FEATURE STORY — Sept./Oct. 2006

Son of the Blues

Billy Branch has made a life of playing, teaching and promoting the music that his mentor, singer/songwriter Willie Dixon, called "the facts of life"

By Justin O'Brien
Photography by John Wheeler

Billy Branch

Blues musician Billy Branch LAS ’74 has an old UIC notebook from the early 1970s in which he long ago penciled a list of things to do: “Form a blues band. Play Muddy Waters’ songs. Use blues in a TV commercial.” Branch, now known for his harmonica virtuosity on stages and in studios around the world, has achieved all those goals—and more. And over his three-decade-plus career, he has become, if not yet quite an elder statesman of the blues, certainly one of its most eloquent spokespersons, as well as an ardent evangelist and teacher of the blues.

It might be argued that Branch underwent two educations after moving back to Chicago from Los Angeles in 1969 to attend UIC on a full General Assembly Scholarship: He received his bachelor’s degree in political science from UIC and his master’s in music from Maxwell Street and the first generation blues musicians with whom he apprenticed. In addition to singing and playing his music professionally, he has applied his unique dual education to the “Blues in the Schools” program, through which he has taught the music and its history to thousands of school children nationally and internationally since 1978.

Jamming in Circle Center

Branch is a third generation University of Illinois graduate. His grandfather, William Jasper Prince, was a close friend of Earl B. Dickerson ’14 uiuc, founder of UIUC’s chapter of the African-American fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi and later a prominent lawyer, businessman and civil rights pioneer. Prince was Kappa’s first “keeper of the records.”

During his college years at UIC, Branch also became a “keeper of records”—blues records, that is—and later, he would become a prolific “maker of records.” When not in class, he spent his time practicing on the harmonica he brought from L.A. in empty rooms and hallways, in the outdoor forums and at Student Center East (formerly known as Chicago Circle Center).

“UIC is where I learned to play the harmonica,” Branch remembers wryly. “We’d have jam sessions every day on the fourth floor” of SCE. (On Feb. 24 of this year, Billy Branch and The Sons of the Blues were featured at the 16th Annual Black History Month Blues Cabaret, held in the Illinois Room, SCE—a return engagement of sorts, 32 years later.)

But even with this passion for music, Branch did well academically. “I made the Dean’s List a few times,” he recalls.

Branch credits sociology classes with Professor Emeritus Thomas Kochman and black studies with Professor Sterling Plumpp for sparking his and his classmates’ interest in black culture and history. “Being able to read all the great black writers at that time,” says Branch, “opened up a whole different world. It synced our political consciousness and our awareness.

“The sociology courses at that time involved debates of really hot political topics,” he continues. “Kochman had written a book called Rappin’ and Stylin’ Out, about black subculture and signifying. In Kochman’s classroom, we would make videotapes of skits to illustrate points in the book,” which included vocal and physical posturing for greeting peers, telegraphing social hierarchy and authority, impressing the opposite sex, etc.

Meeting his mentor, Willie Dixon

His classmate and fellow video actor, Lucius Barner, the stepson of blues harmonica great Junior Wells, also contributed to Branch’s off-campus education by introducing him to Theresa’s, the legendary South Side blues tavern where Wells held court. In addition, Barner brought him to nearby Maxwell Street, where on Sundays Branch witnessed Blind Arvella Gray, Big Walter Horton, One-armed John Wrencher and other blues men perform.

It was during his student years that, with the help of a UIC secretary who knew blues singer-songwriter Willie Dixon, Branch made the acquaintance of his future mentor. (Coincidentally, it was Dixon who had co-organized the first Chicago Blues Fest in 1969 in Grant Park, the galvanizing event that would be Branch’s entrée into the world of Chicago blues.)

After Branch’s walk-on at a rehearsal during which Dixon’s regular harmonicist Carey Bell was absent, Dixon hired Branch to play on a record celebrating Atlanta Braves slugger Hank Aaron’s all-time record-breaking home run. The 1974 release, “The Last Home Run,” received some local airplay.

“I remember hearing it on the radio,” recalls Branch, “and I could shout to the whole world, ‘Hey, I’m on the radio!’”

Branch became something of a cause celèbre in 1975 when he participated in a well-advertised and ultimately controversial harmonica battle at the Green Bunny Lounge with the notorious Little Mack Simmons, who declared himself the winner, despite howls of protest from the crowd who felt Branch had won. As a result, blues aficionados Jim O’Neal and Amy van Singel, co-founders of Living Blues magazine, embraced Branch as a symbol of the next generation of Chicago blues musicians.

“They basically wanted to know, ‘are there any young black guys playin’ blues?’ We were the answer to that question,” says Branch.

O’Neal and van Singel helped book Branch, along with Willie Dixon’s son Freddie, Carey Bell’s son Lurrie, and others for the first Berlin Jazz Festival in 1977, billing them as “The Sons of the Blues,” the name his band carries to this day.

Concurrent with the evolution of The Sons of the Blues, Branch replaced Carey Bell in Willie Dixon’s All-Stars and toured with that group for about six years.

“I don’t think I could have had a better education about the music from anyone other than Willie,” says Branch. “He ate, slept, talked blues all the time. He was deeply, very, very proud that he was a blues man and that his people were the inventors of blues.

“He would often philosophize and make very clear cultural comments and political analogies about the blues,” continues Branch. “It affected my love and appreciation for the music. In some measure, it became the catalytic element that fueled my desire to do ‘Blues in the Schools.’ I can’t over-stress how influential he was on my career.”

Branch has played on more than 100 recordings, appeared in three movies and can be heard on nearly 30 radio voiceovers and on several television commercials. In addition, he has earned a shelf-full of awards for his work.

Among his recordings, Alligator Records’ “Harp Attack!,” released in 1990, represents his elevation to the ranks of the reigning blues pantheon, as co-starring harmonica legends James Cotton, Junior Wells and Carey Bell symbolically pass the torch to him. For this recording, Branch received a W.C. Handy Award, one of the blues community’s highest honors.

Spreading the gospel of blues

Recent tours with The Sons of the Blues have taken him to China, Europe and South America, but Branch is still deeply rooted in Chicago. And he remains faithful to Willie Dixon’s mission to teach and promote the blues, primarily through his involvement with “Blues in the Schools,” but also through a number of other initiatives. In a recent music workshop at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, for example, Branch taught a group of children and then let them trade harmonica licks with other groups via satellite hookup.

Currently, Branch is working on promoting a Chicago-based television blues show, “Billy Branch’s Blues Jam,” which he hopes to co-produce with Chicago Public Radio’s Sylvia Ewing. Branch and Ewing have already broadcast an audio version, “The Blues Hip-Hop Experience,” on CPR’s station WBEZ.

Like Willie Dixon before him, Branch is vocal about the frustration of blues musicians who are not receiving airplay.

“I’ve always felt that if a station would program some really fresh and varied blues content, it would be the number one station—especially in Chicago,” says Branch.

These days, however, far more blues is being played in radio and television commercials than in radio and television programming. The argument seems sound that if blues is popular enough to sell products ranging from laundry detergent to luxury automobiles, isn’t it popular enough to be broadcast?

“Look at the tourism revenue that Blues Fest generates every year,” remarks Branch. “People are pilgrimaging from every corner of the globe. So you know there is a market.”

Branch may have achieved everything on that notebook list, but that hasn’t stopped him from finding new challenges. In coming to Chicago and UIC, Billy Branch discovered his roots and truly found his destiny in the blues.

“For me and for blues,” says Branch, “there was no other place.”