Blues From the Delta/ William Ferris

Since I have a cooking-from-scratch hangover, it's Farm Fresh paninis, Northern Neck ginger ale, leftover three-bean salad, Betty Crocker walnut brownies (with chopped pecans added in) and vanilla ice cream for dinner.   I settled into bed to work on my required reading and promptly fell asleep for a half hour.  

Now I'm awake to tell you about a book I finished earlier this year as part of the syllabus, since I didn't get very far with today's selection.   First, let me say that I have strong biases when it comes to the music that I enjoy.   Words, in general, I need to have words in my songs.   I understand that computers are used to mix music, but I don't want to hear their heavy footprints in the way of letting a vocalist hit certain inhuman notes and blending the band into a tasteless background hum.   I'm not a musician, so I don't have the appreciation for classical music that I should.   And I'm not working it out on the dance floor, so techno has got to go.   Which brings me to...

That's how I like my music.   Thank goodness for people like Alan Lomax and William Ferris who had the sense to capture and preserve roots music.   Ferris spent his time traveling to new places, making new relationships and documenting traditional sounds.   He talks about the hard lives of black sharecroppers and the stories of Chicago's money trees that lured Mississippians north.

Ferris also explores the fact that, "Music was one of the few avenues to success available for blacks, and because blues records were sold to black audiences, recording success reflected how well a singer expressed the feelings of his or her audience.   The blues singer became  a spokesman for the black community" (9).    

Ferris writes about being a white outsider who needed to develop a rapport with the locals in order to gain access to the musicians and their blues.   This allowed the men to speak freely about sometimes contentious relationships with white men, and those stories are included here.

I'm partial to the section on the male/female call and response songs because I like some rowdy sass sometimes.   It makes me think of Joe Tex and Carla Thomas carrying on in Stax's "The Same Things it Took to Get Me".  

I also enjoyed the historical context of the "one strand on the wall".   If you want your own, Jack White will show you how, but you don't need to plug yours into an amp.

There's tension between blues and gospel music, solo and band performances, old and new blues musicians, men and women, black and white and humankind and nature.   In addition to broader stories, Ferris recounts his visits with a handful of blues performers and transcribes the lyrics and conversations of interviews as well as house party performances.   This technique brings the reader right inside the experience that Ferris is enjoying firsthand.

If you think you want to be a blues performer, Mr. Ferris would want you to know that you better be quick on the draw.   Blues lyrics should be flexible and impromptu in order to please the audience at hand.   But if people are trying to dance because your audience is no longer a house party but a big venue, you've got to make that happen by playing the recorded and familiar version.

Now listen up to Howlin' Wolf to see if you've got what it takes.