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 Sunnyland Slim
Exhibiting truly amazing longevity that was commensurate with his
powerful, imposing physical build, Sunnyland Slim's status as a beloved
Chicago piano patriarch endured long after most of his peers had
perished. For more than 50 years, the towering Sunnyland had rumbled
the ivories around the Windy City, playing with virtually every local
luminary imaginable and backing the great majority in the studio at one
time or another.
He was born Albert Luandrew in Mississippi and received his early
training on a pump organ. After entertaining at juke joints and movie
houses in the Delta, Luandrew made Memphis his homebase during the late
'20s, playing along Beale Street and hanging out with the likes of
Little Brother Montgomery and Ma Rainey.
He adopted his colorful stage name from the title of one of his
best-known songs, the mournful "Sunnyland Train." (The downbeat piece
immortalized the speed and deadly power of a St. Louis-to-Memphis
locomotive that mowed down numerous people unfortunate enough to cross
its tracks at the wrong instant.)
Slim moved to Chicago in 1939 and set up shop as an in-demand piano
man, playing for a spell with John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson before
waxing eight sides for RCA Victor in 1947 under the somewhat misleading
handle of "Doctor Clayton's Buddy." If it hadn't been for the helpful
Sunnyland, Muddy Waters may not have found his way onto Chess; it was
at the pianist's 1947 session for Aristocrat that the Chess brothers
made Waters's acquaintance.
Aristocrat (which issued his harrowing "Johnson Machine Gun") was but
one of a myriad of labels that Sunnyland recorded for between 1948 and
1956: Hytone, Opera, Chance, Tempo-Tone, Mercury, Apollo, JOB, Regal,
Vee-Jay (unissued), Blue Lake, Club 51, and Cobra all cut dates on
Slim, whose vocals thundered with the same resonant authority as his
88s. In addition, his distinctive playing enlivened hundreds of
sessions by other artists during the same timeframe.
In 1960, Sunnyland Slim traveled to Englewood Cliffs, NJ, to cut his
debut LP for Prestige's Bluesville subsidiary with King Curtis
supplying diamond-hard tenor sax breaks on many cuts. The album, Slim's
Shout, ranks as one of his finest, with definitive renditions of the
pianist's "The Devil Is a Busy Man," "Shake It," "Brownskin Woman," and
"It's You Baby."
Like a deep-rooted tree, Sunnyland Slim persevered despite the passing
decades. For a time, he helmed his own label, Airway Records. As late
as 1985, he made a fine set for the Red Beans logo, Chicago Jump,
backed by the same crack combo that shared the stage with him every
Sunday evening at a popular North side club called B.L.U.E.S. for some
12 years.
There were times when the pianist fell seriously ill, but he always
defied the odds and returned to action, warbling his trademark Woody
Woodpecker chortle and kicking off one more exultant slow blues as he
had done for the previous half century. Finally, after a calamitous
fall on the ice coming home from a gig led to numerous complications,
Sunnyland Slim finally died of kidney failure in 1995. He's sorely
missed.
-Written by Bill Dahl
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