Robert Johnson is an almost mythical figure in the history of the blues. The chronology of his life is somewhat hazy – we are unsure even of when he was born but it was probably around 1911 in Hazelhurst, Mississippi. The circumstances of his death have been much discussed, along with the question of where he was buried, but it is likely he was murdered in 1938 – poisoned – by the jealous husband of a woman Johnson had taken up with. We know the date of some of the recordings he made and we have a legacy of 41 tracks he recorded of just 29 songs. And yet, for all his short life and mediocre recording output, Johnson is probably the most influential of all the Delta bluesmen – undoubtedly because of his inventive, versatile and masterful guitar playing and his energized singing, which included growls, shouts and tuneful falsetto. And, because Johnson was able “to transform the blues into marketable popular music” (Ted Giola).
Johnson was relatively unknown in his own lifetime and for some decades after his death, but after the reissue of his recordings in 1961 on the LP King of the Delta Blues Singers, he became a blues star, admired and popularized by blues and rock performers from the Rolling Stones to Eric Clapton to Jeff Beck to Jimi Hendrix. Clapton said of Johnson, “At first the music almost repelled me, it was so intense, and this man made no attempt to sugarcoat what he was trying to say, or play. It was hard-core, more than anything I had ever heard. After a few listenings I realized that, on some level, I had found the master, and that following this man’s example would be my life’s work.” In his book Chronicles, Bob Dylan said, “When Johnson started singing, he seemed like a guy who could have sprung from the head of Zeus in full armor.”
One of Johnson’s most influential songs has been Hell Hound on My Trail, recorded in 1937. It was the first song recorded during Johnson’s last recording session in Dallas, Texas on Sunday, June 20, 1937 and the first single released from that session. Inspired by earlier blues songs, it is considered one of Johnson’s “best known and most admired performances—many would say it is his greatest” (Giola).
The theme of the song is a familiar one for bluesmen of the time – “rambling”, never staying too long in one spot:
I got to keep moving, I got to keep moving
Blues falling down like hail
And the day keeps on worryin’ me
There’s a hellhound on my trail.
The theme seems similar at first to another song Johnson recorded, Ramblin’ on My Mind – I got ramblin’, I got ramblin’ on my mind / Hate to leave my baby but you treats me so unkind. Like many of his contemporaries, Johnson was in constant motion, moving from town to town around the Delta and greater Mississippi. And from woman to woman. David “Honeyboy” Edwards said of Johnson, “He loved whiskey and he loved women. That’s two things he was crazy about”. But maybe there’s more to Hellhound than the itinerant bluesman who never likes to stay in one place too long, who is unfaithful to his woman and just wants to catch the next train.
The blues, says Adam Gussow in his book, Seems Like Murder Here, “are a way of symbolizing what unconsciously oppresses the black blues subject – the ever-pressuring white gaze, periodic eruptions of ritualized mob-violence, the blackened knuckles and pickled fingers strewn across the lynching South.” He suggests that the blues are a way of expressing the feeling produced by all that, even though the lyrics may not directly address it.
For Gussow, an understanding of the blues starts with the lynchings and violent realities of African American life in the Jim Crow South. Although “most of what might be called “lynching blues” …are semi-obscure and remain arguable,” and most blues lyrics do not intentionally refer either directly or indirectly to lynching, they do, however, “express the pressured, nightmare-strewn subjectivities that it was the intention of white southern terror to produce.” The blues, Gussow argues, was a creative, artistic response to the oppressive environment around black artists. Lynching, he suggests “casts…a broad shadow across the blues lyric tradition.”
In the Jim Crow South, there was an ever present and real threat of violence against the black community, and the spectre of lynching hung heavily over it during this period. Lynching became a means of terrorism of whites towards blacks, used to defend white domination and to intimidate and control blacks. It was usually done by hanging, but also by burning at the stake. By conservative estimates, 3,500 African Americans were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968, mostly from 1882 to 1920. Lynching was widespread and common in the South during the Jim Crow period and blacks lived in terror of their lives because of the capricious nature of lynching. Looking at a white woman the “wrong way” or acting in a way that was perceived “uppity” were sometimes all it took to begin inciting whites to form a lynch mob. Bluesman Skip James said simply, “They’d lynch you in a minute.”
The daily confrontation with this threat, then, argues Gussow, gave rise to the blues which were a means of processing and dealing with that threat – speaking back to it in song. We’re beyond the territory of mere loneliness and restlessness here – we’re in the area of people trying desperately to assert their humanity, their being, in the context of a broader society that wanted to proclaim their non-being.
The other way that black people did that, of course, was through their faith. The Bible, like the blues, proclaims life in the midst of death and humanity in the midst of forces of evil that seek to annihilate that humanity. The book of Psalms howls out the blues of the oppressed:
“I am distraught by the noise of the enemy
Because of the oppression of the wicked
For they bring trouble against me.” Psalm 55. 2-3
But continues to hope for God’s deliverance:
“But God will never forget the needy; the hope of the afflicted will never perish.” Psalm 9:18
And then, there’s Paul’s letter to Christians in Rome in the 1st century, themselves poor, some of them destitute, all under pressure:
“And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow– not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.” Romans 8:38
The hell hound, whatever that may be, may be on our trail, but we can still proclaim our humanity and still be confident in the encompassing love of God.
Larkin Poe are the Lovell sisters from Atlanta, Georgia. “I’m not Larkin, and she’s not Poe,” quipped Rebecca Lovell during their sold-out gig at Inchyra Arts Club near Perth, Scotland, where Lins Honeyman from the Gospel Blues Train and Gary Burnett from Down at the Crossroads had the opportunity to talk to these hugely talented artists.
Larkin Poe, actually, is an ancestor of the sisters and relative of the famed author Edgar Allan Poe. The pair launched the band in 2010 after a few successful years as a bluesgrass group along with their elder sister, Jessica, and have developed their own distinctive sound, a unique, blues-based Americana rock, which draws deeply on the well of traditional blues but adds their own very modern, high- energy take, featuring gorgeous harmonies and exhilarating electric slide guitar. American Songwriter said of them: “This isn’t your basic Stevie Ray Vaughan-styled blistering blues rock. It’s far more primal, malicious, and unsettling.” That’s true, but what’s also true is the warmth and good humour that’s folded in, which makes their performances massively appealing. [check out our review of their concert here]
The sisters have performed triumphantly at Glastonbury Festival in England, featured on T-Bone Burnett’s Lost Basement Tapes, been nominated for a Blues Foundation Award, and released four studio albums, the most recent of which, Venom and Faith, has reached number one on the Billboard Blues Album Chart and met with considerable critical acclaim.
Lins and Gary sat down with Megan and Rebecca prior to their gig to talk about the blues and their approach to making music, and found two highly articulate young women brimming over with enthusiasm for their music and life generally, and who had thought deeply about their musical heritage. Lins began by commenting on how well Venom and Faith has been received:
Rebecca: Oh yeah. I think this is one of the first tours that we’ve been out and folks are showing up really powering for the lyrics and a lot of the songs off the album. So in that respect it feels like it’s been well loved so far. We appreciate that!
Lins: Yeah, we’ve played quite few tracks on the show as well. And I know, Gary, it was certainly one of your best albums of 2018.
Gary: Yeah. We feature a “best of” album list at the end of every year. Venom and Faith definitely had to feature in our top few albums. It’s a great album, really, really good.
Rebecca: Thank you! We’re very proud of the way it came out. You know self-producing has been a fairly recent affair for us and it’s definitely been very natural. I think Megan and I enjoy the process of, you know, being siblings in the studio, just sort of allowed to have our own private language and to work really lean, mean and fast.
Megan: Absolutely. And Peach, our previous album to Venom and Faith was also produced by the two of us and we’ve just so enjoyed the freeing experience of it being just the two of us in the studio. It’s been so much fun to make these albums.
Lins: And being sisters, it must work for you and against you in certain ways?
Rebecca: Absolutely. I think that we have very limited experiences when it doesn’t work for us. Obviously having a sibling dynamic can be a very volatile and powerful relationship! I think it’s meant that over the years we’ve learned how to treat each other with respect and care, and, you know, I think of the Black Crowes who are not touring together because they have such big feuds and things like that, and we will not have that happen.
Gary: Well, tell us about the album’s title. It seems a little strange – Venom and Faith – conjures up for me strange religious sects handling snakes or something in the Appalachian hills!
Rebecca: Absolutely! That was that was part of the inspiration and it’s drawn from the lyrics of one of the tracks, Honey Honey. Yeah…I do like the juxtaposition of the two words and the fact that it does conjure up those images of a southern American Gothic type. Yeah, backwoods country church, where you’re sort of rolling the dice and…there is something, I think, in our music that summons up some of those sort of feelings. And, you know, some of the flavors of our music go from the dark to the light, tabbing some beautiful moments but also some grungy moments. So, it’s trying to represent that light and shadow, and Venom and Faith I felt was the right title.
Gary: Yes, it’s fabulous. And you’ve done some fantastic versions of old blues songs along the way – the Skip James song, Hard Time Killing Floor Blues on this album is probably the best cover of that song that I’ve heard. The Skip James version is very dark, but somehow, although you keep to the tradition, you manage to bring something fantastically fresh to it.
Skip James
Rebecca: That means so much! That is really one of our favorite songs that we’ve ever run across. We heard that song and we were just immediately obsessed, and the fact that it’s so modal, and major and minor, and it just it makes you feel a very specific way. And so we wanted to pay tribute to that.
Megan: And Skip James is one of the first blues guys that we really, really fell in love with. He’s definitely a mutual love of Rebecca and me.
Gary: And how do you go about choosing some of these old blues songs that you’ve done? You’ve done a few of them – some Son House and Robert Johnson and so on. How do you go about choosing and how do you go about interpreting a song?
Megan: I love this question. The answer to both those questions is kind of a gut feeling! Like, well we’ll stumble across a song that just feels right!
Rebecca: I think also it’s songs that we wish we’d written, like when you stumble across something that feels akin to something that you would have made up yourself. And so, then, the true nature of what the song should be or how we should interpret it – it just sort of feels like you’re rewriting it yourself. And to me that’s part of the beauty of American roots music – the fact that this is a very historic and, by American standards, ancient genre and yet you know there is so much shared feeling. The fact that it is one hundred years since the song was written means nothing. It still feels as relevant to us as it probably did to the people that were writing it. And so that’s really special.
Lins: And these songs, as you say, are ancient in American terms. But a hundred years is quite a sizable chunk between the original and doing a cover version. What makes these songs stand the test of time in your opinion? Because something must be great about those songs.
Rebecca: This is something Megan and I have talked about quite a bit – and that is, that the songs lyrically deal with matters of the human condition. You know, there is very little artifice in a lot of traditional blues tunes, just very raw emotions, very laid bare struggles of how to deal with your humanness, how to deal with sorrow, how to deal with being down and out. And I think that in our own specific ways, we can all relate to those feelings. So, to me, what really stands the test of time is a song that doesn’t deal too much with, you know, synthesizers or pop production, it really is about just the soul of the song.
Lins: Yes. It’s just getting down to the basics, isn’t it? It doesn’t mince its words. One such song which as far as I’m aware is not on any of your albums but I came across it on your Facebook feed, is a version of Blind Willie Johnson’s Soul of a Man. That was an incredible performance from the two of you. Any plans to put that on an album?
Megan: You never know! I guess it’s always unwritten and that that’s what’s exciting about the future.
Lins: And another song that we should mention – I think it’s from your Peach album – was John the Revelator and that recently got played at the end credits of the Fox TV series Lucifer.
Rebecca: It was very exciting! Again. I think it’s great to let these old songs, that have meant so much to so many people, have new lives in such unexpected ways. You know, I will admit though, we hadn’t watched the Lucifer TV show, and so of course we were hop-skipping into this one episode and telling our parents to watch it and not really knowing the premise of the show, and it’s a bit of a twisted kind of crazy show! But that was really fun. Just to see our music presented in this unexpected way.
Lins: It’s a great version as well. I mean, there have been so many versions of John the Revelator – every blues artist is probably done a version, but yours is up there!
Bessie Jones
Gary: I love the first song on Venom and Faith, Sometimes, the Bessie Jones song. The song sounds very up to date, but when you go back and listen to the original, with the clapping and so on, you’re tapping right into the whole spirit of that. What drew you to that song?
Rebecca: Well just the energy, I mean. And also, the power of her voice and the claps. It’s captivating, you know, and it’s a field holler, man, where you can feel the purpose of that song. And also, just wanting also to represent a Georgia girl – Bessie was from Georgia. And there was something we liked about that as well. It’s just a feel-good song.
Gary: Yeah, great song. I was also thinking about, you know, when we think of the blues we often think about the male artists, but of course in the history of the blues, the women were some of the biggest artists. And they’ve been ignored at times. How true is that still today – is it still difficult for women in this industry?
Rebecca: That is that is a complicated question with a complicated answer! And I think that different people would answer it in different ways. But I do think that you’re right, you know, historically women were absolutely the pioneers of blues and pop music, and they were some of the biggest pop stars of their time, at the turn of the century. And it does feel distinctly unfair that they are forgotten. That the role that they played in terms of pioneering the genre gets waylaid with time.
But, you know, we have had a very positive experience. I think that our parents raised us to kick the door down and do what it is that we want to do. And I think that that has served as well in the industry. Not willing to compromise. I mean, yeah you know, you can’t compromise who you are because that’s all you’ve got, right? Who said that? Janis – Janis Joplin. I like that’s all you’ve got, so you might as well just stick to your guns and by hook or by crook make the media that you want to make. And I think if more artists took that stand they’d be better – male or female.
Megan: Bottom line it’s hard to be in the industry, regardless of gender!
Rebecca: Yeah, and it’s so competitive. The music industry is so intensely competitive that you have to be willing to show up and work hard and be very tenacious. Extremely. Yes, so I think the short answer would be we haven’t felt our gender has had too much of a sway on our career thus far. And I think that that’s how it should be, that the art should speak for itself regardless of class, color, creed, gender, all the above. It should just speak to people and that should rise to the surface.
Lins: And what comes across is that the music is authentic – we’ve touched on that earlier on, that really with all your albums, the music comes across as being really, very real. Is that a specific thing in your head when you set out to record an album – that you’re gonna have to be as real as possible? Or does it not enter into your head and you just do it naturally?
Rebecca: No, it has entered our heads! I think that we have made records that we didn’t feel like they sounded like us. The studio can be a bit of a void sometimes. You can get in there and know who you are, but then technology allows you to try and create this hyper-perfect-ized robot version of yourself that’s auto tuned half to hell and everything’s grid aligned. And that doesn’t feel human anymore. And I think that we’ve made a distinct decision over these years to try and under-produce our records in order for the humanity in who we are as individuals to show through.
Megan: Which is part of the reason why we decided to self-produce because we definitely had that specific goal in mind. So, we knew going into it that we weren’t going to pick ourselves apart and that what we loved about discovering the blues was the raw nature of it and to try and keep some of that in the music. Leave the humanity in if possible.
Lins: And there are some great moments because you’ve also introduced some electronic elements later on the album which is great – just takes your kind of music into sort of a different level as well. Now, we’ve talked about our sort of favorite songs on the most recent album. What about yours?
Megan: Depends on the mood. But I’ve really, really enjoyed playing Bleach Blonde Bottle Blues every night. Because Rebecca brought that song very late in the recording process. In fact, I think it was written while we were in the studio. One of the last ones to show up and I just knew immediately when I heard that song it was gonna be one of my favorites. I was so excited to record it, so I would definitely put that as a top contender for me.
Rebecca: Thank you! I think that probably in terms of melding the old with the new, my favorite would have to be Fly Like an Eagle because that does feature a lot of the pop production. You know, we love Tom Petty – Tom Petty is one of the top pop guys ever, because he was a dude that could punch you straight out with a verse and then, bam, you’re into the chorus, and it’s that pop song structure. And I think that that’s been a big marker for us in wanting to do the blues, but also to marry it with more of a pop arrangement, and introduce, you know, a more modern-day sound palette, And Fly Like an Eagle was really fun – we’re from Atlanta, the home of hip hop, so you gotta throw it in!
Gary: But that’s the thing that I think is very appealing about your music. You’ve got this traditional blues underpinning, but you’re bringing the all these modern sorts of influences to bear. I was talking to Bruce Iglauer from Alligator Records recently and he was saying that what he looks for in an artist these days is that traditional base, but really bringing their own stamp to it. And it seems to me that you’ve really been able to do that these last couple of records.
Rebecca: Well I think just by not wanting to be in a time capsule is very important. Because there is zero, zero interest in us in being puppets of something that has already been. Because this is music that has been very real to people for a very real reason, and it served a very distinct purpose, and we don’t want to just piggyback off that. You know, we feel a deep respect for the blues and the masterful artists that pioneered the genre but we have to make it in our own way in order to, you know, not be talking out of our asses, pardon my French. But it’s true, you know, we’re growing up in the 21st century as white women and we want to be as authentic in that way with our own story as we can. Innovation is required!
Lins: Let’s talk about the guitar side of things. Megan, did you get it as a Christmas present as opposed to Rebecca, or how did you end up playing the slide? It’s an amazing sound and along with the voices, it’s what defines the Larkin Poe sound.
Megan: So yeah, we grew up listening to Alison Krauss and Union Station, and that’s of course featuring the legendary Jerry Douglas. So I definitely grew up with that kind of earworm. That sound in my head. And when we quit our classical violin lessons in our teens, we heard bluegrass for the first time and we decided we wanted to quit our classical lessons and hop over onto some acoustic instruments, y’know.
And I tried to play guitar and banjo and mandolin, but I guess me and fretted instruments don’t go well together! So I saw a dobro being played and that’s when I made the connection between the sound that I grew up listening to and what that instrument was. And it was dobro, so I start playing dobro, and later on when we started Larkin Poe, we wanted to experiment more with an electric sound.
Rebecca: So the lap steel just made sense, and kudos to Megan because you were, what 14 when you picked it up? It’s a very awkward instrument to play in just about every way, and the fact that you typically play it seated. And so Meghan, you’ve been very innovative in the way that you’ve repurposed slide – and she had this little contraption built so she can stand and walk around and rock out while playing the slide, and do it very effortlessly, especially considering just how challenging an instrument it is to play.
Megan: It’s not a very common instrument. I don’t know why, because it’s such a versatile instrument and it’s so expressive. What I love about it is the vocal quality of the instrument. I love to sing with Rebecca, I love to sing harmony. You know, we grew up singing harmony together, but I consider my voice to be the lap steel, not necessarily my actual voice!
Lins: And there’s something special when your voice intertwines with the lap steel, that’s just so much special.
Megan: It’s very fun. We certainly enjoy it especially a song like Good and Gone from the record. You know we so enjoy twinning together.
Lins: Fantastic. Excellent. It’s been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you!
I stood beside the Blues Trail Marker for the sharecropper’s shack that Muddy Waters grew up in, in what was Stovall’s Plantation just outside Clarksdale, and gazed over the landscape. The vast fields were ploughed but unplanted, the alluvial soil brown and fertile. The sun was low in the sky but shone brightly against the bluest sky imaginable. And it was cold – a dry, bitter cold that chilled your bones.
But it was strangely warming to have reached this point in our blues pilgrimage. It was here in 1941 that Alan Lomax found McKinley Morganfield and recorded his Burr Clover Blues, a song he’d written at the request of Colonel Stovall, who six years previously had invented the burr clover seed harvester. Muddy Waters’s house also served as a juke joint where Waters entertained field hands. Waters left the plantation in May 1943 after the plantation overseer refused his request for a raise from 22 and a half cents to 25 cents an hour. The rest, of course, is history, Muddy going on to become a preeminent Chicago blues artist and a musical inspiration to subsequent generations of blues and rock musicians.
Cotton Field, Mississippi Delta
The Rich Soil of the Delta
If you head on out past the famous Crossroads at the intersection of Highways 61 and 49, you’ll soon come to the Shack Up Inn, on the site of Hopson Plantation. In 1928, this plantation had over 3,500 acres and was farmed by black sharecroppers and mules, working from 4.30am until 6 in the evening. You can get a sense of plantation life here, as you wander round the sharecropper shacks, with their tin roofs and Mississippi cedar walls (now available as (basic) hotel accommodation), the original cotton gin and seed houses and other outbuildings. I was taken by the old rusting vehicles, including old cars, a tractor and a derelict fire truck. An ancient railway line runs through into the distance, giving a further sense of timelessness to the place. As does the Bottle Tree, with its host of blue bottles, traditionally used to ward off evil from the family home.
Sharecropper Shack
Old Car & Cotton
The sense of poverty exuded by the sharecroppers’ shacks was very tangible and striking. Sharecropping was a system that came to dominate agriculture across the cotton-planting South from the end of the nineteenth century. Black families would rent small plots of land from white landowners, to work themselves. Often, the landlords or nearby merchants would lease equipment to the renters, and offer seed, fertilizer, food, and other items on credit until the harvest season. At the end of the year, tenant and landlord would settle up, often with the sharecroppers owing more to the landowner than they were able to repay with the sale of their crops. It was an exploitative system that resulted in debt and poverty from which the sharecropper found it difficult to escape. It was out of this situation that the blues began to emerge in the early part of the twentieth century and it’s no surprise that many of those we now consider blues legends worked the land themselves.
If you go to the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale itself, you’ll see Muddy Waters’ shack reassembled inside, a kind of shrine to perhaps Clarksdale’s most famous son. Not that Muddy was the only legendary blues artist from round these parts – born and raised nearby were John Lee Hooker, Son House, Ike Turner, Sam Cooke, Junior Parker, and W. C. Handy. In addition, Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, and Charley Patton are all associated with the town, stopping by in their constant traveling. All of this history is preserved and these artists celebrated in the Museum, which makes for an excellent visit.
Talking of blues museums, on the way down from Memphis, we’d stopped at the Tunica Gateway to the Blues Visitor Centre and Museum. Set in an old, refurbished train depot, this is a fabulous introduction to the land of the blues – great exhibits, well displayed, which tell the story of the origins and development of the blues in the Mississippi Delta.
Blues Museum, Tunica
Back in Clarksdale, right across the road from the Delta Blues Museum is Morgan Freeman’s Ground Zero Blues Club (Clarksdale being the blues’ “ground zero”). We stopped by for lunch and enjoyed the general vibe, though sadly, there was no live music. We were wonderfully served by Stella, who took one look at my scrawny looks and said, “Well now, a’body’s momma wanna take him in an’ feed him up. Mmhnnn”. I had the barbeque pork in a spicy pancake – absolutely delicious, but laced with a thousand chillies which quickly had my mouth on fire.
On down the street and you come to Blues Town Music, owned by the inimitable Ronnie Drew, who welcomed us warmly and regaled us with stories of visits to Europe in days gone by. I enjoyed playing one of his acoustic guitars and then chatting to Ronnie’s good friend, an older gentleman, an ex-bass player, with long seventies-style hair and a droopy moustache to match, who intrigued me with tales of visiting New York City as a boy and watching the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field.
And then, right across the road we found the treasure trove that is the Cats Head Delta Blues and Folk Art store and had the pleasure of chatting to proprietor Roger Stolle. I was interested to meet Roger, having read his excellent book, Hidden History of Mississippi some time ago, and being aware of his work to help regenerate Clarksdale. The store is quite unique, selling everything from books to posters to art to CDs, vinyl records and DVDs, all with a blues theme. Even if you don’t buy anything (but please do! My Cat Head poster is now framed and hanging in my office!), it’s a fabulous place just to browse around in.
And Roger’s such a nice guy, full of positivity and enthusiasm, and wondrously knowledgeable about the blues and the Mississippi Delta. Glad to say he agreed to a follow-up interview, which will appear before long here at Down at the Crossroads.
Actually, once again, I have to comment on the welcome and friendliness of everyone we encountered in Mississippi. We were quite charmed. We got on our way in the early evening, unable to take up Roger Stolle’s suggestion of staying for the show in Red’s Lounge later on, and drove back to Memphis on the legendary Highway 61, Mississippi saying farewell to us by means of a spectacular sunset, the sky changing colour dramatically as the sun sank below the horizon.
David Honeyboy Edwards I’m Gonna Tell You Somethin’ That I Know (CD/DVD), Pro Sho Bidness
David “Honeyboy” Edwards was born in Mississippi in 1915 and lived a long life in the blues, which he called “a leading thing.” Son of a share cropper (“Papa didn’t make no money,” he says in his 1997 autobiography), and working in the fields from he was nine years old, Edwards became an itinerant bluesman, playing all over the Delta in juke joints, river boats and good-time houses, first recording in 1942, and eventually settling in Chicago as the blues went electric.
His friend and acquaintances in those early days read like a who’s who of the blues – Charlie Patton, Tommy Johnson, Big Joe Williams, Sonny Boy Williamson, Son House, Memphis Minnie and Robert Johnson. He experienced first hand the 1927 Mississippi River Flood, the Depression, Southern vagrancy laws (Honeyboy was imprisoned for a time working on a cotton farm for hitching a ride on a freight train), and the racial and economic problems of the Black community due to Jim Crow. Honeyboy Edwards really was the last living link to the early blues.
He recorded extensively, was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1996, and won a Grammy in 2007 for Best Traditional Blues Album. This CD and DVD set, entitled I’m Gonna Tell You Somethin’ That I Know, was recorded in September 2010, just eleven months before Edwards passed away. It’s a remarkable piece of blues history.
The disks capture around an hour of a performance by the bluesman, accompanied by Jeff Dale and the South Woodlawners, and Michael Frank in the G Spot in Los Angeles. The CD has 9 songs, the DVD 10, plus about 20 minutes of Edwards reminiscing about his early experience of the blues in the Mississippi Delta. This is priceless. He talks about playing with Robert Johnson when he was 21 and goes into Robert’s life and death in some detail. Johnson “was crazy ‘bout two things,” says Honeyboy, “women and whiskey.” His narrative about Johnson’s sad death speaks volumes about the situation of African Americans in the deep South at that time. “Same doctor that would come to a mule would come to you then.” Anyone who got seriously ill would likely die, for want of decent healthcare. Honeyboy’s own mother died at 32 of “dropsy” – or edema, often associated with malnutrition, and both preventable and curable.
We get details, too, about Charlie Patton (“a hell raiser”) and about Honeyboy’s own career – “been all over the world, Japan, Paris France…Turkey…can’t recall all the places I’ve been.” At 95 Edwards was both lucid and showed a remarkable memory for people, places and incidents long past.
His performance in the gig is quite something as well. He launches into each song with a guitar introduction, whereupon the band joins in, sings with feeling and gives a short guitar solo on his Gibson Les Paul each time. Quite something for a nonagenarian. The DVD is nicely shot, with a kind of sepia tinge and the sound quality good. There are songs by Robert Lockwood Jr., Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and St. Louis Jimmy – a fine collection of classic blues. Sweet Home Chicago is part of the mix, usually attributed to Robert Johnson, but claimed by Honeyboy himself.
“The guitar kept me rolling a whole lot,” says Honeyboy. And it kept him rolling for over nine decades. “God learned me music. He gave me that gift…There ain’t no harm in playing blues, that’s a gift God gave me.” If you’re a blues fan, you don’t want to miss this performance of Honey Boy Edwards’ gift right at the end of his life.
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’sT.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’sBroke and Hungry, or Big Bill Broonzy’sStarvation 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.”
Last month, Eric Clapton suggested that his days of touring are over. “The road has become unbearable,” he said. “It’s become unapproachable, because it takes so long to get anywhere. It’s hostile – everywhere: getting in and out of airports, traveling on planes and in cars.”
Understandable, when you’re nearly 70, I guess, but the good news is that it sounds like he doesn’t intend to stop doing studio work or one-off performances. Clapton has been entertaining us and enthralling us with his blues-based guitar work for nearly 50 years. Ranked by Rolling Stone magazine number 2 in their “Greatest Guitarists of All Time” (surpassed only by Jimi Hendrix – fair enough!), Clapton was once hailed “god” by an adoring fanbase. He’s had 17 Grammys, was awarded the CBE by the Queen, and songs like Layla or Tears in Heaven will be enjoyed and played long after Clapton is gone.
But Clapton is essentially a blues artist who has hailed Robert Johnson as the biggest influence on his guitar playing. He said of Johnson, “His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice.” Clapton’s tribute to Johnson, on his 2004 album, Me and Mr. Johnson, is one terrific blues album, with excellent arrangements which really showcase Johnson’s genius and some outstanding playing and singing from Clapton. Clapton had previously said that Robert Johnson’s best songs had “never been covered by anyone else, at least not very successfully — because how are you going to do them?” This album and the follow-up Sessions for Robert really do Johnson’s songs justice.
B B King has said of Clapton, “I admire the man. I think he’s No. 1 in rock ‘n’ roll as a guitarist and No. 1 as a great person.” He credited Clapton, with other British artists, with breathing new life into the blues in the late 1960s. The collaborative album between King and Clapton,Riding with the King, won the 2000 Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album, and although some felt it was just too polished for a blues album, it is a thoroughly enjoyable record that shows off both men at their very best.
Clapton’s struggles with drugs are well documented, not least in his autobiography, making for painful reading. “In the lowest moments of my life, the only reason I didn’t commit suicide was that I knew I wouldn’t be able to drink any more if I was dead. It was the only thing I thought was worth living for…they had to practically carry me into the clinic.” In 1987, he checked into Hazeldene Treatment Center in Minnesota for the second and last time, and recounts how, after a month there, just going through the motions, he had a quite profound experience.
He says, “At that moment, almost of their own accord, my legs gave way and I fell to my knees. In the privacy of my room I begged for help. I had no notion of who I was talking to, I just knew that I had come to the end of my tether…I knew that on my own, I wasn’t going to make it, so I asked for help and, getting down on my knees, I surrendered.”
He goes on to say, “From that day until this, I have never failed to pray in the morning, on my knees, asking for help, and at night, to express gratitude for my life and most of all, for my sobriety. I choose to kneel because I feel I need to humble myself when I pray…If you were to ask why I do all this, I will tell you…because it works, as simple as that.”
Clapton’s been sober for nearly thirty years, and worked with a number of addiction treatment organizations before establishing the Crossroads Centre in Antigua in 1998 which helps people recover from the devastating effects of addictions to drugs and alcohol. Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival, which has featured a who’s who of top guitar talent in on four occasions since 2004, raises funds for this centre.
I saw Clapton play on a couple of occasions, most notably in the tour which supported the Robert Johnson album. He didn’t engage with the audience much, but it was enough to be treated to a lengthy set of blues songs and classic Clapton numbers and to admire his fret-work on the big screen – the video-team clearly knew their audience, spending the majority of time on Eric’s guitar playing as opposed to shots of the band as a whole. It was a great night’s entertainment. If he’s decided to retire at this stage, then – thanks for your massive contribution to music and the blues and thanks for the memories.
But for the immediate future, we all can look forward to The Breeze: An Appreciation of JJ Cale, in tribute to JJ Cale who died last year, which will be released at the end of 29 July 2014. It features 16 Cale songs performed by Clapton, Christine Lakeland, Mark Knopfler, John Mayer, Willie Nelson, Tom Petty and Derek Trucks.
Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate of the United States (2001 to 2003) is a Distinguished Professor at colleges in New York and Florida. The New York Times has called him “the most popular poet in America”, with his poetry books selling far beyond most volumes of poetry. His poem, The Blues, laced with humor, captures the essence of the blues. Here it is:
Much of what is said here
must be said twice,
a reminder that no one
takes an immediate interest in the pain of others.
Nobody will listen, it would seem,
if you simply admit
your baby left you early this morning
she didn’t even stop to say good-bye.
But if you sing it again
with the help of the band
which will now lift you to a higher,
more ardent, and beseeching key,
People will not only listen,
they will shift to the sympathetic
edges of their chairs,
moved to such acute anticipation
By that chord and the delay that follows,
they will not be able to sleep
unless you release with one finger
a scream from the throat of your guitar
And turn your head back to the microphone
to let them know
you’re a hard-hearted man
but that woman’s sure going to make you cry.
Brilliant, isn’t it? I love the first couple of verses in particular, which point to the repeated first line of the typical blues verse. Take Robert Johnson’sKind-Hearted Woman Blues, for example: “I love my baby, my baby she don’t love me” – repeated before the resolution of the verse “Really love that woman, can’t stand to leave her be.” Collins suggests that such is the disinterest in other’s pain, that the line needs to be repeated twice.
The point is made with good humor, but the “no one takes an immediate interest in the pain of others” strikes home. Too often we’re too caught up in our own worlds of self-interest, or maybe just the busyness of everyday life to be too worried about the pain of those around us. The blues always have been and always will be a stark reminder of the pain and suffering in the world – it may be at the level of the personal relationship where “your baby left you early this morning” or at the level of injustice in the world (B B King’sThat’s Why I Sing the Blues catalogues the injustice suffered by his own community – “It seems like everybody got the blues”).
Ross Douthat in the New York Times recently reported on a Pew Survey on young adults in the United States which indicated that the Millennial Generation is marked by increased individualism – an “increasing absence of local, personal forms of fellowship and solidarity.” It would be unfair to lay this charge only at the door of Millennials, however – our entire society has been characterised by a consuming, self-orientated individualism for a very long time. In fact, the economic basis of our society in many ways is dependent upon this very thing and so the media and advertising industries urge us to keep acquiring, keep consuming, all predicated on our own personal comfort, convenience, development and well-being. Our dedicated self-interest numbs us from neighborly concern with the grief, pain and discomfort of others.
The Christian story, like the twice sung blues line, calls our attention to something beyond ourselves and our own interests. for this is a story of a God who entered in to the poverty, the squalor and messiness of human life so that we might be set free from our self-absorption in order to participate in God’s project of world-transformation, of love and peace, ears attuned keenly to the insistent cry of injustice all around us – the “pain of others.”
Keb Mo with Robert Johnson’s Kind Hearted Woman Blues
Robert Johnson is an almost mythical figure in the history of the blues. The chronology of his life is somewhat hazy – we are unsure even of when he was born but it was probably around 1911 in Hazelhurst, Mississippi. The circumstances of his death have been much discussed, along with the question of where he was buried, but it is likely he was murdered in 1938 – poisoned – by the jealous husband of a woman Johnson had taken up with. We know the date of some of the recordings he made and we have a legacy of 41 tracks he recorded of just 29 songs. And yet, for all his short life and mediocre recording output, Johnson is probably the most influential of all the Delta bluesmen – undoubtedly because of his inventive, versatile and masterful guitar playing and his energized singing, which included growls, shouts and tuneful falsetto. And, because Johnson was able “to transform the blues into marketable popular music” (Ted Giola).
In the Jim Crow South, there was an ever present and real threat of violence against the black community, and the spectre of lynching hung heavily over it during this period. Lynching became a means of terrorism of whites towards blacks, used to defend white domination and to intimidate and control blacks. It was usually done by hanging, but also by burning at the stake. By conservative estimates, 3,500 African Americans were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968, mostly from 1882 to 1920. Lynching was widespread and common in the South during the Jim Crow period and blacks lived in terror of their lives because of the capricious nature of lynching. Looking at a white woman the “wrong way” or acting in a way that was perceived “uppity” were sometimes all it took to begin inciting whites to form a lynch mob. Bluesman Skip James said simply, “They’d lynch you in a minute.”
