Check out this episode of Meet the Music: A Capella to Zydeco.
If you happen to be new to the blues, then here’s your way in. Seven classic songs to get you started on what will be a life-ling appreciation!
“Dr. Burnett shares a little history of the Blues and his deep love for the Blues. In our conversation, we discussed the impact of women blues singers like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Memphis Minnie. Listen as Dr. Burnett lists his suggested artists and songs for new listeners.”
Click for podcast
And here are my seven recommendations for getting started in listening to the blues:
Robert Johnson: Kind Hearted Woman, recorded in 1936, just a couple of years before he died as a young man of 27, poisoned, it seems by a jealous husband. Johnson was a jaw-droppingly good guitarist and a fine singer. He only recorded 29 songs, but Johnson has probably been the most influential blues artist on the whole of rock and roll. Eric Clapton says Johnson was his most formative influence and he has a great version of Kind Hearted Woman on his Me and Mr Johnson album from 1996. Keb’ Mo’ who is one of today’s great blues artist also has a fine version on his 1994 Keb’ Mo’ album.
Blind Willie Johnson: The Soul of A Man recorded in 1930. Willie Johnson was an exponent of gospel blues, and his slide playing, which he did with a penknife, was just outstanding. He’s a remarkable singer, at times a sweet tenor, at other time utterly raw. His music is making its way around the universe on the Voyager space probe launched in 1977 on a golden disk containing a sample of earth’s music. Quite what aliens might make of Johnson’s eerie slide playing and moaning on his song Dark Was the Night, is anyone’s guess! (Check out Tom Waits’ version of Soul of a Man on the 2016 tribute album, God Don’t Never Change, with various artists including Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Lucinda Williams, and Luther Dickinson.)
Mississippi John Hurt: Louis Collins John Hurt was a sharecropper who recorded some songs in 1928, which were not terribly successful. He was then rediscovered in 1963 and recorded a number of albums and performed on the university and coffeehouse concert circuit before he passed away. By all accounts he was a lovely man, and his guitar playing is just delightful. (The version here is Lucinda Williams with Colin Linden on guitar on a tribute album called Avalon Blues. Check out also Rory Block’s tribute album – just her and her guitar, also Avalon Blues)
Memphis Minnie: In My Girlish Days. Before the men began playing the blues, it was the women who were the big stars – women like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Victoria Spivey. Memphis Minnie was a performer, a guitar player and singer, mostly in the 1930s and 40s. The poet Langston Hughes described her electric guitar as “a musical version of electric welders plus a rolling mill” – but she was quite a talent. I’ve gone for her In My Girlish Days. You can hear a great version of this on Rory Block’s 2020 album, Prove it on Me, where she plays tribute to the women of the blues. Rory Block is an outstanding acoustic guitar player, and check out also her tribute to these women in her 2018 album, A woman’s Soul: a Tribute to Bessie Smith.
B.B. King: The Thrill Has Gone. This is B.B. King’s signature tune. King was a great singer, but an outstanding guitarist – one of those guitar players where you can tell who it is from just hearing a single note. The song is on a number of albums, but you can find it on a 2006 album of the same name, along with other great B.B. King numbers.
Muddy Waters: Hootchie Cootchie Man.Recorded in 1954. Muddy Waters is known as the father of Chicago blues. He was a Mississippi sharecropper who moved to Chicago in the 1940s and popularized electric blues. He has been a hugely influential figure on rock’n’roll, and the insistent riff that drives Hootchie Chootchi Man is one of the most famous in all blues music. Eric Clapton has a great version on his 1994 From the Cradle album.
Allman Brothers Band: Statesboro Blues on At Fillmore East from 1971 is an old Blind Willie McTell song. Bob Dylan has a famous song which says, nobody sings the blues like Blind Willie McTell. The Allman Brothers’ version has become a classic version of the song and rightly so, featuring Duane Allman’s fabulous slide guitar playing.
Larkin Poe: God Moves on the Water, on 2020’s Self-Made Man. Larkin Poe are two exceptionally talented sisters, Rebecca and Megan Lovell, both amazing guitarists and wonderful singers. They really bring the blues up to date with their own compositions and the way they cover old blues songs. And they are one of the most exciting bands you’d see live. God Moves on the Water is an amended version of an old Blind Willie Johnson song.
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.]
Brooks Williams is a singer-songwriter-guitarist from Statesboro, Georgia, who has been entertaining audiences all over the world with his original material and reworked blues songs for over 25 years. He’s been ranked as one of the Top 100 Acoustic Guitarist and is one of the coolest vocalists you’re ever likely to hear. If you go to a Brooks Williams gig you’ll be dazzled by his guitar work, charmed by his singing, and drawn out of yourself by the stories in his songs. But more than that, you’ll go away with a big smile on your face which will last all week. According to americanaUK, Brooks is “impossible not to like.”
Blues Matters says simply, Brooks Williams is “…classy, tasteful, bright and hugely enjoyable!”
Gary: Tell us a bit about your relationship with the blues, Brooks. If you look at your albums, it looks like your interest in the blues has developed over the past few years.
Brooks: I’d say that fundamentally the blues has always been the bedrock of my musical understanding. The blues cadence, the musical, the lyrical cadence. Coming from Statesboro Georgia, it’s in the rhythm of life there!
I left Georgia to go to university in Boston when I was seventeen and I was eager to get away from home, to spread my wings. In Boston, what I found myself doing was more acoustic, singer-songwriter, jazzy stuff – there was this contemporary thing that was happening there at the time and I got swept up in that. That was the mid-late 80s, and blues was at a real low ebb. Especially in America. But in those days, even though I was doing this contemporary acoustic thing, I was still immediately identified as having blues roots. I was asked to support people like Taj Mahal, John Hammond, Maria Muldaur, Rory Block, David Bromberg – and they were playing the smallest venues, because there was no big audience for blues [at that time]. And as I look back now, I think – what an amazing opportunity to see these fantastic blues artists in very intimate, 40 seat venues.
Gary: So have you noticed the appetite for blues music change?
Brooks: It’s definitely changed since then. Promoters kept putting me with these sort of artists and although I fell into that very easily, I was with record companies that saw me as doing this new acoustic thing. So I was quite split in my feelings about what I should do – because my performances were quite different from my recordings. I did a lot more bottleneck guitar in my gigs. But when I’d get in the studio, the engineers would say, oh that bottleneck thing’s noisy, we don’t like that sound, can we clean that up? I was in my twenties and I thought, well, they must know better.
So I would say that what’s happened to me and the blues is a growing realization of how important the blues is to what I do – as a writer, as a player. I came to this point of crisis, when the record industry was beginning to implode, when downloading was starting to happen, and my record company practically went out of business. (They just hadn’t anticipated the change in the market.) I found myself done with my record deal, didn’t know what to do. I was really struggling and I had a young family at the time…and I really seriously thought about packing in music and looking for something else to do.
And meanwhile I was getting phone calls and emails from people asking me to come and do gigs – not based around a record or anything, just come and play. I’d go to these gigs and I just started playing what I knew – which was Statesboro Blues, Weeping Willow Blues, Belfast Blues and so on. That’s what I played at home, that’s what I loved. I had no set list, I’d just play what I wanted. And what happened was – I had a great time! And even more importantly, the audience had a great time! And the more I just went with the flow, the better it got.
And that’s where I began to introduce blues back into my recorded work. And it was a revelation – it was like closing the page on one chapter of my life and opening another. And I’ve never looked back.
Gary: And what you often do is to take an old blues song and rework it and breathe new life into it – what do you think is the enduring appeal of these old songs?
Blind Willie Johnson
Brooks: Well, it’s the timeless lyric. The lyric to do with suffering and injustice is timeless. And alienation. We often think of that being the territory of the poor and disenfranchised financially – which is very true – but equally, I would say it’s about moral poverty. This sense of being disenfranchised is something most people can relate to. So what I find enduring in those old blues songs is they link to wherever we are in the strata. Like Soul of a Man by Blind Willie Johnson – that’s a timeless song, he’s captured something there.
And it doesn’t matter whether you’re in the palace or the poorhouse…
Gary: …that’s a question facing us all?
Brooks: Yes, that’s right. And then equally, back to your question, I have such respect for those players who can recreate the pre-war blues sound or the 50sblues sound – but for a lot of people, the minute they hear that old sound, they switch off. So I’ve been looking for ways to introduce this great timeless music in a way that an audience is going to listen to long enough to get it.
Gary: So looking back at some of these old artists, who are your favourites, your heroes?
Blind Boy Fuller
Brooks: It tends to be the acoustic players. I’m a big fan of the Blind Boy Fuller school of playing, that Piedmont blues. As an acoustic guitarist, I just kind of relate to that. And Mississippi John Hurt is a great story teller – I love songs that have a good story in them. More so than lyrics that just hang on a hook and so on. But in the early days, I listened to Blind Willie Johnson and Fred McDowell – those were my early influences.
Gary: And these guys were great guitarists as well….
Brooks: Yes, I really, really liked that. And then, of course, being from Statesboro Georgia, I have to listen to Blind Willie McTell – I have to! And what a beautiful singer – I love his musicality.
And a later guy who influenced how I play the blues, rhythmically – although he’s not strictly speaking a blues player – is Snooks Eaglin, from New Orleans. He has such a universal way of playing the song – playing the bass line, the chords, and some lead – and he sang!
Gary: And of course you have a song about Lightnin’ Hopkins…
Brooks: Right. When I’m in a Texas mood – the way he plays, that slow delivery, he’s great.
Gary: I read a biography of Blind Willie McTell recently – Hand Me Down My Travelling Shoes. Really enjoyed it, very nicely written.
Brooks: Yes, that’s a very detailed biography, packed with so much information. When my wife and I were on tour earlier this year we were in Georgia and one afternoon we drove up to where Blind Willie McTell is buried. It’s in Thomson, Georgia, which is a little speck on the map between Augusta and Atlanta – it’s a stop on the way, but that’s where his music came from. And it made me really value that book even more, because you really would have had to dig to get information on Willie McTell – he was from the middle of nowhere!
Gary: To change direction slightly, Brooks, you recently made a trip to Africa to work with some kids there who don’t have too many opportunities. Can you tell us a bit about that adventure?
Brooks: That was amazing. It was very challenging because the cultural differences are enormous. We were with a charity there which hooked us up with children in schools, doing music, dance, movement to music. From the schools’ point of view it was about getting English language into the schools. From our point of view, we were bringing Western music to the schools. Now, funnily enough, the missionaries had already been there years before, so everyone’s sense of music was old gospel and folk songs. But they’d done something to these old songs – they changed the lyrics and they added this marvelous life to the songs. It was amazing!
Pashua School, Tanzania
In East Africa they don’t really have an instrumental culture, it’s all about drums and voices. So I brought my resonator guitar – largely because it’s really rugged and it was really difficult terrain where we were. And these children had never seen a guitar or seen someone play one in person. And the most amazing thing that really excited me was trying to teach them a 12 bar blues. It was a really simple blues – Good Mornin’ Blues, an old Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee song. In a blues song there’s a gap between the lines, the ‘response’ part of the ‘call and response’, where the music vamps around the chord changes. The kids didn’t know what to do with those gaps in the lyrics! They just raced ahead and just could not get the sense of there being space to wait to sing the next line – until we got them dancing. Now if they had a dance to do, they could keep time, but otherwise they just couldn’t stop themselves going on with the song. And that was fascinating. How would they want to change a 12 bar blues and make it their own. It got me thinking: what would an East Africa12-bar blues look like?
Brooks teaches guitar
We were in Tanzania for about 2 weeks and were in the classroom every day. 70 kids in a class, 12 classes a day! We were exhausted! But what happened was – in about the middle of the 1st week – the 10, 11, 12 year-olds came into class something they’d made at home that resembled a guitar. Maybe a broom handle stuck to an old watering can, with a bit of twine for a strap. And you could see the wheels in their minds turning: how can they make a guitar more like mine? And I thought to myself – how long until they put a nail in the top of the broom handle and another nail in the base of the watering can and put a piece of wire between them? How long until they start twanging? And of course I had my slide there – and I thought, how long until they pick up a bit of metal or glass and slide it along that piece of wire? I was imagining something like an early rural South plantation era musical experience.
It was an amazing experience. And one that, musically speaking, has been…gestating… percolating…. in my mind since. Everything they did was rhythmically based, and so joyful, even in their poverty. It has influenced how I look at rhythm.
Gary: That is one of the things about going to the developing world, where you meet people who have nothing and yet they’re joyful, or they are so hospitable to you, when you have so much and they have so little. It’s a remarkable thing to experience.
Brooks: Yes it is. I did a few gigs in a dusty square and the people came out and they would be hundreds deep and closing in…and we would get them dancing.
My favourite memory was the final concert/celebration that we did. We had hired this guy to bring a sound system. He brought it in the back of a pick-up truck and it was massive. Nobody knew how to work it. So I ended up running the sound as well as performing. The students sat for hours in the afternoon sun and the local dignitaries were there giving speeches in Swahili. At one point the head of the school board got up and gave a speech about the honoured guests and so on, and then he looked at me and he said, “Would you play something?” So I stepped up to the front, plugged in the resonator guitar and started playing the opening riff to Boom Boom, the John Lee Hooker song. I was no more than 2 bars into the tune when all 800 kids got to their feet and came towards the makeshift stage, and there in the dust they all started dancing to this lone guitar. I thought: the dignitaries are going to be a bit cross about this. Well, the dignitaries were not: they got off the platform and came down into the dust and were dancing as well! The place went bonkers!
I thought: there’s something in this music. John Lee Hooker had this riff which I sort of developed, but it linked with these children in East Africa and they were on their feet dancing. After it was over and the kids sat down, a little boy got up and whispered something to the head teacher. The head teacher then came to me and told me that this boy had been so inspired by what had been happening, that he’d composed a rap and he’d like to perform it for everyone – now! And he wants me to play guitar for him.
So this little boy, ten years old, in dirty trousers and a ripped jumper, takes a wireless microphone and begins to rap – with the attitude! He had the hand in the trousers – the whole bit. He did this rap in Swahili and I did a little funky groove on guitar for him. And everybody just went crazy. I was deeply touched, and when it was over I asked the director what he’d been rapping about, and he said, “thank you friend for coming, for bringing your music and your guitar, we’ve never heard this before, and we hope you’ll come back soon and we’ll dance again.”
And I thought, how can we get this boy a guitar – because this music is just waiting to pour out of him. It was a powerful moment. But made sober by the reality that the future for this boy is probably very grim, mostly because of AIDS. If the boys do survive to become men, what kind of work will they do? The last thing he needs is a guitar, there are other things he needs a lot more, but you can’t help but wonder.
What they’ve given to me is a sense of this: when you sing, you sing from the heart. They sang from the heart. Also, music is meant to be moved to, which is a good reminder for a solo performer, that you can move to what you’re doing.
Gary: This whole sense of music touching people – John Lee Hooker said, blues is a healer. And if you ever go to a Bruce Springsteen concert – it’s a spiritual experience. And he seems to have this sense of the redemptive power of the music to touch people, but clearly what you’ve been talking about is pretty much the same thing…
Brooks: Yes. Exactly right. I do think music transcends barriers and boundaries. And I know I have been deeply touched and deeply healed, if you will, by music. It’s a powerful conduit. I get frustrated when I lose sight of this and I get all wrapped up in the details.
Gary: It touches you emotionally – and as sophisticated Westerners, that’s something we’re often not that comfortable with.
Couple of final questions. You made an album this year called State of the Union with Boo Hewerdine. Have you been pleased at the way that’s been received?
Brooks: Yes very much so. At first we thought maybe we’d do an EP and maybe one local gig for charity. But when we got to the studio, we just loved the simplicity of it – two acoustic guitars and two voices. We didn’t labour over any of the takes, we just played it in the moment. We were finished recording in a day and a half. Shortly after, it got picked up by a label and then a tour was put together.
The tour went very well and the whole thing got stronger and stronger. There’s something in the way Boo thinks about music – as an English songwriter, with a very sophisticated ironic and quick-witted Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello type of song writing – that I can relate to. And he seems to find a link with my blues/American/roots thing. When were gigging I kinda know where he’s going and he kinda knows where I’m going, and we know how to sing together.
We’re just about to begin the 2nd part of the tour in November. Then we’re looking to make a new record in the new year. It’s the first time I’ve worked in a serious duo and had a serious collaboration.
Gary: But you’ve a solo project that you’ve just completed as well?
Brooks: Yes. I do want to keep my solo thing going alongside State of the Union.
Gary: What can we expect to hear?
Martin Simpson
Brooks: Well the songs are definitely more evidently rooted in the blues tradition than the songs I write for State of the Union. Plus, I had some fantastic guests join me as well. Martin Simpson came in for one track – the Doc Watson classic, Deep River Blues – that was just mind-blowing! A young banjo player from Sheffield called Rowan Rheingans and a harmonic player from Cambridge called Steve Lockwood joined me on a few tracks as well. The other tracks are based around a trio of me with a great double bass player called Andy Seward and an exciting drummer called Keith Angel. But the thing I love the most about this new album – probably on the back of going to Africa and on the back of working with Boo – is that I’ve been in a very creative writing phase, so I really like all the songs. Plus I’ve learned a little bit about irony in my years in the UK. Americans, as you know, don’t do irony! We’re not naturally endowed that way, but I’ve been learning how great irony can be, so I’ve introduced this into a few songs!
Gary: And a few bluesy numbers?
Brooks: Yes definitely – a cover of Deep River Blues, Mercury Blues and some originals that are very much in the a traditional roots/blues song style.
Gary: We’re looking forward to it. Thanks, Brooks.
Click for podcast
