Current reading: a pair of required Blues classics

I’m currently in the process of reading a pair of books on the Blues. The first is Deep Blues, by the renowned music critic Robert Palmer (no, not the “Addicted to Love” guy). The other, Blow My Blues Away, is by the less-known but equally respectable George Mitchell, who made a slew of recordings of dozens of mostly unheard-of blues and folk musicians in the deep South during the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.

While both books focus on strains of blues that originated in or near the Mississippi delta, each approaches the subject from a different angle. In his book, Palmer — who, during his career, wrote extensively for the New York Times and Rolling Stone and taught ethnomusicology at a number of U.S. universities — gets as close to being all-encompassing on delta blues as one can without becoming entirely overbearing. His book covers the Blues’ African origins, its genesis within the southern sharecropping system during the turn of the 20th Century, its particular musical significance, and the stories of some of its most famous practitioners, including Robert Johnson, B.B. King and Muddy Waters.

Mitchell, meanwhile, focuses on a segment of the Blues rarely examined in such depth; his book, first published in ‘71, consists almost entirely of first-hand testimonials from poor southern blacks in northwest Mississippi who were known in those parts for their skill playing blues and gospel songs. His subjects are people most blues fans have never heard of, folks like Other Turner, William Diamond, and various members of the Hemphill clan.

If you’re taking notes, it’s safe to say that few people, if any, have done more than Palmer and Mitchell to document, publicize and preserve the memory of the raw, authentic blues music that continued to be played — albeit less and less as the years went by — in the South following the American folk music revival of the 1960s.

At present, both men’s most resounding legacy toward this end has quite possibly been their involvement in the independent music label Fat Possum Records, originally of Oxford, Miss. While teaching at Ole Miss in the early ’90s, Palmer was an inspiration for the label’s founder, Matthew Johnson, who was briefly a student in one of his classes. Palmer even served as producer on some of the label’s early releases, and in the process helped alert the world to the value of old codgers like Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside and CeDell Davis, all of whom specialized in a style of severely unpolished, primal blues from the North Mississippi hill country that differed in many aspects from its nearby delta cousin.

But since Fat Possum’s stable of aging blues wonders started dying off near the end of the decade, the label has employed a pair of tactics to stay both relevant and afloat. First, they began releasing more albums from younger, white acts with indie-rock leanings, such as the Black Keys, the Fiery Furnaces, and Andrew Bird. Second, they made a deal with Mitchell to release a large number of his field recordings, many of which hadn’t been available to the public in decades. His vast archive of gems ranged from recognizable names like Sleepy John Estes, Fred McDowell and Robert Nighthawk to largely unknown masters like Joe Callicott, Jim Bunkley, and many of the characters from his aforementioned book.

I suppose it would be an understatement, considering the preceding tome, to say that I have a bit of an affinity for blues music. But I have a particularly special place in my heart for the backwoods fare that Palmer and Mitchell worked so diligently to promote. It’s my hope that labels like Fat Possum and organizations like the Music Maker Relief Foundation will keep receiving enough support to keep this music’s memory alive.

If you’re interested in more about this strand of the Blues, the Web journal Southern Spaces, from Emory University in Atlanta, has a thorough section on the blues of the lower Chattahoochee Valley, including clips of Mitchell’s recordings and even some interview segments with Mitchell himself.