In his 45-year career, Chicago blues drummer Sam Lay has worked with many blues legends, including Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Willie Dixon.
As part of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, he backed Bob Dylan at the famous 1965 Newport Folk Festival when Dylan “went electric.” He has recorded with Dylan, Siegel-Schwall and other blues-rock bands, and also fronts his own group, the Sam Lay Chicago Blues Band.
Not surprisingly, Lay, who also sings and plays guitar, has plenty of stories to tell, and he’s happy to share them. Just don’t expect him to dish any dirt.
“I only know good things about anyone I ever played with,” said Lay, who will play with the Siegel-Schwall Band Saturday at the sixth annual Blues on the Fox festival in downtown Aurora. “I wish I could go back into the past right now and play with each and every one of them again.”
“I’m just now beginning to realize that a lot of Johnny-come-lately musicians probably would like to have been where I have been and played with the people I have played with,” Lay added. “I’ve played with Jimmy Reed, Otis Rush, Sonny Boy Williamson, Magic Sam, Lightnin’ Hopkins, all those guys.”
Lay, who was born and raised in Birmingham, Ala., traces his interest in music back to the Pentecostal church he attended as a child.
“The church had a Hammond organ, drums and piano, and people would clap their hands to the music,” he said. “That beat just lingered in my mind throughout the years. Even today, my drumming style is an older style, like what you would hear in a sanctified church.”
In the mid-1950s, Lay quit high school and moved to Cleveland to work in the steel industry. Soon, the self-taught musician was sitting in on drums with a local jazz and blues band after work; one job led to another.
“I played with several outfits in Cleveland, and things just took off for me,” Lay said. “Then I met Little Walter Jacobs, a harmonica player from Chicago, and he told me about all the recording that was going on there. So I decided to go to Chicago.”
Arriving in Chicago in the early 1960s, Lay met and played with established local blues musicians, including Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, as well as aspiring young white blues artists such as Corky Siegel and Butterfield.
“I’ve known Corky for so long, I don’t even remember how we met,” said Lay, who sometimes works with Siegel’s Chamber Blues group as well as with Siegel-Schwall. “I do remember how I met Paul Butterfield, though. It was when I was working with Little Smokey Smothers at a place called the Blue Flame … near the University of Chicago.
“Smokey was driving down the street and saw this fellow walking in the rain with a harmonica. He offered him a ride and asked if he wanted to sit in on a show. It was Butterfield, and he was great from the get-go. That white boy blew harmonica just like Little Walter.”
“Then Butterfield’s friends came around, and we started getting white audiences from the North Side,” Lay said. “Butterfield kind of opened the door for that, and the club owner was tickled to death.”
Lay helped the late harmonica player put together the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which later backed Dylan during the folk star’s set at Newport.
“The audience wanted Dylan to stay acoustic,” said Lay, who played drums on one song on Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” album. “That was what sparked all of the boos at Newport.”
In recent years, Lay has been inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame and the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. “A Tribute to Howlin’ Wolf,” featuring Lay and several other artists, was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1999 in the best traditional blues album category. But blues and jazz aren’t his only musical loves.
“I also really like country and bluegrass,” Lay said. “I grew up listening to Ernest Tubb and Bill Monroe on the radio, and I could never get enough of Johnny Cash’s music. Country music and 1950s rock ‘n’ roll were the only music I knew about until I was a big boy almost ready to leave home. Today, I’m 67 years old and I still love it.
“I think it shocks everybody when I play country and bluegrass with my band,” Lay said. “But that’s OK. They’re entitled to a good shock.”
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The Siegel-Schwall Band with Sam Lay When: 4:30 p.m. Saturday Where: Sixth annual Blues on the Fox festival, Galena Boulevard and Stolp Avenue, Aurora Phone: 630-801-6590