Episode 3. The Blues pt 2

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:01

How you doing? This is Joe McDonald with my faithful dog Rory coming to you from San Diego, the home of the tastiest fish tacos in all the land. Welcome back to Music in the Air, my podcast about American music and culture. How music has climbed over walls, crossed borders, and built bridges. I'm starting this episode with a discussion about the use of music in my podcast. The first two episodes, the music I selected was available as public domain. This means that it is freely available to use by meeting the criteria of being about a hundred years old. While there are still several songs to use, I will now have to comply with copyright laws, which means paying fees to publishers and controllers if I wish to play the songs that I want to share. I will attempt to do so. However, I'm not independently wealthy, so I'll be looking into solutions for public support, including Patreon and other sponsorships. After all, you the listener deserve the very best. A question has come up about the significance of the crossroads. After doing some research, I have found that in quite a few different cultures, the crossroads is a place where different worlds connect or collide. Good meets evil. Spirits merge and make some kind of deal. I found evidence that the concept of the crossroads may have originated in several distinct African cultures. It is important to note that the crossroads, where either or both Tommy or Robert Johnson met the devil, is generally believed to be the intersection of Highway 49 and 61 near Clarksdale, Mississippi. Highway 61 is famously known as the Blues Highway. It follows the Mississippi River north to a new life. We've all been to a few crossroads of our own, you dig. Booker White, born somewhere between 1900 and 1909, died 1977. Booker is a pronunciation of Booker, common in the South. He was allegedly B.B. King's mother's first cousin. He was born on a farm near Houston, Mississippi. His father was a railroad worker who played music in his spare time. Booker took a lifelong interest in railroad songs, composing quite a few examples. His dad gave Book a guitar for his ninth birthday. He often played guitar and fiddle at local dances as a teenager. Booker was married at 16. His wife, unfortunately, died very young. He worked at odd jobs around the Mississippi Delta where he ran into the Delta Blues. He idolized Charlie Patton and wanted to become his greatest Patton. Their singing voices were said to be very similar, deep and gravelly. In 1928, he formed a partnership with George Bullet Williams, a harmonica player who taught him how to imitate train sounds. He was first recorded by Victor Records. His songs included both Sacred and Secular. This is Joe McDonald. You're listening to music in the air. In 1937, Booker was incarcerated at the notorious Parchment Farm State Prison in Mississippi for murdering a man. He claimed that it was in self-defense. While there, he was recorded by John Lomax for the Library of Congress. The popularity of White's music led the governor of Mississippi to grant him an early release for, quote, his commercial potential possibilities as a recording artist. He did some recordings in Chicago and then gave it up for over 20 years. He was rediscovered in the same manner as Sun House and Skip James. He toured and recorded music until his death in 1977 of pancreatic cancer. His songs include Shake Em on Down, Parchment Farm Blues, Poe Boy, Aberdeen, Mississippi Blues, District Attorney Blues, and Good Gin Blues. There are quite a few more Mississippi Delta Blues singers whose lives are worth researching, learning about, and listening to. These include Mississippi Fred McDowell, Mississippi John Hurt, the Mississippi Sheiks, Ishman Bracie, Dave Honeyboy Edwards, Robert Lockwood Jr., Barbecue Bob, and the two Sunny Boy Williamsons. There are also quite a few more. Meanwhile, out west in Texas, a young man known as Blind Lemon Jefferson had developed a style that was both similar to the Delta and yet unique. This is Joe McDonald. You're listening to music in the air. Blind Lemon Henry Jefferson, born 1893, died in 1929. He was born in Couchman, Texas. He was born blind. Jefferson did not consider this to be much of a handicap as he learned to play guitar and sing for parties, dances, and picnics. He became a street performer in his teens, traveling through different eastern Texas towns. During this time, he met up with and played with Leadbelly, whom I will shortly discuss. He would also play with T-Bone Walker, the great Texas Blues guitarist, whom he taught the basics of playing guitar in exchange for Walker serving as a guide around town. Jefferson became a very successful solo guitarist and male vocalist. He began recording music in either late 1925 or early 1926. Line Lemon would go on to record over 100 different tracks, making him enough money to afford a car and to be chauffeured all over the South. Jefferson is considered to be an influence on Charlie Patton, Furry Lewis, and other solo blue singers. Line Lemon Jefferson died under somewhat mysterious circumstances. The most accepted version is that he had a heart attack and froze to death during a snowstorm. Line Lemon Jefferson's songs include Matchbock Blues, See That My Grave Is Kept Clean, Where Shall I Be, Long Lonesome Blues, Jack O'Dimon Blues, Black Snake Moan, and Easy Rider Blues. This is Joe McDonald. You're listening to Music in the Air. Jefferson's ability to not only play the guitar masterfully, but teach others like T-Bone Walker how to play it made me realize how many great blind musicians played the blues, like Sonny Terry, Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Blake, Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, Reverend Gary Davis, Bo Carter, and even much later, Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder. It's a fact that blindness in the agricultural South made working in the fields or driving a tractor impossible to make a living. Blind folks could sing and even play a little for the church, but very little pay came their way, and very little to build a sense of self-worth until they played the guitar and sang the blues. So why the blues in particular? My theory is that the blues is a spirit that pours into a person's soul through their ears and hands. It resides there forever, gives the person a voice, a heightened sense of awareness that allowed blind blues musicians to compete in an otherwise visual world. Huddy William Ledbetter, known as Leadbelly, born eighteen eighty eight, died nineteen forty-nine. Leadbelly is famous for playing a twelve string guitar. He could also play piano and other instruments. He was born in Morningsport, Louisiana. When Ledbelly was five, his family settled in Bowie County, Texas. This is where he first learned to play guitar. Although he married at the young age of 15, Leadbelly left home and became a wandering musician and laborer. He played all over southern Texas and Louisiana. Ledbelly spent over 20 years in prison for a variety of crimes, including allegedly murder. During his time in Angola State Prison in Louisiana, he was discovered and recorded by John and Alex Lomax. Their job was to record and preserve traditional music for the Library of Congress. The Lomaxes wrote a letter to the governor of Louisiana. This included a recording of Goodnight Irene. It asked for his release and it worked, and he was released. Although he later served more time for similar crimes, and his singing ability would get him released yet again. He would become John Lomax's driver for a while as the latter collected recordings. Leadbelly gained fame performing at different folk music festivals across the country. He recorded songs for the Library of Congress, Folkways Records, RCA Victor, and Capitol Records, among others. In 1948, Leadbelly would be diagnosed with ALS or amiotropic lateral sclerosis, known as Lou Gehrig's disease, for the great baseball player who would die very young from it. Leadbelly died in 1949. In addition to the previously mentioned songs, Leadbelly wrote Alberta, TB Blues, Good Morning Blues, and Eagle Rock Rag, among many others. The Delta Blues began to change dramatically as the country itself began to change from an agricultural society to an industrial one. The cotton fields of the Delta became more mechanized, which meant the loss of jobs for many poor people. These people are also tired of being poor and mistreated. It was time to leave for many, and they began to migrate northward on the Blues Highway, Highway 61. This runs from New Orleans all the way to Wyoming, Minnesota. It follows the Mississippi River north through cities like St. Louis, Chicago, and Detroit, where large industries were in need of workers. You're listening to music in the air. Blues musicians were already used to traveling throughout the South to play music. Their Delta blues was originally an acoustic sound, primarily made with acoustic guitars and voice, though there were other instruments like the piano and harmonica. The music was played in gatherings like picnics and parties on street corners and local taverns. The industrial cities up north featured large ballrooms and nightclubs, events with a lot of people and a lot of noise. The introduction of electric musical instruments, in particular the guitar and bass, allowed blues musicians to turn up the volume and entertain a large audience. Delta musicians making this migration included Lonnie Johnson, Arthur Big Boy Crudep, Elmore James, Muddy Waters, and Hallen Wolfe. Now, one of my personal favorite musicians, Lonnie Johnson, born 1899, died in 1970. Lonnie was born in New Orleans to a family of musicians. As a child, he learned to play violin, piano, and guitar. He stated, There was music all around us, and in my family, you'd better play something, even if it was just a tin can. As a young man, he toured England and returned home to find that everyone in his family, except his brother James, had died of influenza. The two brothers moved to St. Louis. They performed as a duo on riverboats and an orchestra. In 1925, he entered and won a blues contest. This earned his first recording contract with OK Records. He would record about 130 songs for O.K. Later, he went to New York and recorded with artists like Virginia Spivey and Alger Texas Alexander. He also toured with Bessie Smith. O.K. Records promoted his image along with that of Louis Armstrong. This led to the two artists recording some music together. During this time, he also played with several jazz bands. Lonnie is credited with developing the guitar solo. He played note by note with a pick. He was a gifted vocalist as well, whose voice was considered sophisticated and urbane. His songs were often descriptions of the new urban life that arrivals from the South faced. In 1939, he recorded the first electric guitar solo for Bluebird Records. During the 40s, he changed to recording the new style of rhythm and blues. He had several hit songs. Lonnie Johnson would go on to tour during the 1960s as part of the American Folk Blues Festivals. He died in 1970 as the result of being hit by a car the year before. He suffered both major injuries and a stroke. His songs include Tomorrow Night, later made famous by Elvis Presley, Big Leg Woman, She Devil, Haunted House, I Found a Dream, and New Orleans Blues. He was born to a family of migrant workers in Union Grove Forest, Mississippi. He sang gospel music and learned the blues from a man named Papa Harvey. He began by playing in dance halls and cafes around Mississippi, in particular Clarksdale. He was in a group called the Harmonizing Four. They visited Chicago in 1940. He began working as a street musician and eventually was discovered and began recording for Bluebird Records. During the 1940s, he recorded for a variety of record labels. He toured all over the South with Sonny Boy Williamson and Elmore James. For a time during the 1950s, he stopped recording because, as he put it, I realized that I was making everybody rich and here I was poor. He would return to both recording and touring during the 1960s, although he still struggled to make a living. He was helped by blues promoter Dick Wakefield, who helped him recover some of the money he was due. Truly, though, he never received most of the money from his songs. In 1970, he declared, I was born poor, I live poor, and I'm going to die poor. Arthur Big Boy Crudep died of heart disease and diabetes in 1974. His songs include Mean Old Frisco Blues, That's Alright, again made famous by Elvis, Who's Been Fooling You, So Glad You're Here, and My Baby Left Me. This is Joe McDonald. You're listening to music in the air. McKinley Morganfield, famously known as Muddy Waters, born in 1913, died 1983. Muddy Waters is perhaps the most significant blues musician of the 20th century. His life and career involved both the Delta Blues and later, most famously, the Electric Blues. He was born in Issacana County, Mississippi. Muddy grew up on the Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi. This was the setting for many important Delta Blues singers, like Sunhouse and Robert Johnson. He was given the name Muddy by his grandmother, Doris Grant, because as a child he liked to play in Muddy Water. By his teens, Muddy had learned to play the guitar and harmonica. He sang in the church. Muddy shared that I used to belong to the church. I was a good Baptist singing in the church. So I got all my moaning and trembling going on for me right out of the church. Muddy played for people in places all around the Stovewall Plantation. During the 1930s, Muddy accompanied Big Joe Williams in tours around the Delta. In nineteen forty one, he recorded music for Alan Lomax and the Library of Congress. Muddy told Rolling Stone magazine that he brought his stuff down and recorded. Me right in my house. After hearing his voice on record and getting paid twenty dollars, Muddy decided to pursue a career in music because he was tired of working in the fields. In 1943, Muddy moved to Chicago, where he worked at a factory and drove a truck during the day and played music at night. He was given a chance to play as the opening act for Big Bill Brunsey, one of the leading bluesmen in Chicago. This was when he realized that his old acoustic guitar style wasn't loud enough to play large clubs. So Muddy bought his first electric guitar in 1944 and formed an electric band. In 1946, Muddy began recording for Leonard and Phil Chess, two brothers who had formed chess records. His first big hit was Rolling Stone. Yeah, how the stones in the magazine took their names. From 1948 to 1957, Muddy Waters enjoyed considerable commercial success recording for chess records. Many famous musicians like Little Walter, Jimmy Rogers, and Otis Spann passed through his bands. The most famous of all, though, was Colin Wolfe. He started briefly in Muddy's band before going on to form his own. The two men would later become rivals. Often it was hard to tell if they really disliked each other or not. In truth, they were friends. Muddy Waters toured Europe during the late 1950s and 1960s. He was a part of the American Folk Blues Festival. This helped create a whole new generation of blues fans all over Europe, particularly in England. This is when Muddy would re-record many of his hit songs, often using rock musicians as backups. In 1972, Muddy earned a Grammy in Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording for his record, They Call Me Muddy Waters. This was the first of several such awards. He recorded four albums with Johnny Winter, an albino bluesman from Texas, who had idolized Waters from childhood. These opened up a much wider audience as younger listeners were now exposed to his music. Muddy played live shows until 1982 when declining health made it difficult. He would die in 1983 of heart failure. Muddy's songs include Manish Boy, I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man, You Shook Me, My Captain, Honey Bee, Got My Mojo Working, and The Blues Had a Baby, and they called it Rock and Roll. Chester Arthur Brunett, famously known as Howland Wolf, was born 1910, died 1976. He was born in White Station, Mississippi, to extreme poverty. He lived with various family members. Chester was a very large man, 6'3, 300 pounds. He had huge hands. His nickname came from his grandfather, who warned him not to squeeze chickens to death because wolves would come and get him. The name Wolf stuck to him. While growing up, his biggest influence was Charlie Patton, who influenced his playing and singing. Howling Wolf began playing with other blues musicians around the South and made a name for himself. Besides Charlie Patton, Wolf was influenced by many other famous bluesmen and women, such as Lonnie Johnson, the Mississippi Sheiks, Ma Rainey, and Tampa Red. He became a popular regular at many clubs, learning to play harmonica as well as early electric guitar. He spent time in the military, serving in the famous Buffalo Soldier Unit. He was a cook during the day and a musician at night. After the army, he returned to West Memphis, Arkansas, where his family farmed. During this time, Hallenwolf formed a blues band, which became very popular. His recording talents drew the attention of a talent scout named Ike Turner, who brought him to Sam Phillips, and Sun Records, where he recorded several songs. Phillips described his singing by stating, he sang with his damn soul. In 1952, Howland Wolfe moved to Chicago. He met Leonard Chess and recorded for Chess Records. His bands included famous guitarists like Hubert Sumlin, Willie Johnson, and Lee Cooper. He became a popular band leader because he paid his musicians well and on time. His live performances became legendary. He had a deep singing voice and at times was known to get down on his hands and knees, growling and howling like his namesake animal. In 1965, he appeared on a popular teen television show, Shindig, at the insistence of the Rolling Stones. This brought him wide attention. He went on to record quite a few record albums which appealed to the young rock music crowd. Alan Wolf continued to perform in the early 1970s. His health declined, however, starting in the late 1960s, and by 1973 he had suffered several heart attacks. Alan Wolf died in 1976 from a brain tumor combined with kidney failure. Alan Wolf's songs include Moaning at Midnight, Smokestack Lightning, Wang Dang Doodle, Backdoor Man, and Spoonful. You're listening to music in the air. Elmore James, born 1918, died 1963. He was born in Richland, Mississippi. At the age of 12, he constructed his first instrument, a simple one-string diddly bow. This was attached to a wall in his family's home. As a teenager, he began performing at barbecues, picnics, and dances. James's early influences included Robert Johnson and Tampa Red. He recorded several of Tampa Red's songs. James also worked with Sonny Boy Williamson No. 2. He joined the Navy during World War II. After his discharge, James returned to Mississippi and again played with Sonny Boy Williamson No. 2. His first breakthrough recording as a band leader was the Robert Johnson song Dust My Broom. It was a major RB hit in 1952. James became known as a talented slide guitar player. He would go on to record for major record labels, including chess and trumpet records. James died of a heart attack in 1963. The headstone on his grave is inscribed with The King of the Sly Guitar. In addition to Dust My Broom, Elmore James' songs include The Sky is Crying, Done Somebody Wrong, which was famously recorded by the Allman Brothers on their live at Fillmore album, and Shake Your Moneymaker. Artists like Elmore James, Tampa Red, Thomas Dorsey, Willie Dixon, Buddy Guy, Little Walter, and Luther Allison achieved success in Chicago. They all migrated there from the South. The most important component defining Chicago blues was the introduction of electric instruments, in particular the guitar. Musicians had to compete with the noise of audiences in large nightclubs. The blues had gone from the rural south to the big city. Episode 4, Part 3 of the Blues, will feature famous female blues singers. I'll also discuss how the blues crossed over to white folks. The information contained in my podcast has been written and researched by myself. The music you hear has either been public domain or has been created by my brother John January. Thanks for joining us in this episode of Music in the Air.