John Dee Holeman - Bull Durham Blues (1999)

> The album 

 

Piedmont, cap and hambone

John Dee Holeman, who died in April 2021 at age 92, was the last great elder of North Carolina Piedmont blues (read below). Famous for his cap eternally standing on his head and his checked shirts, he was to Piedmont style what Jimmy "Duck" Holmes, 74, is to the Bentonia blues of Mississippi today. 

Holeman started to play guitar at age 14, listening particularly to the king of Piedmont blues Blind Boy Fuller's 78-rpm discs, like for example "Step It Up and Go" that Holeman chose to cover on this album, probably as a long-time souvenir. But what is less known, is that Holeman was also a talented buckdancer (read below) famous in his home state of North Carolina.

A talented guitar picker, a warm raspy voiced singer and a gifted buckdancer, Holeman, like most of his contemporary country blues musicians, performer at social gatherings and events at nights and on week-ends, while working a regular job on week days. In Durham, where he settled in 1954, he was employed as a heavy equipment operator by the old Liggett and Myers Tobacco Co. factory which produced cigarettes for the international market, especially the Chesterfield and later L&M brands. Later he worked in the construction business.

It took him nearly 50 years to gain recognition out of his area. In the beginning of the 1980s, he played at festivals around the country, and in concerts in Europe and Africa, invited by the State Department. In 1988, he received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Finally at 60 odd years, the doors of recording studios opened to him. In 1991, his first album, "Bull City After Dark" was nominated for a W.C. Handy Award. In 1994, he was contacted by Tim Duffy, the founder of the Music Maker Relief Foundation, who offered him the support of his organization and its recording label. Holeman was nearly 70 when he recorded "Bull Durham Blues" in 1998, under the musical supervision and collaboration of Taj Mahal.

Holeman's vintage Piedmont blues style blends an old style roots voice with a faultless guitar picking technique, though maybe not as elaborate as that of his model Blind Boy Fuller, while opening to outside influences from Texas, Chicago and more The album features two Lightnin' Hopkins songs ("Give Me Back My Wig" and "Hello Central"), two from Muddy Waters ("Sweet Home Chicago" and "Early Morning Blues"), "Little Country Gal" from pianist Otis Spann, and "Big Boss Man" written by Al Smith & Luther Dixon (and not Willie as often mistakenly indicated). The nearby mountains bluegrass isn't forgotten either with "God Loves His Children", a strange gospelish bluegrass due to Foggy Mountain Boys' Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs. Along with a few traditional songs, "Chapel Hill Boogie" is the only original Holeman track.

< JDH & Taj Mahal

Taj Mahal role in this recording deserves a word. Credited as musical adviser on the album, he plays bass on "Sweet Home Chicago", piano on the traditional "Mistreated Blues", guitar on "Chapel Hill Boogie", and hambone on the song of the same name, a singular rap style talking blues. The fact that a bluesman of such stature as Mahal participated to this project is a sign not to be overlooked : he held Holeman in great esteem, and rightly too.

Though not strictly Piedmont in its repertoire, this album is a great token of a country blues style sometimes unjustly eclipsed by its Delta or Hill Country "rivals". Holeman testifies that such a blues style, considered by many specialists as the progenitor of all the other blues forms, deserves primary attention. A track like "Hambone" (read below), for example, links Piedmont blues directly to the African roots of blues by its singular rhythmic concept.
May you rest in peace John Dee Holman...

The Piedmont blues style

The Piedmont region encompasses a chain of foothills running between the Appalachian Range and the Atlantic coastal plain, from Virginia through the Carolinas to Georgia. Blues is considered to have first appeared as such in this area, shaped by the sound of the banjo and by still-remembered African plucked instrumental techniques, probably reflecting an earlier musical tradition than the Mississippi Delta blues.
Bonus: "Step It Up And Go", a 59-mn 1989 documentary, directed by Susan Massengale, featuring an array of North Carolina Piedmont blues masters, including Etta Baker, Thomas Burt, Algie Mae Hinton, Cora Phillips, Joe and Odell Thomas, John D. Holeman, Moses Rascoe... : https://youtu.be/P_xrsSzGku8

Juba, hambone & buckdance…

< JDH hamboing

"Buckdance", "hambone", "bust down" or "jigging", originally called "Pattin' Juba", is a dance based on complex hand rhythms providing various tempos for dancers. A centuries-old tradition among Africans and African Americans, its origin is linked to the African slaves who landed on the East coast of the United States.

It was customary when party musicians took a break and men engaged in competitive solo dancing accompanied only by hand rhythms called "patting". Different from hand clapping, "patting" consists in dancing while slapping different parts of the body (arms, chest, thighs, flanks or sometimes even mouth and cheeks) with bare hands to produce different patterns of percussive rhythms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juba_dance).

> All you want to know about hambone : http://www.bluesjunctionproductions.com/hambone
> The story of hambone told by Diane Ferlatte  (it's interesting to read the presentation texte below the video) : https://youtu.be/VIC469NOqbw

> Holeman "singing" Hambone" with Dom Flemons : https://youtu.be/6mOd4PheLTA
> R.L. Burnside's young sons (Duwayne, Dexter and Michael Joe) hamboning at home in Independence, Mississippi (shot by Alan Lomax in 1978) : https://youtu.be/qJ73okpDa6k
> Hambone on a Mississippi porch by Markus James (slide gourd banjo) & Calvin Jackson (hambone ) : https://youtu.be/gTKE3IaVVmA
> Hambone demonstration by Archie Shepp's drummer Steve McCraven at the Tabarka International Jazz Festival in Tunisia : https://youtu.be/v8r5wxpa3hg
> A Juba dance variant by the Georgia Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters : https://youtu.be/NQgrIcCtys0

Download
> John Dee Holeman live at the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro (North Carolina), on Sept. 9, 2009 : https://archive.org/details/johndeeholeman2009-09-05.flac

Videos

> David Holt interviews John Dee Holman and plays washboard on "Come On Down to my House Baby" in Durham. Other songs include "Letter Blues", "Give Me Back My Wig" and "Big Boss Man" : https://youtu.be/NAoWEIdOPxU
> Music Maker Relief Foundation founder Tim Duffy introduces North Carolina blues artists in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 2012 (John Dee Holeman, voice and guitar - Cool John Ferguson, guitar - Gerald Robinson, bass - Bubba Norwood, drums) : https://youtu.be/6KS42PqSogA
> "Shotgun Blues" at the Gromes Hotel in New York in 1989 : https://youtu.be/OWpNOlJSsM8
> Performing "One Black Rat" (excerpt from the Music Maker Relief Foundation DVD) : https://youtu.be/6DHNSqW8rAM

> At the Blue Note Grill in Durham : https://youtu.be/GbPrmhkg3cw
> At Sweetwater in 2014 : https://youtu.be/BbGJeYv2u0I
> "Chapel Hill Boogie" with Andy Coats : https://youtu.be/MaQEtYLASs0
> At the Charlotte Folk Society's in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2010 : https://youtu.be/GOWFbYarwWw

_____________________