***The "Max Daddy” Blues Shootout- Alan Lomax’s "Blues At Newport 1966"-Take Four

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Above A YouTube Film Clip Of Skip James Doing "Devil Got My Woman" At The Newport Folk Festival In 1966. Wow!

 

 

 

Son House

Howlin'Wolf

Bukka White

Reverend Pearly Brown

 

 Based on a DVD review of the documentary Devil Got My Woman: Blues At Newport 1966

 

I remember once, long ago, maybe around the time when I first met him on a fateful night at a rock and roll dance at the Surf Ballroom in 1964 in my hometown of Hullsville my old friend Peter Paul Markin (hereafter just Markin like normal guys) telling me all about his love for the blues. He would go on and on about how the blues, first country down in the South, down in the Delta plantation, picking cotton for some Mister and living under what he called Mister James Crow’s laws and then with the great northern migration of blacks to the cities and real jobs around World War II the blues got all electrified that those strands formed the basis, or one of them anyway, for rock and roll. He would then rattle off  

the names of all the then current groups, mostly British, mostly British invasion groups, who cut their teeth on the blues. Bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the like. At that time I was hot into rock and roll, hot into rock and roll in order to keep in step with what the girls (then, young women now) were interested in so I could have a word with them. Have something to say once I stepped up to some certain she that I had my eye on. The Markin world of folk (which he, alternately, went on and on about) and blues, what did he call it, yeah, roots music left me yawning. Then.

A number of years later, maybe the early 1970s I was out in San Francisco and ran into a number of women, young women, okay, who were crazy for the blues, for the likes of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, guys like that. I was working at the Café Noche where I worked for a while as I was drifting up and down the coast trying to find out once the flame of the 1960s stuff blew out what my little niche in life (life then being may the next three years, hell, maybe just one) would turn out to be. Then I caught the blues bug, caught it almost as bad as Markin (almost, okay). And I in my turn would spread the word to all who would listen about how the blues, country and then city, formed the basis, or one of the bases for our beloved rock and roll.

But by then many of the old time country blues singers like Mississippi John Hurt and city blues guys like Muddy and Howlin’ Wolf were either past their prime or had passed on and so, unlike Markin, I never really got a chance to see them in person. And so every once in a while when I would come across some old film footage of the blues kings and queens I would take note. Of course in the age of exponential developments in film preservation and reproduction technology and access to stuff via the Internet that task has been made easier, infinitely easier. One day Markin sent me a copy of the film documentary Devil Got My Woman: Blues At Newport 1966 and I flipped out. I got to see “live” some of the masters at work, or rather at play and just how they all bounced of each other.     

Here were representatives of the various trends in the blues tradition, including both the country blues and the later electrified urban sound most closely associated with places like Memphis and Chicago. And as I touted the film to others (including women, older women, okay) I pointed out in Markin fashion that it was fairly well known that country blues got its start down in the South during the early part of the 20th century (if not earlier) as a way for blacks (mainly) to cope with the dreaded, deadly work on the plantations (picking that hard to pick cotton). The electric blues really came of age in the post- World War I period and later when there was a massive black migration out of the south in search of the, now disappearing, industrial jobs up north (and to get out from under old Mister Jim Crow racial segregation). I guess I must have been paying attention after all.

In this film (and similarly in a couple of other previously reviewed volumes in this series) Stefan Grossman, the renowned guitar teacher and performer in his own right, had taken old film clips and segments from an Alan Lomax experiment at the Newport Folk Festival in 1966 of putting exemplars of both traditions together under one roof and had produced an hour of classic performances.

Let me set the stage on this one to give you a small, small sense of what an historic blues cultural occasion this was. Alan Lomax, the famous musicologist and folk performer, put the then recently "rediscovered" Skip James and Son House and the already well known and powerful voice of Howlin' Wolf together under one roof. Oh yes, and then added Bukka White and the Reverend Pearly Brown to the mix. The motif: an attempt to recreate an old fashioned "juke joint'" from back in the days on a Down South rural Saturday night complete with dancing and plenty of liquor. Watch out. Watch out for that rotgut liquor, watch out for your woman who is eying that brother who just came the door, worse, watch out for that other brother, hooch brave, eying your woman and making you think big thoughts about how glad you were that you had your knife handy, and wished to high heaven that you had brought your gun. But mostly watch (and watch out for too, watch out for your woman watch out once she starts swaying to the beat) those guys who are providing the night’s entertainment because they are on a roll.  

Needless to say anyone even vaguely familiar with the long and storied history of the early blues knows that this was indeed an historic, and fleeting, occasion. 1966 might have been one of the few years that such an event could have been put together as the old country blues singers were starting to past from the scene. But as fate would have it we got one last chance to look at these five performers going head to head, everyone one way or another a legend. With the partial exception of the Reverend Pearly Brown and his religiously- oriented country blues done in the shout and response style of the old Baptist churches reflecting the tradition made popular by the Reverend Blind Willie Johnson, all the other performers were members in good standing of one or another branch of the blues pantheon.

A few of the highlights. Skip James' rendition of his classic "I'd Rather Be The Devil That Be That Woman's Man" (also known by the title of this documentary "Devil Got My Woman"). Son House brought out his classic "Death Letter Blues" that I always go crazy over. Howlin' Wolf was, well, Howlin' Wolf as he almost inhales the harmonica on "How Many More Years" and did an incredible cover of the old Robert Johnson/Elmore James song "Dust My Broom". Reverend Brown does a very soulful rendition of the tradtional religious blues classic "Keep Your Lamp Trimmed And Burning." Bukka White too, of course, on Aberdeen Mississippi Woman”. Bukka had been a recent addition to my personal blues pantheon and I have spent some effort praising his work, especially his smoking guitar work on that old National Steel guitar that he makes hum. Hell, just like Markin I would have walked to Mississippi to hear that.

Best of all was the interplay between various players, some drinking off the hip, some glassy-eyed with that tell-tale marijuana glow that one could almost smell as thing got heated, some just letting their muse get them high. All taking the measure of each other, all trying to say “son, you thought you had something, watch this.” Yes indeed, this was the blues shootout to end all shootouts. If you wanted to know what it was like to see men play the blues for keeps that was the place to be.