Somebody Keeps Callin' Me

AMG Review of Somebody Keeps Callin' Me

Eugene Chadbourne
All Music Guide

This recording was released first on the Antilles label. It was a few years after the death of Mississippi Fred McDowell, and the new label was attempting to establish a reputation for class and sophisticated artistry. The superb black-and-white photograph of McDowell on the front cover buys lots of both; he was a great lues artist who functioned not as an eerie ghost of former glories but performed with gusto within the possibilities of what was available to him as a lues artist on the American music scene. Hands down, he was the best promoted bluesman in the history of the genre. During the height of the creative music uproar of the late '60s, Capitol records took out full-page advertisements in all the hip ock publications indicating that all one had to do was write back in order to receive a brand new, free Mississippi Fred McDowell album. The proportion of cheapskates being turned onto lues climbed mightily in this year, obviously. What they heard was McDowell playing electric guitar, with a ock rhythm section. This is also what is featured on this session, originally recorded in Jackson, MS, and "mixed" in NY by Michael Cuscuna, perhaps better known as a producer of jazz records. In fact, these tracks come from the same recording session as the Capitol giveaway, which was entitled "I Do Not Play No Rock and Roll." The title alone might have been the reason the company felt it had to give away copies, considering the dominant ock climate at that time. There is nothing that wrong with the music, since McDowell is such a great player and singer and has such a wonderful repertoire of songs. The problem is just that, in the end, he makes much better music alone with an acoustic guitar. This is not to join the ranks of folks who tossed rotten fruit at Bob Dylan for going electric at the Newport Folk Festival and so forth. It is not a case of electric versus acoustic, it is totally a musical judgment. Alone, McDowell is the master of his own universe. On his Mount Olympus, there are musical gods who are more than just effective. There is his low-end bass note work, played with and without the slide. His tone in the low end can be galvanizing. There is his pace and timing in introducing and repeating the slide guitar riffs on the high strings. There is his sense of rhythm, which is perfect. Introduce electric bass and a drum set, and it is elephants on the ballet floor. And they are not executing pirouettes. Since there was absolutely no tradition of using electric bass and a drum set in Delta blues, players such as Jerry Puckett on bass and Durin Lancaster on drums have no one to even imitate. A good eccentric drummer who forced McDowell to react would have been interesting, but here we just have someone trying to be tasteful and not get in the way, and it adds nothing to the music. Puckett is in an even more problematic situation, playing bass in a music that doesn't really need the reinforcement in the bottom end. He ends up getting in the way of McDowell's own bass concept. Puckett's own career doesn't suggest any reason to think he would have been able to add much to a session like this; he worked with more cosmopolitan lues artists such as Bobby Blue Bland, and always as a guitarist, not a bassist. Sure, most guitarists that play lues and ock probably think they could play bass with an old lues guy who sometimes stays on one chord, but that doesn't mean they can. This album is good, and still steps above the efforts of lues imitators, but fans of McDowell will inevitably want his recordings without the ock rhythm section.