Charles Eldridge Norris (August 11, 1921 – August 26, 1989) was an American jazz and blues guitarist.
Considered a prototype West Coast bluesman, Norris was actually a Midwesterner. He was born in the blues- and jazz-heavy town of Kansas City and raised in the equally musical metropolis of Chicago. Listeners who have heard his guitar playing in any
context would not be surprised to learn that he was a student of the
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famed Chicago music instructor Captain Walter Dyett, a man who was involved in the formative training of many Chicago-area jazz musicians. Norris was much more than just a funky string bender. He could play subtle rhythmic accompaniment in the style of a jazz guitarist such as Oscar Moore, then turn around and wail out front and high above the band like a Peewee Crayton or Johnny "Guitar" Watson.
context would not be surprised to learn that he was a student of the
He studied and worked in Chicago until the mid-'40s, when he moved out to the West Coast following a failed marriage. Truthfully feeling the blues, he gigged at night and mined the recording studios for session gold during the days. He soon became one of the most-called musicians in Hollywood. Between 1947 and 1951 he recorded several records in Los Angeles for Coast, Imperial, Selective, Mercury and Aladdin. His final two recordings were made in New York City for Atlantic in 1953. The best-known Norris tracks include titles such as "Messin' Up,""Kinda Sick, Mostly Worried," and the philosophical "What's Good for One's Good for All."
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Some of the guitarist's best playing was on records by brilliant black performers who were in the process of extending the blues into innovative realms, creating brand new genres in the process. One such artist was the great Percy Mayfield, who recorded original classics such as the grueling "Two Years of Torture" with band backing that combined Norris with musicians such as saxophonists Marshall Royal and Maxwell Davis.
Although not as well-known as Mayfield, pianist and singer Floyd Dixon was another blues talent that recorded on the West Coast in the early '50s, putting the guitar sound of Norris into the spotlight for tracks such as "Come Back Baby,""I'll Be Lonely,""People Like Me," and especially the rocking instrumental "Shuffle Boogie."
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Many of the great West Coast players were aligned at one time or another with Johnny Otis, a drummer and bandleader whose groups were something like junior colleges for sidemen, Norris included. Guitar nuts can drool over the Otis band that featured not only Norris but the amazing Johnny "Guitar" Watson as well. Some of the sides cut by this line-up are included on the Otis collection on the Charly label entitled Let's Live It Up. Norris also worked with artists such as Amos Milburn, Dinah Washington, and Little Richard.
In 1980, he recorded a live album, The Los Angeles Flash, in Gothenburg, Sweden. Norris died in Tustin, California, in 1989.
(Edited from AllMusic, Wikipedia, Discogs)