It’s a match made in blues heaven. The legendary Charlie Musselwhite teams up with contemporary blues band GA-20.
By Brian Wise.
They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but tell that to Charlie Musselwhite and he’ll laugh at you.
In the past decade or so, the blues legend, now 82, has not only maintained his own solo recording career but has expanded his scope to include some exciting collaborations. After releasing two acclaimed albums with Ben Harper in Get Up! (2013) and No Mercy In This Land (2018) he has teamed up with his former guitarist Matthew Stubbs and his Boston outfit GA-20 for an album that just might take him to yet another audience.
With more than 30 albums to his name since 1967, Musselwhite has established his legend. Over the years his collaborations and album appearances have also included Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Gov’t Mule, George Thorogood, his friend John Lee Hooker and even INXS. He is a Grammy winner and 13-time nominee and has won 33 Blues Awards. In 2023, he appeared in the Martin Scorsese film Killers of The Flower Moon.
Matthew Stubbs was a member of Charlie’s band for more than a decade; before that, he also toured with John Hammond, James Cotton, Junior Watson, and James Harman. When Charlie was touring with Ben Harper, Stubbs moved to Boston and formed his own band, GA-20, which now includes guitarist Cody Nilsen and drummer Josh Kiggans. So far, the group has released four studio albums.
After Musselwhite finished touring with Ben Harper, and COVID was behind them, Stubbs was reunited with Charlie, and they found time to team up to record an album together. The 10-track set Blues Now, which sometimes also sounds a lot like ‘blues then’, was produced by Stubbs and recorded at Rare Signals in Cambridge, MA.
In early 2025, they booked six days of studio time and selected some of their favourite songs by artists such as Willie Dixon (‘Crazy Love’), Elmore James (‘I Can’t Hold Out’), Earl Hooker and Junior Wells (‘Universal Rock’), Eddie Taylor (‘Stroll Out West’), Jimmy Reed’s ‘I’ll Change My Style’ and more. They also included several favourites from Musselwhite’s 1968 debut, Stand Back! (whose album cover tagged him as ‘Charley’): the classic ‘Cristo Redentor’written by Duke Pearson, as well as Charlie’s own song ‘Strange Land’. The new album is a link between Musselwhite’s past in the Chicago blues scene of the ‘50s and ‘60s with the raw contemporary sounds of GA-20.
At the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in April, the combination appeared in the Blues Tent. It was only their second live show together and I was there to witness it. Afterwards, we had a chat backstage before they jumped on the tour bus for a tour that will take them all the way through to September. It was a fabulous performance, with Musselwhite reinvigorated by the combination. (While there is no bass player in the touring outfit, Marty Ballou plays on Blues Now).
“Charlie and I have a long relationship playing together,” said Matt Stubbs when I asked him about Blues Now. “GA-20 has been putting out albums for the last four or five years. Charlie has a long history playing blues music. So, we wanted to combine forces and make a record together. So, Blues Now is our blues now!”
“I loved that record that Charlie made,” says Stubbs referring to Stand Back! “That was his first record that came out. So, we took inspiration from it. This [album] is its own thing, but it was definitely inspired by that record Charlie made in the ’60s.”
Perhaps the highlight of the album is ‘Cristo Redentor’, a song that has become closely associated with Musselwhite. They closed their JazzFest set with it.
“That’s kind of become Charlie’s signature song,” says Stubbs. “When I was playing with Charlie in his band that would be a song he would always close the night with. Even though he didn’t write it, he kind of made it his own. And people always seemed to want it.”
“Well, after a while I remember thinking, people must be getting tired of this song. I want to stop playing it,” says Musselwhite. “Then people got mad at me saying, ‘I waited all night to hear it, and you didn’t play it.’ So anyhow, people don’t get tired of it, so I keep playing it.”
“I heard the Donald Byrd version probably in ‘62 or something, probably on a jukebox,” recalls Charlie. “In all the blues clubs, they had jukeboxes and besides blues, they had a lot of jazz, especially like Jack McDuff, and people liked that blues jazz.”
On stage, Musselwhite told the story of how his mother was a friend of Estelle Axton (later to form Stax Records) who would bring the latest singles around to their house.
“Yeah, she’d give me the latest 45,” he recalls, “and it looked like it was mimeographed. They were just getting started. It hadn’t become Stax yet. It was just Satellite, which was also the name of their record store.”
Musselwhite brings some heavyweight blues credentials to the combination. Born in Mississippi and raised in Memphis, he moved to Chicago at the age of 18 in search of work. He arrived there during a golden age for the blues.
“When I went to Chicago, I didn’t go there looking to promote myself, to get into the music,” he recalls. “I had no thought about playing music. I just liked to play for myself because I liked the music, but I didn’t have this goal of being in the spotlight on stage and making records or nothing. It just didn’t occur to me that was even possible. Coming from Memphis, it sure wasn’t possible. When I got to Chicago, man, this whole city was loaded with the blues, and they started getting my attention and changing my mind about things.”
Of course, both the album title, Blues Now, and also the name of the band, GA-20 (named after a classic Gibson amplifier) are significant.
“We booked six days, and we did it I think in four and a half and then we just kind of hung out for a couple days in the studio,” recalls Stubbs of the recording process. “But Charlie and Henrietta [Charlie’s wife] flew up to Boston and we just set up shop and took our time, set everything up in one room. What you hear is what we played. There’s not really any overdubs, it’s just a live recording.
“Charlie picked a few songs and myself and the band picked a few. I tried to pick ones that were by artists that Charlie had a connection to somehow, whether he played with them or knew them, and then also songs that Charlie wrote, like ‘Strange Land’.”
“There’s some tunes I had wanted to do and never got around to,” adds Musselwhite, “and I thought they’d be perfect at doing them and some I’ve done before, and we just wanted to have fun. So, I picked tunes that would be fun to do.”
Apart from ‘Cristo Redentor’, they have included a great version of ‘I’ll Change My Style’, a hit for Jimmy Reed back in 1962.
“I was trying to find ones that Charlie or I had connection, mostly Charlie had connections with,” explains Stubbs. “I’ve been traveling with Charlie for 17 years and I’ve heard a lot of stories of his time in Chicago with all these great blues people that were his friends. He’s got some great Jimmy Reed stories. So, I wanted to do a Jimmy Reed song, and I dug in and I picked that one out and it’s a great melody, a great song. So again, it’s not too complex. It’s just songs that we like and then there’s a connection somehow.”
“I remember John Lee Hooker just bought a new Cadillac and I guess it was in Chicago,” recalls Charlie when I ask him for a Jimmy Reed story. “I’m not sure where they were, but there was Jimmy Reed and a couple other guys. John was going to drive them around in his new Cadillac. While they’re driving around, Jimmy says, ‘John, I need a bathroom.’ So, John Lee’s driving, looking for a gas station, is not finding one, but finally does. He says ‘Oh, okay, Jimmy. I see a gas station.’ ‘It’s too late, John.’ He just peed all over the floor in the back of John’s new Cadillac!”
“Based on what you heard – and he’s got some good Buddy Guy stories – he was there. For me, it’s the link. I don’t know many people that were there then. Charlie knew all those guys.”
Appropriately, ‘The Blues Never Die’, an Otis Spann song, is also included. It’s a fitting slogan that describes the combination on Blues Now.
“Charlie brought that one in. Again, he knew Otis,” says Stubbs.
“Otis was a real good friend of mine, and I always really liked that song and anything I really like a lot I like to try it sometimes,” adds Charlie. “So, I tried it out in honour of my memory of Otis, and we had so many good times together. I still miss that guy.”
Blues Now is available through New West Records.