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 Travis "Moonchild" Haddix
“I am the best that I can be,” says Travis
“Moonchild” Haddix, “and since no one
else can be me, there’s none better.”
Once you hear this disc,
you’ll know why the suave blues singer and guitarist sports
such a confident outlook. With more than a dozen albums under his belt
and several European tours distinguishing his frequent flyer account,
the Cleveland-based Haddix is also a prolific songwriter
who’s written memorable material for Artie “Blues
Boy” White, Lee Shot Williams, Michael Burks, Charles Wilson,
Dicky Williams, Jimmy Dawkins, and the late Son Seals.
Of course, nobody sounds better
delivering a Travis Haddix copyright then the man himself. All 10
tracks on Daylight at Midnight are self-penned originals, their
inspiration stemming from myriad sources. “My songs
don’t really depict my life or lifestyle,” he
notes. “It’s just something that I’ve
heard somebody else say, or something like that.” The title
track is an exception. “I wrote that song about a town in the
northern part of Finland,” says Travis. “When I was
on tour there at that particular time, it stayed daylight mostly all
the time.” In addition to his soul-steeped vocals, Haddix
plays crisp, concise guitar solos throughout the disc.
Travis was born November 26, 1938 in
Hatchie Bottom, Mississippi. “That’s out in a cow
pasture, that’s where that is,” he chuckles. I was
born in a cabin in Hatchie Bottom.” Eventually the Haddixes
settled in nearby Walnut. “The closest big city is
Memphis,” he says. “If you wanted to go to town,
that’s where you had to go, ‘cause we lived way
back in the country.”
Travis first heard the blues from his
father, Chalmus “Rooster” Haddix, a Delta bluesman
conversant on guitar, piano, fiddle, and harmonica. “My dad
and his brothers, they played Saturday night fish fries down in the
state of Mississippi. I’m the son of a
sharecropper,” he says. “So I got introduced to the
blues at a very early age. My dad could play several different
instruments, and he could play ‘em very well.”
Although he started out on piano, Travis
switched to guitar after a life-changing visit to Memphis’
pioneering radio station WDIA. “That’s where I got
my introduction to B.B. King,” he says. “He had a
10- or 15-minute radio program, and my older brother Al used to take me
over there to see him play. My brother Al was a great jazz guitarist.
And we’d go over to see B.B. King. That’s where I
decided that I wanted to play guitar.”
It didn’t take Travis long to
get his first axe. “I had been playing my older brother
Al’s guitar,” he says. “And then I got a
guitar shortly after that. My brother Al bought me a guitar called a
Stella. I played that until my father was drinking a little bit too
much, and he sat down on it and broke the neck off! That was the end of
the Stella. And then I graduated and got a Harmony. And after the
Harmony, I got the Gibson 335.
“When I saw the late, great
Robert Lockwood, Jr. play a Guild, then I got a Guild. And
I’ve had the Guild ever since,” he adds.
“I saw him play, this was back in ‘64. I bought the
Guild from my cousin in 1965. I’ve still got it, and I still
play it.” B.B. wasn’t his only early influence.
“There was the late, great Lowell Fulson, Albert King, Little
Milton, and of course T-Bone Walker is everybody’s
influence,” he says. “And of course, Buddy Guy has
been around a long time. I like listening to his music, and trying to
mimic his guitar playing too.”
After graduating from high school in
Walnut, Travis came north. “My family moved to Milwaukee, and
I was a good basketball player, so I went to Marquette,” he
says. “I found out that I wasn’t as good as I
thought I was, and I wasn’t keeping up academically also. So
I left Milwaukee and came to Cleveland. I went to Cuyahoga Community
College, and I finished my education there.” Then Uncle Sam
came calling.
“I was drafted into the Army
in 1961, and I spent a couple of years in the Army,” says
Haddix, who spent parts of his hitch at Fort Bliss in Texas and New
Jersey’s Fort Dix before being stationed in Europe.
“My orders kept drifting me around all over the country, and
then I finally ended up in Stuttgart, Germany.
“I played in the service clubs
while I was in the Army. There was another boy from Cleveland, a good
friend of mine,” says Travis. “We still play
together sometimes. His name is Charlie Favors. We had a choice: we
could either play and entertain, or we could do guard duty. So we chose
to play instead of pulling guard duty!”
Back in Cleveland after completing his
military obligation, Travis joined an R&B band, Chuck &
the Tremblers, that was led by bassist Chuck Barkley. “He was
a very nice guy that would put up with younger guys. He was in his late
40s at that time. And we were in our early 20s,” says Haddix.
“They were well-established when I got there.”
Travis made his recording debut as a member of Chuck & the
Tremblers, writing and singing “Stop Cheating
Woman” as half of their single for John Hicks’
local Del-Nita label. “That was recorded back in 1965 and
released in 1968,” Travis notes. The flip,
“Dianna,” was a hard-driving instrumental.
In addition to spending approximately
six years with Chuck & the Tremblers, Haddix was also a
longtime member of another Cleveland aggregation, Ernest & the
El Roccos, led by bassist Ernest Good. “Actually, the El
Roccos was a little bit before Chuck & the
Tremblers,” he says. “I played with both bands at
the same time.” Eventually, it was time to do his own thing.
Travis formed his own funky outfit, the Now Sound.
“That was my first
band,” he says. “Some of the guys that I had played
with with Chuck & the Tremblers and with Ernest & the
El Roccos, we all decided it’s time for us to move
forward.” The Now Sound served as a frequent attraction at
one of Cleveland’s top entertainment clubs until the band was
seduced en masse by a soul superstar.
“We opened the show for
Johnnie Taylor. It was a very popular place here called the Plush
Entertainment Center. And we opened the show for him, and he said he
needed a band. He asked, did I want to go? And I said I
couldn’t go with him. So he said, ‘I need a
band!’ So he took the band,” says Travis.
“I think they stayed with him several years.” Their
defection didn’t stop Haddix for long. “I put
together a band and I called it the Travis Haddix Band, or
THB,” he says. “And that’s the band that
I have now.”
A solo 45 that the guitarist cut in 1984
with Ernest & the El Roccos providing support spawned his
enduring nickname. “It was called
‘Moonchild.’ It was a song about the heavenly
bodies–the moon, the sun, the stars. And they started calling
me ‘Moonchild,’ ‘Moonshine,’
‘Moondust,’” he laughs. “So the
name sort of stuck.”
Warming up at the Plush for another soul
luminary led to Travis’ signing with John Abbey’s
Atlanta-based Ichiban Records. “I opened a show for Clarence
Carter, and I was talking to him,” he says. Chicago blues
singer Artie “Blues Boy” White also helped out.
“He was with Ichiban, and he and Clarence Carter put in a
good word for me, and they signed me,” says Haddix, whose
debut album, Wrong Side Out, was released on Ichiban in 1988 (the title
track served as half of his first single for the label). Travis encored
in 1991 with Winners Never Quit and cut three more albums for the firm:
What I Know Right Now in ‘92, I Got a Sure Thing in
‘93, and 1994's A Big Ole Goodun.
That didn’t mean he could quit
his day job. “I worked for General Motors for 22 years, and I
worked as a mailman for 22 years. Forty-four years, I was
working,” he says. “I worked both jobs when my
daughters were in school. I worked both jobs for about 10 or 11
years.” That schedule was a backbreaker. “I stayed
in trouble a lot of times because I would take a lot of time off from
my day job to play. It kept me in hot water for a long time,”
says Travis. “I delivered the mail during the day, and I
delivered the blues at night!”
Despite a splendid talent roster,
Ichiban faded in the mid-‘90s. “They went out of
business, unfortunately, but they are largely responsible for getting
me in the marketplace, and getting my name known. They were the first
label that put me on tour,” Travis says.
Travis’s savvy solution?
“I decided to develop my own label,” he says.
Wann-Sonn Records was launched in 1995. “That’s the
name of my two daughters,” Haddix says. “My oldest
daughter’s named Wanda; my youngest daughter’s
named Sonya.” His first Wann-Sonn album was titled Dance to
the Blues, and he’s unleashed plenty more soulful blues discs
since then: Sign of the Times in 1998, the next year’s
Shootum Up, Old & Easy in 2000, Milk & Bread in
‘01, 2002's Company is Coming, Mud Cakes (cut live in
Osnabruck, Germany, near where he was stationed in the Army) in
‘05, and last year’s Mean Ole Yesterday.
Daylight at Midnight was also originally
done for Wann-Sonn. Earwig boss Michael Frank was so impressed with
Haddix’s compelling performances that he picked upthe CD for
more extensive distribution. It won’t be a hard sell
overseas. “Europe seems to be my best market,” he
says. “They like what I do there, and they keep inviting me
back. And that’s a good thing!” In addition to
writing for White, Travis sometimes shares a bill with him.
“Artie’s a good friend of mine,” says
Travis. “Last year we were in England together. We went and
done a short tour in the U.K. I’ve been writing for Artie
since 1985.”
When he’s not dazzling the
European demographic, you’re likely to find Travis and his
band playing back home. “I play every weekend in small blues
clubs here in Cleveland,” he says. “The blues is
just sort of a steady thing. It never gets too high, or never gets too
low. It’s sort of consistent.” Travis also co-hosts
a blues radio show on WCSB every Monday evening.
Now, about the empowering declaration
opening these notes. “That’s just a thing that I
came up with one night, doing the show. It just came out, a
spontaneous quote. I said, ‘I’m the best I can be,
and since no one else can be me, there’s none better. Good
night, everybody!’ That just sort of stuck. And now
it’s a phrase to end all my shows.”
Travis tailors his sets to please his
crowd. “What I do is I play something, and if I can get a
vibration between me and the audience, then I continue to play that
type of music. I let the audience dictate what I’m doing.
“I like to talk to the audience, and if I see
that’s working, then I’ll do more talking. And when
I’m playing and singing, if my playing is catching on and
seems to have a positive effect, then I do a little bit more with my
guitar. If my singing has the most positive effect, then
that’s what I’ll do.”
Daylight at Midnight is sure to have a
similarly positive effect on you.
-Bio written by Bill Dahl
Quotes
“Without
a wasted lick anywhere, this is the kind of blues that used to inspire
college kids to go to bad neighborhoods and have a great
time.” –Chris
Spector (Midwest Record)
“A
solid one-two punch of soul-blues, ten original cuts of down-home blues
with an uptown attitude!” –Don
Crow (Music City Blues)
“It's
not often you have the chance to hear someone who is able to move so
seamlessly between the blues and near funk R&B on the same disc
with such authority and assurance” –Richard
Marcus (Blogcritics)
Press
Blues In Britain - Daylight At Midnight - Review
| Listen (High Speed Internet) |
| Backward
Baby |
[MP3] |
Dick For Dinner |
[MP3] |
| Do Wrong Right |
[MP3] |
Word A Lie |
[MP3] |
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