This is a real artifact.
Now ordinarily I don’t believe in artifacts. But I made this mix tape (I don’t know that that’s what we called it then) over twenty-five years ago – Jake says I made it when he got his license, I thought it was when he went off to college (which I like better). I say, Print the legend. But I’m sure Jake’s right.
I don’t want to ascribe any cosmic significance to it. I mean, it’s just a mix tape – and now a very slightly modified Spotify list – compiled on the fly, sort of. But it sums up so many of the things that I was passionate about then – and that I remain passionate about now, mixing in fun and profundity, the well-known and the obscure (at least then), without any more rhyme or reason than to bring together some really great music in the same way that Gregg Geller has always approached the reissue albums that he’s done for Columbia, RCA, and Warner Bros., with all the excitement intact.
I’m sure no one will be surprised by the omnivorous presence of Howlin’ Wolf. (Every time I hear “I’ll Be Around,” I’m reminded of the elderly babysitter, long before the creation of this tape, who peered around nearslghtedly looking for the source of the unearthly sound that was coming from another room and then said a little worriedly to Alexandra: “I didn’t know your husband sang.”)
Anyway. You’ll note lots of Muddy Waters influence, too. And Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Mister Downchild” was the title source (and the inspiration) for both my second collection of short stories and my fifth novel – unpublished, like the first four, and probably deservedly so. (Sometime in the next few months I’m going to post a blog memoir about “Writing Fiction,” which will serve both to describe the past and, hopefully, to herald the future.)
I guess the thing that surprises me most here is the prevailing influence of Tommy Johnson (“Smokestack Lightnin’,” “I Asked For Water,” “Maggie Campbell,” “Dark Road”), not to mention Robert Johnson, both of whom I was obviously well aware of at the time (I mean, look at the order) but whose ongoing presence, it occurs to me now, gives the lie to the kind of revisionist history which would suggest they were important mainly because they were important to blues collectors. Floyd Jones, Muddy Waters, Johnny Shines, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Nighthawk, Elmore James – these were not collectors. They were disciples, who are here paying passionate tribute to some of the music that captivated them most when they were growing up and continued to fuel their musical imagination and inspiration all their lives.
Another seminal source – and I’ve got to admit, this kind of embarrasses me – was the original Sonny Boy Williamson (John Lee), of whom I was also very much aware but whom I had probably consigned, according to the prevailing wisdom of the day (and with the kind of snobbery to which none of us is fully immune), to the ranks of commercial mediocrity. Kind of silly in that, as it turns out Sonny Boy was the inspiration not only for the second Sonny Boy but the direct source for Junior Wells’ seminal “Hoodoo Man,” much of the other harmonica playing on this collection, and Baby Face Leroy’s great “Blues Is Killing Me,” which I’m sure I heard completely differently at the time simply because it came from the same singer who can be heard wailing with Muddy Waters and Little Walter on the very African-sounding “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” (man, that is still amazing).
Oh well, I guess it just goes to show how parochial (and proprietary) genre enthusiasts of every stripe can be. So all right, maybe the revisionists have something. And further all right, I’m going state right here: John Lee Williamson was something else (get the great album, Blue Bird Blues, that Colin Escott put out on his “Secret History of Rock ‘n’ Roll” series for RCA).
Anyway, I don’t think you need to know a thing to enjoy this “crazy music” (Buddy Guy title). I get such a kick still out of “Eisenhower Blues,” or the chaotic ride that Hop Wilson’s “My Woman Has a Black Cat Bone” takes you on, or the doomy mood of Buddy Guy’s “Ten Years Ago,” or the hair-sticking-up-on-your head nightmare phantasmagoria of “First Time I Met the Blues.”
Make up your own blues mix – don’t forget Little Walter next time, or T-Bone Walker, or B.B. King, or any of the hundreds of other blues men and women (right down to Billy Joe Shaver and Aretha Franklin) that you might want to put in your mix.
P.S. Soul tape from the same era coming soon!