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mongst many stand-out tracks is a ripping take on
Memphis Minnie’s Black Rat. “My parents used to sing
that song,” says Koko. “They weren’t professional
musicians they just loved to sing. They’d be in the cot-
ton fields pickin’ cotton an’ my dad would be behind
his mule singing [sings] ‘one black raaaaaat’ [laughs]. She was
great, Memphis Minnie. I never did see her perform but I used to
listen to her records an’ I always liked the way she did sing. Bessie
Smith? You bet I listened to her. She was one helluva singer alright.
I listened to all them girls an’ respected all of ‘em. Big Mama
Thornton, I thought she had the greatest voice. I always hoped I
could sing as well as her. We did some shows together when I was
comin’ up an’ I tell you, she didn’t take no stuff off no men.”
Well, I say, I imagine you don’t either. “You bet I don’t. With
me, when I’m with my musicians I don’t want no half steppin’.
They don’t get away with nothin’. See, I’ve learned that if you
don’t stand up for yourself there ain’t nobody goin’ to stand up
for you. When I’m on the road there’s no foolin’ around. See, with
my band I treat them like gentlemen an’ they treat me like a lady.”
Koko’s medical recovery coincided with her receiving the
National Heritage Fellowship award from the National Endow-
ment For The Arts. Alongside the prestige there’s a cheque for
$20,000. “It was a great honour. And when they gave me the
money it was even better. The first time in my life someone gave
me something for free. The only money I’ve ever had is from
singing. But, anyway, my daddy always told us to take the bad
with the good, the good with the bad, and total it all up.”
How to total up a life like Taylor’s? Born Cora Walton in 1928
just outside of Memphis in Bartlett, Tennessee, Koko was an
orphan by age 11. Along with her five brothers and sisters, Koko
developed a love for music from a mixture of gospel she heard in
church and blues she heard on radio stations beaming in from
Memphis. Even though her father encouraged her to sing only
gospel music, Koko and her siblings would sneak out back with
their home-made instruments and play the blues. With one brother
accompanying on a guitar strung with baling wire and another
brother on a fife made out of a corncob, Koko began her career as
a blues woman. As a youngster, Koko listened to pioneering all-
black Memphis radio station WDIA.
“I loved hearing B.B. King on the radio. He’d sing [and she
sings]: ‘Pepticon sure is good/ you can get it anywhere in the
neighbourhood’. I learnt songs off the radio. And I got up to Beale
Street sometimes when I was young and it was great – music
everywhere! Really great!”
In her early 20s, Koko and soon-to-be husband, the late
Robert “Pops” Taylor, moved to Chicago looking for work. With
nothing but, in Koko’s words, “35 cents and a box of Ritz crack-
ers,” the couple settled on the city’s South Side and Taylor found
work cleaning houses for wealthy families in the northern sub-
urbs. At night and on weekends, Koko and Pops would visit the
South and West Side blues clubs, where they would hear singers
like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Magic Sam, Little Walter, and
Junior Wells. Thanks to prodding from Pops, it wasn’t long before
Taylor was sitting in with many of the artists.
“Chicago was very different. I only knew the cotton fields.
And there was lots and lots of music. The difference now is that
the older people have died out. That’s ‘bout it. And there’s not so
many places you can go hear blues. First off me an’ my husband
was goin’ to clubs an’ hearin’ the blues – I wasn’t singin’ none then
– an’ then I’d sometimes sit in cos I knew some of the songs an’
that way I got to know a lot of the musicians.”
Who would she sit in with? “Jimmy Reed, he was my buddy.
He was a fine person. Me and him were very tight. Junior Wells?
He was a nut kid [she laughs]. A good kid.”
She tackles Magic Sam’s All Your Love on Old School: ever sit
in with Sam? “Yes, I did know Magic Sam and was friends with
him. But not as well as I knew Wolf an’ Muddy.”
Taylor’s big break came in 1963. After a particularly fiery per-
formance, songwriter/ arranger Willie Dixon approached her say-
ing, “My God, I never heard a woman sing the blues like you sing
the blues!” Dixon first recorded Koko for USA Records then
secured her a Chess recording contract. He produced several sin-
gles and two albums of hers – including Taylor’s huge 1966 hit sin-
gle Wang Dang Doodle.
“‘My old goat’ that’s what I’d call Willie,” she laughs. “I loved
Willie. He was like my right arm. I wouldn’t be where I am today if
I hadn’t met him. I met him in a club – we were listening to Wolf –
and he walked up and said ‘Who are you recording for?’ and I did-
n’t know the meaning of the word. Willie would give me the songs
to sing. I don’t know where he got all those songs. See, I just loved
to sing and Willie loved the way I sang so he got the musicians an’
just started cuttin’ songs on me. Honestly, at the start I never
thought nothin’ of it but Willie kept on sayin’ ‘You got a great
voice, we gonna do this’. An’ everything he said we did!”
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