T For Texas-With The Legendary Texas Bluesman Henry Thomas In Mind

CD Review   

By Zack James  

Texas Blues, various artists, 4 CD set, 1996 

“I don’t know the difference between Texas blues, Mississippi blues, New Orleans blues and North Carolina blues except I know those mountain bound blues meant that those North Carolina pickers, picked cleaner than the others,” Mac Devitt was telling Seth Garth one night at the Club Nana, at a time when both the club and knowing the different blues traditions back among young city rat aficionado in the early 1960s mattered. A time when seemingly long dead guys, long forgotten too, were coming out of the woodwork, old time blues guys and a few gals, Sippy Wallace comes to mind, from Texas, Mississippi, New Orleans and North Carolina made knowing the difference, hell, when the old bastards got going defending the differences mattered.   

The reason the subject of the different traditions had even come up was that Seth Garth who already had something of reputation for being a folkie, at a time when folkie meant “beatnik” around Riverdale and while most of the corner boys he hung around with could give a rat’s ass about folk music or the difference blues picks he was trying to pick up any “converts” he could. All they gave a rat’s ass about and Seth had been among them then was hard-boiled rock and roll music. One whom he had picked up for the folk portion of his endeavors was Jack Callahan but he was lost on the blues gambit, didn’t have a feel for the sound. And beside Jack was getting “hot” with Kathy Kelly who while she would not have used the term “rat’s ass” didn’t give one which meant that Jack didn’t.

The whole bit about music anyway, as it involved Seth, was that he had dreams, since he couldn’t carry a tune and was bloody murder on any instrument that he played that did not cry “uncle,” of becoming a music critic, or at least give it a swipe on the way to a big time journalist’s career. He really did have an ear for various types of music and more importantly had a sense of where various musical genres were heading, and who would follow the trends. Stuff that certain newspapers with anxious advertisers and maybe small press academic publications would grab with all hands. So he spent lots of time in high school doing research and listening to all kinds of stuff so HE knew the difference between the blues traditions.      

Funny thing about his “conversion” of Mac. The off-the-wall conversion had originally started when they were in the middle of a “clip” up at Slappy’s Record Shop in downtown Riverdale at a time when Seth was in his larcenous heart phase (a phase that really never left him he just had it under control better sometimes more than others). The “clip” of course was the classic corner boy coming of age action that made one a corner boy in the Acre neighborhood of Riverdale, the working poor section. Slappy’s was well-known as the place where teenagers, especially girl teenagers who seem to have had more discretionary funds available, bought their rock and roll 45s and LPs. Slappy’s though was a full service shop and you could get others stuff, even classical music records if you can believe that there. He, Slappy, had small bins of folk and blues stuff which expanded somewhat when those genres started getting a hearing from guys like Seth and some of the college kids who attended Knolls College a few towns over. Seth had grabbed, clip grabbed, a fair share of his folk record collection from those bins (including throwing back a few dogs when they didn’t work out after he played them on the family record player at home).

At the time when Mac expressed interest he was plowing forward on his blues phase after he had heard a guy named Skip James down in Newport at the folk festival there. (The folkies, the serious New York and Harvard Square folkies did not draw as big a distinction as Seth did at the time between say mountain music and blues, country or city-etched it was all roots music and that was the draw.) Now a lot of times Seth would work the clip alone, had it down to a science. But on this one he was looking for Texas blues, guys like Mance Lipscomb, Henry Thomas, Lightnin’ Hopkins so he needed a cover, a guy to help look through the piles. That was the time when Mac asked his naïve if heartfelt question.             

Seth later after grabbing a new Mance Lipscomb and a legendary Tanker Thornton album gave Mac the skinny on the differences. The sound differences which made the various geographical locations have distinct sounds. That North Carolina clean pick was already mentioned but the Texas beat had more Mex influence was, the way Seth explained, a little more heavy-handed by design on the down-beat. Although later Seth would care less about the regional distinctions, would see once these lost treasure guys got “discovered,” got shipped up to places like Newport for the young urban acolytes to sit at the feet of that they would play off of each other. As for Mac he never stayed the course, got wired up with some girl from Mechanicville who was only crazy for Bobby Darrin and so of course that was all that Mac was crazy for. Still Seth was glad to hone his critical skills-and add to his record collection with Mac’s help.