[tenn_jim]

I just returned from my annual pilgrimage to the Mississippi Delta. This section of the U. S. is the birthplace of the blues and remains the real seat of blues music in my opinion. I found one jam session going on in Clarksdale MS at the Ground Zero Blues Club where I broke out my guitar and after one of the musicians took it from me and retuned (DADFAD you know), let me sit in on a session...real fun.

Here are a few of the musicians I would recommend you see if you're ever in the neighborhood.

David Lee Durham. Has a new release out "Swing Tonight" which is a great arrangement. Great guitar with of all things, a flute in this arrangement.


Bill "Howl N Madd" Perry. Did a lot of cover songs from Sonny Thompson and Cash McCall.


Jesse Robinson. Jesse teaches blues at Mississippi State University. This is absolutely the epitome of blues music. His band, "500 Pounds of Blues Band" provides just great down-home blues. I caught his new release "Show me a Love" which is on his latest CD.


Daddy Rich. I caught him in Clarksdale MS where he did his latest "Pay your Dues" song. Kind of interesting since I had just written some lyrics entitled "Paying your Dues".


Here is a quick chronology of my trip. I've listed some of the juke joints where you will find performing musicians every night.

CLARKSDALE, MS
Ground Zero
JJ’s
Red’s

SHELBY, MS
Do Drop Inn
The Windy City Blues Cafe

RENOVA, MS
Shatto

LELAND, MS
Boss Hall’s

GREENVILLE, MS
Flowering Fountain where Little Milton recently recorded a song honoring this juke joint.

INDIANOLA, MS
Club Ebony
308 Blues Club and Cafe

RULEVILLE, MS
A section of Front Street is commonly known as Greasy Street, where there’s a strip of clubs.
Black Castle
Top Ten Club

DREW, MS
Boars Nest

SCHALTER, MS
Watt’s Cafe

GREENWOOD, MS
Mitchell’s Lounge

Don't miss these artists:
Clarksdale MS
"Mr. Johnny" Billington - older musician and teacher (lives in Lambert, MS)
O.B. Buchana - young hot shot soul-blues singer with a couple CDs
Mr. Tater "The Music Maker" - Clarksdale's near legendary street musician w/4+ CDs to his name; plays at Cat Head every Monday at 3pm
Sam Carr - legendary drummer has recorded with everyone from Sonny Boy II to Buddy Guy; lives in nearby Powell, MS near Lula
Razorblade Blues Band and/or The Deep Cuts - juke blues/r&b bands with related history/membership
Marshall Drew Blues Band - rockin' blues band of local 20-something talents
Jacqueline Gooch - 13-year-old rock guitarist who learned from bluesmen
Wesley Jefferson Band - house band at Red's Lounge (Fridays)
"Big Jack" Johnson - internationally known guitarist/singer
James "Super Chikan" Johnson - town's best songwriter
James "Jimbo" Mathus - ex-Squirrel Nut Zipper plays and records with Buddy Guy; runs Delta Recording Studio in Clarksdale;
Steve "Lightnin'" Malcolm - when he's not backing up Jimbo Mathus, CeDell Davis, T-Model Ford, Robert Belfour or the Burnside boys... he's playing as a one-man band
Pure Blues Express - Vanessia Young, local band leader... she attends college by day
John Ruskey - canoe adventurer, painter AND musician
Stan Street & the Levee Breakers - Clarksdale transplants; Stan is a painter and harp player
Terry "Big T" Williams - great guitarist; learned from Mr. Johnnie, played with Big Jack

TUNICA, MS:
Eddie Lee Coleman - juke joint guitarist/band leader

GREENVILLE, MS:
James "T-Model" Ford - 80-something opener for Buddy Guy, B.B. King, etc.
John Horton & Mississippi Slim - band mixes blues-rock with soul-blues
Mickey Rodgers & Barbara Looney - Rodgers played with Bobby Rush and Willie Foster
Lil Dave Thompson - Delta blues rocker
Lil Bill Wallace - Older blues guitarist/singer; suffered stroke but still plays occasionally

LELAND, MS:
Eddie Cusic - 70-something acoustic guitar legend, still plays
Pat Thomas - music making son of James "Son" Thomas; also folk artist
Jay Kirgis - young historical blues and roots player and teacher

CLEVELAND, MS:
Cadillac John & Bill Abel - 75-yr.-old harp player with his tough slide guitarist

PONTOTOC, MS:
Terry "Harmonica" Bean - one-man band and/or band leader; plays with "Slick" too

BENTONIA, MS:
Jimmy "Duck" Holmes - owner of Blue Front Cafe keeps music of Jack Owens/Skip James alive.

NATCHEZ, MS:
Elmo Williams & Hezekiah Early - singer-guitarist with harp playing drummer

WOODVILLE, MS:
Robert Cage - disciple of his old friend Scott Dunbar

OXFORD, MS (and Hill Country area, Holly Springs, etc.):
Kenny Brown & Cedric Burnside - R.L.'s guitarist and grandson jam
Duwayne Burnside - R.L.'s son... mixes old and new school blues together for BC Records
David Jr. (Malone) Kimbrough - Jr. Kimbrough's blues and R&B playing son; exited Parchman Penn in spring 2005
Gary Burnside - Often plays with Cedric and sometimes Lightnin' Malcolm
O'Dell "O.D." Harris - older, virtually unknown Hill Country bluesman in style of R.L.

MEMPHIS, TN:
"Slick" Ballinger & Soul Blues Boys
Robert Belfour -
Sweet Brown Sugar -
Earl The Pearl -
The Fieldstones -
Alvin "Youngblood" Hart -
Larry Lewis Blues Mojo Band -
John Lowe -
Richard Johnston -
Carla Thomas -

JACKSON, MS:
Louis "Gearshifter" Youngblood -
Eddie Cotton -
King Edward -
Dorothy Moore -
Jesse Robinson -
Bobby Rush -
HATTIESBURG, MS
L.C. Ulmer - old, virtually unknown, old-school blues guitarist/singer who needs to be recorded
Tommy "T-Bone" Pruitt -

BORN IN CLARKSDALE, MS:
Jackie Brenston
Sam Cooke
Lil Green
Raymond Hill
John Lee Hooker
Earl Hooker
Son House
Johnny B. Moore
Little Junior Parker
Sir Mack Rice
Ike Turner
Robert "Bilbo" Walker
and others!
ONCE CALLED CLARKSDALE HOME:
James "T-Model" Ford
Frank Frost (Helena/Clarksdale connection)
W.C. Handy
Robert Johnson
Pinetop Perkins
Wade Walton ("the singing barber")
McKinley Morganfield, a.k.a. Muddy Waters
Early Wright (blues D.J.)
and others!

Of course I did the obligitory tour of Beale Street in Memphis along with 2nd Ave. in Nashville along the way, but these are the stereotypical blues clubs with the commercial flair...no real down-home feeling. As you tour the Mississippi Delta, be aware that most of the "juke joints" are in the rougher parts of towns and don't be caught off guard by some of the offers you receive...but after all, that environment is what motivates these artists to write blues.

Also, don't get enamored with the Casinos along the river. You may not have enough money to finish the trip.

Take along lots of mosquito repellent, a taste for beer (because that's all you will find other than some illegal moonshine).

Enjoy.

This post has been edited by tenn_jim: 14 August 2006 - 11:57 AM

[dadfad]

Sounds like you had a great time. I've been in a few of those joints you mentioned myself, and jammed with a couple of those guys... Big Jack Johnson, and Dwayne's dad R.L. about ten years ago in Holly Springs before his death. (A true MOSOB) (mean 'ol sonofabitch )

Yeah, the whole area from Memphis to N.O. just drips with blues. The Blues hangs in the air like Spanish moss. Any White blue-haired old-lady working at the counter of a small-town Piggly-Wiggly usually knows more about blues than most white SRV-clone musicians playing a blooze-club in an entertainment district up North. Other things besides clubs and joints to check out are little indie-labels, and the area has a number of them, usually specializing in blues (Like Rooster, etc). There was an old saying "The Delta starts in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel and ends at the Gulf of Mexico" which is pretty much true.

[tenn_jim]

So right John...I bet they didn't have to retune your guitar though did they?

Did you share a sip of Mississippi Shine with them?

[dadfad]

So right John...I bet they didn't have to retune your guitar though did they?

Did you share a sip of Mississippi Shine with them?

No, but Big Jack actually did have to show me a tuning he used for his mandolin I'd never seen before. First time I'd ever come across playing a mandolin in an open-tuning (B I think, it's been awhile. I have it written down somewhere or other. I play a little mandolin but not that much.)

Re: Mississippi shine... But of course!

[tenn_jim]

So right John...I bet they didn't have to retune your guitar though did they?

Did you share a sip of Mississippi Shine with them?

No, but Big Jack actually did have to show me a tuning he used for his mandolin I'd never seen before. First time I'd ever come across playing a mandolin in an open-tuning (B I think, it's been awhile. I have it written down somewhere or other. I play a little mandolin but not that much.)

Re: Mississippi shine... But of course!

I've heard of a style of tuning where players re-string the mandolin, pairing an A string with the G and an E with the D, creating an octave sound when these strings are plucked. They sound very much like strings on a twelve-string guitar. (Rumor has it that they were strung this way to kill mosquitoes).

I sometimes use different tunings for the mandolin when I'm playing slide. A D A D for key of D, A E A E for Key of A and G D G D for key of G. Jimmy Page of LZ tuned his mandolin like a guitar with 2 strings missing...D G B E which made the opening riff to Led Zeppelins "Battle of Evermore" easier to play. All kinds of tricks.

The mandolin hasn't been promoted as much as the guitar as a blues instrument. Rich DelGrosso and Steve James (Yank Rachell) are notable mandolin pickers who keep this alive in the Blues.

[dadfad]

So right John...I bet they didn't have to retune your guitar though did they?

Did you share a sip of Mississippi Shine with them?

No, but Big Jack actually did have to show me a tuning he used for his mandolin I'd never seen before. First time I'd ever come across playing a mandolin in an open-tuning (B I think, it's been awhile. I have it written down somewhere or other. I play a little mandolin but not that much.)

Re: Mississippi shine... But of course!

I've heard of a style of tuning where players re-string the mandolin, pairing an A string with the G and an E with the D, creating an octave sound when these strings are plucked. They sound very much like strings on a twelve-string guitar. (Rumor has it that they were strung this way to kill mosquitoes).

I sometimes use different tunings for the mandolin when I'm playing slide. A D A D for key of D, A E A E for Key of A and G D G D for key of G. Jimmy Page of LZ tuned his mandolin like a guitar with 2 strings missing...D G B E which made the opening riff to Led Zeppelins "Battle of Evermore" easier to play. All kinds of tricks.

The mandolin hasn't been promoted as much as the guitar as a blues instrument. Rich DelGrosso and Steve James (Yank Rachell) are notable mandolin pickers who keep this alive in the Blues.

I'm friends with both Rich and Steve. Rich learned his instrument from Carl Martin mostly and, to a degree, from Yank and then fine-tuned his mandolin skills working with Howard "Louie Bluey" Armstrong (actually probably better known as a blues fiddler) of the old-time '20s-'30s string-band "The State Street Boys" (and then later with "Martin, Bogan and Armstrong"). Howard is the guy I learned to play from. (Not a lot... Just enough to b.s. people who don't know what good blues-mandolin sounds like! ) Since Howard died a few years ago, Rich is probably the best around now on blues-mando. I saw Steve just last month, and should be seeing him again in another month or so. It's been a few years since I've seen Rich since he moved to the West Coast. (Sadly enough, at a memorial service for his wife Maureen who had died at a pretty young age from breast cancer. She was a pretty hot boogie-woogie pianist. I remember when she first started playing blues-piano. Having been classically-trained, Rich had to actually give her sheet-music notation for "improv'ed" boodie-woogie tunes! Too bad, she was a great woman... )

[tenn_jim]

I'm friends with both Rich and Steve. Rich learned his instrument from Carl Martin mostly and, to a degree, from Yank and then fine-tuned his mandolin skills working with Howard "Louie Bluey" Armstrong (actually probably better known as a blues fiddler) of the old-time '20s-'30s string-band "The State Street Boys" (and then later with "Martin, Bogan and Armstrong"). Howard is the guy I learned to play from. (Not a lot... Just enough to b.s. people who don't know what good blues-mandolin sounds like! ) Since Howard died a few years ago, Rich is probably the best around now on blues-mando. I saw Steve just last month, and should be seeing him again in another month or so. It's been a few years since I've seen Rich since he moved to the West Coast.

I know better than that...from what I've heard about you, you don't do anything mediocre. I bet you can pick a hot blues mandolin.

Interesting you mentioned blues fiddlers. I heard one on my trip down south. Talk about crying the blues!

[tenn_jim]

John:

Just thinking about your comments on SRV Clones (although nothing wrong with Stevie)...

I had my wife, daughter, son-in-law with me on my trip. Most nights we were the only white people in the joint. I don't play much anymore but my son-in-law plays a pretty good metal guitar so I introduced him to blues. He sat in on a couple of jams and now he is hooked. A lot of what is being played today is electric blues anyway, so he fit right in...(SRV influence I guess).

Point I'm trying to make is that the old time blues as I once knew it is dying. No one is living those hard times any more and writing new blues. There are a lot of people cloning Jimi Hendrix, SRV or BBK and adapting old tunes to new arrangements but nothing like the old standards. Guess I'm just getting too damned old.

Just wonder who will remember the great old blues musicians when this generation passes. There is little history recorded and fewer musical recordings of these performers.

Thanks for listening to an old timer.

This post has been edited by tenn_jim: 14 August 2006 - 03:55 PM

[jumping_jack_splash]

John:

Just thinking about your comments on SRV Clones (although nothing wrong with Stevie)...

I had my wife, daughter, son-in-law with me on my trip. Most nights we were the only white people in the joint. I don't play much anymore but my son-in-law plays a pretty good metal guitar so I introduced him to blues. He sat in on a couple of jams and now he is hooked. A lot of what is being played today is electric blues anyway, so he fit right in...(SRV influence I guess).

Point I'm trying to make is that the old time blues as I once knew it is dying. No one is living those hard times any more and writing new blues. There are a lot of people cloning Jimi Hendrix, SRV or BBK and adapting old tunes to new arrangements but nothing like the old standards. Guess I'm just getting too damned old.

Just wonder who will remember the great old blues musicians when this generation passes. There is little history recorded and fewer musical recordings of these performers.

Thanks for listening to an old timer.

to both you and john

im 16, ill admit my knowledge of the blues is very small, i know the obvious delta blues guitarists, but i would really appreciate it if you could give me a list of some more, and how their styles vary, i find it a fascinating genre of music, real heart and soul goes into it and i would really like to increase my knowledge of it

[dadfad]

John:

Just thinking about your comments on SRV Clones (although nothing wrong with Stevie)...

I had my wife, daughter, son-in-law with me on my trip. Most nights we were the only white people in the joint. I don't play much anymore but my son-in-law plays a pretty good metal guitar so I introduced him to blues. He sat in on a couple of jams and now he is hooked. A lot of what is being played today is electric blues anyway, so he fit right in...(SRV influence I guess).

Point I'm trying to make is that the old time blues as I once knew it is dying. No one is living those hard times any more and writing new blues. There are a lot of people cloning Jimi Hendrix, SRV or BBK and adapting old tunes to new arrangements but nothing like the old standards. Guess I'm just getting too damned old.

Just wonder who will remember the great old blues musicians when this generation passes. There is little history recorded and fewer musical recordings of these performers.

Thanks for listening to an old timer.

to both you and john

im 16, ill admit my knowledge of the blues is very small, i know the obvious delta blues guitarists, but i would really appreciate it if you could give me a list of some more, and how their styles vary, i find it a fascinating genre of music, real heart and soul goes into it and i would really like to increase my knowledge of it

I understand what you mean, Jim, but I'm sort of hopeful about the future. I'm sure you member the recent past. In the say early 70s "blues" was at about the lowest point it had ever gotten to. The old "folk-revival" that had re-introduced a lot of the old country-blues greats was over and pretty much forgotten. The newer electric-blues and R&B (authentic) was gone, replaced by Motown and the beginnings of hip-hop. Blues was rarely being recorded and largely confined to old scratchy 78s and copies-of-copies of old recordings. No information available at all was very accessible to those few who cared to hear or learn about them. As one old guy I used to know (Buddy "Yer Buddy" Folks... The Biggest One-Man Band in Dee-Troit) put it... "Blues was dead. You couldn't get nobody to come in an' listen to no blues, I don't care if you bought 'em a whiskey an' give 'im a ten-dollar bill."

I think it's better today. You got young guys, like Jack above, who are into it. He probably knows more about old-school blues than I did when I was age sixteen and wants to learn more. Maybe he can't go and dig up old dead-guys to learn from anymore, but at least he has an almost infinite amount of potential information at his finger-tips. He can look up... Oh... Skip James for example, and find thousands of pages about him. Maybe a hundred recordings. And that's a helluva thing. I had a name on a record-credit on a Cream album, a reel-to-reel copy of "Cherry Ball Blues" and the vague information that he was from "somewhere in Mississippi, some town called Kazoo or something like that." And that was it. You couldn't find his name in the Encyclopedia Britannica or any of his recordings in the local music store. So you put the vast amount of information and recordings now readily available with a sincere love of the genre and desire to learn and you have some pretty serious potential there. So I'm not that pessimistic.

Maybe the old original guys die and lifestyles change, no way around that. But the music and the recordings and an awful lot of information are now "etched in stone" for those who care to explore it. I look at it almost like the finest of the old European classical music sort of. Ol' Wolfgang might be long dead, but his music still lives on, probably with the same quality and intensity it ever had. Because it was handed down clearly annotated for posterity and anyone who cared to get into it. And I kind of think of old blues like that now. I didn't used to think it. I thought it was truly close to being dead and would soon be gone forever. But there's a lot of information and annotation and recordings that, luckily, were remembered and saved in time to be preserved forever. And a new-found interest in that kind of music. Maybe no one will ever throw cotton all day long and then worry that the night-riders will find him "standin' at the cross-roads, black-dark gonna catch me here" but there are quite a few guys both older and younger who read about it and listen to the music and try to understand the feelings behind the words and notes, of that day and time, and then do their best to recapture that feeling again. And some are pretty damned good at it.

My blues collection used to be a handful of 78s, a few reel-to-reels of other guys' 78s and a dozen or so old LPs produced by obscure labels. But now with the advent of the CD and how relatively inexpensive it is to reproduce music compared to vinyl masters and pressings, you can get a recording by anyone from Ace Arnold to ZZ Hill with a couple of clicks on a key-pad and a Visa card. I never thought I'd see the day when you could find new recordings of... oh... Barbecue Bob or Peg-Leg Howell or Little Hat Jones, or even Blind Lemon Jefferson and Muddy Waters, available in a mainstream record store. But now they are, a new-found interest in the music. Just hearing the music often makes a guy, especially a guitarist, wanna look into it a little deeper. And the more you look, the more you find. Thankfully, there's now a whole lot to be found.




Jack, in the near future (as in maybe a month or so) I'm going to begin to try to copy a great deal of my blues collection to CD (as I did thirty years ago to cassette). Just as a very small example, I have a box of fifty ninety-minute cassettes of nothing but random-compilations I made myself of fifteen or twenty tunes per cassette (for listening in the car when they first began putting cassette players in cars). That's part of what will be copied to CD (as soon as I re-arrange my music-room and add a few new things, still in boxes, for better copying, etc) (And it pisses me off that they don't make 90-minutes CDs !). Just like I've put a few things up in the past on SoundClick for guys who might care to listen or copy (like I've done with John Jackson, Robert Pete Williams, acoustic-Hank, Paul Geremia, etc). I plan to put a whole lot of stuff like that up temporarily so that guys here can get a really extensive cross-section of blues and old-time music without spending a ton of money first. Then they can have an idea of who did what, what's around, what they like (or don't like) and can go from there. (I have no moral qualms about royalties not being paid to dead-guys.) So you can watch for that too as far as getting a basic familiarity of a lot of blues, both old and new (mostly old, and not all that new! ). As far as a list, I can give you one with a good start as to different guys you might wanna check out, and will copy it below (nowhere near complete though of course). You might wanna wait until I start doing those d/ls before you buy too much because a lot of those guys are going to be on what I put up. Anyway...

(Shelf 2A)

Son House
Charlie Patton
Blind Lemon Jefferson
Blind Blake
Tommy Johnson
Rev. Robert Wilkins
Lonnie Johnson
Furry Lewis
Willie Walker
George Carter
Jazz Gillum
Casey Bill Weldon
Skip James
Mississippi John Hurt
Champion Jack Dupree
Bo Carter
Peg Leg Howell
Barbeque Bob
Curley Weaver
Bumble Bee Slim
Laughing Charlie Lincoln
Tommy McClennan
Texas Alexander
Buddy Moss
The Black Ace
Kokomo Arnold
Blind Willie Johnson
Blind Boy Fuller
Willie Brown
Jaybird Coleman
Scrapper Blackwell
Blind Willie McTell
Hambone Willie Newbern
Petie Wheatstraw
Little Hat Jones
Robert Johnson
Tampa Red
Johnny Shines
Rev. Gary Davis
Big Joe McCoy
Memphis Minnie
Honeyboy Edwards
Big Bill Broonzy
Hudie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter
John Jackson
Mississippi Fred McDowell
Mance Lipscomb
Big Joe Williams
Brownie McGee
Pink Anderson
Lightnin' Hopkins
Bukka White
John "Short Stuff" Macon
Sleepy John Estes
Roosevelt Holts

T-Bone Walker
Muddy Waters
Howlin' Wolf
Ike Turner
Jimmy Rogers
Johnny Watson
John Lee Hooker
Eddie Burns
Elmore James
Jimmy Reed
Hound Dog Taylor
Albert King
BB KIng
ZZ Hill
Albert Collins
R L Burnside
Otis Rush
Freddie King
Luther Allison
Robert "Junior" Lockwood
Johnny Otis

[tenn_jim]

I understand what you mean, Jim, but I'm sort of hopeful about the future. I'm sure you member the recent past. In the say early 70s "blues" was at about the lowest point it had ever gotten to. The old "folk-revival" that had re-introduced a lot of the old country-blues greats was over and pretty much forgotten. The newer electric-blues and R&B (authentic) was gone, replaced by Motown and the beginnings of hip-hop. Blues was rarely being recorded and largely confined to old scratchy 78s and copies-of-copies of old recordings. No information available at all was very accessible to those few who cared to hear or learn about them. As one old guy I used to know (Buddy "Yer Buddy" Folks... The Biggest One-Man Band in Dee-Troit) put it... "Blues was dead. You couldn't get nobody to come in an' listen to no blues, I don't care if you bought 'em a whiskey an' give 'im a ten-dollar bill."

I think it's better today. You got young guys, like Jack above, who are into it. He probably knows more about old-school blues than I did when I was age sixteen and wants to learn more. Maybe he can't go and dig up old dead-guys to learn from, but at least he has an almost infinite amount of potential information at his finger-tips. He can look up... Oh... Skip James for example, and find thousands of pages about him. Maybe a hundred recordings. And that's a helluva thing. I had a name on a record-credit on a Cream album, a reel-to-reel copy of "Cherry Ball Blues" and the vague information that he was from "somewhere in Mississippi, some town called Kazoo or something like that." And that was it. You couldn't find his name in the Encyclopedia Britannica or any of his recordings in the local music store. So you put the vast amount of information and recordings now readily available with a sincere love of the genre and desire to learn and you have some pretty serious potential there. So I'm not that pessimistic.

Maybe the old original guys die and lifestyles change, no way around that. But the music and the recordings and an awful lot of information are now "etched in stone" for those who care to explore it. I look at it almost like the finest of the old European classical music sort of. Ol' Wolfgang might be long dead, but his music still lives on, probably with the same quality and intensity it ever had. Because it was handed down clearly annotated for posterity and anyone who cared to get into it. And I kind of think of old blues like that now. I didn't used to think it. I thought it was truly close to being dead and would soon be gone forever. But there's a lot of information and annotation and recordings that, luckily, were remembered and saved in time to be preserved forever. And a new-found interest in that kind of music. Maybe no one will ever throw cotton all day long and then worry that the night-riders will find him "standin' at the cross-roads, black-dark gonna catch me here" but there are quite a few guys both older and younger who read about it and listen to the music and try to understand the feelings behind the words and notes, of that day and time, and then do their best to recapture that feeling again. And some are pretty damned good at it.

My blues collection used to be a handful of 78s, a few reel-to-reels of other guys' 78s and a dozen or so old LPs produced by obscure labels. But now with the advent of the CD and how relatively inexpensive it is to reproduce music compared to vinyl masters and pressings, you can get a recording by anyone from Ace Arnold to ZZ Hill with a couple of clicks on a key-pad and a Visa card. I never thought I'd see the day when you could find new recordings of... oh... Barbecue Bob or Peg-Leg Howell or Little Hat Jones, or even Blind Lemon Jefferson and Muddy Waters available in a mainstream record store. But now they are, a new-found interest in the music. Just hearing the music often makes a guy, especially a guitarist, wanna look into it a little deeper. And the more you look, the more you find. Thankfully, there's now a whole lot to be found.




Jack, in the near future (as in maybe a month or so) I'm going to begin to try to copy a great deal of my blues collection to CD (as I did thirty years ago to cassette). Just as a very small example, I have a box of fifty ninety-minute cassettes of nothing but random-compilations I made myself of fifteen or twenty tunes per cassette (for listening in the car when they first began putting cassette players in cars). That's part of what will be copied to CD (as soon as I re-arrange my music-room and add a few new things, still in boxes, for better copying, etc). Just like I've put a few things up in the past on SoundClick for guys who might care to listen or copy (like I've done with John Jackson, Robert Pete Williams, acoustic-Hank, Paul Geremia, etc). I plan to put a whole lot of stuff like that up temporarily so that guys here can get a really extensive cross-section of blues and old-time music without spending a ton of money first. Then they can have an idea of who did what, what's around, what they like (or don't like) and can go from there. (I have no moral qualms about royalties not being paid to dead-guys.) So you can watch for that too as far as getting a basic familiarity of a lot of blues, both old and new (mostly old, and not all that new! ). As far as a list, I can give you one with a good start as to different guys you might wanna check out, and will copy it below (nowhere near complete though of course). You might wanna wait until I start doing those d/ls before you buy too much because a lot of those guys are going to be on what I put up. Anyway...

Thanks John for this great post. I guess I was just a little nostalgic yesterday after touring the Delta over the last two weeks and seeing such things as the disrepair to the graves of some of the old guys and gals. Even the grave of Robert Johnson wasn't in the best condition (grass had overgrown the marker). You are absolutely correct, there is a wealth of information available on the more reknowned artists of those days. And thanks to today's youth, their renditions of some of these songs will live on forever. But you hit the nail on the head with your comment about "standing at the crossroads"...and the understanding of what Robert Johnson was thinking when he wrote that song cannot be relived. The blues, of all genre' of music, capture the essence of feelings, from oppression, depression, rejection, loneliness and heartache. Jimi Hendrix did the same thing with his Blues renditions.

Again, thanks for your efforts to keep Blues alive.

[dadfad]

... I was just a little nostalgic yesterday after touring the Delta over the last two weeks and seeing such things as the disrepair to the graves of some of the old guys and gals.

Haha. I know what you mean. Sometimes, especially after a visit through there I'll feel the same way. Many years ago I managed to look up Fred McDowell to try to learn a little from him. I found him driving a tractor in a cotton field near Como, Mississippi. I walked out to talk to him carrying my guitar-case and he said he'd give me some pointers when he had a little time later after he finished his chores. I spent a week sleeping in an abandoned pick-up truck down the road from his place. I practiced all day in the back-bed of the truck, and spent the evenings learning what I could from him (and I couldn't slide for sh!t back then so I needed a lot of help). The day I left, he laughed at the slide-version of the tune "The Pusher" I'd come up with and said "Not bad, keep at it." and told me to keep the old deep-well socket he'd loaned me from under the seat of his tractor when he saw my slide was a thin chromed slide from a music-store up north ("Hahaha... that'll never do. You need something with a little meat to it.... Here, try this.") I returned a couple of years later and he'd died. He's buried in a little cemetery next to his wife at Hammond Hill Baptist Chuch just outside of Como. His headstone was inexpensive, just a poured block of cement with his name cast in it. And his name was even spelled wrong...Fred McDewell. I told myself I was going to by him a real headstone someday. I mentioned it to the old woman back at the general-store in Como who had told me how to find the cemetery. (Very out-of-the-way). She said "Why you wanna go an' do that? His people bought what they could afford. It'd be disrespectful of them for some white-boy to buy him another one." Her statement had a big impact on me. I'd never considered that. (I have bought two gravestones since, but only for un-marked graves with no known family.) A couple of years ago on my way to New Orleans, I stopped in Como again to pay my respects to Mister Fred's and Miss Mae's (who had also been very kind to me) graves. I played one of his tunes and shared a whiskey with him and then went on my way. On my way back to the inter-state highway, I just happened to drive down that same dirt-road I walked down years before when I had hitch-hiked down to Mississippi to find him. The same old rusty abandoned pick-up truck was still there, looking almost the same as it had thirty years earlier. The hot sun beat down on the dirt-road and the cotton-field, just as it had then. As if nothing at all had changed, except the calendar. And me riding in a Buick instead of walking on foot. I had a very......blue, un-easy feeling sort of. Very hard to explain.

I guess as we old coots get older it's hard not to "wax nostalgic."

[BByrdman]

... I was just a little nostalgic yesterday after touring the Delta over the last two weeks and seeing such things as the disrepair to the graves of some of the old guys and gals.

Haha. I know what you mean. Sometimes, especially after a visit through there I'll feel the same way. Many years ago I managed to look up Fred McDowell to try to learn a little from him. I found him driving a tractor in a cotton field near Como, Mississippi. I walked out to talk to him carrying my guitar-case and he said he'd give me some pointers when he had a little time later after he finished his chores. I spent a week sleeping in an abandoned pick-up truck down the road from his place. I practiced all day in the back-bed of the truck, and spent the evenings learning what I could from him (and I couldn't slide for sh!t back then so I needed a lot of help). The day I left, he laughed at the slide-version of the tune "The Pusher" I'd come up with and said "Not bad, keep at it." and told me to keep the old deep-well socket he'd loaned me from under the seat of his tractor when he saw my slide was a thin chromed slide from a music-store up north ("Hahaha... that'll never do. You need something with a little meat to it.... Here, try this.") I returned a couple of years later and he'd died. He's buried in a little cemetery next to his wife at Hammond Hill Baptist Chuch just outside of Como. His headstone was inexpensive, just a poured block of cement with his name cast in it. And his name was even spelled wrong...Fred McDewell. I told myself I was going to by him a real headstone someday. I mentioned it to the old woman back at the general-store in Como who had told me how to find the cemetery. (Very out-of-the-way). She said "Why you wanna go an' do that? His people bought what they could afford. It'd be disrespectful of them for some white-boy to buy him another one." Her statement had a big impact on me. I'd never considered that. (I have bought two gravestones since, but only for un-marked graves with no known family.) A couple of years ago on my way to New Orleans, I stopped in Como again to pay my respects to Mister Fred's and Miss Mae's (who had also been very kind to me) graves. I played one of his tunes and shared a whiskey with him and then went on my way. On my way back to the inter-state highway, I just happened to drive down that same dirt-road I walked down years before when I had hitch-hiked down to Mississippi to find him. The same old rusty abandoned pick-up truck was still there, looking almost the same as it had thirty years earlier. The hot sun beat down on the dirt-road and the cotton-field, just as it had then. As if nothing at all had changed, except the calendar. And me riding in a Buick instead of walking on foot. I had a very......blue, un-easy feeling sort of. Very hard to explain.

I guess as we old coots get older it's hard not to "wax nostalgic."

You should write a book about your experiences. I really enjoy hearing your stories.

[tenn_jim]

Haha. I know what you mean. Sometimes, especially after a visit through there I'll feel the same way. Many years ago I managed to look up Fred McDowell to try to learn a little from him. I found him driving a tractor in a cotton field near Como, Mississippi. I walked out to talk to him carrying my guitar-case and he said he'd give me some pointers when he had a little time later after he finished his chores. I spent a week sleeping in an abandoned pick-up truck down the road from his place. I practiced all day in the back-bed of the truck, and spent the evenings learning what I could from him (and I couldn't slide for sh!t back then so I needed a lot of help). The day I left, he laughed at the slide-version of the tune "The Pusher" I'd come up with and said "Not bad, keep at it." and told me to keep the old deep-well socket he'd loaned me from under the seat of his tractor when he saw my slide was a thin chromed slide from a music-store up north ("Hahaha... that'll never do. You need something with a little meat to it.... Here, try this.") I returned a couple of years later and he'd died. He's buried in a little cemetery next to his wife at Hammond Hill Baptist Chuch just outside of Como. His headstone was inexpensive, just a poured block of cement with his name cast in it. And his name was even spelled wrong...Fred McDewell. I told myself I was going to by him a real headstone someday. I mentioned it to the old woman back at the general-store in Como who had told me how to find the cemetery. (Very out-of-the-way). She said "Why you wanna go an' do that? His people bought what they could afford. It'd be disrespectful of them for some white-boy to buy him another one." Her statement had a big impact on me. I'd never considered that. (I have bought two gravestones since, but only for un-marked graves with no known family.) A couple of years ago on my way to New Orleans, I stopped in Como again to pay my respects to Mister Fred's and Miss Mae's (who had also been very kind to me) graves. I played one of his tunes and shared a whiskey with him and then went on my way. On my way back to the inter-state highway, I just happened to drive down that same dirt-road I walked down years before when I had hitch-hiked down to Mississippi to find him. The same old rusty abandoned pick-up truck was still there, looking almost the same as it had thirty years earlier. The hot sun beat down on the dirt-road and the cotton-field, just as it had then. As if nothing at all had changed, except the calendar. And me riding in a Buick instead of walking on foot. I had a very......blue, un-easy feeling sort of. Very hard to explain.

I guess as we old coots get older it's hard not to "wax nostalgic."

You have a wonderful way of telling stories John. Not many people would have understood the importance of the deep well socket for a slide. The real "masters of the craft" used whatever was available. One of the best I've ever seen used a coke bottle. A little awkward but I guess that practice makes perfect huh?

The Delta has really changed over the past 30 years. Cotton fields are diminishing along with the sharecroppers who worked them. The younger generation is moving up to Memphis or working in the Casinos and the days (or nights) when you ran up on some old guy playing his beat up guitar on the front porch sitting in a cane bottom chair is gone. Back in the 50's and 60's, you could go to almost any plantation store and find a couple of guys jamming on the porch eating a rag bologna sandwich, drinking a RC Cola and playing a cheap guitar or blowing on a "mouth harp". If you ask them why they didn't try to sell their talents, they would tell you that they owed their yearly cotton picking money to the company store and they would have to wait till next year before they got it paid off. Then over the winter they would have to run up a new bill at the "store" so next year never came. That's the stuff that the blues were made of.

The church was all those guys had outside of their meager existence on the cotton plantations. If you listen carefully to many of the old blues songs you will find an interesting parallel between the melodies of blues to hymns sung in the churches along the Delta.

Well, enough nostalgia. Let's just be glad that somewhere along the way people like yourself were astute enough to capture that era and make it available for today's generation to learn from.

Now, let's get a drink...It has to be 5:00 somewhere.

[dadfad]

(Dadfad sets his watch forward five hours. Opens the credenza in his office. Digs back behind the J&B and Drambuie bottles for the jar in back with "Ball" across the lid... )

[guru of rock n roll]

Wow that was educational to me.This a great thread should be pinned.Didn`t realize how many Players are out thier.Opened my world a little deeper. thanks

[tenn_jim]

Wow that was educational to me.This a great thread should be pinned.Didn`t realize how many Players are out thier.Opened my world a little deeper. thanks

The Mississippi Delta is only one section of the country with this heritage. Over the state line in Alabama is another area rich in blues culture.

Little Whitt and Big Bo.
Junior Thomas
Willie King

just to name a few.

[guru of rock n roll]

I`m soon to be a Truckdriver,I will be leaving in less than 2 weeks.I can`t wait to see that part of the country,I will be looking for places to hear some of those people

[tenn_jim]

I`m soon to be a Truckdriver,I will be leaving in less than 2 weeks.I can`t wait to see that part of the country,I will be looking for places to hear some of those people

Wish you the best of everything in your new endeavor. If you are traveling in the delta, you may not be in the right location if you're an over-the-road driver. As Dadfad said, most of these places are off the beaten track. But you will find great music everywhere, so good luck in finding what you're looking for.

[jumping_jack_splash]

thanks john, thats a good looking list i know a few of them, but ill have a look into some of those, if my liver holds out i should have another 50 years or so to keep looking and searching into the blues.


here's to many years finding goood music