Back to Sundays: Fred & Annie Mae

Back before my recent hiatus, I'd gotten into the rhythm of featuring blues recording's spiritual side. I have always been of the belief that the music flows from the same wellspring, not merely that African American spirituals were integral root to the blues' family tree, but from the level of the soul. The same longings and joys, laments and vows of perseverance, the same up-from-the-belly surge that find their expression so perfectly in blues were always brought to bear when making some joyful noise to their God.

Few blues musicians could reconcile both their secular and spiritual material more effortlessly than Mississippi Fred McDowell. Fred lived in a world that refused to recognize any common ground between these two camps, the sacred and the profane. One need only think of Rube Lacey or Ishmon Bracey, two of the finest bluesmen the Delta produced, having their spiritual conversions and turning their backs forever on blues and recording. It was a polarized world where if you weren't "Giving it up to the Lord" you were giving the devil his due. Straight through the American south, through its vaunted Bible Belt, the bluesmen were, to the last, racing down the road to hell. The Rev. Gary Davis would begin recording more secular tunes as he moved into the 1960's. Son House would personally always have trouble reconciling the two camps.

Mississippi Fred McDowell was cutting both blues and spirituals, right along side each other, pretty much from the point when he began recording, famously late in his career. A few months back I posted an album featuring Fred, his wife and Como, Mississippi's Hunter's Chapel Singers --Here--. Amazing Grace, essential album that it's become, was only made possible by the positive reception, and inroads, made by Mississippi Fred's first spiritually-heavy release, My Home Is In The Delta, released two years earlier. That album gave his wife Annie Mae co-billing--and most deservedly so. The album is very much a husband and wife presentation. It was always a sublime partnership.

In its original 1964 configuration, Side A was Fred playing a secular selection, while on Side B he joined his wife Annie Mae for a brace of spirituals. It is a uniformly-wonderful album that flowed smooth as running water. Fred's solo contributions include venerable standards as Sleepy John Estes' The Girl I'm Loving and McDowell originals The Sun Rose This Morning. I'm In Jail Again and Going Down South, Carry My Whip are so juicy you'll want to line the floor with newspaper before cracking them open.

When Annie Mae takes her chair, she and Fred serve up a cross-section of mostly time-honored standards, though with their stamp very much on each one to the last. Witness, for example, their reading of Amazing Grace, as "standard" as it gets for church hymns, building from a slow to lament to something a bit more joyful.

My Home Is In The Delta was recorded on a pair of dates in November, 1963 and February, 1964. When Testament re-issued the album on CD, it included 4 bonus tracks, When I Lay My Burden Down, Big Road Blues, Down on Dankin's Farm, and a true McDowell rarity, Six White Horses, essentially a reworking of Blind Lemon Jefferson's See That My Grave Is Kept Clean, that I believe makes its only appearance in McDowell's canon on this disc.

Through the Fred and Annie Mae duets, we are struck by their being such under-stated wonders. This is no fire & brimstone, Give-Your-Heart-to-Jesus sales pitch. These are straight from the heart and soul country spirituals feeling like they're being played from a back porch. They are all exquisitely rendered.

Peace, Mudcatz


Mississippi Fred & Annie Mae McDowell
My Home Is In The Delta
Testament, 1995

1. Waiting For My Baby
2. I'm In Jail Again
3. The Girl I'm Loving
4. Going Down South, Carry My Whip
5. Diving Duck Blues
6. The Sun Rose This Morning
7. Six White Horses
8. Down On Dankin's Farm
9. Get Right Church
10. Amazing Grace
11. Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dying Bed
12. Where Could I Go
13. The Lord Will Make a Way
14. Keep Your Lamp Trimmed & Burning
15. When The Saints Go Marching In
16. Big Road Blues
17. When I Lay My Burden Down

Link