Gosh, this brings back the summer of 2006. I was a teenager, and worked on the expansion of a cemetery near my home town - half a hectare of open field, and it was hot as Hell. I worked alone and listened to the blues I had recorded on cassettes from CD:s in the library, including Bukka White, Robert Johnson, Skip James, Son House and all the legends. Days were spent burning my skin and listening to the blues in the cemetery, and evenings learning to play slide guitar at home. Nostalgic.
Sounds great. I'm 73 and grew up with Lightnin Hopkins and Muddy Waters etc. Saw Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee when I was young here in Australia. As the years went by I was lucky enough to catch Houndog Taylor and his Houserockers, BB King (twice) Albert King, Buddy Guy, etc. Australia has always attracted the world's musicians. Saw Dylan and the Hawks ( The Band) here on Dylan's famous 1966 world tour. I was 15. Lost track of musicians I've seen. From the Stones (twice) to Eagles to Dire Straits. Joe Cocker ( twice) Dylan heaps, Springsteen, Young, James Taylor, even Chuck Berry's piano player! JJ Cale, Clapton, Pink Floyd. Even the original Bee Gees in 1970. Sometimes I would borrow the ticket money so my partner and I could go! The best concert I saw was Led Zeppelin.
I do the same but working hard in tobacco plantation...i know it was way harder for a slave in 1920 but you could feel that sense of cooperation and common evil of hard work, soothed by the blues sound. I'm Italian and so I also had to study the slang, translate the stories told in the songs, study the protagonists of the genre. Furthermore, in the center of my little village where I live, the "blues made in Italy" is celebrated once a year, one of the largest non-profit shows in Europe to raise awareness of the genre and pass on its origins.
Back in 1971, Bukka, Jimmie Stagger, and myself sat up all night long singing 20 verse versions of this song, drinking Old Charter whiskey until dawn. Miss ya, Booker. Doctor Hamfat
It's so incredible to have this video available to the public. I've wondered for years how he played this song so distinctly and now I can just watch it happening in front of me
This is brilliant - I am from Ireland and our country does not have the blues. BUT I got into listening to it in 1988 and have been addicted ever since. This is real deal, this is what music is. And Bukka White is the real deal.
As an 2nd generation Irish American, ( still have much family in Omagh, Cork, Tipperary, and Donegal), don’t discount the influence that Gaelic culture and music had on much of Southern Culture. Out of all the Celtic diaspora in that area, at that time, ( the Welsh, Ulster Scot’s, Scot’s) the Irish were the most likely, and frequently to engage with the African American community. Hence why so many southern African Americans have Irish last names. Certainly not saying the plight of African Americans and their Irish counterparts was on parity, oppression wise, but there’s some definite overlap that went on.
@@resomony I know Rory is Irish and he did many great albums and backed many great blues singers and blues based singers. Blues exists in Ireland but it is not promoted enough is the problem. It is all pop and modern country music that gets promoted these days!
John Fahey apparently gifted the National guitar used in the video to Mr. White...we owe more to Fahey than has ever been acknowledged...Cheers!!! RC Johnston.
Clapton, The Who, the Stones, all did old blues tunes they "stole" from the original artists but what really brought these original blues guys to the spotlight was the folk revival in the early 60's and then Newport in '65 was the icing on the cake.
I am so happy to see the amount of views this has. Though it is still relatively small compared to others on youtube, it is still astonishing and heart warming! This is probably the most constructive use of a knife as well
XsilentXbladesX unique is my experience with Bukka. He reminds me of a powerful freight train speeding down the track. Love this piece and Aberdeen Mississippi blues.
This is the second vid of this guy I've checked out - never heard him before - and man, he's awesome! Really percussive guitar style, and a voice like Howlin' Wolf, but gentler in a way. Fans of raw slide guitar blues might like "Rosetta West - Underground."
I'll count him as one of the greats, but sadly, one of the greats almost completely forgotten due to the passage of time and the myriad of guitarists that have come and gone since his day. Regardless, his talent is obvious. Crazy good!
Bravo, monsieur, et que Dieu repose sur vous, vous qui m'avait révé 2 fois salle pleyel paris 17 è autrefois,,,,,super jpr jean-paul raillat et voilà!!
I took my little cousins barbie doll guitar and tuned it to where the strings played a chord, and then took my ipod, pressed it against the strings, and played the guitar like this. First time ever playing guitar....and it was fun as hell. I love Bukka White, he inspired me to do that.
thats right...it'll do good to remember that the blues was the 'pop' music of its day, meaning that everyone played it, and wanted to be just like their favorite pop star (in this case, someone like blind lemon jefferson)...now if pop music is really a refection of the society's values, then our society is in a pretty sad state. we no longer value quality or originality. we are happy enough to settle for less.
thank you for posting this comment. I completely agree with you that music today is horrible. Someone needs to bring back the music and remove the noise thats arond today.
@747t. I have the deepest respect for the cultural bonds that keep you connected to your ancestry - there's no substitute for Knowing who we are - and your knowledge of traditional african music(s) is clearly apperent. Regarding African rhythms being difficult, I've never found any rhythms difficult. Prob'ly why I took up Bass. Difficult to write on a graffitti wall but I've heard many more African styles than American/African. Finish this sect. in answere to a query from you; J.B.= James Brown!
Players like Skip James used minor open tunings, songs like Devil Got My Woman / Hard Time Killing Floor Blues among many were recorded in crossnote tunings like Open D Minor, DADFAD, or crossnote Open E minor EBEGBD.
I've had God bless me with a near mint condition 1930 National Triolian with the original case for only 1,000 dollars. It is the most beautiful looking and sounding instrument in my guitar collection.
Players like Skip James did use minor open tunings regularly, songs like Devil Got My Woman / Hard Time Killing Floor Blues among many were recorded in crossnote tunings like Open D Minor, DADFAD, or crossnote Open E minor EBEGBE.
Well I respect your opinion much more. However, still in my eyes, my music connects my people to our homeland. It is what has kept our souls free and culture intact since our bodies were taken into bondage. The pentatonic scale we sing in and the licks we play on the guitar are the same that we sang back in Africa and played on the Banjo, and before that on the Akonting, the Xalam, Banjar, Kora, Bolon, Ngoni...
I have a real nice dvd of 'The Howlin' Wolf Story' which features Bukka with Wolf at a concert and on his own. Son House is on it too. Check it out, not difficult to find as far as I know. Also has Wolf's daughters talking about (amongst other things) the warm friendship he had with The Stones and Clapton.
The tendency toward individualism is the same as colorblindness, and leads people to miss that art is a collective construct which expresses a people as much as a person.
I agree, but makes me smile to think of Jagger as watered down! I read the Fred McDowell liked the Stones as they got him a big cheque for covering his stuff. Unfortunately, just before he died.
Assignments include getting in a bar fight, watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off, streaking through a public place with ten of your best friends, and speeding in a convertible while listening to the first 12 or so songs on Chuck Berry's The 28 Great in a constant loop. There's also fall in love, read a Kurt Vonnegut book, break up with said love, listen to A Love Supreme, walk through New England on a fall day, make a bet, explore a city, and try something new.
It's a "resonator" guitar, with a metal outer body and thin metal discs almost like speaker cones inside the body that resonate along with the strings and give you a mechanical amplification effect. They were built by a company called National in the 1920s and early 30s oh, and back then they were the loudest and most expensive acoustic guitars you could buy. Some of them had a single cone, but the most expensive ones typically had three cones and were known as tricone. The original vintage ones are worth many thousands nowadays, although you can buy more recently made ones as well, but even those are not cheap. The fancier National guitars for back in the day were often engraved with Incredible artwork. The blues players usually had more ordinary work a day instruments.
This is genuine music from Booker White's heart. Captain Beefheart knew a good thing when he heard it but his music was derivative and second-rate. The things he put his band through to make it were unethical. In most cases I ignore what I dislike, but I was a big fan of Don Van Vliet's music until I found out how his bands lived, how he treated them. The music doesn't sound so good any more. Captain Beefheart was a no-playing, no-hearing non-musician who used the talent of genuine musicians to create his art. Some of it sounded great, but that's because the people he hired (and most often didn't pay) were excellent musicians. Captain Beefheart didn't know what he wanted until he heard someone else playing it. Taken together, all those things (and many more, found in the books written by people who played in his bands) make his music unlistenable (for me). There are many worse things. I'm surprised I bothered explaining this.
@@DonDeering where did you get all this info? I'd be interested in reading about it. Not a Beefheart fan...only know of him because I'm a Zappa fan. I've done a little google searching but couldn't find anything about what you're accusing him of.
@@middlebrad I didn't accuse anyone of anything. I mentioned what I read. I got the info from two books about Beefheart by two band members. One of them was Lunar Notes - Zoot Horn Rollo's Captain Beefheart Experience by Bill Harkleroad with Billy James, the other one was Through the Eyes of Magic by John French, aka Drumbo (that's a massive book, way too long and detailed).
Three poor boys we was travelin--three brothers travelin,poor boys--Three poor boys we got bulldogged--and they put us poor boys in the county farm**And then mother she got nervous--?? lets call up on that phone--I decided not to telephone--to let her know ?? the county farm**And then mother she got worried--She started doing somthing wrong--after the sun done gone down--and my little sonny aint made it back home--well the sargent told my mother--it would take two hundred dollar bills-----
@747t. I appreciate your graciousness in mellowing out a little. Regardless of what may appear to you from what I wrote, I'm just a musician which means I've spent my life playing with other musicians. A couple of points; I played in NYC from 1980 to 1993. I played with Top, Influential Bluesmen. If you want a VERY SHORT list of them there are some listed on my site (fly jugband - bio). That was electric mainly, tho' not exclusively. I then spent 5 years in New Orleans.......
John Fahey did a lovely, less intense version of this song on his great album The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death. He helped "discover" Bukka White and was true to the older man's vision.
Alvin Youngblood Hart does it with the same guitar arrangement but different lyrics - his version is called "Rest Your Saddle" and it's on his excellent "Big Mama's Door" CD.
Thanks for the info on bukka/booker. Reminds me of the Flannery O'Connor editor that had her write down notes of what she wanted to tell him since her Georgia accent was so thick.
Some of the original duolians didn't have a truss rod, so high tension plays havoc with the neck. It's actually best to even tune them down a full step when you aren't going to be playing it for a while, too.
