The Big Six One

A group of us at work who were due to celebrate a milestone birthday or anniversary last year, came to an informal agreement when it became increasingly apparent that no-one would be doing any celebrating whatsoever in 2020. We decided to ignore the usual protocol and steam into 2021 intent on marking the traditionally less celebrated occasions -  22nd or 51st birthdays, 26th wedding anniversaries etc. In that spirit, I've spent the last couple of weeks bigging-up my impending Big Six One, which has duly arrived today. Is it wine o'clock yet?

Here's the great Fred McDowell recorded live in November 1971.

Mississippi Fred McDowell - 61 Highway (Live)

Little Walter

That Little Walter was born as Marion Walter Jacobs on May 1st appears to be widely agreed upon, but the actual year in which he arrived is subject to some debate - 1923, 1925, 1928 or 1930, take your pick. What is unarguable is that his innovative, distorted style of playing broadened the accepted scope of blues harmonica, for listeners and fellow musicians alike. What's also unarguable is the fact that he died far too soon - 44, 42, 39 or 37 years of age, depending on which of those birth-dates is the real one. Here's Walter in 1954, with 'Mellow Down Easy', a song written by the great Willie Dixon.

Little Walter - Mellow Down Easy

Howlin' Wolf

Thanks to his imposing physique, as a young man Chester Burnett acquired the nickname Big Foot Chester, before ultimately earning immortality as Howlin' Wolf. In the 1930's, Wolf gained musical inspiration from contemporary performers such as Charlie Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Sonny Boy Williamson II and even played with the legendary Robert Johnson, while his trademark howl emerged as a result of failed attempts to approximate Jimmie Rodgers' signature 'blue yodel'. Many of his classic recordings throughout the 1950's and early 1960's were written by the great Willie Dixon, though my own favourite Howlin' Wolf track is 'Tired of Crying', an obscure self-written oddity, which for 15 years I only owned on 'From Early 'Til Late', a poor quality 1979 bootleg LP of unissued and alternate recordings. The song eventually became more widely available when it was included on a couple of official career retrospectives in the mid-1990's.

'Tired of Crying' was recorded in the Summer of 1969, a one-off studio run through, before being abandoned and, for all intents and purposes, forgotten. Cues are missed, instruments are out of tune, the speed varies dramatically and the melody bears a more than passing resembalence to the masterful 'Smokestack Lightning', which was written and recorded by Wolf 13 years earlier. But it swings so effortlessly. And those horns are so deliciously woozy and off kilter. It sweeps me up every time I hear it. Sometimes I ponder that if Wolf had perservered with the song for a little longer, perhaps we'd have a better, more solid performance to enjoy. Those thoughts pass quickly though. In spite of all its imperfections, because of all its imperfections, 'Tired of Crying' sounds just about perfect to me.

Howlin' Wolf - Tired of Crying

Denomination Blues

Between 1927 and 1929 Washington Phillips recorded the mere 18 songs that comprise his entire body of work - six of those were the first and second parts of three long songs, four were unreleased at the time and two are lost altogether. 'Denomination Blues' originally stretched to over five minutes in length, so was divided into two separate recordings issued across either side of a 78rpm single in 1928 and is, amongst other things, a plea for tolerance and respect across religious divides. 'Well denominations have no right to fight, they ought to just treat each other right, that's all.' Nearly 90 years on, the more things change the more they stay the same.

I first heard 'Denomination Blues' in the late 1980's, via Andy Kershaw's Radio 1 show, though it took me a few years to track down 'I Am Born to Preach the Gospel', a compilation of Phillips' recordings, released on the Yazoo label. A more recent Yazoo collection, 'The Key To The Kingdom', is the one to go for these days.

'Denomination Blues Part 1' - Washington Phillips 

'Denomination Blues Part 2' - Washington Phillips 

The song has been covered many times over the years, most notably in 1972 by Ry Cooder on 'Into the Purple Valley'. Sister Rosetta Tharpe used significant elements of 'Denomination Blues' in the two versions of 'That's All' she cut in 1938 and 1941. Here's a fantastic live performance of it from the 1940's.