So I head out of New Orleans on Highway 61 towards Baton Rouge in the "car" for the trip.... A real tug between a silver Mustang and a. Chrysler Sebring convertible in electric blue... Breaking with my road trip tradition I went for the Chrysler.... It was in blue so that kind of fitted with the grand scheme of the trip.
First music of the day was a song that had been buzzing around my head since I left. John Mayall's "Death of JB Lenoir"... Awesome song and a clear marker in the relationship between American Blues and the British Blues school which developed in the 60's and which was lead by John Mayall, Alexis Korner and then developed by people like Eric Clapton...
A session of JB Lenoir inevitably followed. His high pitched, almost childish voice and simple but infectious guitar rhythms contrasting with the (at the time) quite risque political content (Eisenhower Blues was originally release under another title for example) and with the sassiness of tracks like "Mama Talk To Your Daughter" from 1954....
"Mama, mama, please talk to your daughter 'bout me
Mama, mama, please talk to your daughter 'bout me
She done made me love her and I ain't gonna leave her be."
Driving across the swamps and the bayous of Louisiana I was tempted to go for a Creedence Clearwater Revival moment, but took a turn into more blues with the 1966 Berkeley Blues Festival and three wildly different but supremely enjoyable bluesmen....
Mance Lipscomb - Texas acoustic blues, farmer style with the wonderful Shake, Shake Mama (I'll buy you a diamond ring)... Where dancing becomes a metaphor for all kinds of other good things....
Clifton Chenier - the king of zydeco. This is Acadian music known as Cajun because locals couldn't pronounce Acadian so it became corrupted to "cajun" which we all know). This is somewhere between jazz, blues and folk music with instruments such as the washboard and accordion featuring heavily. Chenier sings a great rendition of Ray Charles's song "What I'd Say" substituting piano with accordion. A genuine Louisiana sound.
Lightnin' Hopkins - perhaps my favourite blues man. Sam Lightnin' Hopkins was from Houston Texas and was a legend. His deep voice and his instantly recognisable guitar style set him apart with songs like "Black Cadillac" (where his eye for the ladies costs him his Black Cadillac of the title), "Last Night" with it's haunting top string whines and so on. More on Lightnin' later on this trip as I will be bumping into him again in Mississippi for sure....
Muddy Waters and various blues men (Elmore James, John Lee Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter) then saw me to the doors of Angola - or The Farm.
Angola Prison is the Louisiana State Penitentiary and houses all the state's death row prisoners. An enormous farm, Angola was home to many bluesmen - among them Leadbelly who spent time there for Aggravated Assault with Intent To Murder....
You can read more about Angola at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_State_Penitentiary
Angola has it's own museum just outside the main gates and it is definitely worth stopping by.
Not only are the exhibits fascinating, but you can also buy original recordings of inmates which were recorded at Angola in the late 50s. I naturally picked up a bunch including recordings of Prison Work Songs which are amazing -rhythm being supplied by hammers hitting rails, sewing machines and other equipment. Also a collection of spirituals sung by the prisoners, and proper blues recorded by inmates including the velvet voice of inmate Roosevelt Charles.
Listening to the work songs in particular and you can instantly connect with both plantation songs and the jump to West African tribal music (where the blues originated and came to America with the slave trade).
The rhythmical beats and the proclamations followed by the chorus response also form the basis for the simplest blues structures and listening to these recordings back to back is a revelation. And unlike a lot of blues "classics" they are not about the woman leaving and waking up in the morning after a fight or too many drinks or both... No, these songs are more fundamental. They're about inequality, suffering, hope, belief in God, salvation and the will to go on. Very human truths from people stripped of everything else. In one talking blues the singer recognises the requirement or hope that the prisoners are there to pay penance for their sins and crimes - and simply beseaches the authorities to allow him to do so in peace and being treated fairly.
That music took me all the way into Mississippi and through Vicksburg - where the last battle of the Civil War took place and up 61 to Rolling Fork (birthplace of McKinly Morganfield or Muddy Waters as better known). From Rolling Fork to Leland and across to Indianola - birthplace of BB King who is finishing a Museum dedicated to the Delta Blues.
This whole is plantation dominated with corn, cotton and sugar cane as the main crops. The landscape is at the same time inspiring and threatening with its vast expanse.
These are the fields where men like Muddy Waters and BB King and thousands of others worked 12 hour days and then played the blues to each other and their friends at night. This is where the blues began in the United States and these were the pioneers along with Son House, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin' Wolf and Skip James, who made it a musical genre which lasts until today.
The day ended heading to Jackson, the capital of Mississippi and being accompanied by Buddy Guy singing acoustic delta blues including tracks like Crawling Kingsnake, Lucy Mae Blues and Hardtime Killing Floor. Buddy Guy, who is synonymous with the Chicago electric blues sound that he and people like Muddy Waters pioneered, but BG - just like Muddy - had his roots in the delta. And this album shows a different side of Buddy Guy which is as surprising as it is beautiful. Great way to end a great day.
How the blues left the delta and went to Chicago and how it developed is the focus on the rest of this journey - but Mississippi holds more learning before the road goes to Tennessee and Memphis....
No comments:
Post a Comment