PhilPaine.com

It would be inter­est­ing to imag­ine what would have hap­pened to blues­man JB Lenoir if he had lived beyond his span of 38 years, cut short by an auto­mo­bile acci­dent. Unlike most blues artists of the fifties, he was polit­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed. One of the three albums I have, Eisen­how­er Blues (1954), is a satir­i­cal stab at that Pres­i­den­t’s poli­cies. He was active in the Civ­il Rights move­ment. Anoth­er album I have, a com­pi­la­tion put togeth­er to accom­pa­ny Mar­tin Scorce­se’s film his­to­ry of the blues, draws heav­i­ly from Eisen­how­er Blues and oth­er Chess record­ings from the 1950s. So does a 1993 Char­ly label com­pi­la­tion I just found, Mama Watch Your Daugh­ter. Dur­ing this peri­od, despite some chart suc­cess with songs like “Don’t Dog Your Woman”, Lenoir had to sup­port him­self work­ing in kitchens. It’s in the six­ties, just before his sud­den death, that he achieved real recog­ni­tion. Down In Mis­sis­sip­pi, issued posthu­mous­ly in 1970, dates from that period. 

Lenoir sang in falset­to, his voice float­ing like a bub­ble on waves of rhythm gui­tar, and the arrange­ments were clos­er to ear­ly Rock ‘n’ Roll than to tra­di­tion­al blues. He affect­ed gar­ish suits, and oth­er­wise fit well into the Rock ‘n’ Roll esthet­ic. His lat­er work was elec­tric boo­gie, and he should real­ly be seen as hav­ing a promi­nent place in the his­to­ry of Rock. Cer­tain­ly, a num­ber of promi­nent rock artists were famil­iar with, and were influ­enced by his work — John May­all, for exam­ple. Per­haps, if he had lived past 1967, that would now be the case. 

Although you will usu­al­ly see his name print­ed as “J. B. Lenoir”, his first name was actu­al­ly “JB”, which was not ini­tials for any­thing. His sur­name was pro­nounced in the French manner.