13 Great Prison Songs You Must Hear

We don’t normally expect prisons to play a role in the history of music. But with the blues, it’s not just drinkers, ramblers and vagrants who take a starring role, but also convicts. The blues grew up not only in plantations but in prisons.

Songs from the 1920s onward complain about the privations of life in prison, loneliness, lost love and injustice. Because under Jim Crow, African Americans were abominably treated by a justice system that might better be called an injustice system. Consider, for example, the convict leasing which took hold in Mississippi towards the end of the nineteenth century and went on for decades. Black people convicted by the law were leased to farmers and businessmen and literally worked to death. They were savagely beaten, made to work seemingly endless workdays and treated with murderous neglect. “Convicts dropped from exhaustion, pneumonia, malaria, frostbite, consumption, sunstroke, dysentery, gunshot wounds and “shackle poisoning” says historian David Oshinsky – and in the process made fortunes for plantation owners. Many of the convicts had fallen foul of local ordinances for minor infractions, were simply not able to pay the hefty fines levied, and then fell foul of well-off whites who paid their fines and forced them into indentured slavery characterized by back-breaking and life-threatening labour. “The end result was a stream of back bodies to the county chain gangs and local plantations” (Oshinsky).

African Americans were also worked in unbearable conditions in Mississippi’s penitentiary, Parchman, which sprawled over 20,000 acres of rich Delta farmland. Prisoners were put to work as if they were slaves, with men working until they dropped dead or burnt out with sunstroke. They worked from dawn to dusk in the brutal heat, surviving on worm-infested food, kept at it by the brutal application of the “Black Annie,” a heavy leather strap. Bluesman Willie Dixon, who was born in 1915 was once sentenced to 30 days for vagrancy on the Harvey Allen County Farm. He recalls the use of the Black Annie:

“They’d haul us out there to work and put us on a great big ditch…We were on top cutting and all of a sudden I hear somebody screaming, “Oh Lawdy! Oh, Lawdy, captain please stop doing it…I run over there peepin’. Boy, they’ve got five guys on this one guy…and this guy – they called him Captain Crush – has got a strap about eight inches wide. It’s leather, about five or six inches long, a handle on it about two feet long and holes in the end of this strap about as big as a quarter. They called it the Black Annie…Every time he hits this guy, flesh and blood actually come off this cat…He was out and they were still beating him.”

Willie Dixon

Dixon goes on to relate how, for being caught watching this, he too was beaten with the strap round the head, resulting in deafness for the next four months. He was thirteen at the time.

But in these prison-farms, remarkably, music thrived – mostly as a survival mechanism. When father and son musicologist team, John and Alan Lomax embarked on their famous blues-collecting road trip in 1933, they discovered that their most productive visits were to penitentiaries. They described finding here a “black Homer”, an aging black prisoner called “Iron Head”, with a songbook that would fill 500 pages if written down. In Louisiana’s Angola, They also found Huddie Ledbetter, later to be known as Leadbelly.

Possibly Leadbelly’s most famous song is Midnight Special, covered by Creedance Clearwater Revival, Van Morrison and many others. The Midnight Special was a train whose headlights lit up Ledbetter’s cell. The song speaks of “Nothing in the pan,” in other words nothing to eat, and if you were to “say a thing about it, you’d have trouble with the man.” It highlights the minor infractions that could put you away in prison – “if you ever go the Houston, boy you’d better walk right… Benson Crocker will arrest you, Jimmy Boone will take you down.” Blacks often did not have to commit any crime, in order to be arrested and subsequently jailed. A white person was completely at liberty to stop and question a black stranger in the neighbourhood, and if they did not have a local white person to vouch for them, then the police could be called upon to make an arrest.

As you listen to blues songs the Lomaxes recorded at Parchman (check out “Negro Prison Blues and Songs, Recorded Live by Alan Lomax”) – prisoners recounting personal tragedies, injustices and the ever-present hope of pardon and freedom, you get an insight into the hardship and injustice that Parchman and other penitentiaries represented.

To be sure, many incarcerated in Parchman had committed very violent crimes. But factors of extreme poverty, lack of education and racist oppression need to be reckoned with. Not only did they contribute to a climate of violence, they increased the conviction rate, lengthened sentences and lessened chances for pardon or parole.

Other famous blues convicts include Son House and Bukka White, second cousin to B.B. King. In his Parchman Farm Blues, Bukka sings of the dawn to dusk work regime:

Go to work in the mornin’ just at the dawn of day
And at the settin’ of the sun that is when your work is done.

No wonder he also wrote Fixin’ to Die blues:

Now, I believe I’m fixin’ to die, yeah
I know I was born to die
But I hate to leave my children around cryin’

(Check out the Postscript after the songs)

Here’s our selection of prison blues songs.

Furry Lewis, Judge Harsh, 1928

It’s an appeal from an innocent man for a light sentence:

They ‘rest me for murder, I ain’t harmed a man
‘Rest me for murder, I ain’t harmed a man
Women hollerin’ murderer, Lord I ain’t raised my hand

I ain’t got nobody to get me out on bond
I ain’t got nobody to get me out on bond
I would not mind but I ain’t done nothing wrong

Blind Lemon Jefferson, Prison Cell Blues, 1928

The hopelessness of the convicted prisoner:

I asked the government to knock some days off my time
Well, the way I’m treated, I’m about to lose my mind
I wrote to the governor, please turn me a-loose
Since I don’t get no answer, I know it ain’t no use

Leroy Carr, Prison Bound Blues, 1929

Early one mornin’, the blues came falling down
Early one mornin’, the blues came falling down
All locked up in jail, and prison boun’.

Peg Leg Howell, Ball and Chain Blues, 1929

Howell served time in Georgia prison camps for bootlegging offenses. He knew
what it was like to endure physical labour for the state as a prisoner.

They arrested me, carried me ‘fore the judge
They arrested me, they carried me ‘fore the judge
Said, the judge wouldn’t allow me to say a mumbling word

I’ve always been a poor boy, never had no job…

And the next day, carried the poor boy away
The next day, they carried that poor boy away
Say, the next day, I laid in ball and chains

Take these stripes off my back, chains from ’round my leg
Stripes off my back, chains from ’round my leg
This ball and chain about to kill me dead.

The Memphis Sheiks, He’s In the Jailhouse Now, 1930.

Made famous recently by featuring in the movie, O Brother Where Art Thou by The Soggy Bottom Boys. This unusually cheerful jail song was originally found in vaudeville performances from the early 20th century, usually credited to Jimmie Rodgers. The final verse of the song is about the singer taking a girl named Susie out on the town and the two winding up in jail together.

I went out last Tuesday, Met a gal named Susie…
We started to spend my money, Then she started to call me honey
We took in every cabaret in town
We’re in the jailhouse now
We’re in the jailhouse now
I told the judge right to his face
We didn’t like to see this place
We’re in the jailhouse now.

Bukka White, Parchman Farm Blues, 1940

White was born in Mississippi, but moved to Memphis and Chicago to record. He ran into trouble when he and a friend were “ambushed” by a man along a highway, according to White. He shot the man in the thigh in self-defence. While awaiting trial, he skipped bail and went to Chicago, where he recorded two songs before being apprehended. He was sent back to Mississippi to do a three-year stretch at Parchman Farm. He recorded two numbers for the Lomaxes at Parchman Farm in 1939. His Parchman Farm Blues speaks of the long days of back-breaking labour:

We go to work in the mo’nin
Just a-dawn of day
We go to work in the mo’nin
Just a-dawn of day
Just at the settin’ of the sun
That’s when da work is done, yeah

Leadbelly, Midnight Special, 1934

Leadbelly recorded a version of the song at Angola Prison for the Lomaxes. They said that the Midnight Special was a train from Houston, shining its light into a cell in the Sugar Land Prison, where the light of the train is the light of salvation, which could take them out of prison. Author Carl Sandburg’s view, however, was that the singer would rather be run over by a train than spend more time in jail.

Well, you wake up in the mornin’, you hear the work bell ring,
And they march you to the table to see the same old thing.
Ain’t no food upon the table, and no pork up in the pan.
But you better not complain, boy, you get in trouble with the man.

Big Maceo, County Jail Blues, 1941

Written by Alfred Fields, the song was also recorded by Eric Clapton in 1975.

So take these stripes from around me, chains from around my neck
These stripes from around me, and these chains from around my neck
Well, these stripes don’t hurt me, but these chains oughta give me death

Walter “Tangle Eye” Jackson, Tangle Eye Blues, 1947

One of many recordings made in late 1947 at Parchman by Alan Lomax, the song speaks of the regret of the incarcerated prisoner.

Oh Lord
Well I wonder will I ever get back home?
Oh Lord
Well it must have been the devil that pulled me here
more down and out
Oh Lord… if I ever get back home, I’ll never do wrong
If I can just make it home I won’t do wrong no more

Lighnin’ Hopkins, Jail House Blues, 1961

Originally written by Clarence Williams and Bessie Smith in 1923, and recorded also by Ella Fitzgerald in 1963, Hopkins’s version is telling, in that he had been sent to Houston County Prison Farm in the mid-1930s – for which offense we don’t know.

Hey mister jailer, will you please sir bring me the key
I just want you to open the door, cause this ain’t no place for me

Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison, 1955

Recorded first on his debut album, Cash performed the song at Folsom Prison itself on January 13, 1968. It contains the classic lines, which were roundly cheered by the inmates:

But I shot a man in Reno
Just to watch him die…

Far from Folsom Prison
That’s where I want to stay
And I’d let that lonesome whistle
Blow my blues away

Bob Dylan, Hurricane, 1976

Co-written with Jacques Levy, the song concerns the imprisonment of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who, it alleged, was falsely tried and convicted, a victim of racism. In 1985 Federal Judge H. Lee Sarokin, ruled that Carter had not received a fair trial and overturned the conviction, resulting in Carter’s release and the granting of a writ of habeas corpus to Carter, commenting that the prosecution had been “based on racism rather than reason and concealment rather than disclosure.”

Sam Cooke, Chain Gang, 1960

Cooke’s incongruously upbeat 1960 hit “Chain Gang” was inspired by his encounter with a prison chain gang while out on tour. These prisoners had been out build a highway, and the only thing keeping them in good spirits was the hope that one day they’d be free from their shackles.

All day long they work so hard
Till the sun is goin’ down
Working on the highways and byways
And wearing, wearing a frown
You hear them moanin’ their lives away
Then you hear somebody sa-ay

That’s the sound of the men working on the chain ga-a-ang
That’s the sound of the men working on the chain gang

Postscript

The inequity of the justice system in the United States continues to this day, with one in every three black male babies born in this century expected to be incarcerated. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with a prison population that has grown from 300,000 to over 2 million today, and one in every 15 people in the country expected to go to jail or prison. Its rate of incarceration is four to eight times higher than those in other liberal democracies, including Canada, England, and Germany.

Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow says that “more African American adults are under correctional control today…than were enslaved in 1850.” The United States now imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. Alexander goes on to note, shockingly, that “young black men today may be just as likely to suffer discrimination in employment, housing, public benefits and jury service as a black man in the Jim Crow era.”

Black rapper Meek Mills tells of his experience as a black man caught in a justice system in need of reform: “Like many who are currently incarcerated, I was the victim of a miscarriage of justice — carried out by an untruthful officer, as determined by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office, and an unfair judge.” You can read details of his case here.

Mills speaks of the disproportionate number of men and women of colour in prison and contends that “the system causes a vicious cycle, feeding upon itself — sons and daughters grow up with their parents in and out of prison, and then become far more likely to become tied up in the arrest-jail-probation cycle. This is bad for families and our society as a whole.”

John Pfaff, in his recent Locked In, observes that “blacks are systematically denied access to the more successful paths to economic stability,” and therefore “face systematically greater pressure to turn to other alternatives.” He goes on to note that young men without a way out of poverty turn to gangs, and gangs always turn to violence. The way out of the cycle of violence and incarceration that America has got itself into in not straightforward, but surely has a lot to do with the need to tackle poverty, with the fact that prosecutors are elected and need to be market themselves as “tough on crime,” with the lack of any sensible gun control policy, and with the need to examine drug policy.

Michelle Alexander concludes her book by reminding her readers of Rev. Dr Martin Luther King’s appeal for a “radical restructuring of our society,” and urges a radical restructuring of America’s approach to racial justice advocacy as well.

James Baldwin, in a letter written in 1962 to his nephew, tells him that, “you were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity…that you were a worthless human being.” The sad history of incarceration in the United States is achingly reflected in the prison blues songs.

The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin, 1962
Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice, David M. Oshinksy, 1996
The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander, 2010
Race, Crime and Punishment, The Aspen Institute, 2011
Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, 2015
Locked In, The True Causes of Mass Incarceration, John F Pfaff, 2017

It’s so hard to find one rich man in ten with a satisfied mind.

A Satisfied Mind was written by Joe “Red” Hayes and Jack Rhodes and first recorded by Porter Wagoner in 1955, scoring him a #1 Country hit. Hayes explained the origin of the song in an interview: “The song came from my mother. Everything in the song are things I heard her say over the years. I put a lot of thought into the song before I came up with the title. One day my father-in-law asked me who I thought the richest man in the world was, and I mentioned some names. He said, ‘You’re wrong; it is the man with a satisfied mind.’”

The song has been recorded by a great many artists over the years, notable by Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan. Cash’s first version was released in 2004 on the Kill Bill: Volume 2 soundtrack, but it later appeared on his posthumous 2010 album American VI: Ain’t No Grave. It was a song Cash had been singing since the 1950s from the time when he didn’t have enough of his own songs and needed covers, but he liked it very much. Like the rest of the songs on American VI, the song is poignant, and sounds like the wisdom of a man who is near to the end and has an urgent message to convey.

Money can’t buy back
Your youth when you’re old
Or a friend when you’re lonely
Or a love that’s grown cold

The wealthiest person
Is a pauper at times
Compared to the man
With a satisfied mind.

Cash doubtless knew his time had “run out,” but the song lyrics seem to very aptly fit the faith that sustained him:

But one thing’s for certain
When it comes my time
I’ll leave this old world
With a satisfied mind.

Bob Dylan recorded A Satisfied Mind twice, first in 1967 on a version that wasn’t released until 2014 on The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete, and again for his 1980 Saved. Dylan’s version on this much pilloried album is masterful, all bluesy and gospel at the same time. He begins virtually unaccompanied, with his wonderful gospel singers harmonizing and some sparse piano. The stripped back, emotion-laden approach highlights beautifully the potency of the song’s message in a way that most other versions I’ve heard fail to do. Throughout the song Dylan moans in the manner of an old gospel blues artist, giving us ample time to ponder the question of what really satisfies in life.

On Saved, A Satisfied Mind bleeds into the excitement of the title track, a rocker which provides Dylan’s answer to the opening song’s question. “I was blinded by the devil, born already ruined,” Dylan sings, urgently pointing to his discovery of the reality of a mind unsatisfied by fortune or fame. But now, “by his grace I have been touched, by his word I’ve been healed,” that unsatisfied life saved by his new-found faith.

I got to thinking about this song after reading Charles Duhigg’s article in the New York Times Magazine, Wealthy, Successful and Miserable. Duhigg says that “The upper echelon is hoarding money and privilege to a degree not seen in decades. But that doesn’t make them happy at work.” He recounts attending his 15^th anniversary reunion with his Harvard MBA class and being shocked at how many were just plain miserable. These were people all earning huge salaries and working in prestigious companies, and yet who felt like they were wasting their lives. One person was earning $1.2m a year, hated his work, and yet felt he could not afford to take a pay cut to a mere $600,000 in order to take up an opportunity he really fancied.

As Hayes and Rhodes’s song says,

But little they know
That it’s so hard to find
One rich man in ten
With a satisfied mind.

Upon further research, Duhigg discovered that around 50% of American workers are professionally miserable – and this in a boom economy. There is an underlying sense that what they are doing day by day just isn’t worth the huge effort many of them have to put into it.

Our economics-driven market drives ever greater production and consumption. It’s hard not to buy into it, so pervasive is the advertising industry assailing us at every turn, online or off. You need this, you have to have it, you’re not complete without this. So it goes, relentlessly, every day. We work ceaselessly, we consume, we sleep, we get up and do it again. But, as the old saying goes, who says on their death bed – “I wish I’d spent more time in the office.”

Money can’t buy back
Your youth when you’re old
Or a friend when you’re lonely
Or a love that’s grown cold.

Or as the ancient Psalmist of Israel said, “Do not be overawed when someone gets rich, and lives in ever greater splendour; for they will take nothing with them when they die, their splendour will not descend with them. (Psalm 49:16-17)

Joe Hayes said of his song, “It has been done a lot in churches. I came out of the Opry one night and a church service was going on nearby. The first thing I hear was the congregation singing ‘Satisfied Mind.’ I got down on my knees.”

Good place to start, maybe, to get some perspective and maybe, a satisfied mind.

 

[Some other fine versions of the song include:

Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama on There Will Be A Light

Jeff Buckley on Sketches

Eric Bibb on Spirit & the Blues

Lucinda Williams on Ramblin’

The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock’n’Roll

Randall J. Stephens, The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock’n’Roll, (Harvard, 2018)

Randall Stephens has given us a riveting account of the way in which rock music impacted the Christian world in the United States, since its emergence in the 1950s. It’s well researched and detailed, and is expansive in its scope, covering the relationship between early rock ’n’ roll and Pentecostalism, the racism inherent in early Christian reactions to the new music, the resistance of conservative religion to the Beatles and other 60s developments, and then the emergence of Jesus rock, morphing into Contemporary Christian Music and the various reactions to that.

The book is well written and never dull, deftly exploring what has been a complicated relationship between rock and fundamentalist and evangelical religion. Along the way we get something of a history of evangelical Christianity in America over the past 60 years, including the distinction between fundamentalists, evangelicals and charismatic/neo-Pentecostals, and the way in which these groups saw themselves over against the prevailing culture in the United States. I liked the quotation from Duke and Notre Dame historian, George Marsden, which Stephens mentions (albeit noting that it doesn’t tell the whole story): “a fundamentalist is an evangelical who is angry about something.”

When rock ’n’ roll first emerged, fusing blues, gospel, rhythm and blues, and country in the 1950s, American Christians viewed it as sinful, deranged, demonic, the “devil’s music.” Yet by the late 60s and early 70s, large numbers of conservative Christians had embraced rock music as a means of evangelism and praise to God. Stephens skilfully tracks this trajectory and is able to demonstrate that “much of what animates evangelical churches in the twenty-first century comes directly from the unlikely fusion of Pentecostal religion, conservative politics, and rock and pop music.”

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Randall begins by tracing the development of rock ‘n roll from its roots in southern Pentecostalism. The hard-driving, powerful music in the worship of holiness and Pentecostal services gave rise to such popular performers as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Godmother of Rock and Roll, with her guitar-fuelled gospel. From a background in Pentecostal religion came major figures like Johnny Cash, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and, of course, most importantly of all, Elvis Presley. Presley not only appropriated the rhythms and beat of his white Pentecostal background, but integrated black gospel into his style of singing and performing. Such integration was anathema to white southern evangelicals in the 50s who objected to the “jungle music” and “voodoo rhythms” of rock ‘n roll.

We then have a fascinating chapter entitled “Race, Religion, and Rock ‘n’ Roll,” where Randall explores the racist nature of white southern Christian reactions to the new music that was capturing the hearts of the nation’s youth. Fears about vulgarity, sexual licence, communist plots, and drinking and dancing combined with the worst of racial prejudice to fuel a fundamentalist loathing of rock ‘n’ roll.

The arrival on the scene of the Beatles in the 1960s is the subject of Randall’s next chapter. Long hair, an emergent youth culture, drugs and androgynous clothing, along with the youth hysteria that greeted the Beatles in America drew the ire and condemnation of church leaders. Billy Graham, in 1968, bemoaned the worldwide “moral deterioration,” which was a clear sign of the approaching apocalypse. Randall takes us through the fall-out in the Christian world of John Lennon’s “We’re more popular than Jesus now” remark through to the beginnings of some soul-searching amongst evangelicals about how they needed to relate to a younger generation.

The next phase of the story is the emergence of Jesus rock and its morphing into Contemporary Christian Music, and the various reactions to it. Randall does an excellent job of catching the spirit of the time in the early 70s when some Christians, led by people like Larry Norman, began to express their faith in the medium of rock music. “Why should the devil have all the good music?” Norman asked. Or indeed, long hair and hippie attire. Even Billy Graham began to wear his hair longer, as folk and rock music were increasingly incorporated into church youth events. Professional rock and pop performers flourished, including Norman, Barry Maguire, Phil Keaggy, Chuck Girard and Cliff Richard, and mainstream performers like Johnny Cash, Pat Boone and eventually, at the end of the 70s, Bob Dylan proclaimed the gospel in their songs.

All of this provoked a furious fundamentalist reaction with figures liked Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye and Jimmy Swaggert fulminating against “a musical revolution that integrated aggressive music and aggressive sex” which ought never to be mixed with the gospel. Notwithstanding this, by the 1990s, Christian pop music and rock-infused worship music had broadly infiltrated the evangelical church and Contemporary Christian Music made up a respectable share of the total recording market, returning huge revenues to successful bands through sales of recordings and merchandise.

Randall closes this fascinating study with a short review of bands and artists with a Christian outlook which have gained critical and popular acclaim, including some that attempted to crossover from a Christian market to a more general one. He notes the Christian background and motivation of U2, and amusingly recounts the late 1990s foray of crooner Pat Boone into the heavy metal arena.

The Devil’s Music is a highly engaging examination of the struggles of American evangelicalism with the emergence and mainstreaming of rock music that gives us an important insight into the nature of the modern form of this type of Christianity, its values and fears. It’s a remarkable story of shock, opposition, accommodation and finally embrace which anyone interested in both the recent history of the church or that of rock ‘n’ roll will thoroughly enjoy.

[Randall Stephens has included a great Spotify playlist based on the book here]

Taking wings: Mandy Brooks in Conversation

Mandy Brooks very fine album, Move On Up!, got considered for nomination for this year’s Grammys. Quite an achievement for a debut album. Daughter of a professional singer, Mandy has been performing with various bands since she was a teenager, including the Jimmy Scott Band. She’s recently formed a new band with Levi Lloyd, The Brooks Lloyd Band, one to watch out for. Down at the Crossroads chatted to Mandy about Move On Up!

DATC: Mandy, congratulations on your very fine Move On Up! album. It’s an album of mostly gospel songs with a distinctive bluesy feel to it. Tell us a bit about the background to the album and what you were trying to achieve?

Mandy: Thank you Gary! I love digging around in your “Down at the Crossroads” blog.  It’s gold mine for reference and resource of Gospel Blues. I am honored to be on “Best Blues Album 2017” list!

As far as what I was trying to achieve with the Move on Up album, I had put music on the back burner for about 15 years. I’m not sure if I put it on the back burner or it was just part of my process/musical journey. Even though I was not very musically active during that time, there was a lot of personal development and discovery going on that I think was naturally integrated into the creative process and expression.

One day my son said “Mom, I found these recordings of you singing and you are a good singer.”  “If you had a dream what would it be?” I said “I would make a CD.”  And he said “You should do it”.  So, my husband generously agreed to support it. He told me he was excited to help me create something that I could have as a keepsake and play for my grandkids.

But in the back of my mind I knew there was a lot more down in inside of me. I knew creating the CD would be just like opening a door to grow, connect with others and move on up in my circumstances.  My logo is a mockingbird taking flight.  That logo is very powerful imagery for me to keep strong and moving up.

Knowing that I had one shot at creating an album, I wanted to really make it count for something. I wanted express my faith in this album but not in a way that was preachy. I just wanted to express my faith in the context of revealing my views and my inner workings and create something that would hopefully bring people joy and encouragement.

DATC: You’ve done a really nice version of Bob Dylan’s Pressing On – very timely, given the release of his latest Bootleg Series, Trouble No More. Why did you choose this song?

Mandy: Music has been for me always a place, a physical space to go to.  When I go there I feel surrounded, understood and protected.  I feel like I have the freedom to express whatever emotion is going on for me and there is no judgment.  So, Pressing On for me is a song that I could sing in that space that gives me strength to keep moving forward through difficult circumstances to a higher calling and bigger reason. If I can press on then maybe someone else could be encouraged and feel like “She’s doing it, I can do it too.”

DATC: And you’ve a Blind Willie Johnson song and a Mississippi Fred McDowell song on the album too. Do you relate to these old blues masters?

Mandy: Even though these masters are of a different gender, race and generation I find them very relatable.  I think it’s the music that helps create bridges across these differences. They are singing about their struggles. They are down to earth and unpretentious.  They are singing to keep their faith alive and share their experiences, because there is healing and connection in expressing. And so yeah, I can relate to them.

DATC: Why do you think there is an enduring quality to the blues?

Mandy: Well the blues is the basis for almost all of American music over the past 100 years because it is relatable. It’s an expression of calling out from suffering.  I think a lot of times people don’t give each other or themselves permission to express, so in the blues gives a place for this. I think another enduring quality is that the blues is profound in its simplicity.

Blind Willie Johnson

DATC: And what about gospel blues – why do you think people still want to listen to Blind Willie Johnson and Rev Robert Wilkins and Rev Gary Davis and others like them, even though they are quite forthright with their gospel lyrics?

Mandy: Well, I think whether they believe intellectually or not with the words, that listeners resonate with the truth of the experience that is coming through their expression. That truth expressed is bringing the listener some kind of satisfaction and making a connection.

DATC: When you say that you “desire to sing the truth,” what do you mean by that?

Mandy: I desire to sing the truth on many levels.  I want to sing what is true to my experience.  I enjoy singing for fun, but I don’t feel like I’m really singing if I’m not expressing the truth of what is going on inside of me.  That could be the truth of my faith in my Saviour and it could be the truth of a really painful relationship I could be going through or the joy of just having a great time and letting go of troubles.  You know, being authentic.  I desire to be and give something authentic and to sing the truth or I feel like I’m not really giving anything of substance.

DATC: You’ve said, that “touching joy and pain through music brings a sweet freedom and healing.” Can you say a bit more about that?

Mandy: I’ve heard that in the West African Mandekan language there is a term, yere-wolo, that means, “to give birth to oneself.”  I feel that this album has been the starting point of that for me.  That I am coming back full circle.

I have been reborn for many years as a Christian, but this rebirth is taking place inside that context. I feel like for many years I did not have something to express and then it was like all at once I knew it was time. It has been an awakening for me and the vehicle for that is music. I feel like I am going back to my beginning and collecting all the experiences and giving birth to myself in this way.

Touching that joy and pain, as difficult as it is sometimes, keeps me alive and constantly discovering myself.  Through discovering myself, I feel like I am able to Move on Up through my circumstances and hopefully encourage other to do the same.

You know I know how it feels to be held down and feel like there is no way. I know what it feels like to not have a voice so I want others to know that they are not alone in feeling like that as well.  I want to share that through faith and relationship with God that he gives us the strength to “Press on” and “Move on Up.” I mean to say that I haven’t “arrived” anywhere. As much as I want to support and encourage others, I need the support, encouragement and relationship with others to keep pressing on and moving up.

Thank you for having me and for your support. I wish you the best with your work. I look forward to hearing updates from “Down at the Crossroads” in 2018!

DATC: Thank you Mandy!

Bob Dylan’s Blues: Trouble No More

Volume 13 in Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series has just been released, Trouble No More, covering the so-called “gospel years” of 1979-1981. There’s a two CD pack with 30 songs, including a couple never before released, and then a whopping 8 CD + DVD offering which, at over £135, I’m afraid priced me out. I might have a friend who can help me out though!

Dylan’s three “gospel” albums from the period were widely pilloried at the time, but the release of this material, all recorded live from concerts in the United States and Europe, has shown what anybody who attended these gigs at the time knew – the performances were nothing short of electrifying. I went to my first Dylan concert on July 1, 1981 at Earl’s Court, London, which was kicked off by four tambourine swinging female gospel singers, Regina McCrary, Carolyn Dennis, Clydie King and  Madelyn Quebec, before Bob weighed in with Gotta Serve Somebody. By this stage, Dylan was beginning to mix in some of the old songs with the gospel material, so it wasn’t long before the whole place was erupting to Like A Rolling Stone. I was in Bob heaven with the set list that night, but it was the energy and conviction of the performances that pulsated through the arena that stayed with me long after the final chords of Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door had died away.

Rolling Stone, never a fan of Dylan’s gospel material, admitted of Trouble No More, “What’s often lost in those arguments is that it produced some of his greatest concerts,” while the Times of London grudgingly confessed that “the two-disc version is ample proof that Dylan finding God was, in musical terms at least, no bad thing.” The New York Times understood better what went on: “What comes through these recording is Mr. Dylan’s unmistakable fervor…[the songs are] “anything but routine…Mr. Dylan flings every line with conviction.” Dylan scholar Clinton Heylin says simply, “Like the mid-1960s, he was at the absolute peak of his powers.”

This was a prolific period. More than a dozen songs that didn’t make it onto the three albums from 1979 to 1981 show up in Trouble in Mind. The body of work composed by Dylan during this time “more than matches any commensurate era in his long and distinguished career – or, indeed that of any other twentieth century popular artist,” says Heylin, and it’s hard to disagree.

The song performances are in turns exhilarating, rowdy, playful, and combative, combined with moments of prayerlike reverence. It’s hard not to be moved by What Can I Do for You, from San Diego’s 27 November 1979 performance. This was a centrepiece of Dylan’s performances in these concerts and his passion and sense of gratitude is undeniable. The gospel backing and the mournful harmonica adds to the poignancy. “You have given all there is to give; what can I give to you?” Dylan’s sense of indebtedness oozes from the song. My wife and I were listening to this song the other day in the car. She doesn’t really like most of the music I listen too – she’s more of a classical music fan. But she suddenly said, “He’s really a fantastic singer, isn’t he?” The character of Dylan’s voice will always, I guess, be something of an acquired taste, but he is indeed a very fine singer, able to phrase a song exquisitely, and, as he does on this one, wring the emotion out of it.

What I found interesting listening to these performances is how much they are blues songs. Gospel blues, yes – but nothing wrong with that – we have a long line of such songs from Blind Willie Johnson and Rev. Robert Wilkins onwards. Slow Train, Gotta Serve Somebody, When You Gonna Wake Up, Do Right to Me Baby, Are You Ready and Dead Man, Dead Man are all served up in a heady mixture of the blues, rock and gospel. There’s something about the blues, when it’s played right that just manages to get right inside you and touch you deeply. And that’s what’s going on here with these songs – aside, of course from the deeply felt lyrics.

And then there is the very solid blues rock of The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar. The November 13, 1980 performance of this from San Francisco features Carlos Santana on guitar with a couple of blistering solos and Dylan as intense as you’re likely to hear him. The song is not on my vinyl version of Shot of Love, but was eventually added to the CD version.

The Groom’s lyrics are not anywhere near as explicit in Christian meaning as most of the other songs, which speak clearly of God, Jesus, the need for faith, repentance and Christ’s second coming. Here Dylan seems to be in enigmatic prophet mode, speaking of a world of chaos, madness, war and misunderstanding. But remember, this is a period where Dylan has steeped himself in the scriptures, and with his prodigious memory, all this theology and apocalyptic imagery is still swirling around his head. The talk of the groom, the implied bride and waiting at the altar seems to me has to refer to Christ and his bride, the church, straight from the pages of the Revelation of St. John. The stage, says Dylan, is burning and the curtain is rising on the new age, but we’re not quite there yet – the groom (Christ) is still waiting at the altar for his bride (Christ-followers) to be welcomed to the new age. For now, there is chaos, massacres of innocents, enough to nauseate you. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

The song is a powerful one – “a fiery piece of molten fury” [album liner notes] and the repetitive blues riff drives home the prophet’s urgent message. Before anyone gets too dismissive of this apocalyptic thread in Dylan’s songs, here and elsewhere, let’s realize that, like it or not, the idea of a second coming of Jesus has been part of orthodox Christianity for the last two thousand years. Yes, recently some Christians have got a bit confused about the idea of heaven as a golden city in the skies and about expecting a so-called “rapture,” but Christians have always hoped for a new world forged out of the old, where peace, love and justice would prevail. And that idea comes through loud and clear in, for example, When He Returns: “Like a thief in the night, he’ll replace wrong with right, When he returns… Will I ever learn that there’ll be no peace, that the war won’t cease, Until He returns?”

Dylan gives us, as the New York Times put it, “a sense of moral gravity, a righteous tone, apocalyptic thoughts and a delight in the rich and powerful receiving their come-uppance.”

The important thing for Christians is to live now as if that new age mentioned in The Groom’s Still Waiting At the Altar had already arrived – peaceably, loving neighbours and enemies alike, and seeking justice for all. That’s the answer to Dylan’s question, What Can I Do For You?

Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, the Blues & Love

Van Morrison has been singing the blues for a long time. In a Rolling Stone interview a while back he said he first realized he had a voice when he recorded himself singing on his dad’s reel-to-reel tape recorder. What did he sing? – “Leadbelly songs.” His influences were, he said, all black and he “related to the lyrics in Chicago blues and the stuff I heard by John Lee Hooker.”

Fast forward a few decades and Van Morrison’s new album, Roll With the Punches, is an unashamed album of blues songs which pay tribute to the influence of the blues on his own body of work. As well as a number of original songs, there are numbers by Sam Cooke, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Bo Diddley, Mose Allison, Little Walter, T-Bone Walker, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, as well as jazz musicians Count Basie and Jimmy Rushing.

This, Van Morrison’s 37^th studio album, is one of the best blues album you’ll hear all year. The fifteen songs feature guest appearances by Jeff Beck, Paul Jones, Georgie Fame, Chris Farlowe and Jason Rebello, as well as some outstanding gospel-tinged backing vocals from Dana Masters and Sumudu Jayatilaka. The blues piano throughout is fabulous and Jeff Beck’s guitar work, especially on Bring It On Home to Me, is quite wondrous. The superb musicianship and production serves as a solid platform for Van’s vocal performance which is quintessentially Van, with its exquisite phrasing and characteristic stretching of words across musical phrases.

“From a very early age, I connected with the blues,” says Van. “The thing about the blues is you don’t dissect it – you just do it. I’ve never over-analyzed what I do; I just do it. Music has to be about just doing it and that’s the way the blues works – it’s an attitude.” Attitude is what this album has in spades. It’s solid, traditional blues, but always sounds up-to-date and the visceral attraction of the blues that the artist must have felt when he first heard the blues as a teenager is here channelled and explored, so that you can’t help but be drawn in and made to feel the emotion – the trouble, the loss and the joy that is the blues.

That dual sense of trouble and joy is explored in Morrison’s own song Transformation, again with some delightful Jeff Beck guitar work. “Remember when we were downhearted, didn’t have nowhere to go…” he sings, before,

“Then something starts happening, feel like you’re on a roll
Gonna be a transformation, baby, down in your soul.”

The reason for the transformation? Love – “Love like a river keeps on wanting to flow…Love is for ever, baby, down in your soul.” It’s easy to simply think of the casual romantic love – the careless love – of a thousand pop songs. But an old preacher I heard once defined love as a “conscious choice for someone else’s good – a decision, not an emotion.” Coming at it like that puts a different perspective on things. That’s the sort of thing that might, just, cause a transformation down in your soul. That strikes me as being a world away from Mose Allison’s “self-love” in Benediction, which for all its thanking of God, doesn’t give a proper answer at the point “When burdens get heavy, And hope starts to fade.” We need something more than self-love. Actually, that might be counter-productive.

Bob Dylan gets the real remedy for the blues. In a Christmas message from a while ago he said, “You don’t need Dr Phil…you don’t need me. Just go out and help someone more unfortunate than you.” Bob suggests going to “a soup kitchen, or a retirement home, maybe even a prison” to find someone to be with and to bring some cheer to. “No matter how bad you have it, somebody got it worse.”

Bob’s spot on with this bit of advice – it’s amazing how just taking your eyes and attention of yourself and your own problems, and starting to focus on the difficulties someone else has, suddenly makes your own situation look, well, not so bad after all.  As Jesus famously said – “If you love your life, you’ll lose it.” It’s those who “care nothing for their lives” that have the best reward (John 12.25)

Spirituality is never far away in Van Morrison, and he includes Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s How Far from God, and features something of the barrelhouse piano of the original – expertly done by Stuart McIlroy. The song reminds me of some of the lyrics in Bob Dylan’s I Believe in You – Dylan’s faith songs are to the fore at the moment with the imminent arrival of Trouble No More, the 13^th in the Bootleg Series, which focuses on his spirit-filled output of 1979-1981.

In Tharpe’s song, Van sings, “Well since I received the blessing, My so called friends turned their backs on me.” Dylan’s song goes:

“And they, they look at me and frown,
They’d like to drive me from this town
They don’t want me around
‘Cause I believe in you.”

Seems like sometimes having a definite faith – or worse still, talking about it – doesn’t go down too well. In Rosetta Tharpe’s song, it seems that some “playmates” have walked and talked her down the road before she came to the realization of how far she now was from God. Interesting question for all of us, isn’t it, as we walk down the road – to wonder how far we are from God?

Never too far from the transformation of love.

 

Thanksgiving – Whatcha Gonna Do?

I listened last week to a version of a Bob Dylan song recorded recently by Tim Easton and the McCrary Sisters to raise awareness and support for the Nashville Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter and addiction recovery centre. The song is Whatcha Gonna Do and this is a really fine new version.

Being a bit of  Dylan fan, I’d heard the song before (on The Bootleg Series Volume 9: The Witmark Demos), but had rather forgotten it. It’s a version of an old spiritual, which asks the sobering question “Oh my Lord, what shall I do…when death comes a-creeping in the room.” Something I guess most of us would prefer not to think about too closely.

I then stumbled upon an excellent post by Sean Curnyn in The Cinch Review from 2014, who points out that Dylan has recorded several versions of the song. The one covered by Tim Easton was in fact the Witmark Demo version, the latest of three versions. Curnyn goes through the lyrical changes in each Dylan version, and prefers the version where the questions posed by each verse of the song are as follows:

First verse: Tell me what you’re gonna do when death comes creepin’ in your door

Second verse: Tell me what you’re gonna do when the devil calls your cards

Third verse: Tell me what you’re gonna do when the shadow comes into your room

Fourth verse: Tell me what you’re gonna do when your water turns to wine

Previously Dylan had had the 4^th verse question as Tell me what you’re gonna do when death comes knockin’ on your door.

This he finds interesting because there is a deliberate change here from contemplating the disasters of life – death, misfortune and evil, the “shadow.” Whether we like it or not, we all, sooner or later, have to face the shadow, or “the devil” (be it the consequences of our own foolish actions or, ill-treatment by others) and, last of all, death, of those we care about and, inevitably, our own. The ancient wisdom writers of Israel thought carefully about these sort of questions, when they wrote about “walking through the valley of the shadow of death,” and wondered where to go “in the day of trouble.” Their conclusion was that the only safe refuge was in “the Lord.”

Important as these questions are, Dylan takes us a step further when he asks “what you’re gonna do when your water turns to wine?” recalling, probably very deliberately, the wedding at Cana where Jesus turned the water into wine. What happens when something good happens, when something turns out, perhaps surprisingly, to be a blessing, when you encounter a moment of grace, when, perhaps, it seems like a miracle? How do we respond? Do we take it for granted? Do we enjoy the moment and then rush on to whatever’s next? Do we think it’s our right?

Or do we pause and be thankful? Gratitude is a powerful thing. Research shows that choosing to focus on good things makes you feel better than focusing on bad things, and that choosing gratitude can also bring out the best in those around us. It doesn’t just happen, however – we need to cultivate “interior gratitude,” the practice of giving thanks privately, and along with that, “exterior gratitude,” publically expressing our gratitude.  Someone has suggested writing two short emails each morning to friends, family or colleagues, thanking them for what they do – I’m gonna give that one a try.

It’s said that truly happy people find ways to give thanks for the little, insignificant things that happen in life – in this thanksgiving week, Dylan’s question is pertinent: asks “what you’re gonna do when your water turns to wine?”

Whatcha gonna do?