Brewer Phillips (November 16, 1924* – August 30, 1999) was an American blues guitarist, chiefly associated with juke joint blues and Chicago blues. He was one of the more unique sidemen in Chicago blues history.
Born in Coila Mississippi, Brewer was a childhood friend of Eddie ‘Playboy’ Taylor whose guitar work was to become the rock on which Jimmy Reed‘s career rested. Both kids recognised the value of the heavy boogie beats coming out of the juke-joints all around the area. When Brewer moved to Memphis in the mid-50s, he did some session work with Memphis Minnie and Roosevelt Sykes before joining Bill Harvey’s band. Brewer lived the life of a working musician throughout the 60s and joined up with Hound Dog Taylor in Chicago towards the end of the decade.
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| Hutto, Taylor, Phillips and Harvey |
Brewer was a driving force behind Hound Dog Taylor’s Houserockers. Alongside his loud long-time drumming partner Ted Harvey, Brewer would keep a bass-line pounding on his battered Telecaster using a thumb-pick, while using his fingers to strum the heavy juke-joint boogies of his native Mississippi hill country. This potent rhythm section allowed Hound Dog to wail his slide guitar over this insanely insistent beat, and Brewer would sometimes contribute his shimmering single-string lead guitar lines to the mix too. It was a sound totally rooted in the juke joint sounds of Phillips' Mississippi upbringing and there was simply no equal to it on the blues scene of the day. After Hound Dog’s demise, Brewer continued to back other Chicago artists and issued a rare solo album when he was almost 60 years old.
When Delmark producer Bruce Iglauer could not persuade owner Bob Koester to sign The Houserockers, he formed Alligator Records to get the music out there. The success of their first album got the band and the label off to a great start, and Brewer’s ‘sheet-metal tone’ had a lot to do with it. The Houserockers always put on a fantastic performance, as their many live albums show. While with Taylor, Phillips played the Ann Arbor Blues Festival in 1970, 1972 and 1973, and toured nationally as well as touring Australia and New Zealand. Sadly Hound Dog passed away from cancer in 1976.
After Taylor's death, Brewer and Ted backed a lot of players around the Chicago clubs, including JB Hutto, Li’l Ed and the renowned Bluesologist Cub Koda. Brewer & Ted Harvey also gigged in Sweden. In 1982, Brewer cut his first solo effort, ‘Ingleside Blues’ for the Wolf label, with Ted on drums and a largely redundant bass player, given the guitarists style. Brewer remained an occasional presence on the Chicago club scene and toured Sweden, but did not record again until his 1996 album ‘Homebrew’.
Pianist Aaron Moore handled most of the vocals, but Brewer contributed his inimitable guitar boogies and a spectacular instrumental on the title track. It's amazing to think that Brewer Phillips would be 70-plus years old before releasing his U.S. debut album, but after a couple of years in virtual seclusion, Delmark coaxed him back into the studio for this fine set.
Pianist Aaron Moore handled most of the vocals, but Brewer contributed his inimitable guitar boogies and a spectacular instrumental on the title track. Sadly, it was to prove to be his swan-song, as he passed away the following year on August 30, 1999 in his Chicago apartment at 74 years of age from a heart attack. This happened three months before his scheduled appearance at the Boston Blues Festival. His 1999 Lifetime Achievement Award was presented posthumously and was donated to the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale Mississippi. Like many blues giants Brewer was an unsung great, and deserved more recognition.
(Edited from All About Blues Music, Wikipedia, Blues Trust.com & AllMusic) (*one source give his birth date as 1930).