Tag Archives: Delta Blues

Blues, The Best Songs

Charley Patton: Pony Blues

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charlie patton

If I made records for my own pleasure, I would record Charley Patton songs only.
~Bob Dylan (Press Conference, Rome – July 2001)

Baby, saddle my pony, saddle up my black mare
Baby, saddle my pony, saddle up my black mare
I’m gonna find a rider, baby, in the world somewhere

Hello central, the matter with your line?
Hello central, matter, Lord, with your line?
Come a storm last night an’ tore the wire down

 

Wikipedia:

Released 1929
Format 78 RPM single
Recorded 14 June, 1929
Genre Delta blues
Length 2:58
Label Paramount
Writer(s) Charlie Patton

“Pony Blues” is a Delta blues song written and recorded by the archaic bluesman Charley Patton. With the help of record store owner, H. C. Speir, Patton’s first recording session occurred on June 14, 1929, cut six sides, included “Pony Blues” (vocal and guitar), for Paramount Records. The song later became a standard in the Delta region, and appears in the repertoires of many other blues musicians. Patton had a body of his own compositions which he recorded at the session, included “Banty Rooster Blues,” “Down the Dirt Road” and his version of “Mississippi Bo Weavil Blues.”

Pony Blues was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in 2006. The board selects songs in an annual basis that are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan albums, Music Calendar

Today: Bob Dylan released “New Morning” in 1970, 43 years ago

bob dylan new morning

..Well, there were two good songs on S. P., DAYS OF FORTY-NINE and COPPER KETTLE… and without those two LPs there’d be no New Morning. Anyway I’m just starting to get back on my feet as far as my music goes… Al, do you use amphetamine?
~Bob Dylan (A.J. Weberman Interview, Jan 1971)

The album has a feeling of”starting over” about it, as the title and the back cover photo (Dylan with blues singer Victoria Spivey in 1961-he looks very young) both suggest.
~Paul Williams (Bob Dylan Performing Artist I: The Early Years 1960-1973)

This is a quirky album, from a Dylan not pointing a way for anyone, but from a great artist remaining at his work knowingly in the face of not being creatively on top form in the phenomenal way he had been in the period 1964–68.Warm and abiding, it sounds better and better as the years go by.
~Michael Gray (The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia)

Day of The Locusts:

From Wikipedia:

Released October 19, 1970
Recorded June–August 1970 at Studio B and Studio E, Columbia Studio Building, 49 East 52nd Street, New York City
Genre Rock, country rock, country
Length 35:21
Label Columbia
Producer Bob Johnston

New Morning is the eleventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released in October 1970 by Columbia Records.

Coming only four months after the controversial Self Portrait, the more concise and immediate New Morning won a much warmer reception from fans and critics. Most welcome was the return of Dylan’s familiar, nasal singing voice. While he has a slightly nasal tone to his voice on “Alberta #1” from Self Portrait this was the first full album with his familiar voice since John Wesley Harding in 1967: he had taken on a country croon since then. In retrospect, the album has come to be viewed as one of the artist’s lesser successes, especially following the release of Blood on the Tracks in 1975, often seen as a fuller return-to-form.

It reached #7 in the US, quickly going gold, and gave Dylan his sixth UK number 1 album. The album’s most successful song from a commercial perspective is probably “If Not for You”, which also was recorded by George Harrison, who had played guitar on a version of the song not released until 1991’s Bootleg Series Volume 2, and was also an international hit for Olivia Newton-John in 1971. Bryan Ferry also included the song on Dylanesque.

Bob Dylan - New Morning (back)

 

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Aftermath:

Critics were quick to praise New Morning upon its release. Ralph Gleason’s Rolling Stone review reflected most sentiments, proclaiming “WE’VE GOT DYLAN BACK AGAIN.” Few placed it alongside his masterworks from the 1960s, but it was considered a substantial improvement over its predecessor. It was only four months since Self Portrait, and many reviewers did not resist comparing the two. “In case you were wondering how definitive that self-portrait was, here comes its mirror image four months later,” wrote Robert Christgau, before giving it an A-.

While New Morning neared completion, Dylan and his manager, Albert Grossman, formally dissolved their business relationship on July 17, 1970. Grossman retained certain rights from previous agreements, including royalties on work produced under his management, but their publishing company, Big Sky Music, would be replaced by Ram’s Horn Music before the end of 1971, putting an end to any joint ownership in publishing. Dylan would gain complete control over his personal management and his own music publishing. Another tense contract negotiation awaited in 1972, this time with CBS. Until then, there would be little musical activity as Dylan entered the quietest period of his career.

bob dylan 1970

 

More opinions:

Paul Williams (Bob Dylan Performing Artist I: The Early Years 1960-1973):
New Morning to me is a scary album. Unlike Nashville Skyline and Self Portrait it’s not a conceptual experiment (Dylan goes country; Dylan sings other people’s songs). It is not a half-hearted effort-there is energy and humor in the singing and musical accompaniment, cleverness and intelligence in the lyrics, personality and imagination in the music, the sound. It should be, in short, the return of Bob Dylan, and was hailed as such by fans and critics at the time. And that’s the scary part. New Morning is Bob Dylan pretending to be Bob Dylan, not in any obvious way (like writing a sequel to “Mr. Tambourine Man”) but in a very subtle way: he goes through all the motions and touches all the bases, but leaves out Ingredient X.

Michael Gray (The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia):
There’s much more going on here than this, though. Throughout the album there is a subtle but sustained falsification of the rural/patriarchal ideas suggested here (and on Nashville Skyline): a persistent kind of Midas touch that deliberately
makes the picture here an idealised and therefore not a real one. … The cumulative effect of all this carefully established unreality is to make New Morning very different, in its vision, from any other Dylan album. It begins to express a new optimism-through-doubt. He may have little to say but he has the courage to know it: and to make, to pass his time, an intelligent critique of what he doesn’t believe in any more. New Morning says for his country persona what ‘My Back Pages’ said about his protest persona.

Robert Christgau:
In case you were wondering how definitive that self-portrait was, here comes its mirror image four months later. Call it love on the rebound. This time he’s writing the pop (and folk) genre experiments himself, and thus saying more about true romance than is the pop (or folk) norm. Two side-closing throw-ins–a sillyditty about a gal named “Winterlude” and the scatting beatnik send-up “If Dogs Run Free”–almost steal the show. And the two other side-closers, which make religion seem dumber than it already is, damn near give it back. A-

 

Track listing:

All songs written by Bob Dylan.

Side one
  1. “If Not for You” – 2:39
  2. “Day of the Locusts” – 3:57
  3. “Time Passes Slowly” – 2:33
  4. “Went to See the Gypsy” – 2:49
  5. “Winterlude” – 2:21
  6. “If Dogs Run Free” – 3:37
Side two
  1. “New Morning” – 3:56
  2. “Sign on the Window” – 3:39
  3. “One More Weekend” – 3:09
  4. “The Man in Me” – 3:07
  5. “Three Angels” – 2:07
  6. “Father of Night” – 1:27

–

My fav songs from the album:

  • If Not For You
  • New Morning
  • The Man In Me
  • Sign On the Window

If Not For You:

Personnel:

  • Bob Dylan – vocals, harmonica, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, organ; piano on “Day of the Locusts”, “Time Passes Slowly”, “Went to See the Gypsy”, “Winterlude”, “Sign on the Window”, and “Father of Night”
Additional musicians
  • David Bromberg – electric guitar, dobro
  • Harvey Brooks – bass guitar
  • Ron Cornelius – electric guitar
  • Charlie Daniels – bass guitar
  • Buzzy Feiten – electric guitar
  • Al Kooper – organ, piano, electric guitar, French horn
  • Russ Kunkel – drums
  • Billy Mundi – drums
  • Hilda Harris – backing vocals
  • Albertin Robinson – backing vocals
  • Maeretha Stewart – backing vocals on “If Dogs Run Free”
Technical personnel
  • Bob Johnston – production
  • Len Siegler – photographer

–

Sign On the Window:

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“New Morning” is not available @ Spotify, but another great album released on this day in 1973 is:

Album of the day: The Who – Quadrophenia

the who Quadrophenia
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Blues, Music Calendar

Today: The late Robert Johnson was born in 1911 – 102 years ago

“Just look at the picture of him with the acoustic guitar: His fingers are in the weirdest position. If you’re a guitar player looking at that, you know this is a guy who’s not even thinking; he’s just there. … The soul of his creative originality plays a huge part in music making for everyone who’s ever written a song and really known what they’re doing.”
~Neil Young

“You think you’re getting a handle on playing the blues, and then you hear Robert Johnson — some of the rhythms he’s doing and playing and singing at the same time, you think, ‘This guy must have three brains!’ ”
~Keith Richards

Favorite album? I think the Robert Johnson album. I listen to that quite a bit still.
~Bob Dylan (Rockline interview – June 1985)

Cross Road Blues:

From Wikipedia:
Birth name Robert Leroy Johnson
Born May 8, 1911
Hazlehurst, Mississippi
Died August 16, 1938 (aged 27)
Greenwood, Mississippi
Genres Delta blues, Country blues
Occupations Musician, songwriter
Instruments Guitar, vocals, harmonica
Years active 1929–38

Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) was an American blues singer and musician. His landmark recordings from 1936–37 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that have influenced later generations of musicians. Johnson’s shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend, including a Faustian myth. As an itinerant performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson enjoyed little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime.

Johnson’s records sold poorly during his lifetime. It was only after the reissue of his recordings in 1961 on the LP King of the Delta Blues Singers that his work reached a wider audience. Johnson is now recognized as a master of the blues, particularly of the Mississippi Delta blues style. He is credited by many rock musicians as an important influence; Eric Clapton has called Johnson “the most important blues singer that ever lived.” Johnson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an “Early Influence” in their first induction ceremony in 1986. In 2003, David Fricke ranked Johnson fifth in Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

Me and the Devil Blues:

…Johnson’s major influence has been on genres of music that weren’t recognized as such until long after his death: rock and roll and rock. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included four of his songs in a set of 500 they deemed to have shaped the genre:

Johnson recorded these songs a decade and a half before the recognized advent of rock and roll, dying a year or two later. The Museum inducted him as an “Early Influence” in their first induction ceremony in 1986, almost a half century after his death. Marc Meyers of the Wall Street Journal wrote that, “His ‘Stop Breakin’ Down Blues’ from 1937 is so far ahead of its time that the song could easily have been a rock demo cut in 1954.

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Blues, Music Calendar

Today: The late Blind Willie McTell was born in 1898 – 115 years ago

blind willie mctell

And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
~Bob Dylan (“Blind Willie McTell”)

He was a songster of wide repertoire and as fine a 12-string guitarist as ever lived. The dexterity of his playing was extraordinary, and his voice was an unusually smooth tenor. The interplay between voice and guitar also brought into the equation McTell’s intelligence and wit, and it was the fusion of all these elements that led Bob Dylan to write in his 1983 tribute song that ‘no-one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell.’
~Michael Gray (BD Encyclopedia)

Willie Samuel McTell was one of the blues’ greatest guitarists, and also one of the finest singers ever to work in blues.
~Bruce Eder (allmusic.com)

Statesboro Blues:

Wikipedia:

Birth name William Samuel McTier
Also known as Blind Sammie, Georgia Bill, Hot Shot Willie, Blind Willie, Barrelhouse Sammy, Pig & Whistle Red, Blind Doogie, Red Hot Willie Glaze, Red Hot Willie, Eddie McTier
Born May 5, 1898
Thomson, Georgia, U.S.
Origin Statesboro, Georgia, U.S.
Died August 19, 1959 (aged 61)
Milledgeville, Georgia, U.S.
Genres Country blues, Piedmont blues, ragtime, Delta blues, gospel
Occupations Musician, songwriter, songster, accompanist, preacher
Instruments Vocals, guitar, harmonica, accordion, kazoo, violin
Years active 1927–1956

Blind Willie McTell (born William Samuel McTier May 5, 1898 – August 19, 1959), was a Piedmont and ragtime blues singer and guitarist. He played with a fluid, syncopated fingerstyle guitar technique, common among many exponents of Piedmont blues, although, unlike his contemporaries, he came to use twelve-string guitars exclusively. McTell was also an adept slide guitarist, unusual among ragtime bluesmen. His vocal style, a smooth and often laid-back tenor, differed greatly from many of the harsher voice types employed by Delta bluesmen, such as Charley Patton. McTell embodied a variety of musical styles, including blues, ragtime, religious music and hokum.

blind willie mctell & Kate McTellBlind Willie and Kate McTell in Atlanta, 1930s

 Travelin’ Blues:

Born blind in the town of Thomson, Georgia, McTell learned how to play guitar in his early teens. He soon became a street performer around several Georgia cities including Atlanta and Augusta, and first recorded in 1927 for Victor Records. Although he never produced a major hit record, McTell’s recording career was prolific, recording for different labels under different names throughout the 1920s and 30s. In 1940, he was recorded by John Lomax for the Library of Congress’s folk song archive. He would remain active throughout the 1940s and 50s, playing on the streets of Atlanta, often with his longtime associate, Curley Weaver. Twice more he recorded professionally. McTell’s last recordings originated during an impromptu session recorded by an Atlanta record store owner in 1956. McTell would die three years later after suffering for years from diabetes and alcoholism. Despite his mainly failed releases, McTell was one of the few archaic blues musicians that would actively play and record during the 1940s and 50s. However, McTell never lived to be “rediscovered” during the imminent American folk music revival, as many other bluesmen would.

McTell’s influence extended over a wide variety of artists, including The Allman Brothers Band, who famously covered McTell’s “Statesboro Blues”, and Bob Dylan, who paid tribute to McTell in his 1983 song “Blind Willie McTell”; the refrain of which is, “And I know no one can sing the blues, like Blind Willie McTell”. Other artists influenced by McTell include Taj Mahal, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Ralph McTell, Chris Smither and The White Stripes.

blind willie mctell 2lBlind Willie McTell, circa 1950

 Pal of Mine:

Bob Dylan has paid tribute to McTell on at least four occasions:

  • Firstly, in his 1965 song “Highway 61 Revisited“, the second verse begins with “Georgia Sam he had a bloody nose”, referring to one of Blind Willie McTell’s many recording names
  • later in his song “Blind Willie McTell“, recorded in 1983 but released in 1991 on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3
  • then with covers of McTell’s “Broke Down Engine” and “Delia” on his 1993 album, World Gone Wrong
  • in his song “Po’ Boy“, on 2001’s “Love & Theft”, which contains the lyric, “had to go to Florida dodging them Georgia laws”, which comes from McTell’s “Kill It Kid”

Bob Dylan – Blind Willie McTell – Hollywood Palladium Theater, Los Angeles, California – 12 January 2012:

Check out this great post @ jasobrecht.com:

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Today: Johnny Shines passed away in 1992 – 11 years ago

johnny shines

That’s what I am, a Delta bluesman. And now I’m considered the king of the Delta blues.
~Johnny Shines (1989 Living Blues Interview)

Best known as a traveling companion of Robert Johnson, Johnny Shines’ own contributions to the blues have often been unfairly shortchanged, simply because Johnson’s own legend casts such a long shadow. In his early days, Shines was one of the top slide guitarists in Delta blues, with his own distinctive, energized style; one that may have echoed Johnson’s spirit and influence, but was never a mere imitation.
~Steve Huey (allmusic.com)

Sweet Home Chicago:

Long before becoming a force in Chicago blues, Johnny Shines hoboed with Robert Johnson through Depression-era America. They hopped freights, played on street corners, shared rooms and whiskey, and made it as far north as Canada. Johnson, the Mississippi Delta’s most celebrated blues performer, perished in 1938, and for the next half-century, his spirit haunted the music of Johnny Shines. It echoed in his turnarounds, mournful bottleneck slides, impassioned lyrics, and falsetto moans. At clubs, house parties, and other gatherings, Johnny Shines was just as likely to launch into Johnson’s “Crossroads Blues,” “Terraplane Blues,” and “Sweet Home Chicago” as he was his own “Evil-Hearted Woman Blues,” “A Little Tenderness,” and “Evening Sun.”
~Jas Obrecht (jasobrecht.com)

johnny shines 2

Ramblin (live ~mid 1970’s):

Wikipedia:

Johnny Shines (April 26, 1915 – April 20, 1992) was an American blues singer and guitarist.

Birth name John Ned Shines
Born April 26, 1915
Frayser, Memphis, United States
Died April 20, 1992 (aged 76)
Genres Blues
Instruments guitar
Years active 1932–1992
Labels Chess Records
J.O.B. Records
Vanguard Records
Various

“Shines was that rare being, a blues artist who overcame age and rustiness to make music that stood up beside the work of his youth. When Shines came back to the blues in 1965 he was 50, yet his voice had the leonine power of a dozen years before, when he made records his reputation was based on”.
~Tony Russell

He was born John Ned Shines in Frayser, Memphis, United States. He spent most of his childhood in Memphis, Tennessee playing slide guitar at an early age in local “jukes” and for tips on the streets. He was “inspired by the likes of Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lonnie Johnson, and the young Howlin’ Wolf”, but he was taught to play the guitar by his mother. Shines moved to Hughes, Arkansas in 1932 and worked on farms for three years putting his musical career on hold. It was a chance meeting with Robert Johnson, his greatest influence, that gave him the inspiration to return to music. In 1935, Shines began traveling with Johnson, touring the south and heading as far north as Ontario where they appeared on a local radio program. The two went their separate ways in 1937, one year before Johnson’s death.

robert johnson johnny shinesRobert Johnson & Johnny Shines

Shines played throughout the southern United States until 1941 when he settled in Chicago. There Shines found work in the construction industry but continued to play in local bars.

Sittin’ on top of the world:

Check out –> Illustrated Johnny Shines discography

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