Delta dawn

IN SEARCH OF THE BLUES: Black Voices, White Visions

By Marybeth Hamilton (Jonathan Cape)

Marybeth Hamilton did not go down to the crossroads in search of the blues. She went there to turn clichés upside down. Her groundbreaking book doesn’t pretend to be a history of the genre; instead Hamilton goes in search of those who originally went in search of the blues. She describes the early song-collectors, ethnomusicologists and record obsessives, and examines how their work evolved into an accepted, party line on how the blues came down from the Delta. All had different agendas but one thing in common: they were after an authentic voice, one that existed before sheet music or the wax cylinder.

Her earliest Livingston to explore the unmapped Southern musical jungle is white sociologist Howard Odum who in 1906 ventured out to record “coon songs”. He accidentally recorded the blues in a condition regarded by collectors as the Holy Grail: in its natural state, before record companies got to it. But, appalled by the licentiousness and degradation he witnessed, Odum transcribed his cylinders then threw them away.

Twenty years later, Dorothy Scarborough followed in Odum’s footsteps. She was a daughter of the Confederacy, nostalgic for the days when the plantation was allegedly a source of transcendent singing. She was much more comfortable transcribing the memories of elderly whites who had learnt to sing and dance from their beloved black mammies. Scarborough was appalled by WC Handy – he commercialised the blues – and turned down the opportunity to be the first musicologist to hear Leadbelly.

Instead, John Lomax exposed Leadbelly’s “pure” blues outside the prison walls, and with his son Alan – who discovered Muddy Waters – the Lomaxes became the century’s most famous ethnomusicologists. But for all the good they achieved, their methods are now regarded with scepticism. Lomax senior was paternalistic and wanted to keep Leadbelly’s music uncontaminated (no Gene Autry songs, please). Lomax junior was more of a political activist – he fled the US during McCarthyism, the FBI on his tail – but he still gave himself the copyrights to traditional songs.

Hamilton portrays John McKune as the original record-collecting misanthrope, always looking for a 78 that was primeval, authentic and preferably unknown. McKune championed Charley Patton over the romanticised Robert Johnson but, like the latter, he died mysteriously: his body was found gagged, bound and naked, his legendary record collection nowhere to be found.

Hamilton describes how McKune’s acolytes – the 1960s “blues mafia” – lead to the Delta blues enjoying its “most authentic” status, despite the evidence that 1940s Delta jukeboxes were playing 78s by Count Basie and Fats Waller rather than local bluesmen.

Scratch a folkie in search of the authentic and a feud quickly rises to the surface. Hamilton shows the Delta blues became far more popular long after its 1930s heyday, thanks to the white evangelists – although their uncompromising, hypocritical attitudes would have banished blacks to reservations, as long as the music stayed pure. In just 200 dense, fascinating pages, Hamilton’s intellectual rigour causes us to reconsider the evolution of the 20th century’s most influential musical style. - Chris Bourke

Gone up North for a while

1. Juno to Juneau
Sometimes the obvious headline is the best one, until it gets over used. That’s already happened with J2J: the director of Juno, Jason Reitman, doesn’t even want to talk about it. But he did admit this much: “You’ve got a 17-year-old pregnant teenager, and Juneau is the capital of Alaska. The coincidence is cute.”

2. Northern exposure
The Juneau connection made me think of the first time I’d heard of the place: Jonathan Raban’s 1999 book Passage to Juneau, in which he takes a solo sea voyage through the Northwest Passage from Seattle, Washington, to Juneau, Alaska. As with his first sea voyage, Coasting, it was the personal journey that resonated most. But it reminded me that in the 1992 election Raban wrote a brilliant piece in the Los Angeles Times Magazine analysing the change in Bill Clinton’s use of language as that year’s campaign progressed. He started out with complex, intellectual, vocab-challenging verbosities. He finished using Good Ol’ Boy aphorisms. Earlier this year Raban considered how the language Rev Jeremiah Wright – the bogey man of black evangelism – had influenced that of his most famous parishoner, Barack Obama. Raban’s occasional journalism is available on-line. He has lived in Seattle since 1990, and this Englishman abroad is always good on US politics. I’d love to hear his take on what’s going on in Juneau.

3. When You’re Hot, You’re Hot
Jerry Reed, who died this week in Nashville, had a breakthrough when Chet Atkins told him to put more of his own personality in his songwriting. ‘US Male’ and ‘Guitar Man’ quickly followed and they were instant hits for Elvis in his allegedly moribund post-army period. The songs were autobiographical of both men: ‘Guitar Man’ is a redneck road-song to match Chuck Berry’s ‘Promised Land’. Reed’s picker quits his job at the carwash, writes his mama a goodbye note and leaves town by sundown, his guitar hidden under his coat. He drifts South, bums a ride to Macon, Georgia, and finds a job as a swingin’ guitar man in Mobile. It was perfect for the big finale of Elvis’s comeback special, but here’s a leather-clad version from elsewhere in the 1968 show. Reed was no fool; he courageously told the Colonel he was keeping the publishing on his two songs. But he didn’t rest on his laurels collecting royalties. Like Roger Miller, he just had fun following his instincts. He starred in the Smokey and the Bandit series, had other hits like ‘When You’re Hot, You’re Hot’ and the great swamp-rocker, ‘Amos Moses’. One of his last hits was ‘She’s Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)’. Which brings me to …

4. When You’re Not, You’re Not
A high-profile broadcasting personality. A stoush with the missus. Warrants for an arrest. A career in tatters. Andy Kershaw, this is your life.

5. Yellow Man
Okay, last connection to Elvis. What will Rodney Hide’s next unwise fashion statement be: wearing his Y-fronts outside his trousers? With his obsessive blitzing of Winston recently, trying every which way to tie the man they call Luigi in knots, Rockin’ Rod may feel he is now dancing with the stars. But I don’t think he’s quite pulled this one off yet: here is how a man in a yellow jacket dances with a star.

5 x 5

1. Olympic Cleansing
As Beijing is left with the clean-up and the bill, the uglies can return and the city’s protest parks can once again fill with joyous folk going about their business, I was thinking of earlier Olympic protests. That image from the 1968 Mexico Olympics of the American athletes on the dais holding up Black Power salutes has been etched in my mind for 40 years. Tommie Smith and John Carlos had just won medals in the 200 metres, and made a statement, whereas this year’s winner made an exhibition. Then I ran into a Latin-American expert, who told me about the Tlatelolco Massacre, which took place in Mexico just days before the 1968 Olympics. Protests against the oppressive government ended up in 200-300 people getting shot. If this was on the NZBC news, it was after my bedtime. “The Olympics must go on,” declared IOC dictator Avery Brundage, “This had nothing to do with the Games.” Curious fashion facts, from the days of black and white TV: Smith and Carlos wore one black glove each, from the same pair. Part of the reason was they thought they’d have to shake hands with Brundage, who had worked hard to get a segregated South African team into the Games. And in Tlatelolco, the government sent in two militia groups: the regular army, and the president’s own Battalion Olympia, disguised as civilians. So the army would be able to spot the others mingling with the unarmed protestors, each member of the Battalion wore a single white glove and white sock. As the bullets started to fly, the Battalion shot a general, so the army then blitzed everyone in sight. The Battalion dropped its cover, crying out “Don’t shoot – we’re the Battalion!” Any ruthlessness in Beijing didn’t happen in front of the cameras.

2. Life is a Hurricane
Next week it is three years since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. The Independent interviews the editor of local paper the Times-Picayune about its impact on the paper, and what happens when the world moves on and you’re the only ones left dealing with the mess. “Imagine how newspapers in this country would have reacted if 160,000 people – about the population of Brighton – had been homeless for three years, forced to find lodging in distant towns or to survive in trailer parks.”

3. The Godfather of Soul
Jerry Wexler’s impact has been so vast – on popular music, and my own take on it – that I’ve been reluctant to get started on it. Luckily, there have been a couple of great blogs with terrific music links, the Adios Lounge and the B-Side. The key points have been well covered everywhere – Aretha, Muscle Shoals, Dusty in Memphis – but still two pieces that moved me most I read back in 2000. Alex Halberstadt’s profile in Salon is excellent, but best of all was Austin, Texas writer Raoul Hernandez’s funny, thorough piece about Wexler’s often ignored impact on country music. Wexler produced two albums for Willie Nelson – Shotgun Willie and Phases & Stages – that sold poorly but led to his breakthrough, Red-Headed Stranger. I still think Phases & Stages is Nelson’s best: he could still be bothered to write songs, and this concept album about a breakup (from the male and female points-of-view) was simple, brilliant, and heart-breaking. And it was produced in Muscle Shoals. (Both albums also have unforgettable opening lines: “Well it’s a Bloody Mary morning, she left me without warning, sometime in the night” … and “Shotgun Willie, sits around in his underwear …”). Yes, ‘I Never Loved a Man’ is mind-blowing, and Dusty in Memphis is masterly. But Aretha’s Young Gifted and Black is her masterpiece (here’s ‘Oh Me Oh My’), and Phases & Stages is Willie’s. A few years ago Marty Duda interviewed Wexler and his former Atlantic colleague Ahmet Ertegun for a National Radio series. In separate conversations, both these ageing dynamos queried Marty’s American accent and in wistful asides said it must be great to move to New Zealand: to get away from the rat race. And now both have gone. (Here's an NPR interview with Wexler.) In his Salon piece Halberstadt describes Wexler as “a musical innovator, a brilliant producer, a shrewd businessman, a master manipulator and a shameless carpetbagger”. Wexler was so dogmatic that his autobiography The Rhythm and The Blues even quoted others who had a different perspective on events. Sam Moore, formerly of Sam & Dave – who got left high and dry by Wexler – gives an artist’s perspective, and also comments on how the Scientologists prevented him from saying goodbye to his friend who wrote ‘Soul Man,’ Isaac Hayes.

4. Rainbow’s End
Harold Arlen’s classic ‘Stormy Weather’ is never far from my mind, especially this winter: songwriting perfection. Ted Barron at Boogie-Woogie Flu agrees; for a week or so he has just posted some wildly varying versions, including Arlen himself, Lena Horne, plus Memphis group the Reigning Sound’s garage-punk version from 2002. After that you’ll be looking for some more Arlen, but over the rainbow. So did Billy T James, and with the punchline of this clip he nails my nagging problem with Arlen’s other octave-leaping classic. (Includes cameo appearance by Max Cryer.)

5. Get Your Kicks
I recently had to give a talk on geography and music, a rich area. Distracting me from writing it was this addictive musical geographer’s toy from The Word. And afterwards I came across this 50 Songs for 50 States project by the Boston Phoenix. Many of the classics are better than you’d predict, and there’s a very high hit rate for recent visitations. By comparison, the Guardian’s Laura Barton takes a road to nowhere.

One-upmanship

Copying iconic images is old news for photographers covering the Olympics. So it was inevitable that someone would emulate the famous 1972 shot of Mark Spitz displaying his – count ’em – seven bits of bling against his hairless chest. (Out of shot are the stars-and-stripes budgie smugglers.)

Michael Phelps, of course, has earned his right to this pose. It’s just a shame that Beijing’s imposing medal ribbons have made it look like he is wearing a fetching halter-necked top borrowed from
J Lo. (Out of shot is the taffeta cocktail frock.)