Originally posted to Instagram, March 11, 2018
When Jim Morrison sang of "Texas Radio and the Big Beat", he said it "comes out of the Virginia swamps, with a backbeat narrow and hard to master". I remember being very confused by that line, until I recently learned that it doesn't refer to Texas radio, but to the big beat... the blues that Jim would sneak out to listen to in the roadhouses and juke joints on the road that leads out of Alexandria, Virginia, where Jim lived as a teenager.
By the early 60s, many of the old bluesmen had moved up from the rural South to urban areas like Washington, DC and the surrounding counties. One of those was "Big Chief" Ellis, an Alabama native who had been a gambler in his younger years. Later in life, he settled down in the DC area and opened a liquor store. He continued sing and play piano, though, and recorded this album with guitarists Brownie McGhee, Tarheel Slim, and John Cephas in the 70s, after Jim Morrison and the younger generation of blues rockers had reignited interest in a style of music that had long been seen as old, rural, and terribly uncool. I'd like to think that as a teenager, Jim got a chance to listen to Chief play "Dices", a song no doubt inspired by his younger years as a gambler who couldn't resist the urge to risk his last dime.
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