let's start at the very beginning

the blues.

Not the very beginning, but a very good place to start, nonetheless.

The Blues are like a room you walk into in the dark. You have to hunker down for a while and let your eyes adjust. They may start out as strange and sinister forms, unidentifiable and unfriendly, but if you sit with them long enough clarity crystalizes. I've been sitting in that room for over a year now and I am starting to sense that there is light present.

The voices keeping me company tonight are straight out of jailbirds, vagabonds and voices of the 1939 South. An eerie miracle of ancient modernity and present routine allows me access to a trove of musical treasure: the John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip. More like the beginnings of blues, which have and will go on as long as we do, I think. Anywhere you have people you have life's pleasures and pains and there you have the blues.

It seems like this process really does take part in the blues tradition, where technological innovation allows for this music to spread to farther and farther reaches. First it was the railroad, then recording, now the internet. Who knows what musical masters will hear these old sounds and come up with something brand rockin' new. The last time this stuff was exploited there was a musical revolution.

Listening to the field hollers is a strange experience, because the notes come directly out of voices to whom these songs were handed down by those that sang them in the fields, under watch and whip. Maybe if they were broadcast on syndicated radio we might have an easier time remembering where this country was just over a century ago. In any case, I do believe the most heartbreaking beauty comes from the most backbreaking suffering. Just listen to the Spirituals.


Some Field Hollers:
Diamond Joe, performed by Charlie "Big Charlie" Butler
It's a beautifully clear recording of a beautifully crisp voice, simple and some kind of bittersweet. Bob Dylan covers this song with a more upbeat ring-a-round tempo, but I feel like this recording rings out with undecorated loneliness. After about four listens I fell in love with Big Charlie.

Got a Woman Up the Bayou, performed by Ross "Po' Chance" Williams
At first listen, this recording sounds like a call straight to Ray Charles. But I guess every old blues singer's got a woman somewhere he isn't. This could be a duet with a female voice... though Po' Chance takes care of it with his dead-on falsetto.

Worry Blues, performed by W.S. "Jaybird" Harrison, Sylvester "Texas Stavin' Chain" Jones & Wallace "Stavin' Chain" Chains
I can't hear a word they're saying on this recording, but the trio is sweet music in itself. It sounds to me like a redemption song, but more likely it's a work song since it's listed under the field hollers and the verses keep good time for grinding an axe.

Stavin' Chain has got some serious missing teeth but it looks like the man can howl.






Some Blues:
Black Betty, performed by Rev. Mose "Clear Rock" Platt
The original.

Don't You Grieve, performed by Aunt Mollie McDonald
Not the familiar 12-bar, but a graceful lullabye blues.

If you spend some time with this collection, it makes the later stuff that much sweeter. Knowing just how bare blues can be and then how rich and malleable is to start to understand why they are so extraordinarily important... and just plain extraordinary.