Riding With The King-The Music Of B.B. King-And Eric Clapton

CD Review

By Zack James

Riding With The King, B.B. King, Eric Clapton

“You never know where music, the muse of music if that is the right way to say it, if it is not redundant is heading in this strange old world” Seth Garth said to his old friend Bartlett Webber one night when they were discussing various musical trends and commitments over a few drinks at Friday’s in downtown Boston. Seth had just been commenting on the hard fact that the guys and gals back in the 1960s who were holding up the blues traditions of the quintessentially black musical form which had been eclipsed in the 1950s by the strong current of rock and rock of which it was a legitimate forbear were mostly then younger whites. They had gotten their baptisms of fire in one of two ways not mutually exclusive. One, Seth’s way, was through what he called the folk minute of the early 1960s when a lot of young people who were coming of social and political age were tired of the vanilla rock and roll that they were hearing on the radio and were looking for roots music. And one of the keys to understanding roots music was looking southward to the black blues traditions coming out of the plantations and juke joints in the Delta and other places. 

That was not just happenstance since some of the folk aficionados headed southward to “discover” if there were any blues guys and gals left (there were from most famously Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James to Sippie Wallace and a whole lot more). The other later trend, which was actually happening at the same time over in England but did not become known here in the States until  as part of the British invasion of rock groups (the Beatles and Stones mostly) we found out that those groups were being spoon-fed (read: covering) the seemingly passe blues greats of the 1950s like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. They worshiped at the feet of the old bluesmen including a trip by the Stones to the Mecca, Chicago. Thus that “worship at the feet” was no mere expression since as august a group as the Rolling Stones made their way to Chicago, made their way to legendary blues label Chess Records, made their way to Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.  

Seth went on, “You know with very few exceptions, maybe in the old days guys like Taj Majal and more recently Keb ‘Mo young blacks were running away from the “blues is dues” contributions of their forbears, except the hip-hop artists who were savoring those blues as backdrop to their new language experiences.” Bart nodded his head not so much because he was as knowledgeable as Seth about musical trends, he wasn’t, but because ever since Seth had turned him on to various non-rock and roll forms of music such as these blues and folk music scenes when they were searching for something in high school he had deferred to him on such subjects.         

That deference to Seth had also not been happenstance since for early in his journalistic career starting with the American Folk Gazette when he was still in college he had been a music critic most frequently and profitably before it folded long ago when the ebb tide of the 1960s faded for the prestigious The Eye. Moreover although Bart was a true aficionado Seth would be the one to lead the way forward musically ever since the old days back in Riverdale when Seth had been the guy who turned the crowd they hung around with on to that folk music that was coming over the horizon. He would take the lead here as well ever since both men had attended a concert at the Garden by Big Bill Bloom, the legendary folksinger from the 1960s. Both men had agreed to walk out of the performance before the encore as a protest to the hard fact that Big Bill could no longer sing, was practically talking the lyrics through. That experience got Seth onto the trail of an idea. He wanted to check out all the singers still standing from back in the day who were still performing and rate them on the question of whether they still had “it.”  As it turned out some did like David Bromberg and his band who burned up the joint one night in downtown Boston. The late Etta James and Utah Phillips didn’t, didn’t have it. And so the quest.       

That quest was now centered more particularly on the fading fast few blues masters still around. That is where Seth began to see that break in the black blues tradition as two generations or more removed from Southern country life or hard inner city industrial madness which had brought a couple of generations north in search of a better life and the music needed to pick up as well bringing forth the whole electric blues scene that hummed cities like Chicago and Detroit in the early 1950s. That brought them to this-B.B. King and Eric Clapton, one of those British invasion guys from back in the 1960s were going to perform together at the Garden in a week or so. [This concert a couple of years before B.B passed in 2015] .

At the concert Seth and Bart had been apprehensive when they saw ancient B.B. and his latest version of Lucille being escorted to a seat on center stage with Eric Clapton to the side. Not to worry though the work they did was a great success. Seth mentioned to Bart though that he was not sure where the new generation would get their blues from and hoped they would never go away just like rock and roll once guys like Eric passed away. This CD was their work for future generation to feast on okay.