{"id":1019,"date":"2015-03-21T12:59:33","date_gmt":"2015-03-21T11:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/?p=1019"},"modified":"2022-03-22T13:21:59","modified_gmt":"2022-03-22T12:21:59","slug":"blues-from-the-mississippi-delta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/?p=1019","title":{"rendered":"Blues from the Mississippi Delta"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the 60s, when I was learning<\/span> to play the guitar, all the hype was about three British guitarists: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. All three went on to have spectacular careers and they all came up playing the blues, all three of them at various times <\/span>with the<\/span> rock group The Yardbirds. Listening to them, I was introduced to the electric \u201cChicago\u201d blues music of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson but Clapton’s great love of Robert Johnson’s music lead me south to the Mississippi delta, where a different brand of blues was being played by very different musicians.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t ready for what I discovered – a world of obscure men (and a few women) who had picked up a guitar, bashed it mercilessly and shouted out their discontent for all the world to hear. It was \u201cadult\u201d music \u2013 none of that \u201cShe loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.\u201d It was \u201cGoin’ down to Eli’s \/ Get my pistol out of pawn \/ When I got home \/ My woman was gone\u201d; it was \u201cEarly this morning \/ When you knocked upon my door \/ I said \u201cHello Satan \/ I believe it’s time to go.\u201d I immersed myself in their dark music, repetitive and hypnotic. What it was that captivated me so <\/span>is difficult to express \u2013 if I had to choose a word, I would say \u201csoul\u201d, a simple and raw\u00a0expression of the human condition.<\/p>\n

These men<\/span> were by no means \u201cprofessional\u201d musicians<\/span> – they played every which way you could imagine, with glass bottlenecks (slides)<\/span>, on metal or cigar box guitars, using outlandish tunings.\u00a0They were solo acoustic musicians, which was very appealing to me. I wanted to play like them – I loved the minimalism, I loved the abandon with which they played and sang, I loved the names: Sleepy John Estes, Pinetop Perkins, Peetie Wheatstraw (The Devil’s Son-in-Law).<\/p>\n

One of the delta bluesmen who impressed me the most was Bukka White. Booker T. Washington \u201cBukka\u201d White (1909-1977) had a wonderful plaintive voice and played a National steel guitar with a slide, the guitar tuned to an odd open E minor tuning. He is famous for many songs, including \u201cShake ‘Em On Down\u201d, \u201cFixin’ To Die\u201d and \u201cParchman Farm Blues\u201d (White was <\/span><\/span>convicted of a shooting incident and was sentenced in 1937 to the notoriously harsh Parchman Farm prison in rural Mississippi). The first piece I play here is my version of White’s \u201cFixin’ To Die.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Again through Eric Clapton, who recorded \u201cI’m So Glad\u201d with his rock group Cream, I started<\/span> listening <\/span>to \u00a0Skip James’ music. Nehemiah Curtis \u201cSkip\u201d James (1902-1969), like Bukka White, played in an open E minor tuning, which both men probably picked up from Henry Stuckey (1897-1966). Stuckey is said to have learned the tuning from Bahamian soldiers while serving in France during World War I.<\/p>\n

James is also credited with \u201cCypress Grove Blues\u201d which I play here, although my version is closer to Doc Watson’s definitive recording of the song. In the picture to the right, Mississippi John Hurt looks on as Skip James plays. My style of finger picking which <\/span>is featured<\/span> here<\/span> owes a lot to Mississippi John’s playing.<\/p>\n

The blues is not all gloom and doom and an important part is spiritual in nature. The third piece I play is the Reverend Robert Wilkins’ \u201cProdigal Son\u201d, an exquisite retelling of the biblical parable.\u00a0Reverend Robert Wilkins (1896-1987) is of Cherokee descent and was very popular during the 60s folk revival.<\/p>\n

All these great bluesmen died in my lifetime, many when I was just a\u00a0young man.\u00a0Most people were as untroubled by their loss as they had been unaware of their presence. Their style of playing is now relegated to the past but I urge everyone to go to YouTube and listen to these greats of the 20th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fixin’ To Die\/Cypress Grove Blues\/Prodigal Son<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the 60s, when I was learning to play the guitar, all the hype was about three British guitarists: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. All three went on to have spectacular careers and they all came up playing the blues, all three of them at various times with the rock group The Yardbirds. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1019"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1023,"href":"https:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions\/1023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eng.richardaseguin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}