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Deep Into the Blues

Photo by Jeff Sedlik

Rounder's Roots Man: The late Ted Hawkins

Rounder's new compilation, 'Deep Blue,' shows off the label's roots

By Nicky Baxter

For a quarter of a century, Rounder Records has proven itself a bedrock of alternative idioms, most notably folk and world music. But as the new two-CD set Deep Blue amply indicates, the company can also stake a claim as one of this country's most important conservators of the blues tradition.

Over the years, Rounder has produced a treasure-trove of artists, including the likes of Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Robert Nighthawk, Lowell Fulson, Charles Brown, Robert Jr. Lockwood and the late, lamented Ted Hawkins, who, though not strictly a blues singer, was a formidable roots musician nonetheless.

Selections from these artists and many more turn up on this wide-ranging compilation. The set kicks off with a bang with Nighthawk's "Mr. Bell's Shuffle," a smoker stoked by Nighthawk's boogie-styled electric guitar and some blazing harp work, unfortunately uncredited. Recorded in 1964 in a Chicago open-air market, the cut gives the impression of a full-tilt party, replete with clamorous shouts of encouragement. Alas, at under two minutes, this jump-up is much too short-lived; just as you're ready to shake 'em on down, the party's over.

Happily, on "Jealous Hearted Woman," the late J.B. Hutto is afforded a little more leeway. His down-and-dirty Chicago slide-guitar work recalled the sovereign of sobbing slide, Elmore James, and was a constant reminder to aficionados that urban blues didn't have to sound urbane.

Hutto, whose heyday began in the mid-'60s after an abortive attempt a decade before, sounded about as country as a city dweller could get with his forceful, guttural vocals and primal fretwork. "Jealous Hearted Woman," a smoky belly rubber, smolders with slow-burning intensity; Hutto's terse solo turns are a model of restrained intensity stripped of artifice but leaving nothing out.

Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson's entry, "Ain't Treating Me Right," sounds decidedly more modern, reminiscent of West Side Chicago mainstays like Magic Sam and Otis Rush. Still, given his eight-year association with Muddy Waters (and the fact that he hails from Itta Bena, Miss.), Guitar Jr.'s approach is planted firmly in the Old Country, i.e., Southern Black-belt, tradition.

That tradition is particularly noticeable in Johnson's vocals. Muddy'd up and seething with menace, he whoops and hollers like a man ready to snap. Like all blues pickers of consequence, from Jimmy Rogers to Jimi Hendrix, Johnson has a deep-rooted understanding of the art of rhythm work. Here, his muscular, chugging guitar never lets up, pushing ahead intently like a Southside-bound freight train that unfailingly arrives at the station right on time.

Not that Chicago is the only home of the blues. As Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown demonstrates on "Sometimes I Slip," Texas-styled wailing is in the house, too. Gatemouth, originally from Louisiana, first achieved notoriety in the 1940s and '50s with an ingenious introduction of jazz, country and Cajun elements into his blues.

Incorporating fiddle, and playing guitar lines patterned after hornmen like Lester Young, Gatemouth expanded dramatically the parameters of the music. Taken from the Grammy Award-winning Alright Again! session, "Sometimes I Slip" is a brooding, indolently paced number on which the guitarist shows his fondness for Texan T-Bone Walker, nicking a lick or two from the latter's epochal "Stormy Monday" and dropping a B.B. King zinger in for good measure.

The album offers an abundance of electrified blues lessons, but the package also contains a fair share of unplugged gems, as well as a sprinkling of items that fall in the nether regions between the blues and its close kin, gospel and R&B.

An arresting illustration of the former can be found on the Holmes Brothers' "Up Above My Head," a rousing number that weds feverish call-and-response vocals, boogie-woogie piano and Chuck Berry-styled rock & roll guitar to construct a wildly exhilarating hybrid located somewhere between heaven and hell.

For fans who prefer their blues with a dash of ivories, Deep Blue includes a healthy sampling. Disc one alone offers a double-shot of barrelhouse piano blues. Champion Jack Dupree's irony-laden 1991 version of "Give Me the Flowers While I'm Livin' " turned out to be spookily prophetic; One Last Time, the album from which this selection is culled, turned out to be his last--he died in 1992. The midtempo number features Dupree's surprisingly robust piano pounding with an emphasis on his trademark triplets and creaking vocals.

Professor Longhair checks in with "501 Boogie," a spry instrumental spotlighting the Professor's infectious party-time tickling. This is boogie-woogie at its finest.

More difficult to pin down is Hawkins' "Peace and Happiness." As his final recording, The Next 100 Years, bore out, Hawkins was a master at weaving together varying strands of black idioms into a stunningly singular vision. (That DGC album, by the way, is essential to any black music collection that claims to be comprehensive.)

"Peace and Happiness," a lo-fi track, provides a glimpse into what life was like for the star-crossed singer-guitarist a decade before his death. Even then, savvy listeners can't help but note how a lifetime of poverty, mental illness and profound pain had etched itself into Hawkins' music.

Stitching together aspects of folk, soul, blues and gospel, Hawkins somehow turns what could be have easily been a downhearted lament into a bittersweet declaration of one man's refusal to give in to despair. After the two-minute, 29-second prayer is done, you find yourself believing that Hawkins has discovered his saving grace.

Though sublime moments like these abound, Deep Blue does contain some less-than-stellar performances by artists whose grasp of the blues is, at best, tenuous.

By including inferior works by the likes of Rory Block, Marcia Ball, Ron Levy and others, Rounder reveals a predictably Eurocentric perspective in which white imitators of African art forms are given equal footing with original creators, while African contributions to white culture continue to be minimalized.

Ironically, the inclusion of Euro-bloozers alongside a Robert Nighthawk or Ted Hawkins only underscores the fact that the blues adds up to much more than 12 bars; it is the very heart and soul of black folk.

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