By Michael Swanger michael@dmcityview.com

If you believe in the old adage that to play the blues you have to live them, then Louisiana Red's life story is evidence to its truth.

"The blues is life," says the 74-year-old singer-guitarist. "When you don't have a job, don't have food for your family, don't have no home to live in, that's the blues."

Whether you believe that or not, it would be hard to argue that anyone playing the blues today has felt them more than Red. Born Iverson Minter in Bessemer, Ala., Red has overcome adversity at nearly every step of his life. His mother died of pneumonia seven days after giving birth to him. The Ku Klux Klan murdered his father when he was 5 years old. Most of his childhood was spent being shuffled between family members who severely beat him. And he spent two years in an orphanage where he suffered additional abuse.

Through it all, Red persevered with self discipline, positive thinking and the blues. Songs like "Childhood Memories" and "Orphanage Blues" may be stark accounts of Red's horrific childhood, but they also champion the poor and the downtrodden. Others, including his biggest hit, "Red's Dream," and "They March and They Sing" are windows to Red's caring soul, one that cries for equality and peace.

"I just had to go through it," Red says of his adversity. "I said, 'I'll have to make a life for myself.'"

That life began when Red found solace in the guitar at the age of 9. His grandfather, a bottleneck-styled guitarist and harmonica player, gave him his first acoustic guitar and taught him how to hobo. Red also took lessons from Crit Walters while living with relatives in Pittsburgh, and by the time he was a teenager, he was playing in school bands, soaking up the sounds of records by Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins, Arthur Crudup and Lowell Fulson.

At the age of 16, Red lied about his age and joined the U.S. Army, serving during the Korean Conflict. After his honorable discharge, he moved to New Jersey to pursue a career in music. Claiming that Phil and Leonard Chess brought him to Chicago in 1952, Red recorded a handful of songs for their Checker subsidiary label under the pseudonym Rocky Fuller and His Guitar (he later earned the moniker Louisiana Red for his love of hot sauce), backed by Waters and Little Walter Jacobs. Waters was so impressed by the young bluesman he invited Red to sit in at one of his gigs.

"My little heart almost jumped out of my belly, I was so excited," Red says. "I hated to leave, but I had to go back to work at the steel mill back in Pittsburgh."

Those Chicago sessions sparked Red to try to make a living playing the blues, and he quickly adopted an improvisational style that has all but vanished from the blues scene today. During the 1950s, he rambled, traveling to the South, returning to Chicago to play steady gigs and sit in with Elmore James and Tampa Red, before winding up in Detroit playing with John Lee Hooker, Big Maceo, Eddie Burns and Jimmy Burns.

Though he continued to gig during the 1960s and record for various labels, by the age of 28, Red married and returned to Pittsburgh to work at the steel mills and factories to support his family. Sometimes he would travel to New York City, where he renewed old acquaintances with Lonnie Johnson, Son House and Victoria Spivey.

A booking at the 1975 Montreaux Jazz Festival reinvigorated Red's career and opened his eyes to Europe's love affair with the blues. While most American blues artists struggled to find work at home, they were revered in Europe. In 1982, following a booking with the American Folk Blues Festival, he moved to Hanover, Germany, where he met his second wife, Dora. These days, Red returns to the U.S. twice a year to play festivals and clubs.

"I wasn't being treated right musically," Red says. "So, I left for Germany and they accepted me right away."

Red hopes the release of a new DVD this summer, "The Blues and Louisiana Red," might help him gain some new fans. He's also working on a manuscript for a book about his life story.

Red is on tour this month with longtime friend and 91-year-old Mississippi Delta bluesman David "Honeyboy" Edwards, one of the last living links to Robert Johnson and other pre-war legends of the blues. The two musicians have been friends for about 20 years, and Red says he enjoys working with "Honeyboy" every chance he gets.

"We're a good team," Red says. "He brings that real Mississippi Delta blues back into circulation again because he knowed all those blues players."

Though "Honeyboy" has achieved modest success in recent years, Red has yet to gain similar acceptance by the blues community. In 1983, he won a W.C. Handy Award, but awards and honors have been few and far between.

Still, regardless of whether Red achieves blues fame, he remains humble in his quest for a quality life that has been filled with hard times.

"I want to keep playing my music around the world, and I want people to feel it," he says. "Awards don't mean nothing to me. My reward is people feelin' my music and lovin' my music and understandin' my music." CV

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