The Oxford American Book of Great Music Writing

Leadbelly: ANOTHER WORLD

Blues 1SMIRNOFF_pages.qxd 8/27/08 10:43 AM Page 1 1SMIRNOFF_pages.qxd 8/27/08 10:43 AM Page 2 Falling Into Place A MUSIC WRITER LOOKS BACK by Peter Guralnick IcouldactasifIdon’treallyknowhowithappened,butitwouldn’tbetrue.Iknow exactlyhowIgottothisplace,whetherforgoodorill,andIcan’tpretendotherwise. Iwantedtobeawriter.Notarockwriter—therewasnosuchthing.Iwanted to write novels and stories. And so I did—and occasionally still do. When I was fifteen, I first read The Paris Review interview with Ernest Hemingway in which he spoke of his working methods, and I took note of the fact that he set himself a quota of at least so many words a day. With as much self-doubt as temerity, I did thesame,committingmyselftotheideathatshouldinspirationeverdeigntovisit, Iwasnotgoingtobeabsentfrommypost.AndsoIbeganadailyvigilthathaspersisted more or less over the last forty years. WhenIwasaroundfifteen,too,Ifellinlovewiththeblues:Lightnin’Hopkins andBigBillBroonzy,LeadbellyandMuddyWaters,Howlin’WolfandBlindWillie McTell.Ilivedit,breathedit,absorbeditbyosmosis,fantasizedit—don’taskme why.ItwaslikethewritingofItaloSvevoorHenryGreen:Itjustturnedmearound in a way that I am no more inclined to quantify or explain today than I was then. ButIneverdreamtofwritingaboutit.Therewasnowheretowriteaboutitin.And besides, I’m not sure I could have imagined a way to truly evoke just what I was feeling at the time. Experience, don’t analyze, my inner voice whispered. Though that didn’t stop my friend Bob Smith and me from scrutinizing liner notes, poringovertheonebookweknewtoexistonthesubject (SamCharters’sTheCountry Blues),andtalkingabouttheblues—allthetime.Itwasalmostasifbythetimewe sawourfirstbluesman,Lightnin’Hopkins,liveandinpersoninthespringof1961, 3 1SMIRNOFF_pages.qxd 8/27/08 10:43 AM Page 3 we had created a virtual world that ignored the complexities of the real one. All ofasuddenwewereforcedtoadjusttotheideathattherewereactualpeoplewho made the music, subject to neither our preconceptions nor fantasies and, of course, far more interesting than either. I won’t bore you with all the mundane details of my awakening to that music and thatworld.Everyonehasasimilarstory.SufficeittosaythatIalmostliterallyheld mybreatheverytimeIwenttoseeanyoneofthegreatbluesmeninthosedays,for fearthatallofthisbeauty,allofthiswit,allofthisgloriouslyundifferentiatedrealitymightsomehowdisappearassuddenlyasithadfirstmanifesteditselfinmylife . I was perfectly happy as a mere acolyte, expanding my world to the soul and gospelshowsthatcamethroughtown,whenaseriesofrelatedeventsconspiredto rob me of my innocence. First I stumbled upon the English blues magazinesBlues Unlimited and Blues World in 1964 and 1965. I started writing to the editors of both and, inspired by the recognition that there were others out there like me, began to filereportsonshowsIattended.Itwasthissenseofalargercommunity,ashungry asIforinsightsandinformation,thatledmetoapproachthegreatMississippibluesman Skip James in the summer of 1965. There could have been no more unlikely interviewer than I, and certainly no one burdened with a greater degree of selfconsciousness ,butIhadwitnessedSkip’sastonishingperformanceatNewportthe previous summer, just after his rediscovery in a Tunica, Mississippi, hospital and his even more astonishing reclamation of the weird, almost unearthly sound that characterizedhisremote1931recordings.SoIpresentedmyselfasbestIcould,asked questions at whose obviousness I winced even as they were being greeted with a kind of courtly gravity by the person to whom they were addressed, and persisted inthisexerciseinself-abasementbecause,Itoldmyself,greatnesssuchasthiswould notpassmywayagain. That was my entire motivation. I wanted to tell the world something of the inimitable nature of Skip James’s music, I wanted to proclaim Muddy Waters’s andBoDiddley’sgenius,Iwantedtofindsomewaytodescribethetranscendent dramaoftherhythm-and-bluesrevuesthatIhadwitnessed,featuringbreathtakingperformancesbysuchvirtuosicentertainersasSolomonBurke ,OtisRedding, JoeTex,andJackieWilson—frequentlyonthesamebill.Whenin1966anundergroundmusicpressbegantoemerge ,firstwiththeappearanceofCrawdaddy!The MagazineofRock’n’Roll,PaulWilliams’sutopianembraceoftherevolution,then, in the same year, with the arrival of Boston After Dark, “Boston’s Only Complete EntertainmentWeekly,”andfinally,in1967,withRollingStone,mycoursewasset. Ineachcasesomeoneatthepaperknewofmylovefortheblues(andwhowithin thesoundofmyvoicecouldfailtobeawareofit?)andaskedifIwouldliketowrite about the music. I never saw it as a life decision (I had no intention of abandoningmynovelsandshortstories ),butIneverhesitated,either.HowcouldIrefuse 4 THE OXFORD AMERICAN 1SMIRNOFF_pages.qxd 8/27/08 10:43 AM Page 4 the opportunity to tell people about this music that I thought was so great? How couldIturndownthechancesimplytoputsomeofthosenamesdownonpaper? Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, James Brown, Solomon Burke, Robert Pete Williams, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and Buddy Guy—these were among the first stories I wrote, some of them no longer than one hundred and fifty to two hundred words. They were intended to sell—not a product but an unarticulated belief, a belief in the intrinsic worth of American vernacular culture. Even writing these names down today evokes some of the samesecretthrill,butitcouldneverfullysuggestthetenorofatimewhenmerely to name was to validate, when so much of this music was not simply ignored but reviledinthemainstreampress.Tobeabletowriteinmyperfectlyserious,ifnot altogetherunself-consciousway,ofJamesBrown’s“brilliantsenseoftheatrics,” his “genius for showmanship,” and the “passionate conviction” with which he transformedhisshowintosomethinglikeareligiousritual,toproclaimSolomon Burke an artist “whose every song seems to [possess] the underlying conviction that somehow or other by his investment of emotion he might alter the world’s course,” to describe Muddy Waters as the creator of a seminal style whose songs wereourcontemporaryclassics,tospeakofthe“existentialacts...