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**Willie Dixon - I Am The Blues**
★★★★☆

There's something beautifully audacious about titling your album "I Am The Blues," especially when you're Willie Dixon in 1970, already deep into your fifth decade of life and having spent the better part of two decades as Chess Records' secret weapon. But here's the thing about audacity – when you've written "Hoochie Coochie Man," "Little Red Rooster," "Spoonful," and "The Seventh Son," when you've been the architect behind Muddy Waters' swagger and Howlin' Wolf's menace, when your bass lines have provided the foundation for an entire generation of Chicago blues legends, well, maybe you've earned the right to make such bold declarations.

By 1970, Dixon had watched rock stars across the pond turn his compositions into million-selling anthems. The Rolling Stones had made "Little Red Rooster" a chart-topper, Led Zeppelin was mining his catalog like prospectors hitting gold, and suddenly everyone wanted to know who this Willie Dixon cat was. The timing couldn't have been more perfect for the big man to step out from behind the console and declare his artistic independence.

"I Am The Blues" finds Dixon doing something he'd rarely done before – putting himself front and center, trading his producer's chair for the spotlight. Working with a crack band that included the incomparable Lafayette Leake on piano and the rhythm section that had powered countless Chess classics, Dixon crafted an album that serves as both autobiography and manifesto. This isn't just Willie Dixon singing his songs; this is Willie Dixon explaining why these songs matter, why they've endured, and why he, more than anyone, has the right to call himself the living embodiment of the blues.

The album opens with "Back Door Man," and immediately you understand this isn't going to be some nostalgic victory lap. Dixon's voice, a rumbling earthquake of authority and experience, transforms the song from Howlin' Wolf's predatory growl into something more knowing, more lived-in. When he sings "I am a back door man," it's not a boast – it's a statement of fact from someone who's been slipping through America's back doors, both literal and metaphorical, his entire life.

"Hoochie Coochie Man" becomes the album's centerpiece, and watching Dixon reclaim his most famous creation is like witnessing a master painter explaining his most celebrated work. The arrangement is leaner than Muddy's version, more conversational, as if Dixon is sitting across from you at 3 AM, bourbon between you, telling you exactly how much mojo one man can possess. Lafayette Leake's piano work here is nothing short of sublime, dancing between the spaces Dixon's voice creates with the precision of a master craftsman.

But it's on "The Seventh Son" where the album truly soars. Dixon's delivery is hypnotic, almost shamanic, and you realize this isn't just a song about supernatural powers – it's Dixon positioning himself as the blues' own seventh son, born with the gift to heal and harm through nothing but words and melody. The track builds with an almost religious fervor, Leake's organ swirling around Dixon's voice like incense in a Mississippi church.

"Spoonful" strips away all the psychedelic excess that Cream had layered onto it, returning the song to its essential truth – a meditation on desire so pure and concentrated it could kill you. Dixon's bass playing, often overlooked in his role as songwriter and producer, anchors the track with the weight of a man who understands that rhythm isn't just about keeping time; it's about keeping souls.

The album isn't without its minor stumbles – a few tracks feel slightly underdeveloped, as if Dixon was still learning how to be the star rather than the star-maker. But these are quibbles with what amounts to a masterclass in blues authority.

"I Am The Blues" stands today as essential listening, not just for blues completists but for anyone who wants to understand the genre's DNA. It's the sound of a master craftsman finally stepping into the light, claiming his rightful place not just as the blues' greatest songwriter, but as one of its most compelling voices. In an era when the blues was being electrified, amplified, and psychedelicized beyond recognition, Dixon reminded everyone what the form was really about – truth, delivered with the weight of lived experience. Mission accomplished, Willie. You are, indeed, the blues.