Chris Jacobs
The Kings have Madison roots and a Chicago sound.
Joe Nosek and Oscar Wilson arrived at the blues via very different routes. Wilson was essentially born a bluesman. He grew up in the heart of Chicago blues country in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood, where 43rd Street was renamed Muddy Waters Drive in the 1980s. Nosek found the blues by way of British Invasion rock. As a 10-year-old digging into his dad’s album collection, he discovered that many of his favorite early Rolling Stones tunes had actually been penned by the likes of Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Robert Johnson. Before long, he was hooked on the original source material.
Nosek and Wilson now anchor the Cash Box Kings, a Chicago-based blues outfit with Madison roots. The Cash Box Kings play a style of blues reminiscent of what you might have heard if you hung out in Bronzeville in the 1940s and ’50s. On May 16, the Kings return to the Knuckle Down Saloon on Madison’s east side to celebrate the release of their new Blind Pig Records CD Holding Court.
Nosek immersed himself in the blues in a serious way when he moved to Chicago at age 14. “I started going to Blues Fest every summer, staying from the minute it started until the last note was played,” Nosek recalls. “I got to see a lot of the original guys, like Jimmy Rogers, Sunnyland Slim and Willie Dixon. Once I heard that music, the original stuff, I was like ‘Whoa, the Stones are cool, but this is really where it’s at.’”
Nosek describes the Cash Box Kings as a “blues collective.” He and Wilson are the mainstays, and they are backed by a rotating cast of about half a dozen guitarists, bassists and drummers. Nosek started the band 14 years ago with fellow Madisonian Todd Cambio, who these days spends more time building guitars (his company is called Fraulini Guitars) than gigging with the band. Nosek and Mark Haines, one of the band’s drummers, are the only current members living in Madison. Most of the band calls Chicago its sweet home, including former Madisonian Joel Paterson.
The 13-song album touches on musicians’ struggles to make a buck in this age of free downloads and digital piracy (“Download Blues”) and the phenomenon of gentrification chasing poverty and other urban problems outside of city limits (“Gotta Move to the Suburbs”).
The band’s 2013 album, Black Toppin’, earned rave reviews from the blues press and was nominated for a Blues Music Award (sort of the Oscars of blues) in the Best Traditional Blues Album category. The Blues Blast Awards (sort of the Golden Globes of blues) named it Traditional Blues Album of the Year.
The four-year-old Knuckle Down has become one of Madison’s prime venues for blues, and the Cash Box Kings have made it a regular stop. There’s also plenty of family blues history; owner Chris Kalmbach’s mother, Bonnie, spun blues discs on WORT for over 25 years.
“Everyone in the band, especially the Chicago guys, really love playing in Madison because people dance more here than pretty much anywhere else,” says Nosek. “That’s a big part of blues tradition; it’s not a spectator sport.”
