Memphis Slim

Memphis Slim, born John "Peter" Chatman, infused his often breathtaking stage presence with a sharp sense of metropolitan polish and thereby earned a place among the finest blues pianists in history. He absorbed Big Bill Broonzy’s early counsel to cultivate an original approach rather than mimic Roosevelt Sykes, and before long fellow keyboardists were emulating Slim’s forceful keyboard style instead of the reverse; his thunderous attack on the eighty-eights distinguished him from most peers, while his richly burnished vocals carried an unmistakable air of authority.

True to his adopted moniker, Chatman grew up in Memphis, an ideal setting for anyone intent on a blues career. In the late 1930s he relocated to Chicago, where he began recording under his own name for OKeh in 1939 before moving to Bluebird the following year. Around that period he teamed with Broonzy, already the leading figure on the city’s blues circuit, and after serving several years as the guitarist’s valued sideman, Slim stepped forward independently in 1944.

In the immediate postwar years he signed with Hy-Tone Records and cut eight sides that were subsequently acquired by King. In 1947 Lee Egalnick’s Miracle label brought the pianist aboard; fronting his lively House Rockers—regularly featuring saxophonists Alex Atkins and Ernest Cotton—Slim delivered the enduring “Lend Me Your Love” and “Rockin’ the House.” The next year saw the landmark “Nobody Loves Me,” later revived by Lowell Fulson, Joe Williams, and B.B. King as “Everyday I Have the Blues,” along with the sorrowful “Messin’ Around (With the Blues).”

Further moves took him from Miracle to Peacock, then to Premium—where he first recorded the quietly sagacious slow blues “Mother Earth”—and onward through Chess and Mercury before settling at Chicago’s United Records from 1952 to 1954. That stretch proved especially productive: Slim enlisted his first steady guitarist, the accomplished Matt Murphy, whose incisive playing energized “The Come Back,” “Sassy Mae,” and “Memphis Slim U.S.A.”

Before the decade ended, the pianist reached Vee-Jay Records and there produced definitive renditions of his most familiar compositions, supported by Murphy and an outstanding ensemble whose interplay proved ideal. Demonstrating his longstanding autonomy, Slim departed the United States permanently in 1962. An earlier European tour alongside bassist Willie Dixon had so captivated him that he settled in Paris, where abundant recording and concert opportunities awaited and the veteran received the esteem frequently withheld from African-American blues artists in their homeland at the time. He remained in France until his death in 1988, revered as expatriate blues royalty.