Blues: A Homegrown Story V

Under the aegis of the 92Y

Jazz and blues,” Host Louis Rosen begins, “evolved from the same basic language at about the same time. You can’t have jazz without blues, but you can have blues without jazz. Tonight we’re going to focus on the rural, guitar side of blues coming out of Texas, the Mississippi Delta, and the Carolinas. Like ragtime musicians, bluesmen traveled. The music spread long before it was recorded.

Henry Thomas (1874-1930), often billed as “Ragtime Texas Thomas,” wrote and played country blues. The son of freed slaves was a “songster” defined as a traveling, often African American musician/busker/hobo, who emerged from the southern states at the start of the century. One conductor is quoted as saying of the artist, “His guitar was his ticket.”

Thomas sang gritty, playing guitar and the quills. (A folk Panpipe comprised of hollowed tubes made of cane reeds or bamboo in various lengths and widths, blown across or into by a musician.) He’d eventually fit the quills to an over the shoulder holder, much like Bob Dylan would do with his harmonica, so both instruments could be played.

“Few musicians change their styles from those established in their late teens. When Thomas started recording in the latter half of the 1920s, he was in his fifties. So even though I’m going to play tracks from 1926/27, we’ll get a sense of his turn of the century sound,” Rosen tells us. Twenty-four sides were recorded for Vocalion Records between 1923 and 1929.

The host’s plan for this session is to take us back and forth from compositions performed by their originators to those who were inspired to readdress the songs later, changing lyrics and interpretation.

We listen to his “Fishin’ Blues.” Its head bobbin’, foot tappin’ feel is clean and bright. “Is that the blues?” Rosen challenges. “No. It’s an eight-bar tune he sometimes only does four bars of with refrain.” The subsequent Lovin’ Spoonful version is a six-pack, straw hat, yee-haw, group sound. “They rewrote some of the lyrics. So what,” the host remarks. “It was done all the time.”

Next is “Bull Doze Blues.” Its main tune covers 12 bars and uses a version of the 12-bar chord progression. The lyric, however, is different from a standard blues which repeats the first line, but finishes the stanza with a different one: “If you don’t believe I’m sinkin’/Look what a hole I’m in (twice)/If you don’t believe I’m sinkin’/Look what a fool I’ve been.”

In 1927, the song was reworked by jazz pianist Johnny Miller who gave it to Wingy Manone who recorded two versions titled, “Up the Country.” Later, the blues band Canned Heat recorded it, faithful to the original format. Their live performance was featured in the motion picture Woodstock. The tenor lead doesn’t do it justice.

“How did these artists know about these songs?” Rosen asks rhetorically. “If you recall, I told you about eccentric Harry Smith who violated every copyright to record the multi-disc Anthology of American Folk Music, a resource for many musicians during the 1950s/60s folk revival. I’m fascinated by how musically literal these rock bands were in bringing the songs to life.”

“Honey, Won’t You Allow Me One More Chance? (I won’t stay out all night…)” is a 16-bar blues somewhat closer to ragtime. Bob Dylan recorded the song, changing lyrics, on his second album. (He credited Thomas.) Lyrics are updated: “Honey just allow me one more chance/To get along with you…To ride your airplane/To ride your passenger train…” His rendition is faster and features harmonica.

These songs were sung at outdoor picnics and juke joints. Musicians would make up lyrics on the spot, extending them when people were enthused and/or dancing. Lyrical style, changing from Texas vernacular to Mississippi, is often called “folk.” Crossovers abound.

We then turn to “Father of the Texas Blues,” Blind Lemon Jefferson (1893-1929). Rosen calls him “not exclusively, but more of a blues singer and the first really successful one.” Born to sharecroppers, he played guitar since his early teens and became a street musician in rough East Texas among bootleg salesmen and hustling women. Like many of his ilk, the young man performed from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. He had to have a big repertoire and be responsive to what people wanted.

Jefferson was brought to Chicago where a first recording was attributed to Deacon L J Bates, perhaps because there were gospel cuts. Subsequently under his own name, “Booster Blues” and “Dry Southern Blues” (on which his guitar sounds like banjo) were hits. From Southern: “I can’t drink coffee and the woman won’t make no tea (twice)/I believe to my soul sweet mama gonna hoo doo me.” “His lyrics cohere more,” Rosen comments.

The musician began recording when there were very few solo guitarists, exhibiting an African American vocal style that adapted to each song, rather than always sounding like himself. Rosen uses Sinatra and Streisand as examples of the latter. The bluesman’s voice is high pitched; an acquired taste. Unfortunately, he recorded on Paramount (as did Ma Rainy), a company whose equipment was not very good. Himself a guitarist, the host admires Jefferson. “He kept the groove going, maintained chordal harmony, and came up with good riffs between vocal lines.”

We listen to “Matchbox Blues” – “I’m settin’ here wondrin’ would a matchbox hold my clothes (twice)/I ain’t got so many matches, but I got so far to go.” Guitar work combines twang, pick, and strum. Every verse accompaniment is different. Rosen looks like a modified Bobblehead while listening.

“A lot of theft went on in the business. In the mid 1950s, Carl Perkins released a rockabilly interpretation taking credit while just changing a few phrases.” We hear an excerpt. The Beatles also covered “Matchbook” on an early album with Ringo singing lead. “We can see the roots of Rock n’ Roll,” Rosen remarks. “This radical thing that thrilled Liverpool teenagers was electrified blues from the 1920s.”

For “See That My Grave is Kept Clean,” a 16-bar blues, Jefferson returned to his pseudonym. It’s a bluesy spiritual with three repetitions, then an answer. In 1962, Dylan recorded the song without claiming ownership. His accompaniment doesn’t vary as much as Jefferson’s though there are short riffs. “Most people don’t get how much the blues is a part of Dylan’s repertoire,” Rosen observes. The jazzy “Rabbit Foot Blues” includes a reference to a submarine and one to the Kaiser, both anomalies.

“Black Snake Moan” which we previously heard performed by Victoria Spivey, was picked up (and partly rewritten) by Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, then became Elvis Presley’s first big hit for Sun Studios as “That’s All Right Mama.” “Jefferson’s work continues to be a virtual stream in the larger world of vernacular music,” the host notes. We close with a video of a Paul McCartney recording session made in “maybe 2001” at Sun Studios. “That’s All Right Mama” is something McCartney sang as a teenager. He’s seriously into it. The guitar player, Scotty Moore, was on Elvis’ version. What comes around…

Another entertaining, illuminating class.

All unattributed quotes are Louis Rosen

“The Blues is the purest home-grown music that America ever produced, a complex, profound expression of life’s essential desires and struggles. It came from places as varied as the Mississippi Delta, the Texas panhandle, New Orleans, Chicago, the Eastern Seaboard and New York City. It is the essential musical language of artists as diverse as Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Jimmy Rodgers, Woody Guthrie, Muddy Waters, Hank Williams, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King and Bob Dylan.

It also became an essential building block in the American concert music of Gershwin, Copeland, and African-American composers such as James P. Johnson and William Grant Still, as well as important composers today. This semester we’ll explore all of these exceptional artists, rural and urban, folk and classical, past and present, and much more. Awaken—or reawaken—to the power of The Blues, our uniquely American story. “ Louis Rosen

This is a subscription Series from the 92Y

Photo of Mr. Rosen courtesy of Louis Rosen

Opening picture from Shutterstock