An Open Letter From a Blues Fan [Bob Koester] 

By Robb Baker - Jan 19, 1969

Our recent series on the rock-blues scene brought a most welcome letter, part plea, part protest, from a Chicagoan with a knowledge of this city’s blues so extensive that we wish ours was one-tenth as great.  

Bob Koester runs one of the town's few record stores with real character, The Jazz Record Mart at 7 West Grand Ave, and has his own recording company for local blues artists, Delmark Records, at the same address.

He writes about blues with the same nonstop excitement with which he speaks of them. Here, unedited except for one word not for family newspaper consumption, is what he said:

The blues scene in Chicago is as it has always been, enormous--far more important (I am truly sorry to say) than the jazz scene here, and certainly relevant to the rock scene and to the readers of your column. It is silly that southern city like New Orleans finally recognizes its culture !To the extent of city-wide support of a jazz club, a jazz museum and annual jazz festivals, while Daleytown refuses to pay the slightest homage to the roles of black bluesmen in the current rock-pop-blues revolution.

Face it rock is all-too-often just whitey's imitation of blues Chicago style. (Maybe I should make that plural—there is quite a range of styles in the Chicago school). The Grateful Dead’s version of GOOD MORNING LITTLE SCHOOLGIRL is a blatant imitation of Jr. Wells' recording of several years earlier (Closer than Jr. would be if he were to re-record it [and not bad for the in all likelihood inebriated Pigpen]); another two tracks from the same album ("Hoodoo Man Blues," Delmark DS-9612, which has never seen so much as one slug of type in the Chicago press) were lifted bodily and spliced together for THE DIRTY BLUES BAND'S first album track, "Hound Dog."

As no rock band (To my knowledge—I don't follow the imitation-blues scene that much) has imitated our recent MAGIC SAM release, I will stop short of giving Leonard Chess’ product free advertising, though I could go on.

It (blues) would seem to be an important part of the rock scene if so much…imitation can be passed off as serious art worthy or "criticism"—so why not lift the bushel and see the light.  Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, and a very few other young Chicagoans did put in their sit-in time on the band stand of the generous black artists, picked up a few licks, organized bands that come fairly close to the original thing and were accepted by the young whiteys (who were culturally deprived by racism and segregation and thus unable to hear the originals); a few of the kids even became members of blues bands (Otis Rush has had a white guitarist—2 different guys—for 3 years now; Memphis Charlie Musselwhite played regularly with Johnny Young before he got tired of being hassled by fuzz and split for S.F. where he is a minor folk hero.)—but the sanctioning of this music by a whole generation of whiteys in imitation (occasionally the sincerest form of flattery but more often than not just a good way to make a buck, pick up some ego, make an identity with the folk "Negro" that helps one’s self-respect perhaps, etc. etc. etc.) has raised the originators from obscurity to legend to an occasional factor in name-dropping on litter notes to help sell the pale imitations.

For God's sake, for art's sake, for journalism's sake, Robb, you know where it's really happening!  Tell the people.  I appreciate the many kind references to my shop, myself and my label. But blues in Chicago depend on the Big Walters and the Magic Sams and the Carey Bells, not on Mike Bloomfield, who wonderful guy that he is, is in a blind alley musically. No black man is going to change his idea of guitar-playing because of a Mike Bloomfield record, and most of the young Whiteys are too interested in the buck to go thru the changes Mike, Paul, and damnfew others did to pick up what must be learned.

If black artists must wait as long as Bird (Charley Parker), (Fletcher) Henderson, Louis (Armstrong)—or Fats Waller) — to achieve recognition (or maybe some bread), they must die first in too pathetically many cases. Here at the Jazz Record Mart we sell the hell out of Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Elmore James (all discovered by whitey immediately after their death as if the press releases had been prepared in advance).

The whiteys [and, culturally, I must include Taj Mahal and quite a few others—haven’t decided about Hendrix because he bores me] make the loot and the black man creates the music.

That's barely a fourth of Koester's letter. Most of it takes issue with our article entitled "Urban Blues: No Longer Easy to Find in Chicago" ("if the blues are hard to find in Chicago it is only because someone thinks of Chicago as meaning ‘white Chicago ghettoes’ and not of Chicago as a very large city with many different ghettoes for many different people of many different cultures"), and for proof gives an extensive list of clubs on the south and west sides, followed by three lists of local bluesmen, headed "Usually on the Road," "Legendary Outside Chicago but Generally Staying at Home," and "Up and Coming."

Last, Koester issued an invitation to visit those clubs with him some Saturday night. It looks like it will take a lot more Saturdays than one. Happily.

Elizabeth Cotten

Noted folk singer Elizabeth Cotton

Still Going Strong at age 92

By Jim Reilly - 1985

When Elizabeth Cotton was a little girl growing up outside Chapel Hill, N.C., she used to dream about playing a guitar and having crowds of people join her in song.

She has lived that dream many times.

Best known as the songwriter of "Freight Train," "Shake Sugaree," "Oh Babe It Ain't No Lie," and other classic country blues, she played at clubs and festivals from New York to Hawaii. She was an active performer well into her 90s, often appearing with her singer/songwriter granddaughter, Johnine Rankin.

Cotton's wit and storytelling skills remained sharp, though her hearing had faded and her voice had grown a bit thin.

In concert, she complained she “can't play like [she] used to," and she warmed up with an old blues guitar progression. Between songs, she pulled the long fingers of one hand through the other, complaining of the cold. But she projected a warmth that drew little children to her and compeled an audience of strangers to sing aloud the songs she taught them.

"0l' Georgia bug, ol' Georgia bug, ol' Georgia bug said so," Cotton sang, watching the crowd. "Sing, son," she prodded as a little boy joined in.

She sang "Freight Train" with a little wide-eyed, red-haired girl she called up out of the audience, then "I'm on My Way to the Promised Land," "Do Lord Remember Me," and "Tell It on the Mountain High."

She ignored the repeated requests for "Shake Sugaree."

In her later years, she left the blues to granddaughter, who sang her own songs, her grandmother's songs, and traditional folk and gospel songs in a rich, ringing voice.

"I don't sing the blues no more unless I have to," Cotton said in her later years. "When I joined a church in Chapel Hill, the deacon said I couldn't play those worldly songs and be a member of the Baptist Church ... so now I play church songs, and it's done me a world of good."

By her own account, Cotton had it hard much of her life. As the youngest child in a family of five, she worked as a domestic for 75 cents a month. She bought her first guitar for $3.75 at age 9, and wrote "Freight Train" two years later. Her parents, two of her brothers, and her sister died when she was young.

She learned to play the guitar by picking out a tune on one string and then adding to the skill. She played left-handed, but with the guitar strung for a right-handed player, so in effect she played upside down. Her rhythmic "Cotton picking" guitar style influenced many other blues and acoustic guitar players. She learned to play the banjo by listening to her older brother and sneaking practice time on his banjo when he was at work.

"He didn't have to show me nothin' 'cause I heard it day and night,” she admitted. "I was always breakin' the strings. I'd play it till the string said pwang, then I'd hang it hack up on the nail and hide under the bed."

Morristown Daily Record, June 30, 1987

After a move to Washington, she went to work for the musical Seeger family. She had been working in a department store when she met Ruth Crawford Seeger, and left to help with housework and care for the young Pete and brother Mike (both became well-known folk singers). She also helped raise her own five grandchildren.

It was with the Seegers in the early 1960s that Cotton picked up her guitar and began performing again, eventually joining the Seegers in concert.

Early in 1984, Cotton, who moved to Syracuse, was named National Heritage Fellow along with 16 other traditional folk artists. 

She claimed that her favorite song was "On My Way to the Promised Land," an old spiritual, “cause I'm on my way.” She ended her concerts with “God Be' With You Till We Meet Again.”

Her body was cremated after she passed in 1987.

Johnny Shines: Blues Singer Shines Helped Lay Rock Foundation

Blues Singer Shines Helped Lay Rock Foundation

By Phillip Rawls for the Montgomery Advertiser 1976

TUSCALOOSA, AL — Johnny Shines will tell you, "If you didn't have the blues yesterday, look out for them tomorrow, if you don't have them now because they're as certain as death."

Shines is a 61-year-old delta blues singer and guitarist who lives in Holt, a working class suburb of Tuscaloosa. Like many blues musicians, Shines laid the foundation for modern soul and rock music, but he has never received any recognition.

The delta blues, according to Shines, are the gut bucket blues, as opposed to the Chicago blues, which are more brassy.

Shines was born five miles outside of Memphis in Frazier, Tenn., and learned to play blues guitar by hanging around with famous Beale Street musicians like Robert Johnson and Howlin' Wolf.

Thirty years later, rock guitarist Johnny Winter learned how to play the blues by hanging out with Shines and his friends. Just as Shines once did, Winter "would play a lick like we played it, and then he would change it to suit his style."

Although the blues guitar was learned, blues singing came natural for Shines. The blues "is what we did in the church and what people sang in the fields at the end of the day, but it wasn't called the blues then," explained Shines.

When Shines was a young man, black audiences turned against the ' blues because "they were taught that it represented everything that was bad.

"The blues is not as bad as it is said to be. It's not sinful to sing the blues," said Shines, who had to give up playing from 1957 to 1964 because there was no audience.

In 1964, white audiences flocked to the blues when Cream, an English group with Eric Clapton, hit the charts with an old Johnson song called "Crossroads."

"If it wasn't for whites, there wouldn't be an audience for the blues today," Shines notes.

When asked what's the best song he ever wrote, Shines lets loose with one of his barrel chested laughs and says "I Don't Know," a song he wrote in 1966.

Like all of Shines' songs, "I Don't Know" tells a story.  The song tells of a country boy who leaves his sweet-heart at home and goes to Chicago. Once in Chicago, he begins to miss the girl and sends for her. But when she gets to Chicago, she finds her old boyfriend has been changed by the city lights, and she falls in love with another man.

When asked if the story is true, Shines answers in a whisper, "Yeah."

Like the blues lyric that says, "If it wasn't for bad luck. I wouldn't have no luck at all," Shines had plenty of down and out times before moving to Tuscaloosa in 1969.

Several times he made records but "never got any-thing but union fees and a piece of paper that was no good.  Not until the 1970's did Shines ever see any record royalties.

While he and his wife Hat-tie were living in a kitchenette apartment in Chicago, their daughter died, leaving them seven school age grandchildren to take care of.

Shines decided that Chicago was no place to raise the children, so the family moved to his wife's home town, Tuscaloosa.

Shines is getting old and he knows his musician days are numbered. "I know I don't play as well as I used to, and I don't have the range I once did. But. friends tell me I sound just like I always did," he said.

The Anniston Star, Apr 20, 1992.

The only recognition Shines will probably ever get will be a small obituary in "Rolling Stone" magazine, but that doesn't worry him. Passing on his music is more important.

Through federal and state grants to the Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project, Shines is able to perform in schools, prisons and hospitals.

Elementary school children make a great audience, according to the blues musician. "You will think they're not paying any attention to what you're doing, and then you will see them copying what you're doing. You know you’re getting through,” he said.

Thursday afternoon, the mailman brought Shines a not letter saying that the Alabama State Council on Arts and Humanities is awarding Shines and friends $1,000 to keep playing in schools. "I've got the happy blues today,” he laughed.

The Montgomery Advertiser, Mar 28, 1976.

PANTHER BURN

Sharkey County, Mississippi

In the book It Came from Memphis, Robert Gordon forwards one explanation behind the band name for Tav Falco and the Panther Burns: 

• “The band’s name reflected the lore surrounding Panther Burn, Mississippi. This town was menaced by an elusive wild beast that, when finally cornered, was set aflame. Its dying shrieks so horrified the citizens that they named the community for it. The moniker was appropriate for” Tav Falco’s assembly of musicians, The Panther Burns.

It's not clear at all where this supposed lore came from--perhaps the mind of Falco himself, or Gordon's own exaggeration--but the town of Panther Burn has plenty of actual historical information related to the naming of the town. Here is one news item from the Vickburg Herald in 1860 that explains how the town got its name.

Population in 1987: About 100 families

Industry: Panther Burn Co., a plantation with about 6,500 acres of farmland growing cotton, soybeans, rice and wheat. The plantation employs 60 to 150 people, depending on the season. 

Settled: 1832 Government: The area is not incorporated so there is no local governing board. The area is under the jurisdiction of the Sharkey County Board of Supervisors.

Of Note: The last reported panther sighting near here was about five years ago by farmers. 

(Jackson, MS) Clarion Ledger, Nov 1, 1987.