zzuo | Blues enthusiasts; Europe (5)

In this column: blues enthusiasts, folklorists, musicologists (Europe), Paul Oliver, Jazz Journal, The Story of the Blues, Mack McCormick, Mance Lipscomb, Chris Strachwitz, Alex Küstner, Big Joe Williams, Watergate Blues, Ziggy Christmann, The Living Country Blues, James Thoman, Eugene Powell, Furry Lewis, George Mitchell, Lee Friedlander, Michael Roach, Bengt Olsson, Memphis Blues, Mississippi Bottom Blues, Freddie Spruell, Live at the Bootleggers, Lattie Murrell, William Floyd Davis, Bill Barth, Gianni Marcucci, Mbirafon Records, Hammie Nixon, Mary Helen Looper, Mott Williams, Blues at Home, Memphis Piano Red, Stefan Wirz, Site American Music, BBC The Devil's Music, NDR Roll over Beethoven - A History of American Music, Alexis Korner, Horst Königstein, Manfred Millerand, Klaus Kuhnke, Giles Oakley, The Devil's Music Series 2; 4 episodes

Introduction

This episode is about Europian blues enthusiasts.

Paul Oliver (UK)
Paul Hereford Oliver was an English architectural historian and writer on the blues and other forms of African-American music.

Paul Oliver with from the left: Little Walter, Sunnyland Slim, Roosevelt Sykes, Armand "Jump" Jackson, Little Brother Montgomery

Oliver was an authority on the blues and gospel music, described in the New York Times as "a scrupulous researcher with a fluent writing style, [who] opened the eyes of readers in Britain and the United States to a musical form that had been overlooked and often belittled."

Feb, 1952 Jazz Journal with Paul Oliver's article "Old-Time Religion"

He published his first article in Jazz Journal in 1952. His first book on the blues, a biography of Bessie Smith, was published in 1959, followed by Blues Fell this Morning: The Meaning of the Blues in 1960. The latter book was "one of the first efforts to examine closely the music's language and subject matter."
His work, which began in the 1950s, included interviews, field work and research in recording and printed sources tracing the origin and development of African-American music and culture from the time of slavery and before. Paul Oliver's Archive of African American Music is held at Oxford Brookes University Special Collections and Archive.


He made several trips to the US in the 1960s to interview and record blues musicians, financed by the State Department and the BBC. In 1969 he published The Story of the Blues, "the first comprehensive history of the genre", followed by several other books covering all aspects of blues music. His unfinished research with Mack McCormick on Texas blues was published in 2019 by Texas A&M University Press as The Blues Come to Texas.

Paul Oliver & Mance Lipscomb at the 1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festival (photo C. Strachwitz)

Video notes
British blues scholar Paul Oliver and Chris Strachwitz hooked up for a recording trip throughout the American South in 1960. Among some of the blues icons they recorded - some for the first time - were Fred McDowell, Sam Chatmon, Wade Walton, Robert Curtis Smith and Bukka White. In this clip, you get to hear their adventures and listen to some music as they reminisce on KPFA radio in Berkeley.

Paul Oliver & Chris Strachwitz 1960 trip SS

Axel Küstner (Germany)
Axel first came to the States in 1972, came over again in 1978, 1980 and made 24 trips to the States between 1990 and 2005. K.C. Douglas was the first artists he recorded in 1972. During these trips he hung out, recorded and photographed many great traditional bluesmen. He recorded Big Joe Williams in 1973 and 1978, resulting the album Back to the Roots (also issued as Watergate Blues). Additional recordings appeared on No More Whiskey on the Evidence label.

1972; 15 year old Axel Küstner meets Big Joe Williams in Germany and makes his first ever recording.
Big Joe Williams recorded by Axel Küstner

In 1980, along with his friend Siegfried "Ziggy" Christmann, he was back in the States with the idea to document the remaining country blues tradition. In this he was following in the footsteps of men he admired like Harry Oster, George Mitchell and Pete Lowry. The result of the trip was Living Country Blues USA, a fourteen volume series issued on the L&R label. The trip was one of the last great large-scale recording trips to survey southern blues and gospel, and the sad fact is that most of these performers have since passed on.

1991; James "Son" Thomas, Axel Küstner, Eugene Powell (Leland, Mississippi, photo L. Lawson)

A prodigious photographer, Axel has amassed 30,000 black and white photos, some of which have appeared in print, on album covers and exhibitions.

Furry Lewis (photo Axel Küstner)

Photographers who inspired Axel were: George Mitchell ("Blow My Blues Away" and especially the locations where they were taken) and Lee Friedlander (From the 1950s to the 1970, his portraits of musicians and jazz marching bands in New Orleans are a passionate document of the American music scene).

Alabama (photo Lee Friedlander)

Video notes
Michael Roach Conversation on European Blues Ass. Podcast featuring Axel Kustner (sundayblues.org, with original recordings and photographs).
Big Joe Williams - Watergate Blues, Aug 2 1978, Crawford, Mississippi (residence Big Joe), Joe is playing a borrowed 6 string guitar with amp.

Big Joe Williams at his house in Crawford with Axel Küstner

Michael Roach Conversation with Axel Küstner

Big Joe Williams – Watergate Blues

Bengt Olsson (Sweden)
Blues researcher who made field recording trips to the US in 1969, 1971 and 1974. Author of "Memphis Blues" (Studio Vista, London 1970) and numerous liner notes.

Bengt Olsson

Partly because of the influence and example of these pioneers, some hugely successful field recording trips continued through the '60s and early '70s, with people like George Mitchell, David Evans, Pete Lowry, Bruce Bastin and Bengt Olsson among the important researchers active at the time (Living Country Blues).

Bengt Olsson

Bengt investigated the factual history of the songsters, blues singers and musicians of Memphis, tracing their lives, the story of the medicine shows that recruited them and the uproarious background of the 'jug bands' (book note by Paul Oliver).

Memphis Blues
Cover "Mississippi Bottom Blues", Mr. Freddie (a.k.a. Freddie Spruell)

Live at The Bootleggers featuring Lattie Murrell and William Floyd Davis

Cover "Live at the Bootleggers" featuring Lattie Murrell and William Floyd Davis, cover Cameron Forsley

Liner notes
These recordings capture a moment in time, and a place in history when community was created around buying and drinking of illegal liquor Moonshine, white lightning. It was recorded at a bootlegger's homebase in Fayette County, Tennessee, 1971 at the behest of Lattie Murrell, whom Bengt Olsson and Bill Barth had tracked down to document.

Back cover

Bengt Olsson:
"We arrived at Lattie's friend place after a 20-minute drive. The house was a wooden shotgun-like building, located directly off a "major" road, possibly Highway 76, and there were 4-5 cars parked outside. The bootlegger and his wife were expecting us and greeted us with big smiles, but there were looks of astonishment and bewilderment among a couple of customers, who made quick Saturday-night purchases and equally quick get-aways. The bootlegger must have had a smooth arrangement worked out with the sheriff and seemed perfectly at ease. Business was being taken care of openly and the bootlegger and his wife showed no apprehension of having us there to attract extra attention.
I set up my recording equipment - a portable Uher and two mike stands - in the middle of the front-room, while Bill played some blues on his guitar and Lattie gathered inspiration from a pint of moonshine. Newly arrived customers lingered on to see what the hell was going on. The bootlegger's wife was frying up fish in the kitchen and selling it by the plate. Business had started started picking up when Lattie put down his glass, picked up his guitar and declared he was ready to record ("Turn that thing on white folks!").
People who had originally come by only to pick up some moonshine, and who had no specific "Saturday night obligations," lingered on and around 7pm there must have been a good dozen cars parked outside. What was going on the bootlegger's was as good entertainment as they would be likely to find anywhere nearby that night.
"Everybody quiet now!" Some recordings was being done, and there was no room for some mud-mouthed motherfucker to disturb the going-ons. The bootlegger's place had temporarily been turned into a recording studio."

Discography of Bengt Olsson

Lattie Murrell – When a Gal Cross the Bottom (1971)

Mississippi Bottom Blues feat. Freddie Spruell and Carl Martin, Long Cleve Reed and Papa Harvey Hull (photo on cover), Tommy Bradley, Otto Virgial, Charley Patton

Giambattista "Gianni" Marcucci (Italy)
Italian producer and self-taught electronic musician, also active in clay sculpture and pen and ink drawing. Owner of Mbirafon Records.

Gianni Marcucci

In the early 70’s through the early 80’s Gianni Marcucci made five trips to the United States, that resulted in the LP series The Blues at Home, released on Mbirafon Records.
Marcucci says:
“In order to preserve these materials I transferred to digital those I thought were best, and by 2013 the 16-volume Blues At Home CD collection was ready for release.
“In 1972, I worked with Lucio Maniscalchi, in 1976 with Vincenzo Castella. I was responsible of the recordings, archiving, and LP edition (including, of course, all the typos, mistakes, etc.).
In 1972 and 1976 Hammie Nixon helped finding some of the performers in Tennessee. In 1976 Mary Helen Looper and Jane Abraham helped in the Delta.
On December 1972, with the help of the legendary harmonica player Hammie Nixon, using a professional portable equipment, I had the chance to start recording blues in Memphis. The documentary research continued in July 1976, ending in July 1982. A series of informal sessions was held during the course of my five trips through Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana, featuring well known, but also little known, and unknown musicians." (as it was written by Jeff Harris)

Here is a list of some artists featured on the LPs: Charlie Sangster, James “Son” Thomas, Walter Cooper, Eddie Cusic, Sleepy John Estes, Hammie Nixon, William ‘Do Boy’ Diamond, Mott Willis, Lum Guffin (discovered by Bengt Olsson in the late ’60s), Roosevelt Holts, Asie Payton, Memphis Willie Borum and Jacob Stuckey.

Video notes
John "Memphis Piano Red" Williams recorded on December 22, 1972 in Memphis by Gianni Marcucci.
- Baby Please Come Back To Me (00:00)
- Forgive Me Baby (04:02)
- Goin' To St. Louis (07:43)
- Blues In The Mornin' (10:26) (= "After Hours")

John “Memphis Piano Red” Williams recorded by Gianni Marcucci (1972)

Stefan Wirz (Germany)
On his website "American Music" he presents his personal taste and preference for American folk music. Fortunately, he has a very broad taste and he treats us to a lot of information, which I gratefully took advantage of. Especially the photos, which couldn't be found anywhere else, including images of LP covers.
As you will find out, it's a wild mixture of black and white, acoustic and electric, rural and urban, silent and loud, female and male, guitar- and piano-oriented, conservative and progressive music, partially of European, mostly of US-American origin. The only selection criterion was his personal taste, so all he has to offer as a principle of classification is the alphabet.

Stefan Wirz

The BBC (UK), the NDR (DE)
The British Broadcasting Company in 1976 presented a look at the origins and history of blues in a series called "The Devil’s Music". There was an updated version in 1979 with narration presented by Alexis Korner. This project was produced in cooperation with the German NDR (North German Broadcasting network, TV & Radio) of Hamburg.

In the late 1970’s/early 1980’s the NDR produced a TV series called Roll Over Beethoven – A History of American Music. They used some of the footage of the BBC’s The Devil’s Music, but the NDR producer Horst Königstein and the music journalists Manfred Millerand, Klaus Kuhnke went to the US in 1977 to do additional filming of various musicians (some of this footage can be found on YouTube).

Horst Königstein

The Devil’s Music presented a number of filmed performances by then still living blues performers like Houston Stackhouse, Sonny Blake, Sam Chatmon, Fenton Robinson, Big Joe Williams, Henry Townsend and others. Giles Oakley wrote the companion book providing a history of the blues under the title The Devil’s Music (multiple editions of the book have been published).

The soundtrack of recordings made for the series was originally available on vinyl on the Red Lightnin’ label (Red Lightnin’ issued a sequel called More Devil’s Music as well) and later on a CD box on Indigo Records.

The Devils's Music LP back cover with liner notes

In January 1976, a four-man BBC film crew and writer/producer Giles Oakley traveled through Arkansas and Mississippi, Memphis, St. Louis, Chicago and New York to to capture on film and tape a wide variety of blues singers and bands. These performances were used for the film and soundtrack.

Giles Oakley

Alexis Korner (UK)
In the 1960s Korner (musician who played blues and made it populair in the UK) began a media career, working initially as a showbusiness interviewer. Korner also wrote about blues for the music papers, and continued to maintain his own career as a blues artist, especially in Europe.
Korner's main career in the 1970s was in broadcasting. In 1973, he presented a six-part documentary on BBC Radio 1, The Rolling Stones Story, and in 1977 he established a Sunday-night show on Radio 1, Alexis Korner's Blues and Soul Show, which ran until 1981. He also used his gravelly voice to great effect as an advertising voice-over artist.

Alexis Korner (1972)

Episode 1 – The Devil’s Music Series 2 (Alexis Korner delves into the world of American Blues music)

Episode 2 – The Devil’s Music Series 2 (good time blues, entertaining blues)

Episode 3 – The Devil’s Music Series 2 (is blues a cry of the oppressed)

Episode 4 – The Devil’s Music Series 2 (electric blues)