A Chicago listener becomes a player
Rick Kreher was born and raised in Chicago. One of his earliest musical memories was seeing harmonica players at Maxwell Street while shopping there with his parents. In the 1960s, the British rock boom encouraged him and some cousins to form a garage band. Listening gradually became a more serious commitment to blues, first through radio and concerts and then through the South and West Side clubs where many of the musicians worked regularly.
He recalled seeing Muddy Waters on bills with rock bands before finding listings for Waters’s club appearances in the underground newspaper The Seed. That led to visits to Pepper’s, Theresa’s, and other venues. At first Kreher was too shy to sit in, preferring to watch players closely and try things later at home. His eventual niche grew from that close listening: he wanted to make a band sound good, and rhythm guitar gave him a useful role among more conspicuous soloists.
Muddy Waters’s last band
Kreher worked with Studebaker John as North Side blues clubs began offering more opportunities, and played with Mojo Buford. Buford became the link to Muddy Waters when Waters needed to assemble a new band in 1980. Kreher joined a lineup that came to include John Primer on guitar, Lovie Lee on piano, Earnest Johnson on bass, Buford on harmonica, and Ray Allison on drums. For a musician used to small local engagements, international touring with Waters was a sudden change.
Kreher remembered obtaining his first passport in time for a trip to Britain, and described his first engagement with Waters as taking place in Jersey. He stayed with the band through Waters’s final years, until the singer’s death in 1983. What he emphasized afterward was Waters’s professionalism: the responsibility of presenting the music well applied to accompanists as much as to the star. Kreher also served as a pallbearer at Waters’s funeral.
The November 22, 1981, Checkerboard Lounge performance with members of the Rolling Stones is a particularly visible part of that period. Kreher and Primer were the band’s guitarists before the visitors joined the stage. The surviving performance places him inside the working group that made the evening possible, even when attention shifted toward the visiting rock musicians. It also preserves the interaction of musicians who normally played the repertoire together rather than being assembled only for that encounter.
A career built around accompaniment
After Waters’s death, Kreher returned to Studebaker John and continued working with Chicago musicians who needed a guitarist. His later associations included Fenton Robinson, Tail Dragger, Little Arthur Duncan, Harmonica Hinds, and Rockin’ Johnny Burgin. Family responsibilities and work outside music affected how much traveling he could do, but local band work remained a continuing part of his life. His career developed through repeated calls from other bandleaders rather than a decision to become a full-time singer and frontman.
His own explanation of his playing is unusually consistent. In both major Blues Blast interviews, he described himself primarily as a rhythm guitarist. Sammy Lawhorn, Louis Myers, and Eddie Taylor were among his favorite players. He valued the ensemble approach in which parts fit around a singer, and said he took satisfaction when listeners praised the bandleader’s performance. That was evidence that the backing musicians had done their work well. His restraint was a positive musical choice, rooted in the situations he most enjoyed.
Rockin’ Johnny and new Chicago records
Kreher met Rockin’ Johnny in the early 1990s and became a regular collaborator. Their work included backing Tail Dragger, and the association continued as Burgin developed his own recording career. The Rockin’ Johnny Band’s Grim Reaper, released in 2012, credits Kreher on rhythm guitar with John Sefner on bass, Steve Bass on drums, and David ‘Big D’ Erickson on harmonica. The record includes Burgin originals such as ‘It’s Expensive to Be Broke,’ ‘One and One Ain’t Two,’ and ‘Shoe Leather & Tire Rubber.’
This was a working-band context for Kreher’s guitar rather than a guest appearance built around his connection to Waters. The personnel had their own accumulated Chicago experience and supported Burgin’s newer material as well as the group’s blues foundations. Kreher’s place in that band also led directly into recording with Willie Buck, whose Cell Phone Man used the Rockin’ Johnny lineup as its supporting ensemble.
Released by Delmark in 2012, Cell Phone Man features sixteen songs, with Barrelhouse Chuck on piano and Bharath Rajakumar among the harmonica players. Kreher and Burgin share the guitar duties. For Kreher, the album continues a recognizable pattern: applying his ensemble experience to a singer’s repertoire while working alongside musicians with whom he already had a practical musical relationship.
Working with Mud Morganfield
Kreher also became an important associate of Mud Morganfield, Muddy Waters’s eldest son. He encountered Morganfield as the singer began appearing around Chicago, and recognized both the vocal resemblance and an interest in writing new songs. Their collaboration linked Kreher’s experience with the father’s band to the son’s developing career without requiring Morganfield to repeat an old repertoire exclusively.
They Call Me Mud, released by Severn in 2018, credits Morganfield and Kreher as co-producers. Kreher plays guitar and contributes backing vocals, with Billy Flynn, Studebaker John, Sumito Ariyo Ariyoshi, E.G. McDaniel, and Melvin ‘Pookie Stix’ Carlisle among the band. Recorded at Joyride Studios in February 2017, the album includes mostly Morganfield compositions as well as two selections by his father. Guests and additional instruments allow the music to reach toward soul and funk alongside Chicago blues.
Kreher’s own notes for that release identify several distinct musical settings: the title song’s funk, the minor blues ‘48 Days,’ a Stax-like feel on ‘Oh Yeah,’ and the duet ‘Who Loves You’ with Morganfield’s daughter Lashunda. Those details reveal a producer attentive to a singer’s range. His continuing value lies in that combination of experience and responsiveness: knowledge of an older band tradition, used in the service of musicians making their own records.
The Severn personnel also distinguishes Morganfield’s own bass contributions from those of E.G. McDaniel, and credits Kreher and several bandmates with backing vocals on one selection. Those precise assignments give a picture of the collaborative studio ensemble in which he served as both guitarist and co-producer.