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Preserving Country Blues through Education, Performance and Technology

Snooks Eaglin - New Orleans Street Singer

November 17, 2011, 06:30:17 PM by Slack
Views: 551 | Comments: 2

Snooks Eaglin - New Orleans Street Singer
Written by John Miller

Snooks Eaglin - New Orleans Street Singer, Smithsonian Folkways SFW CD 40165

It was with great excitement that I discovered this CD in a record store a couple of months ago. I will never forget the shock and amazement I felt upon first hearing this music in its first incarnation, as a Folkways album. Snooks's mastery of the guitar was so far beyond anything else I had heard that there didn't seem to be any basis for comparison; it was almost as though he existed as the sole inhabitant of a musical universe of his own creation.

Smithsonian Folkways is to be congratulated for doing this re-issue project up right, including 5 previously un-released and 3 alternate takes (most instructive) and getting Elijah Wald to write the notes, which are excellent. Wald's discussion of sources for Snooks' program is so complete, in fact, that I won't discuss sources here, but instead will refer interested parties to his liner notes for that information. I would like to indulge in some guitar-centricity, because there is not much point in talking about Snooks without obsessing on his playing.

Snooks was 22 years old when he recorded this music and already possessed of one of the most remarkable technical mechanisms any guitarist has ever had. If Blind Blake was the man who played "piano-sty...

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J.W. Warren - Life Ain't Worth Livin'

November 17, 2011, 06:28:29 PM by Slack
Views: 299 | Comments: 0

J.W. Warren - Life Ain't Worth Livin'
Written by John Miller

J.W. Warren - Life Ain't Worth Livin', Fat Possum Records FP1024-2

This recent Fat Possum release features the music of J.W. Warren, a musician from Ariton, in southeast Alabama, who was recorded by George Mitchell in 1981 and 1982. Warren, who died in 2003, was born in 1921, so he is on the older side of an "in-between" generation of musicians that includes Frank Hovington, John Jackson, Jimmy Lee Williams, and on the younger side, John Cephas and John Dee Holman. Like these other musicians, Warren's music sounds to have been greatly influenced by recorded Blues, and much of what is most interesting about his music has to do with the way he personalized the music he picked up from recordings.

The program opens with one of Warren's more individualistic pieces, "Hoboing Into Hollywood", a 16-bar blues in dropped-D tuning that shares some of its sound with William Moore's "Old Country Rock" and "One Way Gal", though in this instance, I do not believe Warren learned from Moore's recordings, for their senses of time are quite different. Rather, I think they were both speaking a similar dropped-D "language" and taking what the guitar gives you in that position. Warren's pleasant deep voice really sets the song off well.

"Sundown Blues" is an 8-bar cover of Blind Boy Fuller in A, ...

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Jimmy Lee Williams - Hoot Your Belly

November 17, 2011, 06:27:49 PM by Slack
Views: 255 | Comments: 0

Jimmy Lee Williams - Hoot Your Belly
Written by John Miller

Jimmy Lee Williams - Hoot Your Belly, Fat Possum Records, FP1009-2

I have my friend Phil Thorne to thank for bringing this CD to my attention and for loaning it to me at the EBA Blues Week this past August. I was very favorably impressed by the several cuts I listened to then, and resolved to pick up the CD when I returned to the States. I finally bought it about a week ago and really have not felt like listening to anything else since then.

Jimmy Lee Williams is (or perhaps was, the CD gives no indication as to whether he is still living) a farmer, residing in Porlan, Georgia, who was recorded by the blues researcher George Mitchell in 1977 and 1982. On these recordings, Jimmy Lee, who was born in 1925, accompanies himself on solo electric guitar. His music shows a bewildering variety of influences; you really can not peg him as falling into a particular sub-genre of blues based on his age, region, instrumental/vocal approach, or choice of material. Rather, as you listen to him (particularly with repeated listening) you settle back into the sound of his strong vocals and solidly rhythmic accompaniments, whatever the character of the individual songs may be.

The opening numbers on the CD are especially distinctive, and are the most individualistic-sounding portion of t...

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Robert Pete Williams - I'm As Blue As I Can Be

November 17, 2011, 06:27:11 PM by Slack
Views: 379 | Comments: 0

Robert Pete Williams - I'm As Blue As I Can Be
Written by John Miller

Robert Pete Williams - I'm As Blue As I Can Be, Arhoolie CD-394

This CD presents performances by Robert Pete Williams that, with one exception ("Tippin' In"), were recorded by Dr. Harry Oster in 1959 and 1960, when Robert Pete was still incarcerated at Angola Penitentiary in Louisiana. The music from these sessions seems one of the purest manifestations of Robert Pete's unique approach to music-making. The sound of his guitar and the way he used it, the way he phrased vocally, and his take on the blues form all existed at that time at a pretty extreme remove from the blues as they are most often played and sung. This, combined with the fact that Dr. Oster was able and willing to let Robert Pete play songs for as long as he wanted as he was recorded makes for an exceptionally rich representation of Robert Pete's music.

The program opens with "Pardon Denied Again", played in E minor, standard tuning, with extreme bends of the G string up to a unison with the B string. Phrasing begins in a very free-form fashion and eventually evolves into a more conventional form that bears some resemblence to Blind Willie Johnson's "Lord, I Just Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes". On this song and elsewhere throughout the program, Robert Pete's lyrics so far transcend the stylistic cliches...

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Dan Gellert--Waitin' On The Break Of Day

November 17, 2011, 06:26:21 PM by Slack
Views: 404 | Comments: 0

Dan Gellert--Waitin' On The Break Of Day
Written by John Miller

Dan Gellert--Waitin' On The Break Of Day, www.orphonon.com

I have not been able to stop listening to this new Dan Gellert CD since purchasing it from him a couple of weeks ago. Dan Gellert is something of an underground legend in the Old Time music community, and the fact that he does not often make the round of fiddler's conventions and is severely under-recorded add a heightened interest to discussions of his music and musicianship. On this, his first solo recording project, Dan sings and plays fretless banjo on nine cuts and fiddle on seven cuts. The notes on the CD are brief and to the point, presenting the tunings employed on his gut-strung and steel-strung banjos and his fiddle on the various tunes and providing sources for the tunes, choosing not to include biographical information that might go to explain how Dan got to where he is today musically. After listening to the CD repeatedly, all I can say is that however Dan got to where he is musically today, he is THERE, right now, and there can be no question about it. As a player, both on fretless banjo and fiddle, Dan Gellert hits the ground improvising. He has in spades that most mysterious of skills of the great Old Time players: the ability to spin a seemingly endless skein of variations on a...

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