Ronnie Greer – Ireland’s blues legend on playing with the blues greats.

Ronnie Greer has been a much loved and appreciated figure at the heart of the music scene in Northern Ireland for more than fifty years. Something of a legend, really. He’s a top-notch blues and jazz guitarist, who plays with real feeling and soul and has graced stages along the way with Dr. John, Van Morrison, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Lowell Fulson and a range of top Chicago blues artists.

For many years he held down a full-time job as a director in a steel company as well as performing with the renowned Jim Daly Blues Band and others. Over recent years he’s been delighting audiences and adding to his stellar reputation by his collaborations with top Irish musicians like Grainne Duffy, John McCullough, Ken Haddock and Anthony Toner. Ronnie is not only a gifted musician, but a wonderful raconteur and all-round nice guy. Get yourself to a Ronnie Greer show and you come away smiling – guaranteed!

He’s released three albums since 2015, A Lifetime With the Blues which features contributions from Grainne Duffy, Ken Haddock, Anthony Toner, Kyron Bourke and others; The Jazz Project;  and Blues Constellation, a live album – all of them outstanding and drawing hugely positive reviews in the music press.

I caught up with Ronnie recently to chat about his career, the musicians he’s played with some he didn’t…

Gary
Ronnie, you’ve been playing professionally for let’s just say, several decades! But it wasn’t your full-time profession?

Ronnie
I first started playing with a little beat group, when I was about 15, which didn’t really get anywhere. But I then got a job in a showband that was the resident band every Saturday night in the Castle Ballroom in Newcastle. And we’d also do Friday nights, as a warm-up for big bands like the Royal Showband and The Freshman. I was very fortunate with the guys that I played with in that band, most of them were quite a bit older than me – well, I was only 16! And their influence got me listening to a lot of jazz.

Then in my late teens I encountered Jim Daly, the “father of the blues” here in Northern Ireland. He was a great piano player, a Chicago style piano player. I went to one his gigs one night and he invited me to get up and do a couple numbers. And the rest, as they say is history. I spent 25 years or so playing in Jim’s band, which meant that I got a chance to play with American-based genuine blues players. When they came to Northern Ireland, Jim’s band was the band of choice to back these guys. I worked out recently that I’ve worked with maybe 85 or so black American blues artists – guys from the source.

First of all, I was in Jim’s band, and then when I played with Jackie Flavell in the band we formed, Blues Experience, we backed a lot of these guys. But I had the day job and although I had many, many offers to go fully professional into the music business, I chose to stay, doing both. And by staying at home and getting a chance to back these guys, I played with more genuine black American musicians than if I had decided to take my chance and go out to Chicago and try and get a gig there. I’d just have been one of 300 other guitar players trying to get a gig!

Gary
So when you were only 16, Ronnie, how did you get going professionally?

Ronnie
Well, this would’ve been the mid-sixties, which was the British blues boom. You had The Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Pretty Things, obviously John Mayall, Eric Clapton, and many others. So obviously I was right in there at the right time. And I listened to those guys and was heavily influenced by them.

But then when I joined Jim, I started to learn about the people that they were listening to. And Jim was a great mentor to me and got me started listening to Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Otis Spann, Otis Rush, Freddy King, Albert King, all the greats.

And, I seemed to be lucky in that I seem to have a natural kind of feel for the blues, which isn’t always the case. It’s something you can’t teach, if it’s not there. But I seemed to have a feel for it. I have shortcomings in other areas of my guitar playing – I’m not a great technician. I can’t play fast – but I can play with quite a lot of feeling, quite a lot of soul. Which is more important when you’re playing the blues than being able to play hundred notes a second, you know?

Gary
Absolutely. So tell me, you must have been pretty good, to be starting to with Jim’s band when you were only 16. When did you first pick up a guitar and start playing? And how did you get to be as good as you were in your mid-teens?

Ronnie
My parents were at a loss one Christmas for something to buy me when I was 12 years old. My dad noticed that I had developed a tendency to stand on a chair, looking in the mirror pretending to play the guitar with the tennis racquet! So it seemed that it might be a good idea to buy me a proper guitar. And I seemed to have a natural flare for it. Up until then, I’d been quite obsessed with sport and had wanted to be a professional footballer. But once my parents bought the guitar, sport took a second place.  The guitar was something that I really took to and it’s become a very life affirming thing for me.

Gary
How did you get started playing, then? Did you listen to records and try and copy them?

Ronnie
Very much so. And I started to collect, I’ve got a massive collection of vinyl albums, mostly jazz of the fifties and sixties, and quite a lot of blues.  I’ve now got over 5,000 vinyl albums, collected over 50 years. And in fact, the BBC has twice featured my record collection on radio shows. And Duke Special [Irish songwriter and performer] did a video show where he featured my record collection as well.

Anyway, that’s really where I got my knowledge from., I have no formal music training – I can’t read music. Anything that I know about playing music has come from listening and watching other players. Which maybe was a bit regressive – because it would be nice to have the technical information to hand as well. But I can’t complain because I had a kind of gift that many others didn’t. I know lots of musicians who are great technicians and can read music but they don’t really have a lot of feel, a lot of soul in their playing, you know?

Gary
Now I know you’ve played with a lot of well-known blues and roots performers, the likes of Memphis Slim, Dr. John, Sonny Terry, and many others. Would like to pick out one or two of those that perhaps you most enjoyed playing with Ronnie?

Ronnie
Well, Dr. Dr. John would be one of the highlights. Everybody knows of Dr. John. And Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee – I played several times with them. Memphis Slim, as you say, and  then Carey Bell, one of Muddy Waters’ harmonic players, and Mojo Buford, who also played harmonica in Muddy’s band. And perhaps a lesser-known player, a guy I had great rapport with was a guy called Phillip Walker, a Texas guitar player, who played in Big Joe Turner’s band amongst others.

And, the ones that I enjoyed playing with most were the ones who were very, very good and recognized that they were playing with people who were actually quite good themselves. And brought them into the game rather than isolate them. Problem was, a lot of the lesser American players that I’ve worked with over the years, if you played a solo and got any reaction at all from the crowd, that was the end of it for you! They’re never gonna give you another solo!

Gary
Give us an example, Ronnie.

Ronnie
Probably the biggest example would’ve been Lowell Fulson who wrote Reconsider Baby. A lovely man, great guitar player. We did several gigs with him over the years at different places, including the Cork Jazz Festival. But we did a gig with him in the Guinness Spot one night at the Belfast Festival at Queens. Three numbers into the concert, he threw me a solo. Which got a resounding round of applause at the end. And that was that for the rest of the night. I might as well have hung the guitar up and gone home!

But yet the likes of Phillip Walker, who was a brilliant guitar player, he and I bonded greatly. And we actually got into feeding off each other. Guys like that were very encouraging. But, you know, they all loved Jim Daly. Jim Daly was a wonderful Chicago Blues piano player.

He played with Muddy Waters in the Mandala Hall in the mid-sixties, just before I joined his band. Much to my disappointment, I missed that one.

But at the end of the gig, Jim sat in with Muddy, after opening the show. Jim’s biggest Influence was Otis Spann, the doyen of Chicago piano blues. But, at the end of the gig, Muddy said to Jim. He says, “Man, you sound more Otis than Otis!”

Gary
And there’s a postscript to this story, isn’t there?

Ronnie
Yeah. Muddy invited Jim to play the next night at his concert in Dublin. But Jim turned it down because he couldn’t get the day off work from his employer, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive! 

Whenever Jim died, the BBC asked me to do a little tribute to him on the morning radio breakfast show, presented at the time by Wendy Austin. And I related that story about Jim not going down to Dublin the next day because he couldn’t get the day off work. And Wendy’s comment was, “That was Ronnie Greer paying tribute to his friend John Daly. And I sincerely hope that the Housing Executive appreciated the sacrifice that Jim Daly made for that day!”

Gary
You didn’t get to play with Muddy Waters. Are there any others you didn’t get the opportunity to play with but would have liked to?

Ronnie
We did a gig in the Errigle Inn in Belfast after one of one of Van Morrsion’s Kings Hall gigs. Van and Jim Daly were very good friends, and he had booked Jim to play. So, the whole band got up and played – Georgie Fame did some stuff as well as Van. Andy Fairweather Lowe was in the band but he didn’t play at our gig. He came and complimented us on how much he enjoyed our music but apologized because he had to leave for an early morning flight. So, sadly, we didn’t get the chance to play with him.

Gary
He’s a great guitarist and seems like a very nice guy.

Ronnie
Wonderful, absolutely brilliant guy. That’s the thing, all the great guys that I met or was associated with, virtually without exception, are all very gracious and were very complimentary about what you were try to do. It’s the ones that aren’t so good that seem to have a chip on their shoulder.

And one other guy I didn’t play with but nevertheless got the opportunity to spend time with was the legendary jazz trumpeter and band leader, Dizzy Gillespie. Quite some time ago Dizzy came to Belfast to play at the Queen’s Festival. I’d been asked to keep him company throughout the day before the concert, and there was a reception for him with the great and the good at Belfast City Hall. So we were standing there together while people milled around and had nibbles. And this lady came up to Dizzie, and said to him, “and what instrument do you play?”

Anyway, I found myself alone in a room with Dizzie right before the concert. I asked him if he would play Lullaby of the Leaves, which I explained was a song I loved. “Oh,” said Dizzy, “the young guys in my band wouldn’t know that. But, tell you what, I’ll play it for you now.” And with a big smile, he got out his trumpet and played the song for me. What a moment!

And then there was one thing that happened fairly recently. I play regularly in Bert’s Jazz bar. Actually, I’m about to do another run of Wednesday nights there starting next month with the trio. But anyway, one night I was on holiday and somebody else was doing the gig for me. And that night, a guy came up at the end of the gig and complimented the guys on the music.

So, he says, I’d love to sing with you guys, maybe I could sing Nature Boy with you? Well, it was 12 o’clock and they made an excuse and told him, sorry, we have to finish because if we play any later, the management will complain. So the guy was fine, and he said “no problem,” very polite and understanding, and off he went.

A few minutes later, the guys found out it was Robert Plant! He was in Belfast doing a gig at the SSE Arena with his band. They tried to find him, but he’d gone!

Gary
But still, there are those 80 or so American blues artists you’ve played with…

Lurrie Bell

Ronnie
Yes over the years, I’ve had some great nights with many American blues musicians, maybe some of them not too well known. For instance, we did several trips with Carey Bell, the great Chicago style harmonica player. And on one of them, he brought his son, Laurie, with him. [Laurie is a Blues Music Award winner and a Grammy nominee].

Laurie Bell is the best blues guitar player I’ve ever played with. He’s a fantastic player. And a lovely guy. We played off each other, and after we did three or four gigs I said to him, you’re the best blues guitar player I have ever played with. And he said, man, you were smoking too!

Another great player I enjoyed working with was Guitar Shorty [David Kearney, known for his explosive performances, of whom Billboard magazine said, “Righteous shuffles…blistering, sinuous guitar solos”], who was very, very supportive. We did a gig with him at the Monaghan Blues Festival. Peter Green had just re-emerged onto the scene with his Splinter Group. Peter was top of the bill and we were on before him. Peter was a big fan of Guitar Shorty, so he just pulled up a chair and sat at the side of the stage watching.

Now Shorty was a very, very exciting, visceral player and his big trick was to do a somersault whilst playing a solo. He never missed a note! Don’t ask me how he did it! I mean, it was jaw-dropping. And Peter was sitting at the side of the stage watching this, and when he did it, Peter got up open-mouthed and called the rest of his band over to see it!

Gary
Obviously, the music you love is the blues and jazz. What is it that draws you to this music, Ronnie?

Ronnie
Well, the soulfulness of it and just the visceral quality. Something Mojo Buford, Muddy’s harmonica player said quite frequently – if you don’t like the blues, you got a hole in your soul.

So, I mean, that’s what it’s all about. Now jazz is a more sort of specialized thing. But the blues is such an infectious kind of music. How could you not like it?  

It’s a simple form of music. It’s a simple thing that anybody can basically have a go at. But as Chris Barber [legendary English jazz band leader] put it, the big problem with the blues is that anybody can have a go at playing it, but playing it right is another story.

Gary
Ronnie, I’ve talked to quite a number of artists who would now be in their seventies. People like Rory Block, Eric Bibb, Maria Muldaur, and I usually ask them about the process of getting older and their enthusiasm or otherwise for the music and for playing live. And it’s always very interesting to hear their undiminished enthusiasm. What is it that keeps Ronnie Greer going?

Ronnie
Well, it’s in your soul, your DNA. But. As you get older, it’s not the performance, it’s the other stuff that goes around it – you know, getting the gear in and out and so on. But once you start to play, everything else feels insignificant. Humphrey Litttleton [legendary English jazz musician] once said, “I’m getting old now. All my guys in the band are a lot older, and we’ve all got health issues – but once we start to play, Dr. Gig takes care of it.”

For readers in Ireland, you can catch Ronnie playing over the next couple of months:

• Regular slots: American Bar, second Saturday afternoon of every month, with John McCullough and Ken Haddock
• international Blues in the Bay, Warrenpoint, Thursday 20^th May
• Courtyard Theatre, Ballyearl, 3^rd June
• Guinness Blues Café, Deer’s Head, Belfast City Blues Festival, 24^th June
• Open House Festival, Walled Garden, Bangor, 20^th August.

Fabrizio Poggi’s Got Blues in his Basement

Fabrizio Poggi is one of Europe’s premier blues musicians. An accomplished harmonica player, Fabrizio is a Grammy Awards nominee, has been twice nominated for Blues Music Awards, and has received the Hohner Lifetime Award. During a long career he has recorded twenty-two albums and has performed in the US and Europe with a who’s who of blues royalty, including the likes of the Blind Boys of Alabama, Mavis Staples, Charlie Musselwhite, Ronnie Earl, John P. Hammond, Marcia Ball, Guy Davis, and Eric Bibb, 

He has a new album out called Basement Blues, which culls thirteen songs from his recent archives, including originals and covers of classic blues and gospel songs. It’s a real treat and I was glad to get chatting to Fabrizio recently from his home in Lombardy in the north of Italy.

Gary
Congratulations, Fabrizio, on the new album. It sounds great. Can you tell us a little bit about it because I think a lot of the songs have been recorded some time ago, but you’ve put them together in this great album?

Fabrizio
It all started with my wife Angelina. Last year on Valentine’s Day, she gave me a copy of the The Basement Tapes with Bob Dylan and the band. And she said to me, why don’t you do something like the Basement Tapes? Now of course I can’t do the Basement Tapes! But something started to work. inside my mind and I thought, maybe I have got something in the archives, in my own basement that can be useful <laughs>.

You know, Gary, I don’t like to listen to myself very much, but I listened to some of these older recordings and thought, oh, hey, that isn’t too bad! And I was asking myself why I didn’t put these songs onto a record.

So I discovered that I have a lot of songs that people might like to listen to. And these songs go back 15 years. I have a lot of studio recordings from America. Maybe we were just warming up – we weren’t focused – okay, this is just a warm up, but don’t throw it away. But it’s not for the official record, you know?

So little by little, I had collected a lot of songs and when I went into the studio to put everything together, they sounded OK! I discovered that I’ve got a pretty good record! And my friends, other musicians, people told me these songs aren’t just outtakes. These are songs that deserve to be heard by people that love your music.

Gary
Yeah, they’re all great. I mean, it hangs together as an album really well, actually. And, there are no songs that you wanna skip over and think, no, that’s a bit of a filler. They’re all strong performances.

And you have some excellent collaborators on the album. Obviously, Guy Davis is there, and he always sounds great. But you’ve got Garth Hudson, who played with The Band?

Fabrizio
He was one of the five guys from Canada. This album of mine came from thinking about Bob Dylan and The Band in the woods. And Garth recorded with me on two albums. So I listened to one of the outtakes and it’s interesting because here Garth seems to be playing very freely. So, maybe it’s time to let people listen to it. He is always a genius and all the stuff that he plays on John the Revelator – unbelievable and unexpected!

Gary
You’re right, it does sound fresh. And another musician whose work I enjoyed on the album is your guitarist Enrico Polverari.

Fabrizio
Enrico a very good guitarist, who has been playing with me for 12 years. And he is growing all the time as a musician. On this album he’s playing much more acoustic guitar than before. But speaking of guitarists, we also have Ronnie Earl on electric on two of the songs.

Gary
When you mention Ronnie Earl, Fabrizio, you have played with a great number of other top musicians throughout your career, haven’t you? I mean if you listed them all out, I think anybody’s jaws would drop. They would be going, wow! You’ve had that opportunity, haven’t you?

Fabrizio
Yes. I feel very blessed. You know, a lot of these great musicians I ended up playing with were real heroes for me. So it was really a double treat to me, because the beautiful thing is not only to play with this great musician, but when you play with someone like that, you improve. Sometimes a lot. Just to be in the same room and be jamming together. Something happens inside you and you improve a lot. You grow.

And the other beautiful thing about these experiences is that with most of them, we became friends, like, brothers. Maybe we don’t see each other very often. But in some way, when we reach out to each other it’s like if we’ve just seen each other yesterday.

Gary
Of course, a lot of that is down to your musical expertise. But there’s a lot of that I guess, Fabrizio, is down to your warmth as a person.

Fabrizio
Well, I don’t know. But thank you for the compliment. I always think that the best way to approach other people is always to be honest and transparent. And very respectful.

Especially in the beginning. So, if you act like that, if you don’t pretend to be something else, they can feel it. We maybe were born in different countries, have different languages, different culture, but we have the same emotion. And sometimes these things are easy to share because music really is an international language. So, I don’t know if I have a special talent but everything has come in a very natural way. And don’t forget that, I have to be honest. I have my secret weapon, Angelina!

[Angelina, Fabrizio’s wife, is a very talented photographer and author. Her recently published book, Volevo Fare La Deejay, traces her life from a childhood in rural Italy with very restricted expectations of her, to her life in music along with Fabrizio and her art.]

Gary
Let me ask you this. Of all these musical heroes that you’ve had an opportunity to play with, are there any that stand out for perhaps their warmth in the interaction that you’ve had with them. Are there one or two that are particularly memorable for you?

Fabrizio
It’s easy for me to say people like Guy Davis. I had a good feeling also with Eric Bibb. And, I remember when I met Mavis Staples some twenty years ago, it was so easy and she was so approachable. I remember the two or three times that I met her we chatted about everything for maybe 30 minutes just waiting for the sound check. One time in Lucerne, me and Guy were opening for her. And Guy would always tease me – he said that his soundcheck had to wait because Fabrizio is busy chatting with his Aunt Mavis! <laughs>.

Gary
That’s wonderful. Obviously the album is essentially a blues album, but you started off with a gospel song, Tommy Dorsey’s Precious Lord, Take My Hand. Is that a special song for you, Fabrizio?

Fabrizio
Yes. Very special. And, you know, it’s a very moving story. I read many years ago, how Tommy Dossey came to write Precious Lord. [In 1938, while Dorsey was out of town, his wife died in childbirth and then tragically, their son died hours later. Wracked with grief, Dorsey sat at a piano and wrote the song.]

So, the other night, I dedicated Precious Lord, Take My Hand to my sister. [Fabrizio’s sister passed away very recently at a relatively young age.] We weren’t really thinking of opening the CD with this song, but everyone in the studio, said no, this song has to open the album. And Enrico said our version sounds as if Thomas Dorsey wrote the song in Mississippi!

Gary
Yes, it’s a very bluesy version that you’ve done. And I love the vocals that you have on it. It actually works very well. It’s a really nice arrangement.

Fabrizio
Thank you. In fact, I asked Enrico – don’t play minor chords. Just a few notes to support my harmonica and my talking vocals. Just play as if Son House one day woke up and said, I want to play and sing Precious Lord, Take My Hand. And it seems that people that don’t listen much to gospel or spiritual music like it very much. So I’m very happy.

Gary
I thought it was really interesting that the next song you have is Little Red Rooster, which is with Guy Davis singing and it’s great. But I thought it was really interesting because, in the southern states, they talk about, you know, Saturday night and Sunday morning – singing the Blues on Saturday night, and then singing a hymn on Sunday morning. Well, you’ve kind of reversed it on, on your album. You’ve got Sunday Morning first!

Fabrizio
Oh, yeah! <laughs> That’s perfect, man.

Gary
Now let me ask you about this. There’s one song which is Blues for Charlie. And that’s an instrumental, isn’t it? So, what is that about?

Fabrizio
Charlie is Charlie Musselwhite whom I imitate a little bit. I had two songs that I had given to the Blues Foundation where royalties or sales could be given to poor musicians that live in bad situations. But I had a couple of versions very similar to the ones that were on that CD, where I mixed them a little differently and changed the title and they were perfect. That’s Blues for Charlie and Boogie for John Lee Hooker.

Gary
Fabrizio, obviously these are blues songs. It’s the blues that you mostly play. But you play some gospel as well. But on the last song on the album, there’s a great line that says, if you don’t love the blues, you’ve got a hole in your soul. So why is that? What is it about the blues that is so important to you?

Fabrizio
Well, the blues, to quote Charlie Musselwhite, overtook me when I was a teenager. It’s hard to explain but it was love at the first time. The blues had arrived with Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones. But what impacted me was when I went to this little movie theater here in the south of Lombardi, and I saw Muddy Waters and listened to Paul Butterfield on harmonica.

Wow! It was really something, and I said, this is what I want to play. I wanna be like them. “If you don’t like the blues, you have a hole in your soul” was something that I saw written in an old record store in Arkansas. I thought it was a beautiful phrase. Of course, it is a sort of joke, if you don’t like the blues your soul is okay!

So I saw Muddy Water all those years ago playing in the film, The Last Waltz. I had seen the poster which mentioned Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Eric Clapton. Van Morrison. But there were other people I didn’t know at all, like The Band. At a certain point in the concert, Robbie Robertson says, ladies and gentlemen…Muddy Waters. And I saw this old black guy coming on the stage. And all the musicians who are much younger are treating him like the emperor of the world.

And I was wondering, who’s that black man that everyone is treating like a king? And when he started to sing, I said, Oh, now I know, now I understand why they treated him like that!

Photo: John Bull

And then the next day, I went to a record store to buy a harmonica to play the blues. And the man at the store said, I don’t know anything about playing the blues with harmonica! So, I began a journey to find the right instrument. All my friends teased me: You wanna play harmonic, why don’t you play drums or guitar like everyone else? In and around my town, no one played the harmonica. It took me probably six months to figure out which was the right instrument.

And then there’s the question of technique. Of course, nowadays, on Google, you can find tutorials in one second, or less. At that time, I was working as a labourer in a factory. I worked a lot, I ate a lot. I had a lot of anger, a lot of frustration. And when I was listening to a Muddy Waters song, or a John Lee Hooker song, I didn’t understand a word, not even the title of the song. But there was something that in some way seemed connected to my own dissatisfaction.

I felt lonely. All my friends had gone to the university. And I was in a factory working shifts. I was very frustrated. But that’s the magic of the blues. That was 35 or 40 years ago, but it was really another world. So when I started to listen to the blues, I didn’t understand the words. But when I listened to B.B. King or John the Revelator, it didn’t matter. It was something that touched my aching soul. It was enough.

You can have your own lyrics in your mind. The music, the way that the singer sings the song, it’s enough. Of course, if you understand the lyrics it is much better. So at one point I said to myself, okay, Fabrizio, if you like American music, you have to improve your English, because I hadn’t studied English at school. And so I started to translate songs and I started to travel. And of course, the more you travel the more you need to speak English. But that’s how you improve.

Gary
You mentioned getting started with the harmonica, and as you say, you didn’t have YouTube tutorials. You didn’t have Adam Gussow. So how did you learn, how did you learn about sucking and blowing and cross harp and so on? How did you learn all that?

Fabrizio
Well, for six months, I tried to follow the records. Trying to sound bluesy, but it doesn’t work – because I was playing in first position. Then one time I went to a club to listen a local band, and at the end of the show, I got talking to the guitar player. And I told him I had this harmonica, and I said to this guy, I’m quitting. And he told me it doesn’t sound like the blues because you have to play in second position. So, he explained, if the key of the blues song is E you have to use a harmonica in A. So the next day I tried, and although it took me years and years, in some way, I had seen the light.

Gary
Well, are there a couple of harmonica players of the past, or indeed the present, that are your heroes, whose style of playing that you particularly enjoy?

Fabrizio
Well, Charlie Musselwhite has been a great influence. He taught me to experiment, to find my own voice. He was the man. And of course, one month I was listening to James Cotton, the next month Sonny Boy Williamson. And James Cotton has been a big influence on me, and I saw him play live may maybe twelve times.

Gary:
I saw that Basement Blues is in loving memory of Claudio Noseda, who died last year. Tell me about Claudio.

Fabrizio
He was in the band with us for three or four years during the time we recorded Spaghetti Juke Joint. He was a keyboard player, piano player. Very good. And last summer, he left this world. Sadly, he doesn’t appear in any song on the album, but I wanted to pay tribute to him.

Gary
So finally, as you look forward to 2023, Fabrizio, do you have any major tours or festivals or things lined up?

Fabrizio
I would like to go back to the US maybe next fall, and tour with an American musician or maybe just me and Enrico. In April, I have a short tour in Belgium and Holland. This past year was pretty tough because in February I lost my mother and then I lost my sister. But I’m very happy Basement Blues has reached a lot of people and I’ve had a lot of compliments – which I’ve really needed. I’m very happy because a lot of people have contacted me on WhatsApp or Facebook, saying I bought the record and I’m really enjoying it.

Gary
It’s a great achievement. You should be very proud. Thank you, Fabrizio.

Basement Blues is on the Appaloosa Records label and is available to stream on Amazon, Apple and the other streaming services. The CD version can be obtained from the shop at Appaloosa Records at https://www.appaloosarecords.it/shop/Fabrizio-Poggi-Basement-Blues-p510970164

Great Blues Albums: Eric Clapton, Unplugged

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.

Great Blues Albums: Muddy Waters, The Real Folk 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.

25 Blues Slide Guitar Songs You Must Hear

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.]

A Blues Odyssey, Part 3: The Mississippi Delta

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.

As somebody famously once said, “I’ll be back!”

BBC, the blues and the gospel

Here’s a 12 minute interview I did with the BBC about my book, The Gospel According to the Blues.

Just click on the picture below…

BBC Radio Interview with Gary Burnett

You can get a copy of the book in either Kindle or paperback edition at Amazon.

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

 

Muddy Waters: taking the bitter with the sweet

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 – I’m a Man, M-A-N

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 Boy on 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.