So this is now the third installment of a series that I didn’t expect to be a series, but what the hell? I drink a lot and I listen to a lot of blues, so we can keep this train rolling for a long, long time if we’d like.
I’ve been doing 7 songs at a clip all from a night I spent on my balcony, drinking rare bourbon and hashing out a playlist on Spotify.
Here’s the first two lists to bring us up to speed.
Part I:
- Loan Me a Dime — Boz Scaggs with Duane Allman
- Dark End of the Street — Cat Power
- I Cover the Waterfront — John Lee Hooker with Van Morrison
- The River’s Invitation — Percy Mayfield
- Stormy Monday — Cream, Live Royal Albert Hall May 2-3-5-6 2005
- T’Aint Nobody’s Bizness if I Do — Otis Spann
- Hotel Women — Patrick Sweany
Part II:
- At Last — Etta James
- Georgia On My Mind — Ray Charles
- Little Rain — Jimmy Reed
- Sad Hours — Little Walter
- Katrina — North Mississippi Allstars with Anders Osborne
- Governor — Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Suprise
- Worried Dream — B.B. King
So where were we? Oh right, I was getting ice…
Almost all Bourbon starts out as what serious drinkers would call “Grain Forward” with flavors of corn bread and a strong streak of young oak. By law, to be called “bourbon” the liquor must be made in the US (though not necessarily in Kentucky), made from a grain mixture that is at least 51% corn and aged in new charred oak barrels (Hence the large market for used bourbon barrels). It can’t be distilled to more that 160 proof, barreled at more that 125 proof or bottled at less than 80 proof.
So its not surprising that young bourbon comes pouring out strong on the corn and oak notes, but as it ages it picks up first a sweet nutmeg profile and then ultimately a warm vanilla patina. ...if the mash is also high in rye content then you get other spikes of strong spice notes like cinnamon and allspice. (Yes, I am looking at you Blanton’s).
This Black Maple Hill 16 year is heavy on the caramel to the point of hinting at honey and brown sugar and the long lingering after taste makes you know you aren’t touching anything young. My standard wisecrack about drinking scotch is that I have the same rule as I do for women: You don’t touch anything that isn’t 18 years old and single (malt). ;)
Bourbon is not typically aged for as long, so at 16 years this bottle pours out like its absolutely ancient.
Anyway, back to the blues.
I settle back in with a topped up glass and ready for something really low and slow. We just heard from The King, so lets sidetrack from the canonical path for a few songs, shall we?
A lot of people only know ZZ Top from their iconic rock videos in the early days of MTV but Billy Gibbons has the blues in his blood and he puts his maple-necked ‘59 Stratocaster to work, plugged directly into the soundboard for this take, and comes through with Blue Jean Blues, a good ol’ fashioned straightforward bluesy song.
From there, well.. I don’t know why but I went to Mofro. I’ve always liked these guys out of Jacksonville, Florida. With JJ Grey on vocals and Andrew Trube on slide guitar, they have a great Southern sound without resurrecting all the parts of 70’s southern rock best left to the past. Here is one of their more bluesy songs, The Wrong Side. (I almost went with Pray for Rain but I changed my mind at the last second. GREAT song though, if you are interested.)
And at this point, I recognize the fact that I have a lot (A LOT!) of alcohol in me. Not that this is a bad thing, but its definitely a thing. There is only so much a man can drink in one night and thus it must follow as the night the day (H/t to Polonius, Act 1, Scene iii), that there is only so much Blues a man can listen to in one night.
So enough beating around the bush: Let’s get to the Grand Masters.
If I have to introduce Muddy Waters or reference some wiki link as a bio background, then you are in the wrong diary. Now Muddy comes from the Delta but then went on to help shape/personify Chicago style electric blues but, he still has traditional blues running through him. There are DOZENS and DOZENS of songs I could pick here to put Mr. Waters on this playlist. But I don’t want anything too rocking or big band jamming so how about an old favorite of mine: Long Distance Call
This is actually an homage of sorts to Blind Lemon Jefferson and his 1929 Texas-Blues song “Long Distance Moan” but Muddy spins this one with his own distinct sound. (Here is a great piece of crystal clear footage of him performing this at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival in 1968)
And now we come to Robert Johnson. It still surprises me to learn that not everyone knows who that is. Eric Clapton (who we’ll get to in a second) has called him the most influential guitar player that ever lived.
Keith Richards, when asked about Johnson said “You want to know how good the blues can get? Well, this is it.”
Jimi Hendrixs called him his single greatest influence.
Bob Dylan talked about listening to Johnson records and said "The vibrations from the loudspeaker made my hair stand up. The stabbing sounds... could almost break a window."
Rolling Stone lists him as one of the greatest guitar players in history. Spin listed him in their canon of “Guitar Gods”. He is the original founding member of the “27 club”, having died in 1939 from Strychnine poisoning at the age of 27, just like Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin, Basquiat, Cobain and Winehouse.
He is the inspiration for the O Brother, Where Art Thou? character of the musician that sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads in Mississippi to become, through a Faustian pact, the greatest Blues musician the world has ever known. This was an actual legend during Johnson’s life. (Contemporaneously, this was also associated with the African god Legba, who was associated with crossroads.)
Robert Johnson is the REASON we have Blues music today. He is a one-man legend unto himself.
And in light of all this, ….would you believe that he only ever recorded 29 songs?
One of Johnson’s songs was Me and the Devil and Eric Clapton has covered it for most of his career.
In 2004 Clapton recorded “Me and Robert Johnson” a studio album of Johnson covers. Later that year he recorded “Sessions for Robert J” as part of a documentary chronicling his obsession with the Blues Master. As part of that, Clapton traveled to Dallas to sit in the room at 508 Park Avenue where Robert Johnson recorded his only 2 albums and play his version of Johnson’s songs.
From Mr. Clapton:
"It is a remarkable thing to have been driven and influenced all of my life by the work of one man", Clapton said. "And even though I accept that it has always been the keystone of my musical foundation, I still would not regard it as an obsession; instead, I prefer to think of it as a landmark that I navigate by, whenever I feel myself going adrift. I am talking, of course, about the work of Robert Johnson. Up until I heard his music, everything I had ever heard seemed as if it was dressed up for a shop window somewhere, so that when I heard him for the first time, it was like he was singing only for himself, and now and then, maybe God. At first, it scared me in its intensity, and I could only take it in small doses. Then I would build up strength and take a little more, but I could never really get away from it, and in the end, it spoiled me for everything else. Now, after all these years, his music is like my oldest friend, always in the back of my head, and on the horizon. It is the finest music I have ever heard. I have always trusted its purity, and I always will".
Here is our modern day guitar master paying homage to man he considers the greatest:
(Note, that YouTube caption is incorrect. This is not filmed in his hotel room. This is from his DVD release that accompanied “Sessions for Robert J”. This is Eric sitting in the holy mecca of 508 Park Ave. A Blues master playing the Blues in the room that arguably gave birth to The Blues as we know them. Enjoy.)
For a bit more rocking feel, here is John Mellencamp covering one of Robert Johnson’s all-time most iconic songs Stones in My Passway on his Trouble No More album/DVD.
Alright, alright… let’s settle down. If someone had suggested that song be added I would have tsk-tsk’d them and said it was too upbeat and rocking, but what can I say? I was half-drunk and it’s Robert #$@!-ing Johnson! So, anything goes….
I could easily pivot here and get louder and louder and wind up jumping around in my living room to Albert Collins and Buddy Guy and Freddy King and Johnny Winter but this wasn’t that kind of night.
So I go right back to Mississippi Muddy Waters to get re-grounded back in the Delta.
You have to always remember your roots, and Muddy never forgot where he came from. Here is My Home is in the Delta.
Okay, so yeah, we could spend whole nights and weekends listening to and marveling at Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson but let us not belabor the point any further. Masters will always be masters and legends will be legends.
You don’t need me, drunk or sober or anywhere in between, to tell you how great Waters and Johnson are.
I typed in the name of this playlist before I even searched out the first Boz Scaggs song to start it. Remember? I said I called it “Whiskey Throated Lullabies” and sure, that was partly because it was late and I wanted to keep the music on the slow and soft side, but it was also a subtle reference to a song I knew right from the word jump would wind up on this list once I got well into the bottle of my new best friend.
So we’ll wrap up this week’s section of the list with Tom Waits. This is from his debut album in 1973. Prior to this Waits was playing what he self-described as “Hootenanny Nights” on Mondays at The Troubadour in West Hollywood, and these were basically just a bunch of embellished and strung together Bob Dylan covers.
His Album Closing Time would launch his career and only get better with age. Almost every single song on it has been covered, many more than once. Jeff Buckley started it with his 1973 version of “Martha”, which was then recovered by everyone from Bette Midler to Meatloaf. The Eagles remade his “Ol’ 55” . “Ice Cream Man” got picked up by Screamin Jay Hawkins. Even decades later we still saw “I Hope I Don’t Fall in Love With You” done separately by 10,000 Maniacs, Marc Cohn and Hootie and the Blowfish. Hell Jon Bon Jovi even sung it exclusively for the soundtrack of an Ally McBeal episode! How mainstream is THAT?!
But I was thinking of one that doesn’t get as much attention: Midnight Lullaby; and “lullaby” is a literal descriptor here as the lyrics are pieced together from old nursery rhymes and the outro is a simple picked out piano rendition of “Hush Little Baby”.
I punched this up on my phone to settle back down from the old schoolers, but not to sign off for the night. Its a sleepy song, but the night is still (kind of) young and we have many bluesy miles to go before we sleep.
Cheers.
(As always,…If you know of some good tracks that would match these please post them! PLEASE. If you cant find them on YouTube, just give me the name, artist and how to find the specific version (Album? Live Performance date?) and I’ll seek it out.)