A Master Warms Up for Gimmicky Kids

A Master Warms Up for Gimmicky Kids

By Bob Greene -  Chicago Sun-Times - 1972

CHICAGO — I called Howlin' Wolf the other night. He didn't understand why I was calling. I tried to explain, but then gave up. It had to do with some things I saw in California a couple of weeks ago, and somehow I wasn't doing too well trying to put it into words. So I'll try again here. 

It was in Berkeley, and it was the first time I had seen Howlin' Wolf. I was traveling with a big money rock and roll band, and as the limousines brought us to the stage door of the Berkeley Community Theater, I heard his voice. The young members of the money band went to their dressing room, but I walked out to the wings. There he was. 

He is a 61-year-old black man, and he was warming up the house for a bunch of 24-year-olds who make more in a weekend than he makes all year. He was wearing an old gray suit and a white shirt, and he roamed the stage, singing his Chicago Blues. It seemed strange; I had come all the way from Chicago to see a man who lives here almost every day of the year. 

The audience was bored with him. The young white kids had liked him at first, but had soon become tired of his lonesome, mournful singing. He sang on anyway, his aging backup men playing along behind him. The years showed on his face, and it was a pleasure to watch him. And a letdown

when, half an hour later, the money band came out and the audience came to life. 

I saw him twice more that week. Once was in an airport. He was waiting with his backup men for a plane, when the money band came into the loading area. They would be playing on the same bill again this night. The young men in the money band did not say hello to Howlin' Wolf. 

Then, at the evening's show, he was still on stage when the money band arrived. They were impatient, and one of their equipment men said "If Howlin' Whatshisname isn't off that stage in five minutes, I'm going to pull the plugs out." 

And that was the last I saw of Howlin' Wolf. It is easy to talk about "legendary bluesmen," and Glamorize the path from Monroe County, Miss. to the big time. But even today, with more music lovers 'among the young than ever before, the big time means opening the show for a bunch of gimmicky kids, in front of a yawning audience, with the threat of being evicted from the stage by a young man who calls you "Howlin' Whatshisname." 

I didn't think about it again until the other night. I was reading some magazine or other. The story mentioned B. B. King, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf. It was a very light, upbeat story, and I thought back to seeing him in California, and I figured I ought to talk to him about it. 

His number is listed in the phone book under his real name. He came to the phone, and there was opera music in the background. No. he said, he wasn't an opera fan; that was a television show, and the TV just happened to be turned to that channel. 

He said that he may he leaving his home on Chicago's South Side before too long. "The city don't excite me," he said. "Never has. I was raised up in the country. Only reason I came to Chicago was the music. I'm getting tired of the city. You can be more comfortable in the country." 

We started to talk about the feeling of playing warmup sets before audiences of young teen-agers who have come to see someone else. "Sometimes they treat me all right," he said. "Sometimes they are very warm to me." He kept referring to his concert appearances as "school proms." 

He said he still plays most weekends at a lounge on the West Side. Sometimes, when there is work, he leaves town to play dates like the California concerts. But most nights he sits at home. 

Once in a while, the young white rock stars will include him in their conversations. "When they'll talk to me, I talk to them," he said. "Sometimes they treat me very nice." 

He said he couldn't figure out why anyone would be interested in all of this. But we kept talking anyway, about his music and his life. 

"I don't know," Howlin' Wolf said. "I just sing. If they like it, I appreciate it. If they don't like it, then they don't like it. don't be cute to try to make them like me. I just sing my songs."

Skip James: A Most Hard Man

"The people are drifting from door to door. Can't find no heaven, I don't care where they go."

-Skip James

With these lyrics from his song "Hard Time KiIlin' Floor Blues," Skip James summed up the arc of his life's journey. From his birth on a Mississippi plantation; his travels as an itinerant musician, gambler, and levee camp worker; his 1931 Paramount recording session; disillusionment with the music industry; and conversion to preacher to his rediscovery in the 1960s, James's life was marked by hard times and opportunities lost or denied. Even when he had a brief career resurgence in the '60s, he had to deal with severe health problems that made it difficult for him to exploit his newfound notoriety. In spite of this, the singular quality of his music shone through. His unusual guitar tuning and eerie falsetto vocals set him apart from other artists of the blues revival like Mississippi John Hurt and Son House. One musician who was inspired by his approach was the late Piedmont blues guitarist John Cephas. A 34-year-old carpenter and amateur musician when he met James in 1964, Cephas says, "I was so enchanted and fascinated with his sound that I practiced and listened to him for hours on end, just trying to figure out what he was doing."

Bentonia Gets a Blues Trail Marker

Born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, in 1902, Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James was raised on the Woodbine plantation (owned by the Whitehead family) near the town of Bentonia. An only child, he was tended to mainly by his grandparents and mother, who worked as a cook and house servant for the Whiteheads. His absent father was a minister, guitarist, and bootlegger, occupations that James would eventually take up himself, along with piano player, levee camp worker, and gambler.

James's mother gave him a guitar when he was around eight and he took to it quickly, learning his signature ?-minor tuning (E B E G B E) from a local musician, Henry Stuckey. Stuckey picked up the tuning while in France during World War I, from some soldiers who were said to be from the Bahamas. When he returned from the war he showed it to James and possibly to Jack Owens, another Bentonia musician whose guitar style is similar to James's. James called the tuning "cross note," and he used it on many of the songs he would record at his Paramount recording session in 1931. He also developed a unique piano style that sounded more like his contrapuntal guitar picking than the common left-hand-bass, right-hand-melody technique.

In 1931, James auditioned for furniture store owner and talent scout H.C. Speir, of Jackson, Mississippi. Speir's business included selling phonograph players and records to play on them. He had a disc cutter at his store and was able to make demo recordings and refer musicians to record companies. He eventually became a well-known broker and sent many artists, including Robert Johnson, Son House, Bo Carter, and Charley Patton, off to be recorded by major labels, which kept his store supplied with a steady stream of what were then called "race records" to sell to the African-American community. Speir liked James's music and referred him to one of the prominent race record labels, Paramount. James cut 26 songs at the Paramount Records studio in Grafton, Wisconsin, 18 of which were released.

He accepted a royalty deal rather than a per-song payment for his records, confident that they would sell, but the Great Depression had a bad effect on record sales in general and James's were no exception. Speir wanted him to return to Paramount for another session later that year, but by then James had "gotten religion" and bitterly refused the offer, deciding to follow his father's footsteps into preaching and turn his back on music. He referred to the music business as a "barrel of crabs" and didn't return to the recording studio until the '60s.

James was one of a small group of musicians who were "rediscovered" in the '60s by a handful of blues aficionados, including John Fahey, Bill Barth, Tom Hoskins, and Dick Spottswood. But James's dark, eerie, introspective brand of blues didn't prove as popular as Mississippi John Hurt's sunny, bouncy tunes and, consequently, James had a tougher time getting gigs. He was also ill during these years, and eventually died of cancer in 1969. He did, however, get to make some more recordings and perform at a few high-profile festivals, influencing players like Al Wilson and Henry Vestine, who went on to form Canned Heat, and he had a brief financial windfall with royalties from Cream's version of his song "I'm So Glad," recorded on Fresh Cream.

James's haunting vocals, complex picking style, dark and devil-ridden themes, and unique song forms set him apart as a one-ofa-kind artist who doesn't fit neatly into any of the blues categories that have developed over the years. In this lesson exploring his guitar style, we'll take a look at the tuning that gave most of his guitar songs the singular major/ minor tonality that was his fingerprint, his contrapuntal picking style, and his adventurous harmonic sense.

E-Minor Tuning

The tuning that James learned from Henry Stuckey (E B E G B E) is usually called E minor but James didn't generally use it to play in minor keys. He would usually fret the third string at the first fret to give the song a major tonality and then use the open string (the minor third) in conjunction with slides and pull-offs for bluesy melodic runs.

On his Paramount session, however, he pitched the tuning lower, to D minor. On his 1960s cuts he was closer to F minor.

A Short History of the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund

A Short History of the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund

Slim Harpo Keeps a Delta Dancing Tradition Hot on Christmas

Dancing to the Blues on Christmas Eve

in the Rosedale Courthouse - A Delta Tradition

In 1889, Rosedale started a tradition of dancing in its dignified Hall of Justice on Christmas Eve. The festive dancing helped to open the new brick courthouse it s initial year and continued in the same building until 1923, when Florence Sillers Ogden and her husband Harry led the Grand March. Ezelle Watson's Orchestra also performed to open the second brick courthouse. She recalled how her mother and father waltzed to the strains of "Over the Waves" and whooped it up to "Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight," by Beauregarde's Orchestra out of Memphis back in 1889.

Handy's Band out of Memphis furnished the music when Ogden was young, and he performed such tunes as "Memphis Blues," "Alexander's Rag Time Band," and "Clover Blossoms." And his trumpet was golden, she recalled. As I have said before, dancing in the Courthouse is an old Delta custom. Time was when Greenville, Cleveland, Friar's Point, Clarksdale, Tunica and Rosedale danced in their courthouses. In 1961, only Rosedale clung to the tradition. And they still hired blues musicians to perform at the dance. 

"Inside it is Christmassy and all cozy with the fire burning briskly on the hearth, the holly on the mantelpiece catching its glow. But alas! No mistletoe for me. But soon the clock points to the hour. It is time to put on my silver slippers and go dancing. It is time for the Christmas dance at the Courthouse, when all the young Delta will assemble to rock and roll, do the "twist" and the "cha-cha" and the "bop" to the hot music of Slim Harpo out of Baton Rouge, to such tunes as "Ya-Ya", "Blue Hawaii," and "The Twist." Unseemly conduct, Grandma would call it."

Click here for a complete discography of Slim Harpo's Music