Rory Block – A Woman’s Soul: A Tribute to Bessie Smith

RORY BLOCK

A Woman’s Soul: A Tribute to Bessie Smith

Stony Plain Records

roryblock.com

In 2006, after more than three decades as one of the finest contemporary interpreters of traditional country blues, and as an accomplished songwriter in the country blues tradition, Rory Block released an album called The Lady and Mr. Johnson, a magnificent tribute to Robert Johnson, the Delta blues singer, songwriter and guitarist who made a series of what would eventually become highly influential recordings in 1936 and 1937 before his death at age 27 in 1938. Rory followed that album with a series of equally fine tributes to her mentors – blues legends she met and was influenced by while growing up in Greenwich Village – including Son House, Skip James, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White and Reverend Gary Davis.

Now, with A Woman’s Soul: A Tribute to Bessie Smith, Rory begins a new series of tributes to legendary women blues singers. Bessie Smith (1894-1937) was a logical artist with whom to begin this series. The 160 recordings Smith made between 1923 and 1933 remain among the most influential of the classic blues era and earned her the title of “The Empress of the Blues.”

While Smith recorded with pianists and other jazz musicians – including Louis Armstrong – Rory has arranged these songs in her own country blues style for vocals and guitar, sometimes overdubbing more guitar parts, bass, homemade percussion and harmony vocals herself. So, while these 10 songs are familiar from Smith’s versions, Rory makes them her own – with her powerful guitar playing and soulful singing.

Among my favorites here are “Jazzbo Brown from Memphis Town,” a song that pays tribute to a turn-of-the-20th-century musician from before the recording era; “Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer,” which evokes a Harlem speakeasy during Prohibition; and a very sexy version of “Empty Bed Blues.”

I’m looking forward to more volumes in Rory’s tribute series to legendary blues women with great anticipation.

The photo of Bessie Smith, taken in 1936, is from the Carl Van Vechten Photographs collection at the Library of Congress.

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--Mike Regenstreif

Rory Block – Keepin’ Outta Trouble: A Tribute to Bukka White

RORY BLOCK

Keepin’ Outta Trouble: A Tribute to Bukka White

Stony Plain Records

roryblock.com

In 1974, when I was 20-years-old, I was a stage manager (area co-ordinator) at the Mariposa Folk Festival and one of the artists I got to work with that year at Mariposa was Booker “Bukka” White, a 68-year-old legend of the Delta blues. I wasn’t yet familiar with White’s recordings, but I knew some of his songs via recordings by Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk and Tom Rush. What I remember most, more than 40 years later, was White’s imposing presence sitting on stage with his steel-bodied National guitar, and the authority and power in his singing and slide playing. That June weekend in Toronto was the only time I got to see him play live. He died less than three years later.

Rory Block, who grew up in the folk music community in Greenwich Village, met White there in 1965, when she was about 15. “Watching him perform was transformative. Bukka had absolutely no mercy on the guitar and slammed it like Paul Bunyan wielding an axe,” she writes in the notes to Keepin’ Outta Trouble: A Tribute to Bukka White, the latest in her series of tribute albums to legendary blues artists she had the opportunity to know and learn from as a kid. Earlier releases in the series include tributes to Son House, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James.

While Rory has often included a song or two she wrote about those artists on these Mentor Series tribute albums, along with her versions of their classic songs, she brings many more of her own songs to this project than ever before. Of the 10 tracks, half are Bukka White classics and half are Rory’s original songs inspired, in some way by him.

She opens the album with a pair of original tracks. In “Keepin’ Outta Trouble,” she gives us a couple of scenes from (or imagined from) White’s life: a fight in a Mississippi barroom that gets him in trouble and a prison term at Parchman Farm that ends when he impresses the governor with his music. Then, in the gospel-influenced “Bukka’s Day,” we hear about his hard life of work growing up, the influence of the church, his becoming a musician and again, of that fight that put him in prison. Ultimately, it’s a piece of blues philosophy about the saint and the sinner in all of us.

Rory’s songs later in the album include “Spooky Rhythm,” in which she pictures White as an itinerant musician, “Gonna Be Some Walkin’ Done,” which was inspired by White’s guitar part to his song “Jitterbug Swing,” and by an off-hand comment he made on a record, and “Back to Memphis,” a tribute to the music White played in Memphis so many decades ago.

Booker "Bukka" White

Bukka White’s songs – covered with equal doses of respect for his original versions and Rory’s own creativity – include “Aberdeen Mississippi Blues,” “Parchman Farm,” and the often-covered “Fixin’ to Die Blues.”

My favorites of White’s songs in the set are the train songs, “New Frisco Train” and “Panama Limited,” a description of a train trip with the slide guitar duplicating the various sounds of the train as it makes it journey through the south.

Rory is the only musician and singer on the album but she sometimes fills out the sound by overdubbing more guitar parts, harmony vocals and creatively improvised percussion effects.

Like she had with the other albums in her Mentor Series tribute, Rory inspired me to pull Bukka White’s own recording off the shelf and listen again to that powerful musician I encountered at Mariposa so many years ago.

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--Mike Regenstreif

Rory Block – Avalon: A Tribute to Mississippi John Hurt

RORY BLOCK
Avalon: A Tribute to Mississippi John Hurt
Stony Plain 
roryblock.com

Of all the older musicians rediscovered in the 1960s after decades of obscurity, Mississippi John Hurt (1892-1966) was my favorite. He made his first records in 1928 and then faded into obscurity. In 1963, Tom Hoskins, a folk music collector tracked him down in Avalon, Mississippi by picking up on the references to “Avalon, my home town” in one of the songs he’d recorded back in ’28. For next three years, John played folk clubs, concerts and festivals and made a bunch of great records before passing away.

He was, perhaps, the gentlest and sweetest sounding of his generation of bluesmen and songsters, but that was in contrast to some of the violence and sexuality at the heart of many of his songs.

I was a little too young to have known John or see perform live but I started collecting his records as a high school student in the late-‘60s and I’ve continued to revisit them regularly.

Rory Block, who’s about four years older than me and grew up right in the Greenwich Village folk music community, was lucky enough to have met John as a young teenager – he was one of several of the older blues masters that she was lucky enough to meet and learn directly from as a kid. Now, she pays homage to him with Avalon: A Tribute to Mississippi John Hurt, the fourth CD in what she refers to as her Mentor Series – tribute albums to seminal artists she encountered back in the day. It follows earlier tributes to Son House, Mississippi Fred McDowell and Reverend Gary Davis.

Rory begins the album with “Everybody Loves John,” a tribute song she wrote for the album – a worthy addition to the list of great Hurt tributes like Tom Paxton’s “Did You Hear John Hurt?” and Happy Traum’s “Mississippi John” – and then continues with fine versions of 10 more songs either written by John or traditional songs from his repertoire.

Among the best tracks are the bawdy “Richland Woman Blues” and “Spike Driver Blues,” John’s take on the John Henry legend. It was hearing Dave Van Ronk do “Spike Driver Blues” and Maria Muldaur’s sexy version of “Richland Woman Blues” with the Jim Kweskin Jug Band that first led 15-year-old me to seek out Mississippi John Hurt LPs.

Other highlights include murder ballads like “Frankie & Albert,” “Louis Collins” – which Philadelphia Jerry Ricks once told me was John’s own favorite of all his songs – and “Stagolee,” as well as a great version of “Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor.”

Rory is the only musician and singer on the album. While she does overdub occasional back-up parts like the harmony vocals on “Pay Day,” most of the album sounds like it was recorded off the floor.

A superb album from Rory and a fitting tribute to the great Mississippi John Hurt.

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--Mike Regenstreif