“Just Tell Your Story”: Willie C. Cobbs’ Story and Stories
Willie C. Cobbs (1932- ) was born in Smale, Arkansas, near Monroe. As a youngster he was part of a family gospel quartet. He moved to Chicago in 1951, switching over to blues. Working with various artists, including Eddie Boyd and blues great Howlin’ Wolf. In 1961 he recorded his biggest hit, “You Don’t Love Me.” He moved back South in the1960s, playing various clubs and working on WDIA. He remained active as a vocalist, harmonica and bass player. This interview took place in Chicago, Illinois, June 3, 1995.
Barry Lee Pearson
University of Maryland
“I got into music through the church. My grandfather was a choir leader and then after I sung with them for a long time. I started off and got me a little quartet myself in high school. Then after we all broke up I went in the service from 1953-1957, and I came out it was hard getting a group together, so I felt like I could just do it on my own.
So to do it on my own I just started the blues, which blues to me is sisters and brothers to a good church music. I mean, it all come out of the church, you know I mean. We have strayed away from it now quite a bit, but it all came out of church. So that’s how I got started. This was in Monroe, Arkansas. Some of the first music I ever heard in my life was by Sonny Boy Williamson and Percy Mayfield. They was before BB. I mean, they had a station out of Nashville. I was born in Arkansas. They had a station in Nashville called WLAC and they had a guy on there called John R. and he used to play a lot of blues, and he’d be in the homes on all our radios, you know. He come in everybody’s home down there at night. He come on with a blues show. And I used to listen – listen to him and just sit there and cry my eyes out with tears. (Laughs.) Because that music was sounding so good to me.
I came to Chicago at an early age. I played around here in Chicago (1957) with Little Walter, Muddy Waters. I left here with Eddie Boyd, you know I played with some of the greats. You know what I mean, but I put out a few records myself, but I just never did really want to go for it for a career until lately. You know, I just did it for a pastime. I did a lot of writing, and I just had a family – I didn’t – I couldn’t trust myself to get out there on that limb too far with it you know. But I did a lot of work in Chicago back in the ‘50s and through the early ‘60s.
I remember the first time I got a chance to perform. It was here in Chicago. I went, I had just got discharged out of the service and I wanted to have my own band. There’s a club there called Cadillac Baby’s Lounge. And my brother, he played a little guitar. He played all that Jimmy Reed type of stuff and I had the harmonica, so all we needed was a drummer. I went and got my cousin to play drums, which he had never played no drums, but I was gonna train him. I bought the drums and we just were gonna have us a family thing. And I went down for an audition on 4th Street called Cadillac Baby’s Lounge, and we couldn’t sing but one song, ‘Oh, baby, you don’t have to go.’ (Laughs.)
And I’m supposed to be out there telling him I got one of the hottest bands in town. After that, when I left, I could hear him talking: “That man needs help. He got more guts. I would never walk up in a crowd of people like this and tell them I got something and with the stuff he brought up in here.” I heard “The drummer, he just every once in a while ‘Oh baby,’ he’d ‘wham,’ he’d hit the drum and he didn’t have no kind of groove, no kind of beat, no kind of stuff.” That was my first chance I had to get out there and I blew it. And I guess I been blowing a lot of chances. That’s the reason when I jump on stage now, I try to attack it with all I got. Because I promised the Lord if he ever gave me the second chance I will not let the people down or let Him down. So that’s the way I – I fight my blues shows today with all I got.
When I grew up a little, after I got my act together a little bit, I started playing with Eddie Boyd. And playing around a lot with the Howlin’ Wolf and them, all those cats back in those days. So like I was on a show. I was. Howlin’ Wolf used me for an opening up singer with his group once in a while and they used to call me, like, Black Elvis Pressley. I had just got out of the service. I was physically in good shape, could do a lot of dancing, you know. I was raised up in the jook house. And I never could dance with nobody but I could get me one of those chairs and get in the corner with that chair and I could do, hah, I could cut some steps that you ain’t never seen. And I was just, so at that time Elvis Pressley was making all that shaking, so everybody called me “Black Elvis,” because I was so active on the stage. And so one day Wolf caught my coattail and told me: [in Wolf’s voice] “Say, boy, listen here, now I want to let you understand you’re not the star of this show. You better get your ass, s.o.s. and set it down. You jump around here, twist around here, and break my mic cord, I’m gonna break these fourteens off in your you know what.”
So I had my ups and downs, but Wolf had his. Now, Wolf would fight too. I mean, now Wolf would knock, he’d knock the hell out of you. (He wasn’t gonna talk about) to it.
So, he got, back then, he got his respect. I was scared of Wolf. He had those big old hands, big old feet. He was really a sincere cat, you know what I mean. Like I’ve seen guys, a lot of times he’d be performing. Like a guy want to walk up and try to talk to him when he’s singing. He didn’t allow that whatsoever. He didn’t want nobody to break his concentration once he’d focus in on the crowd. Because he’s the one taught me about show business, he told me, he says: “To be a good entertainer, first of all you got to capture your audience’s attention. You got to get them going your way. Once you get them set right focused right on what you’re doing, then you work with them.” But he said, “As long as you got that one throwing bubble gum, the other throwing notes across the aisle to his old lady, you ain’t nothing to the people. Say you got to focus on whatever it takes to get them involved. You know he was a showman. He taught me. He’s responsible for me being like I am on the stage.
I’ve had some rough experiences even with some of those cats. I mean, some of them playing the same game: to get you on with half pay, do this shit. But really you wouldn’t have that trouble out of Wolf. But some of the rest of them I tried to work with, you know, I mean some of them had a big drinking problem, gambling problem. They get out there and gamble off all of the money, didn’t have nothing to pay the band.
When I went back South, in Arkansas, we played mostly clubs we played I got a chance to play like at Brinkley, Arkansas. BB, Bobby Bland, they used to go up there and play every Saturday night and I used to go up there and jam with them, around the clubs up there. But then that’s where we would go from house to house and just play a little bit, but everybody around there was so religious, they as kind of, they didn’t want us to sing the blues. They felt like it was selling your soul to the devil. But I didn’t see it that way. (Laughs.)
I used to broadcast on WDIA in Memphis every Saturday. They used to have a blues show on there. Well, you know, BB had his show named Pepticon for years and then after I was living around [Hughesville then] and I wrote ‘You don’t Love Me,’ in 1961, and then I ran across Rufus Thomas over there and they got very interested in me. So we started doing a broadcast on WDIA every Saturday evening and that went over real big, real great for us. That’s where we really got good responses. It was about an hour – I think we had an hour every Saturday.
It was just a typical blues show. We was just – they thought we were great. You know, we were local. Like I said, I didn’t want to do a lot of traveling and I guess that we were just about the best thing that was around there most likely basically it was better than some of the professional musicians come through. But we just didn’t want to leave away from around there and travel so we just did our show like we always play, like Rufus Thomas – you know he was off in the music and Honeyboy he was the piano player and Nat D. Williams – that’s back when DIA had that good revue. We used to do all the good ‘Starlight Revues’ for them because they were really into black music. When they play a lot of blues on DIA and they just thought it was something great for them and it was great for us. So we just did it every Saturday and it kind of broke everybody’s heart when we pulled away from it.
We would go to the radio station. We would do it directly from DIA, from the studio. The announcer was A.C. Williams and what they call the Booha on the radio at that time was Nat D. Williams and Rufus Thomas.
I’m not only trying to play the blues. I have lived the blues for 63 years. That’s the reason I feel I know the blues as well as anybody – the hurt, the pain, like I said, when I’ve heard them, when you hear, there’s nothing – no other feeling, to me, to when you hear a good blues, a real good blues that’s well put together, well performed. I don’t think it’s nothing more better. A lot of things that people got out today they call blues. I don’t call it blues when you start talking about ‘I went to the hotel with my baby laying down there naked on the floor’ and all that stuff. I don’t call that blues. I call that somebody just hustling, trying to get over. Blues is a story about real life. It’s something that happened to you in life or something, yes, but mostly that’s the reason every song I write, everything on the CD, I wrote it because my idea of life is different from others. I’m just real. That’s why I call it down-to-earth. I mean I just want to get right down to the real facts of life. I mean not what I hear exaggerating about I got a Cadillac car and I got all this. That’s not important. I mean just tell your story and I feel like that’s what blues is about.”
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 blues scene.