Tommy "Bottled it up" & played it with voracity..

Tommy McClennan’s life, like his music, is elusive, hard to pin down, in between worlds, eras, and styles. Born in the Delta (sources disagree on the exact date and location, but his friend Big Bill Broonzy said that it was Yazoo City, in 1908), Tommy McClennan played Delta-style, acoustic blues with an old-timey, syncopated feel, enlivened by occasional scat singing. That wouldn’t be anything remarkable, but instead of recording it in the South in the late 1920s or early 1930s, McClennan’s 44 sides were laid down in Chicago, between 1939 and 1942. 

Perhaps the oddest thing about Tommy McClennan’s records is that they sound shockingly modern, in more ways than one. Firstly, there is the sound: instead of the low fidelity, “old sounding” recordings we associate with early blues, especially from the delta, McClennan’s recordings sound present, lively, and full. This is more evident on his vocals than his guitar, suggesting that the quality is more due to McClennan’s vocal delivery than from high-quality microphones. Perhaps more importantly, his performances are characterized by a sly intimacy, a disarming casualness that feels post-modern, more akin to something recorded in the 1990s or later, than to performances from just before World War II. 

This quality is nowhere more evident than on McClennan’s 1939 recording of “Bottle It Up and Go,” where he laughs his way through the song’s ribald, earthy lyrics, and playfully completes or replaces what would be sung lines entirely with guitar figures, much as Blind Willie Johnson and other notable slide players often did. This track may be the ideal introduction to what makes Tommy McClennan so special, with its joyful scat chorus near the end.  You can hear him smiling on this one, and as per McClennan’s reputation as a heavy drinker, it sounds as if he may have, ah, loosened up a tad before this day’s recording session:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XyNnJNCbV8

The good-time quality on “Bottle It Up and Go” would eventually prove Tommy McClennan’s undoing, however. After 1942, for whatever reasons, he made no more records, by all accounts drinking more and more heavily over time. Bluesman Honeyboy Edwards had known him since the Mississippi days, and was one of his few friends to remain relatively close in McClennan’s later years. Edwards has said that by the late 1950s, Tommy’s drinking had gotten out of hand, and that the last time he saw Tommy McClennan was in May of 1961, when McClennan was homeless, living in a hobo jungle in Chicago. A few days later, Tommy McClennan died of pneumonia. 

His music, however, with its raw, visceral quality, lives on through many cover versions. Albert King made Tommy McClennan’s “Cross Cut Saw Blues” into a Chicago staple, while numerous artists, not the least of which was a certain Mr. James Marshall Hendrix of Seattle Washington, have covered “Deep Blue Sea Blues,” often under the name “Catfish Blues. ”  Really, there is very little other blues music like Tommy McClennan’s, and once you’re hooked by his unique charms, check back right here for some more of the greatest American music ever recorded. 

Leon J    www.RootsBlues.com

Blind Willie Johnson: The Greatest Blues Guitarist Who Never Played The Blues

Blind Willie Johnson: The Greatest Blues Guitarist Who Never Played The Blues

The story of Blind Willie Johnson is compelling on so many levels that it may be best to start with your ears: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH4metotdRk

Blind Willie Johnson’s wordless recording of the old spiritual standard “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground,” sets a new standard for how much loneliness can be expressed in as single musical performance.  His soul-shattering slide guitar performance, accompanied only by his profoundly felt moans, makes an indelible impression on all who hear it. 

Blind Willie Johnson’s life is shrouded in mystery. In fact, the photo above is the only one depicting him known to exist.  Born in Brenham, TX, in 1897, Blind Willie Johnson taught himself to play the guitar at a young age.  Stories about how he became blind are contradictory, but his widow Angeline told it this way: Willie’s mother had passed away when he was young, and his father had remarried.  His stepmother was unfaithful, and after Willie’s father confronted her about her infidelity, she assumed that it was young Willie who had informed his father, and blinded him with lye in retaliation, and so that he’d never do that again.  

Even before he lost his sight, young Willie had decided to be a preacher.  As a boy and young man, his father would leave him to sing the gospel on street corners in Marlin, TX, while the elder Johnson went to work in the fields.  He developed his singular guitar style and unforgettable vocal delivery this way.  As hard as it may be to believe, there are reports that Blind Lemon Jefferson was simultaneously playing on nearby street corners in Marlin.  The mind boggles at the notion of two giants of the blues playing on the street so near to each other…

Blind Willie Johnson may not have played the blues per se, avoiding celebrations of women, liquor, and good times in his lyrics, but he played and sang within the blues idiom, imbuing it with the intensity of the greatest fire-and-brimstone preacher you can imagine.  Although he never, from all reports, played a song that could not be called “sacred,” he wedded the passionate, fervent celebration of the church music he grew up with to a musical idiom born in juke joints and roadhouses.  Blind Willie Johnson bridged the gap between Saturday Night Music, when it was permissible to dance with the devil to the sound of the blues, and Sunday Morning Music, when the devil was rebuked, and sin forgiven, and he did so in an organic, natural way. 

In addition to his matchless slide guitar technique, Willie possessed a voice that could cover a range from a gentle-but-textured tenor to a HUGE, gritty shout, to a disarming “false bass” voice that reminds the modern listener of nothing so much as Tuvan throat singing.  If you want an example of Blind Willie Johnson’s astounding vocal technique and range, along with his devastatingly soulful slide guitar technique, give this track a listen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R7BO6_p4qk

Eric Clapton has called this track the single greatest slide guitar performance ever captured.  Give it a listen, and if you agree, it’s time to delve deeply into Blind Willie Johnson’s recordings, and then come back here for more about the great blues and gospel/blues artists who helped shape modern music.  See you then!

Leon J  Simply Good Music -  www.RootsBlues.com