“It’s an act of cinematic resurrection if ever there was one. You might even call it a miracle.” (Washington post)
I watched the movie Amazing Grace last night, which shows the creation of the 29-year-old Aretha Franklin’s gospel album, Amazing Grace, recorded over two nights in 1972 in front of a live congregation and accompanied by the Southern California Community Choir in the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts, Los Angeles. The album was hugely successful, winning the 1973 Grammy Award for Best Soul Gospel Performance, selling over 2m copies in the US alone and effectively re-inserting black gospel into the American mainstream.
The film was never released because of difficulties syncing the audio with the video. The film was relegated to the vault at Warner Bros. and despite producer Elliott successfully syncing it and paring it down to 87 minutes in length, Franklin resisted it being released. It was only after her death in 2018, that her family agreed to release the film.
Quite simply the movie is extraordinary – riveting, inspirational and deeply emotional. I felt like I was right there, transported back nearly five decades, mesmerized by the power of the gospel music, the musical talent of James Cleveland, the musical director and pianist, and the young choir director, Alexander Hamilton and the fabulous choir – and, of course, by the wonder of Aretha Franklin’s singing. Jon Landau at the time described her singing as “a virtuoso display of imagination.”
But it wasn’t just her voice – it was the evident feeling she had for the music and the lyrics. Her father, invited to say a few words, related an incident when he took some clothes into the laundry, when someone he met commented on how glad she was to hear his daughter was going back to the church to sing. By this stage, the 29 year-old Aretha had had a string of hits, won multiple Grammys, and was a household name. “Truth is,” he said, “she never left the church.” So much was clear by the passion with which she sang Carole King’s You’ve Got a Friend, now amended to refer to Jesus, which then ran seamlessly into Precious Lord, Take My Hand. Introduced by Rev. James Cleveland, intoning, “And Jesus said, call my name, I’ll be there,” Aretha begins to sing slowly, with a sparse organ and piano accompaniment, encouraging the congregation to “close your eyes…and meditate on him.” As the piano chords segue into Precious Lord, and the choir launches in, it really is the most spine-tingling experience. I admit to the tears slipping down my cheeks at this point.
And then there is the scene toward the end of the movie, where, after a stirring performance of Never Grow Old with Aretha accompanying herself on piano, and a short follow up sermonette by Cleveland, Aretha asks for the microphone and, in a startling moment, launches into an unaccompanied I’m Glad I Got Religion, singing a verse, before proceeding to urge the choir into action and then, in an electrifying turn, sings directly toward the choir, with her back to the congregation. It looked entirely unrehearsed, as if Franklin was truly feeling at home, back in the church, and feeling the Spirit move her.
Atlantic engineer, Gene Paul, who worked on Amazing Grace, said he saw producer Jerry Wexler “looking at her like she was really in her place.”
Franklin herself didn’t seem to think she’d moved away from the church. A year after she’d begun singing in nightclubs in 1961, she had written in a black newspaper, “I don’t think that in any manner I did the Lord a disservice when I made up my mind…to switch over.” She went on to say, “After all, the blues is a music born out of the slavery day sufferings of my people. Every song in the blues vein has a story to tell…I think that because true democracy hasn’t overtaken us here that we as a people find the original blues songs still have meaning for us.”
One song, a particular favourite of mine on the album, which didn’t make it into the movie, is Robert Fryson’s Give Yourself to Jesus. The song was the first single after the release of the album. It closes the first side of the original LP and wasn’t one of the traditional gospel songs Franklin grew up with – it’s got a more modern gospel feel to it, more akin to an Andre Crouch song. It’s an incredibly moving piece, with Franklin reciting the words of the 23rd Psalm in the middle of the song, as the choir “oohs” in harmony behind her. As you listen to this, it’s impossible to think of Franklin without faith in the words.
The interplay between Franklin and the choir throughout Amazing Grace is a thing of wonder. James Cleveland was the musical director and for some considerable time had been the preeminent name in the production of gospel music. He was a hugely talented musician, a wonderful pianist, soulful singer who could rock churches wherever he went. and had produced a prodigious number of successful gospel albums. Cleveland’s piano playing, much in evidence in the concert, is truly virtuosic, tugging at people’s emotions and undergirding and interplaying with Franklin’s vocals. For Amazing Grace, he worked with the youthful Alexander Hamilton, one of his circle of talented musicians, who prepared the choir with intensive drills. Hamilton had written musical scores at the age of six, studied classical music and accompanied Mahalia Jackson. Along with a group of outstanding backing musicians, the foundations were laid for the precision and musicality needed to underpin Aretha Franklin’s singing.
Throughout the performance, Aretha Franklin said little – the speaking parts come from Rev. Cleveland and her father. Was it her well-documented shyness, or simply a sense that it was enough to speak through her luminous singing? Franklin at this stage was one of the most popular and influential singers in the world, but was content to collaborate with the choir and the other members of Cleveland’s working band. To be sure, at the end of the movie, when all the words have fallen to the ground, Aretha’s glorious, inspirational singing resonates on.
Franklin’s Amazing Grace album has been frequently overlooked in her back catalogue, despite it being the biggest selling disc in her career. In Mary J. Blige’s tribute in the Rolling Stone issue in 2008 that named Franklin as the greatest singer of the rock era, the album wasn’t mentioned. And only one song from it was included in the 4-disc compilation released in 1992, Queen of Soul: The Atlantic Recordings. This movie surely redresses the balance. Amazing Grace actually was a very important album that “touched on social and political changes far outside” the doors of the church in which it was recorded” (Aaron Cohen). A friend of Franklin’s, poet Nikki Giovanni, suggested that the title track, (some 11 minutes long) tied together Franklin’s personal history, the state of black America at the time and an image of composer John Newton’s change from being a slaver and human trafficker. “Aretha is just so key to everything: she too is saying, “We have to change…It’s time to change. We can no longer do what we did. And she’s going to be the person to reach generations. She’s going back to my mother, my grandmother, and she’s going to go forward.”
Amazing Grace showed a black icon at home in that traditional black home – the church. In a recent New Yorker article, Emily Lordi points out that Franklin’s concert in New Temple Missionary Baptist Church ought to be seen in the context of the 1965 riots/rebellion in Watts and other black cities across America, and the numerous black deaths of previous years, of which Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination was the most visible, and that “black people continued to ask whether America could be a home. The black church continued to serve the function it has long served: as an alternative site in which to create one.”
The music – and now the film which draws renewed attention to it – had wide resonance in the black community and beyond, bringing Gospel music into the mainstream, a recognised part of America’s musical heritage, part of the foundation that would eventually give rise to rock ‘n roll. But in watching this movie, there’s more to it than that. Gospel music is both music and lyrics. The chord changes, the musical dynamics, the soaring voices all make it what it is – but so too do the inspirational and faith-filled lyrics. The very word gospel literally means “good news” and that is the essence of gospel songs. “I once was lost, but now am found” – that belonging that Aretha found in the church; “what a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear;” “Precious Lord take my hand…I am tired, I am weak, I am lone.” These all speak profoundly of the human condition – but more than that, to the fact that we need not be alone, because of the presence of God, and the possibility of redemption. In that lies the enduring power of gospel, of Amazing Grace.
Gary Clark Jr’s This Land is the Texas bluesman’s third studio album and without a doubt his best. Seventeen tracks where he cleverly and successfully fuses a number of styles from rock, R&B, hip-hop and soul, with a dash of reggae on Feeling Like a Million, and punk on Gotta Get Something. In bringing the blues bang up to date, he seems to be living up to his reply a while back when asked, “What do you want to be?” and he said, “Snoop Dogg meets John Lee Hooker.” Clark is never too far from his blues roots in the album, though, with the Robert Johnson fuelled Dirty Dishes Blues, and the album’s general underpinning. It’s exhilarating stuff, each song something of a revelation on first encounter and then hugely enjoyable on subsequent listens. Pink Cadillac, where Clark channels his inner Prince, is a sophisticated, full production pop number and The Guitar Man is a thorough-going toe-tapper, with an echo of eighties R&B.
Musically, it sounds fresh and alive, driven, though not dominated by, Clark’s always outstanding guitar work and his sweet vocals. Lyrically most of the songs ruminate on themes like marriage, fatherhood, life on the road and success. But importantly Clark hasn’t held back from making some rather direct political and social points on some of the songs, particularly What About Us, Feed the Babies and the title track.
He kicks off the album with This Land, a powerful, blues-soaked howl of protest about racism in the United States. The song was prompted by Clark’s own encounter with a neighbour is Texas who wondered how Clark could possibly own such a large plot of land. Clark says he’s “right in the middle of Trump country,” with a neighbour who “can’t wait to call the police on me.” It’s shocking in today’s world to hear the chorus of ‘N—- run, n—- run, Go back where you come from, We don’t want, we don’t want your kind,” the edginess matched by the furious music and the Hendrix-esque guitar work. Clark’s expletive-laced anger cries out “I’m America’s son, This is where I came from.”
A 2019 Pew Research Center study found that more than 150 years after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States, most U.S. adults say the legacy of slavery continues to have an impact on the position of black people in American society today. More than 40% say the country hasn’t made enough progress toward racial equality, and there is scepticism, particularly among blacks, that black people will ever have equal rights with whites, More than 80% of black adults say the legacy of slavery affects the position of black people in America today. (check out our interview with Birds of Chicago’s Allison Russell about the album Songs of Our Native Daughters which is entirely about slavery and its on-going legacy).
The evidence indicates that black people are treated less fairly than whites in hiring, pay and promotions; when applying for a loan or mortgage; in stores or restaurants; when voting in elections; and when seeking medical treatment. That’s even without discussing the problem of interaction with police forces.
A recent New York Times article cited research that shows the United States tolerates a widening chasm between the very rich few and the many with low incomes. And that the burden of poverty falls heaviest on African-Americans and other people of colour. The median white family has more than 40 times the wealth of the median African-American family and 22 times more wealth than the median Latino family. And things are getting worse, not better: the proportion of black families with zero or negative wealth rose by 8.5% to 37% between 1983 and 2016.
In her article, Courtney Martin asks why people of colour do not have more money. The answer she and others give is what she calls the country’s original sins: colonization and slavery. There’s a strong case that closing the racial wealth gap is about addressing these historic injustices monetarily – check out Trevor Noah’s segment on “The Daily Show” – but as Edgar Villanueva, author of Decolonizing Philanthropy says, “We have to be willing to examine the dark realities of what led us to this imbalance in the first place.”
The Pew Research said that most Americans (65%) say it has become more common for people to express racist or racially insensitive views since Trump was elected president. A recent Vox article tracks Trumps history of racist controversies from the 1970s onward concludes that “At the very least, Trump has a history of playing into people’s racism to bolster himself.” Hence Clark’s reference to “Trump country” in This Land. He told Rolling Stone Magazine, “I think it’s only right at this point in time, if you have a microphone louder than others, to speak out about that anger…I haven’t been through s*** compared to my people. But if I can do anything with my opportunity, and say thank you to Dr. Martin Luther King for sacrificing your life so that I can have a microphone … that’s the least I can do.”
It’s certainly a powerful statement of protest, heightened by the video accompanying the song, featuring images of nooses, fire and Confederate flags. Terrific album and a challenging title track.
“It’s easy to love this duo’s brand of barnstorming blues.”
Larkin Poe are the Lovell sisters from Atlanta, Georgia. “I’m not Larkin, and she’s not Poe,” quipped Rebecca Lovell during their sold-out gig at Inchyra Arts Club near Perth, Scotland. Larkin Poe, rather, is an ancestor of the sisters and relative of the famed author Edgar Allan Poe. Rebecca and Megan, formally trained musically, got into bluegrass in their teens and, after forming the band, have developed their own distinctive sound which is a unique blues-based Americana rock. Adept at taking traditional blues and bringing them bang up-to-date at the same time, the pair are exceptional musicians, wonderful singers and high-powered performers. And, as we discovered in an interview with Larkin Poe before the gig – thoroughly nice people, who give thoughtful consideration to the roots tradition that underpins their music.
Photo: Robbie Klein
The band played at a most unusual venue – a refurbished cattle byre in a sprawling country estate in Scotland, Inchyra Arts Club. With a vaulted timber roof, hard wood floors and original wood used wherever possible, it’s got great acoustics and can pack in around 600 people. It’s a unique, welcoming space and made for a great atmosphere to welcome the Lovell sisters and their band.
Broadcaster Lins Honeyman, from The Gospel Blues Train radio show and I had the opportunity to interview Larkin Poe and then attend the gig. Here’s what we learned:
This was a performance full of energy, passion and joy from the opening Trouble in Mind (not the traditional version, by any means!) to the glorious Robert Johnson Come On In My Kitchen The Lovell sisters and the two other members of their band didn’t hold back throughout the whole captivating set. They seemed to be enjoying it just as much as the packed crowd, with smiles aplenty from the duo and plenty of chit-chat to engage the audience from live-wire Rebecca.
Walking through the audience while playing scorching lap steel slide guitar is quite a trick and one which Megan Lovell pulled off with some aplomb, much to the delight of the Inchrya fans, who quickly whipped out their mobile phones to record and photograph. I’ve only seen this done a few times, most notably Buddy Guy – and it sure is a crowd pleaser.
As I listened to Venom and Faith (the band’s latest acclaimed album) in the safe confines of my car, I tried to categorize it – is it blues, Americana, rock or even at times pop? In the full throttle, ear-bending cauldron of Inchyra Arts Club, with the hair-flinging, guitar-slinging, leather-jacketed Rebecca, and the searing sounds of Meghan’s slide guitar, there was no doubt that this was rock music. Blues-infused, genuine, old-fashioned, full-bodied, head-banging, modern rock. Glorious.
The banjo can hold its head up in a rock concert. Yes, really. It featured in two songs, fully amped up, California King and John the Revelator, with a banjo solo taking pride of place in the latter. In the middle of all this high-energy, full-throated rock concert, we get a banjo solo!
Megan Lovell is a terrific slide guitarist. A classically-trained violinist, she took up playing slide guitar as a teenager and, boy, she can make that thing sing. Nothing like some lap steel slide to conjure up the ghosts of the old Delta blues masters.
You can successfully talk about something serious in a rock concert. Before launching in to Mad as Hatter, Rebecca Lovell appealed for a more sympathetic attitude toward mental illness, and dementia in particular, talking about her own family experience. For those of us who have seen the devastating effects of dementia in their family, it was really something to hear:
Time is a thief It’ll steal into bed and rob you while you sleep You’ll never feel it It pulls off the covers, and rifles through your head Then you’ll wait to find you can’t remember what you just said.
Larkin Poe is firmly underpinned by the blues. They played Leadbelly’s Black Betty, Son House’s Preachin’ Blues, Willie Johnson’s John the Revelator and the superbly reworked Hard Time Killing Floor Blues from Skip James. The band is respectful of the tradition, but not bound by it and their versions of these classic songs are some of the very best I’ve heard.
If you can ever get to Scotland, be sure and make you way to the Inchyra Arts Club. More importantly, check out the incredibly talented Larkin Poe.
Luther Allison, Koko Taylor, Professor Longhair, Albert Collins, Johnny Winter, Elvin Bishop, Shemekia Copeland, Marcia Ball, Tommy Castro – just some of the star-studded cast of blues artists that Bruce Iglauer has worked with and have appeared on the record label he founded nearly fifty years ago.
Alligator Records has been a vital part of blues history over that period, and Iglauer has been at the forefront of promoting the blues, discovering new artists, and investing in the careers of established artists. He’s been a record company owner, record producer, record promoter, booking agent and tour manager along the way, as well as encourager and confidante to many of the Alligator artists, whom he counts as part of the family.
Bitten by the Blues is the story of Bruce Iglauer’s journey, the story of Alligator Records and, in many ways, the story of urban blues since the early ‘70s. It’s a hugely enjoyable insight into the world of the blues, the larger-than-life personalities of the artists, and what it takes to found and sustain a record label over several decades. When we spoke to Bruce Iglauer about the book, he told us:
“I didn’t want it to be for a completely specialized blues fan audience, and I certainly didn’t want it to be academic. I wanted to share my excitement about the music and the artists with a more general audience. I also thought/hoped that the business story (which was expanded at the request of our publisher, University of Chicago Press), would intrigue people who like this sort of American success story. Obviously the music that I love is quintessentially American, and it’s hard to imagine building a small business recording blues anywhere else. I just got an email from someone who was given the book and was inspired to start listening to the artists who were featured. If that’s the result, it’s a success!”
The book rips along at a nice pace and I found myself drawn in, wanting to know what happened next at every turn. It’s very detailed about incidents, people, dates and recording sessions, but these are part of a richly told story and contribute to a cohesive narrative. I did wonder, however, how Iglauer was able to remember everything. Maybe he kept a journal along the way?
“No,” he told me, “I just have a very good memory, at least for the most dramatic events of my career. In my life, I’ve been surrounded by very colourful and talented people and they made an indelible mark on me. It’s easy to remember talking with Howlin’ Wolf, because in my wildest dreams I never thought that could happen.”
Early in the book, he recalls traveling to Chicago in 1966 and hearing Mississippi Fred McDowell playing and he said it changed his life. I asked him why it had such an impact on him.
“That’s hard to explain. All I can say is that the music seemed so honest, so unvarnished, so direct, and it seemed like he was almost stripping himself naked emotionally. There was no pretence, no “show business.” He opened the door to his life and I was able to look in. Plus, he had probably lived a harder life than anyone I ever knew, and you could hear the strength that he got from living that live, and feel the wounds and the scar tissue. Blues is some of the happiest music on earth, but it’s happiness borne from overcoming pain, so the pain should be in the music too. That’s what I heard in Fred, though my response was a gut response, not an intellectual one. I felt this was music for me.”
The first band Iglauer signed and recorded, at a stage when he was a young blues fan in Chicago was Hound Dog Taylor and the House Rockers. He lovingly recounts his encounters with Hound Dog live performances and his subsequent first recording sessions. And he talks about the music being “infectious.” Which is maybe not the first word some people think of when they hear the word “the blues.”
But says Iglauer, “I think the easiest way to explain this is to listen to their music. It’s full of energy, danceable grooves, raw vocals, intense guitar—just the things that made early rock ‘n’ roll so appealing. And when they slowed it down, the catharsis that real blues engenders is right in front of the listener. And you can hear how much fun these three guys had playing together. If you can’t feel Hound Dog Taylor & The HouseRockers, and if they don’t make you smile, you’ve got a hole in your soul!”
Hound Dog Taylor
The story of Iglauer arriving in Chicago, working for Delmark Records in the basement of the Jazz Record Mart, and discovering the clubs and the artists who worked them, occupies the early chapters of the book and I wondered, what was it like, as a young white guy, a hippie, as Iglauer described himself, trying to engage with artists on the blues scene in Chicago in the 70s?
“Actually, not very difficult. The whole Chicago blues scene at the beginning of the ‘70s was on the South and West Sides of the city, and the audience was 99% black. The white people who came to the blues clubs were enthralled by the music and its creators. We weren’t neighbourhood people dropping in for a beer. We were fans. These were mostly not famous musicians, and they were pleased to have fans, especially ones who came to clubs that were in parts of the city that might be perceived as hostile to them. After I became a “record man,” there was a certain amount of suspicion of me, but when it became known that I paid royalties and welcomed musicians into my home (which was also my office), I was generally well accepted. Of course, I had to learn to speak with a Mississippi accent!”
As well as a music story, Bitten by the Blues is also a riveting story about business start-up and development, and, as with any business, you not only need a good product, you need good marketing and a huge dollop of hard work. I loved the account of Iglauer’s tenaciousness when he was trying to promote his first Alligator recordings – having signed the artist and overseen the recording and production, he drives to various radio stations in different cities to ensure radio play and doggedly contacts magazine journalists – hugely time-consuming, but the sort of effort that serious marketing requires. He carefully thought through his target audience and how best to reach them (at that time progressive rock radio, rock-oriented publications) and he was the first person marketing blues to that audience specifically.
“I also had to learn the existing ‘ropes’ – working with distributors, working with retailers, collecting money, dealing with financial issues, etc. A lot of it was my refusal to give up, and my willingness to work almost every moment. I never did learn engineering, though. I always found engineers who could hear like I do.
“As far as my “early success,” my success was pretty much just with Hound Dog. I sold enough Big Walter Horton albums to break even, and Son Seals, a complete unknown, was a money-loser for me. Still, part of the reason for my money-losses was that I was manufacturing and giving away literally thousands of promo LPs to radio, press and for in-store play. I could have had a much more modest label, but then I never would have reached the audience I was going after.”
One of the artists whom Bruce eventually signed was Luther Allison, but his history with Allison went all the way back pre-Alligator and he recounts a fascinating incident about trying to get Allison to sign an agreement for a new album with Delmark, which Allison declined to do. In the book, Iglauer said “I was unable to forgive Luther.” And it wasn’t until 20 years later that that relationship was repaired. I wondered about that…
“I was very hurt by Luther’s not being honest with me and leaving me so vulnerable. I could have, and probably should have, lost my job at Delmark because of him. I’m glad we made up but I never forgot what he did to me because he was just looking out for himself. It always kept some distance between us. I was happy to work with him but we didn’t become real friends. Still, people change and I accept that he was a different man in the 1990s than he was in the early 1970s.”
As I considered the colourful history of Alligator Records and Iglauer’s leadership over many years, I asked him if he had any regrets, looking back.
“Obviously, failing to hear the originality in Stevie Ray Vaughan and Robert Cray, both of whom I could have signed, makes me kick myself. Mostly, even though I’m a risk-taker, I’m sorry I didn’t take more risks on more unknown or developing artists, even though I’ve had plenty of failures (when I say failures, I mean financial failures, not artistic failures, though I’ve had some of them too) with unknown artists. Some worked out well, like Son Seals and Saffire – The Uppity Blues Women and Selwyn Birchwood. Some didn’t, like Michael Hill’s Blues Mob and Corey Harris. Many were mixed results. But I’m very proud of the quality of music on Alligator, and I hope it will stand for decades to come.”
As I read this roller-coaster history, I wondered if the young Bruce Iglauer knew then what he knows now of what was to transpire over the years, all the ups and downs, would he have done what he did?
Authors Iglauer & Roberts
“For sure (though I would have done it better!). There are other people who could have done what I have done with the blues, but no one else chose to do so and was able to combine musical and business and marketing skills in the way I have. There are other excellent producers, other smart business people and certainly there are better marketers than I am. And many of those people would expect or hope to make more money than I ever thought about making. I’m very greedy, but my greed isn’t for money. It’s for being in the studio when a timeless recording is made, or in the audience when an Alligator artist makes that soul-to-soul connection with the listeners, or bringing a good arrangement idea to a rehearsal or encouraging an artist to write a fresh original song. The feelings I get in those situations are way better than money!”
One of the most hair-raising incidents in the book is the story about a train crash in Norway in 1978, during a Son Seals tour of Europe. I’ll not spoil the story for you – read the book! – but suffice it to say, thanks to the efforts of Iglauer and band members, nobody died.
Bruce told me, “It’s the only time in my life I’ve ever been brave; I was pretty sure I was going to die and I wanted to know that I had done the right thing. I could have escaped the train car but not without trapping the other passengers. I wasn’t willing to do that. I had always known since my father’s death that life is very fragile and there are no guarantees for the future. So, accomplishing something every day is necessary.”
Talking of accomplishments, what, I asked him, does he consider his greatest achievements?
“I can’t easily determine which things I’ve done have the most importance or are ‘the greatest’. I feel that Alligator (both myself and my great staff of 14) has been a crucial force in moving the blues forward and developing careers for many worthy artists. Of course that only happens with the artists’ talent and a huge amount of effort on their part. But the most important thing I can do is to assure that the blues will have new artists and new audiences in the future. That’s a continuing goal.”
Although he missed one or two opportunities to sign world-class artists along the way – Stevie Ray Vaughan was a case in point: “I couldn’t hear what made him special,” Bruce admits in the book – Alligator has had more than its fair share of top-class blues artists. What does Iglauer look for in an artist when he is thinking of signing them?
“First, passion. I want to feel the music is pouring from the deepest place inside the musician and that “it’s in him and it’s got to come out” (to quote John Lee Hooker). Originality – does the artist have something fresh to say, or a fresh way to say it? Blues is a traditional music, but you can’t impress me just by doing something that’s already been done. Take the tradition and make your own personal statement from it. Then I look for professionalism – can this person lead a band? (Not the same skill as making music with a band). Are they already advancing their own careers, at least by gigging locally and regionally? Are they capable of national/international touring? Do they have their personal lives together? Do I see a potential for them to continue to grow as artists? And do I feel I can work with them as people? But ultimately it’s a ‘gut’ thing. If it moves me, I’ll often take a chance, whether it’s Son Seals or Lindsay Beaver or Toronzo Cannon or Michael Hill.”
Towards the end of the book, Iglauer discusses the recent developments in the music industry – from CDs to downloads to streaming, and the fact that many of Alligator’s former indie label competitors have given up on the blues. What hope is there, I enquired, for independent labels these days?
“The role of labels, indie and major, keeps changing. However, the reality is that though many artists can afford to record their own music now, and make it available on the Internet and on various streaming and download services, there is little to push listeners to discover their music. The role of the labels can still be to bankroll the recording – which many artists need. The “you can do it yourself on your computer in Dad’s garage” is not a reality for people who can’t afford a computer or software and who don’t have a Dad or a garage, i.e. really poor people). And to create media excitement, get songs on streaming service playlists, help create live performance events, and of course also to manufacture and distribute physical CDs or LPs and get them places like Amazon and into existing stores – for that you need a real label with real distribution and marketing.”
And an active online presence is a vital part of this, using an artist’s website, online marketing, and social media.
Says Iglauer, “A few of the older, better-established artists can get away with not much online presence. For anyone on the way up, using any and every online marketing /communication form is absolutely necessary. First, a website that includes every upcoming date, a well-written bio, downloadable good quality photos and maybe a downloadable poster. Lots of Facebook presence. Post photos with fans all the time. Write about upcoming gigs. Even non-musical things….one of my artists did a FB Live from his kitchen while cooking his favorite dish. The artists must be available to their fans 24/7/365 or they appear to be assholes. I don’t know how anyone has a chance to write a song anymore, they’re so busy responding to online communication or Instagramming photos. But it’s all necessary.”
At the end of the book, Iglauer says, “As I get older and the blues move further from the mainstream of popular music, my mission of bringing forward the key artists of the next generation of blues seems ever more vital.” I wondered how confident he was that this can be done? Is blues now just music for old white people?
Selwyn Birchwood (photo: Allison Morgan)
“I am both confident and concerned. I need to find artists who are rooted in the blues tradition with just copying what’s been done before. Recently we’ve signed 20-year-old Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, and just-over-30 Selwyn Birchwood is working on his third Alligator album. Lindsay Beaver, a recent signing, is 33. But regardless of the artist’s age, I want to hear an artist who has a vision for making blues more contemporary, both in the lyrics and in the musical form. I’d like to hear someone making a real synthesis of blues and hip-hop. I’d like someone exploring new chord changes and song structures for blues, but still incorporating the emotions and the blue notes that are intrinsic to blues. I’m sure that humans need the intense catharsis that the blues (at its best) can stir, and the soul-soothing quality of the blues. But can I find the artists who can convey those things in a way that the modern audience (and the future audience) will feel and understand? I’m not sure, but it’s my mission.”
Bitten by the Blues is a well written and utterly engaging insight into how Alligator grew from a standing start into the largest independent blues record label in the world, with hugely entertaining stories of record deals, live performances, studio recording and the lives of important blues artists. If you’re a blues or roots music fan, or a music fan interesting in a behind the scenes look at the history of the music industry, or have an interest in the story of true entrepreneurship, then Bitten by the Blues is a must-read.
Rhiannon Giddens was recently described as one of the 25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st Century and according to the New York Times “her voice is a perpetually soulful marvel.” She’s an historian, musical social activist, former opera singer, top-notch banjo player, fiddle player, actress, and accomplished song writer. Her recent solo album, Freedom Highway and her collaborative project, Songs of Our Native Daughters, with Allison Russell, Leyla McCalla and Amythyst Kiah bring to centre stage the history of black women in the United States, their suffering and resilience.
Along with Italian pianist and percussionist, Francesco Turrisi, she’s just completed a tour of Ireland. Turrisi, dubbed rightly a “musical alchemist,” is an highly skilled musician who has the deepest knowledge of the history of his music imaginable and is an accomplished raconteur, able to utterly engage his audience between songs.
They played a sold-out Black Box in Belfast, treating the delighted crowd to a feast of eclectic music, charged a times with intense emotion and laced at others with humour.
Here are 7 things we learned from their performance of at the Black Box (actually it could have been 26 things, given the lessons we got during the gig on music history, frame drums, banjos, southern Italian trance dancing and more besides).
1. Rhiannon Giddens is a fabulous singer. Actually, we knew that beforehand, but to hear her live was something else. She’s a trained opera singer, so the control, tone and dynamics are all there. But the timbre, the emotion and the connection she makes with her audience when she sings are all utterly mesmerizing. As for the ability to sing flawlessly in a Puglian dialect…
2. Who knew the history of the frame drum could be so interesting? It dates back to the 7th century BC and there are a huge variety from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, most of which Francesco Turrisi had with him on stage. Well, quite a few anyway. Turrisi’s musical history lessons were never less than fascinating and when he pulled off that tambourine solo, he had us in the palm of his hand. Oh, and did I mention the Iranian Sufi drum which Francesco tuned by means of a bicycle pump?
3. The one string piano is a thing. There it was, right on the stage, the Una Corda, designed by David Klavins, the most unusual piano I’ve ever seen. The hammers hit one string, as opposed to three on a regular piano and it’s only got five, not seven octaves, if you must know. The important thing is that Francesco Turrisi could play that thing. Perhaps the most unexpected turn in the concert was when he sat with his back to us and started to play some 16th century Italian keyboard music, which eventually began to give way to jazzy syncopation. Quite wonderful.
4. Most people think of the banjo as a white person’s country music instrument. Rhiannon Giddens is on a mission to ensure we understand its roots in West Africa and then as an instrument of black slaves. It was eventually popularized in the middle of the nineteenth century throughout the United States and Europe by white performers. Giddens played her nineteenth century replica 5-string minstrel banjo with consummate skill, especially in the contra dance tunes she played in duet with Turrisi on piano accordion. The accuracy of the fast in-unison passages in these were jaw-dropping.
5. Ms Giddens’s song-writing is steeped in the infamous history of African Americans, where she distils the whole horror to an individual’s or family’s experience. The performance of the Purchaser’s Option (from her album Freedom Highway), which tells the story of a young black slave and her baby is horrifyingly effective, and but we heard the strength and resilience of the woman despite the horror as Rhiannon Giddens sang over and over,
You can take my body
You can take my bones
You can take my blood
But not my soul.
6. Despite the intensity of her historical quest and her dismay at the current state of affairs in the United States and elsewhere, Rhiannon Giddens remains incredibly positive. “We need to focus on how beautiful we can be,” on our potential for good, she told us.
7. Towards the end of a remarkable evening of the most eclectic musical elements you could imagine, Rhiannon Giddens sang an old spiritual “I’m Going to Tell God All of my Troubles When I Get Home,” with a simple piano accompaniment. You could have heard a pin drop in the packed Black Box. “When you think the world’s gone crazy, He will see you through…” It was exquisite. And an appropriate hymn to take back into life.
Allison Russell is one half of the acclaimed Americana band, Birds of Chicago, along with her husband, JT Nero. Formerly a member of the Canadian roots act, Po’ Girl, Allison is a talented multi-instrumentalist, singer and song-writer. Birds of Chicago has released three top notch studio albums, including last year’s Love in Wartime, produced by Luther Dickinson and JT.
Paste Magazine called the band an “Americana gospel dream team” after hearing their 2016 Real Midnight album, NPR’s Folk Alley included the album in their top 10 favourite albums of the year. Here at Down at the Crossroads, we had both Real Midnight and Love in Wartime in our top 10 Americana albums of 2016 and 2018 respectively. We said of Love in Wartime, “JT Nero’s and Allison Russell’s vocals and rich harmonies meld wondrously, and the song arrangements are innovative and imaginative while, at the same time, warm and inviting.”
Allison Russell has recently been involved in another project, along with Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah and Leyla McCalla, with an album about to be released. Entitled Songs of Our Native Daughters, the thirteen-track album explores the history of slavery and its legacy, especially from the point of view of black women. It’s a stunning piece of work, a tour de force, musically, lyrically and thematically. Rhiannon Giddens, the driving force behind the album, has said that she sees this album “as a part of a larger movement to reclaim the black female history of this country.”
Gemma and Gary from Down at the Crossroads had a long chat with Allison Russell about Songs of Our Native Daughters. We asked her, first of all, who the major artists involved in the project are and what the album is about.
Allison Russell: Well, it’s a project that was envisioned and produced by Rhiannon Giddens and she invited myself, Layla McCalla, an absolutely fabulous cellist and writer, multi-instrumentalist as well, and Amythyst Kiah, a fabulous writer and multi-instrumentalist to join her for twelve days just outside of Lafayette, Louisiana in the bayou country. We went down to Dirk Powell’s studio there and it began with exploring some reclaimed minstrel tunes and slave songs that Rhiannon had. She really wanted to have modern women of black heritage, writers, to kind of delve into that material and see what came up. And it was really quite brave of her, because we all sort of took a leap of faith, in that we had none of the material for the original songs we wrote for the project. You know, we’d all had some ideas but everything was written in those 12 days, so we would be, you know, literally writing everything with the exception of Momma’s Crying Long. That’s a piece that Rhiannon had written previously but had not found a home for yet. And Amythyst had a couple of verses that were floating around to Blood and Bones but it hadn’t fully formed yet. And so, we had this kind of amazing experience of living together, working together, for twelve days and it was just kind of a creative explosion for each of us. And there are a lot of threads within each of our lives.
We’re all obviously very different musicians and writers with very different backgrounds, but we do have in common the experience of being, you know, visible minorities within a country that is still really struggling with the legacy of racial fear and a reactionary kind of backlash of hatred. Of course, the last couple of years especially, it’s become clear that that’s not laid to rest. That the legacy of slavery is not resting easily by any means yet, in America particularly.
And so, all kinds of things came up. All of us are artists who are working more within a kind of a folk or Americana framework, where we are not the majority within that framework. And so, we’ve each experienced people – usually, I think, meaning well and just not realizing – you know, like being taken for another artist of color, or, the assumption that, oh well we’ve already got one banjo-playing black so we don’t need another one at this festival – that kind of thing. And you think, oh my goodness, can you imagine if that same metric were applied to, you know, white gentlemen that play guitars – it would be ridiculous! You know, we don’t need Bob Dylan, we’ve already got Neil Young. It’s just so silly. It’s just so absurd when you extrapolate it to something that’s more commonly accepted.
So, it was really interesting, where we were all kind of delving into our own histories…I did a lot of reading leading up to it. The name of the project is Songs of Our Native Daughters. It’s a reference to James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son which was his first non-fiction book that was published in 1955 and was, I mean, just groundbreaking. What he was writing was unimaginable back in 1955. Obviously, James Baldwin is a writer and a thinker, a vast influence, not just in America, but internationally. He was a sage of our times and he was so erudite and had this academic approach that made it digestible and understandable for people outside of the black community as well. And so, we were kind of rereading that and wanting to have a similar kind of discourse, if you will, or an exploration of that uncomfortable history within our times. But from a more kind of woman-centered and obviously musical perspective.
Gemma:Yeah, well I love the album, Allison, and it was really powerful. But I appreciated about hearing women’s voices and writing women back into history.
Allison Russell: Yes, exactly.
Gemma: I was listening to Polly Ann’s Hammer for the first time when I was walking into work and I just burst into tears in the streets, literally. It was so emotional just thinking about women’s strength in the way that they have been written out of history, and for black women especially. It was very powerful. It just moved me.
Allison Russell: Oh, I’m so glad you brought up that song. That’s an example of what I’m talking about. So here we’re in this process and we’re all kind of bouncing ideas off each other and we’re all writing madly. You know the night before we’d be madly finishing three songs and then recording the next day! We finished all the recordings in about ten days and then just did a few harmonies and things like that, overdubs, but most of it was done live and in real time with the Smithsonian videographer there capturing some of the process – it was just everything happening at once! And that morning, it was our last day in the studio with some of the other musicians that were involved – Jason Sypher who was playing bass and Jamie Dick who’s playing drums. And we were doing interviews with the Smithsonian as well. Rhiannon was on her way out the door from our shared Airbnb, and she said, “Oh you know it occurred to me maybe we should write a song from Polly Ann’s perspective.”
And it was like a bolt from the sky! Amythyst was in the middle of doing her interviews and I started madly scribbling lyrics because I just thought, that’s brilliant!
She’s been there all along, hasn’t she? In those John Henry legends and songs there’s this castoff line – he had this woman Polly Ann who, you know, picked up a hammer and drove steel – and you never hear about her again!
And John Henry dies. He’s killed by this backbreaking labor. And I just started thinking, well Polly Ann didn’t die. As usual, the woman did the job of the man, and then got on with raising the kids! Kept the family together after he died. And so, I was sort of envisioning – here’s this heroine that has been hiding in plain sight all along. She kept the family going and somebody had to to keep the legend going, you know. And it’s Polly Ann! She survived. She did the work, and she helped the kids to go beyond the life of labor they had had. Yeah. Oh, I’m so glad you brought up that song.
Gemma: Yeah, it’s just phenomenal. But there’s another strong woman, of course, in the song Quasheba, Quasheba which is which is really moving and I knew that you wrote that one. Can you tell us a bit about it?
Allison Russell:] I can. I was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec in Canada and I didn’t know my biological father, growing up. I had a French foster family for several years, and then I was raised by my mom and her husband. My mom is a Scottish Canadian. It’s a troubled family and she married a very abusive man, and so the father who raised me, my adopted father, was this very abusive, racist character, and, you know, I just didn’t know what it was to have a real father.
And then when I was 30, I got very curious about my other side – because I was always not like the others. I was always having to explain, yes that’s my mother, yes, she’s my biological mother. In a branch of the family who weren’t particularly accepting of her, you know, born-out-of-wedlock brown child. But my uncle, my mom’s older brother, helped me find my biological father because my mother and he were in high school when she got pregnant. My father had been finishing high school in Montreal from Grenada. Grenada is a tiny little island nation – three little islands very close to Trinidad and Tobago and the West Indies. My father finished his education in Canada, but he and my mom had already broken up and he’d gone back to Granada by the time my mother realized she was pregnant. So, I never met him. Grenadians, it’s such a tiny, tight knit community and there’s only about 350,000 Grenadians in the whole world. And two thirds of them are abroad making their livings. So, my uncle had a girlfriend in high school who was Grenadian and he was able to track her down through Facebook and ask about my father.
And lo and behold, this old girlfriend’s aunt went to church with my father’s sister-in-law. So, within 24 hours of me saying, “I’m interested in meeting my biological father,” I got a phone call and it was my father!
Yeah, it was quite amazing. And so that was, gosh, that’s eight years ago now. And we have had a wonderful relationship. Now it turns out that he had quite an intense early adulthood, because he was sort of on the wrong side of the Cold War. There’s a lot of people don’t know that history, but in ‘82 Grenada was invaded by the U.S. because they had received money from Fidel Castro to build a commercial airport – not a military airport, but the cold war was so intense in the early ‘80s that that was seen as sort of a provocation, and Grenada was invaded. And my dad was a young idealistic socialist and was on the wrong side of that line and lost his job. His wife also lost her job and they ended up having to move to make a better life for themselves elsewhere and they wound up in Toronto, Ontario. And I have two siblings on that side, a little sister and a brother.
And so that’s where I got to meet them when I was 30 years old. They were in Toronto while I was in Montreal. They were only a few hours away for all those years. But I didn’t know!
Anyway, my father’s eldest sister, Denise, decided to hire a historian to help her put together a history of the family. And they were able to discover records of Quasheba, sold off the coast of Ghana and traded hands many times. She eventually wound up in Tobago, and then Grenada and then had – we don’t know how many children she had. But there’s a record of a daughter also named Quasheba, who was actually kidnapped by a plantation owner in Grenada, but she had somehow or other learned midwifery skills and she was able to make somewhat of a life for herself that way – I guess the owner would sell her to other plantations, would sort of rent out her services to other plantations, and so the story of this woman Quasheba…there was this oral kind of thread as well within our family. There was, like, the mystery of this woman.
But the historian my aunt Denise hired was able to track down more information about her, and it was so powerful to learn her name and a little bit about her story. And I am grateful to have that knowledge and I’m grateful for her resilience because literally our entire family and this huge George clan (that’s the last name of my father’s people) wouldn’t exist without her. There’s so much of the narrative around slavery understandably focuses on how horrific it was, and it was obviously. But it’s kind of like taking away a little bit of the everyday heroism of surviving that.
You know we don’t talk about that. We don’t talk about the strength and the resilience. And that’s a gift that gets passed on to subsequent generations. That’s part of it too. But that’s not a story unique to slavery in North America. I mean, on my mom’s side you know, they were Scottish crofters and were turfed out by the Lairds when the clan system fell. On my mom’s side, my great grandfather came over and lied about his age – he was 16 and his brother was 14 and they were basically begging in the streets in Edinburgh, and then they got on a ship. Lied about their ages and got on the ship and wound up in Saskatchewan. Which I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Saskatchewan, but I can’t imagine surviving the winter there when you’re a child from Scotland! But somehow, they did. He and his brother got a land grant and they somehow survived and made the farm thrive enough to make a living. But his little brother wound up dying at the Somme.
Gemma: Well I’m glad you brought up resilience because that was something I wanted to ask you about. Because that’s a very strong theme in the album as well, despite all the harrowing stories. That theme of resilience…and joy is there as well. And it struck me that joy is a form of resistance.
Allison Russell: Yes, it is. It is a form of resistance and love in a time of war or hatred is a form of resistance.
Gemma:And it’s necessary right now.
Photo: Terri Fensel
Allison Russell: Yes. Yes, I feel it is. And my adopted country of America – I am Canadian but my husband is American – I’ve married into this country, my child has been born here. It’s a very, very intense time here, a lot of hidden turmoil and pressures that have come to the surface.
You know, with this character in charge, he’s kind of doing the whole reactionary fear-mongering, us and them nonsense that tries to divide people, and so I feel like it wasn’t an intentional reaction to that, but you can’t help but kind of dig in. All that we know how to do is write songs, you know, and commune with people, but more and more I’m realizing it’s so important, there are so few avenues left where people with differing political views, or religious views, or social views, or socio-economic backgrounds, or cultural backgrounds can get together in a room and be decent to each other.
And music, live music, is one of the few avenues where that still happens. And it can change people’s ideas about things and it can lessen their fear and make them feel more connected. And when you feel connected and empathetic, then you’re not going to lock children up at the border. You know you’re not going to do it.
So, I do feel like, you know, singing songs and writing songs that hopefully people can connect to and with and feel our common humanity – that’s not nothing, that’s something I cling to.
Gemma: And it’s a very intimate experience.
Allison Russell: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Gary: Yes, the album certainly felt to this non-American very important, right at this particular point in time in history with all this going on, Allison.
Allison Russell: Yes. We all felt a kind of urgency, I think. Aside from we were under the clock timeline – we only had 12 days together. But there was a feeling of urgency. We have to respond to some of the poison in the atmosphere here. If just to dig in on the beauty and the connection. You know, another theme in the album that really emerged, I noticed, was this idea that the separation based on a superficial visual trigger like someone has darker skin and someone has pale skin is so false.
And, you know, you just have to scratch the surface of America. Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers, he had an entire black family. And a black mistress, by all accounts. This was probably the half-sister of his white wife. I mean it just goes on and on, and he ends up emancipating the children from that union later, and eventually, finally, Sally, his, you know, well if someone can be called a mistress when they’re an enslaved person – yes, the black mother. You know, this is at the heart of America. And nobody talks about it. One side had darker skin, one side had paler skin and one side was exploiting the other. But it’s the same family. It’s not a different family; it’s one big dysfunctional family and that is something that gets hidden and glossed over too often. I mean that was that’s why I was so thrilled when the Hamilton musical came out because you know finally someone is talking about – this is a mixed-race person. This was not a white person.
Gary: So, tell us about when you were making the album. When you were collaborating, the four of you together, how did you decide on who was going to sing on what songs and what the arrangements were going to be?
Amythyst Kiah
Allison Russell: You know it all kind of happened very organically. I’d say that the obvious delineations of leads were, if you wrote the song, generally you sang it. But for the co-writes, on a couple of them, we were sort of trading verses. Or in the case of Blood and Bone, that was just so clearly Amythyst had that chorus – I just want to hear her voice on that song! It’s strong in the sense that we co-wrote it, but it was just very clear to me that she should be the one to sing it, and it ended up just very natural. It wasn’t an orchestrated, “OK, now you sing this and I’ll sing that” – it just kind of happened naturally, very organically, as we just sort of worked on things. And we’d try things a couple of different ways sometimes and then it would feel really good one way and less good the other, so we’d do it the way it felt really good!
Gary: But of course, you were four very talented musicians and artists. And one thing I noticed is that the banjo features quite a bit on the album. All four of you are banjo players?
Allison Russell: Yes, we are! And we all play different banjos which is amazing actually. That was all Rhiannon. One of the things that she wanted to do is really feature the banjo. And part of that goes back to the unfortunate kind of tokenism that sometimes happens or novelty, like, oh it’s a black girl playing the banjo. How sweet! But it’s a deeply American instrument which could not have existed without Africans being brought to this land. And so, it’s a unique union between African and European and enslaved traditions. And it’s just beautiful. It rises above, sort of tapping into that idea of joy and resilience and beauty coming out of horrific things. And the banjo is a shining example of that. So, it felt powerful and emblematic to all of us and we’ve all used it a lot.
Photo: Terri Fensel
It’s my second instrument that I primarily write on. I am by far the poorest banjoist of the group. But I write a lot on the banjo. But I’m not the shredder! That’s Amythyst. She can rip a beautiful solo and I’m more of a rhythm and textural player and I use it for writing predominantly. I’m more of like a songwriter who also happens to play the banjo and write songs on the banjo.
I loved the way our banjo voices sounded because they’re all quite different. Rhiannon plays this incredible minstrel banjo from the eighteen hundreds, which is a fretless, gut string banjo with a very deep voice. Amythyst plays a steel string, a five-string, smaller sort of sharper-voiced banjo which is gorgeous. Layla plays a four-string tenor banjo which has totally different voicings and sounds. And then I play a kind of a hybrid. Sort of an open G kind of claw hammer style banjo. But I converted mine to be closer to a gut string. It’s called Nylgut and it won’t be as affected by temperature and altitude and things. And it has a kind of fiber skin as close as a synthetic skin can be to the original goat skin. And so, these four banjos have such different voices and it was really lovely. There were a couple of pieces where we were all playing the banjo at the same time. Just something about the harmonics of it. and it just felt like the spirits were gathering or something. It was really affecting and beautiful.
Gary: Who knew there were so many types of banjo!
Allison Russell: Oh, there are so many!
Gary: And we detected your clarinet coming through a time or two as well!
Allison Russell: Yes, I was the one woodwind player in the group and they let me play the clarinet a couple of times.
Gary: We like the clarinet and it’s lovely to hear it coming in now and again!
Allison Russell: Oh, I’m so glad. I love the clarinet! You know if I’m at a jam session or something that’s my axe to jam on! Yeah. To me it feels like an extension of voice. I always have loved the sound of it. I didn’t come to playing instruments until later in my early 20s. I was sort of trapped in what I call the singers’ ghetto before that, where people say, oh you’re a musician and you say, yes I sing, and they’re like, oh you’re a singer, you’re not a musician! So, I decided I’ve got to get out of the singers’ ghetto, I’ve got to learn some instruments. I started actually with guitar which I don’t even really play anymore, and then found the clarinet and then the banjo.
Gary: Fabulous. NowSongs of Our Native Daughters is on the Smithsonian Folkways label. What’s the background to that?
Allison Russell: Well, that was already in place before Rhiannon invited us. I mean that was part of why she was able to invite us all to do it, because the Smithsonian very generously supported and funded the project for us.
And I think it was very important for her to have been involved with the Smithsonian, because so much of the source material that she has researched and delved into has come from the Smithsonian archives. Rhiannon’s like a musicologist, you know; she’s really gone in deep with the archival material in a way that I’ve just scratched the surface. And in fact, most everything that I’ve learned about early American and African-American music has come from Rhiannon. She has really gone in deep with the archives and the research and piecing things together. The inspiration for this project came when she was walking through the new museum of African-American History and Culture. And she was struck by a quotation of William Cowper’s, which was a kind of a satirical poem about the slave trade. He was a great abolitionist, of course, and was horrified by the slave trade and was doing everything he could to get it banned. But Rhiannon was so struck by this poem and how it correlated to our modern times and the kind of hidden slavery that occurs off our shores. You know – people in factories in Sri Lanka being paid nothing and having the factory collapse on their heads so that we can have clothes or cheap watches or phones or whatever it is.
So, she was really drawing that line from the past to the present, so that just kind of got the whole idea percolating to do something like Songs of Our Native Daughters. So, she wrote the Smithsonian a proposal and they got on board. I think they’re really making a point of not just having the archival source material and recordings – they really want to support modern artists who are continuing these traditions. And I think it’s so wonderful because very few places are left that that do that. We’re very grateful to them.
Gary: So, have you any plans to tour this album Allison?
Allison Russell: Well, it’s funny, Rhiannon and I were just talking about that this morning. We were talking about how tricky it is, because of course everybody’s juggling their individual projects as well. But we all want to very much. We did kind of a little preview of Songs of Our Native Daughters. Rhiannon had a residency at Symphony Space in New York City for four weeks and we did two shows where we previewed a lot of the material and it was so well received. People there gave us such great feedback about it. And there’s been such a lovely response from some journalists and wonderful music sites like yours. So, we all want to do some sort of touring around it. It’s just going to be tricky to figure out the timing. But certainly, this summer I think we’ll be doing some festivals together and we’re trying to figure out a time perhaps in the Fall to do a little run.
Gary: You definitely need to do that because it’s a fantastic album! The music’s great and of course the themes are so very important. So, you definitely gotta do that. Now, I know that you’ve been touring hard with The Birds of Chicago, Allison but you’ve another project coming up in March, playing a number of venues with Luther Dickinson and Amy Helm. Now that is some line up!
Allison Russell: Luther and Amy have become like family to us. Luther and his wife and their daughters are here in Nashville and we’ve relocated here within the last year. Our little girls have a band together and they all love each other and they go to the same school, and it’s just become, you know, it’s become quite a family affair! And Amy as well. The record we’re supporting with that tour in March is coming out on New West on March 22nd, Sisters of the Strawberry Moon. But we actually recorded it three years ago! And that’s how we really got to meet. Got to know Luther and got to know Amy and the last few years we’ve become friends and all of these projects have grown out of it. And JT and Amy have started writing a lot together and there is this kind of happy collaboration and deep friendship has ensued. But we all sort of thought about the record, it’s not going to come out. But then, lo and behold, there they’re releasing it in March. So, we were all so pleased to have an excuse to tour together you know!
Gary: And your Birds of Chicago Love in Wartime is a fantastic album which gone down really, really well. You must be delighted with the way that’s been received.
Allison Russell: Oh, we were thrilled about it. We feel so grateful. And we’ll be coming up on a year since it was released at the end of May, and it’s just been such an inspiring year of getting to connect with people all over the world. We came to Ireland and Scotland and England and the Netherlands, and a little bit in Germany, and Canada, and of course in the U.S. It’s been really lovely and we’re so grateful for people listening and coming out to support the shows and, you know, we definitely don’t take that for granted and we’re so grateful for it.
Gary:Allison, thank you so much, you’ve been very generous with your time. Thank you for being so open with us.
Allison Russell: Yes, thank you. It’s been a pleasure!
Songs of Our Native Daughters is released on February 22nd.
Legendary bluesman, Joe Louis Walker is a Grammy nominee who has won numerous Blues Music Awards and W.C. Handy Music Awards, and is in constant demand to perform across the United States and the world. NPR Music called him “a legendary boundary-pushing icon of modern blues.”
Photo: Marilyn Stringer
Born in California in 1949, Joe has had a lifetime in the blues, collaborating along the way with a diverse group of first-rate artists including James Cotton, Bonnie Raitt, Buddy Guy, Taj Mahal, and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown.
With 26 albums to his name, his 2018 release, Journeys to the Heart of the Blues (Alligator Records) is something of a departure from his other records, which typically feature his blistering electric guitar, in a stirring mix of soul, rock, jazz, and gospel. Journeys to the Heart of the Blues is a stripped back collection of old blues songs, some by better known artists like Big Maceo Merriweather, Sunnyland Slim and Blind Willie McTell, others which revive songs from lesser known artists like Washboard Sam and Son Bonds. It’s been nominated for a Blues Music Award 2019 for Best Acoustic Album.
The songs were recorded by Joe along with US keyboard maestro, Bruce Katz and top-notch blues-harp player from the UK, Giles Robson. Along with Katz’s delightful boogie-woogie piano and Robson’s heart-rending harmonica, Walker’s vocal performance throughout is masterful, doing full justice to the gritty blues stories of the album’s songs.
Down at the Crossroads talked to Joe about the album:
DATC: Congratulations on the new album, Joe. It’s really excellent and had a lot of good reviews. It’s a very stripped-down approach to the blues – tell us about why you wanted to make an album like this.
Joe: Thank you. Well, the whole idea was – the harmonica player, Giles Robson, sat in with me one night – we were doing the same show in Amsterdam. And we had a good time, playing together. So he had an idea to do an acoustic thing with acoustic guitar and harmonica. And then we said, why don’t we add a piano to it, give a bit more percussive feel, and so I thought of Bruce Katz. So it turned our really good, because Giles came over from England and we rehearsed for a couple of days, and we recorded the whole thing in, I think, 3 or 4 days – record and mix and all that stuff – the whole record took maybe 6, 7 days to complete it. We did most everything live right there in the studio.
DATC: That seems pretty fast!
Joe: Yeah! In today’s world!
DATC: But then, you had three superb musicians working on it!
Joe: Yeah. Everybody communicated really good, when it came to the recording, when someone wanted to try something one way or a different way. Everybody communicated really well, which was really important.
DATC: Yes, and that comes across very much when you’re listening to the album. You’ve got that real good sense of understanding from the three of you playing together.
Now, these are pretty much all classic blues songs – you obviously still sense an appetite for this sort of material? What is the enduring power of the blues, and this more raw, stripped down blues that we get on this album?
Joe: Well I think that the tunes that this record presents are sort of…it goes back to a lot of topical blues where one particular song would be about one topic. And so here you have in detail about one topic like in Murderer’s Home, Murderer’s Home is basically murderer’s row when you go to prison, so this is describing murderer’s row. You have Hell Ain’t but a Mile and Quarter, obviously a mile and a quarter none of us want to go. So the song has gotta sound like that, gotta feel like that, you’ve gotta make that visual come across in your mind. When Giles brought some of these songs and we picked these songs, they seemed a little bit more obscure than a lot of other songs that have been done, and the artists who did them. People like Son Bonds, and others – a lot of people don’t know about them.
DATC: Yeah, it’s good to bring these artists to people’s attention. The sort of blues you’re talking about there – rooted in real life, in the nitty gritty of the difficulties of real people’s real lives – is that something in the blues that has an appeal, as opposed to the more ephemeral approach of a lot of modern music?
Joe: I think that is the one thing that differentiates blues for a lot of other genres of music. The blues is consistent, it’s constant, you know? It constantly speaks to the harder side of life, the things that we all go through, that might be uncomfortable to talk about, that we all think about, and then you find out that somebody else thinks about it the same way. Somebody else can put it in the form of a song, a poem, a book or whatever, then its cathartic. It’s a great purpose when it does that.
DATC: And is that why you gravitated towards the blues in your early days and why it’s continued to have such a strong pull for you over the years, Joe?
Photo: Joe Del Tufo
Joe: Well, I was like anybody else. I was a kid when I started playing music and you know, I just gravitated towards the music, period! Whether it was T-Bone Walker playing the guitar, or later on, whether it was the Animals – you know, I didn’t care, I just liked the music. And so, later on, when bands would put ads in papers for musicians, or in music stores or in different shops, I would answer some of those ads for a lead guitar player, when I was a teenager, and that helped me become a more well rounded guitar player. I played all kinds of stuff, you know, and the blues I played, it was blues, but it was also bluesy type of material. I just played all kind of stuff.
DATC: At one stage in your career, I understand you changed direction and spent a long time in a gospel group. Can you tell us about why you did that and then about moving back towards the blues again?
Joe: I started back to playing gospel music because that was basically where I started when I was a kid anyway. I’m a sort of a restless soul. There was a great group I was a part of, the Spiritual Corinthians, and so that was a great thing. But when I left the gospel group, I didn’t look at it as going back to playing blues. I looked at it as going forward, to playing something different. I get tired of playing the same thing! It just that musically I’m a restless person. So I wanted to do something different. I went back to trying to make my own stamp on a blues style music.
DATC: And you’ve done that to great effect over the year, Joe, fusing in various influences into your playing and your albums, but gospel has continued to be a theme in your music. I’m thinking of albums like Hellfire – the title track and Soldier for Jesus and the real gospel sound of Keep the Faith on Hornet’s Nest, for example.
Joe: Sure, yeah, and it gives me an excuse to sing with a lot of people who were heroes of mine, who do gospel stuff. I hired the Gospel Hummingbirds, The Spiritual Corinthians, I had The Jordanaires – God bless ‘em – I had the McCrary Sisters on a couple of things. A lot of different gospel people have sung on these records I’ve done. The new record I’m doing – it’s not the acoustic stuff, it’s my own record. I’m having a lot of people on that, I’m having several female singers, and one is Carla Cooke, that’s Sam Cooke’s daughter. And that’ll be out this coming year, with a lot of different ladies singing with me.
DATC: We’ll look forward to that. Just on this subject, On your website, you say talk about “my belief that the spiritual will carry you through when the physical can’t.” What do you mean by that?
Joe: Well, to put it into context, I think somebody asked me the question what was the difference between playing in church, playing gospel and playing in other styles. And I just said that the spiritual usually carry you through when other things won’t, you know. And there’s a lot of people that feel that way, there’s other people that don’t. So It think that when people have faith in whatever it is, it gives them another sort of strength in other areas of life.
DATC: Sure, sure. Now, you’ve kept a very fresh approach to the blues over the years, melding in other influences. As you look around today, are you encouraged by what you see in the blues? What younger players do you see that encourage you?
Joe: Yes, there are a lot of great young musicians that are doing a lot of great things. A lot of young people, like Selwyn Birchwood and Shemekia Copeland, a whole lot of people doing great things. Matt Schofield…everybody’s doing different kinds of things in their own way – more power to ‘em! Some are doing it a bit more jazzy, some are doing it a bit more country bluesier. But I see a lot of young people when I’m out touring at festivals and what have you. So I think music is in a good space.
DATC: Fantastic. Thank you, Joe. Much appreciated.
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I watched the movie Amazing Grace last night, which shows the creation of the 29-year-old Aretha Franklin’s gospel album, Amazing Grace, recorded over two nights in 1972 in front of a live congregation and accompanied by the Southern California Community Choir in the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts, Los Angeles. The album was hugely successful, winning the 1973 Grammy Award for Best Soul Gospel Performance, selling over 2m copies in the US alone and effectively re-inserting black gospel into the American mainstream.
Throughout the performance, Aretha Franklin said little – the speaking parts come from Rev. Cleveland and her father. Was it her well-documented shyness, or simply a sense that it was enough to speak through her luminous singing? Franklin at this stage was one of the most popular and influential singers in the world, but was content to collaborate with the choir and the other members of Cleveland’s working band. To be sure, at the end of the movie, when all the words have fallen to the ground, Aretha’s glorious, inspirational singing resonates on.
