Song of the Day: Future Blues… from one of the Delta Big Four!

July 21st, 2009 categories: Song of the Day

Song of the Day

"Future Blues", by Willie Brown

We call them the Delta Big Four. These are the guys who are the forefathers of the Delta Blues style. They were the first to record it, they were the major influences to both Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, and as such a direct line emanates from the 4 forefathers to the birth of rock and roll.

We are talking Willie Brown, Tommy Johnson, Charlie Patton and Son House, of course. They all recorded in the late ’20′s and into the very early ’30′s, and to whatever extent it was possible back then, among the cottonfield workers, sharecroppers and juke joint world of them, these were the music icons of their day. (That day being the relentless Jim Crow era of the deep agrarian South.)

(yep, theres more below)

When they played, it was mostly on weekends, people came, usually on foot, some on muleback, others on carts, and any available cars filled with as many people as possible that could fit into them. Always they had a hell of a good time. All four lived less than a hour from each other, and two of them came from Clarksdale, Mississippi, our home town.

They certainly played together from time to time, but Willie, Charlie and Son likely played together more than all four of them. Especially in a juke joint on the Leatherman Plantation in Robinsonville, MS, where a young upstart named Robert Johnson would try to sit in with them to little avail (more about all of that when we get to Robert later).

Back then a juke joint could be a sharecroppers shack next to a cotton field, though more often the term conjures up thoughts of a ramshackle nightspot where black people could go to dance, drink, gamble, and otherwise get away from whites to have a good time. In the 1920′s, Willie Brown and his friends we kings of this world.

Willie Brown (b. Aug. 6, 1900, Clarksdale, MS,  d. Dec. 30, 1952, Tunica, MS)  Little is know of Willie Brown, really. He only recorded 3 sides under his own name; there are no known photographs of him, but he was one of the most influential of the early Delta Blues guitarists. He could sing, but his extraordinary guitar playing led him to become one of the first sidemen of his era. More often than not he backed up Charlie Patton and Son House.

Listen to song of the day here

Future Blues was recorded sometime between May 25 and June 14, 1930 at the Paramount Record Company’s studios inside the Wisconsin Chair Company in Grafton, Wisconsin. The song is a classic, and its distinction is the descending-scale motive that  (Willie snaps off the low e-string with his thumb instead of strumming. It is particularly unique, that "snap"; its amazing thought to play a guitar like this… almost 80 years ago. (Click on the gramaphone button and enjoy!)

The recording session that gave us Future Blues is considered by many to be the greatest country blues session ever. It featured Charlie Patton, Son House, Willie Brown and Louise Johnson, a Delta barrelhouse singer and piano player who often traveled with the Delta Big 4.  Ed Komara (see "references" below) has done extensive research into this particular recording session, which was first read as a research document at the American Blues Culture and Heritage Conference in 1994, and later published as "Blues in the Round" in the Black Music Journal by the Center for Black Music Research – Columbia College Chicago and University of Illinois Press in 1997. (This was one of the first things I read when I started trying to help the Delta Blues Museum. It was extraordinary then, and I have a deeper appreciation and understanding of it now.)

Download Ed Komara’s outstanding "Blues in the Round"  here.

How Song for a Day works:
We’ll do this as often as we can. Sometimes it’ll be every day, sometimes our song for a day will last a little longer than that. We’ll focus on something for awhile, like starting off with the beginning of it all, then we might jump into something totally different. Sometimes it’ll be educational, then tangential, as if in protest to it, but always it will be fun.

There are two ways for you to get immediate access to this series: (1) subscribe to this blog at the top of the left sidebar, which will give you immediate email updates, or (2) click on "Song for a Day" under "Categories" in our right sidebar, which will automatically queue up "song for a day" posts only, starting from the most recent to the first.

(Note: The song link above works much easier and faster in Firefox. (Firefox opens a player immediately, whereas IE transfers the song into real player.) Download Firefox instantly  here… it won’t hurt anything, I promise!

Previous Song  of the Day here.

References: (click on ‘em, and click on the book to get one!)
Big Book of the Blues by Bob Santelli Chasin' the Devil's Music by Gayle Dean Wardlow Nancy Meyer
 Deep blues by Robert Palmer Rising Tide by Ed Komara  Peter Aschoff, PhD
Bob Santelli Gayle D. Wardlow Nancy Meyer Robert Palmer John
Barry		 Ed Komara  Peter Aschoff
About this and that:
I know and have worked with most of the folks here, with the exception of Robert Palmer and John Barry. At present Robert Santelli is the Executive Director of the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. It is Gayle Dean Wardlow who is particularly associated with research into the lives of Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson. Our friend Nancy Meyer managed Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy, among others, and has distinguished herself in artists royalty recovery for some 30 years. Deep Blues and Rising Tide are must reads to understand the world from which it all sprung. Ed Komara, also a good friend, was curator of the Blues Archive at the University of Mississippi for years, and now Music Librarian at SUNY Potsdam. Peter Aschoff, PhD was my dear friend, mentor, and blues historian, musicologist and cultural anthropologist for whom this work is dedicated.

 

 

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