Lately, I've been listening to and writing about some CDs from artists who play the blues in one form or another, but who, most of the time, are channeling the original stuff.
I guess I needed a real blues fix, so I turned to the Pandora channel on my iPod Touch, plugged it into my neat little portable speaker system, and as we speak here, I'm listening to real blues, from the artists who made it possible. There's prewar blues, there's Delta blues, there's Chicago blues — all the blues that a blues lover could want.
It's true, I don't get to pick the songs on Pandora, but that's okay. Even BlueNotes likes to be surprised now and then. Right now I'm listening to Albert King's "The Hunter," and I can't remember the last time I heard that song. Now it's "Got to Leave Chi-Town" by Carey and Lurrie Bell. Great stuff. Not that I own any part of Pandora, even though I wish I did.
All of this is just a roundabout way of saying how I need to be revitalized now and then by real-deal blues. And how, if you're a blues fan, this kind of music is the mother tongue, the driving wheel of the music that we all love. Right now I'm getting a taste of early James Cotton's screaming vocal on "Sweet Sixteen" (yes, the blues often took love and lust below the age of contemporary consent).
Sure, I can call up memories of seeing Mississippi John Hurt, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker and more. But if you want to hear that music now, you have to turn to their recordings. At least I can feel somewhat superior to music fans who enjoy Beethoven, but never managed to see him at Moondog's.
And yes, I do enjoy live music, even though it's getting harder and harder to find the Magic Slims and the Pinetop Perkins of the old school. There aren't many of them left, and I keep preaching that we should enjoy the source while it's still here. That's why it's sad to go to someplace like Moondog's and find just 30 or 40 people who turn out to hear an original like Slim.
The track I'm hearing now is Sonny Boy Williamson's "She Brought Life Back to the Dead." That's Sonny Boy II, not the real Sonny Boy, John Lee Williamson. It's always amazed me that Sonny Boy II, Aleck Miller (born Aleck Ford), could so completely become a person that he never was. Not that he wasn't a great harpman and blues singer. He was one of the greatest. I just never understood how he lived out that myth — he could just as easily been Sonny Boy Miller. Oh well. them's the blues, I guess.
Right now, Pandora is giving me Mighty Joe Young's "Early in the Morning." And just for fun, I've included a photo above of Mighty Joe, taken at Mancini's back in the day, probably about 1980.
I'm sure that most of you have lots of this music on CD or maybe even — gasp — vinyl. I humbly suggest that if you do, you make the most of it. It's the original music that keeps it all real. As we close out, I'm hearing Little Milton churning out "Dead Love." And now, Slim Harpo doing "Late Last Night." Got to love those swampy Harpo blues.
Here's a sample of what it used to be like — Mississippi John Hurt at the Newport Folk Festival. Not that it matters, but I happened to see him in 1964 at the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village, New York. This tune, "Candy Man," never failed to get a rise out of the audience.
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