Born on the north side of Chicago in 1943, Terry Callier was surrounded by the very best of music. Although he and his schoolmates were attracted by vocal groups and subtle soul, Chicago was still very much the northern home of the blues. It was one of those northern cities to which southern Delta blacks had come in search of work. They brought their music with them and, in the new atmosphere of the big city, they transformed what had been a distinctly rural sound into something noisy and electric. In the hands of blues-men such as Muddy Waters, it became known as the Chicago style. For the young Callier, however, it was music with which he had little or no connection.
"Well," says Callier, "I knew that I didn't have the life experience to really make that stuff sound real. These guys - Muddy Waters and Little Walter - had lived lives. At that time they were in their 30s and 40s. They had been around and they had come up through, as they say, tribulation. Even today there are young people singing the blues and they really shouldn't, because they don't know what it's about. Someone like Stevie Ray Vaughan who actually lived the life is an exception. I knew that I didn't have any business trying to fool with the blues because I didn't know anything about it. I had led a very sheltered life and I wasn't up to it. But I can sing the blues now - yes sir!"
The city's recording scene was dominated by the Chess record label - an empire which managed to encompass everything from blues and rock 'n' roll to soul and jazz. Callier made his first single for Chess and his first album for Prestige. He was off the blocks in fine style. Perhaps surprisingly, however, given the Chi-Town sound, the debut album was a folk record. The title, The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier, suggested little of Chicago's celebrated heritage.
That term "folk" continues to cause problems for historians. Folk singers - especially black folk singers - never quite fit expectations. Often they aren't bluesy enough for white fans, and singers such as Odetta, Josh White and even Leadbelly can sometimes fall between the cracks. For Callier, beginning to perform during the folk boom, it was just a matter of exposure, circumstance and having no desire to sing Chicago blues. Even so, a folk record seemed odd. He had started out, like many black Chicago kids of his age, performing in vocal groups. He also played piano, but while at college he swapped piano for the more convenient guitar and soon found himself playing in a Chicago coffee house.
"I started out doing a pretty basic folk presentation. I was doing songs by Harry Belafonte, The Kingston Trio, The Brothers Four - what was popular at the time. But then in 1964 I saw John Coltrane live in Chicago and that completely blew me away. The intensity with which that quartet approached the music scared me. I was sitting at the bar and these guys were playing as if their lives depended on it. I'd never seen anything like it before. They were there for a week and I was there every night for every note. When they left town I went out and got a day job. I started working as a laboratory technician and I didn't play in public for about eight or nine months. When I finally went back to the clubs I was looking at music differently and I was looking at the world differently."
And so it was that The New Folk Sound featured guitar, voice and two acoustic basses. It was certainly a new sound - a folk album inspired in part by John Coltrane. But that other important aspect of Chicago music still had a bearing. A major influence on young black musicians at the time had been the success of The Impressions - old Chicago neighbours and schoolmates of Callier. They were a little older than him and while Callier was still at high school, the Impressions had already recorded For Your Precious Love. They were making a serious name for themselves and were a source of local pride.
"We all grew up in the same neighbourhood - Jerry Butler, Curtis Mayfield, Major Lance and Ramsey Lewis. So music was never just a pipe-dream for us. We had seen it happen to people who we knew and touched and got into devilment with. We knew that if we had the right song and the right moves, it could happen to us too. And there was a host of other people who were extremely talented too but they either didn't want a career in music, or got side-tracked by one thing or another, or who left the planet early.
"There were only two things that mattered - music and basketball. And guys would be very frank with you. They'd listen to you singing and they'd say, why don't you come on out on the basketball court! By the same token, if you were playing basketball, they'd say, why do you come here and embarrass yourself, why don't you get one of those vocal groups going?"
Callier continued to make albums and while critical acclaim was never a problem, he found himself getting nowhere slowly. He had also written a major hit for Chess stars The Dells, but it still wasn't getting any easier in terms of royalties. And by now he had something far more important to do - he had a daughter to raise. He took a job at the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Centre and studied sociology in the evenings. And so began Terry Callier's new career as student and computer programmer.
"I wasn't making enough money from the music business to support myself and my daughter. She wanted to stay in Chicago with me and so I had a choice of priorities. I could keep struggling with the music business or I could support my daughter as best I could. It wasn't a hard choice to make because music is a concept and my daughter was in my face. My daughter was a living, breathing person and she needed support. So it wasn't a tough choice. But I will say this - I thought about music. I tried to concentrate on my programming work for eight hours a day, but I did a lot of listening. I listened to music on the way to work and at home and I was still hearing Miles and Coltrane and Billie Holiday and those kind of folks. And I was also listening to the people that my daughter was listening to - Prince and, more recently, Sarah McLachlan and the other ladies of fashion. And so I had a chance to stay current in terms of what was happening in the marketplace."
But for all his listening he was unaware of what was happening in Europe. Thanks to enlightened DJs, Callier was becoming something of a cult figure. Like others from the soul/jazz 1960s, his records were being played in clubs and there was a real demand for reissues. Callier came across to play for the faithful and it all seemed to be finally, and unexpectedly, happening. In the US, Dru Hill put The Love We Had Stays on My Mind on a CD that sold in massive numbers. For Callier, it was an unexpected windfall at the end of the century.
"I was stunned by what happened. I got a call saying that they wanted to re-release my last 12-inch and my first thought that this was one of my friends faking an accent. I had some doubts about going for it because I was still working full-time as late as February of last year. And I would still be working full-time except that the research organisation I worked for was downsized and my position was effectively phased out. I could either work for less money or move on. So I decided that, as there was something happening in the music business, I would try it again. But I'm always glad that I have the computer programming to fall back on. Absolutely."
With the release of Timepeace and Life-time on the Talking Loud Label, and endorsements from the likes of Beth Orton and others, Callier is very much back in the frame. He returns to Dublin in April for what promises to be another deeply intense and generous performance. That's the way he does it. He feels it's the only way to perform - something he learned at the feet of John Coltrane.
"When I first saw him I realised that everything was in this music - heaven, earth, hell, the good, the bad and the ugly - just everything in the universe is there. It took me a couple of numbers to realise it because when they first started playing it scared me. If I could have left the club I would have, but the place was packed. So I watched them and over the years I saw how they were affecting audiences. I saw how you have to have something of that level of intensity to cut through what people have to go through every day. And so music can help and can heal and can do wonders for people - and for things too. Music is good for trees and birds and lions and tigers also! But specifically there are certain vibrations within people which resonate with musical tones, and if you present the music in the right way, with that level of intensity, then you can touch people, and communicate with them on a higher level than most people think possible."
Terry Callier plays Vicar Street, Dublin on Saturday, April 15th