Page Two
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Wednesday, October 1, 1969
PageTwoTHE ICHGAN AIL Wedesdy, Otobr 1,196
records --
From fathers to sons and sons and sons
In the local bars
. . S
By BERT STRATTON,
If a young man wants to learn how to play the blues, he must
learn its language and he must listen to the poets that speak it
best--the old masters, What Muddy Waters did was exactly that
and his teacher was Son House, the pioneer of the Mississippi
blues guitar. That process is the foundation of the blues tradition
--a traditon which years later would make Muddy the teacher
and Paul Butterfield the student.
Muddy would be seated in the first row, every night, when
Son House was playing the local bar. He was the prototype blues
freak, his every action adding to the rich legacy of that peculiar
vocation. The legacy that today accounts for Muddy's hotel room
being filled up every night with you musicians wherever he goes,
Muddy learned his lessons well from Son-the taut whining
sound of the bottleneck sliding across the strings, the golden value
of the straight-forward lyric, in effect, all the qualities that make
Son so revered. And then along came a talented, guitarist named
Robert Johnson, whose energy and youth added new dimension
to Son's style-a dimension that Muddy was to further' enlarge.
What the young Robert did was to up-tempo Son's "old-fashioned"
pace and to develop the boogie base, which is the pulsating, back-
ground runway from which today's good rock guitarists take off.
And Robert died young, poisoned by a jealous girlfriend, before he
was thirty, an abrupt ending not uncommon to great artists.
But Muddy Waters took Johnson's message and spread it,
from out of the close-knit Mississippi culture to Chicago, the
black music capital, and finally to all America. Muddy and his
half-brother Otis Spann played around Chicago at parties, fish
fries--anywhere they could get some bread, Muddy on the slide
guitar and Otis on the piano. Their "down-home" music was
popular, but not anything too different than what everyone else was
playing. But Muddy wasn't satisfied, and after World War II he
formed the first of the now common, amplified Chicago blues
DAILY OFFICIAL
B LLETIN
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1
Day Calendar
Department of Speech and Television
Center: Benjamin H. Berentson Me-
morial Lecture: Mr. Ward L. Quaal,
President of WGN Continental Broad-
casting Company, Chicago: West Con-
ference Room, Rackham Building, 4:00
p.m.
Statistics Seminar: Professor Leslie
Kish, "Balanced Repeated Replica-
tions"; 435 Mason Hall, 4:00 p.m.
Department of Speech (Student Lab
Theater) The Sandbox by Edward Al-
bee: Arena Theater, Frieze Building,
4:10 p.m.
String Department Student Recital:
School of Music Recital Hall, 5:00 p.m.
Botany Seminar: Dr. Richard A. Dil-
ley, Charles F. Kettering Research Lab,
Yellow Springs Ohio, "Ultrastructure
of Sub-Chloroplast Photosystems I and
II Fractions"; 1139 Natural Science,
4:15 p.m.
Cinema Guild: Destiny, 7:00 p.m. and
Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler, 9:05 p.m.,
both directed by Fritz Lang: Archi-
tecture Auditorium.
English Dept. Undegraduate Steering
Committee 435 Mason Hall, 7:30 p.m.
I (open to all taking English classes.)
South and South East Asian Studies
Lecture: Richard L. Park, Professor of
Political Science, "Gandhi, His Life and
Philosophy": Rackbam Amphitheater,
7:30 pin.
Computer Lecture: Brice Carnahan,
Professor of Chemical Engineering and
Blostatistics, "The FORTRAN IV Pro-,
gramming Language - II": Natural
Science Auditorium, 7:30 p.m.
Department of English Poetry Read-
ing: Gwendolyn Brooks. Poet Laureate
of the State of Illinois: Multi-pur-
pose Room, Undergraduate Library,
8:00 p.m.
An Evening of Lieder: Ralph Herbert,
'baritone and Paul Boylan, piano:
Rackham Lecture Hall, 8:00 p.n -
(Continued on Page 3)
ENDING WEDNESDAY
NAt 10 AL 0EF+A CO tP0RATION _
O X E A S 1 E R r H E A T R SFR
375 No. MAPLE PD.-769-1300
MON.-FRI.---7:20-9:30
SAT.-SUN.-1 :00-3:05
5:10-7:20-9:30
BUFFY1
SAINTE
MARIE
October 4!
/ COLORs6 DeLuxe United Artists
PERSONS UNDER 18
NOT ADMITTED
m
TODAY IS LADIES DAY!
75c until 6 P.M.
For All Ladies
TONIGHT
7:00 DESTINY
9:05 DR. MABUSE,
THE GAMBLER
Both by FRIT1Z LANG
"Brinq your money tonight"
662-8871 Architecture
Auditorium
QflL~i
Program Information 662-6264
SHOWS AT 1:10-3:45
6:15-8:45
FEATURE 20 min. later
"VANESSA REDGRAVE IS SIMPLY GREAT IN
'TIlE LOVES OF ISADORA'!"-LIFE Magaine
-ANESSA
REDGRAVE
"THE IDVES
OF ISADORA"
Produced In association with Universal Pictures Ltd.
9 TECHNiC0.6OLmj
bands--composed of a lead and
drum.
His band was the detector
that best sensed the odors of
the urban ghietto, and the peCo-
ple dug it. He cut lots of records
and became a big name in black
communities. However, it's on-
ly fair to mention that he didn't
do it all by himself, he had an
impressive succession of har-
monica players - Little Walter
Jacobs, Jimmy Cotton, and
George Smith. (Now he has an-
other good one, Paul Osher, a
white man.)
Muddy's blues had the black
community in a rhythmic vice,
but white America had never
even heard his name. What
the blues needed, like rock an(;
jazz before it, was a white nman
to bring the energy from the
vortex of black music to the
sheltered core of white Amer-
ica. Muddy's star pupil, Paul
Butterfield, was the logical
choice to be that cultural emis-
sary. (Butterfield had been
drinking out of the well of the
South Side-filled with 'Thun-
derbird-ever since he turne'd
eighteen.)
Butterfield ,was good, and le
was white-a first in blues h:-
tory and a winning combination
inl any record producer's book.
Thus, hie, and not Muddy,
brought the blues America's
mainstream. Everyone remem-
bers his first album. Sim-.i:
titled "The Paul Butterfield
Blues Band" and on the co 'er
are Butterfield, Bloomfield, Ris-
hop, Arnold, and Lay, all giving
tough "greaser" stares in front
of a dilapidated storefront back-
drop. (Enough to knock out any
clean-cut suburban kid in 1965.)
So everybody bought the album,
everybody heard the first few
high-intensity bars of ".3orn in
Chicago," and the boominlg
"folk revival" was sent on its
way back to narmalcy and enier
the "blues revival."
Muddy and Paul's rvlusic his
taken root. On the i.a azme.
stand, in the record store, in
the underground press, every-
where, it's "the blues." Columbia
Records offers a $400,000 c:n-
tract to its latest blues sensa-
tion, Johnny Winter, who is
ironically an albino, and on the
cover of Newsweek, Janis Jop-
lin's wretched face is equated
with the "rebirth of the blues."
Yet on the other hand, soe
white people, like those that at-
tended the Ann Arbor Blues
Festival, have gotten to the
"roots" --- to the Muddy Wat-
ers' and Son House's. The blues
-caught in the dichotomy of
young America's fickleness and
its sincerity.
bass guitar, a harmonica, and a
lddy IJ7te rs
... . to the chambers o a record studio
d..iv<
p..
So here we stand, at right
now, the whole spectrum of
blues exposed. (From the high
energy wavelengths of the blues
originators to the lifeless waves
of the cheap imitators that are
reflected off their chrome for-
tresses of shiny guitars and
seven foot amps.)
The competition is tough
it's cutthroat, but there's one
old blues family that nobody
can scratch, and that's Muddy
Waters and Paul Butterfield.
The evidence for that statement
is Marshall Chess' latest iecord-
ing venture, Fathers anl Sons
(Chess LPS 127), ene of the
finest blues LP's of the decade.
It's a twin record set, contain-
ing jams that Muddy and Paul
cut earlier this year (the first
time they've gotten together on
record) with the help of some
outstanding sidemen-guys like
Otis Spann, Mike Bloomfield,
"Duck" Dunn, Sam Lay, Buddy
Miles, Jeff Carp, Phil Upchurch,
and Paul Asbell.
At the Blues Festival, the
then unreleased records were
quite a big topic of conversation
backstage. At that time, Muddy
said he thought it was the be t
session he had had since woik-
ing with Little Walter and Jim-
my Rodgers (a lead guitarist in
his first band). As he put it,
"We was close to the old sound."
Sam Lay, with typical humility,
was telling everyone how badly
he had cut Buddy Miles on the
drums. It's true though, Lay is
probably the best shuffle dr'n'-
mer around. Jeff Carp, who is
Lay's harp player, didn't say
much about the recording at
the festival, maybe because be's
only on one cut.
The name for the LP, Fath-
ers and Sons, was Bloomfield's
idea (I guess he's been reading
Ivan Turgenev) and not one of
Marshall Chess' brilliant pro-
mos. Undoubtedly Chess was n-
strumental in choosing the cover
design--a surreal scene which
even includes a group of in-
tegrated cherubs floating along
the borders of the cover. Out
of sight. But completely irrele-
vant to the contents of the rec-
ords.
Forget about the cover a,.d
get into the jams and dig how
good Muddy is-he's the boss,
and he makes all flfteen cuts
what they are. To the pleasure
of Muddy's fans, the group dres
a lot of Muddy',s iuore obs -ire
tunes, on the first album. like
"All Aboard," "Blow Wind
Blow", "Standin' 'Round Cry-
ing," and "Sugar Sweet", and
they add some of his better
known songs.
The second album, which ' as
recorded "live" at the vast Chi-
cago Auditorium T h e a t r e,
(which accounts for the thun-
derstorm applause, sounding
like something off a sound ef-
fects record) Muddy and the
gang get down with some vld
standbys - - "Long Distance
Call," "Baby Please Don't Go".
Willie Dixon's classic "The
Same Thing", and of course
"Got My Mojo Working".
There are probably some peo-
ple that think Butterfield ha,
forgotten how to play the bili es
(his new group replete with
horns and sax is playing some-
thing else). But they're -.ron.
Just check him out on "Moo
"Sugar Sweet", "Waikin Thiu
the Park", or "The Same Thing".
That's some heap,'y stuff. the
antithesis of the I've we got
from Junior Wells and Ji'nnyv
Cotton at the Blues Festival.
The difference etwen these
men is that ButeA. even ii.
the 'live' 'ecoine, siugs , ith
his harp. whe s Well;end
Cotton toy with their harps
while struggling to get into po-
sition for their next dance steps.
What Butterfield. as well as
Bloomfield and Spann do
is to fill in the holes that MNudl-
dy leaves open and to respod
to Muddy's calls when he sls
for it. On "Blow Wind Blow". <
there's some incredible tum ate'-
field-Bloomfield duels in an
swver to Muddy's lead and ani
articulate solo b! Spann (wi'o
once again proves that he's
number one among 'giving bltcs
pianists.) On "I'm Ready", But-
terfield, Bloomfield, and Spann
are there again, augmenting
Muddy's rich voice with excel-
lent backup and superb breaks.
Also, its a fact that the other
sidemen do outstanding wi*,'k
throughout the albums as well.
"Duck" Dunn, the Memphis
bass ,player, does a commend-
able job when considering that
the blues is not his forte. Sam
Lay does his best work on
"Walkin Thru the Park" and so
does Paul Asbell, the :hythin
guitarist. Jeff Carp adds a fine
chromatic harp accompanimr'i t
on "All Aboard."
I've heard "Got My Moio
Working" pienty time, but this
recording of the song is the
finest one yet. There's a coupe
of reasons it is so good. One is
that Otis Spann is feeling
mighty fine, and he gets more
right notes out of ?is piano
than he ever has before. The
second reason is that Paul But-
terfield is no ego-maniac, he
knows Muddy is leading, aid
he pushed Muddy hard, but he
doesn't smother him.
Everything, and I mean e;erg"-
thing comes together in "Mean
Disposition", it's the best bluies
jam to be waxed in a hell of
a long t i m e -- Butterfield's
moaning harp crying out to
Muddy who answers him with
all the vibrancy and depth cap-
able of being elicited from the
hmnan voice, Muddy's incredible
"speech" on the slide guitar, and
Spann's rhythmic piano fusing
all the parts together. It's so
good, it's the blues.
i
TONIGHT AT 8:00!0
l{
1
BACH CLUB
presents
RANDOLPH SMITH
Bach Club president and founder
speaking on
"HOW BEAUTIFUL,
INTERESTING AND EXCITING
THE 1ST MOVEMENT OF
BACH'S CANTATA 35 IS"
Thursday, Oct. 2, 8 p.m.
1236 Washtenaw
(at S. Forest near S. Universitv)
Refreshments and Fun afterwards
Eve rybodv Welcome! (No
musical knowledge needed)
For further information Call:
663-2827. 665-6806, 761-7356
SEPTEMBER 30-OCTOBER 12
Directed by
John Houseman
us "PLAY"by
Samuel Beckett
bfl
DI
S
)W2chct do
ChJldro ctt
f
r--
I
with
Patrick Hines
Christopher Walken
-1
L-
.J
Pau flutterfield
1
-4
ENGLISH STUDENTS
Organizational Meeting
FOR
English Department
Steering Committee
All English moiors and students urged to attend
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1st-
7:30 P.M.--435 MASON
I
IN lLL AUDITORI.IM
SECOND ANNUAL DANCE SERIES
NATIONAL BALLET OF CANADA ......Fri., Oct. 17
PROGRAM: Solitaire; Four Temperaments;
and The Nutcracker, Act. II.
20% OFF*
On Regular Dry Cleaning
STIIIKERS WELCOME
(Non-Strikers, too)
'FOR STUDENTS ONLY...
Must show U of M ID card
to receive discount
THE FRATERNITY BUYER'S ASSOCIATION presents
r 0" 0 lTONIGHT-1:OO to 9:30 P.M.
Rooms A and B-Michigan Union
Open To All Cooks, Stewards, and
House Directors in Small Unit Houses
JOSE LIMON DANCE COMPANY
NIKOLAIS DANCE COMPANY
DANZAS VENEZUELA
RAYOL WINNIPEG BALLET
8:30, Sat., Nov. 1
8:30, Wed., Jan. 21
8:30, Tues., Feb. 17
2:30, Sun., Mar. 15
J
=For these modern Dance Companies, Lecture-demonstrations are scheduled for Fri.,
Oct. 31, and Tues., Jan. 20 respectively. Tickets: $1.00. Season ticket subscribers
to the Dance Series will receive complimentary admission.
SEASON TICKETS: $17.50-$15 00--$12.50-$10.00-$7.50
SINGLE PERFORMANCES: $6.00-$5.50-$5.00-$4.00-$3.00-$2.00
;z " .. 1 '4 " .. . , .. . . . . . . ..4
MISHA
DICHTEB
Brilliant young Amercian Pianist
Winner at T chaikovsky Competition in Moscow in I 6
Monday, Oct. 6, 8:30 P.M.
IN IILL AUDITORIUM
PROGRAM:
I
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