Acclaimed “father of the blues,” song-writer and band-leader W.C. Handy was born this day 149 years ago. He’s an important figure in the history of the blues – the first real superstar, through his sheet music compositions, his 1914 St. Louis Blues, and his claim to recognizing the “world famous blues note.”
And, whatdayaknow, I share a birthday with W.C. Handy! Handy, of course, is credited with recognizing the blues for the first time in the plaintive slide playing by a man on his guitar at a station in Tutweiler, has a statue in a park named after him in Memphis, and his compositions are played to this day.
Me, I was a member of the winning sprint relay team in the Belfast primary schools’ interschool competition at Dunmore dog-racing stadium in the late ‘60s and am the proud author of this blog.
But, of course, I’ve one thing going for me over Mr. Handy. I’m still here! Though with each passing birthday, you’re painfully aware of the passing of time. You’ll never be in the sprint relay team again, your hair gets thinner and just about every muscle group in your body heads south. As Jackson Browne says,
Time may heal all wounds But time will steal you blind Time the wheel, time the conqueror.
But, there’s no point is dwelling on that too much, I reckon. I like the attitude of acoustic blues master, Rory Block, who’s now over 70 and who told me when I spoke to her a while back:
“Getting older or passing years is only what you make it. You know, you may make a disadvantage of it, but honestly, I don’t go there. I see it as an advantage. Now maybe I’m crazy, but I see it as a real opportunity to know more, to do more with what you know, to feel more…your fruit ripens! And to me it’s like I don’t feel old. What are you talking about? I’m more clear that this is what I was put here to do. You know, really, I see it that way. And man, I’m just getting started! I don’t feel a limitation at all and I don’t feel old – my goodness, not at all!”
So, as I celebrate my something-somethingth birthday, I’m with Rory. There are books to be written (a couple of new one in production; oh you might like to check out my recent one); albums to be reviewed (though I’ll never keep up with the prolific and quite wonderful Rocking Magpie); guitars to be played; family and friends to cherish; grandchildren to play with and a big old hurting world in which to try and make a small difference (with God’s help).
Bob Dylan’s Forever Young from his Planet Waves album in 1974 – which, incidentally, someone gave me as a birthday present – hits the right note, I think:
May your heart always be joyful May your song always be sung And may you stay forever young May you stay forever young.
And now, to help W.C. and me celebrate, here are a few songs.
Louis Jordan and his Tympany 5’s big band Happy Birthday Boogie gets the party started. “Happy birthday to you, and I hope you have many more”
Sammy Mayfield gives us a more bluesy version of the song.
And B.B. King has his Happy Birthday Blues, with a bit more blues feeling
And check out this bit of fun from Chris Kramer and the Beatbox, who hopes all our dreams come true.
Taking it down a notch, here’s Don McLean with his Birthday Song. “You see I love the way you love me, Love the way you smile at me.” And that’s a dedication to my wonderful wife of over 40 years.
And finally, it’s a celebration, and it’s Bruce. Written for his wife Patti, but now dedicated to everybody who’s having a birthday today:
So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart. (Psalm 90:12)
“Blues is the news we can use to survive in a world on fire”
For nearly thirty years, Corey Harris has been at the forefront of blues interpretation, fusing jazz, reggae, gospel and Caribbean influences to traditional blues. Along the way he has recorded and played with artists like B.B. King, Taj Mahal, Buddy Guy, R.L. Burnside, Ali Farka Toure, and others, performing throughout North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Australasia. He starred in Scorsese’s Feel Like Going Home and collaborated with Billy Bragg on the Mermaid Avenue album series.
He’s a W.C. Handy Blues Award winner, has an honorary doctorate in music and was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship Award for Genius.
Insurrection Blues, his new album, is a fantastic collection of traditional blues songs performed with passion, rawness and fine guitar picking. The album was recorded in May 2021 in
Abruzzo in Italy, where Corey lived during the pandemic before returning to the United States. The album also features contributions on a couple of tracks from harmonica player, Phil Wiggins, and the mandolinist Lino Muoio.
Down at the Crossroads got the opportunity to chat to Corey about the new album and about his music in general.
He told me, first of all, that he’d wanted to show his roots and let people understand know where he’s coming from. “I’ve done a lot of different excursions over the years,” he said, “but this is my foundation. So, I wanted to re-inscribe that into people’s memory banks; that this is what it’s about.”
So you’ll find interpretations of songs by the likes of Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James and Charlie Patton, all performed with passion by a skilled guitarist and singer.
In dealing with such a wide scope in the tradition, I wondered how he goes about selecting a particular song and then making it his own?
“I try and be faithful to the form of the song, how it’s supposed to be played and the recognizable licks, if you will, but at some point, you can’t ever play it just like the version you’re learning – at least I can’t. So that’s where my own creativity and character comes in. Because, you know, you’re gonna sound like you!
“In these the traditional songs, I really try and be faithful to the musical presentation of the song, how it’s sung and the rhythm, unless I’m really trying to do something that is adding to it and doing a totally different version – but I normally don’t do that. Some artists will take, say, a Skip James tune and make it totally different, but I’m not really into that. I’m really into trying to interpret a song through my own filter if you will.”
Corey Harris has been performing, rootsy, bluesy music for a long time now. I asked him what is it about this music that is so important to him.
“Well, I would say that this music connects us to our ancestral heritage in America. And it also opens eyes to the realities of what we’re dealing with. You know, the blues is like our CNN, it is what is happening. It’s the news, you know what I mean?
“So, with the times as they are, I just really felt it was important to get back to the basics about the strengths in the culture, and that’s why I was looking at the different song forms and the different varieties within that culture. Nowadays a lot of times, in the popular context, people assume black culture is gonna be hip-hop, or Lil Uzi Vert or something, but it’s actually quite deeper than the commercial varieties we’ve been conditioned to accept. So, I wanted to show really where it’s coming from, and try and do a survey, not only of how I see the music, but of the last hundred and fifty or so years of it.”
This coheres with what Harris has previously said of Insurrection Blues, that it “is an unflinching look at desire and destruction in 21st century America…as an African American living in America, as a descendant of slaves that built this country, I am looking at the survival mechanisms that have existed for people to persevere in difficult times. And when we think about that, the blues always comes to mind.”
“Yeah. There’s a tendency in the popular press and even in academia, to typify the blues and say it’s this sad music about being drunk and losing your woman. But it’s actually so much more than that. And so, I just want to show that the blues is a textbook for life. It’s just like any other great art, it describes the condition of man and woman in all the different situations in life. So that’s what I’m trying to show. Also, that this is a rich tradition and it’s not anything that can be easily diluted or reduced into simple song forms and like, a skinny tie and a hat, you know what I mean? It’s more than that. And that’s what I wanted to show.”
The blues, clearly, grew up in the context of terrible injustice suffered by Black communities. But, I suggested to Corey, the music and the form, and the spirit seems to be something that has a very broad application and appeal, so that there are all sorts of people all around the world who feel drawn to it.
“Well, you know, we all struggle. That’s why we’re here, to struggle and to overcome, as human beings. We can all relate to that journey of struggle and overcoming, in our own way, because it’s not all equal and not all the same. We all have our own different little histories, but we all have that same feeling of, you know, it’s hard, but finally, I’m victorious. Let’s look back and celebrate how hard it was.”
The blues always seem to have that double edge about them – a lament for the way things are, but hope that things might get better. You see it in so many of the songs, where the singer seems to be able to sing his or her way out of the blues feeling.
“That’s it, being able to see the sun on the horizon and being able to get that strength you need to see the next day and to persevere and to keep going. This is the tradition. It wasn’t a tradition that people did for money. There was no profession back in the days with the ancestors of blues singers, blues performers – I’m talking, like, before the Chitlin’ circuit, before the recordings of the twenties, before Mamie Smith. There was no occupation of blues singer, people did it because they had to, because this is what their culture showed them – how you can deal with the things that the world is giving you, all the oppression and all the Black codes, the lynching, you know, all of that. So, this is a tool for survival is the way I see it.”
Harris was profoundly disturbed (along with most other right-thinking people) about the events in Washington at the beginning of 2021. He has said, “When I saw the insurrection, I saw how race and history collided there.” So Insurrection Blues directly channels his feeling about all this – “I felt there was a duty, a responsibility, to use the craft to say something.”
As I listened to the album, any message of resistance is not very explicit. Somebody could listen to the album and miss that. So I wondered, for Corey as an artist, how explicit or otherwise does he feel he needs to be about issues that he feels are important?
“Well, I think it depends on how you feel at the time emotionally. There are some issues that kind of speak for themselves, and you can make a commentary very easily on them. With the insurrection, depending on your political persuasion, you’re gonna see that event through drastically different spectacles, you’ll have a different perspective. And also, depending on your ethnic origin, with your ethnic history in America, you’ll have a very different perspective on this event. So yeah, there’s some resistance in it, because just the act that I’m here alive is proof that there was resistance.
“Because the system wasn’t built so that I would thrive. But also, this project is like an analysis of where we’ve been, where we are and what might happen in the future. If you listen to the record, there’s an interlude to the song Insurrection Blues, which is some audio of the actual crowd at the insurrection. And then after there’s the sound of thunder and lightning; and then the sound of rain, to symbolize that there needs to be sort of a cleansing. This is a storm, and then after a storm, the clouds go away, the sun comes out and things are fresh and clean. So, that’s what we’re going through. We’re going through a purging right now.”
Prefaced by this short interlude, the title track, Insurrection Blues (Chickens Come Home to Roost), becomes a powerful commentary on the infamous storming of the Capitol, such a symbolic emblem of American democracy. As the storm fades and the rain washes things clean, Insurrection Blues kicks in, a minor key blues. The lyrics are not explicit, but the repeated, ominous minor key riffs on the guitar are the repeatedly intoned, “it’s time to get wise” and “chickens come home to roost” make the point well enough.
It comes right in the middle of the album, and although the songs on either side might just be taken as enjoyable interpretations of acoustic guitar blues numbers, Harris has cleverly drawn attention to his African American blues tradition as pointing to both the struggles and the survival of his community.
On a more general note, I asked Corey about the re-emergence of acoustic blues back in the 1990s when he was starting out. Before that there had been a lot of electric blues for several decades.
“Yes, there was a renaissance of acoustic blues. I think the Columbia Records release of the Robert Johnson box set around 1990 had a lot to do with that. And then, shortly after that Keb’ Mo’ came out with his record on Sony’s OKeh Records – it was on a major label and made a big splash. So those two things had a lot to do with it. And then just by happenstance, I came along, Alvin Youngblood Hart came along and so did Guy Davis. And people were realizing, wow, black people still play the blues and they still play acoustic blues! And they realized that this is part of their culture. So it was a great confluence of events at that time.”
And what is the popularity of blues music, particularly in the United States. What, I wondered, is Corey’s sense of the people and the demographic listening to this music and the more traditional forms of it?
“My sense is that there are people my age – I’m in my early fifties – and older who are listening to this music and coming to these shows. The blues market is still people who buy CDs at shows. They’re not really downloading as much as other genres yet. So we’re kind of oldies but goodies blues people, as far as the fans go!” Harris is encouraged, though, by some of the younger talent coming up, like Jontavious Willis and Buffalo Nichols, whom he referred to as “a really monster guitar player.”
Along the way, Corey Harris has played with a lot of wonderful artists from both North America and Africa. I was very interested to hear about his experience of playing with B.B. King in the 1990s.
“I opened up for BB about 75 times around the world, over the years from about ‘95 until about 2005. I was around him quite a lot over the years and what I observed was he was very professional. He put the music on a level where you just had to respect it because the way that it was presented was first class. And very well mannered, very diplomatic, well spoken. You know, it was really like royal, like he was aptly named. You really felt, wow, I’m with somebody who’s putting their art on the top shelf. And so you felt inspired being around him because you felt wow, I got to raise my standards.
“He was someone who came from nothing, but he just dedicated himself to his craft. He studied a lot, he practiced a lot and he elevated his craft so that you just had to respect it for what it was. That’s what I really loved about him. And then he engaged people really well – he talked to you like you mattered and he was interested in you. He was a good people person. Just great being around him and you know, his stories – he had stories about hanging out with Satchmo in the fifties. He said Satchmo used to cook him bread, beans and rice backstage! And he had stories about hanging out with Miles Davis and Charlie Parker. And thinking of that, he used to tell me, ‘Stay away from drugs!’ But I’m like, don’t worry. I don’t do drugs!”
Corey Harris is a multi-talented guy. Not only is he a successful and talented musician, but he’s the author of several books and is currently doing a PhD (he already has an honorary doctorate in music).
“I’m in the music department in the University of Virginia and I’m studying all sorts of different things. Some are things that I didn’t know a lot about, for example, 17th and 18th century classical music. But my main thrust is music of black resistance. So that could include anything from capoeira to blues, to jazz to music associated with Santeria. So I’ve really whittled it down. But that’s what I’m really interested in – black music of the Americas, of the Atlantic, of the black diaspora.”
As well as studying, Harris is teaching as well, working with university classes along with renowned jazz writer Scott DeVeaux. All of this is sure to find its way into future Corey Harris performances and recordings.
At the moment he’s planning an album in collaboration with Cedric Watson. “He’s a great Louisiana, old-school Creole player who plays a violin and a push button accordion. He also plays banjo, so he’s an excellent talent. We’re going to do a duet record. We both speak French, so we’ll do some French songs and some Creole songs, so, it’s gonna be good!”
And Corey has a book just recently published, Blues People Illustrated.
“People can buy that on my website at Nattyworks.art. It’s fifty-one blues artists, men and women, the cool, all-traditional blues artists, mainly those who were active from the 1920s through the blues revival of the sixties. Each artist has a drawing of them and I’ve written a biography of the artist and included a complete discography as well. So it’s a kind of reference book.
“So those who don’t really know about the specific genre of traditional acoustic blues, the pre-war, can learn about people like Son House, Tommy McClennan, Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. And even little-known people like Hacksaw Harney, Precious Bryant or John Jackson. I talk about people that I knew as well – Cephas And Wiggins are in there, and Brownie and Sonny.”
One worth checking out as well as the terrific Insurrection Blues.
King of the Blues: The Rise and Reign of B.B. King, Daniel de Visé, Grove Press.
I remember reading and appreciating King’s 1996 memoire, Blues All Around Me, written by David Ritz. This, as you might expect, is a much more substantial work, much more detailed, clocking in at over 400 pages.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist de Visé’s biography of American music icon, B.B. King is a masterful piece of work. It’s hugely detailed, yet always engaging – in fact, it’s something of a page turner. He has painstakingly reconstructed King’s life from his memoir, hundreds of B.B. King interviews, discussions with dozens of surviving friends and relatives, bandmates and producers, and input from Sue King Evans, King’s ex-wife, and life-long friend, Walter Riley King. The list of acknowledgements, actually, is quite breath-taking. You can be sure that de Visé has written the definitive account of B.B. King’s life.
de Visé tracks King’s life from the birth of his father, Albert King, in 1907 and his mother, Ella Pully, in 1908 with fascinating early chapters on King growing up in rural Mississippi, through his breakthrough as a musician, the years on the chittlin’ circuit, his discovery by white musicians and fans in the 60s, and then eventually his move into revered status as King of the Blues and recognition by rock stars, presidents, the press and households around the world.
de Visé weaves a number of important threads throughout his narrative, and, as the best of writers do, he never seeks to make any of these a major emphasis or crudely highlight them. He simply tells his story and lets the reader pick up on aspects of King’s life that were important in the make-up of the man.
First, what comes across quite forcibly is King’s utter determination to make it as a musician. After playing the diddly bow – length of wire stretched tight between two nails hammered into a board – as a boy, listening to Blind Lemon Jefferson, Bessie Smith, Jimmy Rodgers and Lonnie Johnson on 78-rpm shellac discs in his great-aunt Mima’s cabin, and then singing in a gospel group as a teenager, B.B.’s single-minded focus on learning the guitar, singing and performing is remarkable.
His was the most unpromising of backgrounds – a sharecropper’s son, born into deep poverty, whose family broke up when he was a small boy, whose beloved mother died when he was ten, and who was shunted around between various relatives until he left for Memphis in 1946. Yet somehow he doggedly got himself on to the radio and began getting some gigs, even though, at this stage his guitar playing was not particularly good.
Perhaps it was because of this very unpromising early life that that utter determination to succeed drove him throughout his life. We hear of the huge number of gigs King played year on year, throughout his life, never retiring even when dementia and ill-health set in, and of his remarkable ability to keep going in the midst of marital trouble, financial disasters, the ills of the Jim Crow South, and the changing waves and trends of the music business. His commitment to his art and the blues, and his skill as a guitarist and singer remained constant throughout his life.
Second, what becomes clear is the contribution King made to the blues and to American music in general. As well as leaving a huge back catalogue of music in his scores of albums dating from 1957 to 2011 (all carefully listed at the end of the book), B.B. King’s single note guitar technique was the influence for all subsequent guitar soloing, in the same way that Louis Armstrong’s trumpet solos broke new ground for jazz. Eric Clapton hailed him as an “inspiration,” and said that Live at the Regal was “where is really started for me as a young player.” King mentored a young Jimi Hendrix and took both Robert Cray and Stevie Ray Vaughn under his wing. Carlos Santana claimed simply he was a “fan.”
It’s worth quoting de Visé directly here:
“B.B. had indeed transformed the blues. Before him, the genre had embraced acoustic slide guitarists and harmonica virtuosi, saxophonists and big-band singers. After B.B., those silos collapsed. By the late 1970s, the blues were played mostly by men with electric guitars, and all of them inevitably invited comparison to B.B. King.”
King’s influence on the blues, guitar playing and American music in general is not to be doubted, and de Visé brings this out admirably, suggesting he was the rightful heir of Armstrong and Ellington, and a cultural ambassador to the world.
Bono’s U2 were huge fans and included B.B. King in their Rattle and Hum Tour of 1987
The third strand that stood out for me was that of racism. King grew up in rural Mississippi in poverty with all the injustice of the sharecropping system, the spectre of lynching, sundown towns and all the rest of the iniquitous Jim Crow laws, segregation and discrimination. His art was confined to Black audiences for decades, as he played the chitlin’ circuit before anyone who was white took notice of his art. Over the years he suffered demeaning traffic stops by racist police; had to sleep on his tour bus because of segregation in hotels; was in a hotel room that was shaken by a bomb blast set off by white supremacists in Birmingham in 1963, and with his band suffered a violent racist attack in Louisiana as late as 1968.
Things did change, though, and King became accepted and adored by white audiences, starting with a triumphant performance and acceptance by the hippies in Bill Graham’s Fillmore in San Francisco in 1967. He travelled the world, was honoured by America’s presidents, won numerous Grammy awards and returned year after year to a “Homecoming” festival held in his honour in his native Indianola.
Finally, de Visé’s King comes across as a genuinely nice man in many ways, and humble. He was fair in his treatment of his band members – provided they could stick the relentless pace of his incessant touring – and made sure they got paid properly. There was scarcely a person who had a bad word to say about him. But de Visé does not shy away from describing the man’s obvious addictions to both gambling and sex. King wasted millions of dollars in a gambling habit that left him seriously in debt from time to time and in trouble with the taxman. He played poker with his band on their bus night after night, keno in Las Vegas and on tour might join his bandmates in betting on the movement of a hotel elevator.
King’s other major addition throughout his life was sex – pornography in later years, but for decades he used his touring as an opportunity to sleep with a large number of women. While de Visé does not go into a great deal of detail, this is a recurrent thread in the narrative and unsavoury snippets about multiple liaisons in a single night are included. Clearly that left King unable to maintain a successful marriage, and you are left wondering about the effect of all this on the women concerned, although de Visé does not deal with this.
In his favour, of course, King accepted at face value the various claims of parenthood of children from various encounters over the years and sought to provide for these children throughout his life. The reality, as de Visé, points out, is it is likely that King was impotent and actually fathered no children.
In addition, it is interesting to note that, although King was at one stage a heavy drinker, he had zero tolerance for his band using drugs.
de Visé’s portrait of B.B. King is generally sympathetic, but the picture emerges of a man, very much of his time, moulded by his early background and the struggles he had to make it into the big time, ambitious but not at all ruthless, and prone to seek comfort from the hardships of the road by indulging his weakness for gambling and sex.
The last section of the book, dealing with King’s demise in later life, is sad, but de Visé is quite sympathetic to the various people who vied for his estate after his death.
King of the Blues is a wholly engaging read and you are left with no doubt as to the impact and lasting legacy of B.B. King on the blues, on guitar playing, on music.
B.B. King’s 2000 album with Eric Clapton was the biggest selling album of his career
Eric Clapton was once “god,” the best rock and blues guitarist on the planet, adored by fans of his time with John Mayall, Cream, Derek and the Dominos and then his solo career.
Now, aside from the recent nonsense of joining in with Van Morrison in a petulant wail against pandemic restrictions, and touting unscientific and dangerous claims about fertility against vaccines, he is a figure who seems to divide blues fans.
This is clear whenever you see something about him posted on blues-related social media – the negative reaction can be visceral. There’ll be those who won’t even bother to read this article and will simply react to the mere suggestion that Clapton’s Unplugged could be a classic blues album.
Others will take a more considered approach to Clapton, understanding his lifelong obsession with the blues and the contribution he made to the genre during the 1960s when the genre was in steep decline in the United States because of the rise of pop, rock’n’roll, soul and R&B. That was B.B. King’s view, who said that he and Clapton had been friends since they met in the 60s and that Clapton “plays blues better than most of us.”
The album the two made in 2000, Riding with the King, which won a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues album, shows two men in love with the blues, their music making flowing effortlessly off each other. And, of course, the admiration was not one way, Clapton thanking King “for all the inspiration and encouragement he gave to me as a player over the years,” and hailing Live at the Regal as the album which got him started with the blues.
Clapton was also very close with Muddy Waters, whom he described as “the father figure I never really had” and his greatest influence. His playing was also deeply influenced by Robert Johnson, who amazed him with his guitar chops and singing. “There were very few people on record who sounded like they were singing from the heart,” said Clapton, “there’s no comparison, this guy’s got finesse. His touch was extraordinary. Which is amazing in light of the fact that he was simultaneously singing with such intensity.” Clapton’s 2004 album, Me and Mr Johnson plays tribute to his lifelong fascination with Johnson.
So, given the association Clapton has had over the years with the greats in the blues Pantheon and their high opinion of his blues contribution, it’s hard to understand how he gets dismissed so readily by some blues fans. Clapton himself has said of his commitment to the blues, “I recognise that I have some responsibility to keep the music alive.”
All that said, on to Unplugged as one of our “Great Blues Albums.”
Playing his Martin 000-42 acoustic guitars, and accompanied by a small group of musicians, including Andy Fairweather Low and Chuck Leavell, Clapton performed the songs for a small audience in England in 1992 at a particularly emotional time for him. His four-year-old son Conor had died four months previously after falling from his 53rd floor apartment. Tears in Heaven – clearly not a blues song in form, but arguably in content – was one of the fourteen songs on the original album, which became 20 in the 2013 remastered version.
The album won three Grammys at the 1991 awards and became the bestselling live album of all time, and Clapton’s bestselling album, selling 26 million copies worldwide. It was released in August 1992 to wide critical acclaim and revitalized Clapton’s career.
The bulk of the setlist consists of traditional blues, including Big Bill Broonzy’s Hey Hey, Robert Johnson’s Malted Milk and Son House’s Walkin’ Blues. Songs from Jimmy Cos, Lead Belly, Muddy Water, Bo Didley, and Robert Cray, along with a couple of Clapton originals complete the set. One of these is an acoustic version of Layla which works surprisingly well.
Clapton breathes new life into these songs – his version of Jimmy Cox’s depression era song Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out has become something of a definitive version, his Walkin’ Blues with its cool slide guitar recalls Robert Johnson’s version, and Muddy Waters Rollin’ and Tumblin’ still rocks as an acoustic number.
Although the blues songs here are all cover versions of old blues songs, aside from the fact that the album just sounds so good, the significance of the album is the effect it has had on acoustic blues music. Subsequent to Unplugged, during the 1990s, you see artists like Keb’ Mo’, Kelly Joe Phelps, Eric Bibb, Rory Block and Guy Davis all seeming to come to prominence. For sure, these and other great artists whose music was based on acoustic guitar had been plying their trade for some time before that – some for a long time, reaching back to the 60s – and had a loyal following. But Clapton’s Unplugged brought blues music – and acoustic blues – to a much wider audience and got a new generation of fans interested in these other artists and then also beginning to listen to the original artists as well.
Testimony to that is conversations I’ve had recently with professional acoustic artists who hail Unplugged as being formative in their awakening to the blues.
Plus, Unplugged stands the test of time. It’s an album anyone can listen to and hear a modern interpretation of the blues that is not dated and is hugely enjoyable. Purists may prefer that everyone listens to Lead Belly or Bill Broonzy, but for everyone else, Eric Clapton’s Unplugged is their way into appreciating the blues.
Check out this episode of Meet the Music: A Capella to Zydeco.
If you happen to be new to the blues, then here’s your way in. Seven classic songs to get you started on what will be a life-ling appreciation!
“Dr. Burnett shares a little history of the Blues and his deep love for the Blues. In our conversation, we discussed the impact of women blues singers like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Memphis Minnie. Listen as Dr. Burnett lists his suggested artists and songs for new listeners.”
Click for podcast
And here are my seven recommendations for getting started in listening to the blues:
Robert Johnson: Kind Hearted Woman, recorded in 1936, just a couple of years before he died as a young man of 27, poisoned, it seems by a jealous husband. Johnson was a jaw-droppingly good guitarist and a fine singer. He only recorded 29 songs, but Johnson has probably been the most influential blues artist on the whole of rock and roll. Eric Clapton says Johnson was his most formative influence and he has a great version of Kind Hearted Woman on his Me and Mr Johnson album from 1996. Keb’ Mo’ who is one of today’s great blues artist also has a fine version on his 1994 Keb’ Mo’ album.
Blind Willie Johnson: The Soul of A Man recorded in 1930. Willie Johnson was an exponent of gospel blues, and his slide playing, which he did with a penknife, was just outstanding. He’s a remarkable singer, at times a sweet tenor, at other time utterly raw. His music is making its way around the universe on the Voyager space probe launched in 1977 on a golden disk containing a sample of earth’s music. Quite what aliens might make of Johnson’s eerie slide playing and moaning on his song Dark Was the Night, is anyone’s guess! (Check out Tom Waits’ version of Soul of a Man on the 2016 tribute album, God Don’t Never Change, with various artists including Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Lucinda Williams, and Luther Dickinson.)
Mississippi John Hurt: Louis Collins John Hurt was a sharecropper who recorded some songs in 1928, which were not terribly successful. He was then rediscovered in 1963 and recorded a number of albums and performed on the university and coffeehouse concert circuit before he passed away. By all accounts he was a lovely man, and his guitar playing is just delightful. (The version here is Lucinda Williams with Colin Linden on guitar on a tribute album called Avalon Blues. Check out also Rory Block’s tribute album – just her and her guitar, also Avalon Blues)
Memphis Minnie: In My Girlish Days. Before the men began playing the blues, it was the women who were the big stars – women like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Victoria Spivey. Memphis Minnie was a performer, a guitar player and singer, mostly in the 1930s and 40s. The poet Langston Hughes described her electric guitar as “a musical version of electric welders plus a rolling mill” – but she was quite a talent. I’ve gone for her In My Girlish Days. You can hear a great version of this on Rory Block’s 2020 album, Prove it on Me, where she plays tribute to the women of the blues. Rory Block is an outstanding acoustic guitar player, and check out also her tribute to these women in her 2018 album, A woman’s Soul: a Tribute to Bessie Smith.
B.B. King: The Thrill Has Gone. This is B.B. King’s signature tune. King was a great singer, but an outstanding guitarist – one of those guitar players where you can tell who it is from just hearing a single note. The song is on a number of albums, but you can find it on a 2006 album of the same name, along with other great B.B. King numbers.
Muddy Waters: Hootchie Cootchie Man.Recorded in 1954. Muddy Waters is known as the father of Chicago blues. He was a Mississippi sharecropper who moved to Chicago in the 1940s and popularized electric blues. He has been a hugely influential figure on rock’n’roll, and the insistent riff that drives Hootchie Chootchi Man is one of the most famous in all blues music. Eric Clapton has a great version on his 1994 From the Cradle album.
Allman Brothers Band: Statesboro Blues on At Fillmore East from 1971 is an old Blind Willie McTell song. Bob Dylan has a famous song which says, nobody sings the blues like Blind Willie McTell. The Allman Brothers’ version has become a classic version of the song and rightly so, featuring Duane Allman’s fabulous slide guitar playing.
Larkin Poe: God Moves on the Water, on 2020’s Self-Made Man. Larkin Poe are two exceptionally talented sisters, Rebecca and Megan Lovell, both amazing guitarists and wonderful singers. They really bring the blues up to date with their own compositions and the way they cover old blues songs. And they are one of the most exciting bands you’d see live. God Moves on the Water is an amended version of an old Blind Willie Johnson song.
B.B. King’s Live at the Regal is on every blues fan’s list as one of the greatest blues albums ever. It’s a live album of ten songs recorded from a concert by B.B. in the Regal Theatre in Chicago on 21st November 1964, and it captures King, aged 39, at the height of his powers. His singing and guitar work is immaculate and his engagement with the audience hugely entertaining.
I saw B.B. King just a couple of years before he passed away, playing the Grand Rex Theatre in Paris. It was the first time I’d seen him, and it was a great thrill – we really did feel like we were connected to the history of the blues that night, even though B.B. didn’t play his guitar as much or as well as he might have as a younger man. Fair enough! When you’ve reached his legendary status, I’ll take what I can get. His singing was still very good, at times sweet, at times powerful, and his good-humoured interaction with the audience was good to see. I’d have liked one of those guitar picks he tossed into the crowd, but I was too far away!
My daughter bought me a vinyl copy of Live at the Regal for Christmas, and it was a delight to slip it on to the turntable and hear the songs in lovely warm, crystal-clear stereophonic sound. On this album you get B.B. as I didn’t get him that night in Paris, that characteristic, crisply-picked guitar answering his vocals, which range versatilely from tender to gritty to falsetto. B.B. King is one of those rare guitarists you can recognize from hearing just one or two notes.
Was he playing Lucille that night? Well, not one of the black signature models that Gibson brought out – they only appeared in 1980 – but from the photographs on the album sleeve, he appears to have been playing a Gibson 335 sunburst and with a Bigsby vibrato device. Not that King ever seemed to need the latter – he got great vibrato from just his fingers on the fretboard.
Doubtless you’re familiar with the Lucille story – but just in case: when B.B. was playing a dance hall in Arkansas in the winter of 1949, a fight broke out and a barrel half-filled with burning kerosene set in the middle of the dance floor to keep things warm was overturned, setting the place on fire. Everyone, including King raced outside, but in his panic, B.B. had left his guitar behind, so he dashed inside to rescue it. He later found out that the fight had been over a woman named Lucille, so he named his guitar, and all subsequent ones, Lucille as a reminder never again to do something as stupid as run into a burning building or fight over a woman!
King, in his biography, Blues All Around Me, said that before this particular concert, he had played the Regal “hundreds of times before,” and felt that he had played “hundreds of better concerts than the one taped at the Regal.” He was surprised at the critical response to the record, but said he was happy to receive the praise. However this particular night rates in the thousands of concerts King has played, the fact is it captures the man in top gear, playing with an outstanding band – Duke Jethro on the piano, Leo Lauchie on the bass, Kenneth Sands on the trumpet, Johnny Board and Bobby Forte on tenor sax, and Sonny Freeman on drums.
Apparently, Jethro’s organ, which he was originally schedule to play, broke down, so King said he should just play the piano. Jethro told B.B. that he didn’t know how to play the piano, only to be told, “Well, just sit there and pretend; that’s what you do most of the time anyway!”
The band that night was in sterling form – B.B., when introducing them, says admiringly, “I think they’re wailin’ out there!”
Recognition of the stature of Live at the Regal has come from Rolling Stone Magazine, which put it at number 141 on its list of the “500 Greatest Albums Of All Time,” and in its addition in 2005 to the Library of Congress’s list of recordings chosen for permanent preservation with the National Recording Registry.
The album kicks off with Every Day I Have the Blues, after broadcaster and music promoter Pervis Spann introduces B.B. King as the “king of the blues.” It’s exciting stuff from the get-go, the brass in tip-top form duelling with King’s timeless guitar licks before the man kicks in with that beautiful tenor voice.
By the time the full guitar solo kicks in the crowd are already whooping and whistling. The crowd cheering throughout the album, actually, adds to the excitement and atmosphere and never seems distracting from the music. It’s just the way a good live album should be.
The album works its way through a veritable collection of B.B. King hits, including the slow blues of Sweet Little Angel (included in the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame’s “500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll) and How Blue Can You Get, King’s guitar reaching right inside you and wringing every ounce of emotion out.
The album captures a couple of great moments where B.B. interacts warmly with the audience – at the start of It’s My Own Fault and How Blue Can You Get – doubtless only a fraction of his chat during the evening, but showing that he was a consummate entertainer with a natural rapport with his audience. But for the most part, King let the sincerity of his singing and the piercing quality of his guitar do the talking.
Photo Credit: Solarpix / PR Photos
Obviously you can’t see it with this record, but King used to contort his face when he played his guitar – his wife Martha used to call him Ol’ Lemon Face because of that. King said of himself, “I squeeze my eyes and open my mouth, raise my eyebrows, cock my head and God knows what else. I look like I’m in torture, when in truth, I’m in ecstasy. I don’t do it for show. Every fibre of my being is tingling.” And that commitment to the music is what you’re hearing on Live at the Regal. “I wanted my guitar to connect to human emotion,” he said once. And you can feel that as you listen to this album.
If you’ve not listened to this album – do so without hesitation! If you’ve not listened to it in a while, get it out of your record collection and play it again. And don’t just play a couple of songs – play the whole thing and let B.B. and the band caress your soul. Rock along to You Upset Me Baby and Woke Up This Morning, and soak in the blues feeling of Worry Worry and You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now.
Mark Carpentieri is the man behind M.C. Records, which he started in 1991. Previously a radio presenter on a weekly blues program in New York, Mark started the label to record his own band, Somethin’ Blue, in which he was a drummer. After signing Mississippi bluesman Big Jack Johnson in 1996, M.C. Records has gone from strength to strength, distributing all over the world and being recognized for the quality of its recordings. Punching far above its weight, the label has made a big contribution to the blues scene, and has been nominated for six Grammy Awards, and has won or been nominated for over 30 Blues Music Awards. In 2006, M.C. Records received The Blues Foundation Blues Label of the Year Award.
I got talking to Mark recently to find out more about the work M.C. Records has done over the years. I started by asking Mark first of all what the focus of the label is, what his philosophy or approach to music was, and he told me that for him it has always been about trying to discover what the artist is really passionate about in what they’re doing, and trying to help them articulate that.
“So, you might have two different types of blues releases, from, say, a Joanna Connor, which is blues rock, and then a Kim Wilson, that’s really retro Chicago blues, and they’re quite different, but they both represent those genres in the best possible light.” Mark tries to facilitate his artists doing what they do in the best possible way. And he’s pleased about the reputation that M.C. Records has gained.
“We don’t release a lot of records. I like to say they are all killer, no filler! That’s really important to me – that whatever I put out, people would really respond to it. And people do tell me that. And I’m really happy when I hear that.”
And he’s been doing this for a very long time – over 30 years, quite a feat for an independent label in today’s music industry. This industry has changed beyond all recognition since M.C. Records started up, so I put it to Mark that there must have been times when he thought that the rate of change was just was too much, that it was all getting too hard.
“It certainly has been challenging, especially over the last ten years. Things have really changed a lot. It’s been helpful to have the right kind of artists that people love and the artists themselves are proud of the work that they do. And they tour a lot so they can sell their CDs on the gigs and that always helps.
“But I think, especially around, 2009, 2010, things became very difficult. Odetta passed away in 2008, and then another artist that I had worked with very closely, Marie Knight, passed away in 2009. We were about to go in the studio with her again, and I was going to be in her touring band, and I was really looking forward to it. We had had so much nice love for the Marie Knight record. That was a challenging time, I must admit. I think it was really around that time, I had to think whether I wanted to continue the label or not.”
Marie Knight was a gospel singer, born in 1920, who toured with Sister Rosetta Tharpe in the 1940s, before going solo as a gospel singer and then recording some R&B songs in the 50s and 60s. She returned to gospel music in the 1970s. Her album Let Us Get Together is an album of Rev. Gary Davis songs and features Larry Campbell doing wondrous things on guitar accompaniment, outplaying Gary Davis, if that’s possible. Campbell is an extremely talented multi-instrumentalist, who was part of Bob Dylan’s band for many years, and the combination of Knight and Campbell on this album brings out the very best in these songs.
“I was working with Marie. I had been her manager for years and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to record her because I was her manager. So, I was trying to figure out what we were going to do, and she only wanted to do gospel. She didn’t want to do blues, she didn’t want to do any of that. And so, as I was looking around, the idea of Rev. Gary Davis came to my mind, and ironically, he’s buried in my hometown of Lynbrook New York.
“So I listened to these gospel songs and I sent them to her, and she loved them. And then it was about trying to figure out who could work with her. At the time she was booked by Concerted Efforts. And the owner, Paul Kahn, suggested I contact Larry Campbell. I didn’t know if that would be possible – Larry had worked with Bob Dylan, you know, he was a big guy! But he really wanted to do it. So, we ended up recording, and then Kim Wilson guested on two tracks. It’s a record that really stands up. I mean, I listen to it not just because I made it but because it’s really enjoyable. It’s really well played. Larry plays the guitar, and also plays the violin. Catherine Russell’s on that record too [Russell is a wonderful American jazz singer]. She sings two tracks with her, which is great.”
When Marie Knight made Let Us Get Together, she was getting on, maybe around 87 years old – Mark said she never would admit to her age! – but her voice sounds great, strong and confident, and she really imbues these songs with a great deal of life and joy. I asked him about working with Marie and how he’d met her.
“Well, what happened was we were doing the tribute to Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Shout, Sister Shout, [a set of various top artists covering Rosetta Tharpe songs] and that was back in 2002. We were recording it and I forget who suggested it, maybe Maria Muldaur, and she said, you should contact Marie Knight. And of course, I said what everyone else would have said, is she still alive? Because she was a contemporary of Sister Rosetta. So I ended up getting a phone number and got speaking to her. But I was thinking, how do I know she’s going to be able to sing?
“Anyway, I talked to her and she didn’t sound weak or frail. She was cautious, but interested. She was very vibrant, so I just said, okay, let’s do it! Let’s see if this works. And I just took a leap of faith and she came down to the studio and she brought her piano player in, her piano player from the church. She was great, and a lot of people think that’s the highlight of the record; her version of Didn’t It Rain is so authentic.
“And then I was managing her, and she would do shows and she would take the bus and was determined to travel by herself! She was something else! So, it was really kind of amazing. I used to visit her in the hospital after she had her stroke. But the last time I saw her was in January of 2009, when we went to the BBC in New York City and she did an interview. Afterwards we had lunch and I said, I’ll see you later. And that was it.
“She was supposed to sing at Odetta’s Memorial service, and the day before we were trying to contact Marie. It ended up her sister called me up, saying that she had had a stroke, she’s in the hospital, and she never recovered after that. She passed away in August.”
I asked Mark if he had the sense that Marie had a strong faith?
“Oh, absolutely. She had a very strong faith. She really dedicated her life to God and she really felt that power. And I think that’s why she only wanted to sing gospel songs. She had some minor R&B hits in the fifties and early sixties but she just didn’t want to do that. She just didn’t feel comfortable singing those songs. I was glad I was able to find an outlet for her through Rev. Gary Davis.”
I was keen to hear about Mark’s experience with Odetta. Ian Zack has just written a terrific biography of Odetta (Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest), which brings out the absolutely massive contribution that Odetta made to American music, which is very often overlooked. Mark Carpentieri comes into the story and the book towards the end, with him working with Odetta when she was in her late sixties, long after her time in the limelight as an icon of the folk world had passed. Working with Odetta, Mark told me was “a joy and a privilege.”
“At a certain point around 1998, my wife and I had the idea of reaching out to Odetta. We were both big fans and I knew she had done a blues record before. That was back in the sixties. So I reached out and contacted her manager, Doug Yeager, and he was interested because I don’t think she’d formally recorded in the studio for years. We all ended up meeting – my wife and I went to see her and it worked out really well. We got along very nicely and then we put this idea together of an album of blues songs.
“We started to look for piano players, someone who would be an arranger and all that. And just like Ian Zack says in the book, I would get blues piano players, and Odetta didn’t like any of them! It wasn’t that she didn’t like their playing, she said, it was just ‘I know what they’re going to play before they play it.’ She wanted something else.
“Doug, I think, ended up suggesting Seth Farber, who is on all three records that we did together, and really did most of the touring with her during that time, and it worked out great. He came from a background of singer-songwriter, Broadway, things like that. And it was just fantastic. I would feed them songs and ideas, and then they would work out the arrangements and it just worked out really well. And, getting her her first Grammy nomination in decades was really great…I was so proud of that.”
With M.C. Records, Odetta recorded three albums, Blues Everywhere I Go, her first full-length studio recording for fourteen years and it featured Dr. John on a couple of tracks; an album of Lead Belly covers, Lookin’ For A Home and a live gospel album, Gonna Let It Shine, with the Holmes Brothers. These are excellent recordings, some of the best work that Odetta has done. The material really suits her, she’s in fine voice and two of them were recognized by Grammy nominations. Listen to the first blues album, Blues Everywhere I Go and you’ll realize you’re listening to what is a classic blues record.
Mark told me he had more material from the first blues album recordings that is as yet unreleased, some of it with Dr. John playing, but at the time unreleaseable because of contractual issues. Dr. John, who was a long-time friend of Odetta, had flown in from Australia the night before the recording and, said Mark, “he comes in and he just sits, and he would have played all day. But they actually just started making music. It was so wonderful working with Dr. John, you know, that was very special.”
Odetta clearly enjoyed the whole experience of making these albums at M.C. Records, but given her age and her health, it wasn’t easy, Mark told me. “It was tough for her. She would sometimes be very weak. But when she sang it didn’t matter. As long as she was there, once she started singing, that was it. There were no bad takes. So, it wasn’t like, Oh my gosh, she’s too tired. If she was going to sing, she was singing!”
Blues Everywhere I Go was nominated for a Traditional Blues Album Grammy, but, unfortunately for her and Mark, B.B. King won it that year for Blues on the Bayou.
Mark said, “It always seems rough when you’re up against B.B. King and you’re never going to beat him! But it was really exciting. We all went out together to the ceremony. And it was so nice to see so many people who hadn’t seen Odetta in years. It was just really wonderful, people congratulating her, and I think she was really proud of that.”
Mark was clearly proud of his work with Odetta and spoke very warmly of their relationship. “It was nice that we developed a friendship. I mean, my wife and I would always take her out to lunch around Christmas time. And she came to my house several times for dinner parties, her and her sister. They were hysterical – complete opposites. It was just great. It was like it was a show! Jimmy, her sister, and Odetta would just be poking at each other. Like they were little kids, it was a lot of fun. I wish I could have videotaped it. But it was just so wonderful to have that kind of relationship, not just the music, but on a personal level, and really, it was such a wonderful time of my life.”
I wondered who Mark was working with at the moment that he thinks is particularly noteworthy or exciting?
“Well, working with Joanna Connor has been wonderful. It was nice that she came back and we ended up releasing those two records [Six String Stories, 2016 and Rise, 2019]. I love working with Joanna and of course, Kim Wilson. He was my musical hero when I was 16. I bought that first Thunderbirds record in the seventies. So we just released Kim’s new album, Take Me Back, in October and it’s really doing well, and we have plans to do more work, which I’m really excited about. We have several projects that we’re working on different than what people would expect from Kim Wilson. And that’s what I’m excited about. And I’m hoping to work again with Guy Davis. I’m really honored to be working with these artists because they’re just great musicians.”
For a small label, M.C. Records has done exceptionally well in garnering multiple Grammy and Blues Music Award nominations, which is testament to both the fine artists Mark works with and the quality of the work they do.
“Back in 2000, after we’d recorded that Memphis Barbecue Session, with Kim Wilson and Big Jack Johnson, Kim said he thought he was being ignored by the Blues Foundation. And I said to him, listen, Kim, if you work with me, I guarantee you, I’m going to get you wins from the WC Handys, you got to trust me. And he did. And you know, the first two records we did, were both nominated for Grammys, and multiple Blues Music Awards. Now, ever since that, he’s always there every year, nominated or winning. So, I think people respect the work that I do. Because it’s about the music, it’s not really me per se. I think over the years people understand that when I release something, it’s thoughtful, it’s not just about, ‘I have to put out six records this year’ or anything like that.”
As Mark looks around the roots music and blues scene, he thinks there is reason to be optimistic, although he says it’s not always going to be necessarily straight blues. In terms of the blues, he says, “Yes, there’ll be people who will look want to play this music and play it at a high level. But you know, straight ahead blues is harder because it’s hard to beat the people who came before. So what we’re seeing more and more of is this roots sound coming along, people taking the blues and gospel and making it their own.”
But, he thinks, “there’s a limited pool of those kinds of things that can really transcend the blues genre. I think Kim Wilson is one of those. I guess Joanna again, combining the rock, putting that edge to it, but not forcing it – you know, just to try to sell records. And I think if you can do that, you’re going to be OK. If you try to force something, or chase after the next thing, it’s going to be really difficult.”
Finally, I asked Mark what he is looking forward to this year at M.C. records? He told me, beyond the record label, he’s looking forward to playing gigs again. Mark is a talented drummer who has been performing for many years. His band, Back On Bourbon Street, plays cool New Orleans’ inflected jazzy blues and he can’t wait to get back on stage with them.
“Emotionally, you know, music is about being with people. I think that’s what people miss most. But maybe we’ll have like a good end of the summer, if people just do the right thing and there’s a vaccine.”
He’s a top-notch harmonica player whose playing, American Harmonica Newsletters says, is characterized by “technical mastery and innovative brilliance that comes along once in a generation”; he’s been nominated for a W.C. Handy award; in a career spanning over 30 years, he’s played major blues, jazz and folk festivals, and on stages with Bo Diddley, Buddy Guy, David “Honeyboy” Edwards, Otis Clay, and Johnny Winter; he’s the subject of a popular and moving Netflix documentary, along with Sterling Magee, the other half of the duo Satan and Adam; and he’s a popular harmonica tutor with students all over the world benefitting from his online video lessons.
And if that’s not enough, Adam Gussow is a professor of English and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi, where he teaches courses in American and African American literature, the blues tradition, southern autobiography, and, would you believe it, the literature and culture of running! He’s the author of a number of award-winning blues books including a memoir of his days playing with Sterling Magee, a novel, and Beyond the Crossroads, which was voted “Best Blues Book of 2017” by the readership of Living Blues. And one which enhanced my own understanding of the blues greatly when I read it a few years ago, Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence and the Blues Tradition, which won the Holman Award from the Society for the Study of Southern Literature.
So, with this rich background as a blues historian, blues artist, blues mentor and teacher, Adam Gussow clearly has a thing or two worthwhile to say about the blues and its history and tradition.
Down at the Crossroads was pleased to get chatting to him recently, and I suggested, first of all, that 2020 had been quite a year for him, with a new book being published, a new album being released and then, of course, that Netflix film.
He pointed out that the film had come out first of all at the Tribeca folk festival back in April 2018, but began to show up on Netflix last year. At that point, his email box blew up with lots of people he’d never heard from telling him how much it had touched them. If you haven’t seen it, don’t hesitate, it’s a great show and tells a remarkable and heart-warming story.
It charts the story of Adam’s relationship with Sterling Magee, beginning with his 1986 Harlem street jams with “Mr Satan,” at a time of considerable racial tension, and stretching through the next 23 years as they became a touring duo, were included in U2’s Rattle and Hum documentary, and released a number of albums before Sterling Magee mysteriously disappeared. What happened next is remarkable and I’ll not spoil it for those who haven’t seen it.
Adam said he had nothing to do with the way that director V. Scott Balcerek told the story but that he was pleased with the way it turned out. The film begins with Adam meeting Sterling on the street and beginning to jam, but what the film doesn’t explain is that Adam by that stage was an accomplished harmonica player. He had been tutored by Nat Riddles, a New York blues master. “Nat Riddles was a very important figure in my life, my mentor, and I had been a busker in New York, played solo, then played with two different guitar players, and then spent two months in Europe in the summer of ’86. So there was a whole lot of dues paid.”
Overall, though, Gussow said, “I think V. Scott Balcerek did a really good job and the proof of the pudding is that people again and again, say ‘it brought tears to my eyes.’”
He went on to explain the importance of that more sentimental aspect of the film, by mentioning Martin Luther King’s ideas about the beloved community, the interrelatedness of humanity. “I think,” he said, “there’s a lot of people who imagine that that idea just kind of somehow faded away. And I think that what our film does, is that it offers a kind of story, a narrative, living proof of that forged long-term brotherhood kind of relationship. And I think it gives people hope with all of this identity politics stuff.”
“I think that Sterling and I were kind of race rebels in some way, playing on the streets during a rough period of New York history in which young black men died. There’s no question that it was a rough time and he and I were out there, and he was very conscious, and he helped me be conscious, of the way in which we were offering a kind of a living image of brotherhood… after a while I sank into the woodwork. It was like I was just a part of the street scene. And all the guys who hung out around us…I was just wanting to be one of the guys. But what I would say is that 99.9 times out of a hundred, the response that I got, when people came up, and it wasn’t like they were praising me, it was more like it was a chance for them to talk, even connect in some ways.”
Gussow talked about what had happened in December 1986 in New York when a white mob in Queens had severely beaten three African Americans who’d been stranded when their car broke down, one of whom had been killed whilst trying to flee. Gussow had been away in California for a couple of weeks and when he came back in early January, he found Sterling and began to play on the street with him again. “At least two hundred people came up to give us, to shake my hand, which is to say, people were saying, basically, not only are they not associating me with the whiteness out at Queens that had killed this black guy, they were saying, we’re glad you’re here…we have a partnership. What’s going on in Queens can’t touch the brotherhood that you all are putting out right here.”
I asked Adam about his new book, called Whose Blues? Facing Up to Race and the Future of Music, in which he contrasts and discusses two opposing views of the blues. One he calls blues universalism, where there’s “no black, no white, just the blues,” with a recognition that the blues is played and appreciated globally. And the other is “black bluesism,” which insists that the blues is black, and wants to resist cultural appropriation and to ensure the trauma of black communities which is inherent to the blues is properly safeguarded. It’s an important question, and one which Gussow deals with in a thought-provoking and sensitive way. He has, after all, come face-to-face with the issue in his long-standing engagement with black blues artists over many years; and, his in-depth knowledge of the blues and the social history of the blues gives him the tools with which to open up the discussion for the rest of us.
I asked him who the book is aimed at and he suggested there were several.
“One audience is probably white, Anglo, American blues aficionados, blues fans and blues musicians…What I’m determined to do is to think about the way that we talk about the music and to sort of educate. My generation of blues players, and I’ll say white blues players, came up at a time – and I know many musicians who fit this mould, including the guys a generation or half a generation ahead of me, like Rick Estrin and Kim Wilson, white harmonica players – came up at a time when, if you’re going to learn the music, you were in predominantly black or all black contexts, some part of the time you were in bands backing up African-American players, and you were getting all of this mentoring, all of this understanding. If you’re Paul Oscher, you were in an all-black context in Chicago.
“And there’s a number of us out there who had that sort of training, which is to say we can’t think about blues without thinking about African-American mentors, teachers, friends, who you’re on the road with. It’s your family. So that’s how we grew up. That’s how we learned the music. That’s how we think of the music. And so, you know, the phrase blues is black music obviously has a kind of weird paradoxical resonance for us, because on the one hand, we know the guys we learned from, we have played with. We also know that we’re a part of it though.
“So there’s a paradox there. So, what we don’t want to hear is that phrase and think you’re trying to tell me I don’t have a right to play this, to carry on a tradition that I was mentored into with somebody who trained me and valued the training he gave me…those guys would often talk about these younger white musicians as their sons.
“But there’s a younger generation that didn’t have that experience at all. And as blues goes around the globe, there are cultures in, it could be Ireland, it could be Chile and Argentina, where there’s no African-American presence to speak of. And so somebody might hear the phrase, blues is black music, and really not even feel the tension that I feel. Really not even get it. And so part of what I’m trying to do is speak to that audience. And I’m trying to say, let’s go back, at least before we move on into the future of this music, let’s go back into that.
“Before we go to the future, let’s go back and understand how the music really came into being with all of the paradoxes – one of my favourite little anecdotes is that in the 1920s, you get this handbook basically for would-be white blues singers written by two African-American blues songwriters that is saying, you must empathize with the lowdown feeling. The music is full of paradoxes, but there’s no question that it has a sort of black Southern identity in some profound way.
“It’s in the language, it’s in the call and response. So I want to make sure that everybody is grounded in that. And that was where, as somebody who taught blues literature, I was invested in saying, here’s how thinking about W.C. Handy can help you. Here’s how thinking about blues conditions, blues feelings, blues expressiveness, the blues ethos, here’s how those concepts can actually help ground you in this. And so that’s one of the audiences and I didn’t want to push that audience away from the music at all.”
Adam’s second audience, he says is the Corey Harrises of the world, black American artists who feel somewhat possessive about the music. “I want to say, I understand that. I want to think critically about the phrase, no black, no white, just the blues. I’m trying to understand what the people who use that think they’re saying. And why people who don’t like that, don’t like it. Maybe diffuse a little bit, I’m trying to see things from a range of perspectives.”
The third audience, he says, is academic readers, people who might be teaching the music. “So that’s why in some of the chapters I talk about the way in which I teach the blues. And my hope would be that those chapters might be of interest to people who teach the blues or are thinking about the blues. It may be in a school context and might help people think a little more clearly about stuff.”
That’s a very interesting section of Whose Blues? where Gussow talks about the worldwide interest in the blues, particularly in his own area of harmonica. He introduces us here to harmonica players around the world who have been keen to learn from Gussow’s library of video tutorial material at www.modernbluesharmonica.com, some of whom have become accomplished players.
In conversation, Adam talked more about blues around the world, noting the role that B.B. King had playing the blues in around 55 countries and seeding the blues in places like Japan and Russia, African American blues artists going to play festivals in Europe, the British blues explosion in the sixties, and the role of American and British radio stations over the years. The blues has truly become a worldwide phenomenon.
In the book, Gussow says, “These are in the process of mastering the music as best they can and making it a part of their own developing cultural inheritances. Should we celebrate this change or condemn it? Should we embrace the postmodern globalization of the blues as a kind of progress, a victory for blues music as a cultural form, or critique that global spread as a crisis of cultural expropriation and dilution, a tragic erasure of the burdens and meanings of black history into the very fabric of music?”
The reality is, Adam told me, that if we were to do “a census of all of the people in the world who listened to blues today, and all of the musicians who played the music, we’d find that African-Americans are the least part of it these days. But in global terms they’re still there. They’re not irrelevant at all. In fact, a lot of the images, the music, the language – everybody knows Hoochie Coochie Man, I’ve got my mojo working, right? And those are all that kind of hoodoo stuff that goes directly back to sort of African rituals. That’s blues music.”
Gussow seems keen to, as he says, embrace the globalization of the blues, but at the same time wants to ensure the blues history, its tradition, its feeling is not lost. And he wants to ensure that the African-American presence is still felt.
Zora Neale Hurston
Which was why he says he thought it was important to talk about blues literature in his book. One of the interesting things you’ll find in the book is the considerable amount of discussion Gussow has about blues writers, as opposed to just musicians: Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and Zora Neale Hurston. I would hazard a guess and say that most blues fans don’t know them at all. Gussow suggested to me that “blues is more than music,” which you discover when you read the blues literature, including authors he doesn’t deal with in the book, like poets Sterling Plumpp and Tyehimba Jess.
So, as well as acknowledging the reality of people responding to, and wanting to listen and play the blues around the world – and encouraging that, and welcoming that – Adam Gussow is anxious that the way in which the blues is rooted in Black history is kept to the fore.
“Blues is history. Blues is survival tools. It’s a site of memory. I try to make this point in my book, of memory for the traumas of slavery and Jim Crow. Blues indexes the sufferings of Jim Crow. And it’s a way of connecting with that history. And I think it’s so important that we not forget that, that we not imagine blues as just music. I don’t think of blues as just music. I think it is a music, but it has a power that’s deep, and it has some deep magic in it that I’ve certainly felt as long as I’ve been alive.”
Adam Gussow’s deep experience of the brotherhood of the blues, forged through decades playing with Sterling Magee and other African Americans, is on the one hand able to transcend race, but on the other it is rooted in the historical reality of the blues as a complex response to the context of social and political oppression of African Americans. That seems to me to a good pointer to the future. The globalization of the blues just is. But we need voices like Adam Gussow’s to keep us mindful of the reality of the blues.
Since call and response, as Gussow explains, is a key part of the blues, it’s appropriate, I think, to conclude with this joint statement – first the Black Arts Movement spokesperson Larry Neal (in italics), then Gussow’s commentary, echoing and expanding on Neal’s pronouncement.
“The blues were shaped in the context of social and political oppression…the blues are basically defiant in their attitude toward life. They are about survival on the meanest, most gut level of human existence. They are, therefore, lyric responses to the facts of life…These blues are not sorrow songs but survivor songs: the soundtrack of a spiritual warriorship that refuses to say die. These blues wrest far more than their share of swaggering lyric joy out of an evil world, inscribing personhood and sustaining the tribe in the process.”
Whose Blues? Facing Up to Race and the Future of Music by Adam Gussow, is published by University of North Carolina Press.
Acclaimed “father of the blues,” song-writer and band-leader W.C. Handy was born this day 137 years ago. He’s an important figure in the history of the blues – the first real superstar, through his sheet music compositions, his 1914 St. Louis Blues, and his claim to recognizing the “world famous blues note.”
And, whatdayaknow, I share a birthday with W.C. Handy! Handy, of course, is credited with recognizing the blues for the first time in the plaintive slide playing by a man on his guitar at a station in Tutweiler, has a statue in a park named after him in Memphis, and his compositions are played to this day.
Me, I was a member of the winning sprint relay team in the Belfast primary schools’ interschool competition at Dunmore dog-racing stadium in the late ‘60s and am the proud author of this blog.
But, of course, I’ve one thing going for me over Mr. Handy. I’m still here! Though with each passing birthday, you’re painfully aware of the passing of time. You’ll never be in the sprint relay team again, your hair gets thinner and just about every muscle group in your body heads south. As Jackson Browne says,
Time may heal all wounds
But time will steal you blind
Time the wheel, time the conqueror.
But, there’s no point is dwelling on that too much, I reckon. I like the attitude of acoustic blues master, Rory Block, who’s now over 70 and who told me when I spoke to her a while back:
“Getting older or passing years is only what you make it. You know, you may make a disadvantage of it, but honestly, I don’t go there. I see it as an advantage. Now maybe I’m crazy, but I see it as a real opportunity to know more, to do more with what you know, to feel more…your fruit ripens! And to me it’s like I don’t feel old. What are you talking about? I’m more clear that this is what I was put here to do. You know, really, I see it that way. And man, I’m just getting started! I don’t feel a limitation at all and I don’t feel old – my goodness, not at all!”
So, as I celebrate my something-somethingth birthday, I’m with Rory. There are books to be written (a new one coming out soon); albums to be reviewed (though I’ll never keep up with the prolific and quite wonderful Rocking Magpie); guitars to be played; family and friends to cherish; grandchildren to greet into the world; and a big old hurting world in which to try and make a small difference (with God’s help).
Bob Dylan’s Forever Young from his Planet Waves album in 1974 – which, incidentally, someone gave me as a birthday present – hits the right note, I think:
May your heart always be joyful
May your song always be sung
And may you stay forever young
May you stay forever young.
And now, to help W.C. and me celebrate, here are a few blues songs.
Louis Jordan and his Tympany 5’s big band Happy Birthday Boogie gets the party started. “Happy birthday to you, and I hope you have many more”
Sammy Mayfield gives us a more bluesy version of the song.
And B.B. King has his Happy Birthday Blues, with a bit more blues feeling
And check out this bit of fun from Chris Kramer and the Beatbox, who hopes all our dreams come true.
And finally, it’s not the blues, but it’s a celebration, and it is Bruce Springsteen. Written for his wife Patti, but now dedicated to everybody who’s having a birthday today:
So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart. (Psalm 90:12)
Prakash Slim is a country blues musician and educator based in…wait for it…Nepal. His remarkable story is straight out of the history of the blues.
He was born in 1980 during the rainy season in a field in the small village of Lamatar, just south-east of Kathmandu in Nepal. Nepal is a country of 28m people, situated between India to the south and China to the north. It has eight of the world’s highest mountains, including Everest and a very ancient culture.
Prakash’s village saw its first electric bulb in 1983 and its first automobile in 1995. Although Nepal is now one of the fastest growing economies in the world, much of the country remains very poor – around one third of the population lives on under $3.20 a day and the GDP is only around $30bn (compare that to South Korea, with a similarly sized population and a GDP of $1.6tr.)
Prakash’s father passed away at a young age, leaving his mother to provide for three children by working in a neighbour’s field. Food and clothing was scarce and the annual festival was much anticipated by Prakash, when an uncle would gift him a set of new clothes. Life was tough.
So, perhaps it’s no wonder that Prakash has gravitated towards the blues. He’s lived the blues, growing up in a rural village with significant hardships, and the road to the future paved with considerable difficulties.
After becoming an accomplished guitarist and playing in a number of bands in Nepal’s lively rock scene, Prakash has become an acoustic bluesman, with Robert Johnson and Mississippi John Hurt as his guiding lights. He’s now a recognized, internationally affiliated Artist/Performer and Educator of the Blues with the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund in Mississippi.
The recent lockdowns because of the pandemic have enabled Prakash to play in a number of international blues events, so we were delighted at Down at the Crossroads to have the opportunity to chat to him:
Gary: For someone born in rural Nepal to become a blues artist sounds like an amazing story. Tell us briefly how you first started playing the guitar and how did you get started performing.
Prakash: Well, I was raised by a loving, loyal family but we had very limited means. I went to a public school where, instead of desks and benches, we had mats made of straw. When I was young the only ambition I had was survival. Ambition, as far as I was concerned, was a privilege for rich kids.
I was interested in music from a young age. I’d play music by drumming against a water container and sing songs all day. Music drew me in. My most prized possession back then was a bicycle that my sister gave me after she landed a job. Now I wanted to learn and play the guitar but I didn’t have the money to buy one, so I sold my bicycle to buy my first guitar. I told my family that a friend had taken it for a few days! But anyway, I got the guitar and started playing.
For two years, I searched for a mentor who could teach me everything I needed to know about music theory. Finally I found a teacher, and even though he lived 10 kms away from my home, my passion for music was so great that I never missed a lesson. Come storm or rain, I always arrived ahead of time and ready to learn.
I worked hard at my music for a number of years and was able to join my mentor, the legendary C.B. Chhetri’s band and gigged in a circuit of restaurants playing mostly rock music. I kept busy playing lead and rhythm guitar and bass, and doing vocals for various bands throughout Nepal.
Gary: Given your background, growing up with very little, is there a particular resonance for you with the blues, in their original setting in the struggles of black Americans?
Prakash: There are a lot of differences between African Americans and me, but, it’s true, we faced difficulties in life like education, economic depression, and discrimination. So many of the social issues are similar.
Gary: What blues artists did you first encounter, and which ones are important to you?
Prakash: I liked to listen to Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and many other rock blues artists. For over 12 years I played in rock bands and I’ve tried to give the songs I play an urban blues feel. When I first heard B.B. King’s recordings I was eager to learn the magical intervals: sixths, ninths, major and minor thirds. I wanted to learn his bee-sting vibrato technique. Then when I heard the country blues artists like Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Blake, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and many others, I knew this was the style that most spoke to my heart. So, now these country blues legends are the most important to me.
Gary: Has where you live been an advantage or disadvantage in pursing your art?
Prakash: Well, that’s an interesting question! My life experiences, including my hardships and struggles, are reflected in my music. I really want to express my experiences and feelings through the blues. But then, the limited access I have to instruments, equipment, sheet music and online music other than YouTube is a real disadvantage for me.
Gary: What sort of interest in blues music do you find in Nepal? Is there any resistance to it as Western music? Is it confined to Kathmandu?
Prakash: Well, we have a history in Nepal of the blues that goes back three decades, so I don’t think there’s any real resistance to the blues as western music. Some well-known blues bands are still active. People are interested in the blues but most people think that the blues start with B.B. King and Eric Clapton. Very few people know country blues, all the early stuff which is root of the modern music. Blues in Nepal, for sure, is centred in the capital and major cities and really, we have very few platforms and venues for the blues.
Gary: Are you able to make a living with your music?
Prakash: It’s very hard to survive as a musician in Nepal. It’s difficult to convince people how important music is for all ages and walks of life. For musicians of all genres, of course we have some pubs, restaurants and hotels to play. But for me, there is not much of a platform as a country bluesman.
Gary: How did you get your nickname, Prakash Slim? That’s a very cool blues name!
Prakash: Well, when I finished some serious blues research funded by the Mount Zion Memorial Fund in Mississippi, Dr. T. DeWayne Moore gave me the name. Prakash “Slim” Papa Pokharel. But when I got some international platforms, many friends suggested that I go for something shorter so we settled on Prakash Slim – “Prakash” represents Nepal and “Slim” represents the land where the blues began.
Gary: Tell us about your work in promoting blues music in schools.
Prakash: Well, blues is not only the music but also a culture. Without knowing its history, blues would be incomplete. We can empower and educate people through the blues. Knowing about the blues helps race relations and makes aware people of social issues. I’ve been teaching blues in schools here for some time now. My students know very little about black communities in the US and the problems they faced. I teach them that blues is an experience of life. I also teach them to play instruments and how to write song lyrics. I’m very happy that some of the students from grade three and four have now started playing slide as well! This year I did a blues exhibition in one of my schools. So, blues education is very important and I feel proud to be a part of it.
Gary: You recently collaborated with a friend of mine, Fabrizio Poggi in Italy. Tell us about that. [catch our recent chat with Fabrizio here]
Prakash: Well, Fabrizio Poggi is a renown Italian blues harmonica player and Grammy nominee. He and his wife Angelina and I connected as friends when I did an interview for Blues Radio International. Both of them are great human beings!
After talking for few days, Angelina said to me, “Why don’t you and Fabrizio do something together? I really would love to see you playing together. It would be a great message of hope for the world. A musician from Nepal and another from Italy? Why not? The coronavirus won’t let us leave our homes but we can travel all over the world through music.”
So, I was very excited and happy to do play with a legendary blues artist. I asked if we could do a favourite number of mine, a Robert Johnson song. I will always be grateful to Fabrizio and Angelina for this opportunity.
Gary: Prakash, tell us about your ambitions and hopes for the future.
Prakash: I really want to establish myself as an acoustic bluesman. I hope one day to play the blues with a National guitar in Mississippi. I consider that the sacred land of the blues – the blues Mecca. I want to spread blues in every corner of the world.
Gary: How has the coronavirus pandemic affected Nepal and has it affected your music making?
Prakash: We are all living in different and strange times. Nepal was not much affected by the pandemic in April and May, but we now see the number of affected people and deaths starting to go up. So, of course, yes, it has affected my music making badly. Schools and colleges are closed and all the venues are too.
Gary: Thanks, Prakash. We wish you well in your music making and every success in the future. Hopefully we’ll hear a lot more from you!
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