Blue Monday: Mississippi Fred @ Court Coffee House, '71

Stepping off from yesterday's "Sunday Spirituals" offering and Fred & Annie Mae McDowell's My Home Is In the Delta, it seems only appropriate that Fred gets to take another turn, showing up in Tacoma, Washington for this two-set glory of stripped-down blues.

While touring through '71, Fred would be diagnosed with the cancer that would ultimately claim him in July of the following year. Finding renown at the tail end of his life, Fred became one of the blues' few success stories, leaving us some of the finest blues ever recorded.

This April, 1971 bootleg finds Fred at the Court Coffee House, doing what he did best: entrancing a crowd with a guitar on his knee, coming on with blues so deep BP couldn't dig a well that far down.

Peace, Mudcatz


Mississippi Fred McDowell
Court Coffee House
Tacoma WA
April 14, 1971

sbd

Set 1

01 Good Morning Little Schoolgirl
02 Louise
03 John Henry
04 My Babe
05 I woke Up This Morning
06 When I Lay My Burden Down
07 Jesus On The Mainline
08 You Got To Move
09 Worried Blues
E:
10 Baby Take My Rest

Set 2

01 Mojo Hand
02 Instrumental
03 I feel So Bad
04 Unknown Instrumental
05 Lord I Wonder What I Have Done Wrong
06 Kokomo Blues
07 Lord,When You Get Home
08 Bye Bye Little Girl
09 Someday Baby
10 61 Highway
E:
11 Oh, That´s Alright
12 (false start)
13 Unknown Instrumental
14 Lord I Wonder What I Have Done Wrong
15 Lord My Head Don´t Hurt Me

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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

Mississippi Fred Preaches To the Choir

I've often found it intriguing, when glancing over Mississippi Fred McDowell's healthy catalog, that Amazing Grace consistently places on list after list of "Recommended Albums." It is, after all, neither a blues album nor an album where the legendary bluesman is even front and center for most of this outing.

All curiosity over its inclusion on these lists is immediately swept away after just one spin of this disc. Fred McDowell: Amazing Grace is nothing short of a classic, an album that gets into your blood and lends every bit of the immediacy now as it did when it was cut, in February, 1966.

Star billing aside, this disc is actually The Hunter's Chapel Singers, from Como, Mississippi. McDowell plays guitar and lends harmonies through most of the tracks, though in the context of this album, he is an ensemble player. He's featured in a couple solo performances (e.g Back Back Train, The Lord Will Make a Way), though this is on par with his fellow artists' contributions. And those contributions are just a wonder.

When trying to understand the history of the blues, we often hear of its pedigree, which includes African-American spirituals and work songs. To my ear, this family tree is strikingly evident throughout these cuts. Shave the tempo down a bit on songs like When I Lay My Burden Down and we're hearing the cadences of the levee camps and prison farms. Devoid of all the polish and flash we often find with gospel outings, these spirituals feel like a Southern country church, all weathered pine boards, old-time religion and raising a voice. Stripped-down or unembellished, these performances are a feast of harmonies, from the opening tracks on.

The Hunter's Chapel Singers included Annie Mae McDowell, Fred's wife, with whom he'd cut another largely-spiritual album just two years previously. She brought Fannie Davis, Grace Bowden and James Collins with her. Just the five of them with Fred's guitar are a full-on revival meeting, with voices straight from the soul. Fred's guitar work, one of the reasons for his renown, is largely understated throughout this album--he and his troupe are out frying bigger fish for this outing--though he retains his trademark insistent elegance. His guitar intro The Lord Will Make a Way is as stirring a gospel as any vocal performance on this CD.

We have grown so used to African American gospel that's fire-and-glory and dancing in the aisles. Sometimes, when we get to spinning a disc like Fred McDowell: Amazing Grace, we get reminded that some of the best gospel out there wasn't meant to raise the rafters. Just shake some foundations.

Peace, Mudcatz



Fred McDowell and the Hunter's Chapel Singers
Amazing Grace
Testament, 1995

1. Jesus On The Mainline
2. When I Lay My Burden Down
3. I'm So Glad I Got Good Religion
4. Going Over The Hill
5. I Know I've Been Converted
6. Just a Little More Faith
7. Back Back Train
8. You Got To Move
9. Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dying Bed
10. Amazing Grace
11. Keep Your Lamp Trimmed And Burning
12. Tell The Angels
13. When You Come Out Of The Wilderness
14. The Lord Will Make A Way
15.It's A Blessing
16. This Little Light Of Mine


Link

Blue Monday: Mississippi Fred McDowell, Live & Essential, '69

Monday again. How time flies.

Heat wave's broiling these north woods. Six in the evening and it's still 94 degrees. The breeze coming in off the lake is just enough to make the shade here on the deck a true enough shelter. With feet up and sufficient fluids on ice, life's been good for hours now, thanks to the bluesmen who are insisting they get their first Blue Monday turns here..


A few years back I got into a brief argument with a feller on Deadhook, who insisted it was with RL Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, and Jessie Mae Hemphill that folks first became aware of the blues from the Mississippi Hill country. Because of the Hill country's comparative isolation from the Delta (which he felt had become too homogenized), the blues stylings there were more true to their roots, etc. Personally I think that's monkey junk (with thanks to Son House for that turn of a phrase). It presupposes that these folks were living in a bubble, untouched by outside influences. That was never the case.

Further and most importantly, blues fans had been well aware of the Hill Country for decades before the 1990's saw a resurgent interest in that school of the blues. We'd long since been hipped to the Hill Country by probably its most important practitioner: Mississippi Fred McDowell.

McDowell would be among the country blues musicians who would be discovered (as opposed to re-discovered) by the folk/blues revival of the late '50's-thru mid-'60's. From 1960 until his death in 1972, McDowell waxed an impressive library of blues and spirituals that assured him not only his lasting fame and esteem but supplied blues recording itself with an essential canon.

There are a scatter of live McDowell releases (official and not). Standing at the Burying Ground is his greatest live recording. Cut at London's Mayfair Hotel in 1969, McDowell served up a strong setlist of mostly-familiar tunes, delivering every note of them with power and immediacy. Standout tracks from this outing include 61 Highway, Shake 'Em on Down, Evil Hearted Woman and, most especially, what amounts to a pair of When I Lay My Burden Down entries. The first of these feature Jo Ann Kelly sitting in with Fred. Their duet is haunting, hypnotic, and an absolute jewel.

As concert--and blues--recordings go, this one must not be ignored.

Peace, Mudcatz


Mississippi Fred McDowell
Standing At The Burying Ground
Sequel Records, 1996

Recorded live at the Mayfair Hotel, London, 1969

(VBR)

1. 61 Highway
2. Red Cross Store
3. When I Lay My Burden Down (w/ J Kelly
4. Evil-Hearted Woman
5. I Asked For Whiskey, he Brought Me Gasoline
6. Standing at the Burying Ground
7. Glory Hallelujah
8. Write Me a few Lines
9. My Baby Done Me Wrong
10. Shake Em On Down
11. Louise
12. My Babe
13. Waves on the Water

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