CLIFTON JAMES
Tales From The Woods' raises a glass and says farewell to Clifton James who died
in his hometown of Chicago on 16th February 2006.
Clifton James was already making quite a name for himself despite being just a
slender youth. Coming up seventeen he had already sat in with Elmore James and
Memphis Slim, to name but two, when he wandered down Maxwell Street upon a warm
mid-autumn afternoon. Hearing the raw ethereal sounds coming from a young guy in
his mid-twenties, Clifton thought to himself this cat plays drum licks on the guitar.
With him was the man who would soon become associated with those early primal records
cut in Chess Studios through the mid to late fifties and into the sixties, Jerome
Green, shaking a primitive type of maracas - actually ballcocks filled with black-eyed
beans. Roosevelt Jackson was there too slapping a washtub bass. Clifton stopped,
listened awhile before strolling across to chat to the guys, particularly the
drum lick guitar picker going by the name of Bo Diddley. The legend that would
become Big Bad Bo Diddley got on well with the young Clifton and soon he would
be playing in Bo's band.
Around eighteen months later Clifton James played drums on "Bo Diddley" recorded
on 2nd March 1955. The flip side, "I'm a Man", received much airplay and helped
the record reach Number Two on the rhythm'n'blues chart. James played drums with
Diddley on his historic television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in November
1955. Off air, the host had argued with his guest, who had performed "Bo Diddley"
rather than the far less primal "Sixteen Tons", the Tennessee Ernie Ford song
which had been requested by the presenter. When Sullivan called him "a coloured
boy", Diddley thumped him.
Clifton James was born on 2nd October 1936 in Chicago, Illinois.
As a child he drove his mother and 13 siblings crazy with his drumming.
"I first started learning to play drums on chair bottoms, tin cans, and
anything you know, I could find to beat on" he was heard to say during a radio
interview with Mick Vernon on a 1965 visit to the UK with Bo Diddley to
appear on Ready Steady Go, repeated again in far more recent times on a
Chess records documentary on BBC Radio Two.
In 1956, James made an important contribution to the much-covered
"Who Do You Love" when he suggested the "for a necktie" lyric to complete
the "I walk 47 miles of barbed wire, use a cobra snake..." opening line.
He also played on "Say Man", Diddley's biggest US hit, as well as his
belated 1963 UK hits, "Hey Good Looking" and "Pretty Thing" - one of
the many Diddley tracks which inspired many of the British R&B and beat
groups that mushroomed in the Sixties - playing on many of the modest Mr
Bo albums "Bo Diddley", "Bo Diddley is a Gunslinger", "Bo Diddley Rides Again"
and "Bo Diddley's Beach Party".
In January 2006, James took part in an event to launch the book
"TV-a-Go-Go: Rock on TV from American Bandstand to American Idol" in Chicago.
He watched with amusement his appearance with Bo Diddley on The Ed Sullivan
Show before accepting a lifetime achievement award.
