Bell's bulging bag of tricks

When Carey Bell reworks the downbeat Muddy Waters classic I Got A Rich Man's Woman on his latest CD, the track takes on a wry significance.

'There were a lot of other Muddy Waters songs I could've done, but that's my favourite.' Why? 'Because that's what I got . . . I got me a rich man's woman.' Bell, 59, was speaking from his hotel room in Washington on the eve of his second wedding anniversary to third wife Patricia, daughter of one of the architects of urban blues, Willie Dixon.

Patricia, a classically trained pianist and a talent in her own right, was at home in Chicago. 'But it don't matter, as long as I'm making money she's happy.' Money, it seems, hasn't always been that easy to come by for the man regarded by blues scholars as one of the leading living exponents of the 'Mississippi saxophone'.

When, in 1956, 19-year-old Bell left rural Macon, Mississippi for Chicago with a harmonica and little else in his pocket, the electric guitar had begun to usurp the harp as the weapon of choice for blues warriors.

Even worse, the genre itself was under pressure from pop, jazz and soul for the hearts of clubgoers.

It was in this climate that Bell became friend and student of Delta blues harp professor, Little Walter Jacobs, whose jump style is still the most imitated of them all.

He kept listening and learning while developing his own 'chopped' technique that had its roots in the country and western he was fed through the Grand Ol' Opry broadcasts of his childhood blended with the funk sensibilities of the time.