Ain’t It Nice To Be Loved: Remembering Lefty Dizz

Excuse the following bit of self-adulation but I’m setting something up here. When I was in LA a mate commented on my guitar playing as follows.

You play out of tune but somehow you make it sound good.

I assure you that it wasn’t damning via faint praise. It was the atonal blues experiment vindicated! There was also some cultural differences happening as well. My mate was German with a heritage of viewing music through notions of equal tempered scales. Me, a wild colonial boy seduced by the blues favoured the notes falling through the cracks and scattering ambiguity. I used to tease my friend Red by playing blues solos where I would deliberately avoid the tonic by playing cascades of non-resolution which would drive him around the bend.

But my descriptions of torturing of sensitive European ears are to show that concepts of what sounds good is not confined to the strict measure of A equalling 440hz. Which brings us to Lefty Dizz.

Buddy Guy tends to overshadow the history of Chicago blues guitar but he wasn’t the only one. Otis Rush, Magic Sam and others all shared the same stages and the same songs and tricks. Lefty Dizz is one of the forgotten ones. One problem is that he was rarely recorded. But you can find his classic Ain’t It Nice To Be Loved on eMusic which captures his sound.

And his sound does live on the edge. The regular blues licks drift ever so slightly outside towards dissonance. It is an example of how attitude and passion can conquer all. It is not everyone who can pull this off. It is done with no hint of self-consciousness or affectation. This is Lefty so take it or leave it (and if you do leave it is your loss). Anyway if it sounds good then who the hell cares?

Lefty also played left-handed with the guitar strung upside down as did another Chicago legend Otis Rush. And also in the grand tradition of Chicago blues guitarists Lefty was a showman:

Lefty had a flamboyant theatrical style that included all of the tricks, such as playing the guitar behind his head, that guitarists had developed in the early days of blues plus Lefty had a few tricks of his own.

Lefty would hold his guitar by the neck with his right hand, playing the strings with the index finger of his right hand, moving his mouth in mime to the voice-like sound that he was playing on the guitar, while shaking the index finger of his left hand at the audience as if scolding them. Then he would swing the guitar back into its’ proper position playing a slide note with his right hand and then launching into stinging the blues out of the strings with his left hand. The audio fireworks would leave the ears of the audience burning red with excitement.

Cloaked in our idealised concerns for blues authenticity the idea that blues was first and foremost practiced as entertainment is often pushed aside. To paraphrase Frank Zappa when Elmore James was playing “da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da, daa-da” he wasn’t making a social statement.

Lefty is with us no more after succumbing to cancer in 1993. The richness of the blues scene is unfortunately diluted to only a few representatives. While Buddy Guy is a deserving legend of Chicago blues guitar, if is easy to overlook the rich history of this genre in his favour. Lefty Dizz suffered the fate of not being recorded enough and the vagaries of popularity and rock’n'roll boosterism. If you like your Buddy Guy and don’t mind a slice of Otis Rush then check out Lefty Dizz, one of the forgotten worthies of Chicago blues.

From Ain’t It Nice To Be Loved:(links active for 7 days)

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