Escaping the Delta (45 page)

28.
This concert is now available on a CD titled
Freedom
(Bridge Records 9114), which includes only a small sample of the commentary. Thus, modern listeners can get a taste of the lecture style, but miss hearing the singers described as representing the “strong, peasant soul” of the Negro people. The entire presentation is on file at the American Folklife Center.

29.
Rudi Blesh,
Shining Trumpets
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958), pp. 143–44. Of Holiday's “Fine and Mellow,” Blesh writes: “Holiday's singing…seems to have, at first hearing, a dispirited and rather poignant melancholy, but beneath the surface are only artifice and insincerity. The performance is devitalized, languishing, and sentimental.”

30.
Ibid., p. 122.

31.
This is a bit of an oversimplification. People like Martin Carthy were playing Big Bill Broonzy songs in British folk clubs, as was Davey Graham, who made a blues duet album with Alexis Korner. There were also blues fans who despised R&B, R&B fans who despised rock 'n' roll, and plenty of jazz purists. There was a good deal of overlap, though, and identification with one or another scene could vary from town to town, club to club, and moment to moment.

32.
Brian Jones was never a trad purist. His idol was Charlie Parker, and he named two sons after Julian “Cannonball” Adderley. He played trad, though, because that was what a jazz musician was paid to play in suburban England.

33.
The reaction of folk and jazz fans to rock 'n' roll was by no means monolithic. Blesh, in a postscript to the 1958 edition of
Shining Trumpets
, described Elvis Presley as “a young folk singer…[whose] records were blues of the same primitive quality…as archaic in form as Ma Rainey's ‘Shave 'Em Dry.'” The particular records Blesh was referring to were “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Money Honey,” which are a long way from folk songs, but he was not alone in noting that in some ways Presley could be considered a rather old-fashioned blues singer (Blesh,
Shining Trumpets
, p. 352).

34.
This album was released by the Origin Jazz Library, a blues collector label that focused on Mississippi blues singers: OJL-1 was the first Charley Patton album, and
Really! The Country Blues
(OJL-2) included the first reissues of Tommy Johnson, Son House, Skip James, and Ishman Bracey. Representing the hardest line among country blues record collectors, OJL had a stated policy of never reissuing a Blind Lemon Jefferson cut, presumably be
cause his overwhelming popularity had compromised the integrity of his art (Bob Groom,
The Blues Revival
[London: November Books, 1971], pp. 41, 43).

35.
Booker White's name was spelled “Bukka” on the labels of his 78s, and since his rediscovery was sponsored by record collectors, this misspelling was maintained during his later career. However, there are plenty of examples of White's signature, and he always spelled his name Booker—unsurprisingly, since his full name was Booker T. Washington White.

36.
Groom,
The Blues Revival
, p. 83.

37.
As Mac “Dr. John” Rebennack said, with some amusement, “Cats like John Lee Hooker and Lightnin' Hopkins can play them folk clubs with an acoustic guitar and get them off. People look at them and say, ‘Well, look at that old man. That's all he know.' But go down to their own stomping grounds like in Texas somewhere. They'll set up an electric guitar and scare the shit out of you” (Neff and Connor,
Blues
, p. 74).

38.
Quoted in
American Folk Blues Festival, '62 to '65
(Conshohocken, Pa.: Evidence Records 26200, 1995) compact disc album notes. At least some of the artists were pleased about this. Walker would later say, “People there [in Europe]
listen
. You've got to be a showman back here. Over there first time I did the splits the fans booed! That was hard to credit, but it was all right with me. They came to hear the music” (Dance,
Stormy Monday
, p. 140).

39.
Stanley Booth,
The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones
(Chicago: A Cappella Books, 2000), p. 102.

40.
Hooker's “Boom Boom” did briefly cross over, reaching number sixty on the
Billboard
pop chart in 1962. By that time, he and Waters had appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival, had toured Europe, and were getting gigs on the Stateside folk scene. They were also doing a lot of interviews with blues purists, and regularly reassured such fans of their devotion to the old-fashioned acoustic Delta style. The white fans held the promise of a comfortable middle age, and neither Hooker nor Waters were fools, by a long shot.

41.
Jas Obrecht, “The Keith Chronicles, Part 2: Keith, Muddy and Wolf,” GuitarPlayer.com, 1992 (March 23, 2003), http://archive.guitarplayer.com/archive/artists/keith2.shtml.

42.
Bruce Cook,
Listen to the Blues
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973), p. 181.

43.
The Stones also made three trips to the Chess studios, cutting two sessions there in 1964 and one in 1965, which provided them with their singles of “It's All Over Now,” “Good Times, Bad Times,” “Little Red Rooster,” “Time Is On My Side,” and the first take of “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction,” along with a couple of dozen album tracks, including the instrumental “2120 South Michigan Avenue,” named for the studio's street address.

44.
Palmer,
Deep Blues
, p. 261.

45.
Some blues fans viewed this as betrayal, others as reinvention. Leroi Jones (now Amiri Baraka), practically the only black writer critiquing the blues scene at that time, would say of the English blues-rockers, “They take the
style (energy, general form, etc.) of black blues, country or city, and combine it with the visual image of white American noncomformity, i.e., the beatnik, and score heavily. These English boys are hipper than their white counterparts in the United States, hipper because…they have actually made a contemporary form, unlike most white U.S. ‘Folk singers' who are content to imitate ‘ancient' blues forms and older singers, arriving at a kind of popular song, at its most hideous in groups like Peter, Paul and Mary…. As one young poet said, ‘At least the Rolling Stones come on like English crooks”' (Leroi Jones, “Apple Cores,”
Down Beat,
no. 32, March 25, 1965, p. 34).

46.
Nadine Cohodas,
Spinning Blues into Gold
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), p. 244.

47.
Eric Clapton, “Discovering Robert Johnson,” in
Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings
(New York: Sony Columbia/Legacy 64916, 1990) compact disc album notes, p. 26.

48.
There are people who think that the studio portrait is not the defining picture of Robert Johnson, and instead stress the “pained” or “haunted” look in the other available picture, which seems to have been shot in a dime-store photo booth. This just reinforces a romantic illusion that is doing neither them nor Johnson any favors. What Johnson looks in the photo-booth picture is tired and drunk, and there is no question which image he would have chosen to represent himself.

14
Farther on up the Road: Wherefore and Whither the Blues

1.
Paul Nelson,
The Blues Project
(New York: Elektra Records 7264, 1964) phonograph album notes.

2.
At times, critics would even suggest that such musicians were selling out to a white audience. John Hammond, in an article for the
New York Times
on December 18, 1938, the week before his first “Spirituals to Swing” show, wrote that some Negro jazz bands “have made serious concessions to white taste by adding spurious showmanship to their wares and imitating the habits and tricks of the more commercially successful white orchestras.” This was why he had chosen Count Basie's group, which he described as “probably the most subtle and least exhibitionistic of dance bands.” This contention—that black audiences expected straight music, whereas white audiences liked cheap entertainment—has no basis in fact, but fit perfectly with the idea of “primitive” genius as opposed to polished theatricality.

3.
I do not mean to suggest that a “natural” musician need not work as hard, or as carefully, as one who is recreating a foreign style, or that the result is less professional or less of a performance. What I mean by a “natural” style is one that is similar to and inextricable from the artist's style of conversation and behavior offstage.

4.
An interesting view on this comes from the Mississippi-born Chicago blues pianist Lafayette Leake: “I've gotten into big arguments with people that say
these white cats can't play blues. I say they can—if they learn it…. I can play Chopin, and he was sure white…. Blues, gospel, jazz—sure that was all created by blacks. So maybe you'd rather see blacks performing it, even if the imitators do just as well. I wish I could hear Chopin himself today, but I can't. So I have to listen to people playing what he wrote. But who knows—maybe they can play it better than he could” (Neff and Connor,
Blues
, p. 122).

5.
Palmer,
Deep Blues
, p. 260.

6.
Stephen Calt,
The Roots of Robert Johnson
(New York: Yazoo Records 1073, no date), phonograph album notes.

7.
Richard Wright,
Josh White: Southern Exposure
(New York: Keynote Records, 1941), 78 r.p.m. album notes, quoted in Elijah Wald,
Josh White: Society Blues
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000), p. 82.

8.
The Muddy Waters performance was not, in fact, the end of that concert. In a perfect example of the standards that have often ruled the blues world since the 1960s, the evening's final, headlining performer was Roy Buchanan, the one white “star” on the program.

9.
Gordon,
Can't Be Satisfied
, pp. 305–6.

A
FTERTHOUGHT
:
S
O
W
HAT
A
BOUT THE
D
EVIL
?

1.
Richard Wright,
Black Boy
(1945; reprint, New York, HarperPerennial: 1998), p. 39.

2.
Wheatstraw was by no means the only singer to use devilish themes. There had been devil songs back to the days of the blues queens. Among guitarists, Lonnie Johnson recorded “Devil's Got the Blues” and “The Devil's Woman,” and if there was one early blues player whose technical skills suggested the possession of supernatural powers, he was it.

3.
Paul Garon argues that Bunch invented the Wheatstraw persona, which then passed into folklore. Other writers have introduced Ralph Ellison's use of a character called Peetie Wheatstraw in his book
Invisible Man
as evidence that this was a folk figure, but Garon writes that Ellison had known and occasionally played with Bunch/Wheatstraw during his youth in St. Louis. However, Garon adds that the character became popular enough that he later came across two other people using the name and satanic sobriquet (Paul Garon,
The Devil's Son-in-Law: The Story of Peetie Wheatstraw and His Songs
[London: November Books, 1971], pp. 64–65).

4.
The line about going down to Louisiana had been recorded by Ida Cox in 1927's “Mojo Hand Blues,” but it also reflected Waters's personal view. As he told an interviewer, “If such a thing as a mojo had've been good, you'd've had to go down to Louisiana to find one. Where we were, in the Delta, they couldn't do nothin',
I
don't think” (Palmer,
Deep Blues
, p. 97).

5.
There were a handful of memorial records like “The Death of Leroy Carr,” but these were commercial novelties, issued to cash in one last time on the star's reputation, and do not count as folk legends.

6.
Alan Lomax,
Mister Jelly Roll
(New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1950), pp. 116–17.

7.
Neff and Connor,
Blues
, p. 18.

8.
Evans,
Tommy Johnson
, pp. 22–23. It may be worth considering that, while LeDell Johnson speaks of Tommy selling himself to the Devil, the actual words he quotes are “a big black man,” and the story involves no sale.

9.
A. O. Scott, “Hail, Ulysses, Escaped Convict,”
New York Times
, December 22, 2000, sec. E, pp. 1, 30.

10.
Evans,
Tommy Johnson
, p. 30.

11.
Wardlow,
Chasin' That Devil Music
, pp. 196–201.

12.
On 1931's “Howling Wolf Blues No. 3,” a sequel to his biggest hit, J. T. “Funny Paper” Smith (The Howling Wolf) sang, “[I] get home and get blue and start howling/And the hellhound gets on my trail.”

13.
Sam Charters suggests that “Cross Road Blues” is indeed a spiritual or religious song, but that rather than having anything to do with myths about meeting the Devil, it is a sort of gospel blues, using the common Christian metaphor of a soul at life's crossroads (personal communication, 2002).

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