Post by Michael Messer on Jan 5, 2014 11:37:25 GMT
Hi Michael,
I have been keen to read your article, 'Slide Blues Roots,' since you mentioned it on the forum last month (I'm gradually making my way through various articles and books on these kinds of issues and am interested in your view) so have kept an eye out for the December issue of fRoots in the local magazine shops in case the opportunity for purchase presented itself, but didn't come across a copy (too specialised, I s'pose). So, now that the December issue has come and gone I was wondering whether are you at liberty to and happy to make a copy of the article available, either personally or via the forum - if not, I quite understand... (I don't know the rules or etiquette for the music press, but FWIW when I worked on a (philosophy) journal our authors were free to distribute a reasonable number of copies of their articles and to make pre-publication drafts available more widely via their own webpages... )
Best wishes,
Bod.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The History of Blues Slide Guitar - Part 1 (of 3 parts) - by Michael Messer
(written in 2011 - published in fRoots magazine December 2013)
SLIDE BLUES ROOTS
Slide guitar blues and gospel music was of course an African American invention, but Michael Messer argues that the pre-war roots of the guitar accompaniment are much less purely African than many like to imagine...
The story of slide guitar has been told many times, but because of partisan opinions and the fact that so much gets lost in the mists of time, there is some confusion about where it came from and how it became part of the African-American blues musicians repertoire in the early part of the 20th century.
I have been playing and studying the subject of slide guitar for nearly four decades and my journey of discovery has taken me from blues and rock into country, folk, western swing, bluegrass, Hawaiian, African, Indian, celtic and a few other places on the way. I am not saying that I know all the answers about its history, but I have formed some opinions and made some interesting discoveries along the way. For this series of articles I will focus on slide guitar in the blues. This first article is about the early pre-war players.
There is a whole school of thought that talks about the roots of blues slide guitar coming from various one string African diddley bow type instruments that arrived in America with the slaves. These instruments (sometimes called a Jitterbug, or Diddley Bow) are usually crude homemade one string childrenʼs instruments made by fixing bailing wire between two screws on a board, or against the side of a shack for resonance. They were played by plucking the wire with one hand and sliding a bottle, a piece of metal or a bone up and down the string to change the pitch.
While there is unquestionable evidence that the roots of the blues are in African music, there is very little evidence, apart from stories told by explorers who went to West Africa, to support the theory that slide guitar comes from Africa. The diddley bow is a much smaller part of the story than it has been credited for. Sliding an object up and down a string to change its pitch may have come into America from both Africa and Hawaii, but I believe the Hawaiian influence to be more important.
There is however, a lot of evidence that supports the theory that slide guitar came into American culture from India via the Hawaiian Islands. In India there is evidence of polished stone slides being used on open tuned stringed instruments played lap-style like Hawaiian steel guitar, dating back thousands of years. There is a story that in the 1890s an Indian musician, Davion, who played slide on a Gottuvadyam (Indian lap steel instrument) travelled to Hawaii to perform for the royal family, but due to a storm at sea, the ship he was travelling on was damaged and his instrument was destroyed, so he borrowed a guitar to do his concerts.
There are other theories about how slide guitar may have started in Hawaii, but this to me is the most logical and believable. Indian musicians were using open tunings on their traditional instruments and in Hawaii, Mexican cowboys working the cattle farms played guitars in open Spanish tuning. All these elements were brought together in the latter part of the 19th century by the first Hawaiian guitarists and to cut a long story short, Hawaiian Steel Guitar was born. (The term ʻSteelʼ does not refer to the body of the guitar, but is the name of the tool used to play the instrument).
It is true that many of the early blues slide players learnt their first tunes on one string diddley bows, but whether that instrument actually does have its roots in Africa is not really known. The first written evidence of anybody hearing blues slide guitar is from the great composer, W.C. Handy, who in 1903, while waiting for a train at Tutwiler railroad station in Mississippi, first heard an African-American musician “playing guitar with a knife as popularized by Hawaiian musicians”. Handy had spent a lot of time in Mississippi studying the music and the culture and he referred to this style as being of Hawaiian origin, not of African origin.
During the first part of the 20th century, Hawaiian steel guitar became very popular in mainland USA and the style of playing was picked up by both African-American and European-American musicians. European-American musicians mostly played it in the Spanish tuning Hawaiian-style on their lap and keeping very close to the Hawaiian sound, adapted it to fit into Country, Folk and Pop music. African-American musicians, also in the early days played mostly lap-style like the Hawaiians, but more often in the sebastopol tuning and used it to accompany their songs as a solo instrument that was capable of echoing the melody of the vocal on the top string while holding a rhythm on the bottom strings.
By the time we hear the first recordings of blues slide guitar in the early 1920s, it has already started to become more sophisticated than just a simple one string-style accompaniment instrument. I believe this sophistication comes from hearing Hawaiian steel players and not from a primitive one string diddley bow.
The first recording by an African-American of blues slide guitar was made in New York City in 1923 by a musician from Louisville, Kentucky, named Sylvester Weaver. Weaver was in New York recording with singer, Sara Martin, and while he was there he did a solo session and recorded two instrumental masterpieces, ʻGuitar Bluesʼ and ʻGuitar Ragʼ. ʻGuitar Bluesʼ is a classic blues played Hawaiian lap-style in sebastopol tuning and uses all six strings to play the melody. Based on a piano rag, ʻGuitar Ragʼ is played Hawaiian lap-style using four chords and the slide on all six strings. These recordings are far from being primitive and draw more from Hawaiian steel playing than from a one string diddley bow. Weaver recorded the tune again in 1927 and it was this recording that was ʻborrowedʼ and slightly renamed by Leon McAuliffe of Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys and became an enormous hit. ʻSteel Guitar Ragʼ is one of the staples of the Western Swing and pedal steel guitar repertoire.
The story of blues slide guitar really gets going with two people who recorded in the 1920s; Charley Patton from Mississippi and Blind Willie Johnson from Texas. Both musicians in my opinion, apart from some occasional and very important exceptions which I will talk about later, form the basis of everything that was to follow. Patton played in both sebastopol and Spanish tunings and from my research I believe he played slide in both regular guitar position and Hawaiian lap-style. His Spanish tuning songs draw a lot in their approach to playing licks and melodies from Hawaiian steel guitar, whereas many of his sebastopol tunes are played in a style closer to the one string diddley bow approach. However, in one of Pattonʼs tunes, ʻSpoonfulʼ, he plays in sebastopol, a ragtime progression with more of a Hawaiian approach that is very similar to Weaverʼs ʻGuitar Ragʼ. There is no proof, but I believe Patton may have heard Weaverʼs recordings. Pattonʼs repertoire of slide guitar tunes is one of the most important and influential in the history of the instrument. Charley Patton influenced Son House and Robert Johnson, who in turn influenced Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton and countless blues and rock musicians.
Blind Willie Johnson played slide guitar held in the regular guitar position in the sebastopol tuning to accompany his repertoire of Spiritual songs. Whether he played with a knife or a bottleneck is not known, but he had incredible accuracy, tonal control and vibrato when playing melodies with the slide. Most unusual in Western players, especially back in the 20s, was his use of quarter-tones in his melodies and slide runs. His playing probably draws more from the one string diddley bow approach than it does from Hawaiian steel. Blind Willie Johnson recorded 15 or so slide guitar Spirituals that have become the definitive textbook or bible for playing slide in sebastopol tuning. Blind Willie Johnson and Charley Patton played their sebastopol tuning songs in a very similar style to each other. As Johnson first recorded in in 1927, it is possible that he influenced Patton who was first recorded playing in this style in 1929. Like Patton, Blind Willie Johnson has influenced so many players that it would be impossible to list them all, but some names include Blind Willie McTell, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Kokomo Arnold, Ry Cooder and Chris Rea. Blind Willie Johnsonʼs most important contribution to 20th century history is that his recording of the baptist hymn, ʻDark was the Night, Cold was the Groundʼ was included as ʻan example of human achievements in artʼ on the Voyager spacecraft interstellar mission in 1977. Ry Cooder, who based his soundtrack to the movie, Paris, Texas on "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground", described it as "the most soulful, transcendent piece in all American music."
The most famous of the early blues slide players and although not an originator like Charley Patton, Son House & Willie Johnson, is the most influential blues musician of all time, Robert Johnson. Johnson was a master musician and he had a tone and touch with a slide that has never been equalled. He played slide in both Spanish and sebastopol tunings and he was influenced by music from all over the southern states and not just from his locality, as with earlier musicians. Johnsonʼs slide guitar songs were based on works by Charley Patton, Hambone Willie Newbern, Son House and Kokomo Arnold. Contrary to popular opinion, I think that Johnsonʼs ʻPreaching Bluesʼ draws more as a slide guitar tour- de-force from Kokomo Arnold than it does from Son House. This does make sense as we know that Johnson based two of his songs ʻSweet Home Chicagoʼ and ʻMilkcow Calfʼs Bluesʼ on Arnoldʼs work. Robert Johnsonʼs repertoire of slide guitar recordings are definitive and form a large part of the well that every slide player since then has drawn influences from. While the slide playing on ʻPreaching Bluesʼ in sebastopol tuning has a distinct diddley bow approach, all but two of Johnsonʼs slide guitar blues songs draw more from the Hawaiian style in Spanish tuning than from the diddley bow.
It is impossible in these articles I am writing to include and talk about every important blues slide player, so at this point I will briefly mention four important early players...
Son House, from Mississippi, was born in 1902 and he played slide guitar in a similar style to his friends, Charley Patton and Robert Johnson. Son House cut some definitive blues records in two early sessions; one in 1930 for Paramount and one in 1942 for the Library of Congress. In these recordings, the young Son House was easily the equal of his friends, Patton & Johnson. Son House was Muddy Watersʼ biggest influence, but it is mostly for his 1960s recordings that I will talk about in the next part of this series, that Son House is so well known and respected.
Kokomo Arnold, from Georgia, made his first recordings in Memphis in 1930 and later in the 30s became an important musician on the Chicago blues scene. Arnold played in both Spanish and sebastopol tunings and played hard-edged juke joint blues on slide guitar with incredible technical wizardry, accuracy and speed. Arnold was interviewed a few times in the 1960s, but sadly he never talked about his guitar playing techniques, so we have no idea about how this incredible slide guitarist, one of the greatest slide players ever, actually played. We donʼt know if he played regular or Hawaiian lap-style with a bottle or a knife and as a left-handed guitarist, whether he restrung, or played upside-down guitars. Of all the masters of the blues slide guitar, Kokomo Arnoldʼs style is without question the most difficult to approach and ironically, is the one that we have the least knowledge about.
Blind Willie McTell from Georgia, played 6 and 12 string guitars and recorded some incredible slide guitar blues and spirituals. He played in the regular bottleneck style in Spanish and sebastopol tunings and his repertoire of slide guitar tunes contains some of the most beautiful slide guitar blues and spirituals ever recorded. Although McTellʼs melodies and some of his songs played in sebastopol tuning draw from the Blind Willie Johnson approach, I believe there is much more of a Hawaiian steel guitar influence in his playing and for me that is evident in the sweetness of his tone and in his use of Spanish tuning.
Hambone Willie Newbern from Tennessee, was born in 1899 and his contribution to the history of slide guitar cannot be underestimated. In 1929, Newbern recorded a song that he called ʻRoll & Tumble Bluesʼ. This recording is so important because even more than Pattonʼs Spanish-tuned slide guitar repertoire, it forms the basis of two of Robert Johnsonʼs recordings and was where Muddy Watersʼ ʻRolling & Tumblingʼ was drawn from.
Muddy Waters was born in Mississippi in 1913 and learned most of his acoustic slide guitar chops from local musicians, Son House, Robert Johnson and Charley Patton. Muddy Waters was first recorded by Alan Lomax on Stovallʼs Plantation in 1941. On that first session Muddy recorded ʻI Beʼs Troubledʼ and ʻCountry Bluesʼ in Spanish tuning. A few months later in 1942 Lomax returned to record Muddy again, this time he recorded a duet with Charles Berry on second slide guitar. The duet of two slide guitars in Spanish tuning, (one National guitar and one acoustic) on ʻI Be Bound To Write To Youʼ, is unique and beautiful in the way the two slide guitars respond to each other. Also on that session he recorded three songs in sebastopol tuning - ʻYou Got To Take Sick & Die Some of These Daysʼ, ʻWhy Donʼt You Live So God Can Use Youʼ and ʻYou Gonna Miss Me When Iʼm Gone”, the last of which contains elements in the playing that Muddy brought to the fore in stinging guitar solos on his electric Chicago recordings. Muddy Waters is most famous for his Chicago recordings on electric guitar with Aristocrat & Chess, but there is no question that his mastery of acoustic Mississippi delta blues slide guitar was equal to that of his peers.
This is not the story of Muddy Waters, so I will leave him for the time being and talk about Chicago in the 1930s, which in terms of slide guitar, was a hive of activity. As well as the blues players, there were a handful of slide players in Chicago in the 30s that I believe may have had more of an influence on the music of Chicago than they are credited for. Historians credit Tampa Red and Kokomo Arnold as being the most important slide players in Chicago in the late 20s and 30s and that they were the major influences on the music of the great Elmore James and electric Chicago blues, but I believe there is more to this period in Chicago slide guitar than blues historians might be aware of. As well as Tampa Red and Kokomo Arnold, who were both masters of slide guitar and who of course did leave their mark on Elmore James and Chicago blues as a whole, there was a slide guitarist whose mastery of the instrument and whose influence on electric Chicago blues is underestimated. The musician I am talking about is the African-American blues musician, Casey Bill Weldon, who moved from Arkansas to Chicago sometime in the 20s and at one time was married to Memphis Minnie. Weldon played slide guitar Hawaiian-style on National guitars and was billed as the ʻHawaiian Guitar Wizardʼ. He played mostly in Spanish tuning and his playing style is heavily influenced by Hawaiian steel guitar. He led a big band (that sometimes included Tampa Red on rhythm guitar) and approached his hard-edged house-rocking blues in away that no other player, as far as I know, had done before. The slide guitar weaves around the voice and the band hold down heavy dance grooves, creating an energy that is possibly more rock & roll than it is blues. Weldonʼs slide guitar licks and the way that he places them around the voice are the nearest thing I can find to Elmore James. James is more delta-sounding than Weldon and did adapt and cover some of Tampa Red, Robert Johnson and Kokomo Arnoldʼs songs, but the Weldon licks and the phrasing are there.
Hawaiian steel guitar was very fashionable in the 1930s and one of Chicagoʼs most notorious figures, Al Capone, was a big fan. Capone hired Hawaiian bands to play in his clubs and at private parties - and even to play behind a curtain in his boudoir while he wooed the dames! One of the musicians he brought to Chicago to work for him was the Brazilian Hawaiian steel guitarist, Ralph Kolsiana, who became a well known musician on the Chicago scene during the 30s. Another steel guitarist Capone hired to play in some of his clubs was the legendary Dobro player, Bashful Brother Oswald, who at the time was an unknown jobbing Hawaiian guitarist. Also in Chicago in the 30s, broadcasting a radio show every week were the incredible Hawaiian steel guitar duo, Jim & Bob. Bob Pauole was one of the greatest Hawaiian steel guitarists ever, he played a National guitar and along with his musical partner Jim Holstein, recorded some of the most beautiful and sometimes very bluesy guitar duets of all time. I believe it is quite possible that Casey Bill Weldon was influenced directly by these Chicago-based Hawaiian players, from hearing them on the radio and maybe seeing them play in clubs. We will never know, but it could answer the question about Casey Bill Weldon, why he played in the Hawaiian style and how he learnt it. I believe there was a lot of cross-pollination happening and that all these musicians playing slide guitar in various styles, influenced each other.
FOOTNOTE: The names of the tunings - Spanish, is any tuning with the same intervals as open G tuning, DGDGBD. Sebastopol (sometimes written as Vastopol & Vesterpol), is any tuning with the same intervals as open D tuning, DADF#AD. These names became popular because in 1860 the composer, Henry Worrall, published two guitar instrumentals, the first was called ʻSpanish Fandangoʼ and was to be played in open G tuning and the second ʻSebastopolʼ was to be played in open D tuning. The sheet music for these instrumentals was so popular that it found its way into almost every guitar case in the land. As time went by people started referring to the tunings, not as open G & D type tunings, but as Spanish & Sebastopol.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shine On
Michael
I have been keen to read your article, 'Slide Blues Roots,' since you mentioned it on the forum last month (I'm gradually making my way through various articles and books on these kinds of issues and am interested in your view) so have kept an eye out for the December issue of fRoots in the local magazine shops in case the opportunity for purchase presented itself, but didn't come across a copy (too specialised, I s'pose). So, now that the December issue has come and gone I was wondering whether are you at liberty to and happy to make a copy of the article available, either personally or via the forum - if not, I quite understand... (I don't know the rules or etiquette for the music press, but FWIW when I worked on a (philosophy) journal our authors were free to distribute a reasonable number of copies of their articles and to make pre-publication drafts available more widely via their own webpages... )
Best wishes,
Bod.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The History of Blues Slide Guitar - Part 1 (of 3 parts) - by Michael Messer
(written in 2011 - published in fRoots magazine December 2013)
SLIDE BLUES ROOTS
Slide guitar blues and gospel music was of course an African American invention, but Michael Messer argues that the pre-war roots of the guitar accompaniment are much less purely African than many like to imagine...
The story of slide guitar has been told many times, but because of partisan opinions and the fact that so much gets lost in the mists of time, there is some confusion about where it came from and how it became part of the African-American blues musicians repertoire in the early part of the 20th century.
I have been playing and studying the subject of slide guitar for nearly four decades and my journey of discovery has taken me from blues and rock into country, folk, western swing, bluegrass, Hawaiian, African, Indian, celtic and a few other places on the way. I am not saying that I know all the answers about its history, but I have formed some opinions and made some interesting discoveries along the way. For this series of articles I will focus on slide guitar in the blues. This first article is about the early pre-war players.
There is a whole school of thought that talks about the roots of blues slide guitar coming from various one string African diddley bow type instruments that arrived in America with the slaves. These instruments (sometimes called a Jitterbug, or Diddley Bow) are usually crude homemade one string childrenʼs instruments made by fixing bailing wire between two screws on a board, or against the side of a shack for resonance. They were played by plucking the wire with one hand and sliding a bottle, a piece of metal or a bone up and down the string to change the pitch.
While there is unquestionable evidence that the roots of the blues are in African music, there is very little evidence, apart from stories told by explorers who went to West Africa, to support the theory that slide guitar comes from Africa. The diddley bow is a much smaller part of the story than it has been credited for. Sliding an object up and down a string to change its pitch may have come into America from both Africa and Hawaii, but I believe the Hawaiian influence to be more important.
There is however, a lot of evidence that supports the theory that slide guitar came into American culture from India via the Hawaiian Islands. In India there is evidence of polished stone slides being used on open tuned stringed instruments played lap-style like Hawaiian steel guitar, dating back thousands of years. There is a story that in the 1890s an Indian musician, Davion, who played slide on a Gottuvadyam (Indian lap steel instrument) travelled to Hawaii to perform for the royal family, but due to a storm at sea, the ship he was travelling on was damaged and his instrument was destroyed, so he borrowed a guitar to do his concerts.
There are other theories about how slide guitar may have started in Hawaii, but this to me is the most logical and believable. Indian musicians were using open tunings on their traditional instruments and in Hawaii, Mexican cowboys working the cattle farms played guitars in open Spanish tuning. All these elements were brought together in the latter part of the 19th century by the first Hawaiian guitarists and to cut a long story short, Hawaiian Steel Guitar was born. (The term ʻSteelʼ does not refer to the body of the guitar, but is the name of the tool used to play the instrument).
It is true that many of the early blues slide players learnt their first tunes on one string diddley bows, but whether that instrument actually does have its roots in Africa is not really known. The first written evidence of anybody hearing blues slide guitar is from the great composer, W.C. Handy, who in 1903, while waiting for a train at Tutwiler railroad station in Mississippi, first heard an African-American musician “playing guitar with a knife as popularized by Hawaiian musicians”. Handy had spent a lot of time in Mississippi studying the music and the culture and he referred to this style as being of Hawaiian origin, not of African origin.
During the first part of the 20th century, Hawaiian steel guitar became very popular in mainland USA and the style of playing was picked up by both African-American and European-American musicians. European-American musicians mostly played it in the Spanish tuning Hawaiian-style on their lap and keeping very close to the Hawaiian sound, adapted it to fit into Country, Folk and Pop music. African-American musicians, also in the early days played mostly lap-style like the Hawaiians, but more often in the sebastopol tuning and used it to accompany their songs as a solo instrument that was capable of echoing the melody of the vocal on the top string while holding a rhythm on the bottom strings.
By the time we hear the first recordings of blues slide guitar in the early 1920s, it has already started to become more sophisticated than just a simple one string-style accompaniment instrument. I believe this sophistication comes from hearing Hawaiian steel players and not from a primitive one string diddley bow.
The first recording by an African-American of blues slide guitar was made in New York City in 1923 by a musician from Louisville, Kentucky, named Sylvester Weaver. Weaver was in New York recording with singer, Sara Martin, and while he was there he did a solo session and recorded two instrumental masterpieces, ʻGuitar Bluesʼ and ʻGuitar Ragʼ. ʻGuitar Bluesʼ is a classic blues played Hawaiian lap-style in sebastopol tuning and uses all six strings to play the melody. Based on a piano rag, ʻGuitar Ragʼ is played Hawaiian lap-style using four chords and the slide on all six strings. These recordings are far from being primitive and draw more from Hawaiian steel playing than from a one string diddley bow. Weaver recorded the tune again in 1927 and it was this recording that was ʻborrowedʼ and slightly renamed by Leon McAuliffe of Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys and became an enormous hit. ʻSteel Guitar Ragʼ is one of the staples of the Western Swing and pedal steel guitar repertoire.
The story of blues slide guitar really gets going with two people who recorded in the 1920s; Charley Patton from Mississippi and Blind Willie Johnson from Texas. Both musicians in my opinion, apart from some occasional and very important exceptions which I will talk about later, form the basis of everything that was to follow. Patton played in both sebastopol and Spanish tunings and from my research I believe he played slide in both regular guitar position and Hawaiian lap-style. His Spanish tuning songs draw a lot in their approach to playing licks and melodies from Hawaiian steel guitar, whereas many of his sebastopol tunes are played in a style closer to the one string diddley bow approach. However, in one of Pattonʼs tunes, ʻSpoonfulʼ, he plays in sebastopol, a ragtime progression with more of a Hawaiian approach that is very similar to Weaverʼs ʻGuitar Ragʼ. There is no proof, but I believe Patton may have heard Weaverʼs recordings. Pattonʼs repertoire of slide guitar tunes is one of the most important and influential in the history of the instrument. Charley Patton influenced Son House and Robert Johnson, who in turn influenced Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton and countless blues and rock musicians.
Blind Willie Johnson played slide guitar held in the regular guitar position in the sebastopol tuning to accompany his repertoire of Spiritual songs. Whether he played with a knife or a bottleneck is not known, but he had incredible accuracy, tonal control and vibrato when playing melodies with the slide. Most unusual in Western players, especially back in the 20s, was his use of quarter-tones in his melodies and slide runs. His playing probably draws more from the one string diddley bow approach than it does from Hawaiian steel. Blind Willie Johnson recorded 15 or so slide guitar Spirituals that have become the definitive textbook or bible for playing slide in sebastopol tuning. Blind Willie Johnson and Charley Patton played their sebastopol tuning songs in a very similar style to each other. As Johnson first recorded in in 1927, it is possible that he influenced Patton who was first recorded playing in this style in 1929. Like Patton, Blind Willie Johnson has influenced so many players that it would be impossible to list them all, but some names include Blind Willie McTell, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Kokomo Arnold, Ry Cooder and Chris Rea. Blind Willie Johnsonʼs most important contribution to 20th century history is that his recording of the baptist hymn, ʻDark was the Night, Cold was the Groundʼ was included as ʻan example of human achievements in artʼ on the Voyager spacecraft interstellar mission in 1977. Ry Cooder, who based his soundtrack to the movie, Paris, Texas on "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground", described it as "the most soulful, transcendent piece in all American music."
The most famous of the early blues slide players and although not an originator like Charley Patton, Son House & Willie Johnson, is the most influential blues musician of all time, Robert Johnson. Johnson was a master musician and he had a tone and touch with a slide that has never been equalled. He played slide in both Spanish and sebastopol tunings and he was influenced by music from all over the southern states and not just from his locality, as with earlier musicians. Johnsonʼs slide guitar songs were based on works by Charley Patton, Hambone Willie Newbern, Son House and Kokomo Arnold. Contrary to popular opinion, I think that Johnsonʼs ʻPreaching Bluesʼ draws more as a slide guitar tour- de-force from Kokomo Arnold than it does from Son House. This does make sense as we know that Johnson based two of his songs ʻSweet Home Chicagoʼ and ʻMilkcow Calfʼs Bluesʼ on Arnoldʼs work. Robert Johnsonʼs repertoire of slide guitar recordings are definitive and form a large part of the well that every slide player since then has drawn influences from. While the slide playing on ʻPreaching Bluesʼ in sebastopol tuning has a distinct diddley bow approach, all but two of Johnsonʼs slide guitar blues songs draw more from the Hawaiian style in Spanish tuning than from the diddley bow.
It is impossible in these articles I am writing to include and talk about every important blues slide player, so at this point I will briefly mention four important early players...
Son House, from Mississippi, was born in 1902 and he played slide guitar in a similar style to his friends, Charley Patton and Robert Johnson. Son House cut some definitive blues records in two early sessions; one in 1930 for Paramount and one in 1942 for the Library of Congress. In these recordings, the young Son House was easily the equal of his friends, Patton & Johnson. Son House was Muddy Watersʼ biggest influence, but it is mostly for his 1960s recordings that I will talk about in the next part of this series, that Son House is so well known and respected.
Kokomo Arnold, from Georgia, made his first recordings in Memphis in 1930 and later in the 30s became an important musician on the Chicago blues scene. Arnold played in both Spanish and sebastopol tunings and played hard-edged juke joint blues on slide guitar with incredible technical wizardry, accuracy and speed. Arnold was interviewed a few times in the 1960s, but sadly he never talked about his guitar playing techniques, so we have no idea about how this incredible slide guitarist, one of the greatest slide players ever, actually played. We donʼt know if he played regular or Hawaiian lap-style with a bottle or a knife and as a left-handed guitarist, whether he restrung, or played upside-down guitars. Of all the masters of the blues slide guitar, Kokomo Arnoldʼs style is without question the most difficult to approach and ironically, is the one that we have the least knowledge about.
Blind Willie McTell from Georgia, played 6 and 12 string guitars and recorded some incredible slide guitar blues and spirituals. He played in the regular bottleneck style in Spanish and sebastopol tunings and his repertoire of slide guitar tunes contains some of the most beautiful slide guitar blues and spirituals ever recorded. Although McTellʼs melodies and some of his songs played in sebastopol tuning draw from the Blind Willie Johnson approach, I believe there is much more of a Hawaiian steel guitar influence in his playing and for me that is evident in the sweetness of his tone and in his use of Spanish tuning.
Hambone Willie Newbern from Tennessee, was born in 1899 and his contribution to the history of slide guitar cannot be underestimated. In 1929, Newbern recorded a song that he called ʻRoll & Tumble Bluesʼ. This recording is so important because even more than Pattonʼs Spanish-tuned slide guitar repertoire, it forms the basis of two of Robert Johnsonʼs recordings and was where Muddy Watersʼ ʻRolling & Tumblingʼ was drawn from.
Muddy Waters was born in Mississippi in 1913 and learned most of his acoustic slide guitar chops from local musicians, Son House, Robert Johnson and Charley Patton. Muddy Waters was first recorded by Alan Lomax on Stovallʼs Plantation in 1941. On that first session Muddy recorded ʻI Beʼs Troubledʼ and ʻCountry Bluesʼ in Spanish tuning. A few months later in 1942 Lomax returned to record Muddy again, this time he recorded a duet with Charles Berry on second slide guitar. The duet of two slide guitars in Spanish tuning, (one National guitar and one acoustic) on ʻI Be Bound To Write To Youʼ, is unique and beautiful in the way the two slide guitars respond to each other. Also on that session he recorded three songs in sebastopol tuning - ʻYou Got To Take Sick & Die Some of These Daysʼ, ʻWhy Donʼt You Live So God Can Use Youʼ and ʻYou Gonna Miss Me When Iʼm Gone”, the last of which contains elements in the playing that Muddy brought to the fore in stinging guitar solos on his electric Chicago recordings. Muddy Waters is most famous for his Chicago recordings on electric guitar with Aristocrat & Chess, but there is no question that his mastery of acoustic Mississippi delta blues slide guitar was equal to that of his peers.
This is not the story of Muddy Waters, so I will leave him for the time being and talk about Chicago in the 1930s, which in terms of slide guitar, was a hive of activity. As well as the blues players, there were a handful of slide players in Chicago in the 30s that I believe may have had more of an influence on the music of Chicago than they are credited for. Historians credit Tampa Red and Kokomo Arnold as being the most important slide players in Chicago in the late 20s and 30s and that they were the major influences on the music of the great Elmore James and electric Chicago blues, but I believe there is more to this period in Chicago slide guitar than blues historians might be aware of. As well as Tampa Red and Kokomo Arnold, who were both masters of slide guitar and who of course did leave their mark on Elmore James and Chicago blues as a whole, there was a slide guitarist whose mastery of the instrument and whose influence on electric Chicago blues is underestimated. The musician I am talking about is the African-American blues musician, Casey Bill Weldon, who moved from Arkansas to Chicago sometime in the 20s and at one time was married to Memphis Minnie. Weldon played slide guitar Hawaiian-style on National guitars and was billed as the ʻHawaiian Guitar Wizardʼ. He played mostly in Spanish tuning and his playing style is heavily influenced by Hawaiian steel guitar. He led a big band (that sometimes included Tampa Red on rhythm guitar) and approached his hard-edged house-rocking blues in away that no other player, as far as I know, had done before. The slide guitar weaves around the voice and the band hold down heavy dance grooves, creating an energy that is possibly more rock & roll than it is blues. Weldonʼs slide guitar licks and the way that he places them around the voice are the nearest thing I can find to Elmore James. James is more delta-sounding than Weldon and did adapt and cover some of Tampa Red, Robert Johnson and Kokomo Arnoldʼs songs, but the Weldon licks and the phrasing are there.
Hawaiian steel guitar was very fashionable in the 1930s and one of Chicagoʼs most notorious figures, Al Capone, was a big fan. Capone hired Hawaiian bands to play in his clubs and at private parties - and even to play behind a curtain in his boudoir while he wooed the dames! One of the musicians he brought to Chicago to work for him was the Brazilian Hawaiian steel guitarist, Ralph Kolsiana, who became a well known musician on the Chicago scene during the 30s. Another steel guitarist Capone hired to play in some of his clubs was the legendary Dobro player, Bashful Brother Oswald, who at the time was an unknown jobbing Hawaiian guitarist. Also in Chicago in the 30s, broadcasting a radio show every week were the incredible Hawaiian steel guitar duo, Jim & Bob. Bob Pauole was one of the greatest Hawaiian steel guitarists ever, he played a National guitar and along with his musical partner Jim Holstein, recorded some of the most beautiful and sometimes very bluesy guitar duets of all time. I believe it is quite possible that Casey Bill Weldon was influenced directly by these Chicago-based Hawaiian players, from hearing them on the radio and maybe seeing them play in clubs. We will never know, but it could answer the question about Casey Bill Weldon, why he played in the Hawaiian style and how he learnt it. I believe there was a lot of cross-pollination happening and that all these musicians playing slide guitar in various styles, influenced each other.
FOOTNOTE: The names of the tunings - Spanish, is any tuning with the same intervals as open G tuning, DGDGBD. Sebastopol (sometimes written as Vastopol & Vesterpol), is any tuning with the same intervals as open D tuning, DADF#AD. These names became popular because in 1860 the composer, Henry Worrall, published two guitar instrumentals, the first was called ʻSpanish Fandangoʼ and was to be played in open G tuning and the second ʻSebastopolʼ was to be played in open D tuning. The sheet music for these instrumentals was so popular that it found its way into almost every guitar case in the land. As time went by people started referring to the tunings, not as open G & D type tunings, but as Spanish & Sebastopol.
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Shine On
Michael
