A & E

Not too long after Willie "Big Eyes" Smith joined Muddy Waters' band, he was sitting outside a nondescript hotel room, passing time blowing a few notes on his harmonica.

Waters himself heard Smith, and delivered a proposition to his drummer: Since he liked what he was hearing, why not come out from behind the drum kit and step out front with the harp?

"I turned him down, flat cold, no way," says Smith, who performs tonight at Moondog's in Blawnox. "Because I loved the drums, too, and at that point I didn't feel no need to blow the harp."

Try that in the corporate world.

Fortunately for Smith, Waters understood.

"That's the way we were," Smith says, laughing. "I knew he was the bossman and I knew what that was like, but other than that, we had a relationship, like family. We just talked about everything: the way it was, the way it is. The way we saw it, we just talked about it."

Smith is a member of an increasingly select group: musicians who played with Waters in his prime. Born in Helena, Ark., in 1936, he grew up with some impressive neighbors: Robert Nighthawk lived on the farm next door and Pinetop Perkins lived down the road.

When he was 17, Smith took a trip to Chicago to join his mother and decided to stay. Even though he wasn't old enough to visit clubs, the rules were relaxed when parents accompanied their children, and Smith was soon hobnobbing with some of the greatest blues musicians on the planet. Waters especially took an interest in the young transplant from Arkansas the first time they met in 1953.

"He liked to talk, he liked to have fun, but I was more interested in the music and the guys that he had around him," Smith says. "I talked to everybody -- Otis Spann, Jimmie Rodgers, Henry Strong -- and they all treated me very, very, very well."

Smith's first gig was playing harmonica in a trio with Clifton James. He also sat in with Bo Diddley, Arthur "Big Boy" Shines and Johnny Shines. He switched to drums in 1957 when he joined Little Hudson's Red Devil Trio, and occasionally gigged or recorded with Waters.

Aside from three years in the mid-1960s when he became frustrated with the music business, Smith was an integral member of Water's band from 1961 until 1980. Smith's immersion in the Delta and Chicago blues is reflected in his solo work, notably his 2006 album "Way Back." Backed by Perkins, James Cotton, Calvin Jones, Bob Margolin and his son, Kenny "Beedy Eyes" Smith, it's a recording that sounds as if it was made in the 1950s or early '60s: his trademark, shuffling style directing the music.

Smith notes that his style was influenced by musicians such as Leroy Carr and Tampa Red, two of the pre-World War II musicians whose music was revered by the players who shape modern blues.

"It's one of those original styles that caught on at its peak and it refused to die," he says with a laugh. "It was one of the better styles, even at the beginning ... the late '30s, early '40s. That style just came in and builds and builds, and catches the soul."

Occasionally, Smith is called an innovator who helped shape contemporary blues. His view of himself, however, is not of a creative genius, but one in a long line of bluesmen who is carrying on a tradition.

"I'm just like the disciples in the Bible; I'm just trying to keep it alive," Smith says, laughing again. "You always got to start out sounding like somebody. And if you keep on going, you still have that instinct, but you always have your own imprint, your own way of doing it. "

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