danny gatton -- my guitar hero

"I was there too"

Traveling around playing music makes you realize how interconnected the world is sometimes. Two weeks ago I was in upstate and central New York playing with Creole Stomp. One night we played at the "Rongovian Embassy" in Trumansburg which is right next to Ithaca. This club is a story in itself. During the break one of the local bar patrons came over to talk to me because he enjoyed my guitar playing. Unfortunately I don't remember his name. That is always nice in and of itself. During our conversation Clarkesdale Mississippi came up. He had ended up in Clarkesdale quite accidentally once, or better said, unintentionally, a year or so ago. He was traveling in Mississippi and being a blues fan he felt himself drawn to Clarkesdale when he realized that he was close by. I laughed and told him that I was just there two weeks ago. He asked if I knew a little juke joint called Red's and I told him that I had just hung out at Red's Saturday and Sunday night the week that I was in Clarkesdale. Red's is a very small and usually dark club in Clarkesdale. Red is the owner and he is one of the primary reasons that blues is alive and kicking in Mississippi. Red's is homebase for Big Jack Johnson who is one of Clarkesdale's native sons. Big Jack is an amazing guitar player who played with the legendary Jelly Roll Kings that also included Sam Carr and Frank Frost. All three are legends in the Delta. Big Jack played to a full house on Saturday night. Robert Balfour - a real juke joint acoustic blues player - filled the house on Sunday night. Balfour is also from Mississippi he relocated to Memphis a number of years ago. I have seen him a number of times but he was absolutely in his element on that Sunday night. The gentleman I was speaking to at the Rongovian Embassy is a big Robert Balfour fan so he enjoyed the fact that not only did I know Red's but that I had just seen Balfour play there.

The next night I was in Rochester with Creole Stomp. Before the gig there was a little party for the band and members of the Cajun dance group that we were playing for. The party was at our host's house. Our host was a very nice woman and a clinical psychologist in Rochester. She is a huge cajun music fan so I asked her if she ever goes to Louisiana. Yes, she said I was just there last weekend for Festival Arcadian. We were in Louisiana last week as well I said. I then asked her if she had happened to go see Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys at the Blue Moon in Lafayette last Saturday night. Steve Riley is one of the most interesting cajun bands. I am a big fan of his guitar player Sam Broussard. The Blue Moon is an outdoor beer garden that is a little bit bigger that Red's but not by much. It as absolutely packed. She said that yes she was there. I laughed and said I was there too.

When I went to watch Big Jack play at Red's I ran into one of my Clarkesdale friends, a guitar player named Big "T" Williams. Big T is another Clarkesdale native that got his start as a teenager playing with Big Jack and the Jelly Roll Kings. Big T was playing bass with Big Jack on Saturday night. When I first met Big T about four years ago for a second I thought he was Big Jack. Sam Carr was playing at Sarah's Kitchen on a Sunday night with various other musicians. Big T was one of the guitar players. He looks kind of like Big Jack but I knew that he was too young. Big Jack I assume is around 70. Anyway I complimented Big T on his guitar playing that night and he invited me back to his house to jam. We played until 5 o'clock in the morning. Big T just released a record on a new Mississippi label called Broke and Hungry records. He was busy this summer doing the blues festival circuit. I know that he was in Chicago and St. Louis. It is good to see him doing well.

The "World" of Roots Music

American roots music has gained a considerable level of popularity over the last decade or so. Obviously, there are a number of reasons for this. Personally, I would like to think that a major contributing factor is a disenchantment with the current state of the music industry which churns out music as an overly commercialized and commodified product. Hopefully this dissatisfaction has engendered a desire for a more "authentic" form of music making and musical experience. However, this view may itself be somewhat problematic and a little bit naive. Nevertheless it is worth considering. The idea of "roots" music is intimately connected to the concept of authenticity and the latter has always played an important role in aesthetic theory. In terms of aesthetic theory the idea of the authentic is used to refer to the "real thing" as opposed to an imitation or a fake. The idea of the real as opposed to the illusory becomes all the more vital in a mass consumer culture that has technology not only for endless reproduction but also the ability, through sophisticated advertising, to manufacture aesthetic taste and desire. In this sense art is no longer produced by artists but by those in charge of the marketplace. Perhaps roots music signifies a desire for a form of art that is more genuine or more authentic. Implicit in this idea is an appeal to "the real" or even what we may refer to as "truth." Everyday language often speaks of a musician or an artist as the authentic or real or even truthful. This raises the question true to what? Often what is meant is the idea of being true to oneself in the sense that art is a true form on inner expression. We are often intend it in the sense of origins of roots. The idea of authenticity therefore holds forth a promise of being "truthful" in a double sense. On the one hand, there is something to said, there is an experience to be communicated. One of the central tenets of Adorno and Walter Benjamin's aesthetic theory is that the notion of the authentic refers to a "total form of life". What is expressed by the art work is not simply an inner desire on the part of the artist but, rather, a total form of life or a world. Adorno and Benjamin contrast this with what they saw as the contemporary form of modern life -- fragmentation. In Adorno and Benjamin's view, art promises something being the fragmented and crisis ridden nature of modern culture.

Taking all of the above as a point of reference we can refer to a "myth of the authentic". I don't mean this in a negative sense at all. What I am trying to get at is the appeal that roots music has for many people and especially the appeal it has that it has when it is experienced on its home territory. Roots music holds forth the promise of a musical culture that is not dominated by the politics of consumerism. But the appeal extends beyond the music. It is also a fascination with the people and the actual geography of the land itself. Blues fans who travel to Mississippi and Cajun music fans that make their annual pilgrimage to Louisiana are two examples of this. Recently, I spent a week in the Mississippi Delta and then a week Cajun country in southwest Louisiana. It was festival season in both Mississippi and Louisiana and therefore both places were full of music fans in search of an authentic musical experience.

Every October many blues lovers head to Helena Arkansas for the annual King Biscuit Blues Festival. There are blues festivals all over the United States as well as in many countries overseas but Helena and its neighbor Clarkesdale Mississippi are sacred ground. In terms of the above it offers a fleeting glimpse into the "world" promised by the music. In its prime the blues of the Mississippi delta literally moved back and forth between Clarkesdale Mississippi and Helena Arkansas. They are separated by about 26 miles and the Mississippi river. There are numerous other historical sites if one follows the historical evolution of the delta blues but Clarkesdale and Helena were the largest communities and most economically thriving cities in the northern delta. Clarkesdale flourished on the cotton trade and Helena was an important Mississippi river port. Consequently, they offered the best venues for bluesmen to pursue their trade. Both cities have been in severe economic decline for decades now and it is difficult to imagine the hustle and bustle of a friday and saturday night when both cities would be alive with people and music and all the things that accompany that. On my most recent trip a couple of weeks ago George Messenger. He runs a club in Clarkesdale named Messenger's that I had never been into before. It turns out that his grandfather started the club in the 1890s! It was then taken over by his father and mother. George began working in his father's club in 1947 and took it over after his mother passed away. It is the oldest business in Clarkesdale. George talked about the Clarksdale that he knew as a young man. "Friday and Saturday night was just like New York City" he said. ". "There were so many people on the street that it was difficult to walk through them." You can also find a good description of Clarkesdale in Alan Lomax's Land Where the Blues Began. Lomax visited Clarkesdale in the 1940s in search of Robert Johnson. Johnson had already passed away but he ended up meeting and recording Son House, Muddy Waters, Honeyboy Edwards and numerous others. Honeyboy is still around and still playing. Helena was also a thriving city. Of the two, its economic situation is far worse that Clarkesdale. However, at one time it was very prosperous. It now has a historical museum downtown on Cherry street which gives you a rich overview of the history of Helena. The contrast between the days of economic prosperity and its current condition are quite startling. During its day Helena was ground zero for many blues artists. One of the buildings that Robert Johnson used to entertain in is still there next door to an old liquer store. Despite the fact that neither Clarkesdale nor Helena look like they did when Johnson and other bluesmen traveled about they still promise that world or a glimpse into it anyway. In one sense this is something mythical but, on the other hand, it is something very real as well.

"Where's Marshall Dillon At?"

One of my favorite contemporary Mississippi bluesmen passed away a couple of years ago. His name was Paul "Wine" Jones. I saw him perform for the last time about a month before he lost a battle with liver cancer. I always thought of him as one of the younger ones. He was a part of the Fat Possum crowd that includes R. L. Burnside, T Model, Ford, Junior Kimbrough and numerous others. Paul was a very engaging performer who played using a incredibly aggressive right hand technique. He had only begun to travel outside of his home state of Mississippi a few years before he passed away.

I first met Paul Jones strangely enough in Sante Fe New Mexico in 2001. He was performing at a local roots music festival called the Thirsty Ear Festival which is held every Labor Day weekend. I think that this was his first trip outside of Mississippi. He was traveling with his fellow Mississippians, T Model Ford and Kenny Brown. The Thirsty Ear Festival is held on a old ranch six miles south of Sante Fe. It is used as a movie set for Westerns and so the effect is that you are in an old town in the west. A month or two prior to the festival the New York Times had done a feature article on the contemporary state of blues in Mississippi. Paul Jones was one of the artists that was featured. His story was accompanied by a photograph in which he was dressed in red and black outfit topped by a red bowler hat. He was wearing the same outfit when I saw him in Sante Fe. It was an interesting sight, Paul Jones in his bluesman outfit standing on a stage in the old west with the Rocky Mountains in the background. The crowd loved him and after his set he hung around the rest of the day enjoying the music and the beer from the local saloon.

I saw him two years later in Rosedale Mississippi. He was still wearing the same red and black outfit with the red hat. I asked him if he remembered playing in an town in the old west. He laughed and said: "Oh, man, I wasn't used to that dark beer. Man did I getted messed up." Later that night he said that he walked into the old jail and said: "Where's Marshall Dillon at? He better lock me up."

I saw Paul numerous times in Mississippi. His form of blues defines the terms primitive and raw. He recorded two records before he died. The first one "Mule" is my favorite. A third one has come out posthumously. You can also catch him on youtube.com videos. Although the quality is not great you can still get a feel for what is was like.

ADORNO AND THE BLUES

Music presents itself as an enigma,not always, but often. In other words,music manifests a certain power that is not immediately obvious but is "is"immediately felt. It is both multidimensional and overdetermined. On the one hand, its power operates on the affective level. Its effects are on and in the body. Our bodies pulsate with its rhythm to the point of frenzy. On the other hand, music is an intellectual endeavor from both the performer and the listener's perspective. In this regard, music is part of our rational heritage. The enigma of music is that it turns a rundown shack into a juke joint on Saturday night and another building into an experience of the holy on Sunday morning. In a sense, the enigma of music situates itself at the crossroads of the rational and the irrational. In this regard it can be seen as a reflection of life itself. Life also presents itself as an enigma -- a mystery to be solved.

The 19th century German father of sociology referred to the development of Western Civilization as a process of rationalization. And the is generally what is referred to as modernization or modernity. Music was a part of this rational process in Weber's view. Weber also referred to this process as a process of "disenchantment". The human world becomes "modern" as it successfully liberates itself from magical and mythical dependence. Traditionally, social organization and our sense of self relied on a mythical or magical form of storytelling or rituals. To disenchant the world, in Weber's view, is the mark of progress. However, the flipside is that disenchanted world is devoid of meaning. It is the modern world of bureaucracy. This is the point of departure for Franz Kafka's stories. Into this void art and aesthetic experience have become all the more crucial as a way of trying to reclaim a sense of significance or meaning.

All of the above is a type of introduction to my own form of storytelling. I will begin with a personal story. Currently, I am making my living as a professional musician playing guitar with a band called Creole Stomp.But this has not always been the case. My life has been tossed around between two important passions; music and philosophy. This leads me to tell about to personal experiences that have been very significant for me. In the early 1990s I was studying in Frankfurt Germany working on a dissertation on a German philosopher named Theodor Adorno. Adorno was a brilliant philosopher and musicologist associated with a group of thinkers that came to be known as the Frankfurt School. They were attempting to develop a critical theory of society. In short, they were trying to understand the enigma of the first part of the 20th century. One day as I was walking around Frankfurt I was very aware of walking on, what was for me, sacred ground, I thought about the young Adorno and his early intellectual efforts and about the stimulating intellectual atmosphere that he found himself in. A few years later I was in the Mississippi Delta for the first time. Delta blues is one of my major passions. As I was driving around the backroads the same experience struck me that had struck me in Frankfurt. I was on the ground that Charley Patton, Robert Johnson and numerous others had occupied.

Now there is perhaps nothing remarkable about having two similar experiences. However, what I found interesting was in realizing that Adorno was working in Frankfurt in the early 1930s at the same time as Patton, Son House, Robert Johnson and others were traversing the Delta. And obviously these are two separate worlds. However, both in their own ways were trying to contribute something towards our understanding of life's enigmas. Adorno, a German Jew, was living in the shadow of Hitler's rise to power.The Mississippi blues men and women were living in the violent atmosphere of White Mississippi. That afternoon as I walked along the river in Friar's Point Mississippi I tried to imagine Adorno mistakenly finding himself in juke joint as Charlie Patton sang and banged on the guitar. I would like to think that Adorno would have danced.