That Sound That Changed It All

A simple blues walk-up turned into a resounding roar. That was the sound.

I had just a very limited knowledge of what this music was. Gathering only bits and pieces from what I heard my father and uncles talking about at small family gatherings and friendly get togethers.

They were talking about groups and bluesmen from faraway places that they would hear played by great DJ's in places like Memphis and Denver and Chicago. The Squirrel Nut Zippers, Tom Petty, and Muddy "Mississippi" Waters.

It was this last man, Waters (who's Christian name turned out to be Mckinley Morganfield), was whom my father held in highest regard. He would always turn up Water's songs on the truck radio when they were rarely played by our own local DJ's. I knew by the reverence my father held for this man that he must be something special. He'd retell the tale of when he was in college and went to see one of his last concerts in Lawrence, KS.

It would take me about a decade of constant study of this music, what I came to understand as the blues, to begin to comprehend Water's greatness. He is my favorite bluesman now.

I will never forget the moment I first heard that sound though.

THAT SOUND.

I had really taken an interest in music by about sixth grade. I had exhausted my Beatles cassettes, they were beginning to sound pretty bad and warbly as I had played them, rewound them, fast-forwarded them countless times.

Taking to the radio I had found I really liked the sound of Pink Floyd and loved when "Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2" would come on. I started collecting their CD's, but could only afford maybe one once a month.

I knew my Dad had vinyl records somewhere and my hopes were that there'd be some Floyd albums in that collection.

I finally convinced my father I wanted to get them out and had to promise to take good care of them. We made a late night journey to one of his two rental houses in town and made our way into the attic there. The attic's only contents were an old Pioneer turntable and a cardboard box.

It was at this moment that I learned vinyl records are fucking heavy.

We took the contents to the back of my old clothes closet in the second story of our house where we set up the stereo over my computer that was also set up back there, it was a very large closet. After getting the old LXI stereo and the Pioneer. My father choose The Rolling Stones "Some Girls" album and cranked the stereo on the final track, "Shattered." My father hates playing music loud unless it's on one of his stereos, this is when it's okay to rattle the house down.

I was actually disappointed at first, there ere no Floyd albums... But my father pointed out a few albums that he said he thought I may like, "Zuma" by Neil Young, "Rare Earth Anthology," numerous Steppenwolf, "Ice Pickin'" by Albert Collins, and the last one was "Future Blues."

It was the last one in this list I remember trying first. It had a cover verging on the taboo: Astronauts erecting an American flag, Iwo Jima style, on a barren wastland that one would first take to be the moon... Until you realize that ther is a full moon on the horizon... Yes, a very early enviromental album (I knew even then that this album long preceded the Ozone scare that we were dealing with at my age in the late 1990's).

This was shocking to me being as sheltered as I was: the American flag was upside down.

Fumbling with the 12" record trying to figure out which side was the first side of the album. Lucky I got it right because as I clumsily dropped the needle down I heard that sound and was forever changed.

It was a simple blues walk up, though I didn't know it at the time. A man blared four simple notes into an old microphone plugged into a cranked-up tube amplifier. Though I did not know even these details. But that sound...

I light bulb exploded in my head. I had heard my Dad's cousin Marty talk about this before... Something called an "electric harp." This, this sound... "This is an electric harp" I thought to myself.

I listened intently to the song preceding these notes as an electric country guitar joined in and a man began to sing.

"Sugar bee, sugar bee
Sugar bee, sugar bee
Sugar bee, sugar bee
Sugar bee, sugar bee
Sugar bee, sugar bee
Look what you done to me"

The country guitars join the man and begin to duel and then the sound comes back. A short lead, followed by more lyrics and another lead. You can hear the harp man's distorted inhales as he draws breath to work the harmonica. It is absolutely striking when you hear this for the first time.

The man on the harp was Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson, leading member of the band Canned heat when the album was recorded in 1970.

As I've studied the blues more and more and the men that play it, I've really began to identify with The Blind Owl. His biggest influence was the work of John Lee Hooker, probably the best known of all the North Mississippi Hill Country bluesmen. Wilson's guitar style is the closest to Hooker's I've yet heard. A lot of Blind Owl's personal struggles are ones that I myself have had. I do identify with this man greatly.

I pursued rock and roll music for a time in high school and college, but I discovered Hill Country Blues which truly took me deep into the blues obsession. I found Hooker's music for myself and that in turn brought me back to Canned Heat and back to that same sound. That sound.

I picked up harmonica as my own instrument, now wanting to emulate that sound. Marty told me to get that sound "you have to have a Green Bullet." I now have a Green Bullet, but I'm still looking for that sound, but I've found my own along the way though, and the pursuit has kind of subsided.

But I know what and where it all started.

With that sound.

That sound.

The Old, Weird, America

Some folks say that the Old, Weird, America is a place long time gone. A distant memory that should be cast away in the name of the new and clean.

It is truth that the Old, Weird, America is a dark and dingy place. Many of its inhabitants bordering on the scoundrelous, the kind that will rob you of your watch when you're laying face-down in a ditch after a few too many. Though there are also many here who cast a nearly saintlike glow and will pick you up out of that same ditch and help you home (they may even give you time). There are many more that are just your average folks, the kind that may just pass you by and leave you to your own business. They may pass judgment unto you or they may not and leave that up to your lord. One thing though is for certain, they number exactly 374 in this little town... Or maybe it's more to the tune of 5053: the Census Man was shot at last time he came through, and that was nigh twenty-five years ago and he ain't been back since.

Many of the men belong to fraternal orders, some of the orders are in good standing, some in not-so-good-standing, and a few that we probably shouldn't talk about, well at least not here. Strange rituals though are the order of the day. Really not unlike those you'd find in most church houses as it should be said. Last week a Shaman erected a longhouse on the leeward side of Lester Hill and has only allowed a few chosen few entrance, the mayor's son being among them. Some nights other locals gather at a large bonfire at midnight and their silhouettes can be seen dancing around the flames through the shadows of the trees from across the river.

An early Autumn storm blows the first fallen leaves across the brick main street a few houses up from downtown and you can see some of the folk hustle into The Hole In The Wall featuring a violent neon exclaiming SHLITZ: "THE BEER THAT MADE MILWAUKEE FAMOUS" in the bar's only, grease covered, window. As they scurry in, they form a bottleneck at the door. The small man makes it in last, but you know not to judge: there is important talk that must be had within. This is standard fare in The Old, Weird, America.

A carnival set up their tents last summer in the old brome field south of town, arriving by train pulled by a rusting steam engine. It still sits on the abandoned siding leading into the field. Maybe the locomotive gave up the ghost or perhaps the carnival folk just like the place... Either way, they are still here and they are staying. It's not unusual to see The Illustrated Man or George Washington in blackface walk into the Wolworth's in The Old, Weird, America to buy a new coat. Siamese twins or The Boygirl are a normal sight in the local watering holes.

As twilight descends, you hear a beautiful caterwauling emanating from The Hole In The Wall.

A man sings:
"When I was just a little boy
So my mother told it to me
Way, haul away
Haul away, Joe"

The barroom chorus responds:
"Way, haul away,
The good ship now is rollin' to me
Way, haul away
Haul away, Joe"

The sound is striking as it rolls out of the barroom door, cutting through the autumn air. But what captivates you is the man walking up to the telegraph pole carrying something in each hand.

Stepping into the light of the shaded lamp mounted to the pole with the brim of his fedora shadowing his eyes, he sets down a small amplifier alongside his guitar case. He plugs the amp into an outlet at the bottom of the pole. Out of the case he pulls a battered hollow body guitar. He plugs this ax into his amp switching it from off to on.

As the tubes in the amp warm up and begin to hum through its speaker, you step forward and drop a greenback into his guitar open case.

Just as the courthouse bell strikes nine, the man begins to play. You hear the man bear his soul under the soft glow of the shaded incandescent in The Old, Weird, America.