My beloved Volvo 240 wagon finally gave up. It was a sad day - I’m still not over it, but it has served its time admirably. Frankly, I’m a miserable car owner… calling me neglectful would be doing me a favor. Lots of amenities on the Volvo stopped working a long time ago: power locks, air conditioner, heated seats (never worked on my watch!), but it ran faithfully to the end.

My new (old) set of wheels is a fairly invisible 2000 Toyota Corolla - dependable, state inspection assured, and best of all, it has a functioning cassette deck. Let me just re-state that:

A Functioning Cassette Deck

One of the miracles of portable analog audio playback - no random access, no picking and choosing songs… what’s on the tape is what gets played - in the order it was recorded. Sure, you could make a mix tape, but in general, it was easier to just put whole LPs or CDs on the cassette. Once I settled on the car (and the cassette deck was, sadly, a major factor in my decision!), I went down to the basement and dusted off a huge box of 90 minute cassettes. All kinds of goodies in there: Big Bill Broonzy, Yazoo’s Alabama Blues, Charlie Patton, an excellent mix of early reggae (Toots and the Maytals rewl!). Among the gems: Blind Willie McTell - Atlanta Twelve String.

When I got this CD, I was pretty green with country blues. It was my first experience of Blind Willie McTell and in retrospect, my strongest. Let me just re-count some of the album’s strong points:

• The recording quality is excellent
• The performances are near perfect
• The song selection is varied and the sequencing keeps the listener constantly engaged

Let’s just take each of these more or less in turn:

Recording Quality

Recorded in Atlanta in 1949, the sound quality is incredibly clear. As recounted in the liner notes, these songs came from acetate discs that hadn’t seen the light of day in nearly 20 years before they were released (initially) on LP. In many ways, these recordings are comparable to Lead Belly’s Last Sessions. We’re fortunate to have such an excellent document of McTell at this stage of his life. It’s tempting to look back at McTell’s career and pronounce that his greatest recordings were behind him. I could imagine hazarding that opinion after hearing his 1956 recordings, but not these. There’s a real sonic benefit in these recordings coming from such a clean source - you can hear every nuance of McTell’s performances: the timbre of his voice, the jangle of his low-tuned twelve-string guitar…. particularly the ring of the octave course on his second string and the unmitigated low-hovering cloud of the bottom strings… every detail is yours to savor.

Performances

He may not be at his most nimble if you’re concerned about the fleetness of his fingers, but there’s no doubt that he’s at or close to his peak performance power on these recordings. Consider this: during his professional recording career, McTell often suffered from a kind of nervousness in his time - speeding up, often somewhat unmusically, during the course of his performances. This tendency could also have the effect of increasing the excitement of a given performance, but I tend to prefer McTell’s delivery at this time of his life. His time is much heavier - listen to the intro to Broke Down Engine… okay, he’s tuned way the hell down to A flat, so that makes him sound pretty intense… but check out the total conviction with which he channels the tune - no rushing whatsoever. He also uses a dark minor 7 chord for the turnaround - a very simple move, but creates a truly unsettling feeling. This is no guy who’s just resting on the laurels of a recording career from nearly two decades previous. This guy’s ears are on.

His voice is also uncannily expressive - one thing I found while driving around listening to this is that he is 100% engaged in making sure the listener is hanging on his every move. I could listen to this guy for as long as he cares to play - and then I’d ask him for more! It’s a true crime that history deprived Willie (and us!) of a genuine re-discovery career for him.

Lest the reader come to the mistaken conclusion that I don’t favor his pre-war recordings, be assured that I do. It’s just that I think that a case can be made for these 1949 recordings being the greatest recordings he ever made.

Song Selection and Sequencing

For the uninitiated, here’s the complete track listing:

Kill It Kid
The Razor Ball
Little Delia
Broke Down Engine
Dying Crapshooters Blues
Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie
Blues Around Midnight
Last Dime Blues
On The Cooling Board
Motherless Children Have A Hard Time
I Got The Cross The River Jordan
You Got To Die
Ain’t It Grand To Live A Christian (Life)
Pearly Gates
Soon This Morning

Rags, blues, sacred music, old-time… something for everybody.

The album opens up with two rag-blues numbers. Razor Ball is a reprise of one of his pre-war commercial recordings and Kill It Kid is a song that he played during he recordings he made for John Lomax and the Library of Congress. This is McTell getting your attention - the pace is quick and the emotional distance in McTell’s voice makes you pay attention - like listening to your grandfather give you advice…. born of experience, he just offers it without any apparent attachment to the listener’s acceptance. It’s almost like his aloofness (cool?) forces you to pay attention, much more than an overt display of emotion (although that does come later).

The blues that he plays are all over the map: Broke Down Engine and On The Cooling Board are remakes of his pre-war classics - both are played with intensity and presence not found in the original recordings. Last Dime Blues is a cover of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s classic One Dime Blues. Dyin’ Crapshooter’s Blues isn’t really a blues at all, but seems to belong in the same bucket of tunes that you’d find Little Delia - both seem to belie McTell’s familiarity and affection for the shared body of “folk” music that is the underpinning of music on both sides of the racial fence, both then and now. McTell never recorded Delia during his professional recording career, but did record it for the Library of Congress in 1940. The only explanation that he was still playing this song in 1949 is that he loved it, and it completely comes through. As simple as the setting of this song is, it is, for me, the showpiece of the album. Just me and McTell’s Delia on a desert island - no problem. If I die, let me die.

Blues Around Midnight has all the hallmarks of a pop tune. Is it a recent entry into McTell’s recorded repertoire? Sure sounds like it…

Welcome to Sunday. One third of the songs on the album consist of sacred music… His performances here are much more emotional and he tends to use a lot more space and rubato in his delivery. I’ve never been a huge fan of McTell’s musical tendencies when he plays sacred music. For one thing, he tends to get carried away with his vocal delivery, and these tendencies became more pronounced as he got older. Even at this stage in his life, when I think he’s truly at his most self-assured, it would be possible for me to tire a bit of his sacred material, but there’s just enough of it here. In fairness, I wouldn’t characterize this material as the high point of the record (with the exception of the excellent You Got To Die), but it does not disappoint.

The album closes with Soon This Morning - an excellent chorus blues that again, sounds like a recent entry into McTell’s repertoire. There’s no doubt in my mind that McTell was actively adding to his repertoire as he got older, and that he could easily put his own spin on just about any tune.

I wonder sometimes if the songs are sequenced in the order McTell recorded them - there’s such a natural flow from the rags to the folk and blues, to church music and back to blues… seems like a master performer at work. Even if that turns out not to be the case, McTell’s repertoire is an endless source of surprise and joy.

So, with all that being said, here are a couple of tunes to whet yer whistle… if you don’t have the record, then go buy it. If you do have the record and don’t like it, please give it another listen. If you have the record and love it, then here’s to you!

blind-willie-mctell-broke-down-engine-blues.mp3
blind-willie-mctell-you-got-to-die.mp3
blind-willie-mctell-little-delia.mp3

…very busy. No promises, but there might be something interesting to post about after the weekend is up. Really.

Oh… and don’t forget to laugh in the steely face of Death. Does a body good.