by Bill Dahl
Exhibiting truly amazing longevity that was commensurate with his powerful, imposing physical build, Sunnyland Slims status as a beloved Chicago piano patriarch endured long after most of his peers had perished. For more than 50 years, the towering Sunnyland had rumbled the ivories around the Windy City, playing with virtually every local luminary imaginable and backing the great majority in the studio at one time or another.
He was born Albert Luandrew in Mississippi and received his early training on a pump organ. After entertaining at juke joints and movie houses in the Delta, Luandrew made Memphis his homebase during the late 20s, playing along Beale Street and hanging out with the likes of Little Brother Montgomery and Ma Rainey.
He adopted his colorful stage name from the title of one of his best-known songs, the mournful Sunnyland Train. (The downbeat piece immortalized the speed and deadly power of a St. Louis-to-Memphis locomotive that mowed down numerous people unfortunate enough to cross its tracks at the wrong instant.)
Slim moved to Chicago in 1939 and set up shop as an in-demand piano man, playing for a spell with John Lee Sonny Boy Williamson before waxing eight sides for RCA Victor in 1947 under the somewhat misleading handle of Doctor Claytons Buddy. If it hadnt been for the helpful Sunnyland, Muddy Waters may not have found his way onto Chess; it was at the pianists 1947 session for Aristocrat that the Chess brothers made Waterss acquaintance.
Aristocrat (which issued his harrowing Johnson Machine Gun) was but one of a myriad of labels that Sunnyland recorded for between 1948 and 1956: Hytone, Opera, Chance, Tempo-Tone, Mercury, Apollo, JOB, Regal, Vee-Jay (unissued), Blue Lake, Club 51, and Cobra all cut dates on Slim, whose vocals thundered with the same resonant authority as his 88s. In addition, his distinctive playing enlivened hundreds of sessions by other artists during the same timeframe.
In 1960, Sunnyland Slim traveled to Englewood Cliffs, NJ, to cut his debut LP for Prestiges Bluesville subsidiary with King Curtis supplying diamond-hard tenor sax breaks on many cuts. The album, Slims Shout, ranks as one of his finest, with definitive renditions of the pianists The Devil Is a Busy Man, Shake It, Brownskin Woman, and Its You Baby.
Like a deep-rooted tree, Sunnyland Slim persevered despite the passing decades. For a time, he helmed his own label, Airway Records. As late as 1985, he made a fine set for the Red Beans logo, Chicago Jump, backed by the same crack combo that shared the stage with him every Sunday evening at a popular North side club called B.L.U.E.S. for some 12 years.
There were times when the pianist fell seriously ill, but he always defied the odds and returned to action, warbling his trademark Woody Woodpecker chortle and kicking off one more exultant slow blues as he had done for the previous half century. Finally, after a calamitous fall on the ice coming home from a gig led to numerous complications, Sunnyland Slim finally died of kidney failure in 1995. Hes sorely missed.