Bukka White: 1963 Isn't 1962

BUKKA WHITE: 1963 ISN'T 1962 (1963/1994)

1) Streamline Special; 2) Drunken Leroy Blues; 3) Fixin' To Die; 4) Midnight Twister; 5) Aberdeen Blues; 6) Vase­line Head Woman; 7) Jump; 8) Jack O'Diamonds; 9) Chi Chi Boogie; 10) 1963 Isn't 1962; 11) Boogie 'Til Dubuque; 12) Driftin' And Driftin'; 13) Corinna Corinna.

Not released officially until 1994, this little-known recording might actually be the best post-war slice of Booker T. to be found on the digital circuit. The reason why it took so long to see the light of day is technical — this is a relatively poor quality tape recording, with a lot of distrac­ting hiss running through it, that John Fahey and Ed Denson took of Bukka in the process of «redis­covering» him in November 1963, exactly one year after Dylan had covered ʽFixin' To Dieʼ and brought the name back to public attention.

But poor quality aside, this is the only post-war document to capture Bukka «unprepared», in a homely environment, without any special new strategy of studio behavior, and, consequently, without the man trying to be like somebody else (Chicago bluesmen, for instance). Mississippi Blues, recorded soon afterwards, would still be relatively fresh and come close to matching this attitude — yet even there, the man was already set on «giving the people what they want», that is, well-recorded recreations of his classic pre-war hits. Here, as you can see from the setlist, those hits are almost nowhere to be found — no ʽShake 'Em On Downʼ, no ʽSic 'Em Dogs Onʼ, no ʽParchman Farmʼ, just whatever Bukka felt like playing at that particular moment.

And he felt like playing lots of different things in free format, be it an almost epic-length version of one of his train tales (ʽStreamline Specialʼ), interspersed with streaks of rapped quasi-auto­biographic dialog, or short stretches of boogie improvisation (ʽJumpʼ, ʽBoogie 'Til Dubuqueʼ) that, interestingly, would not reappear on his post-1963 studio recordings, since, apparently, dance-oriented boogie-blues was not what Bukka's main target audience was expecting from the man. All in all, the main distinguishing feature of 1963 Isn't 1962 is the apparent lack of reve­rence for this business — Bukka was not yet fully aware of how «sacred» the new blues fans were finding that kind of music, and his laid-back mode here might really not have been all too appropriate for market demands circa 1963. But it's all right now, half a century later.

Of particular interest here is the brief cover of ʽJack O' Diamondsʼ, a song usually associated with Blind Lemon Jefferson — Bukka gives us a rougher, faster, more rambunctious version, but still punctuated with plenty of weeping outbursts from the slide guitar to preserve the song's tragic outlook (but his own "Jack o' diamonds is a hard card to play!" sounds pissed-off and frustrated next to Jefferson's almost-sobbing delivery). Great slide moments abound on the album in gene­ral, for that matter — weird as it is, this homemade tape gives the impression of the man really trying to prove his best on the instrument, much more so than on his soon-to-come streak of compara­tively inferior studio recordings. And his will to improvise and create is most amply illustrated by the title of the title track, even if the tune itself is generic 12-bar stuff.

So, if you can stand a little hiss and crackle, 1963 Isn't 1962 might be your best bet for a post-war companion to Bukka's pre-war recordings. The general rule holds here: as long as all those old faded «stars» of a goneby era were content with staying what they were, their recordings were full of genuine spirit — when, on the other hand, they were trying to «match the expectations of the times» or anything like that, things immediately began going sour. This one is quite sweet, by that standard, and gets a respectable thumbs up.

Check "1963 Isn't 1962" (CD) on Amazon
Check "1963 Isn't 1962" (MP3) on Amazon

Bukka White: Big Daddy

BUKKA WHITE: BIG DADDY (1974)

1) Black Cat Bone Blues; 2) 1936 Triggertoe; 3) Crying Holy Unto The Lord; 4) Shake My Hand Blues; 5) Sic 'Em Dogs On; 6) Gibson Hill; 7) Mama Don' 'Low; 8) Hot Springs Arkansas; 9) Jelly Roll Morton Man; 10) Black Crepe Blues; 11) Glory Bound Train; 12) Aberdeen Mississippi Blues; 13) Hobo Blues.

While this album, recorded just three years prior to Bukka's demise from cancer, corrects the blunder of Memphis Hot Shots, no longer trying to recast the artist in a wholly unsuitable image, I cannot honestly say that Big Daddy generates much inspiration. Unless you have pre-generated yourself the mindset of "big old blues legend with acoustic guitar = I'm loving it!", I am not sure that these recordings could serve as a good introduction to the world of archaic country blues in general, or Bukka White as its particular representative.

Here he is, all on his own with nothing but the guitar to provide company, running through a se­lection of the usual classics, mixed in with a few obscurities or rearrangements (ʽJelly Roll Mor­ton Manʼ is the same as ʽGibson Hillʼ, with a new set of lyrics — and, come to think of it, ʽHobo Bluesʼ is also the exact same song). As the man gets ever older, his voice gets ever gruffer and closer to that Howlin' Wolf standard, but that's just the problem: it doesn't quite rise up to the same standard, but it does reduce all of the songs to just about the same emotional state, roughly translated as «don't mess around with the man», which is not how it used to be in pre-war years.

Likewise, Bukka's guitar playing is not what it used to be. «Deteriorating» is not the right word for it, since he can still send off those slide runs like he used to, and slap those strings with the same brute force when necessary. But something seems missing — I'm not exactly sure what, but maybe that would simply be the will to come up with free-flowing guitar phrasing on the spur of the moment, rather than relying on «fossilized», thoroughly predictable stock lines. Naturally, this cannot be construed as an accusation — nobody really expects an inventive, energetic pulse from a 65-year old bluesman — but it also means that, whatever the popular stereotype might be, a young bluesman with a guitar is still generally preferable to an old bluesman with a guitar. Es­pecially when the old bluesman's guitar starts getting rather dangerously out of tune towards the end of the session...

Anyway, the bottomline is simply that there is nothing «wrong» with Big Daddy, but forty mi­nutes of it will most likely get you bored, and it will add nothing to your understanding of the man and his history, except formal proof that the man did retain enough vocal and instrumental competence right up to his final years. But you probably could guess that as it is, couldn't you?

Bukka White: Memphis Hot Shots

BUKKA WHITE: MEMPHIS HOT SHOTS (1968)

1) Bed Spring Blues; 2) Aberdeen Mississippi Blues; 3) Drifting Blues; 4) (Brand New) Decoration Blues; 5) Baby Please Don't Go; 6) Give Me An Old, Old Lady; 7) Got Sick And Tired; 8) World Boogie; 9) School Learning; 10) Old Man Tom; 11) Gibson Town.

A major misstep here. As the 1960s wore on and Bukka made more and more public appearances, he saw that the «proper» way to go for most folks was with a backing band, and opted for one of his own. The results, released on Mike Vernon's blues-oriented Blue Horizon label, were not too good — nowhere near as ridiculous as the album cover (we do not even know if it is Bukka him­self in the space suit, but who cares? would it cease to be ridiculous if we knew for sure it ain't him?), but fairly dull all the same.

I do not know any of the players — no big surprise, considering that some of them are hiding behind pseudonyms, such as «Anchor» on bass and «Harmonica Boy» on guess-what, and that the actual level of musicianship is utterly pedestrian, slightly above high school level, perhaps, but not even on the level of a third-rate British Invasion R&B band. Apparently, the intent is to try and recreate some sort of Chicago blues atmosphere, with a suitably swampy studio attitude, to match the achievements of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, but the only person who'd want to seriously compare «Harmonica Boy» with Little Walter would be a person who never heard one note played by Little Walter.

Worse still, Bukka himself is trying to get into the same pattern — howling, screaming, and roar­ing in prime Chicago fashion instead of retaining his trademark cotton field mumble that he inhe­rited from Charley Patton. It's okay, but it just ain't him: it's a rather pale copy of the Howlin' Wolf approach. It's as if John Lennon suddenly decided to become Bruce Springsteen, or Mick Jagger suddenly decided to become Sting, just because they happened to sell more at the time. The plus side here is that this also brings about a huge change of the repertoire: other than a couple perennial oldies, most of the songs here are new, with titles that I do not recognize (were they actually made up on the spot?) and melodies mostly taken from classic Chicago blues re­cordings. The minus side is — why exactly do I need to hear this?

The best material here is strictly solo: the band takes a break on ʽDrifting Bluesʼ and several other tunes, leaving Bukka alone (or, at most, with a second acoustic guitarist) to exorcise his demons. The vocals are still somewhat inadequate, with too much forced Wolf-style gargling, but at least the lack of inferior musical backing is refreshing, and it becomes easier to assess the amount of sincerity and genuine passion in the man's presence. And, honestly, he just does not seem to be in the right state of mind doing this thang — I count this as a misguided experiment from top to bot­tom and give it a thumbs down, although blues historians will probably want to own Memphis Hot Shots all the same, if only as an example of a curious, one-of-a-kind configuration. Not that old bluesmen didn't have their fair share of embarrassing misses, but they were all embarrassing in their own idiosyncratic embarrassing ways. At the very least, I don't recall Mississippi John Hurt or Skip James dressing in space suits, that's for sure.

Bukka White: Mississippi Blues

BUKKA WHITE: MISSISSIPPI BLUES (1964)

1) Aberdeen Mississippi Blues; 2) Parchman Farm Blues; 3) Shake 'Em On Down; 4) I Am The Heavenly Way; 5) Atlanta Special; 6) Drunk Man Blues; 7) Army Blues; 8) Remembrance Of Charlie Patton; 9) New Orleans Stream­line; 10) Poor Boy Long Ways From Home; 11) Baby Please Don't Go.

Like so many of his blues pals, Booker T. «Bukka» White was rediscovered in 1963 (by John Fahey, a notorious musician in his own right), and with the acoustic blues boom revival in full swing, almost immediately landed a small contract with Fahey's Takoma Records, who got him a recor­ding session in Memphis and released the results under the laconic title of Mississippi Blues (on CD, this record usually goes under the title of The Sonet Blues Story, since, apparently, the European distribution rights were handed over to the Swedish Sonet label).

Bukka is completely alone for this session — no second guitarist, no harmonica, no backup sin­gers, not even a washboard — which is probably the main reason to hear and own it if you alrea­dy have his pre-war recordings (a secondary reason is the expectedly improved sound quality, but the old stuff really wasn't that bad, compared to some of Blind Lemon Jefferson's or Charley Pat­ton's records, for instance). The songs, with but a few exceptions, also cover the same repertoire, although some of the titles are new: ʽThe New 'Frisco Trainʼ becomes ʽThe Atlanta Specialʼ, and ʽPo' Boyʼ becomes a lengthier ʽPoor Boy, Long Ways From Homeʼ. Weirdest of all, ʽParchman Farm Bluesʼ is not really ʽParchman Farm Bluesʼ, but rather ʽWhen Can I Change My Clothesʼ — a blatant mistake that has, nevertheless, steadily persisted on all subsequent releases (just goes to show you how much people actually listen to these things).

It is hard to tell whether the man was in top form while making these recordings (some have suggested a bit of a tired strain to at least some of the tracks), but he does make an effort to pass this off as an evening of public entertainment — regularly interspersing sung parts with snippets of talkin' blues to cheer up the audience, and creating the illusion of a band by sometimes ad lib­bing stuff like "play it while I get me a cigarette!" before launching into a solo passage, even though there really ain't nobody but us chickens in the studio. One of the tracks is completely non-musical: four minutes of small anecdotes about Charley Patton, Bukka's personal idol and greatest influence (although there has been some speculation that he was merely thinking these stories all up to please Fahey, who was a big fan of Patton).

Other than that, the session does not open up a lot of previously unknown sides to Mr. White. He plays piano instead of guitar on one track (ʽDrunk Man Bluesʼ), not particularly well or anything, and covers Big Joe Williams' ʽBaby Please Don't Goʼ — credibly, but not embettering the origi­nal or, for that matter, the Muddy Waters Chicago version. His old standards show that twenty five years outside the studio have not diminished his guitar skills in the slightest, nor has there been any strain on the vocals, but neither has he thought of any additional ways to reinvent or embellish those tunes. Still, the album is well worth a thumbs up at least for the tastes of those who worry too much about the rusty quality of pre-war blues recordings. For Bukka, these songs still remained his lifeblood in 1963 — this is much more than a nostalgic facsimile — and from a technical point, his rough, but effective playing style should be much easier to study based on this session than on anything from the early days.

Check "Sonet Blues Story" (CD) on Amazon
Check "The Sonet Blues Story" (MP3) on Amazon

Bukka White: Aberdeen Mississippi Blues

BUKKA WHITE: ABERDEEN MISSISSIPPI BLUES (1930-1940; 2003)

1) The New Frisco Train; 2) The Panama Limited; 3) I Am In The Heavenly Way; 4) Promise True And Grand; 5) Pinebluff Arkansas; 6) Shake 'Em On Down; 7) Sic 'Em Dogs On; 8) Po' Boy; 9) Black Train Blues; 10) Strange Place Blues; 11) When Can I Change My Clothes; 12) Sleepy Man Blues; 13) Parchman Farm Blues; 14) Good Gin Blues; 15) High Fever Blues; 16) District Attorney; 17) Fixin' To Die Blues; 18) Aberdeen Mississippi Blues; 19) Bukka's Jitterbug Swing; 20) Special Stream Line.

One standard problem with reviewing thoroughly assembled collections of pre-war blues material is their expectable monotonousness — successful artists cutting dozens and dozens and dozens of sides that sounded all the same, simply because it was sometimes simpler and cheaper to cut a new side in the studio than re-release an old one. In that respect, Aberdeen Mississippi Blues, a near-exhaustive archive collection issued on the Document Records label, is a heart-warming and fairly unique exception. It manages to collect almost everything that Bukka White managed to re­cord in a whole decade, between 1930 and 1940, and in widely varying, and sometimes quite in­triguing, conditions at that. Since he was so notoriously un-prolific, this makes the collection read like a thrilling life story, quickly moving from chapter to chapter with a complex plotline.

Chapter 1: May 1930. A young and aspiring Washington White on vocal and guitar, backed by Napoleon Harrison on second guitar, cuts two sides for Victor Records in Memphis — both re­flecting his life-long preference for trains, not just in the lyrics, but also in the music: that steel-bodied National guitar chugs along at top volume like a good old-fashioned choo-choo, speeding up, slowing down, pistons puffing, whistles blowing. He talks more than sings on both tracks, but that's perfectly suitable for these two little travelogs that immediately set the man up as a fairly unique talent, and rather align him with Leadbelly than, say, the ragtime blues school that was all the rage in the late 1920s / early 1930s. Just as you have finished pigeonholing him, though, he unexpectedly turns around and cuts two more, completely different tracks — dark, gruff gospel blues in the style of Blind Willie Johnson, backed by an unidentified «Miss Minnie», usually spe­culated to have been Memphis Minnie, but without definite proof.

Chapter 2: September 1937. A slightly older, but no less aspiring Bukka White on vocal and gui­tar, backed by an unknown second guitarist, cuts two sides for Vocalion in Chicago. Chicago! — and what we now hear is gruff, tense, slightly paranoid 12-bar blues on ʽPinebluff Arkansasʼ and ʽShake 'Em On Downʼ; the latter would eventually become one of the most celebrated blues pieces of its era, not the least because an untrained ear could easily confuse Bukka's hollering and playing on this track with Robert Johnson's. Already he sounds like a man possessed — for the moment, though, possessed primarily by libidinous urges.

Chapter 3: May 1939. A slightly less aspiring Bukka White, locked up in Parchman Farm in Mississippi for shooting a man in the leg, records two tracks for John Lomax on his portable equipment. This recording, ʽSic 'Em Dogs Onʼ and ʽPo' Boyʼ, soon acquires legendary status as well — not only for the rather specific conditions in which it was produced, but also because it unleashes the full spectrum of Bukka's talents: the combination of his deep, rumbling vocal vib­rato and his aggressive playing (few people would dare to be as brutal when playing slide) really sounds like nothing else at the time. The closest comparison would probably be Charley Patton now, although nobody could accuse Bukka of the same levels of insanity.

Chapter 4: March 1940. Not the most legendary, but the largest, cleanest, and most informative chapter of 'em all. Back in Chicago, with only Washboard Sam to keep him company (three gues­ses as to Washboard Sam's preferred instrument of choice). Trains, alcohol, prison, sickness, madness, death, cemetery — not necessarily in that order, but you could easily program the results of that session to read like a short, comprehensive biography. ʽParchman Farm Bluesʼ, recalling personal experience; ʽGood Gin Bluesʼ, dealing with personal conditions; and particu­larly ʽFixin' To Die Bluesʼ, dealing with morose presentiments but in a surprisingly lively fashion (Dylan would later redo the song in a grim, desperate style, more easily understandable for the average white ear) — these are some of the highlights, although the entire session was quite even (must be the washboard effect).

It should be remembered that, although many of the songs sound similar, they never truly repeat each other. Booker T.'s playing style, much like that of Big Joe Williams, relied on brute force and raw feeling more than exquisite technique, but he knew all he cared to about nuances and flourishes, and on the general pre-war scale of «folk artistry vs. popular entertainment» his own little black dot goes almost all the way to the left. Every bit as essential as Johnson, Patton, and Lead­belly, and every bit as enjoyable for that long gone earthy vibe, these four chapters and their sixty minutes are not to be missed by anybody — thumbs up a-plenty.

Technical P.S.: In between this CD and the confusingly titled Complete Bukka White from a decade back, be sure to give your preference to the Document release: Complete really only covers the 1937 and 1940 Chicago sessions, and it is nowhere near as fun or instructive to have Bukka without the early train / gospel records or the quintessential prison session with Lomax.

Check "Aberdeen Mississippi Blues" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Aberdeeen Mississippi Blues" (MP3) on Amazon