By Karen Freeman for the
Greenwood Commonwealth 1990
Willie Cobbs wants to win a Grammy Award,
and he's giving it his best shot.
Blues musician and singer
Cobbs, 58, better known in Greenwood as Mr. C. of Mr. C's Barbecue, hopes it
won't take too much longer to find his name in the book of winners. But more
important, he just wants to make good music.
"I write songs about my way of life. I get visions for songs, and that's where they come from," said the relaxed Cobbs during an interview at his home in Greenwood.
"I write songs about my way of life. I get visions for songs, and that's where they come from," said the relaxed Cobbs during an interview at his home in Greenwood.
Cobbs has much to be thinking
about these days, and he says he has all the work he can do. His career takes
him from Greenwood to Memphis, where he has a home, and to his family home in
Smale, Ark. "Population 39, when I'm there," Cobbs joked.
His latest single is
"Feeling Good," the flip side of "May the Years Be Good to
You." Both receive a fair amount of air play from Greenwood radio station
WGNL-FM, an urban contemporary station. And to showcase his talent, he has a
couple of performances lined up for the people of Leflore County.
He will play with local
musicians at CROP Day Saturday, Aug. 4, and on Aug. 5 he and his seven-member
band are booked to play at Pine Acres Ranch in Itta Bena.
For Cobbs, it will be a nice
change to be able to play for home folks. Most of his shows are in blues festivals
and clubs in Memphis and Chicago and overseas in Japan and Europe, ,where blues
is enormously popular.
In fact, because there is a
larger market for blues in Europe and Japan many blues artists choose to go
there to make their records. But to be accepted on one's own turf is a good
indication of success.
Cobbs doesn't worry about not
being enormously famous. He just keeps playing and singing, and gradually he's
finding his success.
His latest project is to
participate in a British documentary called "In Search of the Missing
Chord," which will tell the origin of blues music and how it has spread to
other countries and influenced many other artists. Cobbs and his manager have
extended an invitation to the London production company to film part of the
work at CROP Day and at the Pine Acres show.
Another promising sign for
Cobbs is the interest a couple of record labels have shown in signing him. Cobbs
said he turned down two recent offers, preferring instead to wait for a deal
with a larger label that would bring him more distribution. His latest single
is on Wilco Records, his own independent label.
Cobbs remains optimistic about
his career and blues music in general, which he sees as having a largely white
audience.
He noted that for many of his
performances, such as at the Chicago Blues Festival which attracted hundreds of
thousands of people, most of the crowd is white. In fact, all of his band
members except one are white.
"That doesn't bother me.
I just want a band that's like family, one that just wants to make music,"
he said.
Cobbs is glad of any audience
attracted to blues music, and he believes that, if it were not for people's
interest in it in the past few decades, blues as a distinct musical form would
not have survived.
When pressed to name his
favorite artist, he says he can't. "I like everybody. Whenever I hear I
song that I like, that's just it."
Cobbs is encouraged by signs
of renewed interest in blues music, both traditional and non-traditional.
"The Delta is the birth
of the blues. I’ll bet many people around here, if they look far enough back,
will find they are relatives of some famous blues artist," he said.
