Fred McDowell - 1962 Fred McDowell (1989)

> The album 

"Mississippi" Fred McDowell's natch'l blues

His grave is just a simple headstone on a rectangle of dry dirt, in a mournful open cemetery field planted with just a few trees, near Como, on the edge of the Mississippi Hill Country, also home of R.L. Boyce and the late Jessie Mae Hamphill, her grandfather Sid and local legend "Otha" Turner. The front side of the headstone simply decorated by a small picture of the tenant bears the inscription : "Mississippi Fred" McDowell - Jan. 12, 1904-July 3, 1972, and just below : Ester Mae McDowell – 1906-1980, while the rear side reads the lyrics of his song "You got to move" (unfortunately not on this album) : “You may be high, You may be low, You may be rich, child, You may be poor, But when the Lord gets ready, You got to move.” So he moved to this Northern Mississippi plain graveyard after cancer silenced both his unique roots voice and slide guitar. 

But years before that unfortunate day, he had become a major figure of Mississippi country blues and a master of "bottleneck" guitar (he first used a pocketknife for a slide, later a polished beef rib bone, before finally settling on a self-shaped glass bottleneck around his ring finger). His music was basically rooted deeply in the Hill Country style, but he blended it with some traditional Delta blues forms.

His "Mississippi" nickname is peculiar since he was born just across the state line in Rossville, Tennessee, east of Memphis, and finally didn't settle down around Como before the end of the 1930s or beginning of the 1940s, after a bit of a hectic working life through cotton fields and plants, or in the hard times, hoboing and busking in the streets like many of his fellow bluesmen at that time.
This itinerant early life probably explains that he was exposed to and influenced by several styles of blues, and that he became a fine observer of social life around him. Playing for tips wherever he could  in his teens and twenties, he managed to settle down and then performed at dance parties, picnics and other social gatherings from the 1930s to the 50s.
Until 1959 when ethno-musicologist Alan Lomax "discovered" him and made some "field recordings" of him, released on disc in 1960. McDowell suddenly came out from the shadows of his Como farm to the lights of the folk revival, especially after his performance at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival.

The present album has some similarities with Lomax's work three years earlier : it was taped at McDowell's home in 1962, in front of friends and neighbors, not in a studio. And what is unbelievable is the quality of the recording when you know it was done by two university students walking on Lomax's path without any commercial project. That idea came only in 1989, seventeen years after McDowell's passing, when one obscure UK. company specialized in reissue of old blues and R'n'B albums, Flyright Records, released it. But, chronologically, it's McDowell second recording.
A real jewel : McDowell is playing and singing so naturally. And so wonderfully. He sounds exactly as he was usually playing at festive gatherings in his Como area, apparently not at all disturbed by the presence of the tape recorder.
His blues was more percussive than the traditional Delta one, influenced by African and old European rhythms specific to the Hill Country blues roots, like the Fife & Drums music. McDowell's performances helped define the Hill Country blues guitar sound, influencing later artists such as the two R. L., Boyce and Burnside, or Junior Kimbrough.

 < Fred McDowell Blues Trail marker in Como..

Through twenty magnificent pieces, this miraculous early home-recorded album already summarizes all of McDowell genius as an acoustic slide guitar blues performer. Featured are his extraordinary wild version of "Shake 'Em On Down"; the superbly slide played "On The Frisco Line"; "I Rolled And I Tumbled", his own version of the famous "Rollin' and Tumblin'"; the social revolt of "Red Cross Store Blues" and "John Henry"; and his great renditions of "Good Morning Little School Girl", "Milk Cow Blues", "Highway 61", "Someday Baby" or the iconic "Kokomo Blues", to name a few. McDowell performance, sometimes discreetly punctuated in the background by appreciations and laughter from the audience, takes the listener down in bygone rural Mississippi for a highly enjoyable and fascinating lesson of authentic country blues.

It's only seven years later, in 1969, that he recorded with an electric guitar, probably a first for a Mississippi country blues musician. The album's title, "I Do Not Play No Rock'n'Roll", sounded like a musical pledge though, claiming loud and clear that he was playing "strict natch'l blues" and only that (another fantastic album I strongly recommend anybody to listen). That didn't prevent The Rolling Stones to record a memorable version of "You got to move" in 1971, on the "Sticky Fingers" album.

One year after this homage from a world famous white British rock band, at "only" 66, McDowell's time had come and he definitely had got to move. But thanks to an album like this, he hasn't moved too far...

 Illustrated discography :
https://www.wirz.de/music/mcdowell.htm

 Rare videos 
> A 14mn documentary about McDowell (University of Mississippi), 1969 : https://youtu.be/gEmqzkkCQBY or https://youtu.be/TnMGpn6qA3Y
> Live in 1969 (the introductory incrusted lines are not quite true about McDowell being "highly typical of the Delta blues style") :
- Part I : https://youtu.be/ZMr_JcW1qAs
- Part II : https://youtu.be/myctFmIkc5A
> Performing "John Henry" around 1962: https://youtu.be/54GNI2K3-ec
> "Goin Down to the River", around 1964: https://youtu.be/9TyzAAwJnIw
> "Louise"  (from the DVD "Legends of Bottleneck Blues Guitar") : https://youtu.be/JU_UJwN3WnE
> Fred McDowell (from 0.00 to 15:25) and Big Joe Williams : https://youtu.be/dYsFVNWpAQI

> "You Gotta Move" by The Rolling Stones : https://youtu.be/8Uhh3a48XPA

Fred McDowell’s grave near Como.

_____________________

Mike Munson - Mike Munson (2013)

> The album

 

Boy from the North Country

Winona is located on the Mississippi West bank in the South-East corner of Minnesota (also Bob Dylan's home state), about a 100 kms from Mineapolis. This rough cold region is the home residence of country blues musician Mike Munson.

It's also in the north of Minnesota that the Mississippi springs off the Ataska Lake. For Mike Munson, the way was simple to reach the Mississipi Delta and Hills Country, the land of the music styles he has made his own : all he had to do, physically and mentally, was to follow the river down.

This musical voyage took him on the path of the late Fred McDowell, Jessie Mae Hemphill and Jack Owens. This one, from Bentonia, had known Skip James and Henry Stuckey, the father of the Bentonia blues. Owens was dead, but Jimmy "Duck" Holmes, the last living master on the Bentonia style, was and is not.

At the 2017 Bentonia Blues Fest.

Very recently I was praying for "Duck" to find a disciple to whom he could transmit the endangered Bentonia blues style (1). I think my wish was granted long before I formulated it. "Duck" mentored Munson who is now possessed by the haunting spirit of Bentonia. He even recorded his 2018-released album, "Rose Hill", live at the famous Blue Front Cafe of "Duck", and released on Holmes newly launched Blue Front label.

The album we're reviewing here is Munson's first studio work, not well known because self released, but definitely rooted in blues. It includes many original blues compositions like "Spike", "Too Far Gone", "Black Bird", "Wanda's Farm", "Sad and Lonely" (where a bass drum brings a local Amerindian color) and the melancholy ballad "Over Now". He also pays his dues to the music's Mississippi roots, for example with "Empire Builder", the stomping "Good Gal Said", the swampy cover of "Pony Blues" or the heavy "What's The Matter". It's so well done, with such a sound unity, that it's almost impossible to see any difference between his self-penned songs and his covers.

Munson is a guitar virtuoso mixing skilled fast finger-picking and masterful slide guitar in a fluid combination of grinding rhythms. Blending his North-Midwestern roots with the Mississippi influences brought back from his numerous travels there, Munson masters blues composition and performance, and his personal vocal signature fits his often dark compelling lyrics.

This traditional country blues album is not 100% Bentonian, though the influence can be strongly felt, but it certainly is 100% Mississipian. With such a CD, Mike Munson has established himself as an evangelist for the roots blues.

(1) See "Jimmy 'Duck' Holmes - Gonna Get Old Someday" on Blue Dragon, and  The last of the Bentonians here.

Interview
With Mike Munson for the Imbibe Sessions: https://youtu.be/PyqpSUlQBjc

Videos

> At the Jimmy "Duck" Holmes' Blue Front Cafe in 2019: https://youtu.be/FdNTnUaCXto

> 1h40 show in Granite Falls (Minessota), 2020 : https://youtu.be/w8QnqVm9Aig

> On Prairie Public channel in 2017: https://youtu.be/zcLbHMw0wbk

> At The Great River Shakespeare Festival, Winona Sate University, in 2016:
- "Shake Em On Down": https://youtu.be/OpKHPZpgMaM
- "To Far Gone": https://youtu.be/LwtDkFimTSQ
- "Empire Builder": https://youtu.be/Ke8j1ryfR7I
- Untitled: https://youtu.be/pcl0CmZTvB0

> Playing Howlin Wolf's "Who's Been Talkin'?" at Ed's Bar, Winona, in 2011: https://youtu.be/541n--k92QY

> "Too Far Gone": https://youtu.be/hOAseYlFMiA

> "Over Now": https://youtu.be/vJOcMzIoAYU

 

_________________________

Jimmy "Duck" Holmes - 2003 Gonna Get Old Someday (2008)

> The album

The last of the Bentonians

Jimmy ‘"Duck" Holmes is the only known surviving practitioner of an endangered blues tradition, the "Bentonia blues", a style born in and around the small Mississippi town of Bentonia (read below). It is said that this unique style of blues was "invented" by Henry Stuckey (1897-1966) who learned an open E minor guitar tuning from black Bahamian soldiers while serving in France during World War I. Returning home, he incorporated and extended this type of tuning to his playing, eventually showing it to Skip James (1902-1969) and Jack Owens (1904-1997).

Holmes never met Skip James who left Bentonia when he was a child, but learned from Jack Owens, who ran a weekend juke-joint in town for most of his life. He became a frequent visitor to the Blue Front Cafe (read below), another juke-joint operated by Holmes's parents, and set himself to transmit the Bentonia blues style to Holmes who learned by watching and listening Owens play, both being unable to read or write music.

Different from the nearby Hill Country blues style, though there are some similarities, the Bentonia blues distinctive "secret" is its use of Open E minor and Open D minor tuning which gives the music a unique mournful, listless tonality, largely confined to the past until Holmes started to record again. Again because the famous and inexhaustible Library of Congress ethno-musicologist Alan Lomax had already recorded a few samples of his songs in the 1970s.

"Gonna Get Old Someday", released in 2008 but recorded in 2003, is in fact Holmes' first album chronologically. Holmes offers twelve tracks of plain, relatively repetitive and monotone country blues that is at the same time ethereal, gritty and rough, even crude, but amazingly beautiful in its simplicity and raw expressiveness. This hypnotic album is a form of bare musical catharsis impossible to resist. It takes the listener back to the origins of blues, to its very essence.

Thanks to the Duck, now 74, the Bentonia blues style is surviving. Let's hope that like Holmes did from Owens, some young bluesmen will take on the torch from him before it's too late. In the meantime the Bentonia style would deserve to receive the Unesco's Intangible Cultural Heritage label.

Bentonia and the Blue Front Cafe

 Located on the South-East edge of the Delta, about 20 miles north of Jackson, Bentonia is a small half deserted town of not more than 400 residents today. It takes the form of a crossroad occupied by a few scattered business services, farm-houses and ancient warehouses and cotton gins. Its location on the Illinois Central Railway used to draw numerous visitors, but today, if the train still runs through town daily, it doesn't stop anymore, and a nearby four-lane highway diverts traffic away from Bentonia. Most of the businesses of Holmes' youth have shuttered, buildings have been torn down, and more than a quarter of the residents live under the poverty line. But for blues lovers, there's a mythical place in town.

On a dead end dusty road along the railroad tracks stands a kind of shotgun house with a blue painted front side : the judiciously named Blue Front Cafe, the first Afro-American-owned business in Bentonia when Holmes' parents, who were sharecroppers, opened it in 1948, a year after he was born. It was then a gathering spot much appreciated by field hands from the surrounding cotton plantations where they could eat and drink a home-made bootleg Moonshine while tasting some good ol' Bentonia blues.

Nowadays, the place still looks voluntarily vintage. Holmes keeps it simple, like it was when he became the owner in 1970 after his father’s death. Inside, the walls are decorated with Holmes' retired guitars and posters from festivals where he has performed, a few tables and chairs, a jukebox, a counter and in a corner some guitars free for a try by tourists… Blues lover visitors come from far to visit this "monument" officially part of the Mississippi Blues Trail, and Holmes never refuses to play a couple of blues when politely asked for...

Worth reading

>The Blue Front Cafe told by Jimmy ‘"Duck" Holmes : https://countryroadsmagazine.com/art-and-culture/visual-performing-arts/bentonia-blues-at-the-blue-front/

> Bluesman Toby Walker's account of his visit to Jack Owens in Bentonia : https://www.littletobywalker.com/jack-owens.html

> Interview to the Clarion Ledger in 2017: https://eu.clarionledger.com/story/magnolia/entertainment/2017/02/12/jimmy-duck-holmes-keeping-blues-alive-bentonia/97286132/

Interviews

> During the 2017 Baton Rouge Blues Festival: https://youtu.be/GeTl4iMGcQ4

> For Live@Blues On The Hill  at The Blue Front Cafe in 2019: https://youtu.be/wpY2cLxigJ0

> For the Italian Web Channel Il Blues Magazine in 2013 during the Rootsway Festival 2013 in Correggio: https://youtu.be/pUi1urmS3d8

 

Videos 

 1) At the Blue Front Cafe

> Short documentary about Jimmy 'Duck' Holmes and the Blue Front Cafe: https://youtu.be/kchRF1tRYDc

> "Refuse to fold", part of a documentary by Brian Dempsey and Angela Smith about heritage tourism and the Mississippi Delta Blues, featuring Jimmy "Duck" Holmes from Bentonia: https://youtu.be/s3xTsum1Jj4

> Visit to the  Blue Front Cafe

- in 2012: https://youtu.be/k0uapbnbKWM

- in 2013: https://youtu.be/PVj03Tm444M

- in 2016: https://youtu.be/EfQK85Vnb9c

- in 2020: https://youtu.be/69WkyhH54GA

> Jamming with R. L. Boyce and Miss Australia before the Bentonia Blues Festival 2019: https://youtu.be/Cr2-licMlbA & https://youtu.be/VOVgc-QhxME

> During the Bentonia Blues Festival 2021, feat. Jimmy "Duck" Holmes, Deak Harp, Lightnin Malcolm, R.L. Boyce and more, in front of the Blue Front Cafe: https://youtu.be/cBTYh98ihYQ

2) At festivals

> At the Bentonia Blues Festival

- in 2018: https://youtu.be/ML-7rH5cGOo

- in 2019: https://youtu.be/yaOyTH_q8qs

> At the New Orleans Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival 2016 (full 57mn set): https://youtu.be/hup93Uawuyo

> At the Juke Joint Festival 2011 in Clarksdale: https://youtu.be/-9ybD-aUIF4

> On the Legendary Rhythm and Blues Cruise: https://youtu.be/pTwyiScrya4 & https://youtu.be/SCPJXRuKUBc

 

 About Jack Owens

> With his old accomplice Benjamin "Blind Bud" Spires (harmonica) , shot by Alan Lomax, Worth Long and John Bishop at Jack Owens' farm near Bentonia, in 1978: https://youtu.be/usA-3HDRLXE

 

 

Otis Rush - 1971 Right Place, Wrong Time (1976, 1985)

> The album

Otis Rush, the cursed guitar giant

When most people think about Chicago blues, the first names that will probably come to their mind are Muddy Waters, Magic Sam, Earl Hooker or Buddy Guy… They will rarely cite Otis Rush. This is a major mistake ! With Magic Sam and Buddy Guy, he his the third part of the "holy trinity" that durably forged the post-Waters Chicago blues, the famous West Side Sound.
 

Like many Chicago bluesmen, he came from Mississippi where he was born in 1935 around the very segregated town of Philadelphia. The first show he saw in the Windy city was Muddy Waters. A revelation for the country boy ! From that moment he knew what he wanted to do : play the blues. And bring it further than Muddy, just like his fellow "beginners" Magic Sam and Buddy Guy. The West Side Sound then appeared as the new way for electric blues.

Famous for his Stetson hats, but above all for his innovative guitar style, Rush was left-handed but played a regular guitar (right-handed) upside-down (high-pitched strings above, low strings at the bottom). Though he's far from being the only left-handed guitar player, he built from this singularity a great vibrato technique that distinguishes his harsh tortured solos. In an interview given to Vintage Guitar Magazine in July 1998 (link below) he explained his style : “When I started out, I loved Earl Hooker, he was my man and he played slide. I wasn’t comfortable with that bit of pipe on my finger, and I also really liked B.B. King. His sound is so articulate and defined. So I tried to combine that slidin’ sound, which is harsh and heavy, with B.B.’s style of vibrato.” 

 

-----------------------------------------------
< Buddy Guy congratulates Rush during a Tribute 

to Otis Rush at the Chicago Blues Fest. 2016. © D.R. 

-----------------------------------------------

With such a rich guitar style combined to solid soulful vocal qualities, Rush should have been the best of the new post-War generation bluesmen, but a conjunction of difficulties made him one of these "cursed artists". Bad luck, a tormented personality and his refusal to make any musical compromise, led him to a chaotic recording career due to wrong personal choices, passing from one recording company to the other, often not for the better. He lived for his music and didn't want to bother with the rules of the music industry. "It’s just a thing with me, I do what I do as best as I can, but I don’t stump around arguing with label owners. If they don’t like what I put out, I guess I just sit back and wait to see what happens”, he confessed to Vintage Guitar. Perpetually dogged by label issues, he became so disheartened that in the late 1970s he stopped performing and recording for a few years.

Rush came back in the middle of the 1980s with a series of live albums, before recording "Ain't Enough Comin' In" in 1994, his first studio album in 16 years ! "Any Place I'm Goin'" was his last studio album in 1998 but he continued to tour and perform until 2003, when he suffered a stroke.

Rightfully considered as a real gem, "Right Place, Wrong Time" illustrates his tribulations in the music business. Recorded in 1971 in San Francisco with very good musicians, the tapes were inexplicably dumped in the vault by Capitol Records, blunting Rush's momentum once again. It took five years for the album to finally reach the public in 1976 on the obscure Bullfrog label, later reissued by HighTone. It is said that Rush himself bought back the master tapes from Capitol.

It opens with the muscular "Tore Up", co-written by Ike Turner &  Ralph Bass, followed by a series of three self-written titles where Rush's voice and vibrating guitar appear in all their splendor : "Right Place, Wrong Time", the instrumental West Side guitar lesson "Easy Go", and "Three Times A Fool". Then Rush apparently moves away from the blues with a great version of the beautiful Tony Joe White's swamp country music ballad "Rainy Night In Georgia" before returning to straight solid Chicago blues on the rocking Albert King's "Natural Ball". The next track, "I Wonder Why", sounds so Earl Hooker that it has to be a tribute from Rush to his early idol through a great demonstration of his (Rush) famous subtle bending and vibrato work. Finally, the raging and jumping "Lonely Man" is flanked by "Your Turn To Cry" and the self-written "Take A Look Behind", two titles where tormented soulful vocal and cutting guitar are at work.
 

When the album ends, a strange missing feeling suddenly catches you so that you want to play it again right away ! This album exhales such a great soulful powerful groove that it was well worth waiting for five years to discover this grand West Side Chicago blues work.

> Rush's interview in Vintage Guitar Magazine, July 1998 : https://www.vintageguitar.com/2846/otis-rush/
> Otis Rush's discography : https://www.wirz.de/music/rushotis.htm & https://www.blues-sessions.com/otisrush.php

Live videos

> At the 1986  Montreux Jazz Fest. with Eric Clapton and Luther Allison (73mn) : https://youtu.be/TeZ-uerasBM
> At the Piazza Blues Fest. in Bellinzona (Switzerland) in 2001 (45mn) : https://youtu.be/YacuJ5LyD7A
> Live in San Francisco (47mn) : https://youtu.be/VzGJkgoX4zI or https://youtu.be/Yudj-Rg0ouM
> At the Topanga Blues Fest. in 1988 (30mn) : https://youtu.be/cZj0iIgy6hE
> In London in 1981, narated by Alexis Korner (51mn) : https://youtu.be/sB5OcchF5_Q 

________________________

Blind Willie McTell - 1927-35 Searching The Desert For The Blues (2009)

> The album

Legacy of the songster's craft

By many aspects, Blind Willie McTell is close to the cliche image of the traveling hobo musician playing in the streets for a few dimes (or a bottle of cheap booze). The big difference comes from the tangible heritage he left to American blues history, a legacy to which this album opens the doors.

William Samuel McTier was born in 1898 (1901 according to his grave, 1903 according to a few researchers) in Thomson, Georgia, and grew up near Statesboro. His father left the family home early and his mother died in the 1920s. He then became an itinerant musician, a "songster", playing in carnivals, medicine shows and all kinds of local outdoor venues, events and places around Atlanta and as far as Augusta and Macon, a Piedmont blues region, and even Savannah on the coast where he probably got familiar with the "Eastern Seaboard" blues style.

His blindness was compensated by an extraordinary sense of hearing and touch, and the chance he had to learn how to read and write music in braille when attending schools for the blind in his teens, gave him an advantage on many of his sighted contemporary musicians.

McTell soon chose to play exclusively 12-string guitars for a simple reason: their greater volume output made them more suitable for outdoor playing. He also was an adept slide player and his technique on the 12-string was unique because he didn't play it as a rhythm instrument, but with a subtle and elegant slide and finger-picking style.

His vocal ability to sound jolly or mournful in accordance with the song, his highly skilled guitar playing and his art of brilliant improvisations, his enrichment of blues with ragtime, gospel, hokum and story telling songs, white hillbilly singing style and popular tunes, and his excellence in all these genres, allowed him to become a quite popular attraction.

Drawing attention of local music companies, the minstrel recorded for the first time in 1927, at the time 10-inch 78-rpm discs. As a growing number of labels got interested in his work, he recorded simultaneously for different companies under different names (readsee below). The number of titles he recorded during his life is estimated to more than 120.

After 1945, though, his recordings were less successful and his career declined, pushing a frustrated McTell to heavy regular drinking and abandonment of music until in 1957 he became a preacher at the Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Atlanta. Two years later, in August 1959, a brain hemorrhage definitely put an end to the life of one of the greatest precursors of modern blues, later revered by great artists like The Allman Brothers, Taj Mahal or Bob Dylan*.

This collection of McTell's golden age recordings, alone or with friends Curley Weaver, Ruth Willis and Ruby Glaze (supposedly McTell's wife Ruthy Kate Williams) was magnificently edited and remastered by Andrew Rose, a former senior sound engineer at the BBC and founder of the French company Pristine specialized in high quality digital audio-restoration. The sound is probably better than the original old 78-rpm discs, allowing to (re)discover the "king of 12-string acoustic blues" through 26 amazingly crafted songs. Definitely a must-have !

______________________

* Dylan once called McTell "the Van Gogh of country blues" and wrote in the early 1980s a song clearly titled "Blind Willie McTell" where he sings "And I know no one can sing the blues/Like Blind Willie McTell". The song was finally issued in 1991 on "The Bootleg Series, Vol 1-3: Rare & Unreleased 1961-1991". Bob Dylan sings the song on Jan 12, 2012 at the Hollywood Palladium in honor of Martin Scorsese.

> Recording dates of the 1927-1935 period covered by this collection

01. Stole Rider Blues: 1927-10-18
02. Mama, Tain't Long Fo' Day: 1927-10-18
03. Mr. McTell Got The Blues (take 2): 1927-10-18
04. Three Women Blues: 1928-10-17
05. Dark Night Blues: 1928-10-17
06. Statesboro Blues: 1928-10-17
07. Loving Talking Blues: 1928-10-17
08. Come On Around To My House 

Mama: 1929-10-30
09. Kind Mama: 1929-10-31
10. Drive Away Blues: 1929-11-26
11. Talkin' To Myself: 1930-04-17
12. Southern Can Is Mine: 1931-10-23
13. Broke Down Engine Blues: 1931-10-23
14. Painful Blues: 1931-10-23
15. Scarey Day Blues: 1931-10-23
16. Low Rider's Blues: 1931-10-31
17. Georgia Rag: 1931-10-31
18. Rollin' Mama Blues: 1932-02-22
19. Lonesome Day Blues: 1932-02-22
20. Mama, Let Me Scoop For You: 1932-02-22
21. Searching The Desert For The Blues: 1932-02-22
22. Warm It Up To Me: 1933-09-14
23. Savannah Mama: 1933-09-18
24. Love-Makin' Mama: 1933-09-19
25. Lord, Send Me An Angel: 1933-09-19
26. Lay Some Flowers On My Grave: 1935-04-25
Restoration and remastering by Andrew Rose at Pristine Audio, © March 2009

> The album cover artwork is a painting from a picture shot by famous ethno-musicologist John Lomax, of the Library of Congress Archives of Folk Culture, in 1940 during the recording of McTell in Lomax hotel room in Atlanta.

> Who really was Blind Willie McTell?
Before 1940, McTell recorded, solo or for other fellow musicians, for several labels, sometimes at the same time, under different names depending on the company for contract reasons. He is known as:
- Blind Willie McTell (for Victor and Decca),
- Blind Sammie (for Columbia),
- Georgia Bill (for Okeh),
- Willie Glaze (for Bluebird)
- Hot Shot Willie (for Victor),
- Blind Willie (for Vocalion),
- Barrelhouse Sammie (for Atlantic),
- Pig & Whistle Red (for Regal).

 

> A 56mn enthralling and really poignant documentary biopic of Blind Willie McTell by David Fulmer for Georgia Public Television in 1997 where McTell heard talking about his early life. © South Georgia Folklife Collection at Valdosta State University Archives and Special Collections.

 

> An interesting illustrated article on McTell in The New Georgia Encyclopedia: "Blind Willie McTell" by Hal Jacobs.

> McTell's illustrated discography

_________________

Rev. Gary Davis - Pure Religion (1961/1972/2014)

> The album 

Pope of the Piedmont blues

Gary Davis was one of the most extraordinary Piedmont blues guitar picker along with his younger fellow Blind Boy Fuller. Almost completely blind since being still a baby, in 1896, he managed to bring the Piedmont blues style to summits. The story says that in the 1920s, he broke his left wrist, that it wasn't properly treated, never set back in the right position, and that this malformation gave him the ability to create unusual chord patterns.

Until being ordained Baptist minister in 1933, at age 37, he was already famous as a secular folk-blues musician around his Piedmont region of the Carolinas. Afterwards he became the Reverend Gary Davis and turned to a more gospel-oriented repertoire.

In 1940, he moved up north to New York. When not on duty at his Missionary Baptist Connection Church in Harlem, he used to sing and preach in the streets of Harlem, particularly on 138th St. (hence the original 1961 title of the album, "Harlem Street Singer").

With the folk revival of the early sixties, Davis was invited to perform at the famous Newport Folk Festival and became a reference of for young musicians who started to attend his guitar classes and study his technique. Folkies like Stefan Grossman (who later did compile the exceptional Davis posthumous 3-CD box set "Demons and Angels" published in 2000), Dave Van Ronk, David Bromberg, Roy Book Binder or even Woody Guthrie, and later Bob Dylan, were deeply influenced by his fingerstyle guitar mastering.

According to the LP's liner notes, the present album was recorded in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, on August 24, 1960, in only three hours, most of the titles being first takes ! That goes to show how much the Rev. was mastering his art.
Originally issued under the title "Harlem Street Singer" in 1961 as already noted here above, it was later re-issued as "Pure Religion" in 1972 and 2014.
Exclusively made of religious inspired songs mixing gospel, Piedmont folk-blues and ragtime, the whole album keeps a high musical and instrumental level from beginning to end , with a perfect sound quality which remarkably renders Davis vocal and instrumental virtuosity.

Davis has a deep warm soul shaking voice. He sings like he would preach, with intense fervor, sometimes crossed by fits of shouting and humorous vocal tricks and jokes, like in his great version of "Samson and Delilah" (a cover of Blind Willie Johnson's "If I had my way"). Actually, his singing is getting more and more intense song after song until the final "Twelve Gates To The City", while his fingerstyle guitar picking is flawless all the way.

A magnificent album whose only mistake is its ugly, tasteless and meaningless cover. What the hell was in the designer's subconscious when he chose that stupid bottle of wine to illustrate this superb 2014 re-edition ?!

Reading
> I strongly advise the reading of "You Got To Move, a reflection upon Rev. Gary Davis" by Jonathan Oldstyle (!), a very interesting study of the Rev.'s life and work illustrated with black & white pics and videos : https://thedocumentrecordsstore.com/rev-gary-davis-you-got-to-move/

Audio doc

> A rare and funny (and noisy) doc catching Rev Gary Davis & friend Elizabeth Cotten on April 4, 1965. The differents parts are documented below the video. https://youtu.be/qZwm2y0Yge8

Videos

1) Docs

> A document issued when the late Rev Gary Davis posthumously received the 2003 Folk Alliance International Lifetime Achievement Award : https://youtu.be/etCyYKufVdk

> A Harold Becker's short film capturing the atmosphere of Rev Gary Davis' life in Harlem in the 1960s : https://youtu.be/WktfKeVA9ac

2) Music

> A 25mn performance in June 1967 : https://youtu.be/4fpPgo4Deo4

or Part 1 : https://youtu.be/zgkrw66PMXg & Part 2 : https://youtu.be/P8nhaOhhETM

> On 12-string guitar in 1966 at Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest Show (with Seeger futzing around with banjo) :

- "Oh Glory, How Happy I Am" (colorised) : https://youtu.be/TRekXdPBxWs

- "I Feel Like Children Of Zion" : https://youtu.be/BhFihkEEF7g

> "Hard Walkin' Blues" (from the "Rev Gary Davis-The Video Collection" DVD compiled by Stefan Grossman) : https://youtu.be/zr4MrbZB7bg

> - "Keep Your Lamp Trimmed And Burning" (a nice cigar in mouth) : https://youtu.be/ib8bCR5lFug

> "Death Don't Have No Mercy" : https://youtu.be/v1BvK_00loQ

> Performing "Buck Dance" at the Blues & Gospel Caravan in 1964 in Paris (France) : https://youtu.be/bg1mKe8kK2A

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