Hi all,
I have been listening a lot to Henry Thomas lately, and I think he was just great--so great that I want to talk about him.? There's a lot you could talk about, too:? His choice of material and its cross-over with Old Time repertoire, his music as dance music, his guitar-playing, etc.
I have been focusing a lot on his tunes with quills (panpipes).? Of his 23 recorded titles in the period 1927-1929, nine featured quills in addition to guitar accompaniment and vocals.?
?* John Henry
?* The Fox and the Hounds
?* Red River Blues
?* Little Red Caboose
?* Bull Doze Blues
?* Fishing Blues
?* Old Country Stomp
?* Charmin' Betsy
?* Railroadin' Some
For all but two of these numbers, Henry Thomas was capoed up, playing in standard tuning out of the D position, sounding about concert G# (capoed at the sixth fret).? "The Fox and the Hounds" moves back and forth between D position at that pitch and G position.? "Railroadin' Some" is the only tune played solely in the G position (though it modulates to D position right at the end).?
For convenience's sake, if you think of the quills as being in D, since the guitar is being played out of a D position, they are set up in a major pentatonic scale of:
?I--II--III--V--VI--I.? If you plug these scale degrees into the D scale you get:
?D--E--F#--A--B--D.? This pentatonic scale has a beautiful, almost Asian-sounding quality, and differs from the so-called Blues scale as follows.? The Blues scale is:
?I--flatIII--IV--V--flatVII--I, or in D, D--F--G--A--C--D.?
Interestingly, the same grouping of notes Henry Thomas used would, in fact, give you a Blues scale in the key of VI if you ran it from VI to VI rather than from I to I, but Henry Thomas never employed the quills that way on his recordings. Instead, he chose to stick with the major pentatonic possibilities.
? Since quills are hard to come by or make if you don't know how, you may wish to substitute harmonica for quills in your own performances of these tunes.? Cross harp works well for the blues scale because you have heavy bent draws to get the flat three and flat seven notes, but since neither of those notes is in Henry Thomas's scale on the quills, straight harp sounds better for these tunes, because you will end up getting a purer sound on the melody notes.
? Henry Thomas's version of "John Henry" uses a quill melody at the beginning of the performance that bears no relation to any version of "John Henry" I have heard before, but once he settles in, he alternates beautifully between the verse melody and the refrain melody.? His version is also one of the very few I have heard by a Country Blues player that is not performed in Vastapol tuning.
? "The Fox and the Hounds" is unusual for its modulation to the key of IV.? Like most "Fox Hunt" type tunes, it has a programmatic element.? One interesting thing about the modulation, is that in the IV key, G, Henry Thomas strongly emphasizes the third of the IV chord, B.? Well, B is also the VI note of the parent key, D, and as it turns out the B on the quills is in tune in the key of D, but distinctly sharp in the key of G.? This makes me think that perhaps there is no such thing as tempered tuning on quills--they are really only in tune in one key.
? "Red River Blues" is a 16-bar blues with I and V chords only, an archetype I have not encountered before.? Moreover, Henry Thomas changes the chord progression as he goes along, using lots of subtle variations, all of which sound good.
?"Little Red Caboose" he plays as a one-chorder, although there is a place where the melody hangs on the II note where it really sounds like it wants to go to a V chord.? This tune is a good candidate for the "Hearing Chord Changes" thread.
?"Bull Doze Blues" is the source for the beautiful flute melody interlude on Canned Heat's recording of "Goin' Up The Country".? I've been kind of obsessed with this melody recently, and if I may say so, it is perfection, and that is rarely encountered.? The melody is a kind of marvel of rhythmic placement and phrasing--in its 12 bars, it never once lands on either the first or third beat of the measure.? As a result, it is the opposite of square, and has this great kind of shadow-boxing or counter-punching quality.? The range of the melody is an octave and a fourth and it uses the following notes:
?V--VI--I--II--III--V--VI--I
If you wanted to arrange the melody for guitar, in Spanish tuning, the melodic span would be from the open fourth string to the fifth fret of the first string.? In Vastapol, the melodic span would be from the open second string to the 12th fret of the first string.
?"Fishing Blues" is just about as pretty as "Bull Doze", and after hearing so many versions of this song where it sounds like the singer is trying to win some kind of cuteness competition it is a real tonic to hear Henry Thomas's straight-forward version.
?On "Old Country Stomp", Henry does some dance calls, and he sure sounds like he played for a lot of dances.? This one has a moment of magic in the quills part--he's casting about, trying to find something by the sound of it, and then he puts it together.? The melody he ends up with is so strong and rhythmic, he just rides it on out to the end of the tune.
?"Charmin' Betsy" sounds like another dance tune.? His timing and execution of his guitar accompaniment is stellar.? He has this way of lifting his left hand for the fourth beat of the measure and just strumming the open strings, which in the key he's playing, implies a IV chord.? I have to work out some of this stuff for Port Townsend.
?"Railroadin' Some" is more of a vamp tune, evoking a ride on a train.? If you listen to it carefully, it's also kind of a geography lesson.? You can get out a road atlas and follow along with the station stops he calls out.? Playing out of a G position, Henry bends the V note of G (D) repeatedly, to evoke the train's whistle.? The ending seems like he just had to get back to D position where the quills are really in tune.
Apart from Henry Thomas's tunes, I only know of a couple more that employed quills.? Big Boy Cleveland did "Quill Blues", Sid Hemphill and Lucius Smith did "Old Devil's Dream" on a recording collected by Alan Lomax in Mississippi.? I know "Old Devil's Dream" is on the Juke.
I am strongly pre-disposed toward pre-Blues material anyway, but I think that the recordings Henry Thomas did are amazingly good.? I'm hard put to think of other musicians of his era and style who recorded so many great melodies.? Once again, it is odd to think how lucky we are that a commercial record company chose to record so many titles of someone so far off the beaten path of the popular music of his era.? Henry Thomas was great!
All best,
Johnm
Edited to add: I remembered, incorrectly, that "Jim and John", from the same Alan Lomax collection mentioned above, was a quills piece. In fact, it was performed on fife, by Ed Young, and Lonnie young, Sr., and Lonnie Young, Jr. on drums, a la Otha Turner. It is a great number, too.
I have been listening a lot to Henry Thomas lately, and I think he was just great--so great that I want to talk about him.? There's a lot you could talk about, too:? His choice of material and its cross-over with Old Time repertoire, his music as dance music, his guitar-playing, etc.
I have been focusing a lot on his tunes with quills (panpipes).? Of his 23 recorded titles in the period 1927-1929, nine featured quills in addition to guitar accompaniment and vocals.?
?* John Henry
?* The Fox and the Hounds
?* Red River Blues
?* Little Red Caboose
?* Bull Doze Blues
?* Fishing Blues
?* Old Country Stomp
?* Charmin' Betsy
?* Railroadin' Some
For all but two of these numbers, Henry Thomas was capoed up, playing in standard tuning out of the D position, sounding about concert G# (capoed at the sixth fret).? "The Fox and the Hounds" moves back and forth between D position at that pitch and G position.? "Railroadin' Some" is the only tune played solely in the G position (though it modulates to D position right at the end).?
For convenience's sake, if you think of the quills as being in D, since the guitar is being played out of a D position, they are set up in a major pentatonic scale of:
?I--II--III--V--VI--I.? If you plug these scale degrees into the D scale you get:
?D--E--F#--A--B--D.? This pentatonic scale has a beautiful, almost Asian-sounding quality, and differs from the so-called Blues scale as follows.? The Blues scale is:
?I--flatIII--IV--V--flatVII--I, or in D, D--F--G--A--C--D.?
Interestingly, the same grouping of notes Henry Thomas used would, in fact, give you a Blues scale in the key of VI if you ran it from VI to VI rather than from I to I, but Henry Thomas never employed the quills that way on his recordings. Instead, he chose to stick with the major pentatonic possibilities.
? Since quills are hard to come by or make if you don't know how, you may wish to substitute harmonica for quills in your own performances of these tunes.? Cross harp works well for the blues scale because you have heavy bent draws to get the flat three and flat seven notes, but since neither of those notes is in Henry Thomas's scale on the quills, straight harp sounds better for these tunes, because you will end up getting a purer sound on the melody notes.
? Henry Thomas's version of "John Henry" uses a quill melody at the beginning of the performance that bears no relation to any version of "John Henry" I have heard before, but once he settles in, he alternates beautifully between the verse melody and the refrain melody.? His version is also one of the very few I have heard by a Country Blues player that is not performed in Vastapol tuning.
? "The Fox and the Hounds" is unusual for its modulation to the key of IV.? Like most "Fox Hunt" type tunes, it has a programmatic element.? One interesting thing about the modulation, is that in the IV key, G, Henry Thomas strongly emphasizes the third of the IV chord, B.? Well, B is also the VI note of the parent key, D, and as it turns out the B on the quills is in tune in the key of D, but distinctly sharp in the key of G.? This makes me think that perhaps there is no such thing as tempered tuning on quills--they are really only in tune in one key.
? "Red River Blues" is a 16-bar blues with I and V chords only, an archetype I have not encountered before.? Moreover, Henry Thomas changes the chord progression as he goes along, using lots of subtle variations, all of which sound good.
?"Little Red Caboose" he plays as a one-chorder, although there is a place where the melody hangs on the II note where it really sounds like it wants to go to a V chord.? This tune is a good candidate for the "Hearing Chord Changes" thread.
?"Bull Doze Blues" is the source for the beautiful flute melody interlude on Canned Heat's recording of "Goin' Up The Country".? I've been kind of obsessed with this melody recently, and if I may say so, it is perfection, and that is rarely encountered.? The melody is a kind of marvel of rhythmic placement and phrasing--in its 12 bars, it never once lands on either the first or third beat of the measure.? As a result, it is the opposite of square, and has this great kind of shadow-boxing or counter-punching quality.? The range of the melody is an octave and a fourth and it uses the following notes:
?V--VI--I--II--III--V--VI--I
If you wanted to arrange the melody for guitar, in Spanish tuning, the melodic span would be from the open fourth string to the fifth fret of the first string.? In Vastapol, the melodic span would be from the open second string to the 12th fret of the first string.
?"Fishing Blues" is just about as pretty as "Bull Doze", and after hearing so many versions of this song where it sounds like the singer is trying to win some kind of cuteness competition it is a real tonic to hear Henry Thomas's straight-forward version.
?On "Old Country Stomp", Henry does some dance calls, and he sure sounds like he played for a lot of dances.? This one has a moment of magic in the quills part--he's casting about, trying to find something by the sound of it, and then he puts it together.? The melody he ends up with is so strong and rhythmic, he just rides it on out to the end of the tune.
?"Charmin' Betsy" sounds like another dance tune.? His timing and execution of his guitar accompaniment is stellar.? He has this way of lifting his left hand for the fourth beat of the measure and just strumming the open strings, which in the key he's playing, implies a IV chord.? I have to work out some of this stuff for Port Townsend.
?"Railroadin' Some" is more of a vamp tune, evoking a ride on a train.? If you listen to it carefully, it's also kind of a geography lesson.? You can get out a road atlas and follow along with the station stops he calls out.? Playing out of a G position, Henry bends the V note of G (D) repeatedly, to evoke the train's whistle.? The ending seems like he just had to get back to D position where the quills are really in tune.
Apart from Henry Thomas's tunes, I only know of a couple more that employed quills.? Big Boy Cleveland did "Quill Blues", Sid Hemphill and Lucius Smith did "Old Devil's Dream" on a recording collected by Alan Lomax in Mississippi.? I know "Old Devil's Dream" is on the Juke.
I am strongly pre-disposed toward pre-Blues material anyway, but I think that the recordings Henry Thomas did are amazingly good.? I'm hard put to think of other musicians of his era and style who recorded so many great melodies.? Once again, it is odd to think how lucky we are that a commercial record company chose to record so many titles of someone so far off the beaten path of the popular music of his era.? Henry Thomas was great!
All best,
Johnm
Edited to add: I remembered, incorrectly, that "Jim and John", from the same Alan Lomax collection mentioned above, was a quills piece. In fact, it was performed on fife, by Ed Young, and Lonnie young, Sr., and Lonnie Young, Jr. on drums, a la Otha Turner. It is a great number, too.