 |
 |
|
|
|
|
Otis Grand, Nothing Else Matters
(Sequel 1008-2)
R. L. Burnside, Too Bad Jim
(Fat Possum FP1005)
| I
pulled this CD from the case, put it in my CD player, and
hit "play" as I absent-mindedly read the liner
notes, which raved about Otis Grand's guitar playing. For
example, I learned that he has been named the UK Blues Guitarist
of the Year several years in a row by the British Blues Connection,and
has received three W.C. Handy nominations here. All because
of his guitar playing, I assumed, since the liner notes
went on to place him in the context of the Texas school
of guitar virtuosity. Then his voice lunged out of the
speakers, and I thought, "My God, he really can sing!"
It turns out that the voice actually belonged to Curtis
Salgado, who began with Robert Cray and fronted Roomful of Blues
for a time, and it's a hell of a voice. Salgado is joined
on this recording by Sugar Ray Norcia, who used to sing
with Ronnie Earl and now fronts Roomful,and he's also
joined by Kim Wilson of the Fabulous Thunderbirds. Tremendously appealing singers,
all of them, and one reason why this is truly such an
appealing album. Another reason is rhythm section,yet
another is the horn section... but the biggest reason is
Otis' guitar playing! In the contemporary style, Otis
plays in many styles, but they're all wonderfully
integrated. He also is a fine songwriter, which allows
him to showcase his stylistic versatility.There's two
Magic Sam covers (for some reason these are relatively
tame), some jumpin' tunes in the manner of T-Bone Walker,
some pleas for love in the manner of Bobby Bland, a few
Otis Rush slow burns, and Kim Wilson's "Things I
Forgot To Do," his rueful answer to Guitar Slim's
"Things I Used To Do." On the later number,
Otis switches between Slim type licks to tense, Albert
Collins flurries, offering a nice stylistic as well as
emotional contrast within the same song. OK, OK, no more
"name the influence"; the excellent singing,
the excellent band sound, and Otis' consistent good taste
make this recording all of a piece. No, Otis Grand isn't
breaking new ground here, but he's a hell of a lot of fun,
and not only for guitarists.
|
|
| I
first saw R.L. Burnside in Deep Blues,
the excellent blues documentary narrated by the scholar
Robert Palmer. Palmer and Dave Stewart of the British pop
group the Eurythmics are looking for the real blues in
northern Mississippi, and get a tip that they should
visit R.L. Burnside. They find him living in the kind of
poverty most people can only imagine. He brings his old
St. Louis Music electric guitar onto the porch of his
shack (there is no other word) and launches into the
hypnotic, droning "Jumper on the Line."
Instantly, everyone in the movie theater must have begun
tapping his or her foot. I certainly did, and Dave
Stewart did, as the camera cleverly focuses on his
expensive cowboy boots, virtual parodies of the classic
rural American work shoes. Later, Stewart explains that
the blues is where it all began.Apparently producing
synthesizer pop hasn't damaged his musical judgement. I
knew I would have to hear R.L. Burnside again, and when
his first CD came out on Fat Possum, a new label
dedicated to bringing the sounds of the hill country
north of the delta to the public, I snapped it up. R.L.
Burnside and the Sound Machine's Bad Luck City was
a fine slice of tough rural funk, just like what you
might hear at a party when Burnside and his younger
family members are providing the music. Burnside's new Too Bad
Jim is something else again. The historian James C. Cobb, in his The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity, shows how the Mississippi Delta, far from being somehow primordially isolated from modern America, was in fact formed by the most modern kinds of economic pressure. Tremendous profits were to be had by entrepreneurially gifted whites who figured out how to use Jim Crow to exact cheap labor to work the incredibly fertile lands of the Delta. The emotional intensity of Delta blues, then, far from being especially African, and contrary to Palmer's earlier book Deep Blues, was formed by essentially American experiences of social dislocation. African-Americans of the less fertile lands north of the Delta, however, could preserve many distinctively African musical and communal practices (see Deep Blues for more examples). Which brings us to Too bad Jim. For this recording, R.L. Burnside picked up his slide, called his young blonde protege` Kenny Brown, the superbly attentive drummer Calvin Jackson and bassist Dwayne Burnside, and together they generate droning, churning, dance grooves reminiscent of Fred McDowell, who was in fact R.L.'s longtime neighbor.Some blues standards--Lightnin' Hopkin's Short-Haired Women, John Lee Hooker's When My First Wife Left Me,-- all surrender to the drone, along with such idiosyncratic local standards as Old Black Mattie and Goin' Down South. Sure the beat turns around, in time-honored blues fashion, but the pulse, the real beat is always there. This is unfussy music, hell, it's sloppy in the best way. It has nothing to do with the flood of recreations of various blues styles, to say nothing of guitar virtuosity, that afflict the blues scene. This isn't virtuosic music, either, but if you think it's easy to play this kind of droning dance music, try it; you'll almost invariably lose your concentration or speed up too much. This is music for drinking and dancing. It's not music for admiring, but I admire Fat Possum for it's dedication to bringing such sounds to the public. This recording hasn't left my car stereo in three weeks. Take that as a recommendation.
|
|
|
On January 26, 1996, I had the pleasure of seeing Ernie
Williams and his Wildcats rock the Louisiana Community
Bar and Grill in Manhattan. Ernie is the benign patriarch
of the blues scene in Albany, and in 1994, the Mayor of
Albany declared an Ernie Williams Day. The night I saw
him, Ernie was a few days away from his 71st birthday,
and the years, 57 of them spent entertaining lovers of
the blues, have not diminished his power. Ernie's band is
much younger, consisting of Mark Emanation and Joe Mele
on guitar (both of them fine players), the former in an
intense, Freddy King style with long string bends, the
later in a punctual, conversation style more like B.
B.'s; both of them distinctive slide players to boot--
and the Berklee--trained Rocky Petrocelli on drums, and
they can funk, they can rock, they can shuffle, and they
can also do a rollicking Chuck Berry take on Dylan's "Highway
61." Some highlights of the evening were a sweet
take on Elmore James' "It Hurts Me Too," where
Ernie replaces Elmore's anguished reproach with the
dignified assertion, "When things go wrong, wrong
with you, it hurts me too." Another highlight was a
churning, Stonesy take on the traditional gospel number
"The Lord Will Make a Way Somehow," which Mark
told me Ernie has known for 67 years. Finally, Ernie
invested the often angry " Five Long Years"
with the wisdom of a man who's seen it all and hasn't let
it get him down, while the guitars whispered, chattered,
and sang. Ernie's age, which ain't nothing but a number,
is not the attraction, since Ernie pumps out as much
energy from his bass to drive the band as any younger
man. Ernie's warmth and spirit, evident in his voice and
on his face are the attraction. Tony Nassar top of page |
