Post by AlanB on May 28, 2015 15:34:02 GMT
In the school summer holidays of 1962 I went to the house of a school chum. On arrival his father was listening to a record, the kind of which I'd never heard. I was transfixed by what I was listening to. It seemed to me be all about the mistreatment of "negroes". I was finding it very difficult to make out what was being said on the LP but my friend's dad gave me a four page LP size sheet of transcription that came with the record.
To cut a long story short, the LP was Blues In The Mississippi Night (Pye-Nixa, 1957) and the father was a jazz/blues fan. He gave me the LP (yes, gave) - along with armfuls of Jazz Journal and Jazz Monthly - telling me that with these I could discover more about "the blues". He also told me to look out for a then out of print book, Blues Fell This Morning. That I found in a bookshop in Charing Cross Road, and have never looked back!
12 years later I wrote about the LP thus:
BLUES IN THE MISSISSIPPI NIGHT
Pye-Nixa NJL8
Alan Balfour
Back in 1962 this record was responsible for my discovering the blues. Issued in 1957, it is a documentary dialogue between three, then anonymous, bluesmen recorded 'in-the-field' by Alan Lomax in 1942 [see note].
Natchez, Leroy and Sib - according to a somewhat patronising liner - remain nameless at their own requests; the innuendo strongly hinting at the 'outspoken' nature of the recording. Without wishing to sound cynical, I would venture that the anonymity is to prevent their respective record companies from finding out. Be that as it may, the bluesmen concerned are, Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Slim and John Lee 'Sonny Boy Williamson.
With the aid of careful editing, together with some prompting from Lomax (not heard, but very obviously there), these three men talk about their lives. The jumping off point is - wait for it - "What gives you the blues". To Sib (Williamson) it's being rejected by parents as a suitor to their daughter: " and so they turned me down, and I just got sitting down thinking, you understand, and I thought of a song". For Natchez (Broonzy): "…a man has a companion and she turns him down…that's where I get the blues from…" Whilst for Leroy (Slim): "Blues is a kind of revenge. You know you wanna say some things…you wanna signify, that's the blues…". And so the foundations are laid by Lomax for a 'conversation with the blues'; the swapping of reminiscences and anecdotes about the 'hard times', mainly between Natchez and Leroy, with Sib occasionally joining in.
Considering the nature of the subjects touched upon and the subjectiveness of those concerned, the attitudes expressed are understandable. From the humorous: "....you know the food we had to eat was really scrap food, from what other people had refused…" (reply) "Yeah, they had a name for it - la, la, lu, if you don't like it he do…". To the embittered "….we had a few Negroes down there that wasn't afraid of white peoples or talk back to them. They called those people crazy, crazy people. I wonder why they called them crazy, because they speak up for his rights?". But although the conversation is almost entirely centred around the ill-treatment of the black man and his own hatred of the whites, Natchez puts it down to the system. "…that's what makes 'em [Negroes] so techious till today, because they have been denied in so many places until if a gang is in a place and they say 'You fellas get back' or 'Don't stand there' or something like that, they figger right straight that's you - they're pointing out to the Negro see, and a lot of times they don't mean that, they really mean they don't want nobody standing in that place. But the Negro thinks they're preferring him cos he's black."
To be fully appreciated this record has to be really listened to no background music this. It is an invaluable piece of documentation, even if at times it does have elements of seeming to give the white man with the recorder what he wants to hear. It is also an indispensable record for its on-the-spot recordings of Broonzy Williamson and Slim, the likes of which I can assure you they never laid down on 'commercial' wax, together with the unidentified field-holler "Another Man", which always manages to leave me with that empty feeling.
Nothing would ever make me part with this record - not even money - so if you want it don't come to me. A better bet would be to pressurise Pye, that is, if they still hold the rights. Or write to Blues-Link and we'll try to find someone who has both sense and money! (Blues-Link 3, Jan/Feb 1974, p. 25-26)
[Note: Since this was written the year was discovered to be 1947]
