Eric Clapton was once “god,” the best rock and blues guitarist on the planet, adored by fans of his time with John Mayall, Cream, Derek and the Dominos and then his solo career.
Now, aside from the recent nonsense of joining in with Van Morrison in a petulant wail against pandemic restrictions, and touting unscientific and dangerous claims about fertility against vaccines, he is a figure who seems to divide blues fans.
This is clear whenever you see something about him posted on blues-related social media – the negative reaction can be visceral. There’ll be those who won’t even bother to read this article and will simply react to the mere suggestion that Clapton’s Unplugged could be a classic blues album.
Others will take a more considered approach to Clapton, understanding his lifelong obsession with the blues and the contribution he made to the genre during the 1960s when the genre was in steep decline in the United States because of the rise of pop, rock’n’roll, soul and R&B. That was B.B. King’s view, who said that he and Clapton had been friends since they met in the 60s and that Clapton “plays blues better than most of us.”
The album the two made in 2000, Riding with the King, which won a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues album, shows two men in love with the blues, their music making flowing effortlessly off each other. And, of course, the admiration was not one way, Clapton thanking King “for all the inspiration and encouragement he gave to me as a player over the years,” and hailing Live at the Regal as the album which got him started with the blues.
Clapton was also very close with Muddy Waters, whom he described as “the father figure I never really had” and his greatest influence. His playing was also deeply influenced by Robert Johnson, who amazed him with his guitar chops and singing. “There were very few people on record who sounded like they were singing from the heart,” said Clapton, “there’s no comparison, this guy’s got finesse. His touch was extraordinary. Which is amazing in light of the fact that he was simultaneously singing with such intensity.” Clapton’s 2004 album, Me and Mr Johnson plays tribute to his lifelong fascination with Johnson.
So, given the association Clapton has had over the years with the greats in the blues Pantheon and their high opinion of his blues contribution, it’s hard to understand how he gets dismissed so readily by some blues fans. Clapton himself has said of his commitment to the blues, “I recognise that I have some responsibility to keep the music alive.”
All that said, on to Unplugged as one of our “Great Blues Albums.”
Playing his Martin 000-42 acoustic guitars, and accompanied by a small group of musicians, including Andy Fairweather Low and Chuck Leavell, Clapton performed the songs for a small audience in England in 1992 at a particularly emotional time for him. His four-year-old son Conor had died four months previously after falling from his 53rd floor apartment. Tears in Heaven – clearly not a blues song in form, but arguably in content – was one of the fourteen songs on the original album, which became 20 in the 2013 remastered version.
The album won three Grammys at the 1991 awards and became the bestselling live album of all time, and Clapton’s bestselling album, selling 26 million copies worldwide. It was released in August 1992 to wide critical acclaim and revitalized Clapton’s career.
The bulk of the setlist consists of traditional blues, including Big Bill Broonzy’s Hey Hey, Robert Johnson’s Malted Milk and Son House’s Walkin’ Blues. Songs from Jimmy Cos, Lead Belly, Muddy Water, Bo Didley, and Robert Cray, along with a couple of Clapton originals complete the set. One of these is an acoustic version of Layla which works surprisingly well.
Clapton breathes new life into these songs – his version of Jimmy Cox’s depression era song Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out has become something of a definitive version, his Walkin’ Blues with its cool slide guitar recalls Robert Johnson’s version, and Muddy Waters Rollin’ and Tumblin’ still rocks as an acoustic number.
Although the blues songs here are all cover versions of old blues songs, aside from the fact that the album just sounds so good, the significance of the album is the effect it has had on acoustic blues music. Subsequent to Unplugged, during the 1990s, you see artists like Keb’ Mo’, Kelly Joe Phelps, Eric Bibb, Rory Block and Guy Davis all seeming to come to prominence. For sure, these and other great artists whose music was based on acoustic guitar had been plying their trade for some time before that – some for a long time, reaching back to the 60s – and had a loyal following. But Clapton’s Unplugged brought blues music – and acoustic blues – to a much wider audience and got a new generation of fans interested in these other artists and then also beginning to listen to the original artists as well.
Testimony to that is conversations I’ve had recently with professional acoustic artists who hail Unplugged as being formative in their awakening to the blues.
Plus, Unplugged stands the test of time. It’s an album anyone can listen to and hear a modern interpretation of the blues that is not dated and is hugely enjoyable. Purists may prefer that everyone listens to Lead Belly or Bill Broonzy, but for everyone else, Eric Clapton’s Unplugged is their way into appreciating the blues.
The Real Folk Blues, released in 1966, is a combination of twelve of Muddy Waters’ recordings from 1949 to 1954, but it’s all quality stuff and the album was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2017 as a “Classic of Blues Recordings.”
Chess took the opportunity with the folk and blues revivals of the early sixties to promote Muddy to a new and younger generation of music fans, his last chart hit with Chess having been in 1958. In 1964, they released Waters’ only acoustic album, Folk Singer, and then, two years later, The Real Folk Blues.
The album includes Canary Bird, named in honour of his wife, Geneva, and originally released on the Aristocrat label in 1949 with Ernest “Big” Crawford on bass. As well as Clarksdale, the song mentions Stovall Plantation, where Muddy Waters lived in a sharecropper’s shack for the first thirty years of his life. It’s delightfully raw, with Waters’ voice to the fore.
Another early song is Gypsy Woman, from 1947, which features Sunnyland Slim on piano. There’s a definite Robert Johnson feel about this one, both in terms of the blues turnarounds and Water’s singing. As there is in an early Water’s version of Johnson’s Walking Blues, sparsely arranged with just his singing and characteristic slide guitar.
The album kicks off with Mannish Boy, first recorded in 1955, with that famous harmonica lick. The song is a classic, included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s list of the “500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.” “I’m a man,” Muddy asserts, “I’m a full grown man.” Like most African Americans of his day, Muddy Waters had still been referred to as a boy even when grown, especially in his native Mississippi. “No b-o-y,” he sings – now free of the extreme Southern racism and oppression and a successful musician in Chicago, Muddy Waters could assert his black manhood. (For more on the song Mannish Boy, click here.]
Screaming and Crying recorded in September 1949, featured “Baby Face” Leroy Foster who played guitar with his hands, and bass drum and hi-hat with his feet! It’s a nice slow tempo blues driven by Little Johnny Jones’s rolling piano, where Muddy bemoans the loss of his past life, his mother, his wives and his happy home. It’s truly the blues!
There is a 1950 version of Rollin’ And Tumblin’, a blues standard, first recorded in 1929 by Hambone Willie Newbern for Okeh Records. This is the song that Robert Johnson adapted as If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day in 1936 in his third recording session in San Antonio. Waters recorded two versions of the song in 1950 and I believe this is the one recorded for Aristocat, with the bass accompaniment by Ernest Crawford. Subsequent rock takes on the song, like Cream’s, are based on Muddy Waters.
Willie Dixon’s The Same Thing is another fine inclusion, featuring Otis Spann on piano and Dixon on bass, as is the classic Just To Be With You, with great lines like “[I will] Fight a shark with a toothpick,” and “I’d call my mother-in-law honey.”
The album closes with You Can’t Lose What You Never Had, another one with loss after loss – woman, money, burned-down home – piling up to deliver the blues. It features some tasty slide guitar from Muddy and is a fine way to finish what amounts to a classic – and quality – collection of early Muddy Waters’ recordings.
Slide guitar – it’s sweet, it’s gritty, it’s sensual, it reaches right inside and grabs your innards. In the hands of an expert exponent, it’s a thing of wonder. And it’s got a long tradition in the history of the blues, reaching back to Charlie Patton, Blind Willie McTell, Blind Willie Johnson and Robert Johnson, when those glissando and vibrato notes were squeezed out by a penknife or a broken bottle neck caressing or, at times, attacking the guitar strings. It was the sound of the slide guitar that first alerted W.C. Handy to the blues when he heard the solitary guitar player on the station in Tutweiler, Mississippi in 1903 – “The effect,” he said, “was unforgettable.”
We’ve chosen 25 terrific blues songs that feature slide guitar, from Willie Johnson to Derek Trucks. They’re in chronological order so there’s no attempt here to judge these against each other. They’re just here for you to explore and enjoy – I hope they give you as much pleasure as I had in researching, choosing and listening to them. (actually 25 has become 26!!)
Blind Willie Johnson: Dark was the Night, Cold Was the Ground (1927)
Willie Johnson’s slide playing is widely admired. Ry Cooder said, “Blind Willie Johnson had great dexterity, because he could play all of these sparking little melody lines. He had fabulous syncopation; he could keep his thumb going really strong. He’s so good – I mean, he’s just so good.” Eric Clapton’s view was that Johnson’s slide work on It’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine was “probably the finest slide guitar playing you’ll ever hear.” So there’s a number of songs we could have chosen. We’ve gone with Dark was the Night, where Johnson’s exquisite slide playing takes you right into the agony of the Garden of Gethsemane, negating the need for sung lyrics, and is just augmented by Johnson’s moaning. [Check out our post about Willie Johnson here.]
Blind Willie McTell: Mama ‘Taint Long Fo’ Day (1928)
Willie McTell was an accomplished slide player as well as being an adept Piedmont style and ragtime finger picker and had a significant recording career in the 1920s and 30s. His 1928 Mama ‘Taint Long Fo’ Day lets you appreciate the depth of his skill and musicality.
Charlie Patton: Mississippi Boweevil Blues (1929)
Along with Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton was arguably the most important and formative voice of the early sound of the blues in the Mississippi Delta. He recorded Boweevil Blues in 1929 as “The Masked Marvel.” It’s primal blues, with one chord accompaniment, three basic notes in the vocal melody, and a high-note bottleneck accent after the vocal phrase, with the slide often finishing the last word in the phrase. Patton bewails the devastation caused by the invasion of the Boweevil beetle which fed on cotton buds and caused huge problems for the cotton industry and in particular for African American tenants.
Robert Johnson: If I Had Possession (1936)
Robert Johnson was hailed as the “king of the Delta blues,” and described by Eric Clapton as “the most important blues singer that ever lived.” His short life ended in 1938 at the age of 27, but his songs have become standards of the blues canon, and he’s recognized as an outstanding guitarist and a songwriter who pushed the boundaries of the genre during his lifetime. Despite that crossroads myth, Johnson’s prodigious guitar chops likely came from finding a tutor and working hard as a student. Guitar players still marvel at Johnson’s dexterity, the complexity of his playing and the intensity of his songs. He was a skilled slide player, amply demonstrated here on this 1936 recording. [You’ll find our piece about another Johnson song here.]
Muddy Waters: I Can’t Be Satisfied (1948)
The “father of modern Chicago blues” moved to Chicago in 1943 and began recording for Aristocrat Records, a newly formed label run by the brothers Leonard and Phil Chess. He recorded, I Can’t Be Satisfied and I Feel Like Going Home in 1948, both of which became hits, and the rest, as they say, is history. In the recording session for the two songs, they were preparing to wrap up, and Muddy asked if they could do the song without the piano. Leonard obliged and Muddy did the songs on the electric guitar, giving the songs a completely new feel. The single, with its raw electric sound and Muddy’s slide playing sold out on its first weekend. Buddy Guy said Muddy was “one of the slidingest people I’ve ever heard in my life. He got it from the Mississippi players playing the Saturday night fish fries, and he took it home.” [We look at another Muddy Waters song here.]
Elmore James: Dust My Broom (1951)
Known as “King of the Slide Guitar” and noted for his use of loud, reverb-heavy amplification, Elmore James is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and the influence behind many rock musicians. That full octave slide riff in the opening to his 1951 adaptation of Robert Johnson’s I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom, has become a classic riff. The song became James’s signature song and has been re-recorded many, many times, usually with James’s riff intact.
Mississippi Fred McDowell: You Gotta Move (1965)
Originally recorded by The Gospel Keys in 1948, McDowell’s version is the most famous and was picked up by the Rolling Stones and included on their 1971 Sticky Fingers album. Fred McDowell’s version is raw and bluesy, never misses a beat and has a nice slide vibrato. It was from McDowell that Bonnie Raitt learned her slide guitar. [More on You Gotta Move here.]
Son House: Death Letter Blues (1965)
House’s 1965 performance was on a metal-bodied National resonator guitar using a copper slide. Death Letter Blues is a revision of House’s earlier recording My Black Mama, Part 2 from 1930. The guitar playing is raw, almost rough, but the passion of the performance and the subject matter make listening to it a dramatic experience.
Johnny Winter: Broke Down Engine (1968)
Winter was a Grammy winning inductee into the Blues Hall of Fame, the first non-African-American performer to be inducted, and one of the first blues rock guitar virtuosos. His version of this Blind Willie McTell song appears on his album The Progressive Blues Experiment from 1968. Winter is probably better known for his high energy electric blues rock guitar, but he played this song on a resonator, with an approach that has echoes of Robert Johnson.
Allman Brothers: Statesboro Blues (1971)
The Allman Brothers’ 1971 concert at New York’s Filmore East is legendary, and the album represented the band’s commercial breakthrough. This cover of Blind Willie McTell’s famous song opens the set and showcases Duane Allman’s fabulous open-E slide playing. His approach to the song is clearly modelled on Taj Mahal’s1968 version of the song.
Rory Gallagher: McAvoy Boogie (1972)
Rory Gallagher never attained star status in his short life (he died aged 47) but he is a cult figure in the blues-rock world because of his incredible guitar skills – he was, for example, voted Melody Maker’s 1971 International Top Guitarist of the Year, ahead of Eric Clapton. Gallagher’s McAvoy Boogie was in honour of Gerry McAvoy, a great Northern Irish blues rock bass guitarist. Recorded around 1972, the song appears on the DVD, Rory Gallagher, Ghost Blues: The Story of Rory Gallagher and the Beat Club Sessions. Gallagher was equally at home on electric, acoustic or resonator guitars, and on McAvoy Boogie he lets loose on his Fender Telecaster.
Ry Cooder: Feelin’ Bad Blues (1986)
Multi-Grammy award winner Ry Cooder has been making music and recording for the past 50 years. He’s a songwriter, film score composer, and record producer. A multi-instrumentalist, he is maybe best known for his slide guitar work. Rolling Stone magazine’s ranked him eighth on their list of “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. Feelin’ Bad Blues is on his 1986 Crossroads album and is an instrumental slow blues, which demonstrates Cooder’s exquisite slide technique and emotive playing. [Check out our post on Ry Cooder here.]
Eric Clapton: Running on Faith (1992)
Clapton originally recorded this on his 1989 Journeyman album, but we’ve chosen the Unplugged version of 1992, where Clapton plays a wooden resonator. He’s played a lot of electric slide during his career, but this performance puts the musicality of his skill in the spotlight, as well as his excellent vocals. [Check out our appreciation of Eric Clapton here.]
(Sadly WMG has blocked the YouTube video of this 28 year-old song)
Bonnie Raitt: I’m In the Mood (with John Hooker) (1991)
Bonnie Raitt has won 10 Grammys and sold millions of albums. The same year as her big 1989 breakthrough with Nick of Time, she recorded this duet with Hooker, which was included on Hooker’s album The Healer. Playing her Stratocaster with the slide on her second finger, and picking with her fingers, Raitt gets the right amount of sass and moan into this reprise of Hooker’s 1951 hit.
Joanna Connor: Walkin’ Blues (1992)
Joanna Connor is so much more than her self-description as “that middle-aged lady with the scorching guitar.” She’s a tremendously talented and original guitar player, whose incredible slide guitar, complete with mushy guitar-player face from 2014 has been seen by around 1.5m people. She is a guitar-playing tour de force. Walkin’ Blues from her second album aptly illustrates her jaw-droppingly good slide guitar. [You’ll find a review of Connor’s Rise album here.]
Bryn Haworth: Will You Be Ready (1995)
Bryn Haworth is an outstanding slide guitarist and songwriter from the UK who has been making records and performing for the past 50 years. He’s appeared on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test and the John Peel show, was a major figure in the explosion of Jesus Rock in the 1970s and 80s, and been the guest guitarist on many albums by rock and folk artists. [Don’t miss this great interview with Bryn here.]
Kelly Joe Phelps: When the Roll is Called Up Yonder (1997)
There’s scarcely a better acoustic slide player on the planet than Kelly Joe Phelps, aptly demonstrated by this superb old hymn which appears on Roll Away the Stone. At this stage in his career Kelly was playing slide on a lap steel guitar. By 2012, he had moved to a more regular bottleneck slide style – and produced similarly outstanding playing on Brother Sinner and the Whale. Check out the interplay between the slide guitar and Kelly’s vocals in this song, particularly in the chorus. Quite remarkable. As for the beautiful solo… [More on Kelly Joe Phelps here.]
Rory Block: Cross Road Blues (2006)
Rory Block is one of the world’s greatest living acoustic blues artists. Her talent has been recognized many times by WC Handy and Blues Music Awards in the US, as well as gaining accolades and awards in Europe. She has won Acoustic Artist of the Year in the 2019 Blues Music Awards. She’s done a number of albums paying tribute to the great blues guitarists of the past, and her 2006 Lady and Mr Johnson sees her taking on Robert Johnson and delivering the songs such that they take on new life, and at the same time showcasing Johnson’s outstanding guitar expertise. Block plays Cross Road Blues on her Martin guitar with incredible attack, accuracy and groove – quite wondrous. [Check out our great interview with Rory here.]
Johnny Dickinson: Ocean Blues (2006)
Northumberland-born slide-guitarist/singer/songwriter, Johnny Dickinson sadly passed away in 2019. He was widely acknowledged as one of the UK’s finest exponents of acoustic slide guitar. And a thoroughly nice guy. Ocean Blues, from 2006’s Sketches from the Road is a fine example of Dickinson’s technique and musicality.
Brooks Williams: Amazing Grace (2010)
Brooks Williams is one incredible acoustic guitar player. He’s a gifted songwriter and singer too. His versatile guitar chops include some tasty slide playing. You’ll scarcely hear a better version of Amazing Grace than Brooks’s from his 2010 Baby O! album. Playing the strings on either side of the slide and moving masterfully all round the fretboard, Williams coaxes each ounce of bluesiness from this old tune. [Check out our interview with Brooks here.]
North Mississippi Allstars: Let It Roll (2011)
Luther Dickinson is a guitarist, songwriter, singer and record producer who grew up in the hills of North Mississippi. Influenced by R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, he and his brother formed the North Mississippi Allstars. Their 2011 album, Keys to the Kingdom, features Dickinson’s characteristic raw singing style and his style of electrified, fingerstyle slide guitar that he calls Modern Mississippi. It’s sounds traditional but bang up-to-date all at once. [Check out our interview with Luther here.]
Tedeschi Trucks Band: Midnight in Harlem (2011)
When you see Derek Trucks live, you’d be forgiven for calling him the world’s best living electric slide guitarist. His guitar and slide just seem to be part of the man. Trucks was something of a child prodigy, playing slide from a young age and by the age of 13, he had shared a stage with Buddy Guy. He was a guest musician for several years with the Allman Brothers and has toured as part of Eric Clapton’s band. The fabulous band formed with him and his wife, Susan Tedseschi, released Revelator in 2011 which features a cover of Mike Mattison’s Midnight in Harlem. It’s quite wonderful, as much for Tedeschi’s vocals as for Truck’s slide work. But his slide work is top drawer and we like the live version on Everybody’s Talkin’ from 2012.
Keb’Mo’ & Taj Mahal: Diving Duck Blues (2017)
There may be better examples of Keb’ Mo’s slide guitar style, but this duet with blues legend Taj Mahal from their excellent 2017 Tajmo album is one of the most enjoyable. Mo’s metal resonator slide playing accompanies Taj Mahal’s rhythmic acoustic picking, rather than taking centre stage. But, of course, it’s the combination of these two wonderful artists playing together that is best of all. [Check out our piece on Keb’ Mo’s Put a Woman in Charge here.]
Sonny Landreth: Key to the Highway (2017)
One of the world’s best, but most under-appreciated guitarists, said Eric Clapton of slide guitar specialist, Sonny Landreth. Landreth has incredible slide guitar technique, able to play notes, chords and chord fragments by fretting behind the slide while he plays. As with nearly all these artists, it’s hard to choose a song from Landreth’s considerable back catalogue, but his version of this blues standard normally credited to Big Bill Broonzy, on his 2017 Live in Lafayette, is a real treat.
Larkin Poe: Mississippi (2018)
Larkin Poe are the Lovell sisters from Atlanta, Georgia with 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. Both terrific guitarists, it is Megan who is the slide guitarist, trading licks with her sister. Standing up – and occasionally walking through the audience – she plays her lap steel guitar with incredible energy. Mississippi from 2018’s Grammy nominated Venom and Faith album evokes the spirit of the Delta while channelling a modern, fresh approach to the blues. Superb. [Be sure and check out our great interview with Larkin Poe here.]
Martin Harley: Roll With the Punches (2019)
When it comes to slide guitar, England’s Martin Harley really is the business. With eight albums to his credit, he delights audiences wherever he plays in the UK and US with his hugely enjoyable brand of Americana and blues. His Roll With the Punches from 2019 finds Harley with a new, more electric sound, now coaxing those trademark slide guitar licks from an electric guitar rather than simply the Weissenborn lap steel he is usually to be seen with. The title track showcases his great slide technique and is just a great song – so positive: “don’t let nobody drag you down, keep your head high, put your good foot on the ground.” [You’ll find our review of Martin Harley’s Roll with the Punches here.]
I stood beside the Blues Trail Marker for the sharecropper’s shack that Muddy Waters grew up in, in what was Stovall’s Plantation just outside Clarksdale, and gazed over the landscape. The vast fields were ploughed but unplanted, the alluvial soil brown and fertile. The sun was low in the sky but shone brightly against the bluest sky imaginable. And it was cold – a dry, bitter cold that chilled your bones.
But it was strangely warming to have reached this point in our blues pilgrimage. It was here in 1941 that Alan Lomax found McKinley Morganfield and recorded his Burr Clover Blues, a song he’d written at the request of Colonel Stovall, who six years previously had invented the burr clover seed harvester. Muddy Waters’s house also served as a juke joint where Waters entertained field hands. Waters left the plantation in May 1943 after the plantation overseer refused his request for a raise from 22 and a half cents to 25 cents an hour. The rest, of course, is history, Muddy going on to become a preeminent Chicago blues artist and a musical inspiration to subsequent generations of blues and rock musicians.
Cotton Field, Mississippi Delta
The Rich Soil of the Delta
If you head on out past the famous Crossroads at the intersection of Highways 61 and 49, you’ll soon come to the Shack Up Inn, on the site of Hopson Plantation. In 1928, this plantation had over 3,500 acres and was farmed by black sharecroppers and mules, working from 4.30am until 6 in the evening. You can get a sense of plantation life here, as you wander round the sharecropper shacks, with their tin roofs and Mississippi cedar walls (now available as (basic) hotel accommodation), the original cotton gin and seed houses and other outbuildings. I was taken by the old rusting vehicles, including old cars, a tractor and a derelict fire truck. An ancient railway line runs through into the distance, giving a further sense of timelessness to the place. As does the Bottle Tree, with its host of blue bottles, traditionally used to ward off evil from the family home.
Sharecropper Shack
Old Car & Cotton
The sense of poverty exuded by the sharecroppers’ shacks was very tangible and striking. Sharecropping was a system that came to dominate agriculture across the cotton-planting South from the end of the nineteenth century. Black families would rent small plots of land from white landowners, to work themselves. Often, the landlords or nearby merchants would lease equipment to the renters, and offer seed, fertilizer, food, and other items on credit until the harvest season. At the end of the year, tenant and landlord would settle up, often with the sharecroppers owing more to the landowner than they were able to repay with the sale of their crops. It was an exploitative system that resulted in debt and poverty from which the sharecropper found it difficult to escape. It was out of this situation that the blues began to emerge in the early part of the twentieth century and it’s no surprise that many of those we now consider blues legends worked the land themselves.
If you go to the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale itself, you’ll see Muddy Waters’ shack reassembled inside, a kind of shrine to perhaps Clarksdale’s most famous son. Not that Muddy was the only legendary blues artist from round these parts – born and raised nearby were John Lee Hooker, Son House, Ike Turner, Sam Cooke, Junior Parker, and W. C. Handy. In addition, Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, and Charley Patton are all associated with the town, stopping by in their constant traveling. All of this history is preserved and these artists celebrated in the Museum, which makes for an excellent visit.
Talking of blues museums, on the way down from Memphis, we’d stopped at the Tunica Gateway to the Blues Visitor Centre and Museum. Set in an old, refurbished train depot, this is a fabulous introduction to the land of the blues – great exhibits, well displayed, which tell the story of the origins and development of the blues in the Mississippi Delta.
Blues Museum, Tunica
Back in Clarksdale, right across the road from the Delta Blues Museum is Morgan Freeman’s Ground Zero Blues Club (Clarksdale being the blues’ “ground zero”). We stopped by for lunch and enjoyed the general vibe, though sadly, there was no live music. We were wonderfully served by Stella, who took one look at my scrawny looks and said, “Well now, a’body’s momma wanna take him in an’ feed him up. Mmhnnn”. I had the barbeque pork in a spicy pancake – absolutely delicious, but laced with a thousand chillies which quickly had my mouth on fire.
On down the street and you come to Blues Town Music, owned by the inimitable Ronnie Drew, who welcomed us warmly and regaled us with stories of visits to Europe in days gone by. I enjoyed playing one of his acoustic guitars and then chatting to Ronnie’s good friend, an older gentleman, an ex-bass player, with long seventies-style hair and a droopy moustache to match, who intrigued me with tales of visiting New York City as a boy and watching the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field.
And then, right across the road we found the treasure trove that is the Cats Head Delta Blues and Folk Art store and had the pleasure of chatting to proprietor Roger Stolle. I was interested to meet Roger, having read his excellent book, Hidden History of Mississippi some time ago, and being aware of his work to help regenerate Clarksdale. The store is quite unique, selling everything from books to posters to art to CDs, vinyl records and DVDs, all with a blues theme. Even if you don’t buy anything (but please do! My Cat Head poster is now framed and hanging in my office!), it’s a fabulous place just to browse around in.
And Roger’s such a nice guy, full of positivity and enthusiasm, and wondrously knowledgeable about the blues and the Mississippi Delta. Glad to say he agreed to a follow-up interview, which will appear before long here at Down at the Crossroads.
Actually, once again, I have to comment on the welcome and friendliness of everyone we encountered in Mississippi. We were quite charmed. We got on our way in the early evening, unable to take up Roger Stolle’s suggestion of staying for the show in Red’s Lounge later on, and drove back to Memphis on the legendary Highway 61, Mississippi saying farewell to us by means of a spectacular sunset, the sky changing colour dramatically as the sun sank below the horizon.
Muddy Waters was born McKinley Morganfield sometime around 1915 in Rolling Fork, Mississippi. Raised by his grandmother, Della Grant in Clarksdale after his mother died when he was three, he lived in a shack on Stovall Plantation, working as a farm laborer from when he was a boy. Life was harsh, brutal even, with poverty and deprivation part of daily life. Muddy Water’s website notes that blues artists like Muddy “gave vent to…terror, frustration, rage and passionate humanity in a music that was taut with dark, brooding force and spellbinding intensity that was jagged, harsh, raw as an open wound and profoundly, inexorably, moving.”
Muddy began playing harmonica, then guitar and by 17, he was playing at parties, seeking to emulate his heroes, Son House and Robert Johnson. Within ten years he had moved to Chicago, where he became a full-time professional musician, and in due course a huge success and the acknowledged father of Chicago blues.
With all his success, however, and ability to broaden his musical horizon to include new musical sounds and approaches, not least the amplified electric guitar, Muddy’s early years in the Delta clearly remained formative – take his 1959 Single Version of Take the Bitter With The Sweet, where he remembers the struggles and difficulties of growing up in poverty. He sings about the pain of not having any family:
Well I don’t have no mother, father, brother, sister, boy, I ain’t never seen
Well you know sometime I feel so lonesome
Well yes I feel just like I wanna scream..
He remembers the times when “There’ve been nights I’ve laid down, And I didn’t have no food to eat,” and the days he walked around and “I didn’t have no shoes on my feet.”
The song, interestingly concludes with the line “Oh Lord, boy I gotta take the bitter with the sweet,” which is a surprisingly upbeat and positive take on the woes that he’s just been singing about.
Even those of us who are fortunate enough not to live in poverty and don’t have to worry about where we’re going to sleep tonight know that life has a way of throwing some bitter pills at us from time to time. I’m just recovering from a lengthy period of ill health, and many of us know about job loss, bereavement, financial worries, family problems. None of us is immune from the trouble that life brings no matter who we are, no matter how wealthy we are or how strong and fit we are.
We hear a lot about life’s woes in Israel’s blues songbook, the Psalms – we regularly read about “the day of trouble,” “the time of trouble,” about “afflictions” and a whole host of difficulties. What is remarkable, though, is the confidence that the writers of the Psalms had that God would be with them in the day of trouble – “When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble; I will rescue them.” (Ps. 91.15). Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann commenting on these Psalms says that “The songs are not about the “natural” outcome of trouble, but about the decisive transformation made possible by this God who causes new life where none seems possible.” Psalms like Psalms 30, 34, 40, 138 all tell stories of going into trouble and coming out the other side.
Like these Psalms which look for a better day beyond the day of trouble, many blues songs also hit this note of hope for better things. For sure there’s no way we can avoid the bitter – we gotta take it along with the sweet – but the question for all of us is: in the day of trouble, who you gonna turn to? Who are you gonna hope in? The Psalms give us a good steer here – “my help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” Maybe we’ll leave the last word on this to Eric Bibb…
Muddy Waters first recorded Mannish Boy back in 1955. He and Willie Dixon had previously written Hoochie Coochie Man, which had inspired Bo Diddley‘s I’m a Man,and which in turn provided the basis for Mannish Boy. The song is credited to Muddy Water, Mel London and Bo Diddley, and features a repeating lick based on one chord.
Waters recorded Mannish Boyon several occasions – in 1968, for the Electric Mud album, in 1977 for the Hard Again album, and on the 1979 live album Muddy “Mississippi” Waters – Live. Muddy can also be seen performing it on The Band‘s The Last Waltz film.
The song has become something of a blues standard, having reached number 5 in the Billboard R&B chart when first released. It was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame “Classics of Blues Recordings” category, as well as being included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame‘s list of the “500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll,” and was ranked by Rolling Stone magazine in its list of “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.
The song is basically a raunchy number, both musically and lyrically, full of male sexual bravado. When Muddy sings “I’m a natural born lover,” and “I passed 21, I want you to believe me baby, I had lots of fun,” and “I’m made to move you honey,” there’s really no doubt as to what he’s talking about. He also says he’s 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.
The song’s chorus goes:
I’m a man
Spell M-A child -N
That represents man
No B-O child -Y
That mean mannish boy.
And then goes on to assert “I’m a man, I’m a full grown man.”
Despite the clear sensuality of the song, there’s something more going on in the song. In the Southern states under Jim Crow, including Mississippi where Muddy Waters grew up, a black man was never recognized as anything other than a “boy.”
Fifty years after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1853, Thomas Bailey, a southern educator set forth fifteen major premises of the “common opinion of the South” of black Americans. Two of these said, “The negro is inferior and will remain so,” and “Let the lowest white man count for more than the highest negro.” African Americans were both demonized and dehumanized. A white student in 1909 – shockingly – wrote, “The negro is more like a mule than anything I can think of…You cannot get the brute out of the negro; therefore he must be kept under subjection.”
Such were the attitudes that Muddy Waters experienced growing up in Mississippi. As a black man, he was considered and treated as less than human, and one of the ways in which this was reinforced was in the way in which he would never be referred to as a man – always as “boy.” Blacks at best were children, to be looked after, provided of course they knew their place, behaved and did not become “uppity.” At worst black men were considered a source of danger to white womanhood, ready at any opportunity to act as crazed, ravishers of pure white women. On this basis, many of the atrocious lynchings that mark the Jim Crow period in the South took place.
Muddy Water’s song, then, takes on a new meaning in this context. Now that he’s free of Southern racism and oppression and is a successful musician in Chicago, Muddy can assert his black manhood – “I’m a man, I’m a full grown man,” sings Muddy, “I spell M-A, child, N.” And free from the accusations of sexual misconduct, the sexual bravado of the song becomes at least understandable.
Despite the complicity of the white Christian church in years of racism in the South, the gospel is the message of God’s unconditional love for all God’s children, irrespective of race or social position. Before God we’re all the same, common humanity, with the same problems and the same potential. St. Paul lived in a world in the first century where the dividing line was between Jews and Gentiles. He wrote two of his letters to help groups of the first Christians to understand that there need be no difference between people. To the Galatians he wrote, “in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile,” and to the Romans he took a great deal of time to explain that nobody, whether Jew or Gentile, had any rights before God and that everybody was made right on the same basis of their devotion to the Messiah Jesus. Nothing, he said, could separate us from God’s love.
No one has the right to dominate or oppress others on any basis. To do so flies in the face of the God in whose image we are made. We each have an intrinsic worth – because God loves us. The truth is we need each other to survive and to thrive. We are human because we belong to each other, we participate together and we share together.
Inequality due to racism clearly still exists and the past casts its long shadow over the present. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof alerts us to “the way past subjugation shapes present disadvantage.” More generally in our societies we see inequality due to aggressive competitiveness, and political and economic structures that result in large numbers of people – even in the US and Europe – suffering hardship and lack of opportunity. In the US, 95% of all income gains since 2009 have gone to the top 1 percent and the top 1% of Americans take home 22% of the nation’s income. Christians need to be in the vanguard of those seeking change in our society and the wider world – as those who will take a stand for our common humanity and against whatever it is that drives a wedge between us.
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