Buddy Moss: Atlanta Blues Legend

BUDDY MOSS: ATLANTA BLUES LEGEND (1967)

1) Hurry Home; 2) Red River; 3) Pushin' It; 4) Comin' Back; 5) How I Feel Today; 6) That'll Never Happen No More; 7) Oh Lawdy Mama; 8) I'm Sitting On Top Of The World; 9) Kansas City; 10) It Was The Weary Hour Night; 11) Chesterfield; 12) I've Got To Keep To The Highway; 13) Come On Around To My House; 14) Step It Up And Go; 15) Everyday Seems Like Sunday; 16) I Got A Woman, Don't Mean Me No Good; 17) Betty And Dupree; 18) Every Day, Every Day.

Like many other fellow bluesmen, Buddy Moss was rediscovered and dragged out into the lime­light in the 1960s, in the middle of the new «blues boom» that hit both sides of the Atlantic. Due to his natural humility and shyness, though, he was never able to capitalize on the rediscovery — never made it over to England, where he could have easily claimed hero status; his live ap­pea­rances at festivals were few and far in between; and his new recorded output was quite slim com­pared to, say, Big Bill Broonzy or the commercially successful duo of Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry. But he probably didn't mind — according to some sources, he seems to have been drawn into the whole revival thing entirely by accident (upon having been seen by some blues fans backstage after a Josh White show).

This record was originally released in 1967 and contained a large portion of Buddy's live appea­rance at a Washington, D. C. concert in June 1966; the CD issue expanded it with a bunch of ex­tra tracks that Moss recorded for Columbia in Nashville around the same time — those, however, remained unreleased for about thirty years. On the studio tracks, Buddy plays and sings almost entirely by himself, with only Jeff Espina on harmonica to accompany the guitar; for the Washin­gton show, they are further joined by John Jackson on second guitar.

As it usually happens with these revivals, there is some overlap with the old stuff, but not a huge lot: audiences were expecting to hear «popular» blues songs rather than obscurities, so that Buddy adds stuff like ʽStep It Up And Goʼ to his repertoire which he never got around to recording in the pre-war era (but Blind Boy Fuller and Brownie McGhee both did), or even ʽEvery Day (I Have The Blues)ʼ, a song that was first recorded by Pinetop Sparks in 1935, but which most people in the 1950s and 1960s probably associated with B. B. King. However, this is no reason to complain — on the contrary, it is very good to hear the old guy «forced» to expand his horizons, combining revised versions of his old classics (ʽLawdy Mamaʼ etc.) with stuff that he heard from others, or maybe even played in the old days, but never got around to record.

I will not comment on the individual tracks, since doing so requires a much deeper understanding of the basics of acoustic blues than I have, but the overall gut feeling is that thirty years of un­involvement in the musical business had a negative influence on the man's fingers (the playing is just a wee bit «sloppier» and less focused than its used to be), but a positive influence on the man's mind — instead of relying largely on stock phrasing, he takes plenty of opportunities to explore, find additional tricks, make the guitar chirp, squeak, and chime whenever possible. Even on the studio outtakes, the tracks sometimes run over four minutes, and several of the concert numbers run over five — meaning that the man had found freedom from the technical require­ments of the three-minute single and that he intended to use it. His singing, unfortunately, had declined due to aging, but that is not a big problem: Buddy was always a competent, never an outstanding vocalist, and «competent» ones get extra bonuses as they age.

Given that, out of everything that Buddy recorded and released in his «comeback» era (not much altogether), this is the most easily available package, it is highly recommendable — sound quality is very decent (the Washington concert is almost entirely free from audience noises, with every­one sitting very quietly, just an occasional snicker or two at Buddy's occasional in-between-lines jokes), relative diversity (12-bar blues, ragtime blues, jump blues, folk, etc.) is guaranteed, «blues authenticity» is indisputable; thumbs up without question. But, of course, if you want to properly «relive history», without relying exclusively on nostalgic product, check out the crackling oldies as well — Atlanta Blues Legend lays a heavy emphasis on the «legend» bit, and it will always be only a substitute for «the real thing».

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Buddy Moss: Complete Recorded Works Vol. 3

BUDDY MOSS: COMPLETE RECORDED WORKS VOL. 3 (1935-1941)

1) Gravy Server; 2) Going To Your Funeral In A V8 Ford; 3) My Baby Won't Pay Me No Mind; 4) Undertaker Blues; 5) Oh Lordy Mama No. 2; 6) Worrysome Woman; 7) Your Hard Head Will Bring You Sorrow Some Day; 8) Can't Use You No More; 9) See What You Done Done; 10) Stop Hanging Around; 11) On My Way; 12) How About You; 13) Talking About My Time; 14) You Got To Give Me Some Of It; 15) Mistreated Boy; 16) You Need A Woman; 17) Joy Rag; 18) Little Angel Blues; 19) Struggle Buggie; 20) I'm Sittin' Here Tonight; 21) Baby You're The One For Me; 22) Unfinished Business.

By mid-1935, it sort of seemed that nothing could seriously threaten or derail Buddy's career — Depression factors were not harming modest, but steady sales, and in an attempt to revitalize the formula, Buddy got himself a new partner: the "Singing Christian" Josh White (also known as Pinewood Tom), who was actually more of a guitar player than singer before gangrene ate up his left hand in 1936. The bulk of the tracks on this third volume consists of material that Buddy and Josh recorded together: usually, White merely supplies second guitar, but some of the tracks are sympathetic gospel duets, well in the tradition of Blind Willie Johnson (ʽHow About Youʼ), or folksy dance numbers (ʽYou Got To Give Me Some Of Itʼ), and this gives Buddy an opportunity to try his hand at something other than straightforward 12-bar blues. The best of these numbers, however, is ʽOn My Wayʼ, on which Buddy wrings a juicy slide tone out of his guitar; unfortu­nately, the only solo is in the brief introduction.

Unfortunately, in 1936 Buddy Moss happened to shoot and kill his wife — or, at least, so said the jury, leading to a life sentence in prison; knowledgeable people sometimes insist that guilt was never proven beyond reasonable doubt and that the sentence was racially biased, but whatever be the case, the sentence broke up a promising career that was almost on the verge of becoming minimally diverse. Josh White went his own way, and Buddy lingered in prison for five years be­fore his old record labels finally secured parole for their former star (hard to believe, yes, but there was a time when people at Columbia would be willing to bribe parole boards in order to help out their has-beens whose further commercial viability was quite under question).

The newly released Buddy, however, arrived back in the studio right on the brink of war, and with restrictions on shellac use coming into effect, only had time for one more session — held in October 1941 with such illustrious friends as Brownie McGhee on guitar and piano, and Sonny Terry on har­monica. With a small and well-qualified band behind his back, this last seven-song section is the liveliest part of the record, and Buddy is in great spirit, whether churning out energetic «proto-rock'n'roll» (ʽJoy Ragʼ, ʽStruggle Buggieʼ), more old-fashioned ragtime dance blues (ʽI'm Sittin' Here Tonightʼ) or the old 12-bar material (ʽYou Need A Womanʼ).

And then it was all over in a flash: shellac restrictions, loss of contract, waning of interest in country blues, oblivion, the whole package, for more than twenty years. To be perfectly frank, Buddy never really stood a chance like, say, Big Bill Broonzy — his style was much more rigid, «academic» (crude, but working, epithet), and not particularly appealing to mass audiences. Big Bill usually sounded like he cared, first and foremost, about giving the listener a good time: Bud­dy was more about expressing his love for country blues, which was far more abundant in his own heart than in the hearts of his listeners (myself included, frankly speaking), and seems to have had relatively little concern for showmanship — never a useful thing in a competitive en­vironment, regardless of all the honesty/integrity that goes along with it. Anyway, bottomline is: these three volumes of Buddy's recordings from the 1930s are actually well worth sitting through, one by one, if you feel a deep affinity for this sort of music — and even if you do not, they work totally fine as a classy background tapestry of fine acoustic blues playing.

Buddy Moss: Complete Recorded Works Vol. 2

BUDDY MOSS: COMPLETE RECORDED WORKS VOL. 2 (1933-1934)

1) Broke Down Engine No. 2 (take 1); 2) Broke Down Engine No. 2 (take 2); 3) B & O Blues No. 2; 4) Some Lone­some Day (take 1); 5) Some Lone­some Day (take 2); 6) New Lovin' Blues; 7) Unkind Woman; 8) When The Hearse Roll Me From My Door; 9) Insane Blues; 10) Tricks Ain't Walking No More; 11) Stinging Bull Nettle; 12) Oh Lordy Mama; 13) Dough Rolling Papa; 14) Some Lonesome Day; 15) Misery Man Blues; 16) Jinx Man Blues; 17) Evil Hearted Woman; 18) Too Dog Gone Jealous; 19) Someday Baby (I'll Have Mine); 20) Love Me, Baby, Love Me; 21) Sleepless Night; 22) Shake It All Night Long.

The second volume of Buddy's complete oeuvres (to be precise, complete pre-war oeuvres) co­vers a one-year period from September 1933 to August 1934 and runs pretty much in a straight, unbroken line together with the first one, so it is not highly likely you will find any serious dif­ferences from the first volume, other than perhaps a larger percentage of completely solo (single guitar) tracks, and just a few scattered attempts to introduce syncopated «dance blues» patterns in the repertoire (ʽTricks Ain't Walking No Moreʼ) that broaden the range, but do not add extra in­sights that hadn't already been there with Blind Blake.

One song from these sessions that has managed to make a little history is ʽOh Lordy Mamaʼ, later known as ʽHey Lawdy Mamaʼ and remade by countless artists from Count Basie and Louis Arm­strong to Freddie King and even Cream (who played the song for the BBC and later merged it with Albert King's ʽCrosscut Sawʼ to make a ʽStrange Brewʼ indeed). Musically, it sounds exact­ly the same way as about a dozen other songs in Buddy's catalog (country-blues with a boogie bass line to it), but it goes to show how much fuss just a teensy-weensy bit of variety in the 12-bar world can make — here, inserting the «hookline» of "oh lordy mama..." after each first line of the verse, which gives a funny illusion of extra complexity and «progressiveness» compared to the more rigid three-line-verse formula. Just an illusion, really, but sometimes an illusion is all it takes to gain additional popularity.

On the other hand, Buddy is just too good a guitarist to be continuously recycling exactly the same ideas, and serious blues fans with a good ear for nuance will most certainly be able to single out unusual takes — for instance, ʽDough Rolling Papaʼ makes some interesting stop-and-starts between the regular bars, and the melody is played as if the bass strings and the higher strings were holding a busy dialog with each other rather than working in tandem; the opening notes of ʽSomeday Baby (I'll Have Mine)ʼ are quite pretty-poetic; and the final track from the 1934 ses­sions (ʽShake It All Night Longʼ) ends the period on a musically/lyrically joyful rather than me­lancholic note. If only half of the other songs did not begin with the exact same note sequence (the pre-proto-ʽDust My Broomʼ pattern), I'm sure Buddy's legacy would have enjoyed more at­tention today; as it is, admiring all of these twenty-two tracks in straight sequence is more of a business for fanatical connoisseurs or students of acoustic blues playing techniques.

Buddy Moss: Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 1

BUDDY MOSS: COMPLETE RECORDED WORKS VOL. 1 (1933)

1) Bye Bye Mama; 2) Daddy Don't Care; 3) Red River Blues; 4) Cold Country Blues; 5) Prowling Woman; 6) TB's Killing Me; 7) When I'm Dead And Gone; 8) Hard Time Blues; 9) Prowlin' Gambler Blues; 10) Hard Road Blues; 11) Jealous Hearted Man; 12) Midnight Rambler; 13) Best Gal; 14) Restless Night Blues; 15) Married Man Blues; 16) Somebody Keeps Calling Me; 17) Back To My Used To Be; 18) Back To My Used To Be No. 2; 19) Can't Use You No More; 20) Can't Use You No More No. 2; 21) Travelin' Blues; 22) Bachelor's Blues; 23) Broke Down Engine.

Wherever Buddy Moss is not falling through the cracks of history, sources tend to present him as a sort of «missing link» between Blind Blake and Blind Boy Fuller — the inelegant part of this view being that Buddy Moss wasn't blind, and the elegant part of it being that his peak career period did fall on those exact years when Blind Blake was already gone, and Blind Boy Fuller did not yet start recording, namely, 1933-34. On the other hand, Buddy himself vehemently denied being influenced by anybody (liar liar), and his own influence on Fuller is debatable. Best stra­tegy would simply be to take the man on his own terms.

Actually, judging at least by Buddy's earliest recordings, his playing style, temperament, and musical attitude were quite different from both of these visually challenged gentlemen. In parti­cu­lar, he played very little of that «Piedmont», ragtime-oriented blues — Blind Blake's style was fast, jerky, entertaining, bodily-provocative, but Buddy strictly sticks to the slow 12-bar form, very canonical, very clean, mostly devoid of individualistic twists, yet with an extremely profes­sional and dexterously flowing sound. Modern listeners will find nothing particularly revealing about this form, but it seems to have been relatively rare on the streets of Atlanta in 1933, domi­nated as they were by Blind Willie McTell's ʽGeorgia Ragʼ and stuff.

On the whole, Buddy's sound should probably be considered as one of the closest predecessors of Chicago blues — even more so than Robert Johnson, who usually worked alone, whereas Buddy, on many, if not most, of his recordings is accompanied by a second guitarist (usually Curley Wea­ver), giving them a fuller, «band-like» sound: if you just added some electricity, you'd have yourself a 1953 as early as 1933. On the technical side, Buddy is a much more skilled lead player than Johnson: be it straight or slide, the best part of all these blues is invariably the solo, where he plays varied, fluent, expressive runs, very precise, very well put together, less imaginative and unpredictable than, say, Blind Lemon Jefferson's, but pretty much unmatched by any other for­malistic 12-bar guru in the business at the time. And if there was one guitarist from whom Elmore James was likely to cop his famous ʽDust My Broomʼ lick, Buddy is as good a candidate as any (ʽTB's Killing Meʼ, ʽWhen I'm Dead And Goneʼ).

The downside is obvious, too: of the 23 tracks on this first volume of his legacy that captures most of the 1933 experience, just about every single one is completely interchangeable with every other one. Occasionally, he switches from regular acoustic to slide, and from one backing guita­rist to another, but the tempos and basic structures stay consistently the same, and unless you are a maniacal 12-bar fanatic, there is no reason whatsoever why you should listen to more than two or three songs at a time (sound quality, by the way, shifts quite significantly from tune to tune, but about half of the songs have a very tolerable level of crackling — which is nice to know, con­sidering Columbia's typically less-than-royal quality treatment of its country blues artists).

On a trivia note, it is funny that one of the tracks here is called ʽMidnight Ramblerʼ — nothing to do with the Stones classic, but giving a rather precise indication as to how the bad boys came up with that title; Buddy's tune, in comparison, is quite harmless and inoffensive, infused with the regular blues yearning and moaning, but without any traces of psychopathology. In fact, as far as we know, Buddy himself was a fairly easy-going, friendly fellow, thoroughly uninterested in cul­tivating any mystical or «spiritually driven» image of himself — his singing is pleasant, but per­functory, his antics / gimmicks / special sonic tricks are non-existent, and his only real love / in­terest lies in making that guitar sing the blues. A completely one-trick pony here, but give the pony a break — it takes a little genius to perform that trick so well.