jeff
Mar 18, 2007
BACKDOORMEN
I came back from busking and making ends meet by playing guitar and harp and singing my way around Australia in the early 80’s, increasingly drawn to blues and country. I worked backwards like many of my generation from beatle’s stones to more muddy waters, with strange and powerful stuff lurking in the depths. You just hadta look for it was all. The mighty Howlin’ Wolf, sly Sonny Boy the 2nd, Muddy hisself with a vast catalogue of classics to plunder and of course Chuck Berry, the early Elvis, a white boy bridging that gap and irresistable Jimmy Reed. How you’d die to sing those simple songs and not sound pedestrian. How’d he do it? That loping, simple rhythm and slurred, right on vocals. I discovered a sea of music and just wanted to drown myself. Albert Collins. Where did HE come from? Another monster. Shattering guitar, the master of the telecaster. Check out BB King as a young man when he caused a riot in the Regal. The water got deeper and deeper and I was lost just like a ship out on the sea. Frank Frost was a strange beguiling island and Sleepy John Estes a ghost. Hours and hours copying Little Walter’s Juke and early on falling a victim to Junior Wells and Buddy Guy. I wish they could live forever. I dived headlong into John Lee Hooker’s back catalogue and came up with gems like “I cover the waterfront” and “Jesse James” as well as the better known blockbusters. In a movie soundtrack by accident came upon Miles Davis . The hotspot, with Taj Mahal and John Lee as well. Delved back to earlier Miles , all heroin coolness, scarey and totally fearless and I finally got it. The penny dropped. Miles like a giant spectre beckoning outta the world. John Coltrane got too crazy, starting with a mile wide tone and heading up and into the blue yonder. Lester Young , further back, all hung over and pouchy and just full of melody pulling in Dexter Gordon by his coat tails, sending him running from temptation to Europe and letting his tears hang out to dry. Just a whole fuckin’ universe of sounds and I never found my way back home. There’s always another turning to the maze. What about soul? Whatabout Sam Cooke, whatabout Otis, Aretha, Ann Peebles, Al Green, Ike and Tina. Whatabout James-let me here it for the number one soul brother- Brown?? Step up and testify for me. Like a steam hammer, passion-stamping my brain over and over ‘til I take the headphones off in submission and turn on the CD player and the late 1920’s floods in on Blind Willie Johnson’s perfect slide. Robert Johnson hovers eternally in the wings, just outta sight, casting a giant net over the future. The man who stole the crown and wears the legend. Losing his soul, howling at the moon, on all fours, poisoned like a dog.
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