Document Records, an independent record label that specializes in reissuing vintage blues and jazz, has a great set of five Christmas Blues albums, which feature a host of well-known artists from yesteryear, like Victoria Spivey, Leadbelly, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker and Freddy King, and many more you’ll likely have never heard of. Volume 1 alone has a massive 52 tracks, so it’s great value.
In this disk, we get fun songs like the delightful Bring That Cadillac Back by Harry Crafton with the Doc Bagby Orchestra, where Harry’s Christmas is ruined by his girl eating his turkey and running off with his Cadillac.
There’s some terrific blues, like Chuck Berry’s Merry Christmas Baby on Disk 2 and Victoria Spivey’s naughty I Ain’t Gonna Let You See My Santa Claus (Volume 3), and of course, we get Robert Johnson’s Hellhound on My Trail, with its mention of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
There’s a fair sprinkling of Christmas gospel along the way, including some interesting preaching. Like the 1918 sermon of Rev A.W. Nix, which he preached during the Spanish ‘flu pandemic, addressing the fact that many in his congregation were broke. He cautioned his flock not to spend money they didn’t have. Pretty good advice, don’t you think? Reminds me of Mr Micawber in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, who famously observed, “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen, nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”
Rev. Nix goes on to tell his flock that rather than go broke splashing out at Christmas, they needed to “spend your Christmas praising God and giving him thanks for what he’s already done for you this year.”
Being thankful maybe seems a tall order after 2020. So many lives lost all over the world to the pandemic, with the resultant economic fallout, domestic violence on the rise and isolation and restrictions causing no end of misery. And, in the developing world, hunger and poverty on the increase, along with sex trafficking and early marriage of girls.
But Nix was preaching to people in as bad a situation or worse in 1918. The influenza pandemic affected a third the population of the world, killed up to 50 million, and came in four waves, lasting until 1920. He’s on to something when he talks about thankfulness.
Modern psychology tells us that if we can find something to be grateful for, it improves our self-esteem, increases our energy, helps our immune system, increases our sleep quality, and enables us to cope better with stress. So being thankful, even in the midst of trouble, can be incredibly powerful.
Christmas, of course, gives us something particularly to be thankful for, in the gift of the child in the manager. The Christmas message is one of hope in the midst of fear and distress, because of this incredible event of “God with us.” God come to share in our humanity, our distress, our joys, our sorrows.
The traditional song Go Tell It On the Mountain captures the celebration and thanksgiving for what happened on that first Christmas. The Document Record collection includes the Famous Jubilee Singers’ version, but I rather like the Blind Boys of Alabama’s take on this.
Volume 3 of Document Record’s collection fittingly closes with Ella Fitzgerald’s The Secret of Christmas. Forget the warm glow you feel, the sleigh bells, the children singing and the presents. For Ella, the secret of Christmas
Is not the things you do
At Christmas time, but the Christmas things you do
All year through.
The blues emerged in the context of the oppression and suffering of Black communities in the southern US, and singing the blues was a means of responding to that oppression – of giving voice to great sorrow, lamenting the current state of affairs, but also of expressing dignity in the face of injustice. The blues also were a means of protest against this injustice.
That’s worth noting at this time when the United States is facing a reckoning for the racism that has dogged it for such a long time. The push-back against white supremacy, police brutality and a myriad of social barriers faced by Blacks and other people of colour can’t be simply ignored or written off.
There have been plenty of today’s artists protesting the current lamentable state of affairs and all that has led to it – Leyla McCalla’s recently released Vari-Colored Songs, an album’s whose centerpiece, Song for a Dark Girl, is a stark account of a lynching “way down south in Dixie,” a powerful reminder of the relatively recent history of terrorism against Black communities.
Gary Clark Jr.’s This Land is a howl of protest which rails against the suspicion he gets as a Black man in Trump’s America; Shemekia Copeland’s Would You Take My Blood on her America’s Child album gets to the heart of racism; Otis Taylor’s trance blues in Fantasizing About Being Black, a history of African-American life, from slavery onwards, has Jump Out of Line, an edgy piece about civil rights marchers’ fear of being attacked; and Eric Bibb’s last album had What’s He Gonna Say Today, protesting the “bully in the playground,” aimed directly at Trump.
But the history of the blues is littered with songs protesting inequality, discrimination and White violence against Blacks. Given the huge inequality that existed, and the whole structuring of society that existed under Jim Crow, it would have been impossible for blues artists to sing protest songs in the way that they were sung in the 1960s when the Civil Rights’ movement had gathered momentum. Often the protest was coded, although sometimes it broke through the surface quite clearly. Although the majority of blues songs are about the troubles of love, there is a steady stream of social protest from the early days right through to the present.
In 1930, Huddie Ledbetter – Lead Belly – recorded a song entitled simply Jim Crow, in which he bemoans the state of affairs facing him every day of his life, everywhere he goes:
I been traveling, I been traveling from shore to shore
Everywhere I have been I find some old Jim Crow.
He can’t get away from the racial discrimination he faces – it’s there even when he goes to the cinema to be entertained:
I want to tell you people something that you don’t know
It’s a lotta Jim Crow in a moving picture show.
And finally he pleads with his hearers, “Please get together, break up this old Jim Crow.”
In the early 1930s, nine Black teenagers from Scottsboro in Alabama were accused of raping two white women aboard a train. The case highlighted the racism of the Jim Crow system and the injustice of the entire Southern legal system. In a series of trials and re-trials, which were rushed, and adjudicated on by all-white juries and racially biased judges, the nine boys suffered incarceration in the brutally harsh Kilby Prison in Alabama, and attempted lynching and mob violence.
After three trials, during which one of the young white women who were alleged to be victims had confessed to fabricating her rape story, five of the nine were convicted and received sentences ranging from 75 years imprisonment to death. The one who received the death sentence subsequently escaped, went into hiding and was eventually pardoned by George Wallace in 1976. The case was a landmark one and led eventually to the end of all-white juries in the South.
Lead Belly recorded Scottsboro Boys in 1938, where he warns Black people not to go to Alabama lest they suffer the same fate as the Scottsboro nine:
I’m gonna tell all the colored people
Even the old n* here
Don’t ya ever go to Alabama
And try to live
Lead Belly was clearly not afraid to voice his protest against what he experienced. He also wrote Bourgeois Blues, perhaps the most famous example of 1930s blues protest songs. Leadbelly here sings about his experience of discrimination in the nation’s capital city:
Well, them white folks in Washington they know how
To call a colored man a n* just to see him bow
Lord, it’s a bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
Lead Belly talks about looking for accommodation and being turned away by the white landlord:
Well, me and my wife we were standing upstairs
We heard the white man say “I don’t want no n*s up there.
America, according to Lead Belly may have been hailed as “The home of the Brave, the land of the Free,” but it was just somewhere where he was “mistreated” by the “bourgeoisie.”
The Great Depression hit black communities in the South particularly hard. Skip James’s 1931 Hard Time Killing FloorBlues captures the grim reality of the time for many people, with James’s high eerie voice and his D-minor tuned guitar. “The people are drifting from door to door” and they “can’t find no heaven.”
Hard time’s is here
An ev’rywhere you go
Times are harder
Than th’ever been befo’.
One of the blues artists who was most articulate about civil rights during this period was Josh White, who was born in 1914 and recorded under the names “Pinewood Tom” and “Tippy Barton” in the 1930s. He became a well-known race records artist during the 1920s and 30s, moving to New York in 1931, and expanding his repertoire to include not only blues but jazz and folk songs. In addition, he became a successful actor on radio, the stage and film. White was outspoken about segregation and human rights and was suspected of being a communist in the McCarthyite era of the early 1950s.
In 1941 he released one of his most influential albums, Southern Exposure: An Album of Jim Crow Blues. The title track pulls no punches:
Well, I work all the week in the blazin’ sun,
Can’t buy my shoes, Lord, when my payday comes
I ain’t treated no better than a mountain goat,
Boss takes my crop and the poll takes my vote.
The album of mostly 12 bar blues songs, included Jim Crow Train, Bad Housing Blues, and Defense Factory Blues. White attacked wartime factory segregation in the latter with, “I’ll tell you one thing, that bossman ain’t my friend, If he was, he’d give me some democracy to defend.”
In Jim Crow Train, he addresses the segregation on the railways:
Stop Jim Crow so I can ride this train.
Black and White folks ridin side by side.
Damn that Jim Crow.
On White’s 1940 Trouble, he leaves no doubt about the cause of black people’s problems: “Well, I always been in trouble, ‘cause I’m a black-skinned man.” The rest of the song deals with the failed justice system of the time and the inhuman conditions which black inmates suffered when incarcerated:
Wearin’ cold iron shackles from my head down to my knee
And that mean old keeper, he’s all time kickin’ me.
As a black man under Jim Crow, all White could expect from life was “Trouble, trouble, makes me weep and moan, Trouble, trouble, ever since I was born.”
Big Bill Broonzy was one of the most popular and important of the pre-World War II blues singers, who recorded over 250 songs from 1925 to 1952, including Key to the Highway, Black, Brown, and White, Glory of Love and When Will I Get to Be Called a Man. He was a very talented musician, song writer and singer, who Eric Clapton said was a role model for him in playing the acoustic guitar.
Broonzy claims in his autobiography that he joined the army sometime after 1917, and fought in World War I in France, and on returning to the South, he found conditions there quite intolerable. A more recent biography of Broonzy doubts his story of joining up, but there can be no doubting the injustice which Broonzy encountered as a black man in the South. He refers to the way in which black men were referred to disparagingly as “boy” by whites in his 1951 song, I Wonder When I’ll Be Called a Man.
When I was born into this world, this is what happened to me I was never called a man, and now I’m fifty-three I wonder when…I wonder when will I get to be called a man
Do I have to wait till I get ninety-three?
Black, Brown and White, recorded in 1951, rails against the discrimination that Broonzy found everywhere, be it getting a drink at a bar, being paid less money for doing the same job, or even just getting a job:
They says if you was white, should be all right
If you was brown, stick around
But as you’s black, m-mm brother, git back git back git back.
Muddy Waters also highlighted the patriarchal attitudes of whites to blacks in his 1955 release Manish Boy, which on the surface is a rather sensual blues song declaring, “I’m a natural born lover’s man,” and “I’m a hoochie coochie man.” (The hoochie coochie was a sexually provocative dance that became wildly popular in Chicago in the late nineteenth century. The dance was performed by women, so a “hoochie coochie man” either watched them or ran the show). In the context of a black man never being recognized as anything other than a “boy,” however, the song asserts black manhood in the face of white suppression. “I’m a man, I’m a full grown man,” sings Muddy, “I spell M-A, child, N”
Another major and influential blues artist from Mississippi was John Lee Hooker, son of a sharecropper, who came to prominence in the late 1940s and 50s. His House Rent Boogie from 1956 protests the all too familiar tale for black American of losing a job and not being able to make the rent payment; “I said fellows, never go behind your rent, ‘cause if you did it, it will hard so it’s cold in the street.”
The wail of protest in the blues continued on into that decade most associated with protest songs, the 1960s. From 1961 we have the guitar – harmonica duo of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee singing Keep on Walkin’ which takes up again the theme of Blacks being worked hard for little pay:
The bossman was so mean, you know, I worked just like a slave
Sixteen long hours drive you in your grave
That’s why I’m walkin’, walkin’ my blues away.
And then we have Vietnam Blues by J.B. Lenoir, from 1966. Drawing an elegant parallel between the US’s presence in Southeast Asia and the Jim Crow South, Lenoir demanded of President Lyndon Johnson, “How can you tell the world we need peace, and you still mistreat and killin’ poor me?”
Lenoir came to Chicago via New Orleans and became an important part of the blues scene there in the 1950s, performing with Memphis Minnie and Muddy Waters. He was a fine singer and a great showman, sporting zebra striped costumes and nifty electric guitar licks.
But Lenoir composed a number of political blues songs bringing sharp social commentary to bear on events going on around him. Songs like Born Dead, which decries the fact that “Every black child born in Mississippi, you know the poor child is born dead,” referring to the lack of opportunity in his home state; or Eisenhower Blues, which complains that the government had “Taken all my money, to pay the tax.” Lenoir also composed the haunting “Down in Mississippi,” which he performed on his 1966 Alabama Blues. “Down in Mississippi where I was born, Down in Mississippi where I come from,” sings Lenoir,
They had a huntin’ season on a rabbit
If you shoot him you went to jail.
The season was always open on me:
Nobody needed no bail.
He concludes about the place of his birth, “I count myself a lucky man, Just to get away with my life.” The definitive version of the song, however, was to come some 40 years later, when Mavis Staples recorded it on her album We’ll Never Turn Back, Staples adding a little to the song about segregated water fountains and washeterias and how “Dr King saw that every one of those signs got taken down, down in Mississippi.”
Mavis Staples had already made her protest against three hundred years of injustice in 1970 with the no-punches-pulled When Will We Be Paid? The song demanded an answer to the exploitation of Black Americans in the construction of America’s roads and railroads, in the domestic chores their women have done and the wars in which their men have fought. Despite this contribution to the making of America over 300 years, all the remuneration Staples’s people got was being “beat up, called names, shot down and stoned.” “We have given our sweat and all our tears,” she sings, so, “When will we be paid for the work we’ve done?”
In a similar vein, complaining about the discrimination they faced, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee & Earl Hooker in Tell Me Why in 1969 sang,
Every war that’s been won, we helped to fight
Why in the world can’t we have some human rights?
Tell me why?
They give the cruel answer themselves – “It’s got to be my skin, that people don’t like.”
And one of the most hard hitting of songs in the blues genre is Mississippi Goddamn, written and sung by Nina Simone in 1964.
Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day’s gonna be my last.
The song was Simone’s response to the murder of Medgar Evers in Mississippi and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four black children. She performed the song in front of 10,000 people at the end of the Selma to Montgomery marches.
The blues chart the history of the indignities face by African Americans over the decades. The blues allowed Black Americans to assert their humanity and dignity in the context of an oppressive system that declared they were less than human. Whether the songs expressed explicit protest at this or not (and most blues songs didn’t), the blues, nevertheless, was Black music and, whether they were complaining about unfaithful lovers or problems with the landlord, whether they were performed as dance music in the juke joint or sung on the street corner, they reflected the abuse and indignities suffered by blacks under Jim Crow and beyond. No wonder Black theologian and writer, James Cone, said, the blues are “the essential ingredients that define the essence of black experience.”
Willie Dixon gets it spot on when he says “The blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and song, inspiration, feeling, and understanding.” In telling the truth about the misery of black experience, but as well as that, a hope for change, the blues were a part of the endurance and resistance of the Black community.
For many white listeners to the blues, the blues are at heart a genre of music, a certain musical form, twelve bars, flattened notes, blue notes. But if we listen carefully, we can hear the history of people who have been sorely mistreated; we can, perhaps, get some understanding of what it means to be Black. But it does require careful listening. And that listening is as urgent as ever just now.
Finally, to help us stop and listen, here is the ultimate protest song written by Abel Meeropol and recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. Strange Fruit.
The railroad has a special place in the blues. Lovers leave on the train, singers go searching for them by the train, the gospel train is on its way, and the ramblin’ bluesman needs to board that train and ride.
Railroads were one of the major infrastructural and economic achievements of the nineteenth century and loomed large in the lives of people as the blues began to develop. You recall that the story of the very beginnings of the blues was at a railway station – in 1903, whilst waiting for a train in Tutweiler, Mississippi, bandleader W.C. Handy heard a man running a knife over the guitar strings and singing. He said,
“A lean, loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept. His clothes were rags; his feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of a guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable. His song, too, struck me instantly. ‘Goin’ where the Southern cross’ the Dog.’ The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I ever heard.”
Handy later published an adaptation of this song as “Yellow Dog Blues,” and became known as the “Father of the Blues.”
Freed slaves had built the railroad with their blood, sweat and tears, and in the early years of the twentieth century, it was the primary means of transport for people for longer distances. For itinerant blues musicians like Robert Johnson, trains allowed them to move from place to place and ply their trade. Johnson’s sister, Annye Anderson, in her book, Brother Robert, remembers Robert “hoboing” around on the train, going back and forth from Memphis to the Delta for his music. His famous train song, of course, is Love in Vain.
The train was the means of escape, too, for black people wanting to leave behind the injustice of the Jim Crow South and seek a better life in the North and West. From 1916 onwards, around 6m people moved away from the racist ideology, the lynching and the lack of economic opportunity to cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit and New York. Famously, McKinley Morganfield – Muddy Waters – boarded a train for Chicago in 1943 to become the “father of Chicago blues” and pioneer electric blues.
Trains in the South were, of course, segregated. In the “colored” section, there were no luggage racks, requiring travellers to cram their suitcases around their feet; and the bathroom there was smaller and lacked the amenities of the “whites” bathroom. All these were subtle and not-so-subtle reminders that you were not as good as the people in the other section.
So James Carr’s Freedom Train of 1969 was significant. Attorney General Tom C. Clark had organized a Freedom Train as “a campaign to sell America to Americans” to try and bolster the sense of shared ideology within the country. The train was integrated, but several Southern cities refused to allow blacks and whites to see the exhibits at the same time, and the Freedom Train skipped the planned visits. Carr’s song celebrates a new Freedom Train, free from segregation and discrimination. where “every man is gonna walk right proud with his head up high.”
So, here’s to trains, and may the Freedom Train keep on rollin’ down the track!
Here are 20 blues train songs for you to enjoy.
Trouble in Mind (1924)
In this old blues standard, things are so bad, the singer wants to end it all – he’s going to lay down his head on that old railroad iron, and let that 2.19 special pacify his mind. It never really gets to that point, happily, because, “sun’s gonna shine in my back yard some day.” First recorded in 1924, it’s been done by Nina Simone, Janis Joplin, Snooks Eglin, Lightnin’ Hopkins and many more. I like this jaunty version by Brooks Williams from his Brooks Blues album of 2017.
Railroad Blues , Trixie Smith with Louis Armstrong (1925)
Trixie Smith, not related to Bessie Smith, paid her dues in vaudeville and minstrel shows, as well as performing as a dancer, a comedian, an actress, and a singer. Here she is backed by Louis Armstrong’s muted horn, as she is “Alabama bound” on the railroad.
The Mail Train Blues, Sippie Wallace (1926)
The Texas Nightingale recorded 40 songs for Okeh during the 1920s before going on to be a a church organist, singer, and choir director, and then eventually reviving her performing career in the 1960s. In Wallace’s 1926 Mail Train Blues she bemoans her sweet man leaving her and wants to go looking for him aboard the mail train.
Spike Driver Blues. Mississippi John Hurt (1928)
This and other songs recorded by Hurt in 1928 were not commercially success and he reverted to the farming life until being found in 1963 by Dick Spottswood and Tom Hoskins, and persuaded to perform and record again. John Hurt had a wonderful guitar picking style which is credited by many guitarists as their inspiration. Spike Driver Blues is a John Henry song where the “steel-driving man” dies as a result of his hammering a steel drill into rock to make holes for explosives to blast the rock in constructing a railroad tunnel.
Long Train Blues, Robert Wilkins, (1930)
Wilkins was a versatile blues performer from Mississipi who gave up playing the blues to become a gospel minister in 1936. An excellent guitarist, he came to light again in the 1960s and recorded some of his gospel blues. Long Train Blues, which he recorded in 1930 tells the tale of a lover who has run off on the train.
Too Too Train Blues, Big Bill Broonzy (1932)
There’s some nifty acoustic guitar work here by the hugely talented Bill Broonzy, with another “my baby done left me aboard the train” blues. Broonzy sustained his career successfully from the 1920s to the 1950s, performing both traditional numbers and his own compositions, recording more than 300 songs.
The Midnight Special, Leadbelly (1934)
Recorded in 1934 by Huddie William “Lead Belly” Ledbetter at Angola Prison for John and Alan Lomax, the song has been covered by a host of artists, notably John Fogerty’s Creedance Clearwater Revival. The Midnight Special is said to be the name of a train that left Houston at midnight, heading west, running past Sugarland prison farm, the train’s light becoming a symbol for freedom for the inmates. The song also references the injustice of black men being incarcerated for minor infractions.
Love in Vain, Robert Johnson (1937)
Famously covered by the Rolling Stones for their 1969 Let It Bleed album which featured some tasty electric slide guitar, Love in Vain is a Robert Johnson song recorded in his last studio session in 1937. Johnson’s guitar work is outstanding, as is his singing. The sense of loss is palpable, and you hear Johnson crying out his lover Willie Mae’s name near the end of the song.
This Train, Rosetta Tharpe (1939)
This old gospel song has been around since the 1920s and has been extensively recorded. Bruce Springsteen’s Land of Hope and Dreams takes This Train as its starting point but reworks the ideas of the original so that everybody can get aboard. Tharpe’s more original version has “everybody riding in Jesus’ name”; it’s a “clean train, which won’t take “jokers, tobacco chewers and no cigar smokers.” The song was a hit for Tharpe in the late ‘30s and again in the ‘50s. This live performance gives some sense of what an expressive and incredible performer Tharpe was, not to mention her impressive guitar chops. The 1939 version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame
Lonesome Train, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee (1952)
Just a great train song, with Sonny Terry’s harp driving the train down the track in this instrumental track. There are a few “whoooos” hollered along the way by the duo, who had a 35-year partnership. A masterclass in harp playing. The song was recorded by Sonny Terry in 1952 along with the Night Owls.
Mystery Train, Junior Parker (1953)
Mississippi bluesman Parker’s 1953 hit inspired a number of later versions, notably Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s take in 1965. In Parker’s version the drums mimic the rattle of the train on the track and the tenor sax the wail of the whistle. Butterfield adds a nice bit of harmonica.
Southbound Train, Muddy Waters (1957)
This is another Big Bill Broonzy song from 1957, which Muddy Waters recorded on his tribute to Broonzy in 1960, Muddy Waters Sings “Big Bill.” Broonzy had mentored Waters when he came to Chicago. Waters version isn’t too far removed from Broonzy’s, both piano driven blues, but Water’s version features some nice harp from James Cotton. The song has the singer heading South to the lowlands to escape his faithless lover.
Freight Train, Elizabeth Cotton (1957)
The song actually is about dying and being laid to rest at the end of Chesnut Street, so “I can hear “old number 9 as she comes rolling by.” Remarkable really, when Cotton said she composed the song as a teenager (sometime 1906-1912). She recorded it in 1957 and it’s been covered by many artists, including Peter, Paul & Mary, Joan Baez and Odetta. Cotton was a great guitar picker and this song has been a favourite for aspiring acoustic guitar players to learn. (Guitarist – check out Tommy Emmanuel’s lesson here (easy!!)
Freight Train Blues, Bob Dylan, 1962
Bob Dylan here echoes Elizabeth Cotton’s song in this 1962 recording from his debut album. Dylan tells a tongue-in-cheek but atmospheric story of poverty, rambling and the freight train. It’s typical early Dylan, all strummed acoustic guitar and harmonica.
Freedom Train, James Carr (1969)
A 1969 R&D hit for James Carr, Freedom Train reflects the Civil Rights movement of the sixties: “It’s time for all the people to take this freedom ride, Got to together and work for freedom side by side.” Born in Mississippi, Carr grew up singing in the church, but his R&D success led to his being called “the world’s greatest R&D singer.”
Hear My Train A-Coming, Jimi Hendrix (1971)
Hendix’s train song is typical Hendrix – overdriven, psychedelic guitar pulsing. It’s on his 1971 Rainbow Bridge album, but Hendrix performed the song in a BBC performance in 1967. He has also been recorded doing an acoustic version of the song on a 12-string guitar, giving it a Delta blues sound, Hendrix clearly familiar with the style of the acoustic blues masters of the past. Here’s some rare footage of Jimi Hendrix playing acoustic guitar.
Get Onboard, Eric Bibb (2008)
The title track of blues troubadour Eric Bibb’s 2008 album. Bibb, in his customary positive fashion, wants us to get on board the “love train.” There’s “room for everybody,” he sings as the band, including some nice harmonica, rattles us down the track.
Slow Train, Hans Theessink, 2012
Good times, bad times, tired and weary – Dutch guitarist and songwriter Hans Theessink has been singing the blues for a very long time and knows how to craft a blues song. This one is from his excellent 2012 Slow Train album, and features Theessink’s superb acoustic finger-picking and his rich bass-baritone voice.
When My Train Pulls In, Gary Clark Jr. (2013)
“Everywhere I go I keep seeing the same old thing & I, I can’t take it no more,” sings Clark, surely against the backdrop of racism in America. Hailing from Texas, the Grammy winning Clark is an outstanding guitarist and prolific live performer. This performance of the song which appears on his 2013 Blak and Blu album, showcases Clark’s guitar chops and his classy vocals.
Train to Nowhere, J J Cale (2014)
Eric Clapton recorded this previously unreleased J J Cale song on his tribute to Cale, The Breeze in 2014. The song features Mark Knopfler singing and playing guitar and is both unmistakably a J J Cale song and a train song. The lyrics look to be about that last train ride we all have to take and are a little bleak.
This Train, Joe Bonamassa (2016)
It’s full steam ahead for Joe’s train, in this case his baby who “comes down like a hammer” and “hurts him bad.” It’s all good stuff, with the usual Bonamassa guitar pyrotechnics. But Bonamassa has become a fine singer as well, which This Train amply demonstrates. The song is on his 2016 Blues of Desperation album, but there are some great live versions available too.
How much can one man pack into one lifetime? In the normal scheme of things, not remotely as much as Paul Jones has. From incredible success as the singer in Manfred Mann in the 1960s, with chart-topping hits in the UK and US, like Do Wah Diddy Diddy and Pretty Flamingo, to lead roles in musicals and plays on London’s West End, to acting in films and on TV, presenting the Blues Show on BBC Radio for over 30 years, and singing and playing harmonica with his Blues Band for the last 40 years – and, “don’t forget songwriter,” he gently chided me, when we chatted recently about his life, the blues and faith.
Now in his eighth decade, Paul Jones is still going strong. He told me that next year is scheduled to be “the most gig heavy year out of the last ten or fifteen,” with shows all round the UK with the Blues Band and the Manfreds, a reformed Manfred Mann. Where does he get the energy from? “Oh,” he said nonchalantly, “I have energy! I always have. I enjoy what we do.”
That enjoyment and zest for life came across in spades during our conversation. I asked him, first of all, of all the things he’s done along the way, what does he consider himself most successful at. Singing was the obvious thing he said, because of all the Manfred Mann hits, the West End musicals and the other bands he’s been a part of. “But from, from my point of view,” he said, “I like being a harmonica player as much as I like being a singer.” It’s the one thing he would choose out of all he’s done, if forced to.
He’s been a top-notch harmonica player for a long time, and has played a long list of major artists, including Joe Bonamassa, Van Morrison and Eric Clapton, as well as his own bands.
What was the most challenging of all the things he’s done? Although in his acting career, there were some straightforward roles where the play was good and he had a top-notch director, sometimes, “at the other end of the scale, there’s stuff where you really have to dig deep.” Although he enjoyed the acting, he’s left that behind – “Things have changed and there’s very little I would want to be acting in now.”
Jones presented the BBC Radio Two Blues Show for 32 years, as well as broadcasting on Jazz FM and the BBC World Service. He told me he thoroughly enjoyed his years with the Blues Show.
“All credit to Dave Shannon, who was the BBC producer who invented the program in the first place and actually offered it to Radio One. They turned it down saying, no, that’s music for old people. You want to go to Radio Two. So we did, and it worked. The program survived for 32 years with me at the helm. And it still exists with Cerys Matthews.
“At the beginning Dave Shannon wrote most of the script. I was allowed to make some additions, which kind of suited me. If, for instance, we were talking about somebody that I had a personal knowledge of, then obviously that would be of interest to the listener. So that was fine. I could do that. And then after a while Dave said, ‘Just talk about this record yourself. You don’t need me writing stuff for you.’ And so I said, ‘Okay, I think I can do that.’ Well, actually I knew I could do it because before I was at Radio Two, I had about three or four years of the World Service so I obviously knew how to present the program.”
I asked Paul about the many artist interviews he’d done on the show. Were there any that particularly stood out for him?
“Van Morrison stands out. He was one of the first people that I interviewed – I had interviewed him previously for the World Service before the blues program came along. I concentrated mainly on that wonderful double album that he recorded in 1994, A Night in San Francisco. He was absolutely brilliant, tremendous guest. I remember doing that interview with Van, because people had warned me, he’s not easy. And actually, Van did sort of throw me a curve ball here and there, but I enjoyed it. And Junior Wells was notable.
“But the very first person I interviewed in my life was Memphis Slim. At that point I was still an undergraduate in Oxford. I noticed that he was in the UK, and with the confidence of youth, I got in touch with the organization for which he was touring. I’d just been asked if I would write on musical subjects for a magazine called Oxford Opinion, which was just starting up – we’re talking round about 1960, 1961. So they said, yes, okay. And Memphis Slim was staying in a rather nice hotel, not far from Trafalgar square. So I went to visit him and I think he thought I was very young. I was still spotty!
“But I, you know, I got a nice interview out of him. I remember he said that he thought it was not entirely fair that Ray Charles was a lot more successful than he was! And, of course, at that time, Memphis Slim was having a lot of commercial success with a couple of albums that featured not only him, but Matthew ‘Guitar’ Murphy – wonderful guitar player – and he also had terrific horn players in those times as well. They were some of the most successful, the most commercially slanted things that Memphis Slim ever did.
“So he sticks out. I never interviewed him again, although I did play on an album that he made at Ronnie Scott’s in London.
“Several times I interviewed Taj Mahal. He’s an artist I admire greatly because he’s never been entirely easy to categorize. And I kinda like that and I’m impressed by it, but he does have a wonderful voice. And he has lovely sort of style on guitar when he chooses to do that. And, of course, he plays harmonica and percussion and all kinds of stuff. I’ve interviewed him several times – the last time was when he came over to Britain with Keb’ Mo’ in 2018. They came in and did an absolutely marvellous interview.
“I’ll tell you one more, Gary. There’s an absolutely marvellous, wonderful jazz singer called Cassandra Wilson. And she sometimes does Robert Johnson songs and things, and always surrounds herself with absolutely stunning musicians. She’s wonderful. And she came in for an interview and somebody said, she’s very nice, but she is very serious. And one thing you mustn’t do is compare her with anyone else because she might get very difficult. She had a marvellous album out at the time and she’d done a song, I think it was a self-written and an absolutely wonderful piece of work. And I played the track somewhere about halfway through the interview. And I said as it came up, I don’t know if I should say this, but as I listen to that, surely I can hear just a teeny bit of Nina Simone. And she said…’I love Nina Simone!’
“And one more somebody warned me about was Koko Taylor. What a great artist and absolutely part of blues history. And the person who warned me was actually her manager and the boss of her record label, Alligator Records, Bruce Iglauer.” [Check out our interview Bruce Iglauer about his book, Bitten by the Blues].
“We had run into Bruce and Koko Taylor in Chicago. Bruce had warned me in advance, ‘She’s in a filthy mood. And you can have 20 minutes if you’re lucky.’ Now I actually think that Koko Taylor was tremendous, great artist. Anyway, I had all my Koko Taylor facts and all my Koko Taylor records lined up. And she came in and sure enough, she had a face like thunder and she was really just barely tolerating me. Well, I just told her what I thought of her, and I played the records and I told her what I thought of the records, and then I asked her some questions. And after about 25 or 30 minutes, Bruce said to me, ‘Well, Paul, I think that’s about it.’ And Koko turned round to him and said, ‘Shut up, Bruce, guy knows what he’s doing!’
“So I’ve had some marvellous interviews. I’ve always liked interviewing people over all these years – I’ve loved all the people that I interviewed.”
I then asked Paul about his relationship with the blues, which he’s been immersed for nearly all of his life. What is it about the music that really resonates with him?
“Well, like so many people of my generation and background, you can blame Lonnie Donegan for a lot of it. I was a jazz fan by the age of 14 and was listening to everything from Nat King Cole to Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, and by the age of 17, 18, I was into modern jazz. However, alongside that along came Lonnie Donegan. I think I was still only 14 years old when Lonnie Donegan did this wonderful recording called The Rock Island Line. And I heard him being interviewed on a radio program. The presenter said, ‘What an extraordinary song. What on earth made you write this?’ And Lonnie said, ‘No, no, I didn’t write it. I got it from Lead Belly.’ And the presenter said, ‘Who?’ It was Lead Belly – Huddie Ledbetter, of course, a wonderful folk blues artist.
“Anyway, I used to go to a second hand record shop in Portsmouth where I lived, and on Saturday mornings I would take my little amount of pocket money and I would I would buy a 78 – I think 45s were just coming in about then. I would buy a Humphrey Littleton record or a Count Basie record and I was already listening to singers like Jimmy Rushing in those Count Basie records.
“Then in first term at university, I went down to stay with my parents for the Christmas holiday in Plymouth where my father was captain of Plymouth dock yard. And I went into a record shop – Pete Russell’s Hot Record Store. I thought that sounded really hip. I mean, nobody used the word ‘store’ in those days except in America. So, I went in there a few times during that particular Christmas vacation, and about the fourth time I went in, Russell said to me, ‘You like blues, I suggest you should listen to this.’ And he put on the record, and it had wonderful electric guitar – most of what I’d been listening to had been acoustic guitar. And not only that, but it had a harmonica. I said, ‘What is this?’ And he said it was a 10-inch LP on French Vogue records by an artist called T-bone Walker. And I looked at it and I saw that the harmonica player was called Junior Wells. I went out of Pete Russell’s shop with that album and then I went to a music shop and bought a harmonica.
“And eventually, not long after that, I heard Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson and Big Walter. I’d already heard Sonny Terry by then. Although I was impressed, he didn’t make me want to play; Junior Wells made me want to play.”
Paul Jones became a Christian in the early ‘80s and his faith is central to him. So, I wanted to know about the relationship between blues and his Christian faith. People have referred to the blues as the devil’s music and there’s all the mythology linked to the blues about the crossroads, mojo and so on. What was his take on all of that?
“Well, one of my favourite interviewees – I can’t absolutely say for definite whether this was Pop Staples, or Clarence Fountain from the Blind Boys of Alabama, but one or other of those two eminent gentlemen – wonderful singers, and in Pop’s case, great songwriter as well, but just two absolute icons of gospel – one of them said to me, ‘What is this devil music stuff? Devil ain’t got no music, except what stupid people give him.’ And that’s right. Because if the devil could make music, then he would be doing something that was true. But as Jesus said, he’s a liar! He’s the father of lies. So, if he did anything, if he actually invented anything or created anything himself, he wouldn’t be a liar. No, all he can do is mess around with stuff that’s already been created and make lies and try and mess people up. So that’s what I think about the phrase, the devil’s music.
“I actually loved gospel music throughout my years of atheism and believe me, I was a serious atheist. I was brought up in a Christian family, we went to church as a family and it was real. At a fairly early age, I was discovered to have a fairly usable voice, so I was drafted into the local cathedral choir, and I actually began to take Christianity seriously. But at that stage – I was probably slightly younger than 14 – some very, very bad behaviour on the part of a Christian turned me against Christianity entirely. And I decided since I was never going to be a Christian, as long as I lived I should be an atheist.
“But in all my years of atheism, I liked gospel music. And in particular I liked early Mahalia Jackson, the records that she made the Falls-Jones Ensemble, which chiefly had a piano and a church organ, and sometimes a rather jazzy bass and drums as well. Boy, that woman’s voice! In 1958 I remember going to see the film Jazz on a Summer’s Day and Mahalia sang The Last Mile of the Way. So here I am, an atheist collecting Mahalia Jackson and Blind Boys and The Swan Silvertones, and things like that. I liked The Swan Silvertones because Claude Jeter had an almost falsetto voice and reminded me of quite a number of soul singers who did the same thing. And I used to walk around singing falsetto all those gospel songs like Smokey Robinson or somebody like Eddie Holman might sing.
“I loved all that stuff. I remember when I was doing a play in New York on Broadway, and I used to walk from my apartment to the theatre, singing the whole way. And at one point I was singing something by Smokey Robinson, Tears of a Clown or something like that. And this guy passed me and he stopped and turned around and said, ‘Righteous man, righteous.’ I just loved that music. So, when I finally became a Christian, I had all these albums I could pick out and listen to.”
We turned from talking about the blues to talking about Paul’s faith, which he said means “everything” to him. I asked him about deciding to follow Jesus – whether looking back, some things had happened along the way that were stepping stones, or whether it was a very sudden thing. He told me how important discovering the work of a 19th century German landscape artist had been in starting to unravel his atheism. As the Blues Band began to take off after 1979, and they started touring in Europe, it had tremendous success, with large audiences cheering, clapping and stomping their feet as the band came on stage. Paul was only too aware from the height of his success in the 1960s, when his life had gone badly off the rails, of the dangers of getting into a fantasy world of fan adulation where you could begin to think that was the only reality.
Paul told me he needed to “Get out from the centre of that maelstrom of his own success and popularity,” and that visiting art galleries whilst on tour allowed him to do that. And it was there that he discovered the spirituality of the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. “When I look at them now, I don’t know why I didn’t become a Christian right there and then,” he told me. But he went on to explain what brought things to a head for him as far as faith is concerned:
“In 1982, Richard Eyre, the director of the National Theatre [in London] called me up and asked if I wanted his ticket for Guys and Dolls’ opening night, because he hated sitting in the audience on his own opening nights. So I sat in the best seat in the house, right in the centre of the stalls. And it was absolutely wonderful, and I’m a man who did not like musicals. By that time I had actually been in one or two, usually Lloyd Webber’s or something like that, but I didn’t really like musicals. And here I was absolutely blown away by this musical.
“And there was this one girl in the cast who really caught my eye. Anyway, about five or six weeks later, Richard rang me again. And he said, “My next production at the National Theatre is going to be the Beggar’s Opera. Would you like to come and play Macheath, the highwayman?’ So I soon found myself in the Guys and Dolls company. And the beautiful girl was in it! So, to cut a long story short, I fell in love with her. In October of that year [1982] – about 9 months after I’d first gone along to see Guys and Dolls – I wound up in Guys and Dolls as well, because Ian Charleson, the actor who was playing Sky Masterson, decided to leave. So I found myself playing Sky Masterson, and then the girl who was playing smaller roles in Guys and Dolls and Beggar’s Opera was suddenly promoted into lead roles in Guys and Dolls and Beggar’s Opera, so there we were, playing opposite each other, and life started imitating art, and we fell in love.
“So, fast forward to 1984. We were still at the National. And something happened where Fiona began to think she was missing something and she really need to do something about it. She was doing a play at the BBC on the radio, and when she finished, she came in to do the evening show at the National. So, she knocked on the door of my dressing room, and she said, ‘Don’t laugh, but I came out of the BBC and I went into that church just opposite the entrance to the Broadcasting House. And I just opened the Bible, and I read something about Jesus and eternal life.’ Turned out, of course, it was John 3:16.
“So she said, ‘I’m going to that church on Sunday,’ and I said I would go with her – partly motivated by the fact that I didn’t want her to go anywhere without me! But also partly because I’d been following these Caspar Friedrich paintings, and they’re so obviously Christian and so powerful. So we went to that church, All Souls, Langham Place, and we thought, this is absolutely marvellous.
“A few weeks later, the phone rang one afternoon, and it was Cliff Richard. And he asked us to come and hear a man called Luis Palau speaking at White City Stadium in West London. I hummed and hawed a bit, so Cliff said, ‘Tell you what, when the evening’s over, I’ll buy you dinner!’ And do you know something, he was just doing what God told him. God told him to get as many people from show business as possible into that stadium. And he invited over 130 people! The night that Fiona and I were there, we were not the only show business people there, there were some other very well-known people.
“And Cliff bought dinner for all of us. So I was pretty impressed by him at that point! Essentially, we gave our lives to Jesus that night. It wasn’t just what Luis said, it was what God said through Luis. And we just looked at each other, and we said we have wasted enough of our lives, let’s not waste any more.
“The next day I telephoned All Souls and asked if we could get married in the church – and they said no! And this lovely guy – who actually conducted our service of blessing, and with whom we’re still friends and are godparents to his three daughters – explained that because I was divorced, the Church of England couldn’t marry us. So we got married in a registry office on a Saturday, and then on the Sunday we went to All Souls and had a great service of blessing with a wonderful black gospel choir, and a large contingent of actors and directors from the National Theatre. We had a wonderful day, and we always celebrate our wedding anniversary on the 16th December, the day of the blessing.”
I wondered how Paul’s faith had developed and matured over the past 36 years, what his faith means to him, and he told me that it meant everything to him.
“Really, for the rest of my days, getting people into the kingdom is my priority. The Bible calls it ‘bearing fruit.’ That’s what both Fiona and I want to do.”
Paul Jones has had a remarkable life, and after nearly six decades as a performer, has clearly no interest in retiring – “retirement is a dirty word, as far as I’m concerned. We usually just refer to it as the ‘R’ word!” He was a breath of fresh air in our conversation, full good humour, full of stories from his rich and varied experience, clearly in love with life, and still inspired by the faith that dispelled his atheism all those years ago. If he’s appearing on a stage near you, or you hear of him coming to your town to tell his story along with his wife, Fiona, don’t hesitate to go and see him. You’ll not regret it.
[interview slightly edited for clarity and length]
“A rare talent of such sheer genius” Blues in Britain
Not so long ago, Dom Martin was busking in the streets of Belfast. Now he’s just won the Acoustic Act of the Year award at the UK Blues Awards, on the back of a well-acclaimed new album, Spain to Italy, a Radio 2 Blues Show session with Cerys Matthews, and a sell-out UK Tour along with appearances at major Irish/UK Festivals.
Dom is a skillful player of intricate blues-infused finger-picked guitar and is a fine singer in who invites comparisons with Rory Gallagher and John Martyn. Spain to Italy is a top notch album, delivered with passion and considerable musical aplomb by Dom and his band. It consists of mostly original numbers and a couple of blues covers and is a combination of finger-picked blues, blues-rock and just beautiful songs.
He’s an acoustic blues artist whose star is clearly in the ascendancy and Down at the Crossroads was delighted to have the opportunity to chat to Dom, who’s been sheltering in his home these past few weeks during the coronavirus lockdown.
Gary Dom, you’ve just won that Acoustic Blues Act of the Year in the UK Blues Awards. Presumably you’re quite pleased about that.
Dom Well it’s a little bit of recognition. Just even to be nominated – there were three categories I was nominated in, and that to me was above and beyond. I couldn’t believe it. But it gives me great confidence that I’m heading in the right direction with my music. Like, there’s progress being made. To me, that means a lot.
Gary And you’d won a European Blues Award last year as well. Best Acoustic Solo Act?
Dom Yeah. That was a complete shock. Last August I was on tour and was pretty busy when I heard that I’d won something. So when I saw what it was for, I was like, wow, that’s amazing. How did that even happen?
Gary When you think about those awards, those categories. how would you categorize yourself and your music? Acoustic blues might describe it, but then when I’m listening to your album, there’s more than just blues there and there’s more than just acoustic as well.
Dom Yeah, it’s a really difficult question, actually. It’s hard to put a finger on it, but I would say, alternative blues, maybe alternative folk blues. But I really haven’t given it much thought, to be honest. Things just come to me in music, with the strings and the guitar. I just kind of sit down and figure out little bits and pieces and make songs out of them. But I wouldn’t call myself necessarily blues one hundred percent of the time.
I’ve obviously been heavily influenced by the blues. But I love Bob Dylan and all those folk types. John Martin, of course, and Neil Young. But they’ve all dabbled in the blues themselves. So, it’s hard to describe what my music is.
Gary But clearly, blues is a big part of what do you do. The blues have been drawing people in for the last hundred years or more. What is it about the blues that still draws people in, still draws you in?
Dom Well, I think it’s just the feeling I get from either listening to it or playing. The struggle you hear in other people’s songs. I can identify with that. And maybe that sounds strange, because I’m a fairly positive person. I don’t tend to write songs that are depressing or sad. I just like the vibe of it. I like writing songs in in a blues kind of way, but basically I’m a happy person.
Pop music – like Ed Sheeran and stuff like that – it’s kind of happy go lucky. You can dive in and out of it and it’s easy. But the blues, it can be difficult to listen to sometimes, but strangely, I get more a better feeling from listening to blues than I do from listening to happy songs.
Gary That’s the nature of the blues, isn’t it? There are two sides of it. There’s the singing about the difficulty and the hard times. But then it’s almost like the singer sings himself out of it. You know that old blues standard, Trouble in Mind. The singer is really depressed but then manages to say, “sun’s gonna shine in my back yard some day.”
Dom Definitely. But when I say to some people that I play the blues, they kind of shrug – “Oh, you don’t play that, do you? That’s so depressing and sad.”
Gary Now you’ve a couple of nice covers on the album, Leadbelly and Blind Blake, and when I was listening to you on the Green Room show at the weekend, there was a song that you were doing that was a minor key blues, and I thought, there are echoes of Skip James in that one.
Dom You know, I haven’t listened to a lot of Skip James, although I do have some LPs. I’ve dipped in and out of in a lot of different artists, people like Robert Johnson and Howlin’ Wolf, but Skip James is one that I’ve yet to actually just sit down and really just get a couple of hours and really listen to the music.
But maybe on some kind of subconscious level, all that listening to music in the background does shape what I play and what I come up with. But I do try and be as original as I possibly can, because I don’t like plagiarism or anything like that. If I play somebody else’s song, I always say, this is a Robert Johnson song, or whatever, and make sure people are aware of who wrote it.
Gary Most of the songs on the album, though, are originals. So tell us a bit about writing songs and how long you’ve been doing that.
Dom Well, I started writing very young, but I don’t think it was very good! That said, I sold my first song when I was 13. I sold it to my dad for £13.50! And I’ve still got the contract somewhere! He bought the rights to the song. It was just something he drew up for a laugh.
Gary So you’ve been writing songs for quite a long time. What is the process like, does it come easily to you? Do you knock ’em out or do you have to refine them or what?
Dom That’s a difficult question to answer. I mean, you can’t really just say, OK, today I’m going to write a song. It doesn’t work like that for me. Take Easy Way Out for instance. I wrote it in five minutes when I woke up one morning and I didn’t have to change any of the words or the way it was sung. I wrote all the lyrics in five minutes – done!
And then I didn’t write anything for three or four months after that. I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t think of anything, I wasn’t inspired by anything at all. So, it’s kind of like that, it comes and goes, and it’s strange and I don’t understand it and I have no knowledge about it. But one thing I try to avoid with songwriting is making everything rhyme! Sometimes I do it, but I’m very conflicted about it. But sometimes you just have to finish a song!
I’m incredibly hard on myself with songwriting. It typically takes me a very long time. The songs on the album weren’t written for an album. There was no deadline. It was just that I had written a handful of these songs and one day I decided to go to the studio and try and record them. And it was just really inexperienced, rushed, you know? Let’s just record something and see what happens.
Gary You must be pretty pleased with the reception the albums had. A lot of people have made fantastic comments about it.
Dom Yeah, honestly, I’m in shock. I’m in complete and utter shock about what’s been going on over the past two or three years. But I’m really critical of myself. I haven’t actually listened to the album back to front. I think once when it was finished, I listened to the individual songs, but not in any particular order. I’m happy with it, but I’ve moved on from it.
Gary Dom, give us a brief synopsis of your career. Things have obviously taken off over the last couple of years.
Dom So I used to live in Antrim in the north of Ireland. And I knew I could play guitar. I knew I could do gigs and play for four or five hours a night, So that’s what I did and that was all well and good. I met my wife there and we decided after a few years that we’d move to Belfast and I’d try to get some more gigs. So, we moved to the city but after going around to all the bars and festivals in Belfast, I got maybe one more gig. That was it – nobody would give me the time of day, I hadn’t two pennies to rub together – I still don’t! But for years it went on like that. I ended up busking in the city centre for a few quid to get something for the electric and gas.
Then out of the blue, Blast 106, one of the radio stations in Belfast, called. My drummer friend knew the guy who did the show, Big Chris. So we went down and played one of the songs which is now on the album, The Rain Came, and they recorded it. Before we played, it was all dance music, you know, rave music. And all of a sudden, we come on with our little folky blues and it’s just so bizarre.
What then happened was a guy called Ray Alexander heard this and we got a gig at an open mike night in Holywood Golf Club. So my drummer and I went, and we sat with other musicians having a talk and a couple of drinks, and we were due to be on last. But nobody was left when we got up to play – it’s late on a Monday night and everyone’s gone home! But we gave it our all, we don’t care, we’re gonna play some music!
Anyway, Ray recorded some of the stuff we did that night and he phoned Fenton Parsons, who is now my manager, and said, you got to check these guys out. Dom Martin can’t get any gigs. Could you help? So Fenton went and found a video of our performance of The Rain Came from the radio show and he loved it and wanted to meet me and see what he could do for me. The guy’s an absolute legend. He helped me when nobody else would, so I owe him an awful lot. I’m very loyal to that man.
Gary So you’ve been getting a steady amount of gigs over the last year or so?
Dom Yeah. This past year, two years, I’ve been pretty much flat out. And I love it. I play every gig like it’s my last, give it my all.
Gary But I guess things have come to a bit of a standstill at the moment?
Dom Yes, but it’s all just gone online. I’m doing something about once a week and there are little festivals, online gigs and stuff. But apart from that, I’ve just been writing songs and trying to come up with some fresh material. So, whenever this is all over I’ve got something new to play.
Gary Very good. Now, tell me about the guitar work on the album – there’s quite a bit of electric guitar going on there. Is that all you?
Dom Yeah, it is. All the guitar on the album is me, apart from a little tiny bit on Luka I think. That was Richard Brown, who is very, very good. He did a bit on that and maybe one of the other songs, but everything else is me. I got my first electric guitar just four years ago, so I haven’t been playing electric guitar that long. But I don’t find it much different than acoustic. I play them both exactly the same. It doesn’t make a difference to me. It’s just a bit smaller and there’s no hole in the middle of it! And that’s about it.
Gary How did you get started playing the guitar and did you start young?
Dom Oh yeah. When I was born, my father picked me up and he held me over a guitar. And I was just kicking it and scratching it and hitting it, and it’s just been a whole lifelong thing. It’s all I’ve done my entire life.
Gary Is there music in your family then?
Dom My dad played. In fact, he was the best guitar player I’ve ever seen. He was great. He didn’t just play – he was like another thing altogether. It’s hard to explain. He just had this certain charisma about him. The way he played was so articulate and just, you know, perfect. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s impossible to replicate. He was just a one of a kind of talent.
And my dad wrote these songs which I now have. And I’ve been trying to play them, but it’s still too difficult for me. It’s too hard because he’s passed on. And it’s just impossible for me to get into that, to play my dead father’s songs now. But I’ll get there with some of the songs. They’re just beautiful. But I can’t even touch them at the moment, you know?
Gary So sometime down the line, Dom, that could make for an interesting album.
Dom I know. Definitely, whenever I’m ready to do it. I’ve got the lyrics right now here in front of me and I’m just shaking as I look at them. But I believe in these songs, they need to be heard. Because they’re the most beautiful, beautiful things I’ve ever heard. I owe so much to my dad.
Gary Now, you’ve released a song to support the NHS. Tell us about that,
Dom I wrote a song called Mercy. And when the Corona virus hit, it was like there was no mercy for anybody. I’m not big on doing stuff technically but I felt we had to do something. But what could I do? Well, I do music, and so I thought, if I make a GoFundMe page where people can donate and then they get the song, I’ll just give all the money to the NHS. But at least it’s something, it’s better than just sitting around, even if it’s a small thing.
Gary Good for you, Dom. Brilliant. So have you just been playing your guitar and spending time with your family over the past few weeks?
Dom Yes. I’ve loved just spending time with my kids and my wife. A lot of people were joking at the start of this – you’ll be stuck at home with your family, it’s gonna be awful. But for me, it’s been the complete opposite. It’s just brilliant. It’s just been fantastic.
“I’m tired of posting social media – I got a black husband, a black son. I’m tired of them killing us. This is the civil rights movement and it’s 2020.” Fatima, from Brooklyn
Layla McCalla posted a new version of her Song for a Dark Girl, Langston Hughes’s poem set to music and said,
“When you hear of another innocent black person getting killed by the police, you never get the full picture of them. The narrative always follows along the lines of – They were black, things escalated and they were killed by well-meaning white people. You don’t see or hear about the people that they loved or who loved them.
I’ve been singing this song for years and the words were first published in 1927. It’s interesting how song meanings change and apply to different situations over time. This song breaks my heart but I have to keep singing it.”
Way Down South in Dixie
(Break the heart of me)
Love is a naked shadow
On a gnarled and naked tree.
America is reeling from the death at the hands of the police of George Floyd. Mr Floyd’s death comes hot on the heels of the incident where Ahmaud Arbery, a black man in southeast Georgia, was pursued by three white men and killed, and the fatal shooting by the police in Kentucky of Breonna Taylor a black woman. Layla McCalla’s song traces America’s long history of racism back to the lynchings of the early 20th century. But if course it goes back much further than that.
As far as the blues is concerned, they grew up in the iniquity of the Jim Crow era in the United States and were a visceral response to the suffering and afflictions of the black community. Skip James’s Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues captures the grim reality of the time for his community:
“Hard times is here
An’ everywhere you go,
Times are harder than ever been before.”
Leadbelly’s 1930 Jim Crow bemoaned the social situation he was in and pleaded, “Please get together, break up this old Jim Crow.” A few years later, in Bourgeois Blues, he takes issue with the idea of America being the “land of the free” and “home of the brave” – for Leadbelly, it was somewhere he was “mistreated” by the “bourgeoisie.” Shortly after that, Josh White gave us Southern Exposure, where he complains he “ain’t treated no better than a mountain goat.”
And Josh White’s Trouble in 1940 says bluntly, “Well, I always been in trouble, ‘cause I’m a black-skinned man.” All he could expect from life was “Trouble, trouble, ever since I was born.”
Clearly there has been change, but racism remains entrenched. Systemic racism is still a problem facing the black community. In a Guardian newspaper article from a while back, Gary Younge defined racism as “a system of discrimination planted by history, nourished by politics and nurtured by economics, in which some groups face endemic disadvantage” and went on to say that, “The reality of modern racism is…the institutional marginalisation of groups performed with the utmost discretion and minimum of fuss by well-mannered and often well-intentioned people working in deeply flawed systems.”
Blavity, a website geared toward black millennials argued that the fires in Minneapolis reflected “the rage of Black protesters fed up seeing the lives of our brothers and sisters robbed by racism…We are fed up because we are forced to fight a pandemic amid a pandemic…We are being disproportionately killed by systemic and overt racism at the same time — and are expected to accept these deadly conditions.”
Despite the evidence that just goes on building up, incredibly you have the national security adviser Robert O’Brien denying in an interview on CNN that systemic racism exists in the US: “No, I don’t think there’s systemic racism…there are some bad cops that are racist and there are cops that maybe don’t have the right training.” The long record of police brutality and the fact that black families need to coach their children in how to appear subservient to law enforcement in order to stay safe tells a different story.
As does the statistic that in Minneapolis more than 2,600 misconduct complaints have been filed by members of the public since 2012 but only 12 have resulted in an officer being disciplined.
A basic starting point for those of us who are white, said New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof, is “to wake from our ongoing mass delusions, to recognize that in practice black lives have not mattered as much as white lives, and that this is an affront to values that we all profess to believe in.”
It’s certainly an affront to Christian faith. The God of the Bible is one who “loves justice” and cares for the poor and oppressed. Just read the Psalms and the Hebrew prophets if you’ve any doubt about that. Here are the prophet Amos’s hard-hitting words:
“I can’t stand your religious meetings. I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making…
Do you know what I want? I want justice—oceans of it. I want fairness—rivers of it. That’s what I want. That’s all I want.”
Jesus declared those blessed who sought after justice and peace. The apostle Paul said that the kingdom of God consisted of “justice, peace and joy.” He also said that equality in Christ trumped all human divisions.
The challenge for us all, and particularly for people of faith, is to understand how black America is feeling right now. The challenge is to share in the anger about systemic racism that has gone on for far too long.
This blog is about the blues – but the blues were forged at a time of deep distress and racial oppression, and they continue to be a howl of protest about the evil of racism.
Josh White speaks the truth in Free and Equal Blues: “Every man, everywhere is the same, when he’s got his skin off…That’s the free and equal blues!”
“He’s a lovely player, a lovely singer, and a great writer – the real thing.” Martin Simpson.
(Photo: Arlene Avery)
Hailing from Statesboro, Georgia, Brooks Williams is a singer-songwriter, jaw-droppingly good guitar player, and consummate performer, whose music melds blues, Americana and folk into a heady soulful mix. If you’re one of the lucky ones to have seen Brooks Williams playing live, you’ll have come away feeling good, with a huge smile on your face. If, by any chance, you don’t already know Brooks Williams, you’ve sold yourself short – start delving into his excellent back catalogue of around 30 albums immediately.
He’s graced stages along the way with Taj Mahal, John Hammond, Maria Muldaur, Shawn Colvin, Paul Jones, David Bromberg, and more recently toured with Guy Davis and Hans Theessink. His guitar and bottleneck slide playing is legendary; he’s got a sweet, but versatile voice, and is a great song-writer with a ready wit. Watch out too for those covers he does from the blues and jazz back-catalogue as well as more recent stuff, where his reinterpretation of the songs breathes new life into them.
He tours the UK and the US relentlessly and is just about to embark on a tour promoting his album, Work My Claim, which celebrates Brooks’s 30 years as a performing and recording artist.
Gary:So, Brooks, the new album: Work My Claim, is a celebration of 30 years recording and performing. You’ve chosen 12 songs from throughout your career, (plus 4 bonus songs when you buy the CD). You’ve recorded something like 23 solo albums to date, aside from collaborative work – so a lot of songs written and recorded over the years – how did you choose just 12 songs?
Brooks; It was a difficult process. I actually spent a whole year going through the old material. You know, once I finished Lucky Star, I immediately turned my attention to this project because I knew I needed to reacquaint myself with the old songs. So, I spent about a year going through the various albums, listening and then trying to play the songs, seeing which ones felt like they were still relevant. And which ones I was interested in. Because a lot changed over 30 years. But it really was a labour of love to go through those songs.
It was great to reconnect with things and so interesting to find those true moments. Like there’s a track on the record, You Don’t Know My Mind, which is an old Leadbelly track. But when I originally learned it, of course, I didn’t know it was a Leadbelly track because we didn’t have the Internet and there was no book at the library that would help you. People at the local record shop were a good resource, but they didn’t always have all the information. I learned this track from someone on the road, just picked it up while I was travelling around and I re-created it from memory. And of course, I got it wrong. But I like it. And it shows how robust a blues song can be.
Anyway I went through all these songs and I felt like, well, if a song doesn’t want to speak to me now, maybe it’s just one that will continue to exist as it was done 20 or 25 years ago. And those are songs that I’ll still happily play in the gigs. If someone says to me, oh, I’d love to hear this old track from 1993, I’m happy to do it. I just didn’t feel it needed a place on a recording because it’s already got one.
Gary:Yeah, that’s very interesting. But isn’t it a wonderful thing, Brooks, to feel that what you’re doing as an artist has developed and there continues to be great value, and increased value, as time goes on?
Brooks: I feel like the same person who is, you know, sitting in the studio 30 years ago thinking the best was yet to come. And I still feel that now. So, I’m sitting here speaking to you and I’m actually holding a copy of the CD in my hand and thinking it really looks good. I’m so proud of the songs – but I’m still thinking, oh, Gary, I can’t wait for you to hear the songs I’m writing now! And so to always have that sense that there’s the next bit coming. And I really feel that what I’m doing is part of something that’s alive. And I don’t mean that as a reflection just on me. I just mean that music is a very alive thing. And I found a way to sort of swim with it or grab on to it or…jump on board that train.
Gary: You know, I was talking to Rory Block a couple of months ago and she’s just turned 70, I think. And she was fantastic. She said, oh, you know, I feel like I’m just getting started. And I thought that was wonderful. Having turned 60 a couple of years ago myself -which, incidentally, I still can’t believe. And hearing that was very refreshing. And hearing what you’re saying is very refreshing as well, because I know you’ve passed that landmark!
Brooks: Yes! I passed that landmark a year ago now. And I can’t believe it either!
Gary: But that’s a very positive thing to say for sure. Now you’ve got a couple of covers on the album. You’ve mentioned the Leadbelly one. And there’s Dave Alvin’s King of California and Duke Ellington’s I Got It Bad – all great songs. So why did you include them and not other originals?
Brooks: Well, as part of the process I just sent out the call through email, through social media, to people who listen to my music. And I said, this is the project that I’m working on and I would love to hear what your top five songs are. And number one for every single person who sent a response back was King of California. And so I knew without a doubt that that was going to be on there.
And I knew the Leadbelly song would be on there because I felt as though that was such an important milestone for me. To take an old blues song, but to not do it in in the style that people are familiar with and yet stay true to the song. So I kind of figured that had to be there.
And then I Got it Bad. That came about because I went in the studio to make this record and I probably recorded near on 30 tracks digitally. I recorded way more than I needed and it was very apparent straight away that, you know, some of them just didn’t have any extra life in them. They sounded fine but just didn’t have any extra life. But likewise, when I did, I Got It Bad, that one was a real standout performance. I was in the studio with the engineer, Mark Freegard, along with the studio owner, and both of them said, wow, that was really something. And I was already shifting to the next tune. But they said, hang on a second – can we go back to that? We’d like to hear that again, because you kind of went somewhere we’ve not heard you go before. And so it really was their calling it to my attention that made it be on the record.
Sometimes I was using songs I knew well just to stay warmed up in the studio. So even if I wasn’t going to use them, I thought, well, if I sing a couple of takes of this one and I know it well – and I do know the Duke Ellington song really well – I thought this will just be a bridge for me to get to the next song. But in this case, this one stuck. On probably more than two occasions I said to the various people working with me on the record, oh, well, I’m not going to put that one on. And every single time I did, everybody came back to me and said, please put that on!
There were some other songs that didn’t make the record. For example, I have a really enjoyable version of Gambling Man that I did with Hans Theessink. But I thought, well, there’s nothing I would do on this recording that’s going to be better than that. And there were some tracks from my Shreveport Sessions, which I really loved. And even though I recorded them again, it just didn’t feel like they needed to be there. You know, it was one of those gut feelings. And the other thing is that over the course of 30 years, one’s point of view changes. And so there are certain things that I wrote about in earlier years that didn’t seem quite as relevant now or maybe if I were to think about them now, I would think about them differently. I didn’t try to work with those songs.
So in the end, if there was going to be too much deconstruction, I thought, well, I’m so far away from the original, there is no sense in going with this. So, that played a big role in which songs made it.
Gary: You completely reworked Whatever It Takes from Lucky Star, didn’t you?
Brooks: Well, interestingly enough, when I write songs, I write two or three completely different versions of the same song. And I mean completely different tunes. So, the version that you hear on Work My Claim, that’s how I originally wrote the song. And somehow when I was recording Lucky Star, it didn’t seem like it had a place there. I was really kind of struggling with it. So I ended up with a completely alternate version, which is what you hear on Lucky Star. And that’s pretty much how all my original songs work. It’s a bit of a rod to my own back because it makes double the work for everything. But sometimes I don’t know what feel I’m going for until I actually go there and sort of sit in it for a while. Kind of live in that groove and those chord changes. And the basis of all this is, I start with lyrics first. And I write almost the complete lyrics without any music. By the time I get to the music, the lyrics are pretty well set. And then I have room to move.
Gary: Now, looking at this group of songs Brooks, are there one or two that mark particular points in the Brooks William story? Pivotal points maybe?
Brooks: I actually think that’s true for every song there. As I look at the list of songs, every song was important in its time. And it did something that helped take me to where I am now. So every song has a place.
Inland Sailor was the first song that I ever recorded that actually got a fair bit of radio play. I don’t really understand why it did. But that one really propelled me and actually it’s the song that took me to Ireland for the first time. It was getting played and somebody rang me up from Belfast and said, you know, we would like you to come here and play. What’s it going to take to get you here? And it opened up all kinds of doors all over the UK and Ireland. And then also in Canada. That was a real important song for me.
And the song Mercy, Illinois was the first song that I wrote that was a straight-ahead narrative song. And that was a real important turning point, because I was very young and I was looking for a kind of a local idiom, I was trying to capture that Midwestern feel. And that song ended up being one that people focused on. Acoustic Guitar magazine interviewed me about it and I ended up doing the tab and the music and the chords. And it was such a big deal because no one had ever heard of me at that point. So, every song kind of has a place in there. Each song just turned the game around at that point.
Gary: Very Interesting. And of course, a song like Frank Delandry has got its own story.
Brooks: Yeah. Well that song has been very important to me because not only is it a narrative song but it also it tells a story about a guitar player, Frank Delandry from New Orleans, who one day just mysteriously disappeared and was never heard from again. And so, his memory lives on in legend, not that dissimilar from the legend of Robert Johnson. And so that’s a great story in itself. But one of the things that was so interesting about that song is that it’s probably the first of my songs that when people would hear me play it, they would want to play it too. That had never happened before. People would actually be sending me recordings of them playing at their local acoustic club! I never had that happen before.
And then the thing I love about it is that it’s firmly set in that sort of sub-delta region of New Orleans. It’s so set in place and time. Which is a place and a time musically that has had the biggest influence on what I do. And so, I felt like I was paying homage to my elders, so to speak. I think it’s important for us to do that.
Gary: Yeah that’s true. And it’s a very appealing song, Brooks. People warm to it very readily. Now, you had some fine musicians who worked on the album with you?
Brooks: Yeah. I was so lucky. Gary, I was making the record and I put out the call to loads of people – to all my friends. And unfortunately, there were so many that were on the road, who were busy and couldn’t come and be part of it. But what I’m so pleased about is a friend of mine called John McCusker, a lovely Scottish fiddler, was able to join me. He had been on tour with Mark Knopfler all last year, and was only home in Scotland for two days. And he spent one of those days recording my album! I’m absolutely blown away by that because, you know… Mark Knopfler, Brooks Williams…come on! But I was so honoured that he prioritized me. And the same for Christine Collister – I’ve been a big fan of her singing for years. And I’ve always thought that her voice and mine would sit really well together. And she just was so generous and did a beautiful job.
And I was so delighted that I got to work with a couple of young players as well, a fiddle player from Bristol called Aaron Catlow. I met Aaron on tour in Europe last year, and I just loved his playing. And I thought, wow, this is fiddle that’s kind of folky on the one hand, but it’s kind of bluesy – that Papa John Creach kind of kind of thing that used to happen with Jorma back in the day. And yet kind of jazzy and had a Stephane Grappelli feel as well. So I was so delighted that he was able to play. He’s a very big part of this record.
And then I called on my favourite piano player, a young fella from up in Newcastle, called Phil Richardson. He’s a wonderful piano player. And when I was on tour in Germany, I met a wonderful blues harmonica player called Ralf Grottian. It was tricky to meet up with Ralf, but it was good to get him on one or two tracks anyway. And then my old friend from the USA by the name of Jim Henry, whom I made a record with back in the 90s, was able to remotely add some mandolin and some vocals.
And it was just so great that that I was able to put all these pieces together. So, I knew from the beginning, Gary, this was gonna be an acoustic album and I knew it was going to be an acoustic guitar album. I certainly had my resonator guitar and my cigar box guitar there. I had the mandolin there. But I knew once I got started that something was happening. And whenever I recorded anything with those other instruments, it just didn’t feel right. It felt very reminiscent of when I started. We only could afford, all of us in my peer group, one nice guitar. And I remember going into a guitar shop and looking at a National and thinking, oh, one of these days I’m gonna buy a National. It took me years! But I remember all the music that I created in those early days was on one acoustic guitar. So I almost felt like I was going back to my roots in that way as well.
Gary: Brooks, you’re going to go on tour to the U.S. again in March. Then you’re back in the UK and touring for months. I’m looking at your schedule, it just looks – I mean, I’m tired just looking at it! How do you have the energy to do this, Brooks? [Find Brooks’ tour schedule here]
Brooks: I have loads of energy when it comes to playing and singing! And I look after myself as well. But I know that come the end of the year, I’ll be ready for a nice, long holiday.
Huddie Ledbetter, better known as “Lead Belly,” survived a life that included desperate poverty and long stretches in prison to become a renowned blues and folk singer. Discovered by the Lomaxes in the early 1930s in the notorious Angola prison in Louisiana where he was serving time for stabbing a white man in a fight, Lead Belly was released to become the “King of the Twelve-String Guitar,” – the most enduring image of Lead Belly is wielding his large Stella twelve-string.
His last recording session was around one year before his death, when he set down as much of his repertoire as he could, from field hollers, blues, and country & western songs to children’s tunes, ballads, autobiographical pieces, and popular hits of the day. There are some spiritual songs in there too, including the poignant He Never Said a Mumbling Word.
The song refers to the Good Friday story of the crucifixion, drawing attention to the Gospel’s account of Christ’s silence before his accusers when on trial – “They led Him to Pilate’s bar,
Not a word, not a word, not a word… He never said a mumblin’ word.” There’s a sense of destiny in all of this, that Jesus willingly gave himself up to his executioners, because he knew it served a great purpose.
In Lead Belly’s rendition of the song, it clips along, almost jauntily, sung unaccompanied and driven by rhythmic clapping. It scarcely seems to do justice to the subject matter, until half way through the song when Lead Belly sings, “He’s coming back again, He’s coming back again for me.”
The song was recorded again in 1989 by Nirvana, in a version that in some ways is not too dissimilar from Lead Belly’s, but driven now by electric guitar. Somehow, though, the rough, rather discordant guitar strumming and the vocals seems to fit the brutality of Christ’s crucifixion. Interestingly, however, the “He’s coming back again,” is missing from Nirvana’s version.
Maybe the best version of the song comes from the Welcome Wagon in 2014. The slow tempo, the banjo, the strings, the slide guitar and the gently sung lyrics carry the sombreness of the story from “Pilate’s bar” to the cries of “crucify” from the mob to the “nailing to a tree.” No second coming in this version either, the artists clearly wanting to focus the attention on the crucifixion.
In St. John’s version of Christ’s trial before Pilate, Jesus is not entirely silent, albeit his answers were, to Pilate’s ears, rather enigmatic. Eventually, though, Pilate asks, maybe cynically, “What is truth?” and receives no answers. “The answer to Pilate’s question, this answer he so desperately seeks in his confusion and emptiness, is standing right in front of him. The one who was the way, the truth, and the life. Christ did not give an answer, because he himself was the answer.” (In All Things).
“It’s easy to love this duo’s brand of barnstorming blues.”
Larkin Poe are the Lovell sisters from Atlanta, Georgia. “I’m not Larkin, and she’s not Poe,” quipped Rebecca Lovell during their sold-out gig at Inchyra Arts Club near Perth, Scotland. Larkin Poe, rather, is an ancestor of the sisters and relative of the famed author Edgar Allan Poe. Rebecca and Megan, formally trained musically, got into bluegrass in their teens and, after forming the band, have developed their own distinctive sound which is a unique blues-based Americana rock. Adept at taking traditional blues and bringing them bang up-to-date at the same time, the pair are exceptional musicians, wonderful singers and high-powered performers. And, as we discovered in an interview with Larkin Poe before the gig – thoroughly nice people, who give thoughtful consideration to the roots tradition that underpins their music.
Photo: Robbie Klein
The band played at a most unusual venue – a refurbished cattle byre in a sprawling country estate in Scotland, Inchyra Arts Club. With a vaulted timber roof, hard wood floors and original wood used wherever possible, it’s got great acoustics and can pack in around 600 people. It’s a unique, welcoming space and made for a great atmosphere to welcome the Lovell sisters and their band.
Broadcaster Lins Honeyman, from The Gospel Blues Train radio show and I had the opportunity to interview Larkin Poe and then attend the gig. Here’s what we learned:
This was a performance full of energy, passion and joy from the opening Trouble in Mind (not the traditional version, by any means!) to the glorious Robert Johnson Come On In My Kitchen The Lovell sisters and the two other members of their band didn’t hold back throughout the whole captivating set. They seemed to be enjoying it just as much as the packed crowd, with smiles aplenty from the duo and plenty of chit-chat to engage the audience from live-wire Rebecca.
Walking through the audience while playing scorching lap steel slide guitar is quite a trick and one which Megan Lovell pulled off with some aplomb, much to the delight of the Inchrya fans, who quickly whipped out their mobile phones to record and photograph. I’ve only seen this done a few times, most notably Buddy Guy – and it sure is a crowd pleaser.
As I listened to Venom and Faith (the band’s latest acclaimed album) in the safe confines of my car, I tried to categorize it – is it blues, Americana, rock or even at times pop? In the full throttle, ear-bending cauldron of Inchyra Arts Club, with the hair-flinging, guitar-slinging, leather-jacketed Rebecca, and the searing sounds of Meghan’s slide guitar, there was no doubt that this was rock music. Blues-infused, genuine, old-fashioned, full-bodied, head-banging, modern rock. Glorious.
The banjo can hold its head up in a rock concert. Yes, really. It featured in two songs, fully amped up, California King and John the Revelator, with a banjo solo taking pride of place in the latter. In the middle of all this high-energy, full-throated rock concert, we get a banjo solo!
Megan Lovell is a terrific slide guitarist. A classically-trained violinist, she took up playing slide guitar as a teenager and, boy, she can make that thing sing. Nothing like some lap steel slide to conjure up the ghosts of the old Delta blues masters.
You can successfully talk about something serious in a rock concert. Before launching in to Mad as Hatter, Rebecca Lovell appealed for a more sympathetic attitude toward mental illness, and dementia in particular, talking about her own family experience. For those of us who have seen the devastating effects of dementia in their family, it was really something to hear:
Time is a thief It’ll steal into bed and rob you while you sleep You’ll never feel it It pulls off the covers, and rifles through your head Then you’ll wait to find you can’t remember what you just said.
Larkin Poe is firmly underpinned by the blues. They played Leadbelly’s Black Betty, Son House’s Preachin’ Blues, Willie Johnson’s John the Revelator and the superbly reworked Hard Time Killing Floor Blues from Skip James. The band is respectful of the tradition, but not bound by it and their versions of these classic songs are some of the very best I’ve heard.
If you can ever get to Scotland, be sure and make you way to the Inchyra Arts Club. More importantly, check out the incredibly talented Larkin Poe.
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
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