Sat Oct 18 2014

When I was young, my initial introduction to the founders and pioneers of the blues idiom was through the rock bands I liked. The first Cream album alone exposed me to Robert Johnson, Skip James, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, and (though it took more than 40 years for this penny to drop) Isaiah Ross. I wasn’t looking for “The Blues”, I just liked what I liked and was curious enough to dig into the names that appeared under the song titles. I was also very fortunate to live in a place with a superb library system, where I could often find recordings by these mysterious characters. In many cases these LPs or reel-to-reel tapes couldn’t be checked out, so I would sit for hours back in a corner of the Arlington County Central Library hunkered down with headphones trying to memorize what I was hearing.

I bought the “London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions” when it came out, specifically because Clapton’s name featured prominently on the cover, along with Steve Winwood and the Rolling Stones rhythm section. In my maturing as a music lover, my interest in those kinds of collaborations has waned. It seems to be almost a cliché for blues giants in their declining years to put out albums collaborating with younger players. And it really doesn’t make any difference how genuine and earnest the intention, the result is generally kind of watered down and uninteresting. The 4th disk of the Hooker retrospective box set is full of these, and while they are not awful (at least most of them), it rarely feels like anything has been gained. So now I almost always go straight to the source, the earliest recordings I can find, so that I can plug into that energy, and then move forward from there.

Yesterday, after all these years, I went ahead and picked up the “London Sessions” from iTunes. The description in the Wolf bio was compelling enough to pique my curiosity after all these years. And I have been very pleasantly surprised. The music for the most part stands on its own merit, rather than just being a reflection of early glory. Wolf was 61 when it was recorded and had already had 3 heart attacks (including a small one in London during the project). A sobering thought for me as I type this at the age of 61.

From the description of the recording process in the bio, my esteem for Clapton goes up (if that is possible). First of all, Marshall Chess didn’t want to spend the money to fly Hubert Sumlin out, to which Clapton’s response was “no Hubert, no me.” Then, as things were a little testy and weird in the studio, as Wolf was trying to work out what his relationship to all the huge rock stars and this big name/big money production team was going to be, this:

The next day, the band was working on The Red Rooster when Clapton did something insightful. Dayron (the producer) said, “He handed the guitar over to Wolf and said, ‘Man, you’ve gotta show us how to do this. Could you play the basic lick so that we can learn the song?’ And Wolf looked at him like he was crazy. He was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ And [Clapton] said, ‘No man. We want to get the feel right for it.’ And Wolf said, ‘Okay.’ And he took up a guitar, which was his own. If I remember correctly, it was an old Sears Silvertone guitar, and he started playing slide. The ice was broken. … At that point, the space opened up.”

When you listen to the recording, it is very clear that the intention of the players is to support Wolf and his music, not to imprint their personalities and style onto it. And it really kind of works. Clapton’s playing is wonderfully subtle and understated, and since all biographical information would suggest he was pretty much drunk 24 hours a day at that time, that much more remarkable. The record contains the strangest arrangement of Wang Dang Doodle yet. It is kind of a cover of the Koko Taylor version, but Wolfified. That would make it Wolf’s interpretation of Koko’s interpretation of Wolf’s interpretation of Willie Dixon. Kind of the way it goes, and part of the fun/frustration of searching for the origins these pieces. The timing of the vocals, particularly in the first verse, is completely baffling to me. If I ever did anything even remotely that fearless, I’d consider myself a success.

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What a funny and incomprehensible thing my personal state is. I never quite know where it is coming from, and even when I do know there ain’t much I can do about it. Yesterday, after the morning conference call, I had an open day. Oh boy! I can get some good solid practice in! Nothing doing. My energy and attention completely scattered, no enthusiasm and very little interest. I still practiced, and I still got a lot of good work done. I’ve been around the block often enough that I know that if I let my moods dictate what I do, or feel I can only work when “my heart is in it”, all hope is lost. It just wasn’t the joyful experience I imagined I was letting myself in for. Then this morning I had a couple of free hours before my students began arriving, so I casually sat down and picked up where I had left off. It was like someone flipped on the electricity. I was cranking away, feeling good, discovering with ease all the things that yesterday I had been scratching and fighting for, only to do badly. What had changed? No idea. I was secretly hoping my students would call to cancel. That didn’t happen. In fact, the lessons were quite good. Riding, I think, on the morning energy. Afterward I was able to hop back into it until I absolutely had to take a break.

What weird creatures we are.

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So here’s a thought. Howlin’ Wolf’s mother was a religious zealot who wanted nothing to do with him because he played the Devil’s music. When, as a grown man, he tracked her down, she refused to him let him help her because his money was dirty. When Wolf was in the hospital dying, and his wife got his mother on the phone, she refused to talk to her, or to come to Chicago to be with him.

Yay religion.