Guest Blogger: Fishing Blues by John Milward

John Milward has a new book coming out this month Crossroads: How the Blues Shaped Rock ‘n’ Roll (and Rock Saved the Blues). The illustration is from the book and is one of many original images by Margie Greve. John’s been writing eloquently about music for years.  Here he examines the genesis of ‘Catfish Blues.’

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 Determining who wrote a vintage blues song can be akin to casting a fishing line into very muddy waters. That’s because in the early decades of the last century, blues was an oral tradition, with songs and lyrics and guitar licks passed from one musician to the next. As Dave Van Ronk once said, “Theft is the first law of art, and like any group of intelligent musicians, we all lived with our hands in each other’s pockets.” Added folklorist and song collector Paul Clayton: “If you can’t write, rewrite. If you can’t rewrite, copyright.”
 
A vintage 78 rpm disc might give writer’s credit to a particular blues singer, but unless the song was copyrighted, he was unlikely to ever see publishing royalties. Talent recruited for so-called “race records” rarely thought in such terms, and typically took a one-time cash payment (Lightnin’ Hopkins did this throughout his long career). Skip James was paid $40 for the 18 sides he recorded for Paramount in 1931, and his songs weren’t copyrighted until his rediscovery in the early-‘60s. (James came into a late-life windfall when Cream covered his “I’m So Glad” on Fresh Cream; his heirs got serious scratch when “Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues” was included on the soundtrack to 2000’s O Brother, Where Art Thou?)
 
Robert Petway recorded “Catfish Blues” in 1941; he was cited as the writer but blues researchers say the song had long circulated around the Mississippi Delta and was in the repertoire (and perhaps composed by) a singer of his acquaintance, Tommy McClennan. Whoever wrote it, however, borrowed a lyrical motif found in a 1928 hit called “Jim Jackson’s Kansas City Blues Part 3” by a medicine-show entertainer named Jim Jackson (“I wished I was a catfish, swimming down in the sea; I’d have some good woman, fishing after me”).

“Catfish Blues” barely caused a ripple commercially, but it was no doubt familiar to one of Petway’s Delta neighbors, Muddy Waters, whom Alan Lomax recorded that same year for the Library of Congress. Muddy brought the song with him to Chicago, and cut it for Chess in 1950 with his ringing electric guitar representing a clear bridge from the country blues to the sound of the city. Muddy moved the “catfish” lyric to the top, added some new words, and put his name on a song whose title he changed to “Rollin’ Stone.” Here’s Waters playing the tune about a decade later, and not long before a British rhythm & blues quintet who idolized Muddy decided to call themselves the Rolling Stones.

Many others have covered “Catfish Blues,” with B.B. King giving Petway writing credit, John Lee Hooker taking it for himself, and Jimi Hendrix citing the song as a traditional. Hendrix undoubtedly learned the song via the Waters recording. “When I was a little kid,” Hendrix told Sharon Lawrence, “I heard a record playing at a neighbor’s house turned way up. That song called to me, and I left my yard, went down the street, and when the song was over, I knocked on the door and said, ‘Who was that playing?’ ‘Muddy Waters,’ the guy said. I didn’t quite understand. He repeated it and spelled it out– ‘M-u-d-d-y.’

“Catfish Blues” was not only a staple of Hendrix’s repertoire– he sometimes called it the “Muddy Waters Blues”– but also the clear inspiration for two classics from Electric Ladyland which confirmed that his roots were deeply sunk in the blues: “Voodoo Chile” and “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return).” Here’s the latter, in which Hendrix casts his line into outer space.

Roosevelt Jamison, 1936-2013

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Quinton Claunch & Roosevelt Jamison August 2012

I’m not sure exactly how I first met Roosevelt.

Probably it was through Quinton Claunch. It was 1981 or 1982. I had started working on Sweet Soul Music, and Memphis – and James Carr, and Goldwax Records, and Otis Redding – were all, of course a big part of the picture. Quinton was co-founder and co-owner of Goldwax, whose biggest star, and probably greatest talent, was James Carr. But James was going through a period of trials and tribulations during which he was virtually incommunicado, and Roosevelt, who had originally brought him to Goldwax, was pretty much his only lifeline to the world. Roosevelt had also written “That’s How Strong My Love Is,” recorded initially by another of his discoveries, and another soul singer of incomparable talent, O.V. Wright, and then, in somewhat circuitous fashion, by Otis Redding in the version that the Rolling Stones picked up and made known to a whole other world on Out of Our Heads.

It doesn’t really matter. The point is, I met Roosevelt, who was working at the University of Tennessee’s Interstate Blood Bank at the time (only one of two or three full-time jobs he was working simultaneously), and once he heard what I was doing, Roosevelt took it upon himself to be my guide.

I don’t know where he found the time – I don’t know where he found the generosity of spirit. But that was Roosevelt – it was his mark in life as well as in music. He seemed to possess an empathy gene, a need to be of service that carried over into every aspect of his life. He was a songwriter primarily, definitely not a singer (his friends told him “to stick to the other end of the business,” he always said ruefully), and with the exception of “That’s How Strong My Love Is,” I’m not sure he ever really profited from the music business – and then only to a limited degree. He had discovered both O.V. Wright and James Carr when they were singing in the same gospel group, the Harmony Echoes, one of a number of quartets that he would rehearse in the back of the blood bank on the corner of Beale and Fourth in the early 1960s. His dream was to bring their talent to the attention of the world (“O God, what is it that Thou has for me to do?” he wrote at the time, seeking inspiration) – and he succeeded. But when I met him fifteen or sixteen years later, O.V. had just died, a victim of drugs at the age of forty-one, and James, two years younger, had himself descended into a fog of drugs and depression.

We started going around. Or, rather, Roosevelt started taking me around – that’s really the point of this story – to a host of his friends who were in large part, like Roosevelt himself, “the story behind the story,” fellow spirits of abundant but insufficiently heralded talent, who looked at me a little like, What are you doing here, but then, since I was vouched for by Roosevelt, never hesitated to welcome me into their homes. I met O.V.’s brother, Eddie Lewis, who Roosevelt assured me sang just like O.V. We went to see the great songwriter and soul singer George Jackson (some of his better-known compositions are Otis Clay’s “Trying to Live My Life Without You,” Z.Z. Hill’s “Down Home Blues,” and Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll,” not to mention the Osmonds’ “One Bad Apple”). And, of course, Roosevelt expended a great deal of time and energy on getting me together with James Carr. There were numerous missed appointments, but finally we picked up James at his sister’s and, after driving around a little, finally settled on a little restaurant in South Memphis, where we sat uncomfortably under the harsh fluorescent light.

James was having trouble just staying awake, expelling his breath loudly from time to time and largely unresponsive to Roosevelt’s promptings. “This gentleman can do a lot for you, sir,” Roosevelt said. “Do you understand where I’m coming from?” But James simply couldn’t. “Aren’t we friends?” Roosevelt tried desperately. “Sometimes,” said James, not really meaning anything by it. “You know,” said Roosevelt, whose dream always remained, to bring the attention of the world to the beauty he saw all around him, “everyone who comes to your concerts loves you. But there are many questions the public would like to ask. Because you’ll go down in history as one of the greatest blues singers of all time.”

There was no truer friend than Roosevelt Jamison. He was the kind of person who couldn’t see a stray dog without needing to feed him – and I always liked to think I was one of his stray dogs. At the book release party for Sweet Soul Music in Memphis, Roosevelt, of course, showed up, and so did his mentor, Dr. L.W. Diggs, the renowned hematologist and pioneer in the study of Sickle Cell anemia, who, defying the state of Tennessee’s laws of segregation, had trained Roosevelt surreptitiously as a medical technologist in the ‘50s, paving the way for him to eventually take over a supervisory position in the University of Tennessee hematology lab. Dr. Diggs was 86 at the time and, as far as I know, no dedicated fan of the music itself. But his granddaughter, who lived in New York, had read an excerpt from my book in the Village Voice that mentioned both Roosevelt and her grandfather, and he showed up for the party dressed like the only distinguished physician in the room.

Roosevelt hadn’t seen him in a while, and he introduced me to Dr. Diggs excitedly (“You remember, I told you about Dr. Diggs!”), and despite an all-star turn out from the music world (Rufus Thomas, Solomon Burke, Sam Phillips, and David Porter, among others), Roosevelt spent most of his time with his one-time mentor and friend, reminiscing enthusiastically about old times.

I saw Roosevelt many times over the years, and it was always renewing. Perhaps most of all because he was someone for whom the dream would never truly be over.

A Word from Mr. C: Marvin's All-Star Moment

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Peter has known FOTB (Friend of the Blog) Mr. C since he was broadcasting on WTUR in Medford. Now he can be heard Saturdays from 12-2 on LuxuriaMusic.com

Having a Las Vegas over/under connected to the length of your song may not be the most comforting entry into performance, much less singing the National Anthem on solo piano at the Super Bowl.  That’s what Alicia Keys was faced with this year, and alone she bravely soldiered on trying to summon some dignity from the whole affair.

Thirty years earlier, Marvin Gaye was introduced at the NBA All Star Game to much less fanfare.  With a click track in the background giving a pulse loosely based on his mega-hit, “Sexual Healing,” Gaye strode evenly to the mike.  Head skewed slightly upward, dressed impeccably in a grey double-breasted suit, with eyes sheathed in opaque, impenetrable sunglasses, Gaye began to sing.  Introspective, gallant and seemingly spontaneous, he began an interpretation as graceful as the athletes lined up in attendance, who smiled and swayed as he sang.  Bombs didn’t burst in the background and U.S. soldiers weren’t standing by. Alone at center stage, Marvin Gaye transformed the potential bombast of the song into a gently parsed hymn - our National Anthem sung as an extremely personal, resolute reflection, part sublime sadness and part quiet triumph.

Great music on TV seems divided into two camps: The Beatles and Rolling Stones on Ed Sullivan, or several Elvis Presley appearances (though a very good argument can be made about the music in his case), which were hugely anticipated Events, where song was almost secondary to just the appearance. Then there’s the unexpected: Howling Wolf on Shindig [1] or this: Marvin Gaye at the 1983 NBA All Star game.  Here, by mid-song the crowd (and many of us viewing), experienced a collective, unmanufactured thrill, a tingle of disbelief…and this became the real event, the transformative, riveting power of great art.  There is something happening here–a pure expression of complex emotion consolidated, into two and a half minutes of song.

–Mr. C

For the full story of how this anthem came to be, check out out Pete Croatto’s piece on Grantland.com



[1]  Ed note: This blog has been up for only a few months, and we have already linked to this INCREDIBLE video three times. If you haven’t ever seen this… well… just watch it already!

The Rolling Stones, 1965

I first saw the Rolling Stones in person in Worcester, Massachusetts, a mid-sized city forty-five miles outside of Boston, on April 30, 1965. It was at the start of their third U.S. tour, and we were excited most of all by their unabashed love of the blues. All the marketing publicity in the world couldn’t hold a candle to their embrace of a music that my friends and I felt no one else could love the way we did.

As it turned out, though, reputation inadvertently took precedence, at least for a moment, when just as the show was getting under way, you could sense the sound of heavy footsteps coming down the aisle, and all of a sudden a teenaged girl in the row in front of ours was being yanked by the hair out of her seat by an angry man who could only be her father. It was, certainly, an unforgettable image, and the Stones presented their music with incandescent belief, but for me the most indelible moment of this American visit would come three weeks later when Brian Jones and Mick Jagger introduced the Howlin’ Wolf to a national television audience on Shindig!, and mainstream America for the first time saw the real face of the blues. That was epic.