Skip James performs Crow Jane from American Folk and Blues Festival (Danish Television) 1967

“The Essentials” will be an occasional post about older albums everyone should own. With a constant flow of new music coming in the door, it’s good every once and awhile to pause, and reflect on the great music of the past. – David D. Robbins Jr.A good record to kick off “The Essentials” post is The Complete Early Recordings of Skip James. No true music fan should be without this eerily beautiful 18-track golden album. James combines unique guitar-tuning, falsetto vocals, with a picking style and rhythmic unpredictability that is really unparalleled in the blues tradition. James’ fingers could sure fly and his voice soars. (Thank God his dad saw fit to buy him a $2.50 guitar at the age of eight.) After recording an album in 1931, James took to finding odd jobs and the occasional hook-up with other musicians, but remained largely an unknown. Years later James would even hold the likes of Son House in awe. “Cherry Ball” is a good example why.

Skip James se encuentra dentro los primeros bluesistas que grabaron y, además, dentro de los que más influencia generaron tanto en músicos contemporáneos como en artistas de épocas posteriores. Fue uno de los principales exponentes de la escuela Betonia, un género que venía fuertemente anclado a la investigación.

Los primeros registros de James se caracterizaron por el falseto, estilo que se mantuvo intacto en los años 60 cuando fue redescubierto, lo cual causó sorpresa.

Las composiciones de Skip James influenciaron a muchos músicos, pasando por Robert Johnson –el tema “Hellhound On My Trail” de Johnson tiene base en “Devil’s Got My Woman”- hasta Eric Clapton, quien hizo una versión de “I’m So Glad” cuando estaba en Cream.

La música de Skip James se ha mantenido fresca, gracias a ese espíritu único que él le supo imprimir.

You know, I used to cut your kindleing
Baby, then I made you some fire
Then I would tote all your water
Way, way, way, from the bogy brier

That whole dry winter, I listened to Skip James.
Imagined him arriving at Newport after
Elvis, wearing a simple black suit: those
high top shoes and felt
hat tipped over his eyes.

Thought of him shy on stage with Bukka
and Son, hidden for thirty-three years
chasing Jesus, until his worn fingers picked
out an old song. Then Skip’s voice
rose ethereal, sweet notes and phrases

invented in church halls and lumber
camps, using all the sinews
of his face and muscle of tongue.
And what thrills me now
is when he grinned to thank

the crowd that sat in awe, and saw
slyly from the corner of his eye
those two blues giants
sitting motionless, their tribute
simply, an astonished sigh.

About Skip James:

Trail of the Hellhound: Skip James

Can’t Find No Heaven: The Mysteries of Skip James

The Music of Skip James:

Crow Jane

Cherry Ball Blues

Worried Blues

Devil Got My Woman

Skip James

Henry Stuckey and Bentonia Blues

Everyone has to learn from someone.  However, sometimes, a style is so well put together, that the style itself becomes part of history.  Such is the story of the Bentonia School – a style of guitar made famous by Skip James.  But was Skip the originator?  hardly, he learned from a man named Henry Stuckey.  As rumor goes, Henry actually learned the open D minor guitat tuning from two soldiers in France.

Born April 11, 1897 in Bentonia (Mississippi), Henry Stuckey began teaching himself guitar at the age of 8. By 11, he was already playing elementary guitar is some juke joints in Bentonia. He stayed local, playing there until 1917, when he joined the U.S. Army and went to France as an aide/nurse in a military hospital.

While working in the hospital, Stuckey learned of two soldiers that were wounded.   From these two soldiers, Stuckey learned a new tuning style for guitar, and history was made.  Stuckey, in an  interview with Gayle Dean Wardlow, said the two soldier/guitarists were  French, one a West Indian and one a Gypsy, who played with an open D minor chord tuning (Other reports say these men were Bohemian).

Upon returning home in 1919, he incorporated the tuning into his playing, eventually teaching it to a younger guitar player, Skip James, around 1924. James featured the tuning on several of the 18 sides he recorded for Paramount in 1931, recordings that became treasured by blues scholars, historians, and collectors for their distinctive plaintive and eerie sound. A handful of guitarists in the Bentonia region took up the tuning, including Jack Owens and Cornelius Bright, as well as Stuckey and James, and songs like “Hard Times,” “Cherry Ball,” “Devil Blues,” and the eight-bar fiddle tune “Drunken Spree” formed the repertoire of a distinct local blues tradition. Stuckey, unfortunately, was never recorded, although he was interviewed by blues researchers in the mid-’60s, at which time he described teaching the tuning and picking style to James and others.

It is largely reported that both the song “Hard Time Killing Floor” and “Devil Got my Woman” were actually songs that the two soldiers played in that hospital.

Stuckey became the owner of a barrelhouse to 1930. In the 50s he played in Bentonia, Omaha (NE), then was seen around Yazoo City in the 60s.
He died of cancer in Jackson (MS) March 9, 1966, in a small, run down shack. The Gayle Dean Wardlow interview was shortly before that date.

Cover of Changing Tunes; image courtesy of musicweb-international.com

Since a lot of folks (including many friends) are back in school, I thought I’d do another book report. Tonight, I’ll jot down my notes on Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-existing Music in Film. Just as my friend Kit pointed me in the direction of this useful, diverse anthology, I thought I’d do the same, especially for any other burgeoning feminist soundtrack/score enthusiasts there may be. Term paper deadlines will come closer than you think.

As Robynn Stilwell was one of the co-editors of the collection who penned the particular essay Kit recommended to me, what better place to start? After all, her piece is called ”Vinyl Communion: The Record as Ritual Object in Girls’ Rites-of-Passage Films.” Here, Stilwell looks at four movies featuring girl protagonists and preoccupied with such themes, two of which I’ve yet to see (Little Voice and Heavenly Creatures) and two of which are all-time favorites (Ghost World and The Virgin Suicides). As Stilwell’s reading of Little Voice aligns with Pamela Robertson’s, I will refer you to a previous entry where Robertson’s essay is discussed. And while I would’ve liked more development of each text (hell, I could read a whole book on each of these movies) and would have appreciated some movies that consider the mediated representations of vinyl practices from girls of color, I still found Stilwell’s insights valueable. And obviously, I’m going to need to watch all these movies.

To Stilwell, Ghost World’s Enid believes that vinyl, and its technological apparatus, has no instrinsic value as an object. In one scene, she pretends to break her record collector friend Seymour’s vintage LP. She also has no interest in creating an authentic listening experience, playing old vinyl releases on a  33 1/3 record player that were meant to be played on a 78. Instead, Enid turns to record-playing for its transportive and transformative qualities. She wants a form of escape from her suburban SoCal surroundings, trying on punk, retro, and gothic fashions and turning to Bollywood, Indian rock music, and blues singer Skip James’s hauntingly androgynous tenor in “Devil Got My Woman.”

With Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, itself based on the Pauline Parker-Juliet Hulme murder, the schoolgirls’ fandom for tenor Mario Lanza serves as a buffer for true homosexual feelings, a development that Stilwell explains by using late theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s notion of the homosocial triangle.

Thus, in order to own those feelings, Pauline and Juliet must disavow themselves from Lanza, burning their records to aver these feelings in the process.

Record burning is considered in a much different context in Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, instead constructed as authoritative punishment rather than a declaration of one’s identity. The Lisbon girls, a mysterious and cloistered quintet, consider records to be a form of communication between one another and to the neighbor boys with whom they’ve been forbidden to interact with by their parents. Songs like Heart’s “Magic Man” and “Crazy on You” speak on their behalf, conveying the lust and sexual agency that girls feel and Lux Lisbon acts upon for high school heartthrob Trip Fontaine. Thus, mother Lisbon’s command that Lux burn her rock records after Trip Fontaine sleeps with and abandons her on the football field after the Homecoming game suggests a tragic loss of voice, demanding that she align with soft rock male singer-songwriters like Gilbert O’Sullivan and Todd Rundgren instead of continuing to listen to libidinous cock rock bands like Aerosmith.

With Vanessa Knights ‘ “Queer Pleasures: The Bolero, Camp, and Almodóvar,” we have a consideration of how Pedro Almodóvar asserted a queer identity in his earlier films, utilizing the campy potential of bolero, as well as acknowledging the contributions bolero singers like La Lupe have given to queer fan culture, particularly among gay men.

While Almodóvar may have more often utilized Cuban musicians’ contributions to movies made within a strictly Spanish context, Phil Powrie’s “The Fabulous Destiny of the Accordion in French Cinema” considers the accordian, originally an Italian musical instrument, as a French national symbol. He considers the accordian’s heroic period between 1930 and 1960 and how the instrument was used as an audiovisual marker of utopian community in movies like René Clair’s Sous les toits de Paris. While Powrie does not make it clear, I hazard to guess that there may be some connection, however tenuous, between this period and the chanteuse réaliste movies Kelley Conway has discussed elsewhere.

By 1949, Powrie notes that movies like Jacques Tati’s Jour de Fête were commenting on the decline of the accordian’s ubiquity in French culture as the country shifted from a working-class country with a strong sense of history to a modern society with tremendous interest in other cultures and a particular interest in American life. This is a point Powrie argues that Tati makes aurally, as Jo Lefevre’s accordian opens and closes a film about a character who tries to emulate American customs, cued through the film’s use of swing music.

The move away from the accordian’s aural connotation of national identity is evident in 80s French cinema. The accordian instead becomes a visual, unheard marker of community demise in movies like Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Diva. From the 1990s on, the accordian has become a post-modern instrument for French cinema to Powrie, suggesting both a utopian ideal and evident of self-aware nostalgia, most evident in Yann Tiersen’s score for Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie.

And finally, we have Ronald Rodman’s “The Popular Song as Leitmotif in 1990s Film,” which considers how the use of theme music written for specific characters in classical music and film can be translated into contemporary film’s use of popular music and how leitmotif is used as a connotative signifier. This seems like a tremendously useful exercise that I’ll make sure to remember when I get to be a boss professor lady.

Rodman considers Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting, two successful movies made noteworthy, in part, because of their exclusive use of popular music. With Pulp Fiction, protagonist hit man Vince Vega becomes associated with surf rock and Elvis as a means of connoting his class and white ethnic cultural positioning as an Italian American with a working-class background. In Trainspotting, Scottish heroin addict Mark Renton is associated with art-damaged, anti-establishment classic rockers like Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, and David Bowie, before getting clean and making his classed ascent into the bourgeoisie, which is highlighted by his musical association with Brit pop and popular techno.
  

While I appreciate Rodman’s argument for Trainspotting, I do wonder what he’d make of the wave of regional pictures in the UK during the 1990s and early 2000s. Just as Trainspotting focuses on Edinburgh, so to did 24-Hour Party People depicted Manchester’s singularity. That said, I do value Rodman’s effort to reconsider how popular music functions similarly to classical music in movies, and look forward to reading more on the interplay from similarly-invested scholars. Please feed me titles if you’re so inclined.

Depuis le mois de janvier, la collection K de la médiathèque de Bruxelles Centre a acquis plus de 300 albums, dvd’s et autres compilations !!

La collection K ? C’est en fait un incroyable et foisonnant fourre-tout qui comprend des musiques aussi variées que le Reggae, le Rap, le Soul ainsi que le Blues et le Rock’n’Roll !

Pas toujours facile de s’y retrouver donc !  C’est pourquoi  j’ai pris l’initiative d’aller fouiner dans mon fichier «nouveautés 2009» afin de vous faire une petite sélection de médias à ne pas manquer… Une sélection transversale qui se veut éclectique et personnelle  !

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On démarre en force avec une excellente compilation de Reggae -

“Randy’s 50th Anniversary”  K 7052

Excellente double compilation célébrant les 50 ans d’existence du Randy’s Records Shop qui deviendra ensuite VP records… Du Rocksteady au Ska en passant par le Early Reggae, avec des morceaux de Lord Creator, Les Heptones, Alton Ellis etc etc…  Et un documentaire sur DVD dont voici un  extrait… !

Dans le même rayon mais clairement plus Dub, il y a l’excellent label Wackies que l’on suit de près et on a bien raison, récemment arrivé, un “DanceHall Showcase 2″ de Sugar Minnot paru en 1983… Bon, il n’y a que 10 tracks et certains sont des versions d’un même morceaux, mais quelle tuerie tout de même, le Genuine Lover est particulièrement réussit !!

Sugar Minott “Dancehall Showcase 2″ KM6217

Toujours au rayon Dub,  le label Soul Jazz nous offre une fois de plus une excellente compilation !! Accompagnant le film du même nom, cette compile est un voyage dans le temps et autour du monde… Des parrains King Tubby, U Roy ou encore The Congos aux “jeunes” qui en veulent à la Kode9,  Roots Manuva ou encore Disrupt, une excellente sélection..

“Dub Echoes” K8196

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Au niveau Rap Us on a vraiment beaucoup aimé le dernier album de MF Doom aka King Geedorah et également la moitié  de  Madvillain . . .

MF Doom “Born Like This”  KM5115

Membre du groupe KMD à la fin des 80’s, il a collaboré avec des gens comme Danger Mouse, Madlib et sur cet album on retrouve Ghostface Killer et Raekwon

Petite présence belge dans le rayon Rap ! Sur le jeune label Thin Consolation se spécialisant dans l’Electro de travers… Ici c’est la 8ème sortie et il s’agit d’un habile mélange d’Abstract Hip-Hop, de sons 8 Bit et d’Electro barrée… Mention spéciale pour la superbe pochette cartonnée en trois volets sérigraphiée… ! La classe !

Cupp Cave “Garbage Pail Beats” Kc9344

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On note aussi avec grand plaisir la réédition d’un des tout bons albums des Beastie Boys, remasterisé avec succès, c’est presque une nouvelle version de cet album originalement paru en 1989… un classique à redécouvrir de toute urgence !!

Beastie Boys “Paul’s Boutique” KB2183

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Au niveau Soul on fonce vers le nord de l’Angleterre où de jeunes gens, fascinés par les productions de la Motown, de Tamla ou encore Kent Records ont décidé de s’y mettre et ce fût fait avec un succès indéniable  et surtout une révérence irréprochable !

A complete Introduction To Northern Soul  K 8179

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On part maintenant en Amérique et on vous suggère une petite perle de Funk cradingue ! Excellente compilation de Funk crado produit par un génie oublié des années 70… Electro Funk suave, jazz-rock ultra technique, enregistrement fait parfois par un seul homme… Serait-ce le lien manquant entre Sun Ra, Prince, Funkadelic et Ariel Pink ?

Wicked Witch  “Chaos  (1978-86)”  KW5410

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Toujours aux States mais dans un genre plus “classique” on a reçu une petite perle de Soul-Funk qui n’a rien à envier à Mr James Brown… L’énorme Lee Fields et sa Soul-Funk délicate, bien écrite et superbement produite!

Lee Fields est l’un des nombreux héritiers de la façon de faire “James Brown”. Début des années 60 on le baptise même “Little JB”. Sur “My World”, Lee Fields a travaillé avec de jeunes instrumentistes de New-York. Il sort de l’exercice de style “James Brown revival” et met en avant un groove profond puisant dans les racines du genre ! Une belle découverte !

Lee Fields “My World” KF2341

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Au rayon “Kitsch mais excellent” je vous suggère une série de compilations éditées par le label Ace, “Where the girls are“. 7 volumes de Girls Group des années 60 ! Avec des figures connues comme Doris Day, Sugar Pie Desanto, Betty Lavette, les Shangri-Las et une pléiade de Girls Group avec des noms aussi imaginatifs que The Sonettes, The Kolettes, The Lockets et mon favori : The Cookies …

“Where The Girls Are”  K5996

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Un petit dernier disque de Soul, carrément rétro pour le coup mais tout de même une belle surprise, Candi Staton et son retour à la Soul après des années passées à chanter du Gospel ! En plus ça me donne l’occasion de vous suggérer l’excellent label qui a produit ce disque “Honest Jon“, fondé par Damon Albarn de Gorillaz et de Blur (!!) et qui se spécialise entre autres dans la réédition de vieux 78 tours  de Soul, de Reggae et de Musique du Monde

Candi Staton “Who’s Hurting Now”  KS7401

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Au rayon Blues on fait un petit voyage dans le temps avec un classique indémodable, Skip James et son blues acoustique décharné enregistré en 1931 dans des conditions que l’on sent peu confortable et c’est peut-être ça qui rend cet enregistrement si poignant !

Skip James ” I’d Rather Be The Devil – The Legendary 1931 Session”

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Et on termine en beauté avec le CHOUCHOU ULTIME de cette sélection !

Filastine avec sa récente tuerie Dirty Bomb, comme le dit très bien notre collègue noreille, ce disque est le disque de “musique du monde” (fanfares des Balkans, orchestres à cordes égyptiens, Dubstep londonien, guitares espagnoles) par excellence !  Intransigeant, imaginatif et dansant sans perdre de son contenu hautement politique !  Vraiment une belle claque…

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Et qui dit Filastine dit DJ/Rupture, Dj et platiniste qui anime une excellente émission de radio tous les lundis soir, “Mudd up” sur WFMU et donc en bonus voici une vidéo de ce dernier…

]]> http://travellinbaen.com/2009/07/30/mississippis-contribution/ Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:34:31 +0000 travellinbaen http://travellinbaen.com/2009/07/30/mississippis-contribution/

Quotes of the Day:

“Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.”

“To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.” –Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

My brother sent me a book about the Mississippi blues masters earlier this summer and I’ve learned a lot from reading it about things I knew before only in passing.

Some of you probably know I haven’t seen my brother in a lot of years. He’s a semi-recluse, a writer, a music aficionado and record collector, and from the accounts of at least four people who have known him, probably some kind of genius. In my imagination, he’s a real life Mycroft Holmes. Lately, I’ve been lucky to learn a little about him and some of the events that shaped him, for better and worse, thanks to his best friend Carl. Anyway, we have a tenuous line of communication nowadays. I send him an occasional email through his wife and a letter when I want to make sure he pays attention, and he responds with a box of Napa cheese or a book on the blues, only once sending an actual note. I’d prefer a note, but the packages are enlightening. Hopefully, my choices below will pass a bit of enlightenment on to you. They were chosen based on some of what I learned reading Delta Blues; The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music by Ted Gioia, selected for TB by my brother Bill. I’ve never really listened much to a lot of these old guys so I was pleasantly surprised at how accessible their tunes are on You Tube. If you have the time and the interest, check out some of the songs below. If there is one thing Mississippi has to be proud of more than anything, even more than our state’s contributions to literature and athletics, its the fact that American music was born and raised right here.

Skip James–watch his fingers; also it is immediately apparent that Clapton borrowed heavily from James. I did a quick Google search and immediately found that Cream covered James’ “I’m So Glad” in 1967.

Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson

Muddy Waters–Baby Please Don’t Go

Old school AC/DC Baby Please Don’t Go

Howlin Wolf–How Many More Years; chose this one mainly for his spoken intro, Gioia says Wolfman Jack’s schtick was a mimicry of HW by the way, but also listen to the guitar work starting at the 2.32 mark and hear what Chuck Berry used; Hat tip to Mr. Wolf for his missin “g”

Son House–Death Letter Blues

White Stripes–Death Letter Blues

Guess that’s enough. I could go on and on. A few months ago I visited the BB King Blues Museum in Indianola, Mississippi. Museums usually hold little interest for me, but this one is really good, and if you are ever within driving distance of Indianola you ought to check it out. My favorite exhibit is a computer panel that is set up where you can search an artist, either a contemporary rocker or a roots bluesman, and trace their lineage going back or forward. There are headphones for your use and not only can you see which bluesman influenced your favorite current bands, you can listen to the songs that illustrate the musical family tree. One could spend days going through just that.

R Crumb's History of Blues, Jazz & Country

Every now and then, amidst the endless reissues on the identikit budget labels, a CD lands in your lap which reminds you that there are still truly unfamiliar – and unusual – early recordings out there. Amidst the depressingly repetitive early releases, R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz and Country (packaged with the book of his 1980s trading cards) offers the sort of hidden gems which get you excited about early americana again. From the off, with the Memphis Jug Band’s version of ‘On The Road Again’, the record provides choice tracks which confound expectations.

Skip James’s ‘Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues‘ might be the most familiar song here, used as it was almost verbatim on the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack; his version, of course, feels – let’s avoid the dread word ‘authentic’ – more lived in, and it is to the credit Crumb’s tracklisting that it is so immediate that the frequent hisses and pops fade into imperceptibility. Dock Bogg’s ‘Sugar Baby‘ (another relatively well known cut) is sunk beneath the crackle of age, and yet his keening vocal and dextrous banjo come through sharply and affectingly.

Many of the songs collected here are folk songs – handed down and passed around, not written by the performer and therefore perhaps already distant from his own experience. They exist even further from our world, of course, and yet the artists interpreting this ancient songs on ancient recordings were doing something different to current revivalists; there is no deliberate archaism here, and that makes the songs, perversely, more exciting, more relevant, than they would be if performed by Norman Blake. Even when the ambient noise essential pulses distractingly in time with the song, such as on the Shelor Family’s glorious ‘Big Bend Gal’, the performance carries the song through to us unsullied.

The disc brings out, too, the cross-fertilisation endemic in early american music: King Oliver, as jazz an artist as you might care to find, sits neatly next to Charlie Patton, in whom it is possible to hear something of Hayes Shepherd (who in turn rubs along well with the East Texas Serenaders). Elsewhere, I’ve pointed out to Martin (who does not share my definition) that when I say ‘americana’ I don’t just mean country. A record like this shows why: there are many different styles here, but much of what is played feels as if it belongs together – and feel is undoubtedly what this music is about. One of the best listens I’ve had all year, and the newest song on it was recorded in 1931.

This week’s Spotify playlist is not particularly themed or anything, and in fact was put together in two chunks – before and after I lost my net access. So it’s more varied than most, although overall more downbeat than usual.

Little Hands by Skip Spence is a song I discovered in Robert Plant’s quite gorgeous cover version a few years ago. This song – and the album it comes from – sounds like the missing link between Arthur Lee and Syd Barret, and is an obvious influence on people like Robyn Hitchcock.

The Girl Can’t Dance by Bunker Hill is my very favourite Little Richard soundalike record (yes, even better than Larry Williams or Don & Dewey). Hill doesn’t have Richard’s camp or falsetto, but the performance here is absolutely rabid. Wonderful stuff…

Appropriately, Holly was earlier watching a documentary on the Russians sending dogs into space. I say appropriately because I’d already included Russian Satellite by Mighty Sparrow in the list – a calypso song about how “I am very sorry for the poor little puppy in the Russian satellite”.

America by Van Dyke Parks is an arrangement of God Save The Queen (yes, yes I know he’s doing it as My Country ‘Tis Of Thee, but it’s our national anthem, not theirs) that makes the horrible dirge actually listenable, using elements of Japanese tonality and orchestration, from an album all about connections between the US and Japan.

Shortenin’ Bread by The Ready Men is a track I first heard on the CD version of Pebbles Vol 4 (the vinyl version has a very different tracklist – both are essentials for lovers of surf music) – a version of the old song done in the style of Surfin’ Bird with a blistering Dick Dale style surf guitar solo. Sublime.

Sarah Lee by Esquerita is a good example of the man whose visual style Little Richard stole completely. Musically, though, he’s closer to the New Orleans strolling R&B of Fats Domino or someone of that type. This is actually an astonishingly sloppy record, but it manages to work.

Solar System by The Beach Boys is a classic from The Beach Boys Love You, an album that I always describe as sounding like “Tom Waits singing Jonathan Richman lyrics, over a background by Bach, played on a Moog set on fart sounds”. This one would make a perfect kids song, and I’m quite surprised it’s never been covered on one of those “Rock songs for kids” type albums like They Might Be Giants make. The middle eight of this is just lovely.

September Gurls by Big Star is unfortunately not the studio version, which isn’t on Spotify, but is a very decent full-band demo which sounds almost identical except for the harmonies. One of the best pop songs ever written.

Rolling Sea by Eliza Carthy is from Rogues Gallery, a compilation of songs about pirates and sea shantys put together by the great Hal Wilner. Anyone who likes good music should check out the compilation, which features everyone from Jarvis Cocker to Richard Thompson to Van Dyke Parks.

Red Wine Promises by Victoria Williams is from an album of cover versions of the songs of Carthy’s late aunt Lal Waterson. Waterson was always an underrated songwriter because her family were so well known as interpreters of traditional song, but some of her stuff is as good as any of the better known songwriters of the British folk movement, and it’s nice to see her getting some recognition, albeit posthumous.

Rain Stops Play by The Duckworth Lewis Method is from the duo’s eponymous album – an album of songs all about cricket, from Neil Hannon and someone I’ve never heard of before. I think the album tries a little too hard to be ‘arch’ and ‘eccentric’ for its own good – it’s the album of people who desperately want to be like Vivian Stanshall or Ivor Cutler, but aren’t, quite. But still, being like Stanshall or Cutler is a laudable aim, and everything on there’s listenable, but I do think this is the best track.

Once I Had A Sweetheart by Pentangle is a lovely little version of the traditional folk song by one of the most interesting bands of the 60s. Also one of the best examples of Jacqui McShee showing what she brought to the band – listen to the way she’s double-tracking herself in very different voices.

Hard Time Killing Floor Blues by Skip James is the second song by a Skip here, but I presume everyone knows this one. But sometimes things become classics for good reason…

The Cruel Sea Captain by Bryan Ferry is absolutely shocking, because you couldn’t imagine a vocal performance further from Do The Strand or In Every Dream Home A Heartache than this wispy, ancient-sounding croak. A really astonishing performance, that almost makes me forgive him for being a fox-hunting aristocrat-suckup Tory arsehole.

The first part of Deserts by Edgard Varese is Varese writing far more conventionally than he usually did – this could almost be Stravinsky or someone of that type – rather than his more extreme atonal electronic music. Zappa fans will note that this was clearly the *koff* ‘inspiration’ for Semi-Fraudulent/Direct From Hollywood Overture from 200 Motels, and indeed to modern ears this sounds like film music, but it was one of Varese’s last major works.

And to finish we have One Track Mind by The Knickerbockers. The Knickerbockers were a one-hit-wonder band in the US whose hit, Lies was such a perfect Beatles soundalike that many people still think it *was* the Beatles (and Holly was surprised just now when I told her they were American). But in fact they were jobbing musicians from New Jersey – Buddy Randell, the singer/saxophone player, had previously been in The Royal Teens (who had a novelty hit with Short Shorts) and their drummer later briefly replaced Bill Medley in The Righteous Brothers – who just managed to sound like whatever was on the radio. One Track Mind is probably a better record than Lies, because it’s less slavishly Beatlesque, though still with very Lennon-sounding vocals. I also like the segue between Varese and this…

I haven’t posted here in a while. Things have a little out of hand lately, I was without a computer for several days last week, and then we were dealing with getting rid of a dead car (plus other stress inducing happenings). So I haven’t had a chance to update anyone on the progress of the list. Actually the list is part of the reason that I haven’t been posting. It’s looking like it’s going to be taking up a pretty good amount of time. It is coming along though, slow and steady. It took a while just to figure out how to get started, but now I am rolling along and it is starting to make sense. I have been walking around with pockets full of little pieces of paper; everyday I find myself sitting at work or on the metro and think of a song that has to go on the list… and yeah, before you know it, I have pockets full of scribbled-on, barely legible paper scraps. It’s going well though, and I want to have the list done by the 20th or so so that I can get a head start on the recording of the top 100. On August 1st I will post 100-500 (with number 100 being an mp3) and then post one a day, counting back to one, for the following 99 days.

I watched Ghost World last night for the first time in a while and something strange happened: I subscribe to Acceptable Oddities (done by a music writer who once a month or so sends out emails with links to download records and he includes his reviews of the albums), and I got around to opening the new one last night after the movie. In the film Enid becomes kind of obsessed with Skip James’ Devil Got My Woman. When the movie was over I went to see what goodies came in with Acceptable Oddities, and it was just one album this time: Skip James’ Today!. Weird. Especially considering that the stuff the writer usually sends out is newer indie stuff and here he comes, on this day, with a single old blues album. Albeit an utterly fantastic old blues album… just odd timing is all.

I don’t have a lot of new music to talk about at the moment. Well there is one (though not new). I am sitting here listening to a new favorite record… Snowball by The Field Mice. My friend Tom (who is headed to XX Merge soon… I’m sure there will be some interesting updates from him…) sent me a mix last week that had Emma’s House on it and it really stood out to me. They are, for me, one of those bands that I just somehow missed in all of my travels over the years… I mean, you can’t hear everything, right? They combine elements of a lot of bands that I really love (Touches of Felt and New Order with a bit of indie pop sensibility for good measure… how’s that for vague?) I quickly tracked down Snowball, and I am looking for the others. I suspect that finding them on vinyl will be a bit of a task, so I may just have to break down and buy the discs. Anyway, I say all of this because I think that a lot of people that I know will like them, that is if they haven’t already heard them. There were a bunch of other things on the mix that I really loved too, I’m sure that there will be more about some of that stuff coming soon.

There isn’t a lot else to report at the moment, which is kind of sad. Though, in the interest of people not thinking that I am neglecting to mention this enormous news, My wife has her first solo show coming up on July 24th, there will be another post devoted to just that coming soon.

Everyone knows that the mysterious and fleeting Robert Johnson left an indelible mark of genius on history; his hexed virtuoso has inspired tremendous imagination. Johnson famously sold his soul to the devil in a secret hoodoo ritual, and though these things are commonly understood as folklore, I can’t help believing it might be true.

But there was another man in those times who also came from Mississippi backwaters, a man who also spent his life running from the devil. He was a master of piano and guitar, but he stopped playing blues for more than three decades. On his deathbed he renounced the blues, repenting for playing the devil’s music. Skip promised never to touch them again, if God let him live.

God didn’t relent, however, but he had let Skip James live considerably longer than poor Robbie. Skip’s first recording- and last for three decades to come- was Devil Got My Woman, the inspiration for Johnson’s Hellhound on my Trail. Skip’s eerie, mournful falsetto is the voice of a haunted man. That afternoon in 1931, in a stifling attic in Grafton, Wisconsin, Skip recorded for Paramount Records some songs that would soon become rare collector’s items and earn him respect as one of the very best bluesmen now and forever. But the Depression forced Paramount into bankruptcy and Skip skipped off to sing a new tune, becoming an itinerant preacher throughout the south.

As an outside observer to the blues scene, not terribly knowledgeable but drawn in by the stories, I was touched and educated by a film by Wim Wenders, Soul of a Man. The gorgeous tribute from Wim Wenders paints a romantic hero, innocent of the small fame that blooms from him even in his absence. He put down his guitar to preach the gospel after poverty defeated him.

And yet I sensed that the darkness in the man’s voice was not simply poverty robbing an artist of his passion. Skip James was a hard living loner who said he always carried a gun, and he was known to use it. His daddy was a bootlegger and a preacher and like father, like son.

Skip roamed the backwoods and highways of the south working like a dog and gambling and sampling the hookers. Seemed he never feared God’s wrath for these biblical sins- sex, murder, pimping, playing cards- but nonetheless, he feared God because he was playing the Devil’s music.

Stephen Calt’s biography, I’d Rather Be the Devil, written from taped conversations with Skip by a friend and blues writer, merits the criticism it garners from irate Skip defenders- but only for its melodramatic prose. The biography insinuates and even proclaims all manner of madness- whoring, gambling, and shooting sprees, but some blues aficionados want to believe, as Tom Jacobson wrote, that Skip James was a “softie.”

Tom also said, “Stephen Calt has written a pathetic book. It will go down in the annals of blues history as an act of great betrayal and deceit.” He shares his personal witness of an elegant and kind man who wrote him gracious letters after Tom helped him with some money.

With all due respect, no. Understandably, sympathetic fans want to make Skip a hero. Like Tom, I want to believe that I can touch Skip’s blues, or speak for him, but in reality, his blues stem from what I don’t have. I have blues of my own, but I can’t know hardest poverty and racism, backbreaking work, life on the run as a gambler, drunkard and murderer. If Skip’s songs were just about twisted love or wishful thinking, they would be tepid melodies of debatable depth, and they wouldn’t be the blues of Skip James.

Now, I can’t say that every word of Calt’s work is true, and Jacobson’s worry that Calt exploited his friend for money may or may not be founded. Calt is an affable and respected, if adjective-heavy blues writer, and I doubt he made any kind of ‘fortune’ from his taped conversations with Skip. He waited politely until 25 years after Skip’s death to publish. I am certain he meant for serious seekers of Skip’s music to find some of what they were looking for, harsh though what they found might be. It’s clear, too, that he retained a love for the mysterious man, even if he did, like his subject, have a penchant for melodrama.

It’s understandable that dedicated blues aficionados and historians like Jacobson want to make sure the things that are being said are true, and to be concerned about the reputation of their blues idols. But even as an outside spectator, I know that sanitizing history may ultimately detract and dilute what the blues are all about.

The kind of grief and bitterness and agony inside the blues didn’t come from a warm and fuzzy place. The rebel drifter artists were not pretending anything- the grim reality of poverty, racism, dehumanization, slavery, grief, loss, crime, hatred, fury, despair, love, fear, whisky, murder was reality indeed. There is no reason whatsoever to doubt that Skip James was at least a few of the things he is reputed to be.

That said, despite his fame, this figure is still shrouded in mystery and totally obscure. In this regard, he is much like his fellow Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson, who made no secret of his devotion to Skip, paying homage by experimenting with his style. Johnson’s premature death at the age of 27 may always remain an enigma- voodoo, murder, poison? But it is Skip James’ life and not his death that we have so little window into- Nehemiah was named Skip because he was always skipping town. He is a man who did not particularly want to be found. And so for those decades between his first recording and finding him in the ‘60s, we have little to go on.

Skip James didn’t like people, and so he didn’t hang around with other musicians more than was necessary. He died with few friends and no family, and fathered no children that he or we know of. Some connections have been made to other artists who knew him, peripherally or otherwise, but there’s not much.

We can be pretty sure of a general picture, however. Skip was born Nehemiah Curtis James and grew up on a Mississippi cotton plantation. His mom was the cook and his father was reputed locally as a low life. He was perpetually on the run from the law, a bootlegger and a preacher, too. Most of the time, Skip’s grandparents raised him. They had been brought in from Virginia on the slave market.

Skip was a proud and articulate man, so he said he had earned his high school diploma though this wasn’t true. Skip was proud of his wide vocabulary and wanted some recognition for his intelligence. He was singing and composing early on, after his mother gave him a cheap guitar as a gift when he was around eight. “My mother made me put that guitar down to eat meals,” Skip said in Calt’s book. “I was just that interested.” Soon he took up piano, too.

Skip drifted around, doing hard labour in levee camps or road construction and so on. Life meant backbreaking labour- the work was hard, but the living was harder. The men drank a lot, and gambled and made money renting their favourite women out to other men. Skip never trusted women, but his early exposure in these environments certainly wouldn’t contribute to a positive image. These women plied their trades because they needed to earn a living, too, and couldn’t labour in the camps like men. Skip became known as a skilled gambler, and sometimes he would risk his whole week’s pay and earn ten times as much.

He had love affairs with some of the ladies, but they weren’t happy ones. “My love is like ice water,” he said. “Once you fuck ‘em, it’s like you never knew ‘em.” He always carried a pistol and there’s no real reason to conclude he never used it. “I never draw a gun unless I pull the trigger,” Skip reportedly said.

He married the daughter of preacher man, Oscella Robinson, the first relationship he had with a woman who was not a prostitute. But his happiness was short-lived. He found his wife having an affair with a friend of his. She was starving emotionally, others said, and observed that Skip wasn’t faithful to anyone except the bottle and the betting. It was this experience that likely fuelled the desolate heartbreaking masterpiece, Devil Got My Woman.

It’s easy to dismiss the devils and the voodoo underneath blues stories as myth, rumour, or even as racism, but that would be an unfortunate erasure of history. Not every blues singer used words like “mojo” and “conjure” man just for effect. To the best blues scholars, this is a large part of the picture and history. I will never understand the secret history of Africa, but it had tremendous power to keep some of the slaves from going insane or going extinct. The rituals and magical beliefs were common threads for broken communities, tying their spirit to Africa. To people who had no possessions, the voodoo objects that outsiders think of as bizarre or frightening or silly became especially important. Any objects could be sacred if they were the only few things you owned.

Whether or not voodoo was practiced, it was in the blood of the slaves and their children and is still going strong today. You didn’t have to practice voodoo, though many did. It was in your blood. And while descendents of Africa layered Christianity onto their own traditions, seeing no disparity between the two, some had the fear of the white God beaten into them. The lingering terror that their own music, rituals, beliefs, and skin colour were from the Devil himself was impenetrable. And that could be a tremendous comfort, the only link to your displaced ancestors. Or it could be cause for a lifelong haunting.

Matt R. Lohr describes the sound of Skip’s blues: “James’ vocals are delivered in either a pure, keening falsetto or a flat, affectless tenor, both tones almost supernatural in their melancholic detachment and both expertly complementing the chillingly pristine tone of his guitar playing. This voice, eerily ethereal … high-pitched and ghostly … conjures nothing so much as the wailing of a tormented Deep Southern banshee.”

Town like Bentonia, Mississippi, population 170, towns like the ones that Skip and Robert Johnson were raised, well, that was voodoo country. It’s not a stretch for me to consider that spiritual turmoil was a prominent element in the lives of many southern blacks. And sometimes that spiritual turmoil showed itself like a hellhound of the trail.

Of course I don’t mean that Satan traded a guitar with Robbie at the crossroads- that’s a metaphor, and a good one. But Robert and Skip both surely wrestled with those demons, alongside all the other bleak, dark, crazy, hostile, wretched, dangerous, violent things- by life so hard, their blues could be born. Skip was still singing and playing music after he split from his wife, and he had developed a very distinctive style that Robert Johnson and other Delta bluesmen tried to adopt and never quite pulled off. His sinister depth felt like voodoo indeed, born of the seesaw torment between God and Satan.

In his essay, Can’t Find No Heaven, Lohr describes beautifully what it is about Skip James. He “is frequently recognized by musical aficionados and critics as one of the most creative and distinctive in the blues canon. Not only are these works notable for their uncommon utilization of blues conventions and precise, disciplined musicianship, but they are also remarkable in the uncanny feelings they conjure within the listener, feelings of unease, foreboding, and soul-dead dread unlike that produced by anything found in the blues before or since.”

He quotes David Harrison. “”[James] didn’t come across as someone with whom you could enjoy leaning on a bar; his songs are unremittingly gloomy and devil-ridden, and if his 78s were the only ones to have survived, the myth of the blues as a depressing music would have been fully justified…[the songs] hint at anger and lurking madness…If the blues can really be said to have a genius, then Skip James is the sinister contender for the title.””

Finally, he describes for those who listen but can’t play what makes that sound so distinct. “When a guitar is tuned in the open-string “Bentonia” style, the resulting pattern is E-B-E-G-B-E, which, provided the G string is not raised to G sharp, creates an E minor tonality. The result of this “cross-note” tuning (a term coined by James) is an off-centre sound with an unmistakably dark undercurrent, a sound that can be heard most vividly in the bottom-scraping bass notes and chilling ascending treble figures…”

James picked his guitar with his fingernails for the effect that Giles Oakley called “icy precision.” He used three fingers, isolating fierce notes. Furthermore, his genius on guitar is so legendary that often his piano prowess in overshadowed. But he used a wooden box at his feet to emphasize thumping and stomping and got totally lost in the notes and rhythms. Lohr comments, “His keyboard work is distinguished by its almost avant-garde utilization of irregularly spaced breaks, helping to create within the music a gripping fits-and-starts tension, and his 1931 piano recordings possess a heavily percussive quality thanks to his complex, syncopated foot pounding… James was also skilled at using runs, fills, crescendo, and diminuendo to create musical power within his piano pieces…creating the gut-shot effect of thudding rapid-fire bullet hits…”

It was in 1931, after leaving his wife, that a talent scout heard these wonders and got Skip that now-famous record deal. He bought a ticket to Wisconsin, and recorded over a two day session for Paramount Records. He was paid a few bucks for his work, but with the Depression stretching before them, Paramount went bankrupt and Skip became an ordained traveling minister like his father. Varying accounts, including his, attest to continued drinking, gambling, womanizing, and wandering. Unbeknownst to Skip, those who had bought the few record pressings Paramount had sold before folding considered the mysterious and absent singer one of the greatest they’d ever heard, and a cult bloomed. That no follow up appeared for decades heightened the hunger and allure for this elusive genius’s work.

There were also rumours that Skip was on the run from the law. Mumbles and murmurs of murder were common- Skip’s music had been full of murder, and he himself had already bragged about how many times he used his gun, how many people he shot- though he was always careful to say he didn’t know what the outcome was of the bullet wounds. But whether Jesus or guns and gambling or women or all of the above were taking place, they were taking place apart from the public eye. If Skip had never recorded that ill-fated record, his blues would have been totally lost to the world.

And then the legend comes full circle. In 1964, a group of blues enthusiasts discovered Skip James in a hospital in Mississippi, and convinced him to appear at a blues revival, the Newport Folk Festival. His strange, reclusive, haunting performance blew everyone’s mind. And for these last five years of his life, years spent in poor health, he recorded for various labels, revisiting some of his 1931 songs as well as making new ones.

“Skip James’ strikingly singular music was a product of his surroundings, musical iconoclasm, and bizarre psychology,” Lohr says. The music was affected by “the damaged psychology of James, a man whose paranoia and misogyny spawned edgy, violent songs that rejected society, race, and gender roles, and whose life was a constant battle between the influence of the church and the dangerous blues lifestyle, a battle which James never resolved and which lent his music its distinctive anxiety and fearful pleading for peace in the next world. The life of Skip James was not a happy one, but the sadnesses and angers that fueled his existence were distilled into his music, allowing him to create accomplished, emotionally devastating work that will let his name live on.”

“The one great fear that marked his existence,” Lohr writes, was “the possibility of dying before receiving the opportunity to make peace with God. While on his deathbed, James denounced his past, acknowledging the “sinful” nature of blues music and announcing that he would perform only spirituals if God would let him live.” But before turning 70, he died of cancer. The torment of damnation was something he never reconciled, never able to shake the belief that blues were straight from hell.

It’s worth going back to the beginning of the story as it relates to me. My first encounter with Skip James was a subtle and unforgettable scene with Thora Birch in the teen angst flick Ghost World. Enid was dying her hair back from green, depressed, and listening to a random record she bought from a blues fan out of a milk carton.

I found it spellbinding to see the darkness descend on her like a wave of heat, the intensity in her eyes, as the strains of Skip’s guitar mesmerize her. The film is worth watching for this brief and brilliant scene alone. I felt the strange and solemn sharpness of desperation in a song that stood alone in the world of music.

When Enid went back to ask Seymour, the blues guy, for more records like that one, he shook his head and said, “There aren’t any more records like that one.”

The scene was my personal invitation, a portal into a part of history I know nothing of. It’s the world whose spectre I glimpsed when I was a braver woman, drifting in my youth. The Mississippi Delta marked me, it made me hungry for its stories, and the houses and stores and gas stations and cotton fields felt like relics, a world that time forgot.

Skip’s heavyweight delta voodoo was completely transcendent, summoning the sick weight of love’s grief into the belly, into the throat. I was suffocated by it; choked- it was the feeling of drowning. I was haunted, by love, by Skip, by the devil himself.

It’s unlikely that Skip knew even a few moments of happiness in a harsh and bitter life, and more than seven decades later, the weight of his blues feels like a stone tomb, the darkest room.

There is nothing I could understand of that weight, but I felt it once traveling through the Delta, and tried to capture the haunting in a poem. I was “hitch-hiking down a slow hot Mississippi highway. The crimson sky stained the cotton fields bloody on either side of that dusty ribbon. I was weaving past scattered porches. Someone was wailing the blues.”

If you like art, literature, madness and interesting people, you’ll love Lorette C. Luzajic’s books. Her first book is “The Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos.” Her second is “Weird Monologues for a Rainy Life (Irreverent Ramblings from the End of the World.)” Her poetry and her collected blogs, musings, reviews, memoirs, notes, eulogies, requiems, interviews, profiles and more are both devastating and hilarious romps through one woman’s wild mood swings. Lorette proves that there’s life after death, even for manic-depressives. “Think Courtney Love meets Margaret Atwood,” says Donnarama, Toronto’s premiere performance artist.

Visit the author’s link at Amazon to order your copies today!

Like every musical style, there are those who become famous and those who do not. And how well they can play is usually not a big deal when it comes to fame. Some famous people play great, some don’t, some ‘common’ people play great and some don’t.

I have combined for you some of my favorite obscure artists. What are yours?

. Skip James – His unique and brilliantly developed finger picking style, his slow and penetrating songs. He influenced masters, lots of Robert Johnson songs are based on his. High pitched voice, also played piano. A truly great bluesman.

. Sonny Boy Williamson I – Ok, Sonny Boy Williamson II got quite famous for a blues man, but the first and great? Today, people don’t even put the one or two at the end, because nobody quite remembers this true master of the harmonica. Although he is gone, his music remained. He is responsible for a huge advance in blues harmonica. And he deserves mention.

. Howlin’ Wolf – A classic Chicago Blues player, you can see in his songs where many others got it from. With a nickname like that, you can probably guess what he sings like. He is not famous like he deserved, but he does have an annual memory festival.

. Elmore James – King of the Slide Guitar, exciting playing, but at the same time, blues. He died before the 60’s blues boom, so very little is known about his life. No live records and few pictures, but his different, strange slide sound will live on. A huge and one of the only electric guitar slide players.

. Memphis Jug Band – A varying style band featuring many instruments, even a violin. Were popular at their time, but over the years falled into obscurity. They played very early city blues, with more of a ‘ballad’ than classic blues records. They really defined what would become of blues in the 50’s and 60’s, and so, the biggest and most famous part of blues.

Ok, so this is the beginning of a small series of posts, on different styles of blues. Delta should obviously be first here, since it was one of the first kind of blues.

It originated on Mississippi Delta, that goes from Memphis, Tennessee to Vicksburgh, Mississippi. Mostly played with an acoustic guitar and harmonica, Delta Blues originated other styles, like Chicago Blues.

It is older than that, but unfortunately Delta Blues was only recorded by the 1920’s. On Mississippi Delta juke joints, blues had been played longer than that.

Now days, Delta Blues tradition is long gone, as it is old, outdated, poorly recorded, and more. Only some real fans still pay attention to this great style of blues.

5 Important Artists: Son House, Charlie Patton, Bukka White, Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf.

Skip James was an important delta blues musician, that is unfortunately very little recognized. His work inspired many, such as Robert Johnson. His finger picking technique is among the best there is to be found.

Born in 1902, in Mississippi, James began playing organ as a teen. He used to work on road construction and levee-building crews. That influenced him to write what is probably his earlier song, Illinois Blues.

He first recorded in 1931, after passing an audition, for Paramount Records. He became moderately famous, and many of his songs were influential on other blues musician.

His popularity started to grow, but unfortunately the depression hit and sales went down. He gave up on the music career and joined a church, disappearing from music for 30 years.

In 1964, he was discovered on a hospital by some blues enthusiasts, and started performing again, and even recorded some more songs, until his death at 1969.

Reference : Skip James.

Here’s the latest batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles. Yet more I’s.

YVONNE ELLIMAN – If I Can’t Have You / Good Sign (RSO 884 1978)
The Bee Gees jumped on the disco bandwagon with Saturday Night Fever, and in their wake, virtually every desperate pop star did a disco record. It’s little wonder, then, that the genre provoked such hostility when there was so much pap being released. Despite loathing pretty much everything to do with the film and its soundtrack, I’ve always had a soft spot for this song. Perhaps it’s because it’s got a heart. It isn’t cheesy and shiny and plastic. Elliman sings it like she means it – with soul.

GLADYS KNIGHT & THE PIPS – If I Were Your Woman / The Tracks of My Tears (Soul 35078 1970)
MILLIE JACKSON – If Loving You Is Wrong, I Don’t Want to Be Right / The Rap (Spring 155 1975)
In popular love song, the woman’s point of view tended to be either doe-eyed worshipper or wronged victim. Often both. Deeper, more complex emotions were rarely aired. That simplified view of the world began to change rapidly as the sixties became the seventies. “If I Were Your Woman” sees Gladys Knight yearning for a man who’s unobtainable. Millie Jackson has got him anyway, despite the fact that he’s married. Neither is apologetic about their situation, although both recognise that it’s far from ideal.

CURTIS MAYFIELD – If There’s a Hell Below (We’re All Gonna Go) / The Makings of You (Curtom 1955 1970)
Amidst an uneasy hubbub, Curtis spits the opening lines of a song that is a frustrated reaction to racial polarisation, political inaction and corruption, social breakdown and the general descent of society into violence – a long way from the ideals of the Civil Rights movement. There is a deep anger about the general complacency of everyone. The repeated refrain of “Don’t Worry” is sarcastic, not reassuring. Coming from a natural optimist, the despair that oozes from every word is shocking. It remains one of Curtis Mayfield’s darkest, but greatest songs, with an arrangement of uneasy funk that builds a fragile surface of joy over a dark turmoil underneath.

HAROLD MELVIN & THE BLUE NOTES – If You Don’t Know Me By Now / Let Me Into Your World (Philadelphia International 3520 1972)
One of the finest soul ballads of the seventies, “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” is lush and sad, but at the same time somehow uplifting. Teddy Pendergrass gives one of his finest vocal performances as a frustrated man who can see that the suspicion and jealousy of his partner is threatening their relationship. He’s beginning to wonder if it can ever change, and whether it would be for the best to end it. It’s another example of how soul music had moved from simple boy meets girl, boy loses girl (or vice versa) stuff towards a reflection of the emotional complexities of real relationships.

SPINNERS – I’ll Be Around / How Could I Let You Get Away? (Atlantic 2904 1972)
JACKSON FIVE – I’ll Be There / One More Chance (Motown 1171 1970)
I wrote about the Spinners’ masterpiece here. Both songs cover similar ground – the noble dumpee selflessly reassuring his ex that he’ll always be there for emotional support. Whether she finds that touching or creepily akin to stalking is not recorded. What both also share is an air of steadfast melancholy that is really touching. I don’t think the Jacksons’ ever bettered “I’ll Be There”, even though the sentiments are a little odd coming from a boy yet to reach his teens.

NEW YORK CITY – I’m Doing Fine Now / Ain’t It So (Chelsea 113 1973)
It’s just the way things fell, but here is yet another seventies soul classic. Pretty much one hit wonders, New York City gave a Big Apple take on the Philadelphia sound. Indeed, it sounds more Philly than a lot of Philly records. Despite the suspicions of bandwagon jumping, “I’m Doing Fine Now” is a great song that does the ‘I’m alright even though you’ve gone’ thing refreshingly straight, without the undercurrent of pretence that someone like Smokey Robinson would thread through the subject. They really do sound like they’re doing absolutely fine.

TAMI LYNN – I’m Gonna Run Away From You / The Boy Next Door (Atco 6342 1966)
A Northern Soul favourite, this was reissued in the UK in the seventies and became a hit half a dozen or so years after it was recorded. It’s not difficult to see why it beguiled them at the Casino and the Twisted Wheel. The rhythm is urgent, and there is repeated hook by the backing singers that ensnares the listener immediately.

BLIND WILLIE JOHNSON – I’m Gonna Run to the City of Refuge / Jesus Is Coming Soon (Columbia 14391 1928)
Nick Cave used the song as the basis for his “City Of Refuge” on Tender Prey. It’s not hard to see why he was so drawn to Blind Willie Johnson. Johnson was, on the surface, a bluesman. He sang blues-like tunes accompanied by guitar. But his subject matter was exclusively religious, and he came across like a true apocalyptic fire-and-brimstone type. His earthy growl served only to give him added gravitas. His God was the Old Testament one of judgement and vengeance, not some fluffy happy-clappy type.

FOUR TOPS – I’m In a Different World / Remember When (Motown 1132 1968)
Not generally considered an A list Tops’ song, “I’m in a Different World” ticks all the same boxes for me that their better known songs do. Levi Stubbs sounds emotionally distraught as usual, even if the subject matter is ostensibly upbeat!

PASSIONS – I’m In Love With a German Film Star / Don’t Talk To Me I’m Shy (Polydor 222 1981)
Largely forgotten now, the Passions were a band who never fulfilled their promise. The dreamy, reverb-heavy “German Film Star” is one of the cornerstones of so-called dream-pop (a genre name that I’ve always loathed), with a debt owed by acts as diverse as the Cocteau Twins and Galaxie 500. “Don’t Talk to Me I’m Shy” is faster, more Lush-like.

SKIP JAMES – I’m So Glad / Special Rider Blues (Paramount 13098 1931)
The song’s best known these days through the cover by Cream. Skip James’ original has an atmosphere all of its own that serves the song much better than the over-excited pseudo-metal of Clapton’s group. Country blues fans will attest that he was one of the finest and most original practitioners of the form, but he was stymied by appearing on the scene just as the music industry (and everything else) was disappearing down the black hole of the Depression.

HANK WILLIAMS – I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry / My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It (MGM 10560 1949)
Hear the lonesome whiperwill
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train is whining low
I’m so lonesome I could cry

I’ve never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry

Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves begin to die
That means he’s lost the will to live
I’m so lonesome I could cry

The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are
I’m so lonesome I could cry

Has ever a more perfect paean to loneliness been written? I don’t think so.

More soon

I didn’t realize until recently when I watched “The Blues” Disc 2 that Skip James was recording blues before Robert Johnson. Some of the songs are even (basically) the same. How did I miss this? I can pretty much forgive my ignorance, but how in the world did Skip James not rate his own disc in The Blues Collection? Seriously – 92 CDs – Fats Domino gets a disc, but not Skip James? For crying out loud.

Musical interlude. Skip James performing “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues” from 1931.