Downhome Delta Blues 1949-1952 (Nighthawk, 1980)

 LISTEN TO "LONE TOWN BLUES"

Downhome Delta Blues 1949-1952 served as my introduction to Nighthawk Records when I purchased this LP sometime during my stint as a college student more than twenty years ago.  At that point, I was fully committed to blues of the prewar country and early postwar Chicago varieties but didn't know much about the music that had been made by the genre's practitioners who had remained down South during the late 1940s and early 1950s.  This album could not have been a better gateway to such material, even if it took awhile for some of the cuts to appeal to me.  While blues musicians from Chicago and other Northern cities often became formulaic at the behest of the labels for whom they recorded, their downhome counterparts seemed to have benefited from lower sales expectations, thus keeping many of their idiosyncrasies and rough edges fully intact.  Several of these tracks - especially those by lesser-known bluesman such as Pee Wee Hughes, Little Sam Davis, Junior Brooks, and Luther Huff - still sound firmly planted in the 1920s and 1930s in a stylistic sense, but are performed with more modern amplified instruments, which helps give them their distinctive character.  Big Joe Williams hardly qualifies as obscure, but his voice and magnificent nine-string guitar have seldom sounded better than they do on the wonderfully raw "Jivin' Woman" and "She's a Married Woman."  Joe Hill Louis's propensity for unrhymed lyrics has kept me from being a big fan, but I can't argue with his blistering guitar playing on "Jealous Blues," and of course such shortcomings aren't an issue on the instrumental "Joe's Jump."  Not everything in this collection is necessarily as earthy, however, with the relatively sophisticated "On the Hook" by Earl Hooker and "Please Send My Baby Home" by Sunny Blair providing this disc with some welcome variety.

 

JOE HILL LOUIS

LUTHER HUFF

BIG JOE WILLIAMS

Patton, Sims, & Bertha Lee: Delta Blues (Herwin, 1977)

 LISTEN TO "OH DEATH"

This somewhat inaccurately-titled album functioned as a fine companion piece to Yazoo's Founder of the Delta Blues for the Charlie Patton completist back in the prewar blues reissue LP scene of the 1970s.  The featured tracks consist of both secular and sanctified performances, some recorded under the guitarist's name, whereas others find him serving as an accompanist to cohorts Henry "Son" Sims and Bertha Lee.  While the blues songs among Patton's eight sides cannot be included among his finest efforts, the gospel numbers, especially "You're Gonna Need Somebody When You Die" and "Jesus Is a Dying-Bed Maker," qualify as masterpieces of the genre.  The quartet of recordings by Sims are primarily notable for his screechy violin and the most simplistic guitar playing Patton ever committed to wax, but aren't bad.  The latter's fretwork is similarly uninspiring while backing common-law wife Bertha Lee on "Yellow Bee" and "Mind Reader," but all is forgiven on the haunting religious duets "Oh Death" and "Troubled 'Bout My Mother," two more of the greatest prewar African-American sanctified showpieces of all time.  In similar fashion to other Herwin releases, Patton, Sims, & Bertha Lee:  Delta Blues boasts good sound quality relative to the audio restoration technology of its time (as well as being further improved upon by yours truly) and includes detailed liner notes (by Don Kent in this instance) in addition to invaluable transcriptions of the song lyrics.

BERTHA LEE PATTON

Memphis Blues Volume 3: 1927-1930 (Document, 2009)

 LISTEN TO "LINDBERG HOP"

Seventeen of the tracks on Memphis Blues Volume 3: 1927-1930 previously appeared on the Wolf Records CD Memphis Jug Band - Associates & Alternate Takes (1927-1930).  In retrospect, the Document label probably should have kept that more accurate title since this disc compiles eight alternate takes by the aforementioned aggregation in addition to a dozen titles by its various members performing under their own names or accompanying singers such as Hattie Hart and Kaiser Clifton.  Guitarist and group leader Will Shade is the one constant throughout the proceedings due to his almost definite presence on all twenty songs.  The MJB sides compare favorably with their better known counterparts, while those by Will Weldon, Vol Stevens, and Will Shade respectively feature outstanding guitar, guitar-mandolin, and guitar-piano duets.  (I remain unconvinced that the first of these musicians is the same person as Casey Bill Weldon.)  While it is difficult to fault the performances themselves, the attention to printed details on this release fails to impress.  Jenny Pope, whose name is listed on the booklet cover, does not appear in any capacity on these recordings.  Moreover, the tracks listed on the CD are actually those from another Document item, Memphis Harp and Jug Blowers 1929-1939.  And finally, the spine of the inlay card reads, "Memphis Blue (sic) Volume 3."  While I am appreciative that this label continues to operate since its relocation to the UK, I have a hard time believing such careless typographical errors would have occurred under Johnny Parth's watch.

MEMPHIS JUG BAND

PROBABLY WILL SHADE (R) WITH THOMAS PINKSTON, CIRCA 1932

Steve Mann - Elephant Songs & Cow Cow Blues (Blue Goose, 1978)

 LISTEN TO "MAKE ME A PALLET ON THE FLOOR"

It seems like every genre and sub-genre of music has its Brian Wilson-Syd Barrett-Skip Spence figures:  musicians whose talents radiate so brightly that they inevitably get burned if not completely immolated in the pursuit of their respective muses.  In the white blues field, that unfortunate role fell upon virtuoso guitarist Steve Mann, one of the few interpreters capable of transcending his influences.  Like Davy Graham, the musician to whom Mann was most similar, he drew upon a great variety of sources.  While blues served as his main foundation, other styles - including jazz, soul, gospel, bossa nova, and traditional British Isles folk songs - were also effectively incorporated into his musical bag.  All these elements are on impressive display throughout Elephant Songs & Cow Cow Blues, an LP consisting of home recordings and live performances at the Ash Grove taped by Stefan Grossman and Nick Perls circa 1966-1967.  At this point in his life, Mann had already established an esteemed reputation from his countless appearances at Los Angeles and San Francisco folk clubs, session work (most notably for playing electric twelve-string on Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe"), and for associating with various key musical figures of the 1960s including Frank Zappa, Dr. John, and Janis Joplin.  However, the mental issues that would eventually consign him to managed care facilities for the rest of his life were already starting to take hold by the time these tracks were laid down.  I suspect that Grossman and Perls were aware of the guitarist's tenuous grip on reality and wanted to document his talents for posterity while still possible.  After completely disappearing in the 1980s and 1990s, Mann reemerged in the first decade of this century with his instrumental skills remarkably intact.  With the help of friends and sympathetic management, he saw much of his music made available on CD and seemed to derive some enjoyment from life during his final years before passing away in 2009. 

78 Quarterly No. 11 (2000)

The penultimate issue of 78 Quarterly proved to be the only instance in which the publication overwhelmingly focused on one subject as opposed to featuring its usual assortment of articles relating to prewar blues, early jazz, and other forms of early twentieth-century (and primarily black) American musical genres.  Indeed, eighty-one of its one hundred twenty-eight pages are devoted to a comprehensive history and discography of the celebrated Black Patti label, which, among other things, inspired the logo that Nick Perls utilized (plagiarized?) for Belzona/Yazoo Records.  While it would be perverse to criticize Tom Tsotsi and Pete Whelan's exhaustive research or the accompanying photos and illustrations, I still find myself going back to reread No. 11 the least compared to other editions of this periodical  because of its relatively one-dimensional nature.  While the actual story behind Black Patti is fascinating, I never considered their recording artists (with the extremely notable exception of Long "Cleve" Reed and Little Harvey Hull aka the Down Home Boys) to be as compelling as those of other race labels such as Paramount.  That, however, is hardly a suggestion that this issue is a waste of your time as it also includes the consistently entertaining Letters to the Editor section, a heartfelt obituary for legendary collector Bernard Klatzko, another installment of "78 Presents the Rarest 78s," and pieces on singers Ida Cox and Sis Quander.