"Perfect" ~

Mississippi Fred McDowell

"I shall never forget", wrote Shirley Collins," the first sight I had of Fred in his dungarees, carrying his guitar and walking out of the woods toward us in a Mississippi night." Collins traveling companion and recording genius Alan Lomax recorded McDowell over four nights in 1959. Night time, because during the day McDowell was picking cotton. As Tom Piazza describes the bluesmaker in his book The Southern Journey of Alan Lomax ~ McDowell was "a sharecropper who sang and played slide guitar in juke joints and at dances, he embodied a legacy of black work songs and field hollers. When he performed his "61 Highway Blues" for Lomax, the folklorist wrote a single word beside the entry in his field log: "Perfect."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Fred_McDowell

DELTA ~

"Three pictures from a recent excursion around the Delta and Hill Country."

That's what Longhouse friend Whit Griffin wrote to us this morning and I thought the setting and timing was quiet enough to share.

Whit often takes photographs and sends them our way from his travels. I didn't even ask him this time if it was okay to post — it always seems okay between us. I kinda wanted to surprise him back with the shots.

The legendary life dates for Robert Johnson are barely wide enough to get a breath taken. Just one song from him is worth a life time.

I remember reading once that Fred McDowell's original gravestone (where his name was spelled incorrectly) had been damaged and replaced by this one above. Bonnie Raitt paid for the new stone, and that photograph of the great bluesman on the stone, born in Tennessee, may have been taken the year he died.

Rest in peace, and song.










photos © whit griffin