present and you have future.” He said, “Most blues is about a person’s past, most blues is about a person’s present, who is qualified to sing of the future?”

So he asked me, “Who has the truest music?” I don’t want to discourage people, but it puts things in perspective. I thought about what he said and he’s telling the truth. Really, the only thing I can really sing about that would be the truth is the past and where I am now. If I sing about tomorrow, I’m taking a chance. It ain’t promised. I ain’t been there yet. A bluesman (Cadillac George Harris) told me that and that was a great message for me. If you singing about heaven, hell, you singing about something that you ain’t really qualified to speak on. You don’t know nobody ever died and come back. I mean, a man can say that, you can’t prove him right, you can’t prove him wrong. Don’t nobody know. Not really. I mean you ain’t qualified to speak about death. You ain’t been there yet.”

__________
Dr. Barry Lee Pearson, Professor in the English Department at the University of Maryland, stands as the most steadfast supporter of the local acoustic blues scene in the greater Washington, D.C., area and beyond. As a musician, author, college lecturer, folklorist, and personal friend to the musicians, he has been the voice of this regional and national blues scene.