All Blues, All the Time
The Year of the Blues is giving tons of attention to one of America’s great art forms—even as it ignores some of the music’s greatest moments and performers
by Ron Wynn
The Blues is at once American and worldly. It’s a form of storytelling so universal that it has inspired people beyond our borders and continues to influence music here and abroad.
—Martin Scorsese in the October/November issue of Blues Revue
It’s easy, and probably wise, to be skeptical about the long-term impact of Congress designating 2003 as “The Year of the Blues.” Those who’ve always loved the music don’t need governmental validation, and those who don’t care aren’t going to be swayed by senators droning on about the genre’s place in American cultural history. Indeed, many within the sphere of blues collectors, journalists, magazines and record labels are suspicious about the entire event. There’s certainly something a bit weird about Volkswagen being the official corporate sponsor of the blues.
“Who’s Got the Blues,” David Hadju’s broadside in the October issue of Mother Jones, outlines concerns that longtime blues advocates have about front-runners and latecomers being misinformed or unduly influenced by the celebration. Witness the following barb from Bob Koester, one of the nation’s premier blues and jazz producers, and the founder/owner of Delmark Records: “A lot of white blues fans remind me of the idiot who goes to the opera house to listen to the orchestra.”
Sadly, the YOTB observance seems to be getting the same sort of misguided criticism that hounded Ken Burns’ Jazz series. This observance isn’t fundamentally designed to do anything significant, like easing the tensions between constantly warring Delta purists and urban modernists. No amount of testimonials, articles, concerts or new clubs like B.B. King’s in Nashville will break the embargo on blues songs and artists at rock and urban radio. Nor will they make artists of vision like Chris Thomas King, Michael Hill, Corey Harris or Alvin Youngblood Hart household names. The blues as a genre, sound and culture is too varied and complex to be easily packaged or assessed.
But what this observance can do, particularly events like Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues, the PBS series that begins Sunday night and continues through Oct. 4, is to stimulate interest among those who’ve never truly heard the music or aren’t aware of its impact on society. Issues like the gradual shift in the blues from country to city themes, the evolution of blues imagery and song structure over the decades, and the music’s gradual drop in status among African Americans are just a handful of topics the series ponders.
The seven-part production, which not only includes a Scorsese entry, but segments by Charles Burnett, Wim Wenders, Richard Pearce, Marc Levin, Mike Figgis and Clint Eastwood, guides the audience through various genres and eras while identifying significant events and personalities. Levin’s “Godfathers and Sons,” which highlights a summit between rappers Chuck D and Common and the musicians who played on Muddy Waters’ controversial Electric Mud album, will no doubt anger purists who dismiss all attempts to modernize the blues. There’s also the companion The Blues: The Radio Series, which was sponsored by the Experience MusicProject in Seattle and begins Saturday night.
Most importantly, the Year of the Blues celebration has spawned a host (actually, a glut) of new blues reissues and anthologies. The PBS production alone has yielded single-disc and five-disc multi-artist sets, individual soundtracks for each movie and best-of albums spotlighting familiar artists like B.B. King and Eric Clapton, as well as largely unknown critical favorites like J.B. Lenoir. (A seven-disc DVD boxed set is also coming in October.) Add to this the equally worthy “Blues Kingpins” series from the Right Stuff, multi-disc lines from Bluebird, HighTone and Shout!/Factory, and it might prove the only time in recent history when even ardent blues fans would throw up their hands and say it’s too much.
The various discs grouped under the banner Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues were compiled through a cooperative venture between Universal Music and Sony/Legacy. Seemingly designed for fledgling listeners, the series is likely to make hardcore fans groan at hearing overly familiar chestnuts like “Sweet Little Angel” and “Feel Like Going Home” again. There’s nothing wrong with most of the music in these packages, but there’s no way they can be recommended to anyone with even minimal blues knowledge.
It’s also a bit sad that what’s sure to be the most heavily touted blues line ever released doesn’t include single packages devoted to luminaries like Otis Rush, Magic Sam, T-Bone Walker, Charley Patton or Little Walter, while spotlighting Keb’ Mo’ and Taj Mahal, two wonderful performers who’d be the first to admit they’re hardly innovators. Thankfully, some of the soundtrack discs address this inequity, most notably Piano Blues, with definitive cuts by Otis Spann and Roosevelt Sykes, and Soul of a Man, with earthy material from Skip James and Blind Willie Johnson that reestablishes the blues as a poetic art form able to accommodate unorthodox instrumental and vocal approaches. The series also includes single discs from Robert Johnson and Son House, who, along with Patton, form the holy trinity of the Delta blues. There’s also a great single disc’s worth of Bessie Smith, though it only scrapes the surface of her catalog and hardly communicates how magnetic, combative and risqué she was.
Still, perhaps the most musically invigorating reissue series is “Blues Kingpins,” particularly the discs devoted to Ike Turner, Elmore James and John Lee Hooker. The Turner set illuminates the ties between swing-influenced R&B, gospel-tinged soul and the blues. Vocalists like Dennis Binder and Billy Gayles moan and wail on “Nobody Wants Me” and “Night Howler,” respectively, while Turner assists them as both a producer and an instrumentalist (on piano and guitar). Turner also demonstrates his facility as a soloist on the loose, fiery “All the Blues All the Time.”
Hooker’s disc highlights his booming vocals and hypnotic boogie beat, moving from the familiar in “Boogie Chillen” and “Crawling Kingsnake Blues” to the seldom heard in “Hug and Squeeze.” Elmore James was the master of the recycled riff, but no matter how often you hear his “Dust My Broom” configuration, his fervent shouting and crunching accompaniment provide a visceral thrill. Fats Domino, B.B. King and Lightnin’ Hopkins are the other artists in the series, with Hopkins’ weary, laconic vocals and odd, yet masterful guitar playing revealing that he was an artist rooted in tradition who nevertheless kept one eye fixed on the future.
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