The Rev. Gary Davis, his 115th anniversary today

Today in 1896 the legendary Rev. Blind Gary Davis was born. Davis was a guitar player of great dexterity, although he favoured the 6 & 12 string acoustic guitar over the electric guitar.

In the 1930s Davis both influenced and  played with Blind Boy Fuller. No one is quite sure whether or not Davis was blind from birth or he became blind later, Davis would never confirm the details of his blindness when asked. By the late 1920s Davis had moved to Durham and was working the streets for change. Sometime in the early 1930s he found God and was ordained a Baptist minister in 1933, although he did not use the title in his pre war recordings. Davis made 15 solo sides in July 1935, almost all of which were religious songs, of which none sold in any quantity. He found no difficulty in combining the secular and spiritual sides of music, recording as Fuller’s second guitarist on his 1935 Blues records. 

Davis moved to New York in the latter years of the 30s where met up with, and worked with, Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry. From the 1940s onwards he recorded, sang and preached on the streets of Harlem, and like McGhee, Terry and many others Davis found new found fame in the 1960s when the folk revival was in full swing. . He became a regular performer in New York City's coffeehouses and folk clubs, like Gerdes Folk City continuing to record, cutting albums for larger labels including Folkways, Vanguard, Prestige, & Bluesville. He played many festivals, including Newport and died while on his way to perform in New Jersey in1972

Charley Patton – Delta Blues Original

Charley Patton’s legend strides across the Delta like no other Bluesman of his generation. He was already over 40 when he first recorded for Paramount in June 1929 at Grafton Wisconsin. Patton travelled extensively, which helps account for his influence. Tales of his singing, playing and life are numerous and all point to the fact that he was an original, one that many of the younger players looked up too. But above all else Charley was an ENTERTAINER. He was popular because he gave his audiences what they wanted, a mix of predominantly Blues based material that was delivered in showman’s style; Patton has even been called the first rock and roller.

Willie Brown, Son House, Howlin' Wolf, Tommy Johnson, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Bukka White, Big Joe Williams, Pop Staples and David ‘HoneyBoy’ Edwards all came under Patton’s influence in some way. They may have played with him, known him as a friend, seen him perform or quite simply they aspired to be both as good and as well known as he was. He was particularly close to Willie Brown who travelled with him throughout the 1920’s playing house rent parties, picnics, juke joints, and workers camps. They often played for white audiences, especially in Lula. They initially used Dockery Farms as their base, it was where Patton’s Father had moved his large family in 1912.

Charley was confident in his ability as a musician, he even got some people’s backs up with his demands to be addressed as ‘Mister Patton’ – might uppity in some folk’s eyes. Whether it was arrogance or confidence we can never know, but as Paul Oliver attests  "Charley Patton is without question one of the most impressive and important of Bluesmen on record..." – and what must have it been like to have seen him live? He was a showmen, of that there is no doubt, but it was also what was required of these entertainers, in no way should it undermine our view of Patton’s musicianship or his status. What is clear from listening to his records that he was an original, he wrote wonderful songs and interesting lyrics; he also delivered them with a great deal more panache than most of his contemporaries. Amongst Delta musicians there was a degree of competition, they made their living from playing live, not from their record sales. With no royalty payments from their records, it was playing to their Delta audiences that earned them their living; records just helped to ‘spread the word’. A player had to give the audience a show and that is what Charley Patton did better than anyone.

After his first session at Paramount’s Grafton studios in June ‘29, Charley went back and added to the 14 sides he’d recorded with another 24 sides in October. Henry Sims a violin player went with him on his trip north and accompanied him on 4 of these sides. Some of these earlier sides were in fact religious, including the powerful, two part, Prayer of Death; these Paramount released as Elder J.J. Hadley. For Charley’s third release Paramount got highly creative in their marketing, and did his career no harm. They released Mississippi Boweavil Blues and Screamin’ and Hollerin’ The Blues as ‘The Masked Marvel’ and asked record buyers to guess who the artist was, their prize was another Paramount record of their choice ….for free.

A little over 6 months later Patton headed north once again, this time accompanied on the trip by Willie Brown, Son House and Louise Johnson. The consensus is that Charley and Louise were an item at the start of the trip, by the end she had switched her favours to Son……..life on the road! At this session Charley cut just four sides, it may have been that the cream of his material had been used up; the 1920’s equivalent of that difficult third album. The Depression was also underway and it may also have been the case that Paramount was limiting what it recorded, they did in fact have a backlog of unreleased Patton sides. Nearly four years were to pass before Charley got to record again. He went to New York to sides for Vocalion. He cut 36 sides over three days, ten of which were released at the time. These performances are not as good as Charley’s earlier work – he had a serious heart condition, he was just three months away from his death and he had a knife wound in his neck. His latest wife Bertha Lee accompanied him on some of these sides; sadly the masters of the unissued sides are missing.

Patton and Bertha Lee left New York and went back to Mississippi. Three months later on April 28th the 43-year-old Patton died at Holly Springs near Indianola. At his last recording session he recorded the prophetic Oh Death…….

Oh, hush, good Lordy, oh hush, somebody is callin’ me

Lord I know, Lord, I know my time ain’t long.

"Well my stepfather came home and told me.  I was sitting on the front porch rocking in a rocking chair and he said, ‘Rosetta, I have something to tell you’.  He said, ‘Don’t get upset, I have something to tell you’.  And Momma, she rushed to the door, she said, ‘What is it?  What are you going to tell her?’  He said, ‘Her father’s dead’.  And I know that they say he had asthma and a heart attack.  He went out to play that night, a Saturday night, he took a real sick attack and they rushed him home and he died before he got to the doctor back there."

Rosetta Patton in 2001

Ever wondered where the juke box got it’s name?

know what goes on in a juke house?

Boy don’t you know there’s gambling,

And a whole lotta drinking,

And a lotta hot women.

And I don’t want no boy of mine in a juke house.

 ‘Juke’ by Blind Mississippi Morris & Brad Webb

Ever wondered where the juke box got it’s name? From Juke or Jook Joints of course. Juke is a West African word meaning wicked or disorderly in one language, while in a Congolese language it means, a building without walls. It passed into popular usage amongst black Americans from the Southern States with a sexual overtone, it later came to describe a sort of dance.

To begin with Juke joints were found in rural areas and it has been suggested that there is a link to the jute fields and the jute workers that frequented makeshift bars. Long before there was blues music that we would recognise as such. These places usually had a bar that fronted onto the street, often with a dance floor and a back room for gambling or other activities; some Juke joints doubled as a brothel..

“We had these little juke joints, little taverns at that time. On a weekend there was this little place in the alley that would stay open all night. We called them Saturday night fish fries, they had two or three names, they called ‘em juke houses or suppers”

Muddy Waters

The need for music in such a place is obvious. During the 1930’s itinerant blues players used Juke Joints as their regular gigs, they were where many of the younger players first got inspired to pick up an instrument and learn to play it. It was in a Juke that Robert Johnson watched Son House, while Tommy Johnson saw Charley Patton play.

Honky Tonks, Barrelhouses & Juke Joints

A Honky Tonk is the red neck equivalent of a Juke Joint. The difference between the two? The music you’ll find on the Jukebox and the colour of the women in the beer adverts. Barrelhouses are much the same and take their name from the fact that the beer was kept in barrels! Often more associated with pianists they were somewhat more likely to be found in towns.

 “The biggest thing around Vicksburg was Curley’s Barrelhouse. At the time you could hear Little Brother Montgomery”

Willie Dixon

Juke Boxes

The naming of the juke box was of course no accident; they are the ideal way of providing music in such establishments. Juke Boxes were invented in 1927 by The Automatic Music Instrument Company when they created the world's first electrically amplified multi selection phonograph.

Hoochie Coochie Man

For many bluesmen that found new fame in the 1960s, having originally recorded in the post war country blues boom, along with those who were discovered in the post war Chicago blues boom, the pinnacle of their career was the American Folk Blues Festivals that toured in Eurpoe. Bass player and composer Willie Dixon was the man who acted as unofficial agent for the German promoters who put these tours together. Willie had a little black book in which were the phone numbers of every player on the Chicago scene, it also had the numbers of their girlfriends so he could always track them down. When asked what was his favourite gig that he had played it was not one of the European shows. According to Willie it was a nudist camp just outside Colorado Springs in 1949. Maybe it was what inspired him to write You Can’t Judge a book By Its Cover for Bo Diddley.

The Blues and some Fresh Cream please. . .

Cream were among the first rock bands to embrace the Blues in every sense. They were inspired the great Delta bluesmen who had gone before them and paid tribute to them. It's clear though that not everyone quite understood what they were doing at the time. In their review of Cream’s first album, Fresh Cream, the NME were none too sure. “The Cream….really startle the ears with their changes of volume and tempo as they play.” The NME also appeared just a little confused as to the pedigree of the band's music. “In Willie Dixon’s Spoonful you can almost visualize Chinatown at times.”

The Burying Ground

When I was filming a TV series about the Blues we went in search of Robert Johnson’s grave. In all we visited three places, at which he may have been buried. One has a head stone erected by Sony Music (above) at another location there was a headstone paid for by the members of ZZ Top. We were finally taken to a place where there was no headstone and is just one of those graveyards that ‘could’ be the place.  We were also told of two other places he might be buried, one of which may be the place that an 85 year old lady called Rosie Eksridge says is the spot where her husband helped to bury Johnson in a graveyard, it’s about 3 miles from Three Forks, Mississippi. 

See that my grave is kept clean

It was in 1928 that  Blind Lemon Jefferson sang about the need for his grave to be kept clean; it was just a year before he died. Fast forward nearly seventy years and two people did see a grave was kept clean but the spelling on the headstone was corrected and the dates were corrected as well.

Mississippi Fred McDowell was born in North Mississippi near Memphis in 1904 and settled further south  in the Como area around 1940. He farmed and played music for fun and was not one of those blues players who made any records in the pre-war period. He was 'discovered' in the late 1950s and was recorded by Alan Lomax in 1959 on a trip through the South accompanied by his girlfriend, the English singer Shirley Collins.

Through the 1960s Fred played festivals including Newport and came to Europe as part of the American Folk Blues Festival. Fred wrote 'You Gotta Move' that was covered by the Rolling Stones and in the sixties he showed Bonnie Raitt how to improve her slide guitar technique. His playing style was an inspiration for others in the Delta including R L Burnside and much later The North Mississippi All Stars who covered Fred's 'Drop Down Mama'.

Dick Waterman who did so much to help many of the blues singers during the early 1960s, including rediscovering Son House, decided to do something about Fred's grave in the early 1990s. The old one had the wrong dates and spelled Fred's name as McDewell. Dick and Bonnie Raitt – they were and girlfriend boyfriend back when she got to know Fred in the late sixties and through her early career – paid for  a new gravestone. Today you can visit the grave site which is just off I-55 the interstate between Memphis and New Orleans.