Ain't Bad for a Pink (23 page)

In my interpretation of “Dust My Broom” I’ve taken the feel and tried to express it from my heart. It’s a song of acceptance: “I believe my time ain’t long”. “Dust my broom” means to leave for good. I’ve tried to reflect that in the stately rhythms and the dynamic of my slide playing. At the end of the day I’m a middle class white guy but this is what I tried to do. No-one is quite sure whose song it is but I regard John Henry Barbee’s as the definitive version as far as technical expertise goes. However, the most famous interpretation of this song is by Elmore James. Like John Lee Hooker, James had limitations but this did not thwart his influence. Whereas Barbee cannot be faulted from a technical point of view, both John Lee Hooker and Elmore James play from the heart and that’s what makes the difference. I still find it difficult to make up my mind between the technical excellence of Barbee and the heart of Elmore James and this has affected my musicianship in ways I can’t measure. If the style I play is more technical it isn’t because I chose that; it’s just the way I’ve learnt, the way my style has evolved.

Heart wins, though.

And the story of John Henry Barbee is heart-breaking. Barbee had a singularly unfortunate life. Perhaps I should say a doubly unfortunate life. Thinking he had killed his girlfriend’s lover, he disappeared from music – he had played with Sonny Boy Williamson – and was later found working as an ice cream vendor. His novel way of attracting customers was to play slide. He was told the good news that the man had not died so he agreed to tour Europe in the Sixties with people like Lightnin’ Hopkins and Howlin’ Wolf. Unfortunately, he fell ill and had to return to the States. Driving the Cadillac he had bought with his new wealth, he knocked someone down and killed him. This was in the Southern States. It seems the karma was just too strong. He died in jail ten days before his 59
^th
birthday. I often recount his rather sad story, ending with, “That’s how people get the blues.”

Thousands of men and women were lynched throughout the South, the perpetrators so confidently above the law that the process became known as “lynch law”.

Michael Gray.
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I’ve been drawn to some songs because they really encapsulated the lives of black people: disenfranchised and hounded by white prejudice, they often lived in fear and danger, longing for a freedom which was only possible in the afterlife. I’m not going back very far in historical terms: the last lynching took place as recently as 1981.

“Strange Fruit” is the ultimate gallows song. In 1937 Jewish school teacher Abel Meeropol saw a photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in 1930. He was so moved by this he wrote a song which he showed to Billie Holiday after a performance in New York. It was a hit in spite of establishment hostility and the difficulties of getting anybody to record it.

Strange Fruit. (1939)

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather,
for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

If anything the horror is understated in these dark, tight lyrics. The deathly stillness of the hanged man a contrast to the terrible time of terror and pain: begging to be hanged, not burnt, that would precede it.

To express these events I thought it was important to emphasize my voice. For my performance of “Strange Fruit” I use a Guild guitar just suggesting the key, with the minimum amount of guitar work: discordant punctuation and occasional increases in volume for emotional emphasis. Although I learnt this song very early on in my career I haven’t performed it that often in public: I become almost scared of my emotions because I feel that in singing this song I resurrect the suffering. I can smell it: I’m there.

If you want dexterity listen to a guitar playing; if you want feeling listen to a voice – not necessarily at its best. Billie Holiday does the definitive version of this stark song. From the heart. It doesn’t matter that her performance suffered from years of alcohol and drugs: her last recordings include some of her best work and her voice is poignant not pathetic. I think she stopped being a performer and became herself: she and the suffering and the music are indistinguishable.

Billie Holiday ended her performances in a single spotlight, her eyes closed as if in prayer. The waiters stopped serving; the mood changed. Then she sang “Strange Fruit”.

The importance of “Strange Fruit”, twenty-five years before the Civil Rights Movement, was pointed out by Samuel Grafton of the
New York Post
: “If the anger of the exploited ever mounts high enough in the South, it now has its Marseillaise”.

Meeropol’s political compassion translated into another dramatic action. In 1957 he adopted the two sons of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg: executed for spying.

“Strange Fruit” is a protest song: an instrument of change; “Oh Freedom” is a song of acceptance. I first came across the song on a recording by Carl Sandburg, the American poet and folklorist. It is a song that conveys the longing to go home to the Lord and I try to sing this spiritual with the dignity and confidence that befits a song about faith. As a non-believer I wouldn’t be able to perform this without becoming that rock-like faith. The guitar is merely touched as underlining – as with “Strange Fruit”, the voice is the dominant instrument here – and there is a falling cadence on the word “grave”. The sentiment is one of acceptance and affirmation at the same time. Freedom in this song is associated with the liberation of death, not with politics. “Ain’t goin’ to worry Poor John’s mind any more” it says on Sleepy John Estes’ gravestone.

My anger at the plight of black people was increased by not believing in an afterlife for them. There was no “home to my Lord and be free” in my view.

Leadbelly, whose music stopped me in my youthful tracks, became my all-round hero and shared the crown as king of the twelve string with Blind Willie McTell. His music resonated with the angry young man I was. He was a huge character: strong, libidinous, hard drinking, hard working, persuasively charming and violent. This zest for life is there in his music: the driving rhythm of the twelve string guitar – taken up in Texas where he also teamed up with Blind Lemon Jefferson – fading in and out. Then the voice – impressive and expressive, the high clear vocals counterbalancing the instrument. It has been said that his perfect tenor voice could have been trained for opera. Sometimes it’s almost a speaking voice to emphasise the message and when he sings
a cappella
…

Then there’s the sheer eclecticism in his repertoire: an approach the Skunk Band favoured. I have Leadbelly’s
Library of Congress Recordings.
Serious listening. In essence it can’t be called popular and some of it’s about as accessible as opera or classical music. On the other hand, I also have his
Good Night Irene
: country blues directed at a white audience where some of the songs don’t even sound ‘black’. “When The Boys Were Out On The Prairie” sounds like all the other songs popularised as cowboy songs. “Roberta” is full of sensuous detail and powerful storytelling and the clarity of the vocals in “Telling John Hardy” is impressive. Lonnie Donegan did a version of this song and so did I. “Black Girl” – also known as “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” – is a dramatic story with a haunting melody and a sense of dread. In my version I use Leadbelly’s Texas waltz tempo because it makes a jaunty contrast to the macabre details. Other versions exist: by the Four Pennies in the Sixties and Kurt Cobain in the Nineties.
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Cobain’s guitar playing is more emphatic, the pace slowed down, building the vocals to a climactic ending. He pitches the song in E flat in order to sing an octave higher at the end of the song. These songs live on.

“In New Orleans” is a faster, upbeat version of what we came to know as “House Of The Rising Sun” when Eric Burdon did it in the Sixties. There’s no comparison. Leadbelly’s style: running bass lines on a twelve string is piano-like and complex. A Library of Congress number called “If It Wasn’t For Dicky” similarly became a pop song as “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine”. Leadbelly’s song is darker – more sombre – and like “In New Orleans” very complex. I think that’s why I don’t play either of these!

So, although some of Leadbelly’s music was alarming and inaccessible to a white audience some of it was approachable. This was in the Thirties and Forties, long before the Sixties explosion in folk music. The popular potential in Leadbelly’s songs has been fully exploited. The usual thing happened: he didn’t become a successful recording artist in his lifetime but his music was popularised by his disciples. Pete Seeger’s Weavers had a big hit with “Goodnight Irene” just after his death and his repertoire has been interpreted by a wide range of performers since. Leadbelly’s fast-paced version of “Gallis Pole” with its earth-thumping rhythms is a forerunner of folk rock.

Leadbelly attracted the political left. In New York he met Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Pete Seeger and the as yet unknown Woody Guthrie who moved in with him and his wife, forming the hub of the folk movement for a while. Leadbelly sang about topical and political events and in this respect he was like Guthrie. I’ve always wanted to do a version of “Sacco’s Letter To His Son”
–
on the Woody Guthrie album
Sacco & Vanzetti,
the music actually written and performed by Pete Seeger – because it combines the personal with the political. On the eve of his politically contrived execution, Niccola Sacco writes to his young son asking him to look after his mother and those round him. The words are very moving and this is reinforced by the fact that the writer will soon die; what he imagines his wife and son doing:

And when you want to distract her from the discouraging soleness
You take her for a long walk in the quiet countryside,
Gathering flowers here and there
And resting under the shade of trees, beside the music of the waters,

will be denied to him.

I find Seeger’s version too contrived and too folkie so my interpretation would take it further towards the style of Woody Guthrie.

Being black and a musician, Leadbelly had double low status and his itinerant life would take him to wild places. His violence incarcerated him; his musical skill coupled with charm freed him. He allegedly sang his way out of jail twice! “If I had you Governor like you got me I’d wake up in the morning and set you free,” was his famous plea to Governor Neff and there was another musical plea to Governor Allen years later. Apparently Leadbelly was due for parole and the Governor’s decision was economic rather than appreciative but you shouldn’t bother folks with the facts when a mythology is at stake. It is true that Leadbelly’s music had entranced the Governors and inmates as well as John Lomax, whom he then persuaded to let him work as a recording assistant. Huddie Ledbetter was a powerful musician and a powerful human being.

Performing solo is hard, lonely work. Basically you have to find the breath and energy to project the song to the audience whilst playing an instrument and being aware of all the ambient details. It’s a survival situation. That you won’t forget the words, break a string, lose your bottle, suffer a power- or heart- failure has to be taken for granted or you wouldn’t get out of bed. On a more subtle level there’s a continuous interaction with the audience – gauging whether to match the mood, modify the mood, challenge the mood, innovate… and with this in mind choosing the next song, mentally balancing the rest of the set list. And all this is happening against a background of constant, single-minded movement to the bar, the bogs, the smoking tent, check-shirted blokes playing darts, a scratchy-headed youth on simultaneous ringtones, underage kids gnawing one another’s necks, United playing Chelsea, the epileptic jackpot machine, the landlady’s husband hijacking the karaoke, a perspiring bloke announcing a taxi…it doesn’t look promising if you’d planned a song requiring respectful attention, does it?

To a great extent, if you can’t hack it you shouldn’t be doing it but being a soloist does stretch you more than any other type of public performance. Being a soloist is being a front man without a band! Being a soloist requires charisma, confidence and commitment without the benefit of having your musical brothers there to make a joke whilst you retune your guitar or lose your grip.

So how is it possible to do a song justice with so many variables? You can’t if you’re angry with the ringtones, or concerning yourself with double drop Ds, or chewing up your set list. I have developed a strategy – a philosophy if you like – with regard to performance. In order to communicate with the audience you have to communicate with
the music.
This is one of my core beliefs. I don’t hold with the notion that music comes from the spheres – that’s a bit esoteric. At the other end of the spectrum there are people with a knowledge-based approach to the blues: they collect records; they attend live performances; they do research; they know about the blues; they produce the equivalent of the perfect photograph of a song. This to me is pedantic; it lacks soul and I see our interests as being essentially different. To truly understand the blues you’ve got to be able feel it, to
be
it in order to play it. It’s the difference between learning about and experiencing: it’s about immersion – the best country blues musicians were immersed in the music for their own sake. It was part of their being – not essentially public. It’s the same with me. For me to play it in front of an audience is a side-step – it’s not why I do it. What anyone thinks is of no consequence; I do it for me though I do love an appreciative audience. For the sake of the music.