Columbia / Legacy Roots N’ Blues Reissues

Columbia / Legacy Roots N’ Blues Reissues
Columbia

The latest batch of Roots N’ Blues reissues from Sony Corporation maintain up the series’ high standard. One of the latest releases is Bessie Smith, The Complete Recordings Vol. 4 (Columbia/Legacy C2K 52838) which brings us near the end of her recording career, and contains some of her most celebrated recordings, including Me and My Gin, Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out, Empty Bed Blues, You’ve Got to Give Me Some. Other numbers may not be as well known, but are memorable for the total conviction of the performances. James P. Johnson’s stride piano enlivens a number of performances , and the cornet of Ed Allen or Louis Metcalfe is heard on several tracks. But it is the majesty of Bessie’s vocals that make this so memorable, and the sound reproduction from the vintage 78s is quite good.

Blind Willie Johnson, The Complete  (Columbia Legacy C2K 52835), duplicates what has been available for a couple years on two Yazoo albums. Blind Willie Johnson was one of the most astonishing practitioners of the bottleneck guitar (his standard guitar playing was adequate), and sang in a raspy, hoarse shouting style with an intensity reminiscent of  Son House. House’s formidable slide guitar playing can sound rudimentary and mechanical compared to Johnson. Johnson’s recordings including Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed, It’s Nobody’s Fault But

Mine, If I Had My Way I’d Tear the Building Down, Lord I Can’t Help But Keep From Crying, You’ll Need Somebody on Your Bond and John the Revelator are classics of African-American roots music, and influenced numerous numerous others who adapted them including Gary Davis, Son House, Muddy Waters, and Fred McDowell. Johnson’s masterpiece was Dark Was the Night- Cold Was the Ground with his wordless vocalising and slide guitar accompaniment, that later Ry Cooder played homage to. Sam Charters provides a lengthy annotation that covers Johnson’s life, his music, and his impact. This is essential music, the only question being whether one already has the Yazoo albums.

New Orleans Barrelhouse Boogie (Columbia/Legacy CK 52834) collects Champion Jack Dupree’s first recordings made for Okeh in 1940 and 1941. Several of the 25 recordings are previously unissued alternate takes to issued sides. Most of the songs here find Dupree’s piano and vocals backed by just  a bass, although the final eight recordings feature Jesse Ellery’s nimble guitar. New Orleans Barrelhouse Boogie is a fitting title, describing his driving two handed piano style, although his bass heavy playing here lacks the touch and articulation found in his later recordings. A major reason for Dupree’s appeal was his soulfully delivered vocals that were ebulliently delivered, and his downhome country supper lyrics which touched a chord with those listening to him sing about ‘those greens those Cabbage Greens.’ Junker’s Blues  and Angola Blues reflect his New Orleans roots, while New Low Down Dog is a barrelhouse version of a Leroy Carr recording which he later recorded as Stumbling Blocks. While Dupree sang about drugs and prison, these songs were not based upon Dupree’s personal experiences, but from knowing people, and personalizing their stories. This marriage of lyric and performance that make these Champion Jack

Dupree recordings stand up half a century later. This collects some of his finest recordings.

The Slide Guitar, Bottles, Knives & Steel Vol. 2 (Columbia/Legacy CK 52725) is the second such collection in the Roots N’ Blues series. While there are no selections from Robert Johnson or Blind Willie Johnson, this provides a diverse sampling of slide players, with a healthy number of selections featuring Tampa Red, perhaps the most influential of all slide guitarists. One interesting song by him is Things Bout Coming My Way, heard in both instrumental and vocal versions. Derived from Sitting on Top of the World, he later revamped it as It Hurts Me Too. Perhaps the most influential slide guitarist in blues hisory, he was not represented in Rhino’s supposedly essential collection. Sam Montgomery, who recoded as the King of Spades is heard on the previously unissued Where the Sweet Orages Grow, a Kokomo Blues variant recored a few months before Robert Johnson waxed Sweet Home Chicago. Other slide guitarists heard here include  Casey Bill Weldon’s with lively Hawaiian style playing on the Hokum Boys’ Caught Us Doing It; Barbecue Bob backs Nellie Florence’s powerful singing; Curley Weaver’s slide is heard with the Georgia Browns and supporting Buddy Moss  sober vocals; and  Sylvester Weaver, is heard on the selections by Helen Humes and his partner Walter Beasely.

The most intriguing of these releases may be the two compact disc set, White Country Blues-

Lighter Shade of Blue (Columbia/Legacy C2K 47466), devoted to recordings of blues by various white performers of what was then marked as old time or hillbillymusic. As the respected country music historian Charles Wolfe notes, there was a distinct white country blues tradition that certainly reflected the influences of pioneering African-American performers, but reached a different audience. Some performances, like Frank Hutchinson’s lively K.C. Blues are not far removed from contemporaneous recordings of Furry Lewis, and the hawaiian style steel guitar heard on some of these will remind some of Tampa Red’s hokum recordings, or Casey Bill Weldon. In a blindfold test, the Blue Ridge Ramblers might be mistaken for a Memphis based jug band, and Larry Hensley stays pretty faithful to Blind Lemon Jefferson Match Box Blues, even if he can’t replicate all of the nuances of Jefferson’s recording. After all, who can.  Other recordings, like those by Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers, are string band blues performances that have few recorded counterparts by African-American musicians. While some of the performances here are more country than blues, they are more than dry historical specimens, and illustrate the influence and reach of the blues outside of the African-American community long before the rock and roll era. They also show how skillfully and movingly the music was adapted by white southerners who were drawn to the power and simplicity of the blues, just like many of us are drawn to the blues today.

This review appeared in issue 188 of Jazz & Blues Report from 1994. The original review also included "The Okeh Rhythm & Blues Story 1949-1957" which I will reprint on Monday the 28th. I received review copies from Columbia Records.