~Robert Pete Williams, 1964
For a tenth grade American History course, we were allowed to assign our own topics for a year-end essay. I assigned myself the topic of American blues music, with very little prior knowledge of the subject, but a good deal of curiosity. Little did I know what fields lay ahead.
Research and writing started slow, but picked up momentum when I realized that I actually enjoyed what I was doing. Soon, I found myself clearing entire shelves of books at the downtown public library. There was also a lending library of tapes, records and CDs and I found myself trundling bags of recordings home. From these records, I compiled a cassette tape of tracks based simply on what appealed to me. That tape stayed with me for years, frequently found threaded up on my cheap walkman.
I clearly remember listening obsessively to Leadbelly’s “John Hardy,” Peg Leg Howell’s “Rolling Mill Blues,” Elizabeth Cotten’s “Freight Train,” Charley Patton’s “Some These Days I’ll Be Gone,” Robert Johnson’s “Come in My Kitchen,” Skip James “I Am So Glad,” and Mississippi John Hurt’s entire oeuvre. For me, it was a secret comfort in an unkind world.
For the first Snore & Guzzle Radio Hour of the new year, you’ll get a taste of my favorite songs in the extended Afro-American blues idiom. That includes ragtime, country blues, spirituals, field-recordings, work songs, string bands, sacred steel, game songs, banjo songsters, and porch folk. I’ve skipped most of the canonical blues artists in favor of some less popular musicians. There are some beautiful, subtle grace notes in the recording quality on these songs. In many of the field recordings, you get a sense of the acoustic environment based on ambient sounds. In the Etta & Cora Baker song, you can clearly hear the sound of whistling birds. In the Moving Star Hall Congregation’s spiritual, you can hear the architecture of the building in which they are performing. You even get a sense for the wooden floors by the sound of the feet stamping on the ground. Each recording has sonic artifacts from its media: from shellac to wire to magnetic tape, you can hear a full rainbow of hisses, scratches and pops. They are sounds to relish, not bemoan. Thank you to the archivists of this era, without whom, these recordings would be lost: Yazoo, Document, Revenant, Old Hat, Arhoolie, Folkways, Alan Lomax & Moses Asch. The tracklist can be found below.
In other Snore & Guzzle News:
+ You’ll find a new gossip column on the Society Page. Don’t forget that there is now a little chapbook available of all the collected gossip columns to date.
+ There’s an article of mine in the current issue of Cinema-Scope magazine, entitled, “Lightness & Density: The Films of Charles & Ray Eames.” Pick up a copy at your local news-stand.
+ The Design page has been updated and there are a number of new flyers and miscellaneous projects that have been posted.
+A couple new songs have found their way on to the mp3 page, including some rare Nino Rota’s compositions from the score for Purple Noon, the original screen adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s Talented Mr. Ripley.
1. Weaver & Beasley - St Louis Blues
2. Luke Jordan - If I Call You Mama
3. Lizzie Washington - My Low Down Brown
4. Henry Thomas - Fishing Blues
5. Mississippi Mud Steppers - Sunset Waltz
6. Sonny Boy & Lonnie - I Wonder Who’s Holding You
7. Etta & Cora Baker - Jaybird March
8. Elizabeth Cotten - When I Get Home
9. Charlie Butler - Diamond Joe
10. Clifford Gibson - Don’t Put That Thing On Me
11. Lottie Kimbrough - Rolling Log Blues
12. Blind Lemon Jefferson - Beggin back
13. Frazier & Patterson - Bile Them Cabbage Down
14. Vera Hall - Trouble So Hard
15. Sam Montgomery - Honey Dripper
16. Peg Leg Howell - Rolling Mill Blues
17. Andrew & Jim Baxter - the Moore Girl
18. Bukka White - Poor Boy Long Way From Home
19. Blind Roosevelt Graves - I’ll be rested when the roll is called
20. Blind Willie Johnson - The Rain Don’t Fall On Me
21. Geeshie Wiley - Last Kind Word Blues
22. Unidentifed Group Of Tobacco Workers - Run, Sinner, Run
23. Moving Star Hall congregation - Jesus Knows All About My Trouble
24. Goodwill Spiritual Choir - You Better Mind
