1972 Blues Concert at BG Offered More Than Music

In 1972, McKinley Morganfield, aka Muddy Waters, won his first Grammy Award, for Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording for They Call Me Muddy Waters, a 1971 album of previously unreleased recordings. Later in 1972, he flew to England to record the album The London Muddy Waters Sessions. The album was a follow-up to the previous year's The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions, and Chess Records producer Norman Dayron intended the showcase to feature Chicago blues musicians playing with the younger British rock musicians.

Muddy Waters was not satisfied with the results. "These boys are top musicians, they can play with me, put the book before 'em and play it, you know," he told music writer Peter Guralnick. "But that ain't what I need to sell my people, it ain't the Muddy Waters sound. An' if you change my sound, then you gonna change the whole man." He stated, "My blues look so simple, so easy to do, but it's not. They say my blues is the hardest blues in the world to play." Waters, nevertheless, won another Grammy, again for Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording.

He also performed with his band in Bowling Green, Ohio in 1972. Below is the review of the concert published in The BG News as well as the letters to the editor that came in response to the biting commentary. It is a telling exchange that offers insight into the social climate on campus in the early 1970s.

Review: "Muddy Waters Is the Blues"

The BG News, October 11, 1972

By Richard Brase 

On Monday night, a genuine, honest-to-goodness. down-by-the-delta blues band came to campus and generated about as much excitement as your roommate doing his laundry on the weekend.

That is not to say the music was bad---it wasn't. Instead, the Bowling Green audience was not completely able to identify with the music of a downtrodden people. New Orleans blues certainly differs from lamentations over having a chemistry test the next day.

It was under these circumstances that a highly polished group of musicians known as the Muddy Waters Blues Band gave a free concert in the Grand Ballroom of the Union to an estimated crowd of 2.500 persons. 

The six-piece band broke into four jumpy numbers (about as jumpy as the blues can get) before MuddyWaters made his first appearance on stage The audience resounded with a standing ovation 

The impeccably dressed Waters, clad in maroon and white, took a seat on a stool and began to wail on his guitar. His technique was smooth and polished, which also best describes the performances of the rest of the members of the group.

The group is composed of three guitarists. Waters and two others, a bass player; a drummer, a pianist, and tremendous harmonica player, not quite rating in the same class with John Sebastian.

All were fine musicians, especially Fuzz Jones, the bass player.

Waters played five songs, including his hit, "Rolling Stone,'' before breaking for intermission. When the group returned, they maintained the same pace, a slow and grinding beat throughout the second hall of the concert.

Two things which detracted from the performance were the inadequate audio facilities, which made the words of the singers unintelligible, and the minor problem that none of the names of the songs were announced. 

But the largest problem of the evening was that the audience simply did not understand the music played by the Muddy Waters Blues Hand.

The crowd came expecting music which "moved out," but it never happened. The music reflected the lives of the people of the delta---it seemed to be music which was perfect for just allowing people to sit back and listen.

Many people walked away disappointed because they couldn't jump up and "boogie," or cheer to the words of a song which they all knew But there were also many who were content with just listening to some good musicians telling stones through music.

Deconstructing the Dockery Myth

B.B. King at Dockery Farms in the 1970s

In their “Response” (vol. 50, no. 1, Spring 2019) to T. DeWayne Moore’s article “Revisiting Ralph Lembo” (vol. 49, no. 2, Fall 2018), Edward Komara and Gayle Dean Wardlow cite my research and publications as the primary endorsement of their position that famed Mississippi blues artist Charley Patton was “discovered” and sent north to record for Paramount Records by H. C. Speir, as Wardlow has long claimed, rather than by Ralph Lembo, as suggested recently by Moore. I would like to clarify my position on this matter in the light of recent research, including Moore’s article. In the interest of full disclosure, let me state that I provided advice and information to Moore in the preparation of his article, although its conclusions are his own. I regret that this matter of who “discovered” Patton may be currently overshadowing Patton’s own greatness as an artist, but the controversy is not trivial and actually has importance beyond Charley Patton. It speaks to issues of research methodology and the “established facts” that researchers accept and perpetuate, sometimes for decades.

By way of background for readers, Charley Patton first recorded for Paramount on June 14, 1929, at the Gennett studio in Richmond, Indiana. He made two subsequent recording sessions for Paramount in its new studio in Grafton, Wisconsin, in late January/early February 1930 and August 1930, and one session for American Record Corporation’s Vocalion label in New York City on January 30-31 and February 1, 1934. At the time of his first session Patton’s home was somewhere in the Delta in the northwestern part of Mississippi. Speir was based in Jackson, Mississippi, a hundred miles or more from Patton’s home. Lembo was based in Itta Bena, Mississippi, in the Delta. Both Speir and Lembo were the owners of music/record stores in their respective locations and had already sent or brought other African American musicians to recording studios. 

Deep River [a Patton poem] by Habe Conlon

To whom it may concern-

Two September’s ago, during my first sophomore year of high school, my first assignment in my Honor’s English class was to pen out a poem. I wrote “Deep River” in approximately 4 minutes, and to this day I attribute this ease of the pen to Patton. Being only 15 at the time, I had known and heard Patton in song and had delved into his history, and I have realized how profound it really is. I am very thankful to have discovered Charley Patton and the rest of the Delta Blues denizens and the world they lived in relatively early in life. And I am very thankful for the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund and all involved in preserving the message, for research is respect indeed.

Deep River 
by Habe Conlon

               — along the palms of God’s hands, 
                   Dockery Plantation
                   (between Cleveland and Ruleville, MS)

Yesterday I found myself biding time
where billows of great aerial rain
comes down, hot stew and potatoes

I am here with sugarcane, and peas and so forth grow
shed by a beacon of lone smoke, stemming from
my pipe, a teepee sentinel worth dreaming of

The shanty rooftops, barns and even
the stills out back do little justice, on the sparks and
flames that seem to channel from the bottoms

of his feet, for a quarter you’d see and hear
him all night, it’d be dusty, the air glazed, stirred up
This man is a soldier, traveler into the blue, he flows like

a deep river, plantation desperado thinks to himself
simple thoughts, as the banty rooster only
stirs up more dust, the Delta sun quaking

Imitation train whistles echoing closer and
closer does this quaking not cease, with a
tighter grasp on moving on, and with that

our vagabond with guitar in hand weaves
a patchwork dream in hand, and into the night
he’s vanished, masked marvel out with the lantern flame

Some say he’s headed to the North, to play in the fiery bands
He’ll shake it and brake it in the palm of God’s hands.

Johnnie Billington: He taught the character of the Blues

Photo by Lou Bopp

By T.J. Wheeler

I was musing today about my old friend and Blues in the school com-patriot Mr. Johnnie Billington. Thinking over what a divine soul and teacher he was, as well as remembering all the good times we had conducting BITS (Blues in the School) programs together down in Jackson Mississippi, I decided to feature him for this month’s TBA Musing the Blues column.

Figuring I should include some basic bio info for the article, I did a quick Google search of his name. I scrolled down a litany of sites that immediately popped up from various Blues Societies he had dome BITS and concerts for, interviews, and old video links of such performances. Instead of a bio though, I was hit suddenly with a short and simple obituary. Unbeknown to me, he had died last year; April1, 2013 at the age of 77. The OB stated that he had died due to “complications from a heart attack” at a hospital in Clarksdale MS. They did mention that he called the music of his ancestors his passion and his calling. Today I’ll write this short musing about him, and then have a libation in his honor, making sure I pour some of it to the ground for him and those very ancestors that gave us all this music we call the Blues.