ROOTS ‘N’ BLUES
Columbia’s much-heralded “Roots ‘n’ Blues” series illustrates the problem perfectly. It’s an admirable, long-overdue effort on the part of a major label to document some of our most important blues history in a serious, even scholarly way. But aside from the ubiquitous Willie Dixon (shown here in a setting most would consider nearly irrelevant to his best Chicago work), scarcely a living soul is represented. To be taken seriously, it seems, the blues must be a museum piece.
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Predictably, given the series’s relentless historicity, it succeeds best when dealing with historical figures. Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings, for instance, is everything the hype claims–the definitive set of some monumental blues recordings. Johnson was indeed a folk poet of rare and tormented vision, but he was also a consummate artist. His tonal shadings and rhythmic complexities and counterpoints–sometimes more hinted at than developed, but nonetheless audacious for their time and place–were nearly as visionary as his fabled lyrics. The inclusion of alternate takes on this disc, while not providing any spectacular revelations, underscores Johnson’s genius even more profoundly. He was obviously very much aware of the effect he wanted to have on his audience, and how to go about getting it: his vocal mannerisms, guitar patterns, lyrics, even spoken asides were worked out meticulously and are repeated on alternate versions.
By this point, most listeners are familiar with at least one or two of Johnson’s creations, but it’s thrilling to be reacquainted with some works that may not be as well-known or have been appropriated through the years by other artists; and they’re restored here to their original glory. There’s the wracked “Preaching Blues (Up Jumped the Devil)” with its nightmarish imagery of terror and dislocation: “I’s up this morning / Ah, blues walkin’ like a man / Worried blues give me your right hand . . . / And the blues fell mama’s child / And it tore me all upside down / Travel on, poor Bob, just can’t turn you ’round.” There’s the original “Sweet Home Chicago,” replete with fierce declarations of independence and smoldering self-assertiveness (“I’m heavy loaded baby / I’m booked, I gotta go”), and the lovely “Come On in My Kitchen,” with its seductive promise of sexual pleasure overlaid by an aura of impending doom. Not to be forgotten are the rollicking good-time songs and their feel of uninhibited juke-joint fun. Johnson’s work encompassed–indeed, it helped define–the entire spectrum of possibility in blues expression.
Although there are a few examples here of Broonzy’s acoustic solo work, this set is most important as a documentary of small-group sessions he recorded in Chicago in the late 1930s and in 1940, often with jazz instrumentation and even an early electric guitar, played by George Barnes, on “It’s a Low Down Dirty Shame” in 1938. Again, several previously unissued sides are included.
Cajun music’s hypnotic modal drone of fiddles, accordions, and guitars is one of the more hauntingly ecstatic sounds ever recorded, and the propulsive rhythms remind us that not only African American music is steeped in a tradition of dancing and exuberant celebration. This disc is especially valuable in that it documents both the famous Breaux Freres band (featuring vocalist Cleoma Breaux and her legendary accordionist husband, Joe Falcon) and, from 1939, a lesser-known Cajun aggregation, the Alley Boys of Abbeville.
Legends of the Blues, Volume One seems to be the disc Columbia hopes will snare the uninitiated–the cover illustration features an image of Muddy Waters looming like a colossus above Big Bill Broonzy, the Big Three Trio, and Lonnie Johnson. But alongside the well-planned diversity of much of the rest of the series, it seems thrown together.
