The paradox is that whilst recreating the past I can simultaneously inhabit the present. My granddaughter Maya sways to the music; rain drips off the microphone. There’s a convivial scent of wet foliage, fried onions, oil and metal at the bikers’ reunion as I launch into and find the world of Guthrie’s Dustbowl Ballads.
Woody Guthrie’s “Vigilante Man” is a song I’ve been performing since the late Sixties. My interpretation involves recreating a sense of brooding presence and desperate waiting. I have to be the vigilante and I have to be the relentless tension and those experiencing the tension. Combining my voice with the haunting layering power of slide, I can slow things down to capture the uncertain waiting. And the voice has to match the power of the instrument in order not to be diminished by it or the epic scale is lost. Compared with my version Guthrie’s is faster – jolly almost. This seems incongruous to me; I wanted to create space – stillness even – for the iconic omnipresent stalker.
If I can achieve this I can involve the audience fully. As Bob Groom said of Son House: “When he performs it is a corporeal thing, audience and singer become as one.” (36) And it isn’t laboured or done with deliberation: Louis Armstrong created atmosphere just by smiling; Mississippi John Hurt through gentleness and John Lee just sang, “Boom, boom, boom, boom”.
Guthrie’s haunting songs are simple but he deals with the big issues and they get you emotionally. “Deportees”, a song about illegal itinerant workers caught between local hostility, the vigilance of the authorities and exploitation by the employers, requires the same sense of scale as “Vigilante Man”. I need to paint a broad canvas of human need and vulnerability, and on a personal level find the line between compassion and sentimentality as John Steinbeck did in novels such as The Grapes of Wrath. When I sing songs with a humanitarian message this is my fight on behalf of oppressed people. I’m honouring their individuality in the face of systems that take it away. “You won’t be a name when you ride the great airplane/all they will call you will be deportees” – that’s why I sing a cappella at one point.
And if I’m singing the songs of John Hurt, Son House, John Estes, Blind Willie McTell, Kokomo Arnold, Blind Blake… I hope I’ve communicated well enough with their musical world to be a conduit for a modern, largely white audience. My song might only hit one person and not make any quantifiable difference to the rest. The point is that it did make a difference to that one individual and that’s the point of doing it.
Another song from the Depression era: the American folk standard “Good Morning, Mr. Railroad Man” needs to capture the American theme of riding the freight trains: an illegal and often dangerous way of life. It’s still happening. Train sounds haunt the country blues; they are the accompaniment to dramatic escapes from the law and other bad situations, or they punctuate the beginning of a new life in the more prosperous North. Blind Boy Fuller and Sonny Terry’s “Train Whistle Blues” is a good example of this soundtrack to the rural South.
What I’ve done in my arrangement of this song is emphasize the sense of the regulated world of the train timetable: “nine sixteen and two forty-four and twenty-five minutes to five” as a counterpoint to the anxious anticipation of the man smoking a cheap cigar and pulling his hat down waiting and checking, waiting and checking while he thinks about his wife who has left with another man. It’s minutely observed and this gives it humanity.
This is a good song especially with the right chord structures. I try to get the whole melody line into the chord shapes: I’m walking from chord to chord, continually moving, never on a single chord. And set against this movement is a sense of melancholy inevitability in my guitar solo. Someone like Woody Guthrie would do this song with four chords. His emphasis would be on the message getting across, not on the guitar. Dave Evans would rely on the character in his voice to get more out of the song without being a great fingerpicker. The voice would compensate. Ry Cooder does clever things with minors where they wouldn’t normally be. I just get the feel and I pour myself out.
Learning The Hard Way
Achieving the freedom of technique that enabled me to perform without concerning myself with it and lose myself in the way I have described, was a long hard road. I spent years trying to be free of my fingers before attempting to play the music to any level. For me it’s four digits and six strings and I can play any of those strings with any of those digits – it’s become a reflex. In listening to so much music from the Twenties and Thirties I discovered that the virtuosity of these country blues players often surpassed the modern musicians considered to be great. The more you listen and learn the more you get to know your place! But I wanted to play the music. I certainly wanted to play the music. So I persisted but I have never considered myself to be a good musician.
Like all the local kids I had been taught piano by Mrs. Coffin and this was to be helpful in my painstaking learning of blues guitar. Like many people I taught myself to play by listening to records and trying to duplicate the sounds, but some of those early recordings are terrible and probably nothing like the live performance. So I was copying something that was not true to the original but what could you do? Then I had to get the lyrics down and fit them to the music. It was slow work. But help was there from friends who could show you chords or from watching musicians and making notes. Aged fifteen I used to rush for the early school bus because Keith Haines would be on it and we would talk music. I’d ask him the chords to songs like “Georgia” then write them down. I took the basic chords and made a melody whilst keeping the bass line going. This was free-form finger picking.
Learning to play by listening had other unexpected limitations. Sometimes I found it impossible – let alone uncomfortable – to make the sounds I was hearing in the tuning. So when listening to Mississippi John Hurt I was often unable to get the proper key off the records because the guitar wasn’t necessarily tuned to concert pitch. Also some of the older recordings – the older technology – could be running faster than they were played, which would sharpen the key. If they were running slower than they were played this would flatten the key. John Hurt’s “Pay Day” can only be played in open D tuning. So open D was: D A D F# A D. When I’d worked out the Mississippi John Hurt stuff in D I always thought his guitar was a little high – not considering it could be a little low because he was in C tuning.
I don’t possess an amazing ear: I think I just absorb the maths of it and come out with a personalized approximation, then work like mad at the dexterity. I sorted this stuff out by myself; no-one in my circle knew about this kind of tuning in the days when I was discovering it.
I once found myself in a tricky situation brought about by the constraints of a particular occasion and my lack of formal musical training. Fortunately my trial and error approach – which had landed me in this nightmare – also saved me from it. I was involved in a rock extravaganza to demonstrate Gordon-Smith guitars. This was in Manchester in the Eighties. Three famous rock musicians were also involved, including Jeff Beck, who found fame with the Yardbirds, the fast country rock picker Jerry Donohue, well known for being in Fairport Convention – I’ve forgotten the third guy – and me playing slide guitar. There was a good resident band and the idea was to insert us to play with them and demonstrate the guitars.
I arrived late because of dense fog and the other three didn’t get there at all. People were panicking. I was pushed onstage into a situation more unknown than the fog without any time to ask anything or do anything: it was all down to me. “Oh don’t worry – there’s a guitar up there tuned for slide,” someone told me. This was the guitar I was to demonstrate. Much to my dismay it had a locking tremolo system tuned to a chord: my pet hate. The thing about the locking tremolo system is that you can’t retune it. The device is designed for heavy metal players whose guitar can easily go out of tune because of vibration: hence the locking device. The bad news is that you haven’t got enough adjustment on a tuner without unlocking the whole thing with an Allen key.
&nb
sp; The only musician to turn up in the fog, I’m standing there naked with a guitar and slide, not knowing what it’s tuned to and stuck with it anyway, my reputation as one of the best slide guitarists on the line, with the responsibility of demonstrating the guitar to advantage. No pressure then. Fortunately no time to panic! The band strikes up and I need to know the key of the guitar so I let the band play and I’m thinking and trying my notes: that works…that works…that works…We’re half way through the first verse; the audience is responding well to what I’m doing and I realize the guitar is tuned to E. I don’t know whether this playing by numbers is a recognized thing but that’s how I do it. I know when I’m in D or G tuning. If the guitar is in open G or open D I know how to get twelve bar and relative minors. I can find a relative minor: I know that’s number nine. But I don’t know notes: I only know numbers and this doesn’t usually matter because either I’m playing for myself or others are fitting in with my playing.
But not on this occasion…
Until I got home and tuned my guitar to E I didn’t realize I’d made such hard work out of something so easy. It had been in open E – basic – the first thing you learn is twelve bar in E. What I hadn’t realized till then was that the mathematics of playing in E was exactly the same as playing in D. I needn’t have struggled in the first few songs. It was easier in that tuning than in what I would have tuned myself, because I would have tuned to D or G. But the easiest way to play slide with a band is in E because it’s the easiest configuration: there’s no counting for me; I can find the notes intuitively and I don’t need to think about it.
This foggy incident gives some insight into the limitations of my self-teaching!
But although my musical education was not structured I often find evidence of how hard I worked: scraps of paper with chord diagrams, written observations and comments on techniques used by other musicians, hard-won lyrics, self-critical notes on set lists and phone numbers everywhere. When I look at the scruffy, beer-stained, sellotape-edged lists of songs I think of the people who wrote on them besides me: Whitty, Andy, Dave… There’s Plum’s writing all in upper case as if to make it louder and all spelt correctly except “DEBBLE”. Deliberate, I should think.
Dim. Repeats in 3rd.
Slide various inversions e.g. C7 shape 5.3 frets. Black Snake try odd rhythms. When runs take place think notes finish run on note corresponding to known note same with diff. fretting and string.
Down ‘n Out.
C. E. A(?). Dm A. D. F. Dim. C~A (D9).
Dm to get other tones take Sub Dom~Am. On 5th same as all other chords.
(Run through treble with 3 fingers with Rockin Bass)
Down ‘n’ Out good, lazy vocal. Second solo?
Shine bum solo 1st part guitar too strummy.
Stormy Weather [sp*d] illegible.
Loving You energy mistake 2nd verse scrappy solo.
Roll ‘em Easy reverbed guitar.
Vigilante fucked up solo.
Eug [?] voice thin.
Groundhog voice thin horrible end[word illegible]
Willin’
So Long
Louis Collins
But for all my formal musical limitations there are certain originalities and sophistications in my work. I use blues scales: the bass notes are there as well. You get to know where all the safe notes are round every chord there is. If you change keys when piano playing it’s not massively different but on a guitar it does sound quite different. A good pianist would be able to explain which keys sound right for which piece of music. Music is just maths – triads – three notes equally spaced on a piano. In the case of simple pop songs with basic simple chord structures, if you’re playing it on a piano and you play a triad you’re playing equally spaced notes (apart from sharps and flats getting in the way!) whereas on a guitar, because you’re playing 5 – 6 strings for most chords, then the change from one to another is more apparent. It’s why you can make a guitar sound so good with three chords. You can do three chord tricks. You couldn’t do that on any other instrument. “Wild Thing” on a piano would sound awful. Take each pop song back to its basics and you find the differences between them are very slender. If you know twelve bars and pentatonic scale, you’re a lead guitarist! You can play Mississippi John Hurt’s “I’m Satisfied” with just three chords if you strum it: C, F, G. I can hear any pop tune, including folk, and work it out and play it. You could play any of those songs well in three months. The guitar is the only instrument you can achieve that with – hence its popularity with young people in a hurry.
I play melodies and bass lines along with the chord at the same time. The average electric guitarist plays block chords linked up with scales. I don’t do that. It has nothing for me. In the main they use pentatonic scale and they’ll get a riff out of that. It’s quite crude: a series of single notes, a series of chords. The electric guitarist doesn’t use the orchestral potential of the guitar as I do. Playing melody lines on top of base lines whilst playing chords, the right hand is liberated: any finger can pick any string at any time. You just pick the convenient melody. Conventionally, people are taught to allocate certain fingers to certain strings. I can create the melody out of a set of chords. Des will give me the chords and I will use that to place a melody over it. It’s collaborative. The music stands up without vocals or other instruments. Everything you can play for a melody is a ‘safe’ note.
Some music does indeed demand a high level of technical flair, good timing and manual dexterity. I have a few numbers by Little Feat in my repertoire: I would describe their music as American swamp rock. It has a laid back feel: it still rocks but it’s kind of lazy. “Willin’” is a modern song I used to sing with Whitty. It’s not in strict tempo so needs sensitive timing. “Roll ‘Em Easy” – also by Little Feat – requires a sense of containment and release. It’s a love song I dedicate to every woman I ever loved and to the man who wrote it: Lowell T. George, a member of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention who founded Little Feat. He died in 1979. You have to get the balance right: containing the passion within the restraint of tenderness. I have gone for emotional focus over the variety of sound chosen by Little Feat. These songs are in my repertoire for two good reasons. They remind me of singing in harmony with Whitty, whose extremely good voice did justice to the melodies and they are also close to the sentiment and style of the Skunk Band. Creating a fusion of California rock, folk, rockabilly, blues, country, boogie, funk and jazz, Little Feat had the same eclectic approach to music as we did.
Speaking of technical challenges, I was impressed by The Grateful Dead song “Friend Of The Devil” which I heard at the Bickershaw Festival in Yorkshire in 1972. Jerry Garcia wrote the music and Robert Hunter wrote the lyrics. It has a folkie flavour. The lyrics are at variance with the melodic music and I liked the harmony guitar work which made me wonder if I could do the two guitar parts on one guitar. I also noticed it has the same tuning as “Bourgeois Town”. “Friend Of The Devil” is an interesting challenge on two counts: you have to tune two strings down then deal with the problem that the lyrics are going in a different direction to the guitar, which is on the run. It’s like rubbing the stomach whilst patting the head. Incidentally, it’s hard to play on a twelve string. I have used this number when tutoring up and coming musicians.
Maximizing The Minimal
As a solo performer, whatever your level of expertise you have to exploit everything available to you with discrimination. Early blues singers made instruments with whatever was to hand. Jug bands were popular in the Twenties and Thirties, playing primitive party music on household articles such as washboards, jugs and tea chests. Some people even added mouthpieces to the jugs.
Fortunately I haven’t had to recycle cigar boxes and bits of wire to serve my musical needs! I have choices. For example, my 1936 Gibson Blues King has a warm resonant depth, a slur, making it suitable for blues playing. If I want something precise and crisp like a piano for playing ragtime numbers then I us
e my 1923 Martin. For a loud blues sound I have a 1932 National style 0. My 1936 National Tricone, on the other hand, has a wonderful mellow tone suited to a jazz treatment or a Hawaiian sound.
There’s a mystique surrounding the twelve string guitar. People think it’s twice as difficult to play as the conventional guitar. This is too simplistic. It isn’t twice as difficult – it’s just the same as playing six string because each string is played in a pair. Not a great many people use the twelve string guitar but it has more overtones, more power than the conventional guitar. You’ve got notes you couldn’t play on a six string: I can get notes that are an octave higher on a twelve string. The facility’s there when you need it. But you have to use discrimination. There are times when I would choose a twelve string and times when I wouldn’t – for the same song. It’s a question of mood. You wouldn’t ever use a twelve string with certain songs, though. It detracts from melodic tunes like “I’m Satisfied”- fluffs it up and makes it too cluttered. Few people use the twelve string on slide; it has its limitations, though if you listen to Leadbelly and Blind Willie McTell they adapt the instrument to suit what they’re doing dramatically. Because the strings are in pairs and each of the paired strings is an octave apart (except for the first pair which is in unison) it’s a lot easier to make a mistake when using a twelve string. Manual dexterity is required if you’re picking out one string or if you’re playing melodic slide. When using an electric Dobro I do use the strings separately for dramatic effect or vibrato effects. For example in “Stormy Weather” it gives accent and subtlety.
Demystifying the instrument with discrimination and skill, you can then exploit its capacity for greater volume, depth and resonance to advantage.
Many soloists include a range of instruments for interest and texture. A mandolin adds colour and variety to a set. It is an eight-stringed monophonic melodic instrument but I tend to like it as a rhythm instrument – like Des plays it. You need little fingers to play a mandolin but in US bluegrass music it’s usually the biggest bloke who plays it – generally for top harmonies – and it looks comical.
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