Archive for the 'Non classé' Category

Sometime around 1975, I found myself in Treble Clef Records on the Sparks Street mall in Ottawa, the only significant record shop in the area at that time, which unfortunately went out of business a few years later. I had money in my pocket and was leafing through their collection of “long-playing” (LP) records lined up against the wall when I came across the LP pictured at the right. It said “Mississippi Country Blues by Jack Owens and Bud Spires” and had a nice photo of Jack Owens and his horse on the cover! I had no idea who Jack Owens or Bud Spires were but Mississippi Country Blues was right down my alley. The title was enough to stop me right there – “It Must Have Been The Devil.” I was raised Catholic and I knew many dreadful tales about “the Father of Lies”, more so since I was an avid horror movie enthusiast, where Mephistopheles frequently showed up uninvited. I couldn’t resist and bought the album on the spot.

When I listened to the LP at home, I loved the laid-back sound of the songs but the title song, “It Must Have Been The Devil”, stood apart from all the others. Its tonalities, harmonies and resonance were haunting. For more than nine minutes, the guitar kept weaving hypnotic patterns and Jack Owens’ powerful, all-out vocal was like a force unleashed, unlike any other singer I knew. This was some of the eeriest, loneliest and deepest blues sounds I’d ever heard.

Of course, I tried to learn the song but all I could get was that it’s in the key of E! At that time, I knew just about every open guitar tuning that existed, thanks to Bert Jansch, Davey Graham, John Renbourn and all those tremendously talented guitarists that had spearheaded the British Celtic Revival. I tried and tried but I could not play the notes Jack Owens played in any tuning that I knew! Facing a brick wall, I eventually discarded the song, extremely disappointed that I had failed at discovering its secrets. Years went by and my Jack Owens/Bud Spires LP remained stored in my voluminous collection, out of sight and out of mind.

Fast forward many years to the digital age and the seemingly endless amount of information available to us at the click of a mouse. I had heard Skip James during the 60s Folk and Blues Revival and I learned that he was from Bentonia, Mississippi and played his guitar in an open D Minor tuning (sometimes called “crossnote tuning), which was extremely odd since the songs he sang were all in major keys! To hear me play Skip James’ classic “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues” in crossnote tuning and to learn more about Skip James, click here.

Crossnote tuning originally came from Henry Stuckey, an unrecorded bluesman who had learned it from Bahamian soldiers while stationed in France during World War I. He brought it home to Bentonia after the war, a town of less than 500 people located on the edge of the Delta, between Jackson and Yazoo City, Mississippi. All the bluesmen from Bentonia eventually ended up playing their guitars in this crossnote tuning. Henry Stuckey taught the tuning to Skip James, who taught it to Jack Owens who, more recently, taught it to Jimmy “Duck” Holmes. Skip James was certainly the most famous of these artists and it is fairly certain that he also taught the tuning to Robert Johnson, who used it to play his composition “Hellhound On My Trail.”

“It Must have Been The Devil” has a chronology of its own and the song changed over the years. It was first recorded by Skip James in 1931 under the title “Devil Got My Woman.” These early recordings, made in the midst of the Great Depression, sold poorly and drifted into obscurity, as did James himself. James was rediscovered in 1964 and made new recordings of most of his repertoire, including ‘Devil Got My Woman.” He died in 1969 at the age of 67 and the following year, musicologist David Evans met Jack Owens during a field trip to Bentonia. In 1970, he recorded Owens and blues harp player Bud Spires playing a number of songs on Owens’ porch, including the landmark recording of “It Must Have Been The Devil”, a song about isolation, betrayal and the supernatural. Evans was later quoted as saying “Hearing Jack Owens singing out across the fields late at night is one of the most moving experiences I have ever had.”

Owens did not seek to become a professional recording artist. He farmed, sold bootleg liquor, and ran a weekend juke joint in Bentonia for most of his life. Originally set in Owens’ home, the juke joint became so popular that it moved to a separate and larger house across the street. Festivities lasted from Friday evenings until Sunday mornings, with non-stop barbecue, bootleg, music and dancing. Sometimes the music came from Owens’ own juke box, but it was mostly played by Owens and Spires themselves. Jack Owens learned to play especially for the raucous dancers at his juke point, using a thumb pick to be heard above the din of the celebrations, stomping his boots on the floor for rhythm. He played on any battered instrument he could find, even an old 12-string guitar body fitted with the usual six strings, sometimes using a pencil clamped over the strings with elastics for a capo. Over the years, Evans recorded Owens playing in seven different guitar tunings.

Jack Owens died in 1997 at the ripe old age of 92, a tribute to the restorative qualities of bootleg, barbecue and the blues.

Richard Séguin – voice, acoustic guitar, percussion (foot)

It Must Have Been The Devil

When I was a teenager, a lot of guitarists hated country music – I know I sure did. Harlan Howard (1927-2002), a popular songwriter, was asked in the 1950s what constituted country music, to which he famously replied “Three chords and the truth.” I had no problem with the truth but I hated those three chords. Three chords is what guitarists played if they couldn’t play anything else. Three chords was a capitulation. In all fairness, country music at that time featured some horrible songs – Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man”, on its own, set women’s rights back 100 years. I eventually changed my mind when a few artists started writing true, honest songs like Merle Haggard’s (1937-2016) “Mama Tried” or Kris Kristofferson’s (b. 1936) “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down.”

These days, artists from diverse backgrounds are writing credible songs that resonate with very diverse groups. One such artist is Mary Gauthier (b. 1962), who chose a very circuitous route to end up where she is now. Born in New Orleans to a mother she never knew, she was adopted at the age of one but struggled with many demons growing up. Drug and alcohol addiction ruled her life. At 15, she ran away from home and spent the next several years in drug rehab centres, halfway houses or living with friends. She spent her 18th birthday in a jail cell. She eventually opened a Cajun restaurant in Boston but was arrested for drunk driving on opening night in 1990. However, she has been sober ever since. She wrote her first song at the age of 35, sold her share in the restaurant, and used the money to finance her second album. From then on, her career has climbed steadily – she appeared at many folk festivals, was nominated for three Gay and Lesbian American Music Awards and named new artist of the year by the American Music Association in 2005.

Her most famous song is “Mercy Now”, which she wrote at a time when she felt that she wasn’t getting the artistic attention she deserved. One of her friends reminded her that, considering her life up to now, what she deserved was perhaps the last thing to hope for. Her friend suggested that she might pray for mercy instead.

My version of “Mercy Now” only uses the first two verses of the song. I wrote the last two verses myself to avoid singing Gauthier’s last verses, which glorify America, her Church and State, among other things. I am not an American and I look at America from beyond its borders. What I see is the genocide of the American Indian (First Nations), the systemic racism, segregation and murder of African Americans, the large scale adoption of slavery, and state-sanctioned hand guns and assault weapons which contribute to an endless stream of mass murders. As for the Church, there are over 4,000 religions, churches, denominations and faith groups in the U. S., which dilutes any notion of faith. We should also all keep in mind the Branch Davidians of Waco, Texas, where the FBI and the sect clashed for 51 days in 1993, leading to the deaths of nearly 80 people. Not to be outdone, Jim Jones founded the Peoples Temple which ended on November 18, 1878, when 909 people died in a mass murder/suicide at its remote settlement of Jonestown, Guyana.

All this being said, I find that “Mercy Now” is the perfect song for this time of year and for all those who have witnessed the pandemic. We all need a little mercy now.

Richard Séguin – voice, acoustic guitars, electric guitar, electric bass guitar
Roch Tassé played and recorded the drums at Howlin’ Huskies Studio, Ste-Cécile-de-Masham, Que.

Mercy Now

In the early twentieth century, the invention of recording technology, the phonograph and the phonograph record made music available to the common people for the first time. In previous centuries, music was very much entertainment for the rich and affluent, symphony theaters and opera houses being beyond the means of everyone else. However, a different, more rural music was emerging, particularly in the British Isles, thanks to composers like Robert Burns (1759-1796) of Scotland and the Irish composer Turlough O’Carolan (1670-1738). These new ballads, reels and jigs came over to America with the European settlers, especially those who settled in the Appalachian Mountain region.

In Appalachia, a particular type of ballad, which singled out tragedies, came to the front. Train wrecks, mining disasters and murders became the subject of many popular songs – dozens were written about the sinking of the Titanic alone. Murder being a purely human venture, both aberrant and alluring, those particular songs became very popular and were known as “murder ballads.” For a brief look at Appalachian music and to hear Alrich, Roch and I play my interpretation of “Little Sadie”, a well-known murder ballad, click here.

The song “Henry Lee” is of Scottish origin with Scandinavian relatives and has several distinct versions with different titles, melodies and lyrics. For me, the definitive version was recorded by Dick Justice (1906-1962), a coal miner from West Virginia. At a time when Blacks and Whites seldom associated, Justice learned guitar from a black bluesman from Virginia named Luke Jordan (1892-1952). Both were able fingerpickers but Justice’s “Henry Lee” is delivered in the most basic of styles. He only recorded ten sides for Brunswick Records in 1929 and they never sold well because of the Great Depression. Afterwards, he went back to the coal mines and an early grave, like so many other miners. His recording of “Henry Lee” is the first song in the Anthology of American Folk Music, eighty-four songs published in 1952, which became the Bible for the Folk Revival.

“Henry Lee”, a quintessential murder balled, is divided into five verses – Lee’s rejection of a potential lover, the girl’s murder of Henry Lee, the gruesome disposal of the body, the murderer’s menacing of a bird who witnessed the murder, and the bird’s retribution.

Part of the charm of the old ballads are the terms and speech patterns left over from an earlier time. In “Henry Lee”, I’ve chosen to “modernize” a few of the expressions used by Dick Justice – “bend and bow” becomes “bended bow”, “wobble” becomes “warble”, etc. Some may wonder how a murder could be committed with a “little pen-knife” but it was originally a “weapon knife,” pronounced “weepin’ knife,” from whence “wee pen-knife,” and an easy verbal jump to “little pen-knife.”

Richard Séguin – voice, acoustic guitar, mandolin

Henry Lee

By the time I first heard John Hurt, he had already died, passing away in 1966 at the age of 73. I saw him around 1968 on CBC reruns of Pete Seeger’s American TV show, “Rainbow Quest”, which featured many of the blues and roots artists which the American Folk Revival had brought into prominence. The camera work gave us close-ups of Mississippi John’s fingerpicking right hand, where all the intricate and interconnected movements of all his fingers were revealed as they struck the guitar strings and created a full and harmonious arrangement. This was a true revelation for me and it changed my life. Before I heard John Hurt, I was a guitar strummer, like millions of others. After I hear John Hurt, I willed myself into becoming a guitar player, like him.

In the 60s, this was no easy task. Now, there are many didactic videos freely available on the internet, teaching guitar arrangements for any song imaginable. Back then, there were books, especially those published by the Stephan Grossman Guitar Workshop, out of New York City. I was very skeptical about sending a postal money order to New York City from Rockland, but I took a chance and, a few weeks later, I received my instructional booklet in the mail. The songs were presented in tablature, a more pictorial representation of musical notation that I knew nothing about! However, I eventually figured everything out.

I started with simple songs like “Pay Day.” I learned how to create a bass pattern with my thumb. I gradually brought in the four other fingers of my right hand, used for melody, harmony, counterpoint and syncopation. Before I knew it, I understood all these basic elements of composition and was able to use them freely. It was a very powerful lesson in self-worth, especially for a kid who had always thought of himself as inept. So I grew as a musician and I grew as a person, thanks to John Hurt.

I always loved the relaxed pace of “Pay Day”, its amusing lyrics and its almost child-like spirit, a characteristic found in much of John Hurt’s music. He was everyone’s grand-father, a benevolent smiling friend in a felt hat, so beloved by his young, mostly white audience.

“Pay Day” was not part of John Hurt’s original 1928 recordings but his tremendous popularity in the 1960s led to additional recordings. “Pay Day” was recorded in 1965.

For a more detailed narrative of Mississippi John Hurt’s life and artistry, click here.

Richard Séguin – voice and acoustic guitar

Pay Day

In 1964, Bob Dylan released “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”, which he sang while playing only an acoustic guitar. The lyrics read like a newspaper account of an incident that occurred at the Emerson Hotel, in Maryland, on February 9, 1963, where a 51-year-old black servant named Hattie Carroll was struck with the cane of a drunken William Zantzinger, a 24-year-old rich white patron of the hotel. Carroll died eight hours after the assault. Zantsinger was subsequently found guilty of assault and sentenced to six months in the county jail, a verdict that incensed many.

In 1965, Bob Dylan released “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, which he sang while playing an electric guitar, backed by Mike Bloomfield (electric guitar), Al Kooper (electric piano) and session musicians Paul Griffin (piano), Harvey Brooks (electric bass) and Bobby Gregg (drums). The lyrics describe a hallucinogenic vision of Juarez, Mexico, where the narrator encounters poverty, sickness, despair, prostitution, indifferent authorities, alcohol and drugs before finally returning to New York City. The lyrics make reference to works by celebrated authors like Malcolm Lowry, Edgar Allan Poe, Jack Kerouac and Arthur Rimbaud.

So what happened? How did Dylan change so completely in one short year?

Of course, some superficial manifestations of change like hairdos and clothes can be discounted. However, the change from acoustic to electric instruments was extraordinary and provided Dylan with many more colours to his palette. Electric instruments were a very important means of expressing the nuances of his new and obviously expanding world. He no longer sang about the politics that were corrupting and tearing American society apart. Afterward, Dylan sang of the whole world, with all its magic and all its aberrations.

From my point of view, throughout his early “protest” period, Dylan sang of things that happened in a foreign country. However righteous that I found his cause (and I did), I was aware that he had nothing to do with Canada. With a few and far between exceptions like Thomas D’Arcy McGee (1868), George Brown (1880) and Pierre Laporte (1970), we don’t assassinate politicians in Canada. Our restaurants serve all people, our motels welcome everyone and black people can even drink at public water fountains in Canada. It has always been so, as far as I know. We are not Americans and, starting in 1965, Dylan’s compositions left America to explore roads previously left untraveled.

Alrick Huebener

Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun

or incredibly romantic phrases like:

The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face

Gone are the common words expressing bigotry and hatred. Here was a poet trying to describe the ineffable. The lyrics to “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” have caused much confusion to many people, beginning with the title itself. Tom Thumb is never mentioned in the lyrics and many believe the reference comes from Arthur Rimbaud’s Ma bohème (My Bohemian Life), where he refers to himself as a stargazing Tom Thumb. I believe the logic of the title can be found in the original book of The History of Tom Thumb. Tom’s story was originally intended for adults, but it was amended over the years and relegated to the nursery by the middle-19th century. Published in 1621, it was the first fairy tale printed in English. It relates a story from the days of King Arthur, where old Thomas of the Mountain wants nothing more than a son, even if he’s no bigger than his thumb. He sends his wife to consult with Merlin the magician and in three months time, she gives birth to the diminutive Tom Thumb. Several outlandish adventures befall our tiny hero – he proceeds to fall into a batter and gets cooked into a Christmas pudding, which he eats his way out of. Tom gets swallowed (and excreted) by a cow, carried away by a raven, and swallowed once again by a giant and a fish. I rather believe that Dylan makes an analogy between these fantastic hardships of Tom Thumb and the demoralizing situations related in the song’s lyrics.

Roch Tassé

Richard Séguin – voice, 6 and 12 string acoustic guitars
Alrick Huebener – upright bass
Roch Tassé – drums

Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues

During the mid 1920s, the unexpectedly strong sales of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s Paramount 78s sent record scouts scrambling throughout the southern United States to sign other blues artists. One of their best discoveries was Arthur “Blind” Blake (1896-1934), a sophisticated guitarist whose warm, relaxed voice added to his appeal. Today, the man with the “piano-sounding guitar” is still regarded as the master of ragtime and blues guitar fingerpicking. Some of his songs feature some raucous boogie-woogie phrases that he must have picked up from some of his contemporaries like the great Meade Lux Lewis, a master of the boogie-woogie piano. Certainly, no other guitarist played phrases like that at that time.

Very little is known about Arthur Blake. He was born blind and there were some questions as to his real name – he was simply known as Blind Blake all his life. His single surviving photo is a promotional print made by his life-long recording company, Paramount Records. It shows Blake sitting cross-legged, dressed in his Sunday best and playing a small parlour guitar. In one of the most callous and insensitive decisions I’ve ever comer across, Paramount included a dedication on the lower part of the photo saying “Cordially Yours, Blind Blake”, in a flowery script. Anyone can see from his sunken eyes on the photo that Blake is bling and, obviously, incapable of writing. Anther example of the blatant disregard for black artists in that era.

Arthur Blake’s recording career spanned six years, from 1926 to 1932, all with Paramount Records. In that time, he was extremely popular and recorded some 80 sides as a solo artist as well as playing guitar for artists like Leola Wilson, Ma Rainey, Bertha Henderson, Chocolate Brown and many others. He was the most gifted guitarist of his era, had a powerful voice and was comfortable with ragtime, ballads or blues.

Paramount’s ads in the Chicago Defender, a popular African-American newspaper, emphasized Blake’s guitar style, which was often compared to a piano because of his magnificent dexterity on the instrument. Of all his songs, “Police Dog Blues”, recorded in 1929, is my favourite. Not only is the song a classic example of Blake’s sophisticated guitar work and solid vocals, it is humourous and yet also paints a stark picture of the life of an itinerant musician during the inter-war years.

Being blind, Arthur Blake’s life was harder than most. It was a time of severe segregation, where black people could not sleep in the same rooming houses, eat in the same restauraunts or even drink from the same water fountains as white people. There was no Green Book (which was published after Blake’s death) to help black people decide on “friendly” accommodations. In “Police Dog Blues”, Blake talks of travelling, staying alone, making shipping arrangements for his trunk to follow him wherever he played. For a blind black man, an easy prey for thieves, it was a hard life and you did the best you could.

In 1932, the Great Depression caught up with Paramount Records and they went out of business. Blake never recorded again and he died in 1934. Facts about Blake’s life and his death were hard to come by. The Reverend Gary Davis believed he had been run over by a streetcar, a plausible fate for a blind man. It wasn’t until 2011 that facts finally surfaced when a group of researchers led by Alex van der Tuuk published various documents regarding Blake’s life and death in the journal “Blues and Rhythm.”

Working from a small obituary found in the Chicago Defender, they searched the Milwaukee area and found a remote part of the cemetery where he had been buried (Glen Oaks), the grave found in a bush along with garbage and an American flag. .From the 1934 death certificate they found, we now know that Blake was born in Newport News, Virginia and married Beatrice McGee in 1931. This is extremely comforting to me – Blake finally had someone to share his lonely and dark world with.. It must have felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off of his shoulders. 

In April 1933 he was hospitalized with pneumonia and never fully recovered. On December 1, 1934, after three weeks of decline, Beatrice Blake summoned an ambulance. He died on the way to the hospital, the cause of death listed as pulmonary tuberculosis. Blake was buried in Glen Oaks Cemetery, in Glendale, Wisconsin in a previously unmarked grave. The county paid for the burial so the popular artist heard and enjoyed by so many was never paid for his efforts, like many others. Thanks to the exemplary work by van der Tuuk and his researchers, Arthur Blake now has a headstone, as does his wife Beatrice.

My Taylor 30th anniversary guitar

In 2004, to commemorate 30 years of guitar making, the Taylor company introduced a limited issue Grand Concert series guitar featuring a classic slotted peg head, elaborate pearl and 18k gold inlay, the best quality woods and state-of-the-art construction techniques. It is a vintage, prior to 1930 look that I’ve been looking for since I saw Jimmie Rodgers’ magnificent 1928 Martin guitar. Not surprisingly, one of these rare beauties found its way into the exquisite collection of my long-time friend Pépé (Pierre Pinard). Following casual negotiations between two good friends, that guitar is now part of my collection. I used it in my recording of “Police Dog Blues” and it will be my guitar of choice from now on.

Richard Seguin – voice and acoustic guitar

Police Dog Blues

Robert Wilkins (1896 – 1987) was an American country blues guitarist and vocalist, the son of an African-American father and a white and Cherokee mother. Wilkins was born in Hernando, Mississippi., at the center of the cotton industry. He recalls making the 22-mile trip from Hernando to Memphis as a small boy. “We would drive a wagon or buggy to Memphis.”, he said. “I hauled five bales of cotton on a two-mule team to the cotton shed. Then I picked up freight to take back to the merchandise store.”

When Wilkins was very young, his father was forced to leave Mississippi to avoid prosecution on bootlegging charges. His mother remarried a very fine guitar player who taught Robert how to play. After service in World War I, Wilkins played on the same circuit as did Furry Lewis, Memphis Minnie and Son House. He also organized a jug band to capitalize on the “jug band craze” then in vogue. Like many of his contemporaries, he played for very different audiences throughout the South and needed to be versatile to make a living. Consequently, he played ragtime, blues, minstrel songs, and gospel music with equal facility and dexterity. He recorded four sides for Victor Records in 1928 and eight sides for Brunswick Records the following year, including “That’s No Way To Get Along.” Thanks to his outstanding guitar talent, he was also asked to play on a number of recordings by other artists, including Will Shade, the founder of the influential Memphis Jug Band and one of the architects of what would later be known as The Memphis Sound.

In 1935, Wilkins recorded five additional titles for Vocalion Records but sales were poor during the Great Depression and he saw the writing on the wall. In 1936, he witnessed a murder at one of his performances and he started doubting his choice of careers. At that time his wife also became very seriously ill and Wilkins, a religious man, offered his life to God in exchange for that of his wife. His wife survived and Wilkins kept his pledge and joined the Church of God in Christ, becoming an ordained minister in 1950. Wilkins specialized in healing and herbal remedies but never stopped playing the guitar, although he left the blues for more appropriate gospel numbers. However, he kept his old blues guitar arrangements and played them as instrumentals. Occasionally, he would add religious lyrics to his earlier blues pieces and create a “new” song, which he did with “That’s No Way To Get Along.” The new lyrics were based on Christ’s parable to the Pharisees about the prodigal son, the third and last parable of a cycle of redemption found in the Bible. He named the resulting song “Prodigal Son”, which he recorded for Piedmont Records in 1964. “Prodigal Son” was then famously taken up by The Rolling Stones on their album “Beggars Banquet” in 1968.

The Reverend Robert Wilkins was “rediscovered” in the early 1960’s, like many bluesmen from the early days when roots music was being created. He was persuaded to record an album of religious material but never played the blues again. It is very likely that “That’s No Way To Get Along”, one of the very best blues songs I have ever heard, would have been lost and forgotten, were it not for the determination of some contemporary artists to preserve the music of the past. I must mention the work of Valerie and Ben Turner, a married couple who play Piedmont Style blues with great style and vitality. Piedmont, a literal French translation of “foothill”, is a plateau of the Eastern United States that sits between the Atlantic coast and the Appalachian mountains. In addition, Guy Davis is a tremendous artist whose voice and guitar playing really rejuvenate the blues that was. Davis is the son of Ruby Dee (1922-1914) and “Ossie” Davis (1917-2005). Both were actors, poets, playwrights, screenwriters, journalists, and civil rights activists.

The Reverend Robert Wilkins died in Memphis in 1987 at the age of 91. His son, the Reverend John Wilkins, continues his father’s gospel legacy.

Richard Séguin – voice, acoustic guitar
Roch Tassé – shaker

That’s No Way To Get Along