Smithsonian Folkways is one of the more time-spanning record labels going today. While they reissue and unearth archival recordings from blues, folk, gospel, classical, and world music artists—many long gone from this Earth—they also actively put out albums from contemporary performers in those genres and many more.
One of their better-selling releases was 2003’s Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings CD. Its 26 tracks were mostly recorded in the ‘40s and ‘50s. And with interest in older blues music resurging thanks somewhat in part to the movie Sinners, the label is re-releasing it, but now on double vinyl for the first time.
Blues scholar (and sometime guitarist) Dr. Barry Lee Pearson of the University of Maryland English Department wrote the liner notes along with biographical blurbs for each artist. The tracks come from a variety of sources: studio records, field tapings, live performances, and radio programs.
And except for a few songs that have low-key hisses and pops, the sound quality on this new pressing is much improved. Especially for songs recorded in (by today’s standards) primitive settings and media.
“There’s been some discussion about the quality, and it did surprise me. Though the audiophiles may have a greater sense of that,” Dr. Pearson says. “And there’s a few more record players out there today! Who thought that would have made a return? When DAT recordings were a new thing, they did an April Fool’s story about people going back to vinyl!”
Dr. Person gives credit to Pete Reiniger (who mastered the original 2003 release) and Mike Monseur at Axis Audio who handled this vinyl project for the sound quality.
Artists on the tracks here include familiar names like Houston’s own Lightnin’ Hopkins (“Come Go Home with Me”), Rev. Gary Davis (“Candy Man”), Big Bill Broonzy (“Mule-Ridin’ Blue”), and Son House (“Country Farm Blues”). Deeper fans will know Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (“Old Jabo”), Big Joe Williams (“Don’t Leave Me Here”), Champion Jack Dupree (“Clog Dance [Stomping Blues]”), Lonnie Johnson (“Drifting Along Blues”), and Elizabeth Cotten (“Vastapol”).
Deep, deep crate diggers might notice Cat Iron (“Jimmy Bell”), Vera Hall (“Black Woman”), K.C. Douglas (“Mercury Blues”), or Etta Baker (“One Dime Blues”).
There’s also the charming “Boll Weevil” from Pink Anderson. Perhaps known to classic rock fans as one half—along with fellow bluesman Floyd Council—as the inspiration for a certain band name taken by four English lads who went to the Dark Side of the Moon.
And Lead Belly, who namechecks Houston in his most famous song “The Midnight Special,” has one solo credit here (“Leaving Blues”) and one with Josh White (“Don’t Lie Buddy”). White, a favorite of the early ‘60s New York Greenwich Village folk scene, also chimes in with “Careless Love.”
One point that Dr. Pearson also makes in the notes is that many of these songs have a political force, even when the song’s lyrics itself might not be specifically addressing a political matter.
“I’ve been teaching about blues for so long, and I’ll give you two answers on that. One about blues as a state of mind, even a sickness of sorts about mistreatments. And then the other side is that musicians who focus on what they do with blues as a healing force,” he says. “As a ritual of purification followed by a ritual of fertility, one might say!”
Blues, he says, is about two things: the sickness, and the cure. And part of that understanding is based on the more than 250 individual interviews he’s done with blues musicians over the years.
“A lot of people don’t know how a blues musician works, compared to other musics. People think that blues musicians are singing about themselves, and it is true sometimes,” he says. “But when you use first person, a persona, it gives you a lot of room to put in feeling. It may not be something that happened to you, but it happened to somebody. And you have to understand that cultural nuance.”
That’s not to say it’s all tragedy. About half of the songs on Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings have humor on them. Whether it’s the rider and the animals he encounters on “Mule Ridin’ Blues,” the poor soul who loses all his money to a “Beer Drinking Woman,” or the farmer whose crops are threatened by cute-but-deadly “Boll Weevil Blues.”
“First time I seen him, he’s on a cotton square/And next time I saw him, moved his whole family there!”
Finally, there’s an additional Houston connection with Lightnin’ Hopkins’ “Come Go Home with Me.” It was recorded in 1959 right at the singer/guitarist’s home on 2303 Hadley Street. Blues historian/advocate Samuel Charters set up the microphone.
“Not in this song, but often Lightnin’ is a perfect example of where he tells you about something that’s funny,” Dr. Pearson offers. “In ‘Short Haired Woman’ he talks about a woman who sits down on a bus, falls off her seat, and her wig falls off. And he’s laughing about it. And he can sound funny when he’s [put upon]. He’s always talking about ‘Poor Lightnin’!”
