Bob Corritore on playing with Muddy Waters sideman John Primer: 'It was completely on fire'

Bob Corritore has been a major player on the Phoenix blues scene for decades, having moved here from Chicago, the hometown that continues to inspire him, in the early ‘80s.

A decade after his arrival, Corritore opened the Rhythm Room in Phoenix on the former site of a venue called the Purple Turtle, where he'd booked his first show in the Valley with Louisiana Red.

Corritore has been spreading the gospel of blues on his radio show, "Those Lowdown Blues," on KJZZ-FM (91.5) for 40 years.

He also fronts his own blues project on harmonica. And after all these years, the man still seizes any opportunity he gets to work with fellow players with Chicago in their blood.

How Bob Corritore started working with Chicago blues great John Primer

That’s how he came to find himself recording his first album with John Primer, a Grammy-nominated blues great from Chicago who has played with Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Magic Slim and Junior Wells, in 2012.

“I got a call from his manager,” Corritore recalls. “He said, 'John would like to come to Phoenix. And he'd liked to play with your band.' I said, 'Well, that sounds great. Somebody recently asked me why I haven't worked with John.' And I didn't have any really good reasons. It's just that our paths hadn't really led us there.'”

Before the call was over, Corritore asked, “While John is in town, do you want to set up a recording session?”

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Corritore says Primer 'just brings out the Chicago blues in me'

On Friday, March 29, at the Rhythm Room, Corritore is celebrating the release of “Crawlin’ Kingsnake,” the fourth album he has made with Primer since 2012.

“John just brings out the Chicago blues in me,” Corritore says.

“We both have very strong Chicago roots. So there's this point of reference, an unspoken Chicago thing. John worked for years with Magic Slim. He worked with Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, James Cotton. And they've all influenced me. So we mesh.”

It’s all very organic, he says.

“There's a certain phrasing, a certain approach to Chicago blues that if you're not from Chicago, you probably hear it differently,” Corritore says. “But we walk on that stage and we know. I'm gonna give him what he needs out there. And he's gonna give me what I need. It's a great combination.”

They got to know each other in the ‘70s when Corritore was living in Chicago.

“In the mid-'70s, I started hitting the clubs and John got a gig in the house band at Theresa's, the South Side club where Junior Wells and James Cotton would play when they weren't on the road,” Corritore says.

“As a building, it was maybe not much to look at. But inside, it was a blues paradise. Because Junior Wells, James Cotton and Sammy Lawhorn, all sorts of fantastic artists, would always be there. Well, John got into this prestigious house band, where he backed up all of the greatest blues musicians. And I got to know him a little bit there. Not well. But I got to see him a bunch of times and we knew each other.”

Then Corritore moved and they fell out of touch until that fateful phone call in 2012.

'From that first song on, it was completely on fire'

“We had never played together before, but we went in the studio," Corritore says. "And from the first song on, it was completely on fire."

“Knockin’ Around These Blues,” their first collaboration, topped the Living Blues charts in 2013.

Not long after that, they saw each other at the annual Blues Music Awards in Memphis.

“I was talking with John and I said, 'That's the first time I've ever been No. 1 on the Living Blues charts,’” Corritore recalls. “And he said, 'That's the first time I've ever been No. 1 on the Living Blues charts. Bob, do you want to do another album?'”

Primer did not have to ask him twice.

“We've been doing recording ever since,” Primer says. “Anytime I go up there, we do some recording and I play at the club.”

They’ve become a lot closer over the course of those recording sessions and the festivals and tours they’ve done together.

“John's just a real standup guy,” Corritore says. “We were in Europe for five weeks together. And when you're on the road with somebody for five weeks, you get to know that person really well. You know if you get along. And John and I just fit together real good. He always had my back. I always had his back. We looked after each other."

There’s also an obvious musical chemistry between them.

“We enjoy each other musically,” Corritore says. “Our paths don't always cross. But when we are in the same place, we try and make it count. We know that we can make some good records together. John likes the way I produce and that just makes me feel good. So we have a good time and we've gotten some great, great sounds out of it.”

Corritore and Primer went for a late-'60s Muddy Waters sound this time

One of the goals going into this new album was to make a better record than they’d ever made before, which is the same goal they’ve had going into every session since the first one.

“We also put together what I thought was just the closest we could get to a late 1960s-sounding Muddy Waters blues band,” Corritore says.

“We had Bob Stroger on the bass. He’s 93 years old and still playing at the top of his game. We also had Anthony Geraci, a renowned piano player, Wes Starr, great drummer, and Jimi 'Primetime' Smith on second guitar. John doesn't often like to work with another guitar. But Primetime knows exactly how to back him. Because he’s from Chicago.”

Four of the musicians on the album are Chicagoans, Corritore says.

“And the others are honorary Chicagoans because they play so well in that style. So we walked away from those sessions knowing that we really laid it out. And it obviously brought John to this pinnacle. His singing and playing are great. There's an unspoken sameness of purpose. We're all there to serve a particular sound.”

There’s always been a certain magic to the way they work together.

“We always stumble upon some gold,” Corritore says.

“We don't know where or when it'll be, but there'll be something that comes up and we'll go 'Whew, that’s great.' It's such a great band that pretty much everything we do is at least really, really good. But when we can get past that point to where it's really amazing? That's the fruit that's ripe that we pick from the tree.”

Corritore says he’s particularly fond of Primer’s vocal on the title track.

“Nobody in today's world could sing that song with that amount of fervor and excitement,” Corritore says. “John was born in Mississippi and bred in the blues. His parents were sharecroppers. He moved to Chicago at 18 and came into the blues in the most honest of ways.”

Going for a Muddy Waters sound came naturally to Primer

Going for more of a Muddy Waters sound on “Crawlin’ Kingsnake” felt like going home to Primer.

He was Waters’ guitarist and bandleader from 1980 until the legend’s death in 1983, as captured on “Live at the Checkerboard Lounge, Chicago 1981,” an award-winning concert DVD and album that features Waters and his bandmates jamming with the Rolling Stones.

“I loved working with him,” Primer says. “We were playing the real blues. I studied his music all my life. He was my idol.”

Primer learned to play guitar at 6 while living with his grandmother in Mississippi.

At 18, he moved to Chicago, in 1963, playing for tips at the Maxwell Street Market.

“I would play my guitar with no shame,” he says. “I didn’t even care. I wasn’t shy or nothing. Never been that way. Never been nervous.”

Eleven years later, he landed the gig in the house band at Theresa’s Lounge, which led to Willie Dixon asking him to join the Chicago Blues All-Stars in 1979, touring internationally for a year with Dixon before joining Waters’ band.

Breaking into that scene at Theresa’s “wasn’t no problem,” he says.

“I had no fear. Because I wanted to learn them guys. And those old blues guys loved me. I would always play rhythm guitar behind those guys that would sit in. A lot people from all over the world know me. But that was my start right there.”

John Primer and Bob Corritore album release show

When: 8 p.m. Friday, March 29.

Where: 1019 E. Indian School Road, Phoenix.

Admission: $32.

Details: 602-612-4981, rhythmroom.com.

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Follow him on X @EdMasley.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Muddy Waters sideman John Primer and Bob Corritore on their new album