Archive Review: Brownie McGhee’s The Complete Brownie McGhee (1994)

That Brownie McGhee’s career should span several decades really comes as no surprise. The energetic and charismatic bluesman has managed to wear many hats during his lengthy musical life, appealing to several disparate audiences throughout the years without ever changing his basic style or direction.

Born in Tennessee in 1915 and raised in a musical family, a crippling childhood bout with polio kept McGhee housebound, and thus able to hone his musical skills. He was already in his 20s when he graduated from high school, a short time after which an operation provided the young artist with near total mobility. He began his musical career as a traveling bluesman, playing towns across Tennessee, West Virginia, and Virginia. He made his way to North Carolina, where he was discovered by J.B. Long, manager for the popular blues artist “Blind Boy” Fuller.

Collecting the initial sides recorded by McGhee for OKeh/Columbia during 1940 and 1941, The Complete Brownie McGhee showcases a talented artist developing his style from record to record. McGhee seems to have enjoyed a fair degree of commercial success with several songs, including “Me and My Dog Blues” and “Picking My Tomatoes,” but a number of the 47 recordings presented on The Complete Brownie McGhee are previously-unreleased sides.

His fluid vocals are accompanied by his own guitar, the harmonica playing of old friend Jordan Webb, and maybe a washboard player, offering up a healthy dose of traditional southern blues, mixing the best of that musical history with strains of gospel and hillbilly music in the creation of a style and performance that remains unique to this day. (Sony Legacy Recordings, released 1994)

Review originally published by R.A.D! zine, July 1994

Archive Review: Chris Barber Presents Lost & Found, Vol. 1 (2008)

In a nutshell, here’s the amazing story behind the Lost & Found CD series. Since the early 1950s, Chris Barber has been one of the movers and shakers in the British blues and jazz worlds. The Chris Barber Jazz and Blues Band performed over 10,000 shows during the past 50 years, and the band has made thousands of recordings. Barber also played a significant role as a concert promoter. During the 1950s and ‘60s, Barber brought dozens of American blues artists to the U.K. and Europe to perform on the continent for the first time, often backed by his band.

Lost & Found, Vol. 1

Many of Barber’s shows were recorded for posterity, but the tapes were lost during the 1970s and remained undiscovered until recently. Barber had decided to restore one of the vintage American cars that he owns, and while digging through his storage warehouse, he found the long-lost original tapes for some of these unique shows. Remastered to achieve the best sound possible from the old tapes, these previously unreleased classic performances are documented by Barber’s Lost & Found series. This first volume features Sister Rosetta Tharpe and folk-blues duo Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.

One of the best-known the Sanctified gospel singers, Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s popularity during the 1930s and ‘40s equaled that of many of the era’s secular stars. Tharpe often performed and recorded with jazz bands, appearing with legends like Benny Goodman and Cab Calloway. Acclaimed as a powerful singer and innovative guitarist that mixed gospel with blues and pop, Tharpe’s showmanship was second to none, and musicians like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Aretha Franklin have cited Sister Rosetta as a major influence on their work. Brought to England by Barber for a full-fledged tour, her performance here is from a December 1957 show at The Free Trade Hall in Manchester.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe with The Chris Barber Band

Tharpe’s “Every Time I Feel the Spirit” is a wonderful example of old-school gospel-blues, Tharpe’s joyous vocals soaring above the Chris Barber Band’s jazzy, raucous instrumentation. If anything, “Feed Me Jesus” is even more powerful, Tharpe’s unaccompanied vocals rising and falling as the spirit moves her, creating an incredibly mesmerizing effect. Another solo performance, “Didn’t It Rain,” shows Tharpe’s incredible range and phrasing, her jazzy vocals be-bopping across the lyrics, creating their own rhythm. Barber’s band wraps its instrumental soundtrack behind Tharpe’s vocals on “Peace In the Valley,” horns jumping in counterpoint to the singer’s transcendent highs.

The temperature in the Manchester Trade Hall certainly rose a few degrees with the upbeat “Down By the Riverside,” which brings a tent revival fervor to the performance. With her guitar in the lead, Tharpe delivers an engaging reading of the gospel standard “Old Time Religion,” Barber’s horns blowing mightily behind her finely-tuned vocals. Singer Ottilie Patterson joins Tharpe for the jazzy, New Orleans-flavored “When the Saints Go Marching In,” the two women swapping equally impressive vocal performances. To the crowd’s approval, the two singers break into a reprise of “Old Time Religion” as the band plays them offstage. During her performance, Tharpe introduces nearly every song, and her interaction with the audience is both intimate and endearing, the crowd obviously responding to her humor and warmth.

Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee

Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee are two of the more interesting of the early Piedmont bluesmen. Blind since his teen years, Terry learned the harmonica from his father, and turned to blues music to make his living. Through the years, Terry performed with Blind Boy Fuller, recorded with folk legends like Woody Guthrie, and forged a significant acting career that saw him perform on both television and the Broadway stage. McGhee overcame childhood polio to become a respected blues singer and guitarist, and also enjoyed success as an actor on Broadway and in films, and built a significant body of work as a solo artist as well. The two first performed together in 1941, their musical relationship extending over 30 years. The duo’s Lost & Found performance was recorded in April 1958 in Manchester.

Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee begin their performance with the Leadbelly classic “Midnight Special,” Terry blowin’ the harp, McGhee on guitar, and both of them singing in unison to great effect. “Climbin’ On Top of the Hill” is an old blues music standard, a re-working of “Sittin’ On Top of the World” with a similar melody, but featuring McGhee’s unique picking style, punctuated by blasts of Terry’s harmonica. “Fox Chase” is an antiquated chestnut passed around by harp players, Terry rolling out scampering notes in between whoops and hollers as McGhee adds running commentary.

The two run through a number of traditional folk and blues music standards. “John Henry” has the two trading verses, singing together on the choruses, throwing in short, sharp shocks of harmonica and guitar. “Worried Life Blues” is a textbook example of country blues, McGhee strumming the guitar and singing in a rural drawl as Terry scatters notes across the song like seeds in a freshly-tilled field. Perhaps their best-known song, the love song “Betty and Dupree” is also Terry and McGhee’s defining moment, the bluesmen knocking the listener down with strong vocals, low-key but elegant fretwork, and perfectly matched harp playing. They finish their set with a pair of gospel songs, the Chris Barber Band joining Terry and McGhee and providing excellent accompaniment.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

For listeners expecting loud, compressed, lifeless digital-quality sound, you’re not going to find it here. Sourced from 50-year-old tapes literally rescued from obscurity, Lost & Found is mixed a little lower than what modern audiences expect, with a bit of theater-hall echo, and definitely hot highs and resounding lows. What you will find, however, is altogether inspiring, transcendent performances from Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Ottilie Patterson, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and, of course, the Chris Barber Band. An invaluable historical document, Lost & Found, Vol. 1 presents these classic gospel and blues artists in their prime, preserving these wonderful performances for generations to come. (The Blues Legacy/MVD Audio, released 2008)

Blues: The Devil's Music (2008)

Long known as the “devil’s music,” thanks to the legend surrounding bluesman Robert Johnson’s alleged deal with the devil at a Mississippi crossroads, “Old Nob,” as he’s known, has become firmly identified with blues music.

The devil is often just a metaphor used by blues singers to describe a cheatin’ woman, a bad boss, or even the evil in the world, and not a literal being. Still, from his first appearance in Clara Smith’s 1924 song “Done Sold My Soul To the Devil,” the devil persists in the culture of the blues. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular blues songs to evoke the devil’s name.

Brownie McGhee – “Dealing With the Devil” (1941)
Recorded during the Piedmont bluesman’s brief incarnation as “Blind Boy Fuller No. 2,” Brownie McGhee’s “Dealing With the Devil” is a classic tale of love gone wrong. Singing that “my woman don’t love me no more,” McGhee goes on to describe a lover that tries to poison him with “salt in his gravy” and “potash in his tea;” she “has a shotgun in the corner” and a “blackjack on the bed;” and he doesn’t understand why she “goes to bed with an icepick in her hand.” Delivered in Fuller’s traditional ragtime-influenced finger-picked style, McGhee’s spry, almost comedic reading of the song belies its seriousness.   BUY!

Charley Patton – “Devil Sent the Rain” (1929)
Patton’s “Devil Sent the Rain” is a plain-and-simple song of grief. Although the only remaining recording of this early track is pretty scratchy, as are many old blues 78s from the 1920s, the singer’s feelings are clear despite the ancient recording’s raw sound: his mother has died and he’s going to leave home to wander. Patton sings “Good Lord sent sunshine, devil he sent the rain” in response to his loss, adding “I didn’t know I loved her ‘til they eased her down.”   BUY!

Clutch – “The Devil & Me” (2007)
With an evil blues-metal soundtrack and stunning sandpaper guitars, rockers Clutch delivered one of the most chaotic-sounding songs on the subject with the open flame that is “The Devil & Me.” Turning the Robert Johnson myth on its head, the song speaks of a split between the protagonist and the devil, referring to some shadowy deal with the verse “the devil and me had a falling out, violation of contract beyond a shadow of a doubt.” Singer Neil Fallon doesn’t say exactly what caused the rift between the “best of friends” but the song cleverly name checks Beale Street in Memphis and Skip James’ classic “Killing Floor,” both places where one might run across the Prince of Darkness.   BUY!

Lonnie Johnson – “Devil’s Got the Blues” (1938)
Johnson’s classic song compares the blues to the devil – when one overtakes you, the other can’t be far behind. Johnson sings “the blues is like the devil, it comes on you like a spell, it will leave your heart full of trouble and your poor mind full of hell.” The protagonist is personifying the blues lifestyle, claiming that “the blues will drive you to drink and murder” whether due to heartbreak, poverty, or just good, old-fashioned depression. Johnson’s song includes a fine six-string performance by the influential guitarist.   BUY!

Peetie Wheatstraw – “Devil’s Son-In-Law”
Some time during the 1930s, bluesman William Bunch adopted the name and persona of “Peetie Wheatstraw,” also known as “the Devil’s Son-In-Law” and “the High Sheriff of Hell,” and all but two of his records were released under the Wheatstraw name. Although most historians believe that Bunch took on his diabolic moniker as a marketing ploy – playing up his macho image to sell more records – he penned several songs boasting of his connections to the underworld, including the ethereal “Devil’s Son-In-Law.” A larger-than-life figure that died young (the fate, it seems, of those that fool around with the devil), Bunch/Wheatstraw inspired a character in writer Ralph Ellison’s classic novel Invisible Man.   BUY!

Robert Johnson – “Cross Road Blues” (1936)
The myth behind Robert Johnson’s enormous talent, of course, is that the bluesman met the devil at the crossroads of Highways 61 and 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi and sold his soul in exchange for his guitar-playing prowess. Oddly enough, Johnson’s “Cross Road Blues” has nothing to do with any late-night bargaining with the devil, its lyrics instead describing the singer’s desperation to get home as darkness is falling. With the lynching of African-America men in the Southern United States not unusual during the 1920s and ‘30s, Johnson’s fears were not entirely unfounded. Regardless, the myth of Johnson’s shadowy midnight tryst has endured. The song available on Johnson’s The Complete Recordings set.   BUY!

Robert Johnson – “Hell Hound On My Trail” (1937)
Recorded during his last RCA studio session in 1937, Johnson’s “Hell Hound On My Trail” sounds terrifying. Over a strummed guitar, Johnson wails a desperate tale of a man trying to escape his fate – whether it’s the devil coming to collect on the Faustian bargain made by the singer, or just the police looking to arrest and jail him. Either way, Johnson maximizes the impact of the song through his use of brilliant poetic imagery and a vocal delivery that borderlines on the edge of desperation.

Robert Johnson – “Me and the Devil Blues” (1937)
The last of the fabled bluesman’s devil-related songs, “Me and the Devil Blues” seems to be a standard-issue blues tune about having trouble with your woman. In this case, the devil might personify the singer’s troublesome lover, or it might be a reference to the artist’s belief that the woman’s love would lead him to the grave…or maybe both. Johnson’s final verse, “you may bury my body down by the highway side, so my old evil spirit can catch that Greyhound bus and ride” touches upon the blues tradition of anonymous roadside internment.

Sam Collins – “Devil In the Lion’s Den” (1927)
This song by obscure bluesman Sam Collins offers one of the earliest references to the devil in blues music. The singer, a “motherless child” (another blues tradition), states “yon’ come the devil, we gonna set this town on fire” before boasting of his personal powers (“I got ways like a devil, sleep in the lion’s den”) before letting his woman know that he’ll be “goin’ up the country” when she asks him to stay. Not unlike modern rap songs with their braggadocio, Collins’ “Devil In The Lion’s Den” may be the first recorded tale of the ramblin’, gamblin’ man.   BUY!

Skip James – “Devil Got My Woman” (1931)
Country bluesman Skip James’ “Devil Got My Woman” is a song of romantic entanglement. James opens the song by singing “I’d rather be the devil, to be that woman man” before blaming the evil one’s influence for his lover’s infidelity, closing the first verse with “was nothin’ but the devil, changed my baby’s mind.” It turns out that the song’s protagonist is not without blame, ‘cause it turns out that the “woman I loved, took her from my best friend,” later adding “but he got lucky, stoled her back again.” Although delivered with James’ typical high wail and accompanied by a haunting guitar track, the song displays an irony usually absent from the bluesman’s repertoire.   BUY! 

Also on That Devil Music:
Spotlight On R.L. Burnside
Lost & Found: Preacher Boy