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  

From the Bayou to the City: The Louisiana Blues 

The Blues of Louisiana is not quite the Blues of the Delta.  Yes, geographically, the Delta is partially in the state of Louisiana, straddling the Mississippi River.  The musical traditions of the Mississippi side are well-known, and make up most of what we call “Delta Blues.” But later, after the Delta Blues had made its mark, on the Louisiana side, there developed lesser-known but equally important Blues traditions, and only by understanding them, particularly through listening to them, can we start to get a clearer picture of the Blues as it developed. 

When you say “Louisiana Blues,” most casual fans, even those who consider themselves to be well-versed in the Blues, draw a blank. They might think of Fats Domino-style Rock & Roll, or of Dixieland Jazz, or of Zydeco, but rarely Blues. Although it has been somewhat overshadowed by its more famous cousin from the Delta, the Louisiana Blues has a rich history and a long-reaching influence. In the years that followed World War II, the Delta Blues as a form began to wane, and as it traveled into the cities and other Southern regions, and also as it migrated north and became the electric Blues of Chicago and St. Louis, it evolved.  And nowhere did it evolve more interestingly than in its own back yard. 

There are two basic styles of Louisiana Blues: the slow, gritty, low-down “Swamp Blues” of the rural areas and bayous, and the faster, more urban, Jazz-influenced “New Orleans” style. The Swamp Blues is best characterized by the music of artists like Lightnin’ Slim (James Moore, 1924-1970) and Slim Harpo (Otis V. Hicks, 1913-1974), who shared a taste for slow tempos, stomping beats, guitars heavy with reverb and tremolo, and boogie structures. If you wanted to find the uncredited influences on rock artists like Dale Hawkins or Creedence Clearwater Revival, look no further. Swamp Blues’ hypnotic style evokes late nights, smoke filled rooms, whiskey, and trouble.  A great example of Lightnin’ Slim’s brand of Swamp Blues can be heard on “Mean Old Lonesome Train,” issued on the Excello label in 1957:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cZPoGJjsJs

Slim Harpo’s somewhat more shuffle-influenced style is best heard on his often-covered classic, “I Got Love If You Want It,” also from 1957 on Excello:

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

In New Orleans, the Blues took a jazzier, big-city turn. Often piano-based (although guitars are still prominent), with strong elements of Caribbean music and Dixieland Jazz, New Orleans Blues took on a more laid back style than its country cousin, often employing slowed-down rhumba rhythms and a triplet feel that allowed bands, as any musician could cryptically tell you, to play “fast and slow at the same time.” Exemplified by the recordings of NOLA legends like Professor Longhair (Harry Roeland Byrd, 1918-1980) and Guitar Slim (Eddie Jones, 1926-1959), New Orleans Blues records showcase the beginnings of the second-line style of Funk music that The Meters (who worked with Professor Longhair in the 1970s) would cook up in their own polyrhythmic stew. 

Professor Longhair’s style is best appreciated in his classic, “Go to the Mardi Gras,” rhumba beat firmly to the fore, with the Professor’s own cooking piano underscoring his exhortations to join the yearly madness of Fat Tuesday.  Comparisons to Fats Domino are inevitable, but Professor Longhair had an earthier style. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wAMr3V5lN4

A great introduction to Guitar Slim’s music is “The Things I Used to Do,” famously covered by Stevie Ray Vaughn and numerous others. The mid-tempo, Blues triplet style is one of the cores of New Orleans Blues:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCeb-28W26k

Once you’ve dipped your toe into the waters of Louisiana Blues, whether sitting on the levees of New Orleans or fishing in the bayous, you’ll want more and more. Once you’ve explored a bit, come back here for more Blues exploration! 

Leon J.... Simply Good Music    www.RootsBlues.com

Walkin in Memphis... The history and influence of the Delta

“Walkin in Memphis” The History and Influence of the Delta Blues

The blues and the rich history it lends to the music of today run as deep as the mighty Mississippi and just as wide. This comes together from hundreds of years of troubled times, of revolutions and through many races, colors and creeds. The most important and influential part of the history of Delta blues is between the years of 1890 to 1930. At the time the Mississippi Delta was being settled, slaves and whites alike were inundated with the arduous task of tending the land and dying from fever and malaria which ran rampant via mosquito infested waters and killed a multitude of people. It’s no wonder that gospel music which is in-part the root of Delta music was so popular. You’d need strong faith to keep you going with an uncertain future. 

Many say that Delta Blues began in Memphis and in Clarksdale, Mississippi when a bluesman named Gus Cannon said that he heard the first of this music played in Clarksdale as early as the turn of the century. Then W.C. Handy moved to the little town of Clarksdale and only because he decided to wait for a train at the exact time a gentleman sat at the Tutwiler train station and passed the time by playing a guitar did he hear the inspiration to start writing and playing blues music. Basically the unknown gentleman used a knife to run along the strings of his guitar that produces a deep sorrowful sound. 

From that day on blues was born and would influence the basis of the music we have today. Fretting the instrument as our unknown musician did became the earmark way to make the distinctive sound that is slide blues today and is carried through to pop and rock as well.  

Moving to the Memphis area and making that music scene, W.C. Handy helped forge the way for Blues and Jazz into the mainstream American Music Scene.  You can hear the influence of the traditional marching band sound here starting to transform into a jazzy flavor here with his song titled 'Memphis Blues'  you have to stretch hard to hear blues as you would know it today, but it was one of the songs that put him on the map as a composer and leading this style of music into the mainstream... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGqBmlZR3dc

Robert Johnson was one of the first renown masters of the ‘slide-guitar’ and his songs were stories, instead of the rambling of the already old-school way of singing the blues. From the 1930’s to the 1950’s solo blues artists were gaining popularity and shaping blues into what it is today.  Many of whom luckily for us had a strong  revival from the 60's Folk movement and finally got the due that was due them!

Leon J   www.RootsBlues.com

A Musical Exodus: The Great Migration of the Blues  by Leon J www.rootsblues.com 3/13

Most music scholars know that the Blues moved from the rural American South into Southern Cities, and then to the great cities farther north up through the center of the continent: St. Louis, Detroit, Chicago. A cursory look at where blues records were made will confirm that, but looking at the phenomenon as the movement of a musical form is somewhat misleading. To truly understand, we must consider, rather, the movement of a people. We must examine an exodus of near-biblical proportions, of a people who brought their music with them, and in the process, urbanized and electrified it: we must examine the role The Great Migration played in the development of the first truly American art form: the Blues. 

The Blues, in the South before and during the Depression, was an acoustic affair. Whether it was in the older-Ragtime style, the more countrified Piedmont style that developed from Ragtime, the earthier Delta style, or the minstrel-show-influenced Jug Band style, it was mostly guitar-based, and mostly solo. Yes, there were blues piano players, and Gus Cannon played the banjo with his Jug Stompers, but the Southern rural blues was acoustic guitar music through and through, whether played with a slide or not, open-tuned or not. 

Starting around 1910, African Americans began leaving the rural South. Driven by poverty and the lack of jobs, poor educational opportunities for their children, and continuing racial discrimination, segregation, and Jim Crow laws, more than a million black Americans fled the South for the cities of the North: New York, Boston, and Philadelphia all saw a growth in their African American populations between 1910 and 1930, but the greatest growth was in the great Midwestern cities like St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago.  African Americans formed communities in these cities, but the numbers slowed to almost nothing once the Depression’s effects were felt nationwide. The Great Migration’s first wave ended when jobs up North dried up. 

With the end of the Depression and the onset of World War II, a second, far larger wave of African Americans began to look North for opportunities. The Depression had forever changed agriculture in the South, to the extent that even when the economy of the nation as a whole had improved, tenant farming, sharecropping, and cotton production in general would no longer be a viable way to earn a living. This factor, more than anything else, drove part II of The Great Migration. African Americans filled the Northern cities in greater numbers, and small enclaves grew into large neighborhoods and major districts. And with the increased population and the solidification of black communities, the traditions and art forms that had been brought with the “immigrants” were given the chance to resurge, to flourish and develop. 

With that development came change. Northern urban clubs were bigger and louder than their counterparts down South, and called for more volume. Luckily, the guitar industry had, since the 1930s, largely perfected the electric guitar and amplifier, and so during the 1940s, in Chicago and St. Louis especially, the blues became electric. Drums were needed to get dancers moving, and as any musician knows, once you have drums, you need bass. The electric bass only became viable during the 1950s, but standup basses could be amplified, and were often loud enough on their own. Pianos entered the blues band dynamic, and given the fact that the blues artist now had sidemen to fill out his sound, specialists entered the scene: harmonica players, horn players, and even percussionists. 

The typical lineup of, say, Muddy Waters’ band in the 1950s gives an idea of the classic, electrified, “Chicago Blues” band setup: drums, bass, piano, one or two guitarists augmenting Muddy’s playing, a harmonica player, and Muddy Himself, on occasional lead guitar. All the guitars are electric, and the bass is likely to be as well, unless Willie Dixon is on the session. In the wake of Little Walter’s success with “electric harmonica,” even the harp player probably has his own amplifier. 

Practically speaking, the rural, acoustic blues had run its course by the end of World War II, and it would not be until the nostalgia-driven revivals of the style in the early 1960s that it would return. The Great Migration might have turned the volume up on the blues,  but worry not, those of us keeping the traditional  influences of the pre-war styles alive are still influencing the modern styles of electric blues and rock of today.

Leon J

3/13

American Music's West African Roots

The Roots of West Africa – Born again in American Music   by Leon J   www.RootsBlues.com

So many of the musical terms we hear have an origin that even the most obsessed music enthusiast wouldn’t be aware of. But when you really get into the meat of it, regardless if you have been listening to the same music for decades; the knowledge of the origin will open your eyes and give you a new vision of old music.

Africa, particularly West Africa has been at the root of all modern music as we know it today whether you listen to rock, pop, country, blues or jazz you can find a strand that leads you back to the Dark Continent. It began with the slaves that were captured and sold here in the US and their music which turned into the melodic and powerfully inspirational gospel music we know today. African music is termed polyrhythmic this means the rhythms are rather complex. 

However as time went by and more European settlers came our way, they also made a musical contribution which threw very melodic music in the mix. When these two styles combined, it actually eventually turned into the ‘Ragtime’ music that was so popular in the 1890’s. This sort of music is termed syncopated which in its more literal definition means that yes it has mixed rhythm but also has unexpected rhythms that throw the expectation of what is coming which is very indicative of African-style music. This influence is the roots which lead to jazz and every known style which came after. 

There seems to be now more than ever, a revival of sorts with American artists looking back to an almost forgotten contribution by that enormous continent. They are reaching back either for fresh inspiration and to apply spin to an old tradition or to reach out and retrieve their own ethnic background to breathe life into it again through their music.

Now, to oversimplify this influence by describing it as one single influence would be doing this important artistic contribution a great disservice. Africa which is no less than four times the size of the US and offers 2000 tribes who speak in no less than 2,400 dialects and languages is so significant that if this continent, the seat of humanity didn’t exist, we would shudder to think what we would be listening to today. This gift is something that can only be called a blessing and something we can attribute to many careers and musical pathways. 

In conclusion, there has been an ethnic explosion thanks to our black brothers and sisters in major metropolitan area as well as the south, like Chicago in the Midwest which boasts the largest jazz progressive movement in the country. Don’t be left behind, join the revival with us.

A Day at the Music Instrument Museum....

Instruments of the African Continent and its Evolution to Modern-Day Instruments

by Leon J   WWW.ROOTSBLUES.COM

We have been told that the oldest human bones were found in Africa, it seems only fitting that we can hypothesize that we feel music must have had its beginning there as well. Maybe it began as crudely as the first language I mean if you are banging on rocks and trees and your buddy hears it and likes it well then he or she may try in some way to mimic the experience and eventually improve on it. We can only speculate on how this may have come about but what we do know from archeological finds and history as well as the instruments used today, that there are five categories of instruments used in North African music that are used today in some variation either with the instruments themselves or in a synthetic replication of the sound.  

The Five Categories

1. 1. Tuareg Instruments: This is a drum made of animal gut and is the first of the snare drums we have today. It is classified in modern terms as a frame drum.
2. 2. Sudanese Instruments: This is a horn but you use your voice as the primary sound in the instrument. This was used to induce a trance like state among the people so the sound is that of chanting.
3. 3. Sahrawi instruments: This was the first of what is now a modern day banjo with fishing line strings and raw hide tension straps.
4. 4. Moroccan Instruments: This is a hybrid of a bass and a banjo. 
5. 5. Egyptian Instruments: This is woodwind single-reed instruments that are akin to the modern-day flute.

Walking thru the world famous MIM  Music Instrument Museum last year was amazing for me personally as I was able to see, and hear these instruments first hand.  As I teach in my historic music showcase The Americana Crossroads Music Tribute, these stringed instruments transformed into out single string diddley bow and ultimately our cigar box guitars from the plantations of the southern US  which laid the foundations of our blues and rock and roll as we know it.

Now this is only a small handful in only the historically more populated regions of Africa but this region, from the evidence that we have been shown is the region where most of today’s modern day instruments that are specifically used for playing Delta and jazz were found to have originated.

What’s with the Diddley Bow?

What’s with the Diddley Bow?

You’ve heard of Bo Diddley but what’s a Diddley Bow?  This is a fascinating single string instrument whose origin stems from the Ghana coast in West Africa. So if you are touring that end of the Dark Continent then you may run into the original version but here in the states you’ll be hard-pressed to find one anywhere other than the rural south way deep in the Delta in fact. But when you find it, time will stop while you listen to a rare and mesmerizing sound that you have never laid your ears on before guaranteed.

So who were the first to play this instrument?

The first to play the Diddley Bow were none other than kids! They would play it in teams as one child would beat on the one string with a stick and the other would assist the pitch and change it with a slide made from another stick. 

What other names shall we know you by?

In America we are notorious for adopting things and changing them. So the Diddley bow has a few aliases such as the ‘jitterbug’, the ‘one string’ and a more formal name coined by music scholars the ‘monochord Zither’. 

Sounds fun can I make one of my own?

The answer is a resounding yes! And you won’t break the bank doing it. In fact the constriction is so rudimentary that you could find the parts in your garage! The Diddley Bow is composed only of a slender wooden plank, a string you could use a fishing wire for or and two screws at either end. 

Crazy Diddley Bow factoid

Did you know that the Diddley Bow was played by Mississippi Blues musician Lonnie Pitchford? On Pitchford’s grave there is a playable Diddley Bow on his stone. Other notable Diddley Bow musicians include; Eddie ‘one string’Jones, Napoleon Strickland, Moses Williams and Compton Jones. 

A Little American Diddley Bow History

The history of the Diddley Bow’s landing in America began with its sojourn to this country by African slaves. This instrument was not an instrument at all but a children’s toy. But later on in history as these children grew up and had children and freedom was enjoyed by the next generation , the toys of the slave days gave way to the six string guitar and left the Diddley Bow to a few loyal enthusiasts with a few sporadic revivals over the years including today. Jazz and blues festivals will have a featured few. Lonnie Pitchford is the multi-talented musician that can be credited with keeping the Diddley Bow alive. Though his talents lie in bass, harmonica and harmonica, his passion for the Diddley Bow never allowed him to stop playing it or teaching others how to play it. You can find his story in the documentary American Patchwork, Songs and stories of America Part three: The Land where Blues Began.

So there ya have it; a plank, a string, two screws and another rich contribution to American Music History.

Leon J   www.RootsBlues.Com