Champion Jack Dupree
William Thomas 'Champion Jack' Dupree earned his nickname through his skills as a boxer: fortunately he quit the fight game in 1940 with his hands still intact. He took New Orleans piano all over Europe before settling down to voluntary European exile, spending several years as quite the most famous bluesman in Halifax, Yorkshire, as well as living in Switzerland and Germany.
In his later years he took up painting (one work selling for as much as $7,000), but his principal achievements were a lifetime of ambassadorship for his personal take on his hometown piano tradition; and the influence of his early records on later Crescent City keyboard titans like FATS DOMINO and PROFESSOR LONGHAIR. That blues artists have led hard lives is a commonplace (and, considering the endemic poverty and racism with which they have had to contend, an eminently justifiable one), but Jack Dupree's life was harder than most.
Born in New Orleans on 4 July 1910 (or 1909, as the case may be), he was orphaned as a small child when the Ku Klux Klan burnt down his family's home, and grew up, like Louis Armstrong ten years earlier, in the city's Coloured Waifs Home. When, with his recording career barely launched, he joined the U.S. Navy to fight in World War II, he was captured by the Japanese and spent two years in one of their world-famous prison camps. His most celebrated subject matter was the street-life of the African-American underclass; his music was always patently the work of a tough guy with a generous heart and a sense of humour. His style was thoroughly New Orlean, albeit modified by extensive travel. Even before he�d relocated to Indianapolis in 1940, he spent time in New York City (his adopted hometown between 1945 and 1960) and his vocal approach incorporated the 'ooh-well-well' near-falsettos of the Delta. The title of his UK-recorded 1964 album From New Orleans To Chicago is an appropriate one: Dupree's piano has taken exactly that musical journey without him ever doing more than pass through the Windy City.
Dupree died in his home in Hanover, Germany, on 21 January 1992; fortunately, he returned to New Orleans a couple of times in his last years and recorded a pair of fine autumnal albums produced by Ron Levy. Dupree finally came home, and so did his music.
Early Dupree, recorded in New York City: the 20 solo Davis sides are preponderantly but the'46 batch manifest the Dupree who inspired the young Domino and Longhair. The tough, rocking ensemble tracks on the Krazy Kat album heavily feature the expert city blues electric guitar of BROWNIE McGHEE, moonlighting from his folkie activities and, on one decidedly Chicago-style 1953 session, bringing SONNY TERRY along with him. �Shake Baby Shake' and the closing Shim Sham Shimmy' rock considerably harder than you'd expect from New York City blues; McGhee's guitar isn't as ferociously distorted as Willie Johnson's on HOWLIN' WOLF's Memphis sides, butt it's still a long way from the clean Carolina finger-picking with which his name is generally associated.
Whoever supervises the packaging of King Records' reissues clearly can't be bothered with unnecessary trimmings like liner notes or session details; so all I can offer is that these tracks were (probably) cut in Cincinnati and New York between 1953 and 1955. Good-humourered, light-hearted small-band sides which demonstrate how polished and confident an entertainer Dupree had become,they concentrate on comic monologues like 'Tongue Tied Blues; 'Hair Lip, Blues and 'Me And My Mule; despite the occasional deeper blues Iike 'Camille, a first cousin to the 'Louise' beloved of JOHN LEE HOOKER and MISSISSIPPI FRED McDOWELL. Burning question: is the (excellent) guitar and harp by Brownie and Sonny? Alternative title: Having A Hoot With Champion Jack Dupree.
The homecoming albums, recorded in 1990 and 1991 under the watchful ear of Ron Levy, 'Roomful Of Blues' keyboardist/leader and former ALBERT KING and B.B. KING sideman. Dupree coasts through the first one genially enough, but Forever And Ever is the one which really delivers: all the way from the scarifying autobiographical deep blues 'They Gave Me Away' through to 'Yella Pocahontas' the most overtly Nwawlean piece he's ever recorded, it�s a fine swan song for a true prodigal son of the Crescent City.
More late-'40s Dupree/McGhee sides are included on Brownie McGhee 1944-1955 (Travelin� Man TM CD04): the Champ takes lead vocals on two of them. Dupree's most celebrated album is Blues From The Gutter (Atlantic,1958, currently unavailable) which includes a terrific 'Junker's Blues'. Raw Blues (London 820 479-2) includes a couple of outtakes, Featuring JOHN MAYALL On harp and ERIC CLAPTON on guitar, from From New Orleans To Chicago (Decca,1964, unavailable) one of several well-regarded Dupree albums cut in London. Others include When You Feel The Feeling You Was Feeling (Blue Horizon,1968, unavailable), and The Legacy of The Blues Vol. 3 (Sonet SNTCD 626); the latter, recorded McGuinness-Flint colleague Benny Gallagher (later of Gallagher in 1971, features ex-Bluesbreaker Hughie Flint on drums with his and Lyle, etc.) partnering him on bass: its best shot is the uncompromisingly militant curtain-raiser 'Vietnam Blues'.
�
If you can contribute anything to this site then please use this link.