Get the blues
• PBS film series aims to spark interest, sales
• Blues on PBS
By Richard Harrington
Washington Post
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| Muddy Waters transformed the blues with his electric guitar.
Advertiser library photos |
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| Koko Taylor's raw vocals put her on the map as the indisputable "Queen of the Blues." |
That's because without the Library of Congress, you wouldn't have Leadbelly, and you might not have Muddy Waters, either.
Look a-here people, listen to me / Don't try to find no home in Washington D.C.
Lord, it's a bourgeois town, it's a bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues, I'gonna spread the news all around
Me and Martha were standing downstairs / Bossman said, "Don't want no colored people here"
Lord it's a bourgeois town ...
Home of the brave, land of the free / I don't want to be mistreated by no bourgeoisie
Lord it's a bourgeois town ...
That was Leadbelly's take on the nation's capital the first time he came here in 1937, only to be denied lodging because of his race. He had come here to record in the Library of Congress's new studio with archive head Alan Lomax. Unable to find a room for Leadbelly, an archive staffer exclaimed that Washington was "a real bourgeois town." Leadbelly asked what the term meant and then crafted one of his best-known songs around the term and his experience. But Leadbelly would still have been in a Louisiana prison were it not for the Library of Congress.
The Archive of American Folk Song was founded in 1928 within the Library's Music Division and curated by fabled folklorist John Lomax. In 1932, Lomax and his 17-year-old son, Alan, headed south with a 500-pound recording machine built into the trunk of their car. Sponsored by the Library, they were among the first folklorists to take equipment into the field, recording not only the folk songs they encountered but the personal histories of the musicians and the social and cultural contexts of the music. The Lomaxes returned with a treasure trove of folk, blues, gospel, Cajun and Tex-Mex music. Alan Lomax recounted this and subsequent southern journeys in "The Land Where the Blues Began," which won the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction.
In 1933, while collecting music preserved in obscure spots, the Lomaxes encountered Leadbelly (born Huddie Ledbetter) at Louisiana's notorious Angola State Farm.
Leadbelly was a great discovery, a "songster" who played and sang a wide variety of songs, both sacred and secular. His repertoire would provide a foundation for the folk revivals of the '50s and '60s. Leadbelly was also a convicted murderer who had already used music to charm the governor of Texas into a pardon, but was serving another lengthy sentence for manslaughter. After hearing and recording his music, the Lomaxes arranged for Leadbelly to sing for Louisiana's governor and won his release from Angola in 1934.
Leadbelly accompanied the Lomaxes to Washington and ultimately New York, working for a while as their chauffeur and valet and performing in concerts and on radio. He also began a prolific recording career, most notably at Folkways Records (now owned by the Smithsonian), becoming the first blues musician to find commercial success with white audiences.
Alan Lomax succeeded his father as curator of the archive in 1940, and a year later he and pioneering African-American researcher John Work III made the first recordings of Muddy Waters, then a 26-year-old sharecropper and occasional musician living on the Stovall Plantation outside Clarksdale, Miss. (now home to the Delta Blues Museum).
McKinley Morganfield — the nickname "Muddy Waters" came from his habit of playing in farmyard dirt — came of age in one of the most fertile blues environments imaginable, one populated by Delta legends Charley Patton, Robert Johnson and Waters' mentor Eddie "Son" House, who lived one plantation over and was rediscovered on the same field a decade after he'd stopped recording.
Lomax recorded Waters' bottleneck guitar-driven acoustic country blues in his cabin at Stovall Plantation in 1941 and again in 1942 with a string band. Two tunes, "Country Blues" and "I Be's Troubled," were put on a Library folk anthology, and Lomax sent Waters two acetate discs of those songs.
Waters had never heard his own voice before and its power, and the favorable comparison with commercial blues recordings gave Waters the courage to quit his plantation job in 1943 and move to Chicago, where he switched from acoustic guitar to electric and subsequently transformed the blues and American popular music.
The string band version of "Rosalie" is a virtual blueprint for the seminal electric band Waters would soon put together in Chicago, while "I Be's Troubled" would be Waters' first big seller in 1948 when he recorded an electrified version for the Chess brothers' Aristocrat label as "I Can't Be Satisfied."
The Archive of American Folk Song (renamed the Archive of Folk Culture in 1979) would become, and remains today, a crucial resource for blues and folk scholars and musicians. Library recordings were first issued in 1942 on 78s and expanded in the '50s on an album series, "Folk Music of the United States," that, along with Folkways' huge library, helped fuel the folk revival.
The historic Folkways catalog is available through Smithsonian Folkways (which also includes the Smithsonian's vast collection of field and festival recordings), and much of the Library of Congress material has been reissued through Rounder Records. Waters' 1941-42 Library recordings, now considered a historical document, were not commercially released until 1966.
On the Web
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PBS film series aims to spark interest, sales
Earlier this year, Congress declared 2003 "The Year of the Blues."
Of course, some might see Congress itself as a source of the blues, but this time they're the good guys, part of a concerted team effort to heighten public consciousness about one of the most crucial genres of American popular music.
The congressional resolution was the opening shot in a massive campaign "to bring awareness to blues history and culture and to show people the vast influence that blues has had on American popular music," says blues historian Robert Santelli, director of the Experience Music Project in Seattle, which has spearheaded the Year of the Blues campaign with the Memphis-based Blues Foundation, as well as several major record labels, festivals and museums.
A centerpiece of that campaign will be PBS' flagship fall program, "Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues — A Musical Journey," a seven-film package that airs tonight through Saturday.
Scorsese, who served as executive producer for the series, hopes it will do for the blues what Ken Burns' "Jazz" did for that genre two years ago — ignite interest and sales alike. There will also be a 13-part public radio series; a massive companion book, "The Blues"; DVD and CD box sets related to the series; and extensive reissue programs as labels capitalize on their blues catalogs.
The television episodes — each directed by a different well-known filmmaker — are intended as personal, sometimes impressionistic, reflections on the blues. The episodes air each night at 9.
— Richard Harrington
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Tonight: "Feel Like Going Home," directed by Scorsese and written by Peter Guralnik, pays homage to the Mississippi Delta blues through rare archival footage of Son House, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker and performances by Willie King, Taj Mahal, Otha Turner and Ali Farka Toure. Bluesman Corey Harris travels through Mississippi and West Africa, where he explores the roots of the music.
Tomorrow: "The Soul of a Man," directed by Wim Wenders, explores the lives and music of Blind Willie Johnson, Skip James and J. B. Lenoir; the first two are examined via a surprisingly moving fictional film-within-a-film and rare archival footage. Original recordings alternate with contemporary covers by such artists as Bonnie Raitt, Lucinda Williams, Lou Reed, Cassandra Wilson and Los Lobos.
Tuesday: "The Road to Memphis," directed by Richard Pearce and written by Robert Gordon, features B.B. King, Bobby Rush, Rosco Gordon and Ike Turner, as well as historical footage of Howlin' Wolf and Rufus Thomas.
Wednesday: "Warming by the Devil's Fire," directed by Charles Burnett, is a fictional narrative about a boy's encounter with his family in Mississippi in the 1950s, and intergenerational tensions between the heavenly strains of gospel and the devilish moans of the blues.
Thursday: "Godfathers & Sons," directed by Marc Levin, finds Marshall Chess, son of Leonard Chess and heir to the Chess Records legacy, and hip-hop legend Chuck D of Public Enemy, touring Chicago and its grand blues history as they produce an album bringing together veteran blues players and contemporary hip-hop stars.
Friday: "Red White & Blues," directed by Mike Figgis, revisits the music of the early '60s British Invasion that reintroduced the American blues sound that had been pretty much ignored at home. Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Van Morrison and Tom Jones perform and talk about inspirations such as Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Freddie King.
Saturday: "Piano Blues," directed by Clint Eastwood, explores his lifelong passion for piano blues.
