Son Seals dies

[brownie]

From The New York Times today:

December 22, 2004

Son Seals, 62, Chicago Bluesman, Is Dead

By JON PARELES

Son Seals, a Chicago bluesman whose slash-and-burn guitar solos and raspy voice carried a fierce blues spirit into a new generation, died on Monday in Chicago. He was 62.

The cause was complications from diabetes, said a spokeswoman for Alligator Records, his label from the 1970's into the 1990's.

With songs about woman trouble and hard times, Mr. Seals played his blues spiked with a wounded fury. He didn't attempt modernization or crossover beyond an occasional funk beat; he often reached back to jump-blues and soul by adding a horn section to his band. But what he played was straightforward and savagely direct. The license plate on his car read, "BAD AXE."

Frank Seals was born in Osceola, Ark., near Memphis, on Aug. 14, 1942. He was nicknamed Son as his father, Jim Seals, had been; his father became Ol' Son. Jim Seals owned an Osceola juke joint, the Dipsy Doodle, and the Seals family lived in back. Son Seals grew up listening to working bluesmen through the 1940's and 1950's. By his early teens, he was joining them, first on drums and later on guitar.

He formed his first band, the Upsetters, in 1959, and started working regularly around Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi. He also worked in bands led by Earl Hooker, Robert Nighthawk and the guitarist who became his mentor, Albert King.

Mr. Seals began visiting Chicago in the 1960's, and in 1971 he settled there, began sitting in with bluesmen who included Junior Wells and Hound Dog Taylor, and started playing regular weekend shows at the Expressway Lounge. Bruce Iglauer, a blues fan who had recently started Alligator Records, heard him and released his first album, "The Son Seals Blues Band," in 1973.

For the next decades, Mr. Seals toured nationally and then internationally at clubs, concerts and festivals. He was nominated for a Grammy Award as one of the performers on the 1981 live album "Blues Deluxe," and he received W. C. Handy Blues Awards in 1985, 1987 and 2001. He also performed at the Clinton White House.

Mr. Seals recorded eight albums for Alligator and then made two albums for Telarc. The jam band Phish regularly played his song "Funky Bitch," and Mr. Seals made guest appearances with them. Trey Anastasio, Phish's guitarist, sat in on a remake of "Funky Bitch" for Mr. Seals's 2000 album, "Lettin' Go" (Telarc). In 2002, Alligator released a compilation, "Deluxe Edition."

In 1997, Mr. Seals was shot in the jaw by his wife, whom he later divorced, and in 1999, complications from diabetes led to the amputation of part of his left leg. But he continued to perform until two months ago. He is survived by a sister, Katherine Sims of Chicago, and by 14 children.

"We try and make everybody feel good," he once told an interviewer for the African American Music Collection at the University of Michigan. "I don't want you to come in with your handkerchief in your hand and leave with your handkerchief in your hand, I want you to leave and feel good."

[Harold_Z]

Sorry to hear this sad news.

I saw him in the early 80s in a small club on Long Beach Island - the kind of joint where you could get a seat right up in front of the band stand. He had a smokin' band and really did play burnin' guitar. I also remember he had a drummer that played two and four LOUD on the bass drum when they played in straight four. Different - but it worked. He MADE it work.

[Chrome]

I saw him a number of times when I lived in Chicago ... always put his all into his shows and turned out some great blues albums.

[John L]

RIP

That is a major loss for the blues. Son Seals was one of the last of the blues masters who could sum up the history of the music in a highly distinctive approach to the guitar. After a few notes, you knew who was talking to you and from where he was coming.

[Chrome]

From the Chicago Sun Times

Blues guitarist, singer Frank 'Son' Seals dies at 62

December 22, 2004

BY JEFF JOHNSON Staff Reporter Advertisement

Frank "Son" Seals played the blues with intensity. He lived them with a vengeance.

The gruff-voiced, hard-edged Chicago blues guitarist-vocalist, who looked like a grizzly bear and reminded good friends of a teddy bear with his sly, self-deprecating humor, died Monday at age 62 of complications of diabetes.

Mr. Seals' last 10 years were marked by misfortunes.

His left leg was amputated below the knee in 1999 because of diabetes. He was hospitalized frequently for the disease in the last two years, and had taken insulin since the 1970s. Two years before the amputation, he was shot in the jaw by an ex-wife as he slept, forcing months of reconstructive surgery. More recently his motor home was destroyed by fire after a show in Miami, and his custom-made guitar was stolen.

"The guy faced the most unbelievably life-shattering experiences, and you never heard him complain about it," said Dan Rabinovitz, a trumpet player in Mr. Seals' band from 1990-97 and a former Cook County assistant state's attorney now practicing law in Boston.

Started professionally at 12

"Son came from a background where once you took the bandstand, the only thing that mattered was the music," Rabinovitz said. "No matter what else was going on in his life or the lives of anyone else in the group, that was the priority. That tradition was passed on from Albert King and Earl Hooker and the others he shared the bandstand with over the years."

As the youngest of Jim Seals' 13 children, Frank Seals learned about the blues firsthand at his daddy's juke joint in Osceola, Ark. He was called "Little Son" in his hometown to distinguish him from "Son," his dad. Mr. Seals began playing professionally at age 12, first on the drums and soon after on guitar. While still in his teens, he toured as a drummer with Hooker and later with King, one of his primary influences.

By the time he moved to Chicago in 1971, Mr. Seals had mastered many of King's guitar riffs. He took over Hound Dog Taylor's regular gigs at the Expressway Lounge on the South Side when Taylor's debut album for Chicago's Alligator Records took off and Taylor hit the road.

Alligator went on to record "The Son Seals Blues Band" in 1973 and seven other Seals albums, as well as a 2002 "Deluxe Edition" compilation. He left the label for Telarc in 2000, when he recorded "Lettin' Go," his last studio album.

'It came from his heart'

Mr. Seals played guitar "like his life depended on it," said Bruce Iglauer, Alligator founder and president. "Part of it was his sheer intensity. He didn't really play the guitar, he attacked it. And that's the way he approached his vocals, too. He didn't ask you to listen, he bullied you into it."

Iglauer recalled that Mr. Seals was little-known to blues audiences when he arrived in Chicago. "When I first saw him, he was just playing little South Side joints," he said. He was one of those 50 cents or a dollar [cover charge] guys. He was playing with a borrowed guitar and amp. He recorded the first album for Alligator on a Norma, the Montgomery Ward's guitar brand, and he did the second on a Slivertone from Sears."

Mr. Seals went on to help reshape the Chicago blues, expanding on the traditional Mississippi Delta roots by incorporating hard-rock elements. His raw, "all kill, no fill" style, as Iglauer describes it, found favor with a fan base that was increasingly white and based on the North Side.

"Nobody could send a roomful of people over the edge in the midnight hour with a guitar like he could," Rabinovitz said. "When he wanted to throw down, nobody could touch him."

Mr. Seals' son Rodney, with whom he was living at the time of his death, said his father's health had been declining for some time, but he never lost his passion for the blues.

"Anybody who knew my dad and followed his career of 40 years knew blues was like a second life to him," Seals said. "I just believe that he felt every song he sung. It came from his heart. To be true to what you do, you've got to speak what you feel. That's what he did."

Mr. Seals leaves a sister, Katherine Sims of Chicago, and 14 children, none of whom has followed the family blues tradition professionally.

Funeral arrangements are set for 11 a.m. Monday at the Alonzo Davis Funeral Home. 305 E. 16th St., Chicago Heights. Visitation is 2-5 p.m. Sunday.

[JSngry]

Bummer.

[Eric]

yeah, he was a bad-ass guitar player ... one of my favorites

RIP

[Enterprise Server]

Well, not much to say at this point other than he was a fine guitar player and a seriously talented blues artist. I do recall his laying down the blues hard and fast in Chicago. Another major figure in the world of blues and jazz is no longer with us. Thank God for the many fine recordings he left that documents his talent and artistic accomplishments.

[mailman]

Truely a sad day. I recall seeing him several times here in NYC in the late 1970s and he always tore it up. One memorable date at the late lamented Village Gate had him sharing the bandstand with the great Otis Rush. Men like this will not come our way again. And we are all the worse for it.

[chris olivarez]

A truly underappreciated bluesman but thankfully not too underrecorded and he always did good work. He'll be missed by his fans and those that didn't hear him don't know what they're missing.

[danasgoodstuff]

I saw Son Seals at Reed College here in Portland sometime in the '70s. Not a concert but a 'social'; free beer and Thunderbird(!) I missed the one the Kinks played by a year or two. Needless to say, a good time was had by all.

[chris olivarez]

I saw Son Seals at Reed College here in Portland sometime in the '70s. Not a concert but a 'social'; free beer and Thunderbird(!) I missed the one the Kinks played by a year or two. Needless to say, a good time was had by all.

Thunderbird? Now THAT's hard core blues.