The Real Folk Blues, released in 1966, is a combination of twelve of Muddy Waters’ recordings from 1949 to 1954, but it’s all quality stuff and the album was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2017 as a “Classic of Blues Recordings.”
Chess took the opportunity with the folk and blues revivals of the early sixties to promote Muddy to a new and younger generation of music fans, his last chart hit with Chess having been in 1958. In 1964, they released Waters’ only acoustic album, Folk Singer, and then, two years later, The Real Folk Blues.
The album includes Canary Bird, named in honour of his wife, Geneva, and originally released on the Aristocrat label in 1949 with Ernest “Big” Crawford on bass. As well as Clarksdale, the song mentions Stovall Plantation, where Muddy Waters lived in a sharecropper’s shack for the first thirty years of his life. It’s delightfully raw, with Waters’ voice to the fore.
Another early song is Gypsy Woman, from 1947, which features Sunnyland Slim on piano. There’s a definite Robert Johnson feel about this one, both in terms of the blues turnarounds and Water’s singing. As there is in an early Water’s version of Johnson’s Walking Blues, sparsely arranged with just his singing and characteristic slide guitar.
The album kicks off with Mannish Boy, first recorded in 1955, with that famous harmonica lick. The song is a classic, included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s list of the “500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.” “I’m a man,” Muddy asserts, “I’m a full grown man.” Like most African Americans of his day, Muddy Waters had still been referred to as a boy even when grown, especially in his native Mississippi. “No b-o-y,” he sings – now free of the extreme Southern racism and oppression and a successful musician in Chicago, Muddy Waters could assert his black manhood. (For more on the song Mannish Boy, click here.]
Screaming and Crying recorded in September 1949, featured “Baby Face” Leroy Foster who played guitar with his hands, and bass drum and hi-hat with his feet! It’s a nice slow tempo blues driven by Little Johnny Jones’s rolling piano, where Muddy bemoans the loss of his past life, his mother, his wives and his happy home. It’s truly the blues!
There is a 1950 version of Rollin’ And Tumblin’, a blues standard, first recorded in 1929 by Hambone Willie Newbern for Okeh Records. This is the song that Robert Johnson adapted as If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day in 1936 in his third recording session in San Antonio. Waters recorded two versions of the song in 1950 and I believe this is the one recorded for Aristocat, with the bass accompaniment by Ernest Crawford. Subsequent rock takes on the song, like Cream’s, are based on Muddy Waters.
Willie Dixon’s The Same Thing is another fine inclusion, featuring Otis Spann on piano and Dixon on bass, as is the classic Just To Be With You, with great lines like “[I will] Fight a shark with a toothpick,” and “I’d call my mother-in-law honey.”
The album closes with You Can’t Lose What You Never Had, another one with loss after loss – woman, money, burned-down home – piling up to deliver the blues. It features some tasty slide guitar from Muddy and is a fine way to finish what amounts to a classic – and quality – collection of early Muddy Waters’ recordings.
Along with Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon defined the sound of Chicago blues. A prolific song-writer, particularly during the years when Chess Records were at their peak, his songs were performed by a who’s who of blues royalty, including Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Little Walter. His Little Red Rooster and I Just Want to Make Love to You were both recorded by the Rolling Stones, the former with the distinction of being the only blues song to reach No.1 on the UK singles charts (1964).
Willie Dixon knew what the blues were all about, having been incarcerated for minor offences on two occasions in Mississippi, the first when he was only 12. In his book, I Am the Blues. he says, “That’s when I really learned about the blues. I had heard ’em with the music and took ’em to be an enjoyable thing but after I heard these guys down there moaning and groaning these really down-to-earth blues, I began to inquire about ’em…. I really began to find out what the blues meant to black people, how it gave them consolation to be able to think these things over and sing them to themselves or let other people know what they had in mind and how they resented various things in life.”
On another occasion, Dixon served thirty days at the Harvey Allen County Farm, near the infamous Parchman Farm prison, he saw prisoners mistreated and beaten. Those, he said who were “running the farm didn’t have no mercy – you talk about mean, ignorant, evil, stupid and crazy. This was the first time I saw a man beat to death.” Dixon too was cruelly treated receiving a blow to his head that made him deaf for about four years.
Dixon arrived in Chicago from Mississippi in 1936, and after a boxing career, singing in a gospel group and in a successful trio, he ended up working for Chess Records, producing, arranging, leading the studio band, and playing bass. His first big break came when Muddy Waters recorded his Hoochie Coochie Man in 1954, which became his biggest hit, Dixon going on to become Chess’s top song-writer.
Dixon eventually recorded his own version of some of these blues songs that he’d written for others to perform in his 6th album in 1970, an album which eventually was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1986. I Am The Blues, which shares the title with Dixon’s autobiography, has nine of Dixon’s best songs, including Hoochie Coochie Man, Spoonful, Little Red Rooster and I Can’t Quit You Baby.
Produced by Abner Spector, the album features Willie Dixon (vocals and bass), Walter Horton (harmonica), Lafayette Leake & Sunnyland Slim (Piano), Johnny Shines (guitar), and Clifton James (drums).
Dixon proves himself to be a fine blues vocalist throughout. He arrives growling, Howlin’ Wolf-style, on the first track, Back Door Man, shows fine control on the slow I Can’t Quit You Baby, adds a playful note on The Seventh Son, and gives The Little Red Rooster a nice barnyard feel. You don’t feel in any way like you’re short changed from versions of songs by the artists who made the songs famous.
The arrangements throughout give room for each of the fine instrumentalists. Lafayette Leake’s and Sunnyland Slim’s piano work is very cool and never feels overbearing. The piano and bass driving Hoochie Coochie Man gives it a slightly different feel from the Muddy Waters version, and provides a nice counterpoint to the harmonica riff. Walter Horton’s expressive and sweet harmonica weaves in an out of the songs expertly – Dixon said the shy, gentle Horton was the best harmonica player he ever heard. Johnny Shines adds some nice guitar work along the way, especially on I Can’t Quit You Baby and The Same Thing.
Overall, it’s classic Chicago blues, with artists at the top of their game, seemingly really enjoying themselves in the recording process. It’s a piece of blues – and indeed, given the debt it owes to Willie Dixon, rock’n’roll history.
Dixon once said, “The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits…The blues are the roots of all American music. As long as American music survives, so will the blues.”
Dixon’s legacy is found not only in the blues songs he composed recorded by the likes of Waters and Wolf, or in this gem of an album we’ve been looking at, but in the way his songs were covered by major rock’n’roll artists and influenced their output.
Quite rightly, he was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. In 2007, Dixon was honoured with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail in Vicksburg.
It’s time for everyone to sit up and take notice of Joanna Connor. And with her new album, 4801 South Indiana Avenue, produced by none other than Joe Bonamassa, it feels like an already successful career is opening up in new ways.
Those in the know have seen the YouTube videos that have gone viral, with her incredible slide guitar playing – check out Walkin’ Blues, 8m views and counting – and have listened with pleasure to some of the thirteen albums she’s released over the past 30 years. But 4801 South Indiana Avenue ought to bring her much wider attention.
Joanna Connor has been paying her dues for many years, plying her trade in the blues clubs of her adopted home town, Chicago. She moved there in 1984, and has played with, and learned from, the likes of James Cotton, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells. Shortly after arriving in Chicago, she began playing at the premiere blues club, Kingston Mines, where she has continued to perform three nights a week until the advent of the pandemic. She’s been a regular at major blues and music festivals worldwide, and those who know her music will hail her as one of the world’s best blues rock guitarists, with her innovative, jazzy, funky approach.
Of her early days in Chicago, she has said, “It was my university. I went out every night of the week. Within a month I had my first gig with the legendary Johnny Littlejohn. A few weeks later I became a part of Dion Payton and the 43rd St Bluesband. We were the house band at the Checkerboard Lounge, on the south side of Chicago, then owned by Buddy Guy. That’s when my schooling kicked into overdrive. I played with Buddy, Junior Wells, Otis Rush, Sammy Lawhorn, Pinetop Perkins, Hubert Sumlin, Magic Slim, Son Seals, Lonnie Brooks, Koko Taylor, just to name a few. I was blessed.”
Her new album on Joe Bonamassa’s new independent blues record label Keeping The Blues Alive, follows 2019’s excellent Rise, and was produced by Joe Bonamassa and Josh Smith at Ocean Way Recording Studios in Nashville, Tennessee. It’s an absolutely top-notch set of blues rock that clearly has a Chicago blues heritage, yet sounds completely fresh and modern. Connor’s killer slide guitar and vocals are augmented by some characteristically fine guitar work by Bonamassa and a tight-knit top-class band, consisting of Josh Smith (guitar), Reese Wynans (keyboards), Cavin Turner (bass), and drummer Lemar Carter (drums).
It’s superbly produced, but at the same time, it’s packed with raw, high-energy musicianship.
Down at the Crossroads got chatting to Ms. Connor about the album. I congratulated her on such a fine piece of work, and asked, first of all about the record’s title.
She told me she had been very pleased about the way it had turned out: “I mean, the whole time we were doing it, it felt special and it felt wonderful. So, in the whole process, I thought, Oh, this is going to be good! And now I’m very pleased that people love it.
“As for the title, 4801 South Indiana Avenue was the address of Teresa’s lounge, which went away in about 1986. I did actually play there a few times, but, you know, Teresa’s had Howling Wolf and Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, and it’s really a historic place.”
Theresa’s Lounge was one of the best of the bars that had opened on Chicago’s South Side to showcase the emerging sound of Chicago blues after the Second World War. African Americans from rural Mississippi had begun to migrate north, in the hope of a better life, and the musicians amongst them adapted the Delta blues they had played to a new form of blues reflecting their new urban environment.
Theresa Needham
Owner Theresa Needham regularly booked people like Junior Wells and Buddy Guy, and quickly established the venue as one of the best places to see and hear the blues played. Over time its faithful local clientele was joined by people from all over the world attracted by the calibre of music being played.
Choosing to reference this iconic Chicago venue in the album’s title nails its colours firmly to the mast. Connor said it was the most bluesy record she’s ever recorded. I asked about the songs chosen – they are mostly covers of obscure blue songs.
“Well, Josh Smith, Joe Bonamassa and I sat there, and just went through maybe fifteen or sixteen songs and then kind of narrowed it down to the ones we chose. We all know a lot about the blues in terms of the history and the artists, but Joe is like a walking encyclopedia! So he really knows how to dig into some of the deeper catalogues.”
You do get the impression with Bonamassa, a self-confessed guitar and technology nerd, that he’s likely to dive deep into the history and background of any music he’s involved in. Just watch his recent movie, Guitar Man, where, at one point he claims not to really be a blues musician, but then later on he’s travelling around Mississippi looking for the roots of the blues. You can well imagine the man getting deep into the detail.
I wondered if there was any song that Joanna particularly likes on the album?
“It’s hard to choose because they all bring something different to the table. Some have got that Hound Dog Taylor boogie-type thing, some have great energy and some have got that slinky horn thing. But I do like the single a lot, I Feel So Good, I just feel like it’s got a lot of fire to it and I’m pleased with my playing on that too.”
I Feel So Good features some incendiary slide playing by Connor, taken at a tremendous pace with deadly accuracy. And as she says, her singing is fiery. It’s a song you can’t help moving to, or smiling as you listen. And it’ll be sensational when played live.
I also love the Albert King one, For the Love of a Man, where the horns give it huge sound. With horns and guitars blasting you might wonder about how the vocals fare – no problem for Connor, whose singing on this album is stellar. We expect a Joanna Connor album to blow us away with the guitar work, but her vocal performance here is maybe the best we’ve heard of her. On songs like I Feel So Good and Please Help, she sounds like she is really cutting loose. That, apparently, came with Bonamassa’s encouragement.
“Joe told me, people know you can really play the guitar, but the vocals are gonna surprise everyone. And that was Joe just pushing me, you know, pushing me to the limit of what I could do with my voice. So, he knew what he was doing, I think.”
Photo: Marty Moffatt
Bonamassa’s stamp is clearly on the album. So, how did it come about that Joanne and Joe started working together?
“He saw some of my videos – people post videos of me online, and Joe put one of my videos on his sites, on social media and he said something about my talent and that I deserve to be recognized – something like that. So I reached out to him through direct message. I’m like, Hi, this is Joanna Connor! And thank you. And this is my contact information, if you ever want to get in touch with me. And he did immediately. Like within few hours. Then it just started rolling. That was in May of 2019. And then, Joe said, we gotta get into the studio, I’d like to record a record with you. And so that’s how we started the conversation.”
The way the album has turned out, with such an evident definition, I asked Joanna if she and Joe had a clear vision for the record at the outset.
“I had no clue. He asked me, but then he said, listen, I have a vision for this record. I want to make a record – I’m being selfish – that I want to listen to. And he said, I want to bring out all your best qualities throughout the whole record. Then he asked me, could I trust him in the project? I’m like, sure, you have a great reputation and done so much. So I let him take control and I just tried to do the best that I could.
“Joe brought a lot of humor, a lot of very dry humor, which I like; a little sarcasm, which I can totally relate to. And so that helped. And he was just a straight shooter, you know?
“With the guitar stuff, basically we’d just try to get a sound. He would give me an idea like, Hey, why don’t you try to do a Hound Dog Taylor type thing, be real raw. And the other times he’d just let me play and wouldn’t say anything. But with the vocals, he was much more hands-on.”
In the liner notes, Joanna says that Joe painted pictures for her with each cut, and then she “fleshed those stories out.” I wondered what that really means?
“It was kind of like Joe was a movie director. Most of the songs are about men and women: so Joe painted a scenario to try to get me in the moment of the song – ‘it’s like you walk in the club and your man is there with another woman.’ Every song he’d make up a scenario for me.”
In working with such a top-class band and Joe Bonamassa playing guitar, I asked Joanna if – despite being a very seasoned professional, and successful, performer – she was at all nervous in that environment to start with?
“Oh, extremely! Beforehand, as the whole months would go by, I was like, is this really going to happen? I was thinking, Whoa, I’m walking into a huge platform here with these legendary players and top-notch studio people. Of course, I’ve done it, I’ve played with some legendary people along the way, but still, this was something brand new for me. And I kinda had to coach myself down the aisle when I was on the plane, you know! But you got to give it your best and let go of these nerves and just let it happen. But I’m kind of nervous about new situations anyways. People always say, Oh, I can’t tell that you’re nervous. Well, if you were inside my brain, it’s a zoo in there!
“But once I started laying down those grooves and playing, they were all such nice guys, they were very down to earth. You never know, because people like that might be condescending, but they were totally cool. And we just had a blast and we were all in one room so it was kinda like being on stage.”
I wanted to know a bit about Joanna’s blues background. As she told me, she’s played with some legendary blues artists and spent her career playing in Chicago blues clubs. What, I asked her, is the continual drawing power of the blues? Why is this music so powerful, and why does it still attract people?
“Blues is the music of the soul. It’s the music that came from pain, sorrow and suffering. But also joy, from a group of people that had to deal with the harshest of harsh things. And I think all great music, unfortunately, usually comes from that kind of suffering. I think it really just speaks to the human emotion. And then, you know, there are the rhythmic qualities. But I think what draws you in is, when it’s played right, it’s honest music. There’s no pretense involved and I think that’s appealing.”
We’d all agree with that. And that’s why I suppose, the blues have transcended its original context, and people all over the world and in different situations can respond to it. What drew Joanna Conner to the blues when she was younger?
“My mother was a huge music lover. She wasn’t a mainstream person – she loved jazz and blues and rock. My mother had me when she was 32 – in those days, kind of old. I was her first kid. She was born in 1930, and by the time I was around she could have been listening to show music or something really corny, but she was really up on everything. And she brought that to me and I heard it my whole life. So it was part of what I grew up listening to.”
The young Joanna Connor starting to play guitar, was also down to her mother. “I woke up one day and she’s like, there is something for you in the living room, you’re going to play guitar. Really? I never had asked her for one!
“I had a strange journey with the guitar because I started off playing classical. Then I played acoustic. I had a teacher that taught me ragtime, Piedmont blues, Delta blues, and then the slide. After that I switched to electric and started singing in a band. But I really could never solo, that escaped me, although I was always a very good rhythm guitar player. So eventually when I was 22 and moved to Chicago, I said, listen, I gotta really focus on how to solo. It all came in stages, but I think I always had a good feel for music. I was always playing an instrument and singing. It’s just in my DNA in some way. But I worked hard at it too.”
When you listen to Connor’s previous album, Rise, it’s much more varied musically than this latest one, quite jazzy and funky in places – you’ve got all those musical influences that she imbibed from she was a child coming through there. So although 4801 South Indiana Avenue is an out and out blues album, Joanna Connor is not simply a blues artist, she’s a musician capable of adapting her playing to a range of genres, when the need arises.
She’s had a long career and a successful one. I wondered how it has been for here as a woman operating in what is often a genre dominated by men?
“My younger brother and I were talking and he said, well, you know, you have a strong personality! I guess I do! So that was one thing that carried me through. I wasn’t timid about things – not that I don’t get nervous, but I feel like I will stand up for myself, no question about it. But it was kind of lonely, because it’s mostly men and you’re never quite in the boys’ club. So, you’re definitely walking a path by yourself. And especially when I started, there was really just less than a handful of women playing an instrument like that.”
Joanna Conner is an incredibly hardworking professional musician, playing around 200 shows a year. Before, of course, the pandemic stopped everything in its tracks. And she’s been doing that for an awfully long time. She clearly loves what she does. What is it about performing at this high level that excites her?
“You know, the first time I ever really played with a band when I was seventeen. I was freaking out for a few days before the gig, but as soon as the lights on the stage went on and the people were there and the band started playing, I swear, I said, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life! I absolutely fell in love with it.
“First and foremost, it’s playing with a great band that brings me the most joy. And then if the audience is there with us, then it could be really transcendent and special. But it’s first the band, that interaction of musicians that really brought me into playing music.”
Not having that over this past year, though, has clearly been a frustration. Although she and her band played a few outdoors, private-hire shows last year, it’s basically been over a year without performing.
“It’s been strange. I haven’t not played music for more than three weeks at a time in forty years. I’ve been through a multitude of emotions. Sometimes I play my guitar now and I want to cry. And then other times I’m like, well, it’s good to take a break. The thing that’s kind of disconcerting is there’s a lot of famous clubs that are not going to reopen all around the States. I mean, when you become a musician, there’s no guarantee of anything, you’re always living on the edge. And so that part I’m sort of used to, but I’ve never been in any situation like this. There have been economic downturns, there was nine-eleven and so on, but for all of us this is an unprecedented time.”
And it’s a great pity that Joanna doesn’t have the opportunity to take this record out on the road for the time being. These are songs that, with Joanna’s energy and commitment, will fire up audiences for sure, creating an electric atmosphere. But hopefully, with vaccines and good sense prevailing, we’ll get through this, and we’ll get to experience the exhilarating energy of a Joanna Connor performance. Until then, just get the album, turn up the volume and let these classic-but new songs bring the blues to life for you in new ways.
Muddy Waters was born McKinley Morganfield sometime around 1915 in Rolling Fork, Mississippi. Raised by his grandmother, Della Grant in Clarksdale after his mother died when he was three, he lived in a shack on Stovall Plantation, working as a farm laborer from when he was a boy. Life was harsh, brutal even, with poverty and deprivation part of daily life. Muddy Water’s website notes that blues artists like Muddy “gave vent to…terror, frustration, rage and passionate humanity in a music that was taut with dark, brooding force and spellbinding intensity that was jagged, harsh, raw as an open wound and profoundly, inexorably, moving.”
Muddy began playing harmonica, then guitar and by 17, he was playing at parties, seeking to emulate his heroes, Son House and Robert Johnson. Within ten years he had moved to Chicago, where he became a full-time professional musician, and in due course a huge success and the acknowledged father of Chicago blues.
With all his success, however, and ability to broaden his musical horizon to include new musical sounds and approaches, not least the amplified electric guitar, Muddy’s early years in the Delta clearly remained formative – take his 1959 Single Version of Take the Bitter With The Sweet, where he remembers the struggles and difficulties of growing up in poverty. He sings about the pain of not having any family:
Well I don’t have no mother, father, brother, sister, boy, I ain’t never seen
Well you know sometime I feel so lonesome
Well yes I feel just like I wanna scream..
He remembers the times when “There’ve been nights I’ve laid down, And I didn’t have no food to eat,” and the days he walked around and “I didn’t have no shoes on my feet.”
The song, interestingly concludes with the line “Oh Lord, boy I gotta take the bitter with the sweet,” which is a surprisingly upbeat and positive take on the woes that he’s just been singing about.
Even those of us who are fortunate enough not to live in poverty and don’t have to worry about where we’re going to sleep tonight know that life has a way of throwing some bitter pills at us from time to time. I’m just recovering from a lengthy period of ill health, and many of us know about job loss, bereavement, financial worries, family problems. None of us is immune from the trouble that life brings no matter who we are, no matter how wealthy we are or how strong and fit we are.
We hear a lot about life’s woes in Israel’s blues songbook, the Psalms – we regularly read about “the day of trouble,” “the time of trouble,” about “afflictions” and a whole host of difficulties. What is remarkable, though, is the confidence that the writers of the Psalms had that God would be with them in the day of trouble – “When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble; I will rescue them.” (Ps. 91.15). Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann commenting on these Psalms says that “The songs are not about the “natural” outcome of trouble, but about the decisive transformation made possible by this God who causes new life where none seems possible.” Psalms like Psalms 30, 34, 40, 138 all tell stories of going into trouble and coming out the other side.
Like these Psalms which look for a better day beyond the day of trouble, many blues songs also hit this note of hope for better things. For sure there’s no way we can avoid the bitter – we gotta take it along with the sweet – but the question for all of us is: in the day of trouble, who you gonna turn to? Who are you gonna hope in? The Psalms give us a good steer here – “my help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” Maybe we’ll leave the last word on this to Eric Bibb…
