Album Reviews

As with back jacket credits of UK-based Pure Pleasure’s 180g vinyl release ofMississippi John Hurt Today! (http://www.musicangle.com/album.php?id=461), this Vanguard reissue erroneously claims to have been sourced from a CD. If you’re going to do that, why bother having Kevin Gray cut lacquers at AcousTech when you can have it done much closer to home and probably at lower cost?

It turns out, this was a “credit” insisted upon for some bizarre reason, by the licensor but, I have been assured by Pure Pleasure and AcousTech mastering engineer Kevin Gray, the source material was most certainly analog tape.

Before getting that information, I’d written “Whatever was used for source material produced a swell-sounding LP of a no-nonsense, intimate, indelibly pure-sounding document, unencumbered by studio detritus.” So it’s good to know that what’s in the grooves is AAA all the way because that’s what it sounds like.

Skip James’s cool, plaintive, ghost-like, high-pitched wail produces soft chills starting with the opener, a tale about slaughterhouse work during the Great Depression. There are songs about temptation, poverty, hard drinking and all of the standard blues fare told from an authentic perspective. James was born in Mississippi in 1902 and grew up spending time in the fertile Delta where blues was born. When he hits the “you” in “you can understand” at the end of “Washington D.C. Hospital Center Blues,” if the hair on your neck doesn’t stand up, you have a hairless neck.

James’s guitar style is equally cool and cleanly rendered as he hangs on a chord working and scampering elastically around unexpected notes and runs. You can hear the hot country sun in his guitar and the dead of empty night in his voice. You will also hear his influence on younger enthusiasts like Taj Mahal and Eric Clapton and not because James wrote and sings “I’m So Glad,” covered by Cream. The version here (“I play it for kids sometimes” he’s quoted as saying in the annotation) is hardly recognizable as that song, but you’ll hear the influence on Clapton all over the place.

James plays barrelhouse-style piano on two tracks, adding keyboard embellishments that are similar to what he adds to the guitar, giving the tracks a bordello-like flavor. The two tracks are a pleasant diversion, but it’s the tracks of just James and his guitar that pack the real punch.

We’re lucky to have this extraordinarily fine recording of an authentic blues master once again made available on AAA vinyl.