The Blues of Robert Johnson

This CD is so good, so raw and real, and so much in the spirit of Robert Johnson that Eric Clapton should be ashamed for thinking he could do better. You can practically taste the dust being kicked up while Johnson (er. .. Hammond) stands at the Crossroads waiting for an appointment to sell his soul to the Big Red Guy. It's not derivative. It's a heartfelt and down to the bone interpretation.

The leader, however, is at his best on the acoustic pieces. He takes 32-20 blues at a languid, strutting half-time, adding drama and dread. On "Stones in my Passway" Hammond effects a Skip James falsetto that will make you start the piece over just to make sure who is singing. His voice is no mere caricature of a Caucasian performing in an African-American idiom. Hammond comes off as the authentic article, displaying the true ubiquity of the blues.

If Robert Johnson could look down from heaven or up from hell, he'd likely find it very interesting that John Hammond Jr. had covered his songs. Here is a white guy, after all, who sounds like a black blues singer and chooses -- of his own free will -- to frequently return to the repertoire of an obscure black guitarist/singer from the 1930s.

At the Crossroads collects this musical meeting of the minds -- or souls -- by gathering 14 of Hammond's Johnson covers, recorded between 1965 and 1978. Like Johnson, Hammond relies mostly on solo acoustic guitar. In this way, it's easy to certify his versions of "Come on in My Kitchen" and "32-20 Blues" as the real deal, or, as a folk enthusiast would say, "authentic." At the same time, renditions of "Milkcow's Calf Blues" and "Stones in My Passway" are less raw and penetrating than Johnson's, and one could easily say that Hammond's real gift is that of a popularizer of rural acoustic blues. The last four cuts include full-band takes of "Sweet Home Chicago," "When You Got a Good Friend," "Judgment Day," and "Rambling Blues." While these cuts surely won't pass the purity test, they're nonetheless lots of fun. At the Crossroads is a cross-cultural, racial, and generational document, and offers a good one-stop look at one artist's nod toward another.

John Hammond (vocals, guitar, harmonica); Billy Butler, James Spruill (electric guitar); Robbie Robertson (guitar); Charlie Musselwhite (harmonica); Mike Bloomfield (piano); Garth Hudson (Hammond B-3 organ); Jimmy Lewis (electric bass); Bobby Donaldson, Levon Helm (drums); The Nighthawks.

http://lix.in/71217b2d

Fill your ears

Posted by Joski at 11:17 AM |  
Labels: John Hammond