Eighty Years Ago Today

Robert Johnson R.I.P

Taking The Leeds

This is becoming a long term relationship. Once a week I commute between Leeds and Manchester; forwards and backwards; linear and cyclical.

As I approached the train, waiting on the platform in Manchester Victoria, the lines from Robert Johnson’s Love In Vain came to mind:

When the train, it left the station, with two lights on behind/When the train, it left the station, with two lights on behind/Well, the blue light was my blues, and the red light was my mind/All my love’s in vain

Maybe distance gives you a penchant for the blues. The separation from all that is familiar.

All I need to pass the time on these journeys are two windows: one to the outside world racing to keep up beyond the glass, and one to an inside world constructed within a book cover.

 I had picked up a copy of The King In Yellow earlier for a couple of quid.

The first four stories in this collection are linked by mention of The King in Yellow, a forbidden play which induces despair or madness in those who read it. 

 It was not what I was expecting, though. This is a book of two halves-the first being stories of a weird and macabre type that gradually fade away during the remaining stories which are of a romantic fiction style. 

My preferences are those from the first half. I guess you have an idea by now that I’m that kind of guy. The Repairer Of Reputations, The Mask, In The Court Of The Dragon, The Yellow Sign, and my favourite The Demoiselle d’Ys. These were up there with M.R James and my favourite Le Fanu.

There was a woman in the seat opposite me. I caught her glancing at the cover of my book, much in the manner that I often do. Whenever I see someone reading I am filled with a curiosity about the book that is holding their attention. 

Due to the theme connecting these tales, I thought it could be appropriate to warn her:

“Beware the King In Yellow!”

“Beware the infernal influence of books!”

But of course I didn’t. I imagine she may have sounded the alarm for an emergency stop, and Lancashire to Yorkshire is an awful long way to walk.

Later, my business in Leeds done, I caught a return train home to Manchester. Last week I returned under beautiful blue skies as captured below, but this time it was gloomy and raining, my journey moving through a deepening Autumn.

And yes, I loved it.

Back in my home city I caught a coffee and finished my book, shaking off a travel induced lethargy, before emerging into a darkened metropolis. All around familiar landmarks, monoliths against the sky, were lit up in a futile attempt to hold back the night: blues; yellows; reds.

The blue lights were my blues. The red lights were my mind. Is my love for Manchester in vain?

Birthday Blues

The great Son House was born 114 years ago today. You should see my wife’s face when I put Death Letter on. She starts writing one to me.

The Romancing Of Lorenzo? Perhaps Not.

I have just finished this book about the blues musician Skip James:

Not afraid to look at the darker side of James’ character: that of gambler, bootlegger, pimp and (alleged) murderer, it sheds some light (at least the amount that James allowed himself to divulge to the author) on the life of this blues player, and on blues music in general.

Some readers have commented on the book’s descent into bitterness about James’ (and some of the other old bluesmen’s) declining powers over time, a decline which is understandable given the circumstances of their lives and breaks from performing and practising music which lasted for decades.

I do like Skip James the artist, though I’m not sure if I would have liked Skip James the man.

Still.

Towards the end of the book, there is a passage that made me laugh, about the time when James finished recording Lorenzo Blues in honour of his wife, Lorenzo. The producer Maynard Solomon beamed: “Mrs James, you’ve just been immortalized.” 

The passage read:

Lorenzo Blues, his most recent composition, was probably the poorest piece of doggerel James ever invented, and Lorenzo herself was far from flattered by her husband’s mock description of her: “She stumbles when she talks, she wobbles when she walks . . . She’s shaped like a Coca Cola bottle . . . “

How is that for a romantic ode?

In your face, Lord Byron.

As My Poetry Book Approaches

The publication of the chapbook of my poetry, by Nordland Publishing, is getting closer, I’m excited to say. I think we may be looking at late August or September. As soon as I know-you’ll know!

It will be titled Heading North. 

Songs of the North is to be a series of books by different poets. Mine is slated to be the second book in the series.

I’ve been staying up late, listening to blues, and writing a few new poems for late inclusion in the collection before the cut-off date. Last night I wrote Canticle and Old Town. They may need a couple of tweaks, but they are more or less completed.

You guys may remember my post about the trials and tribulations I suffered in taking an author head shot? Well Nordland have now posted my author profile on their website:

Andrew James Murray is from the United Kingdom, specifically Manchester. He came to our attention with the first of the Northlore Series – Folklore. His story, Myling, grabbed us and we jokingly asked him when he would have a novel finished. He sent us a chapbook instead. Well, not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, we read it, loved it, and plan to publish it as part of Songs of the North.

Below is a link to take you to the fuller biography on their page, but beware: my ugly mug is there, in black and white to lessen the shock, although the lack of colour may creep you out even more.

http://www.nordlandpublishing.com/authors/andrew-james-murray/

Check out some of the other stuff going on at Nordland while you are there. Have a great weekend.

R.I.P BB King

R.I.P the King Of the Blues, aged 89.

That Phantom Robert Johnson

He is like a shadow; like a phantom. Obscured by the mists of time and legend. Death has removed from us all means of finding someone today who could contribute some colour to our drab and faded depictions.

The itinerant musician. The walking bluesman. Travelling along the Delta trails, jumping freight trains, instrument of choice strapped to his back. Playing his music then moving on. For so long, we saw not his face, apart from the features of imagination. We glimpsed only his outline. His silhouette.

An unsubstantial suggestion of the man.

There are moments when desperate afficianados would get witnesses, while they still breathed, to give ageing descriptions to composite artists to try and bring him back into the light. To give him an identity and a face beyond the anonymity of the voice alone.

Is the voice not enough? The music? To convince us of one who once was?

Can we not envisage that he was a man like us, who lived in context and not a vacuum?

All bones and little meat. We try to reanimate him with stories, both credible and fantastical.

The musicians in the crowded juke joint, taking a rest from the sweat-filled hovel. Outside, having a smoke in the balmy, southern air. Somebody comes out, interrupting their brief respite, imploring them to come back in to take the guitar off the young guy whose incompetence is driving everybody mad.

And such a racket you never heard!

It is the same youth who habitually turns up to listen to them play, to watch them play. Just sits there observing their hands.

Months go by. Another night. Once again laying down the music, the men drinking, the women gyrating, and in comes the lad. Young Robert Johnson. Only this time he is armed with his own guitar, much to the merriment and mirth of those present. But now he plays. How he plays. His new found ability is greeted with astonishment, and when he sings, Come On In My Kitchen, men and women are moved to tears, and the way is now set for tales to be spun and a legend to run and run until it outstrips fact and the life of its subject.

The Faustian pact; the aspiring musician; the crossroads; midnight.

The man in the dark suit (we all know who he is), takes the guitar, tunes it, plays a few melodies, hands it back with a pleasant damning of the soul.

This must be so. It explains everything.

Long after his death, the stories continue to be told, encouraged by some of Johnson’s cut records: Me And The Devil Blues; Crossroads; Preaching Blues (Up Jumped The Devil), Hellhound On My Trail. His life, his musicianship, all will be forever swept up in a cloud of incredulous tales and romantic mystery.

They dovetail nicely with some of the few anecdotes we have.

The women:many women. They wake in the middle of the night to find their errant lover sitting by the window, soundlessly fingering guitar chords by moonlight. On realising that they are awake he immediately ceases.

When playing in public he shields his hands as he makes the chords, turning his back if he feels a fellow musician’s eyes upon him. There is a secrecy about his craft.

He left us a scant selection of his repertoire-recordings made in ’36 and ’37. Forty two recordings of just twenty nine songs. We still can’t see his hands.

The music is the only thing we can be sure of. His authenticism exists only in that inflected voice, that masterful playing. Even his date of birth is questioned, as we try to fix him rigidly in time and place.

Then comes the moment when surely all will be revealed. An emissary is sent into the deep South to locate him, sent by someone who has listened to those obscure recordings, and wants him to headline a concert at Carnegie Hall, no less.

Robert Johnson-it is time to emerge from the shadows and take your rightful place in front of an appreciative world.

Except, it is too late. All that is located are conflicting tales of the singer’s death shortly before. Instead of being recognised and celebrated, he is memoralised at the concert, two of his recorded songs played to the audience, still blissfully unaware of the enormity of their loss. Unaware of a death that goes by many stories, but falls under one verdict:murder.

We imagine him in another joint, playing for the people, playing to the women. He is handed whisky, laced with poison by a jealous husband, and begins to fall ill. The crowd don’t believe him, and he plays on, as they brush aside his protestations that he is too sick. He plays on, dying. Those secret chords, that haunting voice. One last time. But then he is too ill to continue, and a familiar, dark suited figure is now among the audience.

Johnson takes three days to die. Crawling on his hands and knees and barking like a dog. Even his final moments have an unsubstantiated feel about them. Still shrouded in mystery, there are three graves that lay claim to him.

The guitar has now fallen ever silent, but the stories take up speed.

His stature grows, his reputation grows, the adulation grows. Yet still we know little about him. Just tall stories spun by those thrust into the limelight, clutching at memories now decades old, embellished to please the questioner.

Then, in 1968, for the first time, evidence is found. A birth certificate, the first documentation, makes him real. He is a flesh and blood figure after all. Born of a woman and having walked this earth. He is not a construct of imagination and myth.

Again, in 1973: a death certificate. But, maddeningly, perversely, a cause of death isn’t given.

But then, in that same year, the Holy Grail of blues folklore is found. At the end of an arduous quest, two photographs are discovered, thirty five long years after his death. They aren’t widely published until the late 80’s, and when they are, our phantom finally has a face. He emerges from the cloaking veil of superstition and anonymity, bowing shyly before his adoring public.

Robert Johnson, we presume?

We stare and stare. Looking for signs. Doubting our eyes. He isn’t a vampire, or a ghost, whose likeness cannot be captured by a lens. He is a man. He is us.

Wearing a pin striped suit that belonged to a nephew who had joined the military. Nothing sinister or devilish here.

There is a later find, only authenticated in 2011, of Johnson with fellow bluesman Johnny Shines. In the way of all things connected to him, some question the identification while others seize it possessively.

What do you think?

Though now our hero has a face, much remains elusive, and will always do so. When we look back over the many years, and try to make sense of his story, ordering it in a way that satisfies, it is like trying to lay a glove on a phantom.

History only gives up so much.

For those of you who appreciate irony, consider this: the most famous of all the bluesmen is the one that we know the least about. What is the cause, and what the effect?

You may bury my body down by the highway side

So my old evil spirit, can catch a Greyhound bus and ride.

R.I.P Ray Manzarek

I was just about to retire to bed tonight when I heard of the passing of Ray Manzarek, the great keyboardist with The Doors and the main perpetuator of the Morrison-as-shaman myth.

The group formed after a chance encounter between Ray and Jim on Venice beach. History hinges on such casual, random moments.

I sometimes forget that all those from that psychedelic, hippy generation are now pensioners. The ones that got this far anyway.

Turning now to the great music that you left us.

R.I.P Ray.

From an old Doors fan- give my regards to Mr Mojo Risin’.