BLIND LEMON JEFFERSON: COMPLETE RECORDED WORKS, VOL. 2 (1927)
1) Black Snake Moan; 2) Match
Box Blues; 3) Easy Rider Blues; 4) Match Box Blues; 5) Match Box Blues; 6) Rising
High Water Blues; 7) Weary Dog Blues; 8) Right Of Way Blues; 9) Teddy Bear
Blues; 10) Black Snake Dream Blues; 11) Hot Dogs; 12) He Arose From The Dead;
13) Stuck Sorrow Blues; 14) Rambler Blues; 15) Chinch Bug Blues; 16) Deceitful
Brownskin Blues; 17) Sunshine Special; 18) Gone Dead On You Blues; 19) Where
Shall I Be?; 20) See That My Grave's Kept Clean; 21) One Dime Blues; 22) Lonesome
House Blues.
The obvious towering highlight of Blind Lemon's
output in 1927 is ʽMatch Box Bluesʼ — not because it has anything to do with
matchboxes, and not even because it was later covered by Carl Perkins, Jerry
Lee Lewis, and eventually the Beatles (the lyrics only have one verse that
overlaps anyway, and the melody... 12-bar blues is only whatever your
inspiration makes out of 12-bar blues, in any case). It's just that it happens
to be the best sounding Blind Lemon song: during a brief stint at O'Keh records
rather than Paramount, he cut one single (with ʽBlack Snake Moanʼ as the
B-side) that, today, allows us to appreciate his guitar magic unhindered by
crackle (well, there is still a little bit left, but it only helps the
atmosphere).
I still feel that ʽRabbit Foot Bluesʼ is the
man's one true classic on which he pulled all the stops, but ʽMatch Boxʼ does
not linger far behind — chops, flourishes, trills, rhythmic traps and counterpoints,
and then an out-of-nowhere boogie line for the last verse. The technique is
impressive for its time, but it is not the technique that counts (for sheer
speed and complexity, Lonnie Johnson had Blind Lemon beat all the way), it is
this amazing freedom of form: normally, you'd expect the flourishes and key
changes to happen after the man sings
his line — Jefferson does that while
singing, so that it is his voice, occasionally, that becomes the rhythm
instrument, while the guitar just goes wherever it wants to.
The demand for the record was actually so big
that, as soon as Blind Lemon returned to Paramount, he was pressed into
cutting two more takes — both of them in Paramount's standardly awful quality,
yet it is still curious to compare all three recordings, since no two out of
the lot are completely identical. The boogie line may come in earlier, the
intro may play an entirely different chord sequence, and, in general, it seems
as if the man had no set plan when launching into the performance at all. Pure free flight.
This does not apply to all of Blind Lemon's material, of course. Some of the songs are
quite tight and disciplined, such as ʽRight Of Way Bluesʼ, which is all based
around one dark, menacing line winding its way upwards after each vocal turn —
but it is such a creepy line, way over any generic 12-bar standards of the
day, that the song is still a minor masterpiece. To compensate for the
eeriness, there is ʽHot Dogsʼ, a fast little dance number credited to «Blind
Lemon Jefferson and His Feet» (the latter are indeed well audible), and then
ʽHe Arose From The Deadʼ, sung in Blind Lemon's most sentimental croon to a
very similar melody. (And why shouldn't
one be merrily tapping one's foot to the story of the Resurrection? Happy end
and all).
Somewhat more questionable is the inclusion of
several numbers on which Jefferson switches guitar for a piano accompaniment: I
am not sure if he played the instrument himself (he did know how, according to
reports) or if Paramount brought in a session musician, but the playing on ʽTeddy
Bear Bluesʼ and other piano-led tunes is nothing special, and Blind Lemon is
not that miraculous a singer to just
fall for his voice and nothing else (well, Eric Clapton never learned his lesson, either). It's not bad, but,
as a guitar player, Blind Lemon is worth looking into even at his laziest and
tiredest — as a singer, he's just one of the many greats of his era.
Besides, his finest vocal performance on Vol. 2 is on a guitar-led track anyway:
ʽSee That My Grave Is Kept Cleanʼ, which Bob Dylan would later record trying to
emulate some of Lemon's actual modulations — to very good effect, for that
matter, even if the fact remains that one is the original and the other one is
a tribute act. Musical testaments like this were still a rarity in 1927, even
among blues singers, and Jefferson's howling, while not particularly «shivery»
per se, still feels a little uncomfortable. The guy was a commercially
successful, near-prosperous, respectable bluesman-entertainer, yet here he is
wailing about impending death and diminished returns in the afterlife. He only
had two more years to live.
No comments:
Post a Comment