Living Country Blues Part 4

Preface from CD liner notes:

Since the blues was first introduced overseas through appearances by guitarist Big Bill Broonzy in 1951, European interest in this music has never waned. Broonzy was marketed as the last surviving bluesman, but before long, others followed in his footsteps, most notilbly Muddy Waters. His 1958 trip to Europe changed the perception of an old itinerant bluesman playing an acoustic guitar - Muddy's blues was electric and loud. In 1962, Horst Lippmann launched the touring American Folk Blues festival, opening the floodgates for blues legendssuch as T·Bone Walker, Sonny Boy Williamson (II), Willie Dixon and John lee Hooker who performed their

music to enthusiastic European crowds. While many artists like Big Joe Williams, Champion Jack Dupree and Memphis Slim were having lean times in the U.S., they could cross the Atlantic and earn a decent paycheck. For the first time, American Blues artists were recorded in Europe by European labels. Companies like Flyright in England, Albatross in Italy and Swingmaster in the Netherlands were recording and releasing blues albums for the European and U.S.markets. In addition, men like Bengt Olsson of Sweden, Gianni Marcucci and Lucio

Maniscalchi of Italy and Paul Oliver of England were coming to the States during the 1960s and early 1970s to to record artists on their home ground.

But by the late 1970s and early '80s, interest in the blues at U.S. labels was at an all-time low. The death of legendary figures such as Howlin' Wolf, Freddie King, Muddy Waters and Lightnin' Hopkins, the emergence of disco, and an economy in recession proved too much for many record labels and their artists. live acts werepassed over in favor of DJs at clubs, and most major labels dropped their blues lines entirely. It was in the midst of this malaise that Axel Kustner and Ziggy Christmann pitched their idea to Horst Uppmann and, much to their surprise, were given the O.K. to make their pilgrimage.

Modeled after the historical library of Congress recording trips of Alan Lomax and the more recent excursions of Olsson, Oliver and Marcucci, they wanted to make their own field recordings. From the earliest days of recording, men like Howard Odum, John and Alan lomax and Lawrence Gellert have lugged their portable equipment throughout the backwoods of the country, recording musicians wherever they found them. These landmark recordings reveal the blues in its rawest and most indigenous form. More recently, ethnomusicologists like David Evans, Bruce Jackson, Mack McCormick and Chris Strachwitz have taken to the back roads in search of the "undiscovered" talents hidden along the way.

Although many of the artists recorded by Kustner and Christmann on their trip never made any commercial recordings, it was not due to a lack of talent but to circumstance. Many blues greats made their first recordings for field researchers: Muddy Waters, Mississippi Fred McDowell and Leadbelly, to name but a few. Herein are the first recordings by Lonnie Pitchford and the duo of John Cephas and Phil Wiggins, as well as the only issued recordings of Boyd Rivers, Cora Fluker, Sam Shields and Stonewall Mays. The majority of musicians heard here were never recorded again.

The artists that appear on these three CDs are a link to the pre-war spawning ground where the blues took form, developed and thrived. As we turn the corner into the 21st Century, there are fewer and fewer musicians alive who played with and learned from the early blues masters: men like Arzo Youngblood and Boogie Bill Webb, who were taught by the legendary Tommy Johnson; CeDell Davis, who played with slide master Robert Nighthawk; Othar Turner and Napoleon Strickland, who learned from northeast Mississippi's multi-instrumentalist Sid Hemphill; and Sam Chatmon and Hammie Nixon, who were pre-war recording stars in their own right. In the 20 years since these recordings were made, most of these musicians have died. Soon there won't be anyone who remembers Blind Boy Fuller, Bo Carter or Sleepy John Estes.

The Living Country Blues series represents one of the last great Blues field recording trips. The music captured here is the real thing, as close to the blues of the fish fries and back country juke joints as most modern blues fans will ever get. This is what it sounds like in Mississippi on a hot, dark Saturday night, four miles out from Panther Burn, Alligator or Toomsuba. Sit back and enjoy this piece of history.

STONEWALL MAYS

Jazz Boogie Woogie

Very little is known about guitarist Stonewall Mays. As Axel remembers, "I first met him in 1978 in Coldwater,Mississippi. He had been playing since the 1920s. He first started with Blind Lemon Jefferson stuff and his style evolved from there. He spent most of his life as a construction worker but always played music... He was instrumental in teaching another bluesman from Coldwater - R.L Burnside." Ethnomusicologist David Evans worked with Mays in the early 1970s and remembers his performances as being untypical of the music found around Coldwater. He credits this to the fact that Mays was on the road working construction for many years, absorbing a variety of musical styles. The Living Country Blues recordings are the only released sides by Stonewall Mays, who died in the late 1980s.