Subgenre Coverfolk: Acoustic Blues
Covers of Bob Dylan, Mississippi John Hurt, Johnny Cash and more!
January 10th, 2010 — 06:18 pm
Last night’s utterly amazing Greg Brown show started off with a short solo set from perennial sideman Bo Ramsey, who played a set of hushed alt-country blues originals and an achingly delicate cover of Lucinda Williams’ Joy, his hands barely brushing the strings. Brown, too, played mostly blues, when it comes down to it: recognizable chords in sixteen bars; low, quickspoken, plaintive lyrics that pulsed along with the bass string beat. Stunning stuff.
Which got me thinking about the acoustic blues, and its relationship to modern folk music – not necessarily just as ancestor, but as a subset of that music which one can reasonably expect to hear on any folk festival stage. And, turning to the archives, I find that many of the living artists we’ve included here in the past, from Taj Mahal and Jorma Kaukonen to Ruthie Foster and Pat Wictor, would certainly fit within a generous definition of the subgenre.
It’s been almost a year since we focused on a particular style of music here at Cover Lay Down. The links are long dead on previous Subgenre Coverfolk features on Freak Folk, Zydeco, Bluegrass, Celtic Punk and more, though this summer’s Pianofolk feature remains live. But I think we’re long overdue for a return to one of our most prodigal series, and there’s a rich vein to be mined at the intersection of country, blues and folk. Ladies and Gentlemen: the acoustic blues as folkform.
A century ago, the acoustic or “country” blues was a distinct genre from folk, grounded in a different population, forked in its sonic ancestry. But the “discovery” of Leadbelly, Mississippi John Hurt, Elizabeth Cotten, Etta Baker, R. L. Burnside and other stylistically similar musicians by bourgeois ethnomusicologists like John and Alan Lomax and Mike Seeger, and the subsequent incorporation of several of these artists into the folk circuit late in life alongside such inheritors as Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, Odetta, and Taj Mahal, places the acoustic blues square at the roots of the folk revival.
Since then, of course, like so many other components of the rich tapestry of American music, the stylistic elements handed down from the blues have found their way into much of the mainstream, from R&B to Rock and Roll to Country music, both alt- and otherwise. As such, the acoustic blues form is hard to pin down, in part because so many components of the blues have so fluidly made their way into folk performance since the time of Lomax and Seeger. But as a subgenre, the form is generally typified by acoustic solo performance, an ear for the folklorist’s communality in lyrical delivery, and the marks of blues writ large – slippery vocal mannerisms, repetitious “call and response” lyrics, and a consistent 12 or 16 bar song structure built from power chords and a pentatonic scale.
More notable, perhaps – at least from a folk perspective – are the racial issues surrounding the subgenre. Unique among modern branches of the folk canon, the acoustic blues community is racially diverse; though there are certainly plenty of white male bluesfolk artists (and a few females, such as Rory Block and, arguably, American Primitives like Gillian Welch, whose fingerpicking style had its origin in the early country blues) still plying the coffeehouse circuit today, it would not be hyperbolic to suggest that the acoustic blues subgenre is the locus for the vast majority of black musicians on that circuit. And sure enough, our set below features numerous black artists, an accomplishment unseen in these pages since last April’s full feature on the Carolina Chocolate Drops and the Piedmont blues style and an even older feature on Jazzfolk featuring KJ Denhert and Lizz Wright.
Though Leadbelly and Odetta are long gone, modern inheritors of the country blues label still roam the folk circuit, their audience and their self-designation as folk artists identifying them as a legitimate, staple component of the modern folkworld. But though they share the stage with singer-songwriters and traditionalists of other types and stripes, their distinct sound clearly defines them as something unique and worthy of our attention.
So here’s a sampling of coverfolk from some of our favorite living acoustic bluesmen and women to give you a sense of the subgenre. As always, if you’ve got other suggestions for me and our readership to follow, feel free to leave ‘em in the comments.
- Kelly Joe Phelps: House Carpenter (trad.)
(from Shine Eyed Mister Zen, 1999)
- Spider John Koerner & Dave Ray: Delia (orig. Bob Dylan)
(from A Nod to Bob: An Artists’ Tribute To Bob Dylan, 2001; more here)
- Keb’ Mo’: Folsom Prison Blues (orig. Johnny Cash)
(from Kindred Spirits: A Tribute to Johnny Cash, 2002; more here)
- Taj Mahal: Satisfied ‘n Tickled Too (orig. Mississippi John Hurt)
(from An Evening of Acoustic Music, 1996; more here)
- Pat Wictor: Well, Well, Well (orig. Maria Muldaur; written by Bob Dylan/Danny O’Keefe)
(from Sunset Waltz, 2008)
- Chris Whitley & Jeff Lang: Changing of the Guard (orig. Bob Dylan)
(from Dislocation Blues, 2006)
- Guy Davis: False From True (orig. Pete Seeger)
(from Where Have All The Flowers Gone: The Songs Of Pete Seeger, 1998; more here)
- Jorma Kaukonen w/ Tom Hobson: Another Man Done Gone (trad.)
(from Quah, 1974)
- Eric Bibb ft. Michael Jerome Browne: Just Look Up (trad.)
(from Friends, 2004)
- The Holmes Brothers: Trouble (orig. Cat Stevens)
(from the Crossing Jordan soundtrack, 2003; more here)
- Alvin Youngblood Hart: Things ’bout Comin’ My Way (orig. Mississippi Sheiks)
(from Big Mama’s Door, 2008)
- Geoff Muldaur & the Texas Sheiks: The World Is Going Wrong (orig. Mississippi Sheiks)
(from Texas Sheiks, 2009)
- Rory Block: Milkcow Calf’s Blues (orig. Robert Johnson)
(from The Lady and Mr. Johnson, 2006)
- Ruthie Foster: Fruits of My Labor (orig. Lucinda Williams)
(from The Phenomenal Ruthie Foster, 2007)
Cover Lay Down presents new coverfolk sets and features each Wednesday and Sunday, and the occasional otherday. Coming soon: covers from some new 2010 folk releases, and a post-New Year’s return to our regular New Artists, Old Songs feature.