Come And Found You Gone

by Pete Simonelli

Now this here’s the first piece I learned how to play when I was a little boy: it’s called the "Big Fat Mama with the Meat Shakin’ On Her Bone.”

So begins Devil Down Records’ inaugural release, Come and Found You Gone: Mississippi Fred McDowell: The Bill Ferris Recordings. Immediately, we are transported back to a night in August, 1967, when Blues scholar Bill Ferris brought together McDowell, friend and cohort, Napoleon Strickland, and Fred’s wife, Annie Mae McDowell, into the home of an “unidentified musician” for a night of recording, drinking, and good, loose fun.

Then again, one could almost call the few opening minutes of this gathering breezy. Three of the first four tracks feature easily identifiable songs of McDowell and his grab bag of traditional tunes, including “Big Fat Mama,” “Shake ‘em On Down” and “Baby Please Don’t Go,” respectively. They come and go with a swift familiarity that McDowell seems almost eager to get behind him. Not until we’re introduced to the fourth track, “Find My Suitcase,” does the mood shift into something a little more focused, if not truly demonstrative of McDowell’s usual prowess and finesse as a bottleneck guitar player. He had always stressed his need for a “feeling” to accompany his playing and singing, and, to my ears, I can’t say that I hear that special confluence of the emotional and the physical until he sort of cat-walks into “Find My Suitcase.” The vamp starts off in a slow, slithering manner until, just a few bars in, the combination of melody and rhythm seems to leap into his voice and send us, the listeners, into a grinning fit of head-bobbing (in my case, also hand-clapping) joy. Up to this point it’s easily the most fluid and loaded number yet. It sounds as though he’s warmed up now; perhaps the whiskey’s starting to hit, and his “feeling” arrives in the amalgamated and masterful way any fan of Mississippi Fred McDowell has come to know and love.

He performs solo throughout the first seven numbers before our “unidentified musician” takes the vocal on “Dream I Went to the UN.” Strickland follows with a hot solo harp piece called “The Boogie.” McDowell then accompanies the homeowner on a wandering version of “Little Red Rooster” before we move right into the spiritual mood of the evening, beginning with “Get Right Church,” which is far and away the most somber but moving moment on the CD. McDowell delivers a weary and sad opening, but the others, as though prompted by the tone, take up the call and deliver a mesmerized, "slain in the spirit” performance. The melody is ominous and fearful, indicative of some great underlying menace that can only be relieved by a collective rising of voice and faith. It also instigates a pivotal shift in the entire recording: only now is everyone truly involved; they are engaged in a purpose. The tenor of the evening has switched to a collective outpouring of voices and emotions that hadn’t yet been exposed. Now we hear Mae’s beautiful punctuations as well as Strickland’s and the homeowner’s presence driving the overall performances into a realized recording. It’s not that any fun is gone. It’s just that they’re all in tune with one another, and the ensuing tracks that take us into the end of Come And Found You Gone find a special accent and grace. A track called “Dialogue” (No. 13) gives the recording some additional potency. It features some testy, marital back-and-forth between Mae and Fred that the homeowner has to subdue with a very diplomatic “You’re singing fine” to Mae. It signifies a high point in the group’s general demeanor. They’re all ready, animated--- this is a party after all--- and the banter flying about the room is quick and sharp. The track keeps rolling on for another minute and a half while Fred plucks and tunes, getting ready for the next number. But Mae isn’t giving in. She ribs and taunts Fred like she wants some of the spotlight, too. It’s a great little moment in the CD that reinforces the sense of being in a very particular time and place.

Ferris’s intention was clear: to capture a great musician in a casual, down-home environment. All the material is performed acoustically, and throughout the CD we can hear the room itself, the air, and in quieter numbers the soft penetration of background talk. All of these elements produce a very intimate recording. Sadly, though, some of the songs’ performances fall short or flat. One of McDowell’s many attributes is his ability to create tension. His mastery of melody and rhythm, for which there are few equals, usually has time to be developed and carried through his performances. In Come And Found You Gone many songs sound truncated, rushed, or are cut off too soon, which could be a case of something perhaps a little too intimate. One could chalk this up to a tendency among many posthumous recordings, in which, for the sake of showcasing an early or less polished performance, a listener is allowed to hear a different or less-cured approach to a song or batch of songs. I wonder if the project was compromised by a limited recording value or if McDowell himself just began to grow a little distracted, bored or tired.

Don’t get me wrong--- a lack of industry polish is also a very welcome thing. I would think that this recording is only being released now because bigger, established labels may have passed on it. Not a shame at all, I say. It’s out now, and Devil Down's founder, Reed Turchi, should be commended for it. A captured night of tape in McDowell’s hometown of Como, Mississippi should demand the attention of a new and old fans alike. Unfortunately, for all the CD’s attention to the region’s invaluable musical legacy and traditions, the underlying anthropological aim to this CD is more a credit to the region and its customs than it is to a night of decent Fred McDowell recordings. A collection of photos within the CD package artfully displays the environment of The Hills (an area in northeastern Mississippi that McDowell both lived in and in whose musical traditions he was a product of), and liner notes supplied by Ferris, Luther Dickinson, and “eminent French blues scholar Vincent Joos” are by turns elegiac and informed pieces of a package intended to not only entertain but to educate its listeners as well.

At first I was a bit distracted by this. I thought, What should a live recording be but a document in and of itself? A live recording should effectively conjure a singular spirit whose existence takes its shape and sound from a body of music. As such, further listening and reading encouraged me to appreciate the effort Turchi has taken to release this recording. He’s obviously a very knowledgeable and avid fan of Fred McDowell, and he has commandeered three other astute fans to help him elaborate and present a labor of love. But I can’t help asking myself: Are there better, more resounding McDowell recordings in the world? Yes. Even so, I really don’t think Come and Found You Gone was meant to be presented as the very best. It is, above all, an evocation of a humble night in which listeners are invited to participate in an integral and enriching grasp of the Blues. We get all of the fundamental ingredients: the pain, the fear, the anguish; alternatively all the fun, humor, and abandon to be found in the Blues. This record is a friendly and highly respectful homage to a person whose status resides in a pantheon reserved for only the finest and most revered Blues artists of all time.




"Find My Suitcase" mp3
by Mississippi Fred McDowell, 1967.
available on Come And Found You Gone: The Bill Ferris Recordings

"The Boogie" mp3
available on Come And Found You Gone: The Bill Ferris Recordings
by Napoleon Strickland, 1967.

"Come And Found You Gone" mp3
by Mississippi Fred McDowell, 1967.
available on Come And Found You Gone: The Bill Ferris Recordings

top photo: by Lee Friedlander
Mississippi Fred McDowell, 1960.
from American Musicians © 1998

Mississippi Fred McDowell

by Pete Simonelli

Mississippi Fred McDowell: Live at the Gaslight
Recorded: November 5th, 1971, New York City

Several years, and many miles, after his discovery by the great (and sometimes controversial) Blues musicologist, Alan Lomax, Mississippi Fred McDowell’s two sets this night in New York City proved to be the culmination of a long and rich career.

Born in Rossville, Tennessee, McDowell settled in Como, Mississippi in the early 40s, working as a plowman and cultivating his distinct style of slide guitar in local picnics and dances in the region known as The Hills: an area just north of the Mississippi Delta, noted for its own brand of Blues that hewed closer to the African tradition of repetitive rhythms, or “vamps.” He was taught to play slide guitar by an uncle, gradually using a beef rib bone before turning to a pocket knife and, later, as his style and gift were fully developed, a more common glass side he wore on his ring finger. Lomax arrived in 1959 and found McDowell and his wife on their porch, “looking like a couple of hungry blackbirds.” A questionable allusion today, but Lomax said Fred was, understandably, “eager to record.” In his highly acclaimed book, The Land Where the Blues Began, Lomax continues, “We recorded outdoors after dark, by flashlight. No wind was blowing, and the katydids were out of season, so we could take advantage of the living quiet of open air and the natural resonance of the earth and the trees….The sound we captured made us all deliriously happy.”

That same kind of sensation comes across in the intimate setting of the Gaslight. Greeted by an eager and excitable crowd, McDowell takes that energy and works off it throughout the entire recording. People gleefully heckle and cheer him on, entirely in love with him. It goes on like this throughout the show, McDowell being a consummate showman and kindly host, peppering his tuning breaks with explanations of how the Blues, “and Spirituals, too”, are conveyed to him and thus onto his listeners. He never flaunts his authority over the music, never condescends or rhapsodizes the crowd with hollow banter. Instead, he relies on a convivial and sympathetic approach. And as the songs unfold in alternating bouts of grief and redemption, sorrow and joy, the easy, fluid mastery of his playing--- and by extension, his personality--- is undeniable.

Given the palpable sweat and heat that reaches out of this recording, you’d never think that winter was fast approaching outside the Gaslight that night. But it was in fact an approaching cold that would settle over the world when, just a few short months later, Fred McDowell would die of cancer in 1972. Listening to these songs, accompanied by the late Tom Pomposello on bass (who also provides the liner notes and some fond, insightful memories to the collection), is an intimate and sometimes chilling experience when considering the proximity of McDowell’s death. He never recorded again, and to hear these songs unfold is easily one of the greatest listening pleasures any music lover could have. It’s not essential to be a fan of the Blues; this music resonates with such force and authenticity it would be hard not to feel instantly moved by McDowell’s singular ability to make his music stand out and be heard. As he so often said, the Blues “is a feeling, you understand,” and to hear his playing is to understand and capture not only the root of Blues music but what music in general can do for the soul of the listener.

A lofty sentiment perhaps. But if you go straight to the end (yes, straight to the end) of this double CD set, to “Get Right Church”, I think you’ll see what I mean. Granted, it is a haunting number that could unsettle the fainter heart, but the virtuosity of the playing and how McDowell’s plaintive voice combines with the hair-raising, get-right-to-the-bottom-of-the-well tone of his guitar is something beyond explanation. I’ve listened to this song repeatedly for years and my addiction to it is hopeless. I take to it like a dog to an ass scratch; all physical surroundings are lost; I succumb to the feeling.

When the song ends I turn around and play it again, thinking the only approximation to this kind of performance can be found in the likes of Son House or Skip James (each of whom are welcome inspirations to McDowell). There’s an ethereal, transcendent quality to the performance. Pomposello holds a grinding rhythm as McDowell luxuriates over the top of it, sometimes falling in with the bass line for a beat or two before he winds out of it and lets the guitar punctuate and/or finish the lyric. Many bluesmen---from Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton, Sleepy John Estes on down---substitute notes for the voice and finish a lyric; I realize it’s nothing new. But to hear it so closely (due to the great mastering of the recording) and with such acoustic density is truly akin to watching the show along with all the other fortunate folks who were there that night. You just have to close your eyes.

Another notable song, “Red Cross Store”, can also be found on the second of the two CD’s (track no.7). To call this number anything other than an indictment would be wrong. Even more so, this particular take is a variation on the original lyrics. Instead of a man taken to task by a woman, McDowell counters that idiom with a stirring version about a man looking to feed his family. Encountering the sheer rejectionof an otherwise charitable organization--- “Go ‘way, boy, you know times got hard.”--- the song veers between an urgency and a telling narrative built on the era’s social injustice that isn’t found too often in McDowell’s catalogue. Though the driving rhythm is a signature style and serves up much of the tune’s anger, a resentful McDowell tells us from the outset: “Well I ain’t!/ gwine back!/ to that!/ Red Cross!!/ store no more // ain’t gon/ na let my baby go back (to that) Red Cross/ store no more.” This is the verse that gets me, the opener, because you know something’s terribly wrong (the delivery tells us as much) and he’s not having it. When followed by the vow that he won’t let his baby go back either, I hear the conviction of a loving and righteous soul who won’t let anyone else suffer the way he already has.

By the third and fourth verses he’s laid out the story for us: boll weevils in the meat, (corn) meal, and lard, and there’s absolutely nothing to show for anybody’s work. The very people who have tended to the food--- sowed it, reaped it, and slaughtered it--- are suddenly told that it’s not available to them; it’s tainted, and there’s not a damned thing anybody’s going to do about it. The Blues, indeed.

On a lighter note, listen for something really cool at the very opening of the song. After a short tuning, McDowell slowly, almost cautiously, begins the song, letting it find its swing. Just as it starts to ramp up, a woman in the audience cuts loose and screams right into the song. It sounds like she’s launching it to fruition, and it’s the kind of enthusiasm that makes any great set a little more memorable. I sometimes go back to “Red Cross Store” just so I can hear her again.

This is standard-bearing work and shows us an artist, poet and farmer in one of his finest hours. Lomax would go on to lament Fred’s preference for electric Blues, believing that he’d lost one of his golden boys to the bright lights and flashy suits, but there’s really nothing lost at all. The porch is just New York City now.

Download:

“Get Right Church” mp3
"Red Cross Store" mp3
"Someday Baby" mp3
"When The Saints Go Marchin' In" mp3
"You Got To Move" mp3

by Mississippi Fred McDowell, 1971.
available on Live at the Gaslight

this photograph:
by William Eggleston,
Untitled, 1972.

top photograph:
by Lee Friedlander
Fred McDowell, Senatobia, Mississippi, 1960.