King Cotton and The Mississippi Delta Blues

Photo by Carol Highsmith / Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division

Do you want to know the absolute, honest-to-god truth? I am laying down on my bed, my computer balanced on my thighs, trying to find a topic for this week’s column, and I’ve got no clue about what I’m going to write. All I have is a photograph of an abandoned car sitting on what used to be the Hopson Plantation, outside of Clarksdale in the Mississippi Delta region of America, and a title I made up to go along with it. That’s how it goes sometimes.

I found this picture online at the Library of Congress, where I was just poking around for inspiration. Sometimes when you ain’t got one thing or another on your mind, it’s a good place to ramble and wander. This particular image is one of 100,000 that Carol McKinney Highsmith has donated, the product of a decades-long project photographing all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and her pictures are free for anyone to use.

In a CBS News story about her back in September 2013, she said, “Things are changing for the good and the bad, and so that it’s important to catch that. Now, do I know what will be important? No, I don’t. I’m clueless.” (Note: Like me.) “If people are using my images now, I want them to. But I’m not living for today, I’m really living for 100 years from now.”

You can read Carol’s description of her photograph on the Library of Congress site where the image is posted, or I’ll give it to you here:

“An old spread on which cotton was picked by black tenant farmers and mules, Hopson became one of the Old South’s first mechanized cotton farms in 1935. After the crops petered out and labor became scarce, the operation shut down for many years, but it was revived as a most unusual motel, the Shack Up Inn, in which guests sleep in some of the old farm cabins, gins, and these metal silos. Also on the grounds, the converted farm commissary is now a jazz club and bar, loaded with antique memorabilia from the region.”

Something tells me that should you be reading this column around the time I published it (March 2020), you probably ain’t all that busy. If you’re like me and a few million other people, you’re at home experiencing the coronavirus pandemic. Streaming movies on your television, listening to or making music, catching up on a book or two or three, helping the kids with their schoolwork, cleaning out that closet, painting, whistling, cooking, praying, and thinking. So consider this a gift: Carol Highsmith’s America is a treat to click on and visit.

Two hundred miles long and about 70 miles wide, the Mississippi Delta is actually an alluvial plain. It’s a flat piece of fertile land created by the sediment from the continuous flooding of the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers. For over 200 years it has been an agricultural region, and the first plantations initially grew tobacco, sugar, and rice. After the cotton gin was invented in the late 18th century, short-staple “king cotton” became the premier crop throughout the Deep South, with over a million slaves forced to leave Africa and work the fields. After the Civil War, the area lured both black and white migrants to work the land as sharecroppers and tenants, and they were followed by the recruitment of Italian and Chinese laborers.

The Delta Blues came out of the poverty and discrimination experienced by blacks in the area. When mechanization came to the farms in the 1920s, the Great Migration to the Northeast and Midwest took place and the music went with it. “Milk Cow Blues” by Freddie Spruell, recorded in Chicago in June 1926, may or may not be the first of this style to be documented, and there were a lot of other “race records” released during the decade.

If you’re looking for some more information and resources, check out this list of books from Acoustic Guitar magazine as a starting point. A lesson plan for students titled “A Snapshot of Delta Blues” is available from PBS. To wrap this up, I’ll leave you with a few live performances. Hope you enjoyed this little ride with me, and together we just made somethin’ out of nothin’. I remain forever clueless. Stay safe.

This was originally published at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com.

Musicians, Fans and Mutual Support

Photo from Pixabay.

Musicians and fans are sharing common feelings in the midst of a pandemic: fear, anxiety, isolation, depression, sleeplessness, and daily visions of what potentially might be the worst-case scenario. And from my daily contacts with friends around the globe, it appears that we’re all waiting for the next shoe to drop. I suggest we let Leonard Cohen soothe our souls for a few minutes before we go forward. Why? Because that’s how it goes, everybody knows.

As a music writer I am in touch with a vast network of musicians, as well as those who run concert halls, clubs, festivals, and house concerts. Please pardon my language, but from all of the communiques and pleas I’m receiving, they’re all fucked. No other way to put it, but the fragile economy and supporting ecosystem of artistic creation in whatever form it takes has been shattered to pieces in a matter of days. From the most popular and successful musicians out on the road with a half-dozen 18-wheelers of equipment and luxury tour buses to the person who barely makes a living playing bar mitzvahs and weddings on the weekend, this viral scourge is completely indiscriminate.

Over the past week my inbox has been filled daily with requests to help support musicians. There are livestreamed concerts popping up with tip jars, websites to donate to money to non-working musicians, and of course reminders that you can and should buy merch. Our editor here at nodepression.com, Stacy Chandler, published a super helpful article titled “How To Help Roots Music Artists” that I would encourage y’all to read. Nevertheless, all of these solicitations and cries for help have left me feeling guilty for my inability to participate. I’ll share part of what I posted on my Facebook page after reading Stacy’s suggestions:

While people who are in the creative community have little or no safety net, there is an assumption that those of us with day jobs have the wherewithal to assist. The reality is that we too are hunkering down, worried if we can pay the rent, if we will get a paycheck next week, can afford food and medical care, and on and on. So I guess that while there are some things I can do — like not requesting a refund to a canceled concert, of which I currently have $350 invested — l simply can’t be made to feel guilty because I won’t buy your T-shirt.

My heart breaks every minute that I get a message or see a social media post from a musician who’s lost all their source of income, lost money on preparing for travel they can’t get refunded, or have invested every dime in a new project set to release when the world is too overloaded with worries on survival. So no answers here, and this article touches on significant ways to at least think about or consider.

If you thought that the headline of this column was insensitive or perhaps simply a grasp for clicks, you’re wrong. The roots music community is fortunate in that we’re small enough that musicians are close to their audience. Years on the road have created relationships and established bonds, and social media opens the door for personal communication. It’s not simply the music that connects us, it’s the spirit of being part of a community. And words matter.

Ana Egge, who recently released an album and had to cancel shows in Texas opening for Iris DeMent, posted this simple message that gave me some perspective as well as some comfort:

“While these are scary and crazy days, let’s not forget that these are also days that we are living to have more of. Especially those of us lucky enough to be stuck at home with the people we love. We can’t let ourselves be overrun by fear and anxiety and miss out on this time that we have together. To love each other and share our lives. If you’re not in the same house or apartment with those you love, call them and tell them.”

Jason Isbell tweeted: “Sitting here thinking of folks who might be stuck in a house that isn’t safe. Maybe if you have a friend who has a potentially aggressive spouse or parent, be as aware as you can right now. Check in.” and he posted the link for the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Brandi Carlile shared a helpful list of things people can do to protect themselves and their community, and Rosanne Cash wrote, “I got home off the road last night & am self-quarantining until the CDC gives the all-clear. I was on a lot of planes & in a lot of airports, hotels & venues. I don’t know if I’ve been exposed, & I don’t want to expose you. Let’s do this together, apart.”

These are just a few examples of musicians using their thoughts and words to help and connect with their audience, and I know there’s plenty more. Personally, it means a lot and touches me deeply when the people who enrich my life with their music take the time to let me know they are thinking about me as much as I’m thinking about them. Y’all have a big voice, and we all appreciate it when you use it in these troubled times. Stay safe.

This was originally published at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.

The Loneliest Roots Music Festival of 2020

This was published at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website, on my first day of self-isolation or whatever y’all want to call it. As you’ll see below, my area had 98 cases on March 13 2020, and as of today, sixty-one days later, there are 32,673 cases with 1,313 deaths. Knowing that “One day in April it will just disappear…it’ll be a miracle” was just another lie, I suspected we would all be craving live music. Putting together this video music festival was an idea behind the times, as a week or two later musicians began to livestream on social media. Now, mammoth events are taking place and people are spending a lot of time watching and hearing some great content. In any event, I still like my choices, and thought you might enjoy them as well. What do you have to lose?

As I sit in my apartment a few miles north of New York City, and only a few minutes away from what we’re now calling The Containment Area, I wait for the pandemic to land at my doorstep. In our little corner of Westchester County there are now officially 98 cases of the coronavirus reported, schools are closed, the National Guard has been dispatched, I witnessed a fight over toilet paper at the local Costco this morning, and, God help us, they’ve sold out of frozen pizza at Trader Joe’s.

With millions of people living in the tri-state area you might think that a few hundred confirmed cases doesn’t sound all that threatening, but all the public health officials are warning it’s only the beginning. The World Health Organization‘s Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced that “We are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction.” (The Washington Post — or #fakenews as some call it.)

While Tedros could be right, he’s probably not heard that here in America we’ve already developed an antidote to the virus. It seems that a weekend of playing golf at Mar-a-Lago and shaking hands with possibly infected ass-kissing conservative politicians and donors will make you immune to all future illness. And if for some reason that fails, we’ll be arming every doctor and nurse with automatic weapons and orders to shoot the germs on sight while we begin building walls around hospitals.

If you think I’m making light of this human tragedy, it’s only because I’m anxious and nervous, and humor is a form of relief. You see, at my age with an underlying medical condition and being a Democratic Socialist who likely conspired with the Chinese to cause this to happen, my odds of beating this virus if it lands at my doorstep aren’t all that great. And so here I am, acting like a young Brian Wilson: in my room.

Sadly, you’ve likely heard that music festivals and tours are being canceled in rapid succession. Musicians, record labels, and fans have lost money that they probably barely scraped together to attend SXSW in Austin. Marketing and launch plans have turned to dust, and the organization will not be issuing any refunds. To add insult to injury, any national economic relief plan that the DC superstars put together will exclude participants in the arts.

For almost six years up until 2016, Couch By Couchwest was a great way for musicians to share their music. Running concurrently with SXSW, the online video festival let anybody upload a clip to their site and you could tune in whenever you wanted and catch both pros and amateurs. I heard a lot of great music, made lifelong friends, and it beat the inconvenience, heat, and cost of any outdoor festival. If you guys are still out there, this would be a great time for a revival.

Lacking that effort, I’ve put together my own mini-fest of some recent (mostly) live videos for your enjoyment. Please wash your hands for 20 seconds before watching and try not to breathe. And please, stay safe.

For more information on finding sources for online concert streaming, check out this article from the San Francisco Chronicle. And for news on the financial impact the virus is having on the music industry, here’s an overview from Fortune.

Milk Carton Kids and Rose Cousins – “Wild World”

Nathaniel Rateliff – “And It’s Still Alright”

The Reckless Drifters – “Drivin’ Nails in My Coffin”

Dori Freeman – “Walls of Me and You”

The Mastersons – “Eyes Wide Open”

Honey Harper – “Tomorrow Never Comes”

Nora Jane Struthers – “Nice to Be Back Home”

Bonny Light Horseman – “Jane Jane”

John Moreland – “East October”

Tré Burt – “Caught It from the Rye”

Terry Allen & The Panhandle Mystery Band – “Abandonitis”

Charles Wesley Godwin – “Coal Country”

Courtney Barnett – “So Long, Marianne”

This was originally published at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.

More Country, Less Americana

Logo from www.ameripolitan.com

Throughout its seven years in existence, the association founded by musician Dale Watson flies so far beneath the radar of the Americana and roots music community that you’d barely know it exists. With its primary focus on honky-tonk, Western swing, and rockabilly, the Ameripolitan Music Awards is admittedly pretty small and loose, and one might assume that it lacks the organization, funding, or desire to be something other than what it is.

For the first four years, the annual event was held in Austin, which was Watson’s hometown, but when he moved to Memphis he found an enthusiastic music and arts community that opened its arms to the Ameripolitan folks and offered its support. This year the event was held over several days at the end of February, with a weekend of showcases and concerts throughout the city that concluded with the awards ceremony hosted by Western swing bandleader Big Sandy and Doris Mayday. Here’s a list of the winners, courtesy of The Boot:

Honky-Tonk Male: Charley Crockett
Honky-Tonk Female: Sarah Vista
Honky-Tonk Group: The Country Side of Harmonica Sam
Rockabilly Male: Bloodshot Bill
Rockabilly Female: Laura Palmer
Rockabilly Group: Mark Gamsjager and the Lustre Kings
Western Swing Male: Dave Stuckey
Western Swing Female: Georgia Parker
Western Swing Group: The Farmer and Adele
Venue: Luckenbach, Texas
Musician: Sean Mencher
Festival: Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion
DJ: Eddie White

For those of you who have followed the Ameripolitan awards, you probably noticed that the outlaw category has been eliminated — actually, it has been rolled into honky-tonk. In addition to the winners listed above, special awards were given out this year to Duane Eddy, who received the 2020 Master Award, and J.M. Van Eaton for the 2020 Founder of the Sound Award.

I’d bet that many of the nominees and winners aren’t all that well known to No Depression readers who live outside of Texas, or maybe Sweden. The latter is home to The Country Side of Harmonica Sam, one of my current favorite bands who took home the award for best honky-tonk group.

Here are a few more clips from some of the winners. And check out these links to the Ameripolitan Music Awards site and its Facebook page. You might also enjoy reading my article on Dale Watson that was originally published as a Broadside column back in 2018.

This was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com.

Americana Lost and Found: 1940-1947

Film Reel Container

On April 14, 1891, a Chicago businessman named Mortimer Birdsul Mills was granted a patent for a major improvement in what was then called a coin-actuated vending apparatus. It gave consumers of cigars the opportunity to select which one of several brands housed inside of a machine that they wanted to purchase. Mills established the Mills Novelty Company, and over the next several decades manufactured slot machines for gambling and separate devices that dispensed chewing gum, hot coffee, and cooled Coca-Cola bottles. With Mills’ son and grandchildren running the business, in 1928 it added coin-operated radios, phonographs, and eventually jukeboxes to its offerings.

One of the coin-operated machines of particular interest delivered to the public a new music configuration called Soundies. These three-minute black-and-white musical films were produced between 1940 through 1947, shot on 35mm film stock, and then transferred to a more affordable 16mm loop that featured eight different performances. For 10 cents you would get to watch one at a time with no ability for selection, but hopefully you’d enjoy whatever clip was next up and keep feeding the dimes.

At least seven production facilities in New York, Hollywood, and Chicago produced Soundies, for which the performers recorded the songs in advance and then lip-synced for the film. The machines that played them were sold and marketed under various brand names — Hi-Boy, Troubadour, Dancemaster, Do-Re-Me, Swing King, Zephyr, Studio, Throne of Music, Empress, Constellation, and The Panoram.

The Mills Panaram

The Panoram, built with high quality wood and designed in an art deco motif, was placed in public areas such as soda shops, cafés, taverns, roadhouses, and bus and train stations. While the first year was a runaway success, bringing the Mills family millions of dollars, World War II quickly interrupted its distribution with a shortage of raw materials to build more cabinets. By 1947, with television in the beginning stage of home entertainment dominance, Mills discontinued the Panoram, leaving an archive of approximately 1,800 Soundies.

Merle Travis – “Old Chisolm Trail”

Covering all genres of music, such as classical, big-band swing, hillbilly novelties, and patriotic songs, Soundies also added comedy sketches in 1941. In American roots music you had Merle Travis, The Hoosier Hot Shots, many jazz bands, and what has become their legacy: a huge catalog of African American artists who would otherwise not have had the opportunity to be filmed. Eventually the Soundies were sold off to several home video companies and distributed in a variety of formats, with many currently available to view on YouTube.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe and The Lucky Millinder Orchestra – “The Lonesome Road”

In the mid-1960s, the Scopitone jukebox made its debut based on a similar technology as The Panoram but now offering color format. They were initially available in Western Europe but soon spread to the United States. Some of the performers included The Exciters, Procol Harum, Neil Sedaka, Jody Miller, Bobby Vee, and Nancy Sinatra’s popular “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.” Bypassed by The Beatles and others from the British Invasion, the Scopitone jukebox faded by the late ’60s, although its technology continued for several years.

Lani McIntyre – “Imua Ailuni”

The Panoram and Scopitone systems each preceded and predicted the popularity of music videos popularized by MTV. Two recommended sources for more information about Soundies, the Panoram and Scopitone:

The Soundies Book: A Revised and Expanded Guide
The 2007 PBS-produced documentary Soundies: A Musical History, available on Amazon Prime Video

I’ll close this out with a cornucopia of clips, and encourage you to go forth and explore these three-minute slices of old-time historical Americana and American roots music.

This was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com.

Hanging Out Backstage With The Dead

Photo courtesy of Pixabay License.

When I first began working in the mailroom of a record distributor back in the early ’70s, one of the perks of the job was going backstage either before or after a concert. Documented in films such as Spinal Tap and One Trick Pony, the infamous music business “meet and greet” is a staple at virtually every concert. Usually, it’s simply a casual opportunity to say hi to the musicians, tell them how much you like their latest album and then finish it off by posing for a photo. I did hundreds of these over the decades and while often it was a blast, eventually I grew weary of this ritualistic and orchestrated event..

I can recall my baptismal “behind the curtain” invitation in September 1973 to a Grateful Dead show at Philadelphia’s Spectrum, a large hockey arena and a major concert venue of the day. My wife and I had spent all week hanging out with their advance man, legendary promoter Augie Bloom. We helped him contact local members of their fan club which predated and morphed into Deadhead culture, drovehim to radio stations, and smoked the best weed we’d ever tasted. On the night of the show he led us through the hallways deep inside the venue and then left us in a room overflowing with food and drink, not without warning us not to sip anything liquid unless it came from a bottle we’d opened ourselves.

That particular evening we never got a chance to chat with the band as they were busy with a crowd that could have easily come out of Hollywood central casting. Groupies, bikers, DJs, wives, girlfriends, a few kids, smarmy record label execs, retailers, wholesalers, hipsters, artists, local scene makers, and bored beefy security men who ignored the smells and snorting going on all around them. I suppose it sounds as if it was a great party, but on this particular night I witnessed an incident that has always stuck with me.

One member of the band was absolutely strung out, with his eyes rolling back into his head. He was being held up on his feet by his wife, who gingerly attempted to get him to walk back and forth in preparation for soon going out onstage. When he became loud and rude, roughly shoving her away from him, some of the roadies stepped in to drag him away and we left to find our own way out. Whatever thoughts of rock and roll idolatry I’d had quickly dissipated. Loved the music, hated the scene.

The lights came down just as we got to our seats. With the smoke around us rising up to form one giant mushroom cloud, the band took the stage. The dude who was barely able to stand up just a few minutes earlier played his ass off for the next several hours. Looking back, I suppose it was my first introduction to the principle of “the show must go on” and so it did, likely with pharmaceutical assistance.

I have a box in my closet stuffed with pictures of me taken backstage while standing next to lots of different musicians, almost all of them having no clue who I was or why I was there. A fast intro, a shake of the hand, maybe a quick chat, and then turn, pose, smile, snap, and move on. One of my favorites is of me and a few people from my office posing with The Rolling Stones. They preferred to do group shots rather than with individuals, and I recall that our brief intro came right after a group of Pepsi executives and was followed by employees of the local Budweiser brewery. As they say, it’s only rock and roll.

Easy Ed (far right) with The Rolling Stones at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Oct. 15, 1994.

This was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website.

The Artist Currently Known As Prince

Photo by Ryley Dawson

I’ve written endlessly over the years about the opportunities and challenges of discovering new music in the current paradigm. With digital streaming platforms now accounting for 80% of music revenue (RIAA Mid-2019 Report), and downloads and physical formats each running less than 10%, our reliance on websites, social media, algorithmic suggestions, and curated playlists is at an all-time high. Yet for all of our technological advances, it is harder than ever for a new musician or even an exceptional album or song to find an entry ramp to your aural highway.

As a music hobbyist, writer, and social media aggregator, my days are filled with digitally zipping from here to there on an endless search for something new and different. After giving up most of my destructive addictions over a quarter century ago, the feeling I get when mainlining lyrics, notes, and rhythms is as strong as drinking, inhaling, ingesting, or whatever else once tickled my brain’s pleasure zone.

Recently I experienced an analog recommendation: My friend, co-worker, and fellow musical traveler Neil asked if I liked William Prince. An unknown name to me, I pulled out the phone, opened my streaming app, did a search, and added his 2015 debut, Earthly Days, along with his brand-new release, Reliever, into a playlist I have thoughtfully titled “New Shit.” There’s currently about 75 albums residing there and cued up for listening. Since I tend to live in shuffle-ville, I knew it would likely take a few weeks until Prince popped up. No rush; I’m not a reviewer or on some sort of deadline. Heck, I’m still writing about music from a hundred years ago, let alone 2020.

A few days later, “Breathless” was the first song of Prince’s that I heard, and I later learned it was also one of the first songs that he ever wrote. A breakout single from the first album, which was recorded in just 10 days and produced with collaborator Scott Nolan, it won Aboriginal Artist of the Year at the 2016 Western Canadian Music Awards and Contemporary Roots Album of the Year at the 2017 JUNO Awards. In a 2018 interview with CMT, Prince explained the experience:

“I’ve shared stages with some of the finest songwriters in the world, played some of the most beautiful festivals, inducted Bruce Cockburn into the Songwriting Hall of Fame, hugged Neil Young, worked with Dave Cobb, spent days in Nashville, New York and so many cities I used to just sit and wonder about.”

Based in Winnipeg, the 34-year-old’s baritone voice is second only to his songs and lyrics. He writes these great heartfelt stories and then delivers them like a bowl of hot, thick oatmeal on a cold day in the north country. An Anishinabe, Prince was 5 when his family moved to Peguis First Nation, a reserve named after the chief who led a band of Saultaux people from present-day Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, area to a Cree settlement at Netley Creek, Manitoba. Prince is a direct descendent of Chief Peguis.

Prince began playing guitar and piano when he was 9 years old, and has said he was inspired by Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Charley Pride, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, and, most significantly, his preacher and musician father, who passed away just as he began writing the songs for Reliever. Sometimes I hear the voice and phrasing of Leonard Cohen in his music, but that might just be a similarity of their vocal range. Other times he reminds me of a storyteller like Springsteen or Guthrie, with grit and depth in his lyrics.

The new album was recorded both in Winnipeg with Scott Nolan and down in Nashville with Dave Cobb. As the latter seems to produce a top 10 Americana album just about every week, working with folks like Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson, Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlile, and John Prine, here’s hoping some of his magic will rub off on Prince and allow him the opportunity to be heard. I suspect this album will likely be the first that’ll wind up being on your list of end-of-the-year favorites for 2020.

This was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website.