The Blues as Protest

 

The blues emerged in the context of the oppression and suffering of Black communities in the southern US, and singing the blues was a means of responding to that oppression – of giving voice to great sorrow, lamenting the current state of affairs, but also of expressing dignity in the face of injustice. The blues also were a means of protest against this injustice.

That’s worth noting at this time when the United States is facing a reckoning for the racism that has dogged it for such a long time. The push-back against white supremacy, police brutality and a myriad of social barriers faced by Blacks and other people of colour can’t be simply ignored or written off.

There have been plenty of today’s artists protesting the current lamentable state of affairs and all that has led to it – Leyla McCalla’s recently released Vari-Colored Songs, an album’s whose centerpiece, Song for a Dark Girl, is a stark account of a lynching “way down south in Dixie,” a powerful reminder of the relatively recent history of terrorism against Black communities.

Gary Clark Jr.’s This Land is a howl of protest which rails against the suspicion he gets as a Black man in Trump’s America; Shemekia Copeland’s Would You Take My Blood on her America’s Child album gets to the heart of racism; Otis Taylor’s trance blues in Fantasizing About Being Black, a history of African-American life, from slavery onwards, has Jump Out of Line, an edgy piece about civil rights marchers’ fear of being attacked; and Eric Bibb’s last album had What’s He Gonna Say Today, protesting the “bully in the playground,” aimed directly at Trump.

But the history of the blues is littered with songs protesting inequality, discrimination and White violence against Blacks. Given the huge inequality that existed, and the whole structuring of society that existed under Jim Crow, it would have been impossible for blues artists to sing protest songs in the way that they were sung in the 1960s when the Civil Rights’ movement had gathered momentum. Often the protest was coded, although sometimes it broke through the surface quite clearly. Although the majority of blues songs are about the troubles of love, there is a steady stream of social protest from the early days right through to the present.

In 1930, Huddie Ledbetter – Lead Belly – recorded a song entitled simply Jim Crow, in which he bemoans the state of affairs facing him every day of his life, everywhere he goes:

I been traveling, I been traveling from shore to shore
Everywhere I have been I find some old Jim Crow.

He can’t get away from the racial discrimination he faces – it’s there even when he goes to the cinema to be entertained:

I want to tell you people something that you don’t know
It’s a lotta Jim Crow in a moving picture show.

And finally he pleads with his hearers, “Please get together, break up this old Jim Crow.”

In the early 1930s, nine Black teenagers from Scottsboro in Alabama were accused of raping two white women aboard a train. The case highlighted the racism of the Jim Crow system and the injustice of the entire Southern legal system. In a series of trials and re-trials, which were rushed, and adjudicated on by all-white juries and racially biased judges, the nine boys suffered incarceration in the brutally harsh Kilby Prison in Alabama, and attempted lynching and mob violence.

After three trials, during which one of the young white women who were alleged to be victims had confessed to fabricating her rape story, five of the nine were convicted and received sentences ranging from 75 years imprisonment to death. The one who received the death sentence subsequently escaped, went into hiding and was eventually pardoned by George Wallace in 1976. The case was a landmark one and led eventually to the end of all-white juries in the South.

Lead Belly recorded Scottsboro Boys in 1938, where he warns Black people not to go to Alabama lest they suffer the same fate as the Scottsboro nine:

I’m gonna tell all the colored people
Even the old n* here
Don’t ya ever go to Alabama
And try to live

Lead Belly was clearly not afraid to voice his protest against what he experienced. He also wrote Bourgeois Blues, perhaps the most famous example of 1930s blues protest songs. Leadbelly here sings about his experience of discrimination in the nation’s capital city:

Well, them white folks in Washington they know how
To call a colored man a n* just to see him bow
Lord, it’s a bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around

Lead Belly talks about looking for accommodation and being turned away by the white landlord:

Well, me and my wife we were standing upstairs
We heard the white man say “I don’t want no n*s up there.

America, according to Lead Belly may have been hailed as “The home of the Brave, the land of the Free,” but it was just somewhere where he was “mistreated” by the “bourgeoisie.”

The Great Depression hit black communities in the South particularly hard. Skip James’s 1931 Hard Time Killing Floor Blues captures the grim reality of the time for many people, with James’s high eerie voice and his D-minor tuned guitar. “The people are drifting from door to door” and they “can’t find no heaven.”

Hard time’s is here
An ev’rywhere you go
Times are harder
Than th’ever been befo’.

One of the blues artists who was most articulate about civil rights during this period was Josh White, who was born in 1914 and recorded under the names “Pinewood Tom” and “Tippy Barton” in the 1930s. He became a well-known race records artist during the 1920s and 30s, moving to New York  in 1931, and expanding his repertoire to include not only blues but jazz and folk songs. In addition, he became a successful actor on radio, the stage and film. White was outspoken about segregation and human rights and was suspected of being a communist in the McCarthyite era of the early 1950s.

In 1941 he released one of his most influential albums, Southern Exposure: An Album of Jim Crow Blues. The title track pulls no punches:

Well, I work all the week in the blazin’ sun,
Can’t buy my shoes, Lord, when my payday comes
I ain’t treated no better than a mountain goat,
Boss takes my crop and the poll takes my vote.

The album of mostly 12 bar blues songs, included Jim Crow Train, Bad Housing Blues, and Defense Factory Blues. White attacked wartime factory segregation in the latter with, “I’ll tell you one thing, that bossman ain’t my friend, If he was, he’d give me some democracy to defend.”

In Jim Crow Train, he addresses the segregation on the railways:

Stop Jim Crow so I can ride this train.
Black and White folks ridin side by side.
Damn that Jim Crow.

On White’s 1940 Trouble, he leaves no doubt about the cause of black people’s problems: “Well, I always been in trouble, ‘cause I’m a black-skinned man.” The rest of the song deals with the failed justice system of the time and the inhuman conditions which black inmates suffered when incarcerated:

Wearin’ cold iron shackles from my head down to my knee
And that mean old keeper, he’s all time kickin’ me.

As a black man under Jim Crow, all White could expect from life was “Trouble, trouble, makes me weep and moan, Trouble, trouble, ever since I was born.”

Big Bill Broonzy was one of the most popular and important of the pre-World War II blues singers, who recorded over 250 songs from 1925 to 1952, including Key to the Highway, Black, Brown, and White, Glory of Love and When Will I Get to Be Called a Man. He was a very talented musician, song writer and singer, who Eric Clapton said was a role model for him in playing the acoustic guitar.

Broonzy claims in his autobiography that he joined the army sometime after 1917, and fought in World War I in France, and on returning to the South, he found conditions there quite intolerable. A more recent biography of Broonzy doubts his story of joining up, but there can be no doubting the injustice which Broonzy encountered as a black man in the South. He refers to the way in which black men were referred to disparagingly as “boy” by whites in his 1951 song, I Wonder When I’ll Be Called a Man.

When I was born into this world, this is what happened to me
I was never called a man, and now I’m fifty-three
I wonder when…I wonder when will I get to be called a man
Do I have to wait till I get ninety-three?

Black, Brown and White, recorded in 1951, rails against the discrimination that Broonzy found everywhere, be it getting a drink at a bar, being paid less money for doing the same job, or even just getting a job:

They says if you was white, should be all right
If you was brown, stick around
But as you’s black, m-mm brother, git back git back git back.

Muddy Waters also highlighted the patriarchal attitudes of whites to blacks in his 1955 release Manish Boy, which on the surface is a rather sensual blues song declaring, “I’m a natural born lover’s man,” and “I’m a hoochie coochie man.” (The hoochie coochie was a sexually provocative dance that became wildly popular in Chicago in the late nineteenth century. The dance was performed by women, so a “hoochie coochie man” either watched them or ran the show). In the context of a black man never being recognized as anything other than a “boy,” however, the song asserts black manhood in the face of white suppression. “I’m a man, I’m a full grown man,” sings Muddy, “I spell M-A, child, N”

Another major and influential blues artist from Mississippi was John Lee Hooker, son of a sharecropper, who came to prominence in the late 1940s and 50s. His House Rent Boogie from 1956 protests the all too familiar tale for black American of losing a job and not being able to make the rent payment; “I said fellows, never go behind your rent, ‘cause if you did it, it will hard so it’s cold in the street.”

The wail of protest in the blues continued on into that decade most associated with protest songs, the 1960s. From 1961 we have the guitar – harmonica duo of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee singing Keep on Walkin’ which takes up again the theme of Blacks being worked hard for little pay:

The bossman was so mean, you know, I worked just like a slave
Sixteen long hours drive you in your grave
That’s why I’m walkin’, walkin’ my blues away.

And then we have Vietnam Blues by J.B. Lenoir, from 1966. Drawing an elegant parallel between the US’s presence in Southeast Asia and the Jim Crow South, Lenoir demanded of President Lyndon Johnson, “How can you tell the world we need peace, and you still mistreat and killin’ poor me?”

Lenoir came to Chicago via New Orleans and became an important part of the blues scene there in the 1950s, performing with Memphis Minnie and Muddy Waters. He was a fine singer and a great showman, sporting zebra striped costumes and nifty electric guitar licks.

But Lenoir composed a number of political blues songs bringing sharp social commentary to bear on events going on around him. Songs like Born Dead, which decries the fact that “Every black child born in Mississippi, you know the poor child is born dead,” referring to the lack of opportunity in his home state; or Eisenhower Blues, which complains that the government had “Taken all my money, to pay the tax.” Lenoir also composed the haunting “Down in Mississippi,” which he performed on his 1966 Alabama Blues. “Down in Mississippi where I was born, Down in Mississippi where I come from,” sings Lenoir,

They had a huntin’ season on a rabbit
If you shoot him you went to jail.
The season was always open on me:
Nobody needed no bail.

He concludes about the place of his birth, “I count myself a lucky man, Just to get away with my life.” The definitive version of the song, however, was to come some 40 years later, when Mavis Staples recorded it on her album We’ll Never Turn Back, Staples adding a little to the song about segregated water fountains and washeterias and how “Dr King saw that every one of those signs got taken down, down in Mississippi.”

Mavis Staples had already made her protest against three hundred years of injustice in 1970 with the no-punches-pulled When Will We Be Paid? The song demanded an answer to the exploitation of Black Americans in the construction of America’s roads and railroads, in the domestic chores their women have done and the wars in which their men have fought. Despite this contribution to the making of America over 300 years, all the remuneration Staples’s people got was being “beat up, called names, shot down and stoned.” “We have given our sweat and all our tears,” she sings, so, “When will we be paid for the work we’ve done?”

In a similar vein, complaining about the discrimination they faced, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee & Earl Hooker in Tell Me Why in 1969 sang,

Every war that’s been won, we helped to fight
Why in the world can’t we have some human rights?
Tell me why?

They give the cruel answer themselves – “It’s got to be my skin, that people don’t like.”

And one of the most hard hitting of songs in the blues genre is Mississippi Goddamn, written and sung by Nina Simone in 1964.

Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day’s gonna be my last.

The song was Simone’s response to the murder of Medgar Evers in Mississippi and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four black children. She performed the song in front of 10,000 people at the end of the Selma to Montgomery marches.

The blues chart the history of the indignities face by African Americans over the decades. The blues allowed Black Americans to assert their humanity and dignity in the context of an oppressive system that declared they were less than human. Whether the songs expressed explicit protest at this or not (and most blues songs didn’t), the blues, nevertheless, was Black music and, whether they were complaining about unfaithful lovers or problems with the landlord, whether they were performed as dance music in the juke joint or sung on the street corner, they reflected the abuse and indignities suffered by blacks under Jim Crow and beyond. No wonder Black theologian and writer, James Cone, said, the blues are “the essential ingredients that define the essence of black experience.”

Willie Dixon gets it spot on when he says “The blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and song, inspiration, feeling, and understanding.” In telling the truth about the misery of black experience, but as well as that, a hope for change, the blues were a part of the endurance and resistance of the Black community.

For many white listeners to the blues, the blues are at heart a genre of music, a certain musical form, twelve bars, flattened notes, blue notes. But if we listen carefully, we can hear the history of people who have been sorely mistreated; we can, perhaps, get some understanding of what it means to be Black. But it does require careful listening. And that listening is as urgent as ever just now.

Finally, to help us stop and listen, here is the ultimate protest song written by Abel Meeropol and recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. Strange Fruit.

Adapted from The Gospel According to the Blues by Gary W. Burnett

20 Blues Train Songs You Must Hear

The railroad has a special place in the blues. Lovers leave on the train, singers go searching for them by the train, the gospel train is on its way, and the ramblin’ bluesman needs to board that train and ride.

Railroads were one of the major infrastructural and economic achievements of the nineteenth century and loomed large in the lives of people as the blues began to develop. You recall that the story of the very beginnings of the blues was at a railway station – in 1903, whilst waiting for a train in Tutweiler, Mississippi, bandleader W.C. Handy heard a man running a knife over the guitar strings and singing. He said,

“A lean, loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept. His clothes were rags; his feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of a guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable. His song, too, struck me instantly. ‘Goin’ where the Southern cross’ the Dog.’ The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I ever heard.”

Handy later published an adaptation of this song as “Yellow Dog Blues,” and became known as the “Father of the Blues.”

Freed slaves had built the railroad with their blood, sweat and tears, and in the early years of the twentieth century, it was the primary means of transport for people for longer distances. For itinerant blues musicians like Robert Johnson, trains allowed them to move from place to place and ply their trade. Johnson’s sister, Annye Anderson, in her book, Brother Robert, remembers Robert “hoboing” around on the train, going back and forth from Memphis to the Delta for his music. His famous train song, of course, is Love in Vain.

The train was the means of escape, too, for black people wanting to leave behind the injustice of the Jim Crow South and seek a better life in the North and West. From 1916 onwards, around 6m people moved away from the racist ideology, the lynching and the lack of economic opportunity to cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit and New York. Famously, McKinley Morganfield – Muddy Waters – boarded a train for Chicago in 1943 to become the “father of Chicago blues” and pioneer electric blues.

Trains in the South were, of course, segregated. In the “colored” section, there were no luggage racks, requiring travellers to cram their suitcases around their feet; and the bathroom there was smaller and lacked the amenities of the “whites” bathroom. All these were subtle and not-so-subtle reminders that you were not as good as the people in the other section.

So James Carr’s Freedom Train of 1969 was significant. Attorney General Tom C. Clark had organized a Freedom Train as “a campaign to sell America to Americans” to try and bolster the sense of shared ideology within the country. The train was integrated, but several Southern cities refused to allow blacks and whites to see the exhibits at the same time, and the Freedom Train skipped the planned visits. Carr’s song celebrates a new Freedom Train, free from segregation and discrimination. where “every man is gonna walk right proud with his head up high.”

So, here’s to trains, and may the Freedom Train keep on rollin’ down the track!

Here are 20 blues train songs for you to enjoy.

Trouble in Mind (1924)

In this old blues standard, things are so bad, the singer wants to end it all – he’s going to lay down his head on that old railroad iron, and let that 2.19 special pacify his mind. It never really gets to that point, happily, because, “sun’s gonna shine in my back yard some day.” First recorded in 1924, it’s been done by Nina Simone, Janis Joplin, Snooks Eglin, Lightnin’ Hopkins and many more. I like this jaunty version by Brooks Williams from his Brooks Blues album of 2017.

Railroad Blues , Trixie Smith with Louis Armstrong  (1925)

Trixie Smith, not related to Bessie Smith, paid her dues in vaudeville and minstrel shows, as well as performing as a dancer, a comedian, an actress, and a singer. Here she is backed by Louis Armstrong’s muted horn, as she is “Alabama bound” on the railroad.

The Mail Train Blues, Sippie Wallace (1926)

The Texas Nightingale recorded 40 songs for Okeh during the 1920s before going on to be a a church organist, singer, and choir director, and then eventually reviving her performing career in the 1960s. In Wallace’s 1926 Mail Train Blues she bemoans her sweet man leaving her and wants to go looking for him aboard the mail train.

Spike Driver Blues. Mississippi John Hurt (1928)

This and other songs recorded by Hurt in 1928 were not commercially success and he reverted to the farming life until being found in 1963 by Dick Spottswood and Tom Hoskins, and persuaded to perform and record again. John Hurt had a wonderful guitar picking style which is credited by many guitarists as their inspiration. Spike Driver Blues is a John Henry song where the “steel-driving man” dies as a result of his hammering a steel drill into rock to make holes for explosives to blast the rock in constructing a railroad tunnel.

Long Train Blues, Robert Wilkins, (1930)

Wilkins was a versatile blues performer from Mississipi who gave up playing the blues to become a gospel minister in 1936. An excellent guitarist, he came to light again in the 1960s and recorded some of his gospel blues. Long Train Blues, which he recorded in 1930 tells the tale of a lover who has run off on the train.

Too Too Train Blues, Big Bill Broonzy (1932)

There’s some nifty acoustic guitar work here by the hugely talented Bill Broonzy, with another “my baby done left me aboard the train” blues. Broonzy sustained his career successfully from the 1920s to the 1950s, performing both traditional numbers and his own compositions, recording more than 300 songs.

The Midnight Special, Leadbelly (1934)

Recorded in 1934 by Huddie William “Lead Belly” Ledbetter at Angola Prison for John and Alan Lomax, the song has been covered by a host of artists, notably John Fogerty’s Creedance Clearwater Revival. The Midnight Special is said to be the name of a train that left Houston at midnight, heading west, running past Sugarland prison farm, the train’s light becoming a symbol for freedom for the inmates. The song also references the injustice of black men being incarcerated for minor infractions.

Love in Vain, Robert Johnson (1937)

Famously covered by the Rolling Stones for their 1969 Let It Bleed album which featured some tasty electric slide guitar, Love in Vain is a Robert Johnson song recorded in his last studio session in 1937. Johnson’s guitar work is outstanding, as is his singing. The sense of loss is palpable, and you hear Johnson crying out his lover Willie Mae’s name near the end of the song.

This Train, Rosetta Tharpe (1939)

This old gospel song has been around since the 1920s and has been extensively recorded. Bruce Springsteen’s Land of Hope and Dreams takes This Train as its starting point but reworks the ideas of the original so that everybody can get aboard. Tharpe’s more original version has “everybody riding in Jesus’ name”; it’s a “clean train, which won’t take “jokers, tobacco chewers and no cigar smokers.” The song was a hit for Tharpe in the late ‘30s and again in the ‘50s. This live performance gives some sense of what an expressive and incredible performer Tharpe was, not to mention her impressive guitar chops. The 1939 version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame

Lonesome Train, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee (1952)

Just a great train song, with Sonny Terry’s harp driving the train down the track in this instrumental track. There are a few “whoooos” hollered along the way by the duo, who had a 35-year partnership. A masterclass in harp playing. The song was recorded by Sonny Terry in 1952 along with the Night Owls.

Mystery Train, Junior Parker (1953)

Mississippi bluesman Parker’s 1953 hit inspired a number of later versions, notably Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s take in 1965. In Parker’s version the drums mimic the rattle of the train on the track and the tenor sax the wail of the whistle. Butterfield adds a nice bit of harmonica.

Southbound Train, Muddy Waters (1957)

This is another Big Bill Broonzy song from 1957, which Muddy Waters recorded on his tribute to Broonzy in 1960, Muddy Waters Sings “Big Bill.” Broonzy had mentored Waters when he came to Chicago. Waters version isn’t too far removed from Broonzy’s, both piano driven blues, but Water’s version features some nice harp from James Cotton. The song has the singer heading South to the lowlands to escape his faithless lover.

Freight Train, Elizabeth Cotton (1957)

The song actually is about dying and being laid to rest at the end of Chesnut Street, so “I can hear “old number 9 as she comes rolling by.” Remarkable really, when Cotton said she composed the song as a teenager (sometime 1906-1912). She recorded it in 1957 and it’s been covered by many artists, including Peter, Paul & Mary, Joan Baez and Odetta. Cotton was a great guitar picker and this song has been a favourite for aspiring acoustic guitar players to learn. (Guitarist – check out Tommy Emmanuel’s lesson here (easy!!)

Freight Train Blues, Bob Dylan, 1962

Bob Dylan here echoes Elizabeth Cotton’s song in this 1962 recording from his debut album. Dylan tells a tongue-in-cheek but atmospheric story of poverty, rambling and the freight train. It’s typical early Dylan, all strummed acoustic guitar and harmonica.

Freedom Train, James Carr (1969)

A 1969 R&D hit for James Carr, Freedom Train reflects the Civil Rights movement of the sixties: “It’s time for all the people to take this freedom ride, Got to together and work for freedom side by side.” Born in Mississippi, Carr grew up singing in the church, but his R&D success led to his being called “the world’s greatest R&D singer.”

Hear My Train A-Coming, Jimi Hendrix (1971)

Hendix’s train song is typical Hendrix – overdriven, psychedelic guitar pulsing. It’s on his 1971 Rainbow Bridge album, but Hendrix performed the song in a BBC performance in 1967. He has also been recorded doing an acoustic version of the song on a 12-string guitar, giving it a Delta blues sound, Hendrix clearly familiar with the style of the acoustic blues masters of the past. Here’s some rare footage of Jimi Hendrix playing acoustic guitar.

Get Onboard, Eric Bibb (2008)

The title track of blues troubadour Eric Bibb’s 2008 album. Bibb, in his customary positive fashion, wants us to get on board the “love train.” There’s “room for everybody,” he sings as the band, including some nice harmonica, rattles us down the track.

Slow Train, Hans Theessink, 2012

Good times, bad times, tired and weary – Dutch guitarist and songwriter Hans Theessink has been singing the blues for a very long time and knows how to craft a blues song. This one is from his excellent 2012 Slow Train album, and features Theessink’s superb acoustic finger-picking and his rich bass-baritone voice.

When My Train Pulls In, Gary Clark Jr. (2013)

“Everywhere I go I keep seeing the same old thing & I, I can’t take it no more,” sings Clark, surely against the backdrop of racism in America. Hailing from Texas, the Grammy winning Clark is an outstanding guitarist and prolific live performer. This performance of the song which appears on his 2013 Blak and Blu album, showcases Clark’s guitar chops and his classy vocals.

Train to Nowhere, J J Cale (2014)

Eric Clapton recorded this previously unreleased J J Cale song on his tribute to Cale, The Breeze in 2014. The song features Mark Knopfler singing and playing guitar and is both unmistakably a J J Cale song and a train song. The lyrics look to be about that last train ride we all have to take and are a little bleak.

This Train, Joe Bonamassa (2016)

It’s full steam ahead for Joe’s train, in this case his baby who “comes down like a hammer” and “hurts him bad.” It’s all good stuff, with the usual Bonamassa guitar pyrotechnics. But Bonamassa has become a fine singer as well, which This Train amply demonstrates. The song is on his 2016 Blues of Desperation album, but there are some great live versions available too.

 

16 Blues Tribute Albums You Must Hear

There have been a lot of excellent tribute albums to blues artists over the past twenty years. We’ve chosen 16 excellent albums, some by just one artist covering the music of another artist from the past, and some with various artists covering the songs. In each case, the new artist has both re-interpreted the songs and kept the spirit of the originals intact, honouring the legacy of the original artist.

Billy Boy Arnold, Sings Big Bill Broonzy (2012)

Veteran blues harp player Arnold turns in a very fine acoustic guitar driven tribute album to the great Bill Broonzy. Broonzy had a very long and varied career as a musical artist, after life as a sharecropper, preacher and soldier. He copyrighted more than 300 songs along the way and had a wide range of songs in his performing repertoire including ragtime, country blues, urban blues, jazz, folk songs and spirituals. Arnold gives us 15 classic Broonzy country blues numbers.

Rory Block Avalon, A Tribute to Mississippi John Hurt (2013)

Rory Block is one of the world’s greatest living acoustic blues artists, whose talent has been recognized many times by WC Handy and Blues Music Awards. She has lovingly recorded a number of tribute albums to some of the major country blues artists, including Skip James, Fred McDowell, Robert Johnson, Son House and Rev. Gary Davis. All of them are terrific, featuring Block’s outstanding guitar chops, but we’ve gone with her tribute to the wonderful John Hurt, whose guitar picking style underpins the technique of so many acoustic artists that have come after hum.

Rory Block, A Woman’s Soul: A Tribute to Bessie Smith (2018)

Block turns her attention to the Empress of the Blues, after her set of 6 tribute albums to the founding fathers of the blues. Everything on the album is played by Rory Block, and as ever, the guitar picking and slide work are masterful. The songs, clearly, are very differently treated to the originals, Block cleverly translating the big band arrangements into guitar accompaniment. It makes for a fine and hugely enjoyable tribute to Bessie Smith. [Check out our interview with Rory here]

Eric Clapton, Me and Mr Johnson (2004)

Hugely successful album, selling over 2m copies. Clapton said he’s been driven and influenced all his life by Robert Johnson’s work. It was, he said, “the keystone of my musical foundation…now, after all these years, his music is like my oldest friend. It is the finest music I have ever heard.” The album, consisting of 14 of Johnson’s songs, sees Clapton in fine form, and features, as you’d expect, top-notch lead and slide guitar. A companion album and video release entitled Sessions for Robert J was released also released, featuring different versions of each of the songs from the studio album.

Fabrizio Poggi and Guy Davis, Sonny and Brownie’s Last Train (2017)

As fine an acoustic blues album as you will hear. Two top modern-day artists, Davis on guitar and Poggi on harmonica, both at the top of their game and channelling two of history’s greatest acoustic bluesmen. There’s a warmth, feeling and joy in the way these songs are presented that draws you in and puts a big smile on your face. The album was nominated for a Grammy. [check out our review here]

Marie Knight, Let Us Get Together: A Tribute to Reverend Gary Davis (2007)

Recorded by the late Marie Knight two years before she passed away, aged 89. Knight toured widely with Sister Rosetta Tharpe in the 1940s, but left to become a successful solo gospel and R&B singer. Davis was an incredible guitarist and Larry Campbell’s blues picking and guitar work more than does justice to the reverend’s genius. Knight’s soulful, gospel vocals in these 12 gospel blues songs pay a handsome tribute to the often overlooked artistry of  Rev. Gary Davis. Superb. [check out our take on Rev Gary Davis here]

Mark Miller, Ain’t It Grand: The Gospel Songs of Blind Willie McTell (2010)

Nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell, sang Bob Dylan. True, but McTell also left us a fine collection of gospel blues songs, and Americana/Country artist Mark Miller’s gospel tribute has 10 songs which McTell regularly performed. Lovely old timey feel to the album, with some fine acoustic finger picked and slide guitar.

Various Artists, God Don’t Never Change: The Songs of Blind Willie Johnson (2016)

“Eleven stirring renditions which replicate the soul of the songs, not just the sounds.” Has earned plaudits from all quarters and Grammy Award nominations for Best Roots Gospel Album and Best American Roots Performance for the Blind Boys of Alabama’s recording of Mother’s Children Have a Hard Time. The album was produced by Jeffrey Gaskill of Burning Rose Productions. The album features a star-studded cast which includes Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams, Derek and Susan Trucks, Luther Dickinson and the Cowboy Junkies. [check out our conversation with album producer Jeffrey Gaskill here]

Various Artists, First Came Memphis Minnie (2012)

Maria Muldaur was the driving force behind this excellent set of Memphis Minnie’s songs, featuring Rory Block, Ruthie Foster, Bonnie Raitt, Koko Taylor and others. Dave Bromberg, Bob Margolin and Billy Branch all contribute to the music. Memphis Minnie was a towering blues figure and a gifted singer, songwriter, and guitarist whose recording career spanned more than 40-plus years, during which she recorded around 200 songs.

Various Artists, Muddy Waters: All Star Tribute to a Legend (2011)

A recording of a Kennedy Centre concert from October 1997 with an impressive all-star cast of blues musicians, including Muddy’s own son Bill Morganfield, Kok Taylor, Buddy Guy, Charlie Musselwhite, John Hiatt, Keb’ Mo’ and Robert Lockwood Jr. Songs include Muddy Waters favourites like Hoochi Coochie Man, Can’t Be Satisfied, Got My Mojo Working, Rollin’ and Tumblin’. A DVD is also available.

Various Artists, Shout Sister Shout: A Tribute to Sister Rosetta Tharpe (2003)

18 Sister Rosetta songs by the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Joan Osborne, Janis Ian, Marcia Ball, Maria Muldaur, the Holmes Brothers and others. Born in 1915, Rosetta Tharpe was a major star during the 1940s and 50s, sensationally filling arenas. Her trail-blazing rock ’n’ roll tinged gospel performances, driven by her exceptional electric guitar work, sent audiences wild and made her a major celebrity. She inspired the early generation of rock ‘n’ roll artists, and Johnny Cash called her his favourite singer and biggest inspiration. This stirring album has a contribution by Marie Knight, who toured and sang with Sister Rosetta. [check out our piece on Rosetta Tharpe here]

Various Artists, Things About Coming My Way: A Tribute to the Mississippi Sheiks (2009)

The Mississippi Sheiks were a popular and influential American guitar and fiddle group of the 1930s. They only lasted for about 5 years, but had a prodigious output and, while adept at many styles of popular music of the time, were notable mostly for playing country blues. Artists featured include North Mississippi Allstars, Bruce Cockburn, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Madeleine Peyroux. Kelly Joe Phelps and others. 17 classic 1930s songs in a sunny, feel good production.

Various Artists, ZZ Top: A Tribute from Friends (2011)

Eleven great ZZ Top tracks like Sharp Dressed Man, Gimme All Your Loving, and La Grange by artists from country to heavy metal, including Grace Potter, NickelBack, Jamey Johnson and Daughtry. It’s great rockin’, head banging fun all the way.

Various Artists, Avalon Blues: The Music of Mississippi John Hurt (2001)

John Hurt is the ideal entry point to introduce anyone to country blues. His guitar work is mesmerizing and has been the foundation for many of today’s acoustic guitar players. The story goes that Andres Segovia, after hearing John Hurt’s guitar playing for the first time, demanded to know who the second guitarist was. This loving tribute by a high-class cast covers 15 of Hurt’s best loved songs. There are contributions from Taj Mahal, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Bruce Cockburn, John Hiatt, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and Lucinda Williams. A joy.

Walter Trout, Luther’s Blues: A Tribute to Luther Allison (2013)

Ace guitarist Walter Trout pays tribute to his great friend Luther Allison with 13 songs, including one written by Trout, When Luther Played The Blues. Allison was a wonderfully talented guitarist, who died in 1997 at the age of 57. He had been discovered by Howlin’ Wolf in 1957 and then mentored by Freddie King. His live performances were quite a thing, sometimes lasting four or more hours. In Trout’s song, he highlights a great quote by Allison “Leave your ego, play the music, love the people.” [check out our interview with Walter here]

Joe Bonamassa, Muddy Wolf at Red Rocks (2015)

A recording of Bonamassa’s concert from August 2014 at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre on Colorado. The show celebrates the music of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, featuring many of the two blues legends’ greatest songs as well as a few of Bonamassa’s own songs. It is probably one of the best live blues albums of recent years. As usual, Bonamassa’s guitar work in incendiary, but his singing in the show is exceptional. Available in either 2-CD or DVD formats.

20 Best Acoustic Blues Albums

Acoustic guitar blues goes back a long way to the early Delta pioneers like Charley Patton, Son House, Willie Brown – and, of course, Robert Johnson, who followed them around and eventually outstripped his mentors. Blues musicians like Blind Blake and Blind Boy Fuller, Willie Mctell and Willie Johnson were all skilled exponents of the art before, eventually, the blues would go electric. People like Josh White and Big Bill Broonzy kept the acoustic tradition which was revitalized in the folk revival of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s with the rediscovery of artists like Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Elizabeth Cotton and Rev. Gary Davis.

The legacy was taken on by those who learned from these artists, like Rory Block, John Sebastian, Jorma Kaukonen and others, and acoustic guitar blues has continued to flourish in the capable hands of artists like Taj Mahal, Eric Bibb, Keb’ Mo’, Hans Theessink, Chris Smither, Mary Flower, Guy Davis and many others. And, of course, Rory Block is still going strong.  We have to mention, too, Eric Clapton, whose massive selling 1992 Unplugged album put acoustic blues back on show and paved the way for an increase in popularity of the genre ever since.

We’ve chosen a selection of 20 of the best acoustic guitar blues albums from the last 10 years. Check them out and enjoy!

Billy Boy Arnold: Sings Big Bill Broonzy

Veteran blues harp player Arnold, turns in a very fine acoustic guitar driven tribute album to the great Bill Broonzy.

Lurrie Bell: The Devil Ain’t Got No Music

Sparse, stirring 2012 album of gospel blues from Chicagoan Bell, with help from Joe Louis Walker and Billy Branch.

Eric Bibb: Blues, Ballads and Work Songs 

We could easily have plumped for any one of Bibb’s recent albums – Blues People (2014), Lead Belly’s Gold (2015) and Booker’s Guitar (2011) all come to mind – but have gone for this 2011 album of traditional blues songs all featuring Bibb’s expert picking and dulcet singing tones. Check out our recent interview with Eric here.

Rory Block A Woman’s Soul

Again, we could easily have chosen one of Block’s fine tribute albums of the last ten years – to Mississippi John Hurt or Rev. Gary Davis, amongst others – but have plumped for her 2018 album of Bessie Smith songs for the clever way in which she has translated the big band arrangements into guitar accompaniment and her fine vocal performance. Check out our interview with Rory here.

Michael Jerome Brown: Can’t Keep a Good Man Down

Canadian Brown is an incredible musician and guitarist, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the blues. This 2015 album of forgotten largely pre-war blues songs is quite wondrous.

Paul Cowley: Just What I Know

I guess most people reading this will not be aware of Paul Cowley, an English musician living in France. This 2018 album of 7 classic blues songs mixed with 5 originals ought to out him on the map. Very fine album. Check out our review of the album here.

Guy Davis & Fabrizio Poggi: Sonnie and Brownie’s Last Train

This 2017 album ought to have earned the artists a Grammy. Two top modern-day artists at the top of their game channelling two of history’s greatest acoustic bluesmen. See our album review here.

Luther Dickinson: Blues and Ballads

Brilliant album of timeless-sounding, original songs from the North Mississippi Allstars front man and top-notch album producer, Luther Dickinson. Lovely gospel vibe throughout and a welcome contribution from Mavis Staples. You’ll find our interview with Luther here.

Mary Flower: Misery Loves Company

Fingerstyle guitarist and music educator, Flower is a master of intricate syncopated Piedmont style finger picking. This 2011 album produced by Colin Linden with half of the 12 songs originals features Flower’s outstanding guitar work.

Mark Harrison The Panoramic View

A hugely enjoyable treat of modern acoustic blues from 2018, full of wondrous finger-picking and slide playing, and giving full vent to Harrison’s compelling story-telling and wry humour. You can find our review here.

Bottleneck John: All Around Man

Again, you may not know of Johan Eliasson aka Bottleneck John, but this 2013 album is an absolute treat. Eliasson has an amazing collection of vintage guitars and resonators and can play them to great effect. Our review can be found here.

Ernie Hawkins: Whinin’ Boy

Hawkins is a masterful guitarist in the blues and ragtime vein pioneered by the legendary Rev Gary Davis. This is a fine album of early jazz and blues songs, with Hawkin’s guitar work augmented by a little clarinet, trombone and trumpet.

Harrison Kennedy with Colin Linden: This is From Here

Canadian singer-songwriter and bluesman, Kennedy’s 2015 album of soulful and authentic blues won a Juno award.

Taj Mahal & Keb Mo: TajMo

Fabulous collaboration album from blues masters Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’ in 2017. This is an adventurous, joyous take on traditional blues from two musicians oozing class and mutual respect. It won a Grammy in 2018. Check out our review of the two in concert here.

Doug MacLeod: There’s a Time

An album of original songs which sound like well-worn acoustic blues classics. Bass and drums accompany MacLeod’s ever tasteful guitar work and excellent vocals. MacLeod is known as the “storytelling bluesman,” and these songs draw you in to their engaging narrative. Superb.

Chris Smither – Still on the Levee

A two-CD retrospective featuring Smither’s own new recordings of a selection of songs from his vast back catalogue to celebrate his 50^th year of making music. Witty, intelligent songs, driven by Smither’s metronomic guitar picking. Catch our interview with Chris here.

Hans Theessink & Terry Evans: Delta Time

Hugely enjoyable 2012 acoustic blues album from two of the finest blues singers you’ll hear (sadly Terry Evans passed away in 2018). Great chemistry from the combination of these two contrasting voices with a wonderful gospel sound and lovely harmonies throughout. Also check out their 2008 Visions. You can find our interview with Hans here.

Brooks Williams: Blues

The album is a gem, featuring just Brooks’ voice and guitar – acoustic, resonator and cigar box, and was recorded live in the studio. The result is a very fine album of traditional and classic blues. Worth checking out, too is Brooks’ Baby O! from 2010. Take a look at our interview with Brooks here. 

Jontavious Willis: Spectacular Class

Spectacular Class is an album of timeless acoustic blues, released in 2019 by a young man hailed by Taj Mahal as a “great new voice of the 21st century in the acoustic blues.” It’s an album that sounds at once traditional but at the same time entirely fresh, with an outstanding set of songs driven by his top-notch guitar picking and his hugely entertaining vocals. You can find our interview with Jontavious here.

Various Artists: Things About Comin’ My Way – A Tribute to the music of the Mississippi Sheiks

Terrific tribute album from a variety of artists, including Bill Frisell, John Hammond and Bruce Cockburn.

Starvation Blues – Nobody’s Fault But Mine?

I had a conversation with some friends recently about the idea of personal responsibility and how that might apply depending on your circumstances, particularly if you happen to be poor. There’s no doubt that poverty limits your choices in life – most of us can’t imagine what it would be like to live, as so many do, on less than $2.50 a day. There are many things that can be said to be getting better in the world, but still – over three billion people live on less than $2.50 a day. And at least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.

Hard to imagine getting by on that, isn’t it? Your options for food, shelter, clothing, healthcare – the basics – never mind things most of us take for granted, like leisure, career, travel, entertainment – become pretty limited. Not only that but the lives of the poor become very precarious, because of the environment in which they live (subject to problems associated with climate change or subject to violence, for example) and the ruthlessness at times of those who are more powerful and wealthy.

 

 

I reflected on the issue of personal responsibility a while ago in a post about Blind Willie Johnson’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine. What I didn’t consider in that post was a very important point made by Rishawn Biddle in an article provocatively entitled Beyond the Personal Responsibility Myth. Knowledge, he says, is power, but also “the most-crucial tool for acquiring the financial and social resources needed to emerge and stay out of poverty.” Unfortunately, says Biddle, many people in poverty do not have the education and hence knowledge required to make good decisions or to make the best of good decisions made, and become trapped by their own situation and bad decisions. He concludes, “ thinking that bad choices alone explain poverty is as wrongly simpleminded as believing that impoverished people are too tied down by structural inequities to emerge from their conditions.” It’s not a straightforward issue.

 

However we think personal responsibility fits into the picture, those of us who are better off can’t let ourselves off the hook. More than ever before, our lives are interconnected, the world is getting smaller, we have responsibility one for the other, and each of us can make a difference. I was reminded in thinking about all this of Eric Bibb’s song Connected. The song isn’t about rich and poor, but it’s a powerful reminder that we are all part of each other, we are all connected. Someone famously asked a long time ago, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” A while later, but still a couple of thousand years ago, the answer came: “If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion – how can God’s love be in that person?”

 

 

Prescription Blues

I listened to a great version of a song recorded in 1924 by Clara Smith called Prescription for the Blues recently on the Watkins Family Hour album. It struck a chord, having suffered some ill health recently myself – doctor’s prescriptions have been all too frequently part of life of late!

Of course the song isn’t really about treating physical health – it’s about the blues, what Robert Johnson called “an achin’ old heart disease,” the “worried blues.” W.C. Handy said that the “blues were conceived in aching hearts.” Prescription Blues is a clever, light-hearted, playful little song about being love sick, having a “heart disease” and asking the doctor  for a cure:

All day long I worry all night I’m blue
I feel so awfully lonesome I don’t know what to do
And so I ask you doctor to see if you can find
Something in your sachet to pacify my mind
Oh doctor doctor write me a prescription for the blues

Let me tell you doctor why I’m in misery
Once I had a lover, but she went away from me
…Oh doctor doctor write me a prescription for the blues

And that’s what most of the blues are about, isn’t it – lost love, love gone wrong, unfaithful lovers, unrequited love, yearning and heart break. As Son House said, “Ain’t but one kind of blues – and that consisted in male and female that’s in love.”

Well, for sure that’s mainly the subject matter of most blues songs. But there’s more to it than that, and I think this is why the blues continue to resonate for us. The blues arose in black communities a century ago, in the hardship, toil, injustice and bondage of African Americans. B. B. King said, “The blues is an expression of anger against shame and humiliation.” And, as well as love, many of the songs address real life problems – not having enough money, illness, homelessness, bereavement, abandonment. You can easily think of songs like Victoria Spivey’s T.B. Blues (“I got a tuberculosis; consumption is killing me, It’s too late, too late…too late”), about a disease that is particularly associated with poverty, or Blind Lemon Jefferson’s Broke and Hungry, or Big Bill Broonzy’s Starvation Blues, where he sings about having no job, no place to stay and “starvation everywhere I go.”

Well, of course, there is a prescription for all this – we don’t have to tolerate injustice, racism, exploitation. They are all problems that can be addressed, if we have the will. The blues can keep on jolting us out of our safe, comfortable lives and alert us to the pain and ills of the world around. Will we be part of the problem or part of the solution? Which starts with the words of someone from a couple of thousand years ago: “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.”

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe: the blues versus racism

The blues grew up in an environment of the most virulent racism and discrimination, perpetrated by white people on the black communities of the Southern States. Many of the early blues songs bear witness to the suffering endured by black communities. In 1930, Lead Belly sang Jim Crow, bemoaning the inequity he found everywhere he went: “I been traveling, I been traveling from shore to shore, Everywhere I have been I find some old Jim Crow.” Eleven years later, Josh White gave us Jim Crow Blues, where he complains he “ain’t treated no better than a mountain goat.”

Lead Belly also suffered racism in the nation’s capital. In Bourgeois Blues, he tells us about the ostracism he faced as a black person: “Well, me and my wife we were standing upstairs, We heard the white man say’n I don’t want no niggers up there.” Then:

“Well, them white folks in Washington they know how
To call a colored man a nigger just to see him bow.”

But those days are long gone, right?

Last week the news emerged that the police commissioner of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, Robert Copeland, admitted to publically calling the president of the United States a “f***ing nigger.” In March Jane O’Toole overheard Copeland make the remark as she finished her dinner in a local bistro.

O’Toole complain to the town management, but Copeland was unrepentant, saying in an email to his fellow police commissioners, “I believe I did use the ‘N-word’ in reference to the current occupant of the Whitehouse. For this, I do not apologise – he meets and exceeds my criteria for such.” His loudly stated opinion, according to Copeland, was merely an exercise of his first amendment rights.

The sorry tale was compounded by the Chairman of the Police Commission, Joseph Balboni, saying he had no plans to ask Copeland to resign. He said of Copeland, “He’s worked with a lot of blacks in his life. . . . He said some harsh words about Mr. Obama, and here we are. This woman, she’s blowing it all out of proportion.” Mr. Copeland has now resigned.

There have been other incidents of expressions of racism recently. One Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who is leading a ranchers’ dispute with the government over cattle grazing, recently wondered whether the “Negro” shouldn’t be back in chains. He recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids – and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch – they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do…And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do? They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

Bundy, the New York Times reported, has become a celebrity, “drawing hundreds of supporters, including dozens of militia members, many carrying sidearms, and members of Oath Keepers, a militia group, who have embraced him as a symbol of their anger and a bulwark against federal abuse.”

Then there’s the recent case of Donald Sterling, manager of the LA Clippers basketball team, who asked his girlfriend not to take pictures with black friends or bring them to games. “Admire him, bring him here, feed him, f*** him,” he said of former basketball legend, Magic Johnson. “But don’t put him on an Instagram for the world to have to see so they have to call me.”

Racism is alive and well on the other side of the Atlantic as well. The host of the BBC’s successful Top Gear programme,  was caught on camera reciting a version of “eeny, meeny, miny, moe” from his childhood in which he is heard to mutter “catch a nigger by the toe.” Clarkson’s got form in this regard, of course, previously calling Mexicans “lazy, feckless and flatulent.”.

Perhaps this is just a few ignorant and well-known people getting caught saying some things they shouldn’t. In a recent Guardian newspaper article, however, Gary Younge argued that racism is “a system of discrimination planted by history, nourished by politics and nurtured by economics, in which some groups face endemic disadvantage” and went on to say that, “The reality of modern racism is…the institutional marginalisation of groups performed with the utmost discretion and minimum of fuss by well-mannered and often well-intentioned people working in deeply flawed systems. According to a recent US department of education report, black preschoolers (mostly four-year-olds) are four times more likely to be suspended more than once than their white classmates. According to a 2013 report by Release, a UK group focusing on drugs and drug laws, black people in England and Wales are far less likely to use drugs than white people but six times more likely to be stopped and searched for possession of them. In both countries black people are far more likely to be convicted, and to get stiffer sentences and longer jail time.”

The blues, forged as they were at a time of deep distress and racial oppression, continue to be a howl of protest and a stark warning about the racism that, sadly, often seems to be just under the surface.

The Giro d’Italia, the Blues and Easy Riders

Giro starts at Titanic Centre, Belfast

The second biggest bike race in the world, the Giro d’Italia swung into Belfast for two days this weekend. It was a big deal for the city and country which was festooned in pink (the race’s official color); people turned out in their hundreds of thousands to cheer on the riders as they whizzed past, all colourful lycra and bulging thighs. For once we were united, old grievances forgotten in a haze of sporting, multi-colored, cycling fever.

It reminded me of that old 12-bar blues song, C.C. Rider or See See Rider, or possibly even Easy Rider, recorded by a great many artists over the years, first by Ma Rainey in 1924. It’s hard to know exactly what or who this See See or Easy Rider was. Theories vary, from it referring to a person with easy going sexual morals, to it being an itinerant bluesman with a guitar slung over his back or a “county circuit” preacher, to Big Bill Broonzy’s tale of a local fiddle player named See See Rider who taught him the blues. Seems to me that “see see” and “easy” sound pretty similar and that the term most likely refers to an easy lover, man or woman, someone who was habitually unfaithful – the subject of many a blues song.

The song has been recorded by a host of artists, including classic blues artists such as Big Bill Broonzy, Mississippi John Hurt, Lead Belly and Lightnin’ Hopkins, as well as artists like Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, the Animals and Elvis. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s also been covered by Bruce Springsteen, appearing on the Boss’s “Detroit Medley” contribution to the 1979 No Nukes Live album.

Film director Martin Scorsese counts Lead Belly’s version of the song as formative for him: “One day, around 1958, I remember hearing something that was unlike anything I’d ever heard before…The music was demanding, “Listen to me!”…The song was called “See See Rider,”  [and the] name of the singer was Lead Belly… Lead Belly’s music opened something up for me. If I could have played guitar, really played it, I never would have become a filmmaker.”

High speed racing

Whatever exactly the easy rider of the song means, there’s nothing easy about what these professional cyclists do. It’s a punishing sport with riders clocking up hundreds of kilometres of racing day after day, in all weathers, up and down mountains and across countryside and urban landscapes. Now that the sport’s cleaned itself up after decades of drug abuse culminating in the shameful Lance Armstrong years, the sight of the peleton whizzing past at speed or the pain endured by the riders on the upper slopes of high mountains is a thing of wonder. Easy it’s not.

But I guess that’s true for almost everything in life. As author Scott Alexander says, “All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.”

 

Hans Theessink: A life in the blues

Hans Theessink, is one of the fiercest acoustic players in Europe and one of the top acoustic blues stars worldwide, a man who has played with the best and is one of the best, American or European, black & white, old and young, since the 1960s.This guy is the real deal, simply a blues master who is as good as it gets on every level. www.thecountryblues.com

Photo courtesy Beate Sandor

DATC: Hans, you’ve been playing the blues, releasing albums and entertaining people for over 40 years now. It’s clear from listening to your music that you have a deep appreciation and love for the blues – how did this all start, how did this music come to make such a deep connection with you? – particularly for someone from the Netherlands and not some Southern USA state!

HT: Actually I’m celebrating “50 Years On The Road” this year! My musical journey started when my dad gave me a mandolin. A few years later I got my first guitar and just loved it. I liked the songs that I heard when the skiffle craze hit Europe. Exciting music; later on I learned that they actually were adaptations of southern folk and blues (Leadbelly e.g.). I didn’t know of the existence of the blues as a musical  genre; just loved to play around with what I knew. One night I heard Big Bill Broonzy on the radio – a revelation to me that touched me and sent the shivers down my spine. Great guitar playing and a voice full of emotion. Big Bill Broonzy set me off on my blues journey.

Over the years I’ve met quite a few colleagues in different parts of the world that had a similar key experience. It’s probably just about having your feelers/antenna out and tuning into the signal! For a kid from the Netherlands this music was exotic, new and exciting. I suppose that if you grew up around it somewhere in the south, it was more like a common everyday kind of thing. Maybe the guy next door was a great bluesman but you probably didn’t think too much of it unless you had your antenna out and were tuned into that certain something. Of course I travelled to Missisippi and other southern states to experience the blues in its original surroundings. That was like blues heaven to me – I sucked it all in.

When I started working with African American tuba player Jon Sass, I played my kind of blues to him, and he said: “My grandfather in W.Virginia used to play like that.”  That was his natural family connection, but musically he had classical training and was much more into James Brown, Steely Dan and jazz. The blues came back to him via Europe so I suppose it’s a two-way system.

DATC: The blues arose in the context of black experience and suffering in the Southern States in the early part of the twentieth century. How aware are you of that as you sing the songs you sing? How straightforward is it for a white European to perform the blues?

HT: Of course the blues hails from southern black context where hardship and suffering was a daily experience but that’s most likely also the reason why this music is so vibrant and appeals to people all around the globe who have had their share of troubles too. Most people can relate to a person/musician that survives all the hardships helped by the power of his/her music. The feel of the music is glorious and comes across to anybody with some sort of sensitivity. Maybe people in Europe (and N. America for that sake) sometimes tend to romanticise the black blues experience. I’ve met and played with lots of blues old-timers over the years; they all had one thing in common: a great sense of humor and their own kind of philosophy and wisdom about life. Great people to be around.

For all of them “Blues is a feeling” – it’s not about a million notes but about the feeling and the emotions in the music and their performances were a 100% all the time. If you feel it and are earnest about it, you can do it; black, yellow or white, young or old.

I’m not a Mississippi sharecropper or Louisiana cotton picker – I’m alien to that side of the blues experience but there are many other aspects of human condition, love, death, hardship, joy etc. that I do understand very well as a common human experience. So I got plenty of things to sing about from my own experience and use the country-blues vehicle as a musical art-form. I just love the sound of the blues. It got a hold of me when I was a kid and heard Big Bill Broonzy on the radio – a key experience to me – so I suppose that I just do the music that I love and enjoy doing. Since the early nineties I’ve had collaborations with Terry Evans – one of the great american voices – who hails from Vicksburg MS and is old enough to still have had the cotton picking experience. On our latest duo album Delta Time Terry does a haunting version of J.B.Lenoir’s “Down In Mississippi” that silences audiences all over the world; people sense the truth and feel the urgence of hard times and prejudice that the song relates.

DATC: How often do you get to play in the US and how you been received there?

HT: Some of my earlier records were released on the Flying Fish label out of Chicago in the late eighties. (Unfortunately Flying Fish stopped their activities after the untimely death of record boss Bruce Kaplan). These records made some impact and I got really good reviews that led to invitations from clubs and festivals in N.America. I’ve made regular trips to N.America ever since that time. The reception has always been really good and for me it was a real bonus to bring American style music back to the US by Europe. Playing at the New Orleans Jazzfest and the Chicago Blues Festival were highlights and a wonderful experience for me.

DATC: As you look around, how healthy is the blues in Europe – in terms of both performing artists and in terms of the appetite of audiences?

HT: I think it looks pretty healthy. Blues societies get established in many places and do a great job spreading the news. Also lots of younger musicians seem to be drawn to the blues or a blues based kind of music. There’s an audience there, especially if you – like me – have built up a following throughout the years. Young musicians probably may find it a little harder to make a name for themselves. My brand of acoustic blues-based music attracts audiences that listen carefully. The music takes center-stage – be it in small intimate clubs, concert halls or big festivals.

DATC: I’m sure you’d say there have been many influences on your music and your guitar playing – are there any in particular that stand out?

HT: There are so many but I should probably mention Broonzy, Mississippi John Hurt, Yank Rachell (mandolin), Sleepy John Estes, Fred McDowell, Brownie McGhee, Mance Lipscomb, Blind Willie Johnson… I’ve had the pleasure of spending time and playing with Yank Rachell, Honeyboy Edwards, Louisiana Red, Champion Jack Dupree, John Jackson, Sam Chatmon, Odetta, Wilsson Pickett, Luther Allison, Bo Diddley, Son Thomas, Taj Mahal, Henry Townsend to mention a few. I suppose they’ve all influenced me more in the sense of feeling and understanding the music than guitarlines and notes. But of course you pick up things left and right. I’m self-taught and learning to play wasn’t easy in the east of Holland in the early sixties – no teachers, books or videos. Brownie McGhee was the first bluesman that I saw live in concert. I sat in the first row and watched carefully what he did – my introduction to fingerpicking: thumb + 2 fingers. All of a sudden I was able to figure some things out – a real eye-opener that gave me a direction.

DATC: You always make playing the guitar look so easy and effortless. Any advice for aspiring acoustic blues players?

HT: Play, play, play – that’s all I can say. Go to see other good pickers play and play with other people. If you’re dedicated and have the love for the music and your instrument, someday it will fall into place.

DATC: Hans, congratulations on your album, Wishing Well. About half the album is traditional songs and the other half has your own compositions – some of which, like Early This Morning Blues, sound like traditional blues songs. Tell us a bit about your song-writing, Hans – is that something that comes easily, naturally to you?

HT: Actually I already have another album 65 Birthday Bash recorded live in 2013 and released in april 2014!

Wishing Well is from last year and a pretty laidback kind of album. Songs that have accompanied me throughout my musical career (e.g. Brownie McGhee’s Living With The Blues that I picked up when I saw Brownie at my first ever live blues experience – or Wayfaring Stranger that I picked up from Johnny Cash at a dressing room session before a concert – I was the support act). Songwriting comes quite naturally to me. I don’t write all the time but I’ve probably written 3-400 songs over the years and whenever I get some good idea or have a certain experience that’s worth a song, I get going. I suppose that’s a good way too to find your own personal expression. I’ve included a few lyrics: Big Bill’s Guitar (about hearing Broonzy and playing his guitar in Chicago) and Mississippi (written after my first trip to the state). [Click here]

DATC: You seem very much at home performing and recording gospel blues songs or songs with  spiritual content  – your album Jedermann is full of such songs, whether it’s Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down, or Oh Sinner Man or Way Down in the Hole; and some of the songs from your collaborative album with Terry Evans have a gospel feel, not just Heaven’s Airplane. How do these songs fit in the overall blues genre? And how well do you relate to them?

HT: Musically it’s more or less the same idiom and both are closely related. Gospel puts “God” or “The Lord” where the blues puts “My baby” – just about. Bluesmen like Fred McDowell used the same musical vehicle to play and sing gospel style material and blues.

I especially like the vocal aspect of the gospel sound – with its emotional output and great harmonies and spirituality. Especially on our latest collaboration Delta Time where, besides Ry Cooder on guitar, we were backed by Willie Greene and Arnold McCuller with their great gospel blues voices we got a gospel inspired sound. I think it has a lot to do with the voices and 3- or 4 part harmonies. Terry, Arnold and Willie all sang in church when they came up and know how to wrap their voices around a song. We’re not trying to put a religious viewpoint across though – just enjoy singing together and I think it really fits well with the blues. In my band I work with 3 singers from Zimbabwe – a similar thing: rich harmonies with an African twist. To me the human voice is the greatest instrument and singing with others is an inspiring and glorious experience.

The Jedermann Remixed album is more explicit with its spiritual content. I was asked to do the soundtrack for this film based on an old medieval morality play where religion and the fight between good and bad, “God” and the “Devil” play a big role.

DATC: Finally, Hans, what does the rest of 2014 hold for you?

HT: Just had my 66th birthday on April 5th – where we had 2 great “Birthday Bash” concerts with myself and musical friends here in Vienna (where I make my home). I’m trying to work a little less as I get older but it’s hard to say no and I’m still playing many concerts all over Europe in 2014. I play lots of solo gigs but also duo’s and bandgigs – keep it interesting and varied. There are no plans for N.America this year but I may come over in 2015.

 

Key to the Highway – Walkin’s Much Too Slow!

Key to the Highway is a Big Bill Broonzy song which has been covered by everybody from Sonny Terry to the Band to B B King to Eric Clapton. It’s a classic, “I’m outta here!” song:

I got the key to the highway,
Billed out and bound to go
I’m gonna leave here running

Because walking’s much too slow

It’s typical of a lot of the early blues songs – the ramblin’ bluesman who can’t stay in one place too long, needs to be on the road again and can’t commit to any relationships.”You ain’t done nothing babe, Except drive a good man from home,” says the singer, putting all the blame on his woman. When in reality, it’s his own itchy feet that are making him want to pack up and hit the road again – “I’m gonna roam this old highway, Until the day I die.”

There were lots of reasons for blues artist moving around – it may have been the threat of lynching in the Jim Crow South; it may have been the need to make a little money – then as now, the professional musician can’t just keep playing his material to the same group of people over and over again; it may have been failed romances; or just a restlessness, a need to get up and go, see a few different places. Whatever the reason, many of these guys didn’t have much of a home, not one they could feel contented in anyway.

Robert Johnson said he had “ramblin’ on my mind,” again, blaming his “baby,” because she treated him so “unkind.” Muddy Waters sang “I’m a rambling kid, I’ve been rambling all my days,” but his baby, “she want me to stop rambling.” Johnny Shines’ version goes, “Woke up this morning, reached down for my shoes, Reason was, baby, I got them old ramblin’ blues.”

But, hey, we love listening to these songs, don’t we, because there’s something just a bit rebellious in them, something that makes us feel alive in our soft, comfortable lifestyles. Problem is, though, home comforts are pretty good, and we don’t really want to change anything, because change can be unsettling, and, quite frankly, “leavin’ here runnin” is way too much effort. We get settled pretty easily these days, don’t we?

Interesting, isn’t it, that Jesus might be termed a “ramblin’ man?” Once his ministry got going, he never stayed in one place too long. He moved about the countryside with a bunch of followers, men and women, had little in the way of possessions, and said at one point that animals like foxes and birds had dens and nests, but he had no place to call home. He was, and is, an unsettling character – even though the Christian church tames and domesticates him.

Jesus never really fitted in with his contemporaries. The people to whom he preached got excited and saw in him a new political leader who might take on the occupying Romans (John 6.15); many of the Jewish leaders were deeply troubled about his version of God’s coming kingdom; his disciples seriously misunderstood the nature of his leadership, bickering about who would be top dog beside him. He made people who came to him terribly uncomfortable about his attitude to wealth (he told a “rich, young ruler” to give away his money to the poor) and he was prepared to symbolically attack the very centre of Jewish political, economic and religious life, the Temple in Jerusalem. And, of course, so upsetting and threatening was his vision for all things new, for changing the status quo, he ended up being tortured and executed.

Would be Jesus-followers can’t expect a life of quiet comfort and ease. He promised his followers harassment for pursuing justice and reviling by people who misunderstood them. Problem is, by making this word that Jesus used – justice (Matt 5.10) – into a nice-sounding religious word “righteousness,” we’ve taken the heat from Jesus’s life and message. We’ve probably never heard of people being persecuted for “righteousness” sake; but we’ve certainly heard of people being persecuted for pursuing justice. And there’s where things start to get uncomfortable for us – how far are we prepared to go, as Jesus-followers, to pursue justice? Some of us can’t even be bothered finding out what’s going on the world, or signing that petition against modern day slavery or whatever, never mind taking to the streets to make our voice hear on behalf of the voiceless and the oppressed. Our Christianity has become too domesticated, too calm, too cosy. We need to find ways to get radically connected to the poor, the weak, the oppressed of the word, or else we’re just playing at it.

The followers need to start to look a bit more like the one we’re following. Walkin’s much to slow – we need to shake ourselves down and be prepared to do a bit of running. Only when we’re prepared to change ourselves can we hope to change the world.