Willie Kent, a hard-working bluesman whose soulful singing and solid P-Bass grooves anchored his own band and the Chicago scene for decades, died of cancer on March 2. He was 70. A ten-time Handy Award winner, Kent recorded 12 solo albums and toured the U.S. and Europe, but his home was onstage on the West Side fronting Willie Kent & the Gents.
Migrating from Mississippi to Chicago in the early ’50s, Kent drove a truck by day and hit the clubs by night, soaking in the sounds and learning the rules. “You played a little of everything that was on the ’box,’” he said in June ’99. “If it was hot, you played it.” Kent apprenticed with local bands and logged stints with greats such as Little Walter and Muddy Waters before the Gents began their three-decade run. Though the band worked steadily, it would take heart surgery to unseat Kent from his truck-driving job, in 1987.
On his beat-up Fender Precision—strung with nylon-wounds and played through a Peavey guitar head and Ampeg B-15 cabinet—Kent employed a supple double-thumbing technique he developed after a serious hand injury. “It’s a smooth down-up motion, kind of like a rocking chair,” he explained.
Kent kept gigging as chemotherapy began early last year, finally hanging up his bass in December. “I just keep playin’ what I enjoy, what the people want to hear,” he said in ’99. “It’s nice to do other things, but it’s also nice to please others.”