Blues mandolin is not a misprint. The mandolin is mainly associated with bluegrass music thanks to the great Bill Monroe and others, but even before there was bluegrass there were blues artists who played the instrument and made it known far and wide. In this article, I would like to shed a brief light on the mandolin as it relates to the blues.
I had been a musician for about fifteen years and was getting into the blues when I met a guitarist in Milwaukee named Peter Roller. He told me that in his college years in Indianapolis, he became the guitarist for a blues artist named James ‘Yank’ Rachell. Having never heard of Yank, Peter played some of his music for me and it was mesmerizing. The tonal register of the mandolin gave the blues a more sophisticated but also more lonesome sound, especially on slower numbers. I had never thought of the mandolin being an instrument that leant itself to the blues, but here it was right in front of me. After listening to everything I could find with a mandolin on it I acquired one and started teaching myself songs. Now, after years of digging, listening, and playing I know a bit more about this little instrument and its evolution in the blues.
The mandolin comes from Italy in the 18th century. It has eight strings which are tuned in four sets of doubles and it has the same note tuning as a violin (aka fiddle). The early part of the last century saw African Americans forming string bands and jug bands to travel across the South performing at parties, medicine shows, and backyard suppers. The mandolin’s crisp, bright sound went well with guitar, piano, jug and washboard and could really cut through the mix when played fast with a pick called a tremolo. Some of these groups were recorded and became famous. The Mississippi Sheiks, Cannon’s Jug Stompers, and the Memphis Jug Band were quite popular and wrote songs that are still performed today. ‘Sittin’ on top of the World’ by the Sheiks and ‘Walk Right In” by the Stompers were songs used some sixty years later in television commercials and are still covered by countless bands today.
By the late 1920s, 78rpm records had been around for almost a decade and many blues artists were being recorded for the first time. One blues musician was Yank Rachell, who in 1929 recorded a version of ‘Diving Duck Blues’ with himself on mandolin, his friend Sleepy John Estes on guitar, accompanied by piano. The song has one of the most iconic lines, “If the river was whiskey and I was a divin’ duck, I would dive to the bottom and never would come up.”. This was Yank’s first time on record and it is a classic. It was also the first time that the mandolin was featured as a blues lead instrument, not just accompaniment. The mandolin really sings in a small group setting as opposed to a larger string band.
That same year another blues mandolinist and singer by the name of Kansas Joe McCoy pops up on a recording with his wife, the great Memphis Minnie. She can play guitar as well as anyone, male or female, and had McCoy to back her on mandolin and vocals. It adds a melodic touch to her upbeat rhythm and storied songs. We all know the Led Zeppelin version, but the original ‘When the Levee Breaks” is a song of Minnie’s from 1929 with McCoy singing and playing mandolin to accompany her guitar groove.
In the 1940s, after many African Americans had moved North to escape the oppressive, segregated South, a man in Chicago named Johnny Young sang and played both guitar and mandolin. He later played with Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, Big Walter Horton and many others, frequently playing on Maxwell Street in Chicago. By this time mandolins could be electrified and plugged into amplifiers, giving it greater volume and impact. One could call Johnny’s style urban blues mandolin. It sounds more current and electrifying, literally. Keeping up with the times, the older Yank Rachell joined in and started playing electric mandolin too.
We all know how important the role of the guitar, harmonica and piano are to blues music, but underneath that veil lies a second line of instruments that have a unique sound but are not as well known. The mandolin is one of them and well worth a listen.
Today, with the help of the internet and YouTube, we are now able to see many musicians of old do their thing along with current artists who use the mandolin to express the blues. Check out the older artists I’ve mentioned like Johnny Young and Yank Rachell, along with some current artists like Ry Cooder, Steve James, Rich DelGrosso, and Chicago’s Billy Flynn and Gerry Hundt. They are all keeping the blues alive, with a bit of mandolin mixed in for some extra spice.
Комментарии