The Devil's Music 1979 BBC Television

The British Broadcasting Company in 1979 presented a fascinating look at the origins and history blues, The Devil's Music. With a narration presented by Alexis Koerner, the program presented a number of filmed performances by then still living blues performers like Houstoin Stackhouse, Sonny Blake, Sam Chatmon, Fenton Robinson, Big Joe Williams, Henry Townsend and others. Giles Oakley wrote a book providing a history of the Blues under the title The Devil's Music. The soundtrack of recordings made for the series was originally available on vinyl on the Red Lightnin' label and later on a CD box on Indigo Records that I reviewed and 2004 and included on this blog in 2013, http://inabluemood.blogspot.com/2013/02/devils-music-soundtrack-to-bbc-tv.html. 

In my review of the soundtrack I concluded "This is a fascinating collection of field recordings with some really exceptional performances interspersed with other entertaining ones. Add to this some live recordings of Memphis Slim and Sonny Boy Williamson in Europe in 1963 and one had a rather attractive box set, which I believe is bargain priced. Now if someone would only make the BBC-TV series available on dvd." While not available on DVD, the series is on youtube which I have linked here. While my CD box set review suggested there were  5 episodes there were only 4.

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

Devil's Music - Soundtrack to BBC TV History of the Blues

The Devil’s Music was the title of a 1976 BBC 5-part documentary series that resulted from Giles Oakley’s travels to the United States. It was accompanied by a nice history of the blues by Oakley also titled The Devil’s Music as well as some lps on the Red Lightnin’ label. While this writer has never seen the BBC television series, he has read Oakley’s book (which I believe De Capo may have republished) and had the original recordings, a double lp set The Devils Music, and a single lp, More Devil’s Music. Those ops are reissued on CD by the British Indigo label along with some live recordings by Memphis Slim and Sonny Boy Williamson from the 1963 American Folk Blues Festival Tour in Indigo Records 3 cd box, The Devils Music.

The first two volumes contain recordings made during by Oakley and his BBC crew while visiting the Us and range from the legendary Mississippi bluesmen, Sam Chatmon doing Stop and Listen Blues, Big Joe Williams performing Highway 49, and Bukka White’s powerful Aberdeen Mississippi. Some of the performers around Memphis and Helena Arkansas are also featured as two former King Biscuit Time guitarists; Houston Stackhouse and Joe Willie Wilkins are heard. Stackhouse’s performances include Tommy Johnson’s Cool Drink of Water while Wilkins does Mr. Downchild, a tune associated with Sonny Boy Williamson. 

Harmonica player Sonny Blake is heard on Sonny Boy’s Bring It On Home. Also heard are Laura Dukes, once a singer with the Memphis Jug Band, and pianist Mose Vinson. Chicago blues are represented with performances by The Aces, Fenton Robinson (on which Bill Heid can be heard on keyboards), Good Rockin’ Charles, Elmore James imitator Joe Carter and Billy Boy Arnold. Pianist Little Brother Montgomery and singer Edith Wilson provide a nod to early blues recordings in the performances. 

St. Louis is represented by the final twelve performances including six by James De Shay, whose recordings of Pony Blues, Mistake in Life, Hold That Train and Elmore James’ Crossroads are live club recordings, that are not hi-fi. These are is only recordings DeShay made. Other recordings include some more Big Joe Williams (including a raucous Sloppy Drunk) and Henry Townsend (with the bittersweet Tears Come Fallin’ Down being outstanding). The late blues queen Victoria Spivey closes the field recordings with a remake of her hit, T.B. Blues. 

This is a fascinating collection of field recordings with some really exceptional performances interspersed with other entertaining ones. Add to this some live recordings of Memphis Slim and Sonny Boy Williamson in Europe in 1963 and one had a rather attractive box set, which I believe is bargain priced. Now if someone would only make the BBC-TV series available on dvd.

This review originally appeared in the April 2004 DC Blues Calendar, the DC Blues Society newsletter  I edited for many years. I have made a few minor revisions. Amazon lists this as available from various sellers. I purchased this.

Herb Wise Photographed Legendary Musicians

People You’d Like To Know: Legendary Musicians Photographed
By Herb Wise
Omnibus Press 2010

Herb Wise was an editor for Oak Publications who published Sing out as well as various books on folk and blues (Samuel Charters’ The Bluesman was originally published by Oak), when photographer David Gahr took him outside gave him a camera and had him start shooting pictures. While his initial efforts were not productive, it led to him becoming a fixture with his camera at festivals and concerts throughout North America documenting a wide spectrum of music, focusing on folk, bluegrass with some blues, country and jazz mixed in from Mariposa in Toronto, the Ann Arbor Blues Festival, the Philadelphia Folk Festival, the American Folk Life Festival, and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

This is a coffee table sized volume of his photos. There is an amiable quality to many of these which are often informal portraits although there are some very fine performance images included. Graham Vickers includes brief descriptions of the artists depicted and sometimes the circumstances the photos were made of. Striking images of Richard Havens, Sam Chatmon, Jaco Pastorious, Professor Longhair (one great picture with reflections showing in his sunglasses) , Chuck Berry, Charles Mingus, Saul Broudy, Jim & Jesse McReynolds, Frank Zappa, Jackson Browne (great portrait), Sonny Terry (reclining against a trailer), Joan Baez & Kris Kristofferson, Joe Zawinul, Arlo Guthrie, Ray Charles, Doc Watson, Leon Redbone, Stephane Grappelli, Bob Dylan with the Band, an early Taj Mahal and Koko Taylor sitting in front of her van at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival. Its a pretty diverse group of images, and some are devoted to showing dancers at the festival while a young Rosanna Arquette is seen at the 1971 Philadelphia Folk Festival. Blue Lu Barker and Danny Barker are seen in their living room, while Roosevelt Sykes is backstage at the 1981 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.The pictures mostly come from the sixties and seventies. 

The reproduction (with a slight sepia tint) seems quite satisfactory and there is a wealth of performers captured here, some famous, others less so. People You’d Like To Know is a book you might skim through when you first get it and return to look at the images again and again. It is reasonably priced with a list price of $34.95, should be reasonably easy to fine and makes a nice addition to one’s collection of music photography books.

This review originally appeared in the September 2010 Jazz & Blues Report (Issue 329).  I received a review copy from a publicist. Needless to say this would make a great holiday gift for music lovers.

Barrelhouse Words Illuminates The Language of the Blues

Word has been circulated that blues scholar Stephen Calt recently passed away. Calt, a controversial figure in the blues world, first came to notice from liner notes he drafted for Yazoo Records starting in the sixties, and then articles in blues and other publications. He co-authored a biography of Charlie Patton and authored one of Skip James, which were important contributions, but also marked by jabs at other blues scholars and artists themselves. His works could be frustrating in the appreciation he would provide of the artist while going into character defects at length. Larry Hoffman, (himself a blues scholar as well as a contemporary classical composer who incorporates blues into his compositions), played an extended time with James, and said he found little of the Skip James he knew as a person in Calt’s biography. These reservations noted, these works still are significant contributions to the blues literature. Last year, Barrelhouse Words, was published, and as suggested below,  is a significant reference work for blues scholars.

Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary
Stephen Calt
University of Illinois Press
2009, 320 pages

Several years ago, Debra DeSalvo's "The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu," attempted to present a lexicon on blues terminology, that a flawed effort. It was described as an anecdotal dictionary of the blues, but it was far from authoritative or comprehensive. It focused on some 150 words and phrases emphasizing the African roots of the blues, but usually to the exclusion of other possible meanings. She focused on terms related to sex and hoodoo, but her book had very very little on traveling which is also a significant theme of the blues. She included interviews of significant blues artists, but such material rarely contributed to elucidating the meaning of the terms and phrases.

Stephen Calt has contributed a more scholarly effort with "Barrelhouse Words." In contrast to the 150 odd phrases of the earlier volume, Calt has over 1200 entries, although some words or phrases are represented by multiple entries. Calt as a blues writer and scholar often has been acerbic in his writing and occasionally some of his commentary here has tinges of that, but its more to be emphatic about points. He has a selected bibliography of dictionary sources which include various volumes dealing with colloquial terms, regional and ethnic language ranging from John Russell Bartlett’s “A Dictionary of Americanisms” that was published in 1877 and the first American Dictionary devoted to colloquial terms; Dan Burley’s Original Handbook of Harlem Jive, published in 1944 was an elaboration of an earlier pamphlet by Cab Calloway; Clarence Major’s “Dictionary of African-American Slang” and “Juba to Jive,” various volumes of the Harvard University Press’ “Dictionary of American Regional English;” “The Oxford English Dictionary,” and Mitford Mathews’ “A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles,” published in 1951 and of who Calt describes as the leading American language scholar of his era. DeSalvo’s book is dismissed in his bibliography as “An ill-informed work containing chronically faulty definitions and etymologies.

The entries are taken from Race Recordings (that is recordings produced for sale to Blacks) from between 1923 and 1949. In addition to his scholarly sources, he also employed information culled from interviews of blues artists between 1964 and 1971 including Ted Bogan, Sam Chatmon, Gary Davis, Son House, Skip James, Pete Franklin and Bessie Jones. Unlike DeSalvo’s book, there are no sidebars on these perfromers, but rather the interviews are cited as supporting the meaning of the phrase Calt provides.

Each entry is followed by a couplet from a recording after which the meaning is provided with sources as appropriate and occasional other couplets to further illustrate the meaning. It would be appropriate to present a few examples of Calt’s entries.

hoodoo (a.)
        I’m getting so I can’t rest
        You almost ruined me, with that lowdown hoodoo mess.
        —Freddie Nicholson, You’re Gonna Miss Me Blues 1930
        Conjuring; in this instance, by means of black (destructive) magic.

hoodoo (n.)
        Aw she went to the hoodoo, she went there all alone
        ‘Cause everytime I leave her I have to hurry home
        —Charlie Lincoln, “Mojoe Blues,” 1927
        Conjurer, sometimes referred to as a hoodoo doctor. Both terms date back to 1875. (DAH).

DAH is an abbreviation for Mathews, Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles.

cookie (n.)
        Papa wants a cookie, papa wants a cookie
        Papa wants a cookie right now now now now
        Papa wants a cookie, papa need a cookie
        Papa’s gonna get it somehow.
        —Leroy Carr, “Papa Wants a Cookie” 1930
        A black slang term for female genitals (DAS).

DAS is an abbreviation for Wentworth and Flexner, Dictionary of American Slang.

These are relatively short and simple samples, although some have more discussion such as dust one’s broom which is illustrated from a couplet from Kokomo Arnold’s 1934 recording “Sagefield Woman Blues.”

Calt notes the phrase means to leave hurriedly, and although Burley cites this as a Harlem jive phrase, Calt notes its earlier occurrence in Arnold’s song and Robert Johnson’s “Dust My Broom,” indicates a southern origin and was a blending of two conventional slang synonyms. “To Broom,” meant to run away while “to get up and dust” meant to depart hastily. I have not repeated the lengthier entry here, but rather give a sense of how he does contribute new understanding to terms that crop up in the blues.

Another phrase, “sleep in a hollow log, to drink muddy water and,” was familiar from the 1930s recording by Eddie Miller, “I’d Rather Drink Muddy Water,” but Calt observes its use in Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Wartime Blues,” and Charlie Lincoln’s 1928 “Depot Blues,” whose verse anticipates Miller’s lyrics. The phrase means to live outdoor in the manner of a vagrant rather than be mistreated. There is a sense of authoritativeness to Calt’s work here that lends the reader with a certain confidence and the entries do provide a valuable reference to understanding these dated lyrics.

This is an important contribution to the blues literature and is invaluable addition to any library of blues books and a foundation upon which future blues dictionaries will build upon.


The review copy for this was provided by the publisher or its publicist.