Eddie Shaw comes back from the crossroads with a new album

By Bill Dahl

On a Chicago blues landscape teeming with guitar masters and harmonica wizards, Eddie Shaw is in a class of his own. Shaw's main ax is the tenor saxophone, an instrument more commonly associated with jazz. But his unusual choice hasn't held him back.

"1 think it's an advantage for me, simply because I'm out there by myself," said Shaw, who also plays harmonica. "There's nobody really doing it now."

After spending more than a dec­ade backing Howlin' Wolf, Shaw has been a top Chicago blues act himself since the late 1970s. His new release on the Rooster Blues label, "In the Land of the Cross­roads," is a sizzling showcase for his blasting horn and commanding vocals.

The album was cut in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, not far from where Shaw grew up.

"I was really comfortable working down there, Shaw said over a snack of pastries and milk at a North Side Dunkin' Donuts (fit­ting, in that one of the set's stan-dout tracks is the rocking "Dunkin1 Donut Woman").

In ancient Delta blues lore, the role of secluded crossroads is signif­icant. Legend has it that the great Robert Johnson, among others, met old Beelzebub himself at such an intersection one dark night, and bartered away his soul to acquire his prodigious performing skills.

"We went out on the crossroads, in this area where all of the contro­versy has been about Robert Johnson and all the guys meeting the devil at the crossroads” he said "It's a different feel, man, like somebody's watching over you or something."

Shaw was playing professionally around Greenville, Miss., by the time he was 14, often jamming with pianist Ike Turner's combo in the early 1950s. Other local luminaries included guitarist Little Milton and saxophonist Oliver Sain.

"When you're a musician living in that same area, you have a ten­dency to cross one another's trail," Shaw said. "I met Ike before I got into high school because Ike had a band, and everybody would go sit in with Ike."

Chicago great Muddy Waters roared through nearby Itta Bena in the late '50s and changed the saxo­phonist's career plans.

"I sat in with him at a club, and he offered me a gig," he said. "I was about to get kicked out of school anyway. I needed the bucks, so I latched on to the gig."

Transplanted to Chicago, Shaw stayed with the blues legend for a year before switching allegiance to Waters' chief rival.

"One Friday night, we were play­ing on the West Side, on Roosevelt Road," he said. "Howlin* Wolf was playing two blocks west of where Muddy was working. So I stopped playing with Muddy about 10 o'clock that Friday night. I walked down the street and got a gig with Wolf the same night."

Although Shaw's association with Wolf endured until the ferocious bluesman's death in 1976, Shaw also broke loose to gig with West Side guitarists Freddy King, Otis Rush and Magic Sam.

Today Shaw's band remains sta­ble despite extensive touring, sparked by his son Vaan on guitar and anchored by bassist Shorty Gilbert and drummer Robert Plunkett. Another son, Stan, is a successful actor, with meaty roles in the films "Harlem Nights" and "Fried Green Tomatoes."

The elder Shaw's tenor sax sound remains gloriously bold and direct.

"I think playing the horn like I do is something like the old Baptist preacher," said Shaw, who will play Buddy Guy's Legends, 754 S. Wabash Ave., on Saturday. "When a Baptist preacher preaches in church, everybody listens. He shouts out what he wants you to hear, and he brings it to you in such a way that you're gonna listen.

"So that's the same way I try to do it with the saxophone. I try to have a good attack, don't try to play a lot of notes, try to stay with the basics and tell a good story."

Bill Dahl is a free-lance music writer