Willie Dixon
1915–1992
Chess Records’ bassist, songwriter, and talent broker — the man who wrote much of the Chicago blues canon and helped ship it to Europe.
was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1915 and became the central working musician of Chess Records in Chicago: house bassist, arranger, producer, and above all songwriter, with “Hoochie Coochie Man,” “Little Red Rooster,” “Spoonful,” and “I Just Want to Make Love to You” among the songs British bands later treated as standards. When the German promoters Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau wanted to bring American blues to Europe, it was Dixon's contacts that made the American Folk Blues Festival possible from 1962, and he toured with it as bassist and de facto musical director. He spent his later years fighting for songwriters' royalties and founded the Blues Heaven Foundation. He died in 1992.