02/07/2026
Happy belated heavenly birthday to Willie Dixon, born on July 1st 1915 in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Dixon was an immensely important and dominant figure in Chicago throughout all of the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s, defining the genre of Chicago blues.
He was a hit writing machine for Chess Records in Chicago, writing for all the greats such as , , , and many, many others.
Sadly, he wasn’t compensated in royalties accordingly. In the late 1970s, Dixon and Muddy Waters successfully sued Chess’s publishing company ARC, which enabled them to establish their own publishing entities.
As far as we know, Dixon also took care of a lot of business and paperwork for many artists, enabling them to travel and work overseas. Being a talent scout also, he was largely responsible for the line ups on the American Folk Blues Festival tours in Europe throughout the 1960s and 1970s, inspiring the British Blues Boom!
Dixon was a key link between blues and rock and roll, and you’ll come across his name on the back of countless albums produced during the impressive timespan of over half a century. He’s inducted in several different ‘Hall of Fames’ and won numerous critically acclaimed prizes, one of them being a Grammy for his 1958 album ‘Hidden Charms’.
