Willie Dixon: the man behind The Rolling Stones, The Doors and Led Zeppelin classics
It’s November 1964, and a young British invasion band is performing their new hit on national television, fresh from recording it in Chicago. Mick Jagger pouts at the camera as he mimes to the record, while Brian Jones’ superb slide guitar faithfully imitates the sound of his teenage years. ‘Little Red Rooster’ will go on to be the second UK number one single by The Rolling Stones.
Fast-forward four years, and a psych-rock band is taking Europe by storm on their first world tour. The crowd goes wild as Jim Morrison wails over the intro to a song from their smash debut album. It’s a bluesy number with rough edges that arguably rocks harder than anything else they put out.
The music builds to a crescendo with John Denmore’s fizzing guitar fills and Ray Manzarek’s off-beat jazz embellishments. “I’m a back door man!” screams Morrison. The Doors are at their fiery best.
A year later, another band raised on the blues would release a record that rocked harder than anything anyone had heard up to that point. The opening song to Led Zeppelin II is an absolute monster. “You need cooling / Baby I’m not fooling,” it begins. “I’m gonna send ya / Back to schooling.”
When you delve into the story behind ‘Whole Lotta Love’, you find it’s no accident that it goes on to reference back to ‘Back Door Man’. The link between the two pieces, as well as ‘Little Red Rooster’ and an entire pantheon of rock and soul classics, is one man. His name may not register even among blues fans today, but his game-changing impact on world music is undeniable. The man’s name is Willie Dixon.
But who was Willie Dixon?
Like almost all the pioneers of electric blues music, Willie Dixon was born in the cotton fields of Mississippi and raised on a diet of gospel music and duke joints. An accomplished songwriter in his early 20s, he moved to Chicago in 1936 in search of a career in music.
This was a time when B.B. King and Bo Diddley weren’t yet in their teens, and Muddy Waters was slumming it around the Mississippi Delta on his acoustic guitar. Dixon was the first to make the jump, travelling north up Highway 51 to usher in a new era for the blues.
After singing and playing his signature upright bass in a vocal jazz group, Dixon was imprisoned as a conscientious objector for refusing to fight in World War II on grounds of racial discrimination. He returned to music after the war and finally landed his big break.
From session musician to master songwriter
Dixon was recruited by brothers Leonard and Phil Chess for their new record company not long after Muddy Waters in the late 1940s. His initial role was just playing bass in studio sessions, a role he continued to perform until he left the label in the 1960s.
Indeed, he played bass on some of the most iconic and important recordings in the history of popular music, including Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny B. Goode’ and Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘Smokestack Lightning’. But his talent as a songwriter meant he was soon playing a far more integral role in the entire Chess operation.
In 1951, he began his tenure as a full-time composer, as well as acting as a producer on records released by Chess subsidiary Checker Records. His first major songwriting contributions to Chess were ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’, which would go on to be one of Muddy Waters’ defining songs, and ‘I Just Want to Make Love to You’.
Chess artist Etta James recorded the latter composition for her debut album in 1960. James’ version is easily recognisable today, as it’s become the staple soundtrack for Diet Coke adverts, which made it a surprise chart hit across Europe in the mid-1990s.
In 1956, Bo Diddley recorded Dixon’s song ‘Pretty Thing’ for Checker, which would go on to inspire the name of British invasion band The Pretty Things. Meanwhile, Willie Mabon’s recording of Dixon’s ‘The Seventh Son’ gets a namecheck in the title track on Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited.
Dixon wrote ‘Talk to Me Baby’ for Elmore James, which Fleetwood Mac and Eric Clapton would later cover. And his composition ‘Spoonful’, recorded by Howlin’ Wolf in 1960, has gone on to become a blues standard.
Led Zeppelin later faced a plagiarism suit from Dixon for using the lyrics and melody of his song ‘You Need Love’ for ‘Whole Lotta Love’. It was one of two pieces on Led Zeppelin II that directly lifted from the Chess songwriter, along with ‘Bring It On Home’.
But beyond Zeppelin, The Doors and The Rolling Stones, we can see how Willie Dixon’s impact is woven into the fabric of modern rock music and popular culture. His name rightly adorns the gate of a memorial garden at the site of Chess Records today. His real legacy, though, whether most people realise it or not, is the 500 songs he authored, more than 60 of which have made it onto the records of other artists.