BLUES SESSIONS
(5CD)
REVIEW
If the Coen brothers are looking for a follow-up to their phenomenally
successful film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? then they need look no
further than the story behind Modern Downhome blues field sessions of
the early 1950s. The location would still be the Deep South, and so
would the allusion to Homer's epic, 'The Odyssey'.
A vivid opening snapshot to our new series is given by notewriter Jim
O'Neal, the founding editor of Living Blues magazine: The tale of their
[the Bihari brothers] exploits in the land of cotton has all the elements
of a Dixie docu-drama, complete with an indignant Southern heroine
[Lillian McMurry of Trumpet Records], a double-dealing native talent scout
[Ike Turner], small town sheriffs and police, subterfuge, disguise,
raiders, traitors, spies, and clandestine operations. But no shots were
fired in these skirmishes, and the only casualties were in lost record
sales revenue, broken contracts, violated trusts, and one unfortunate
blues artist's shattered career. The Biharis' battle wagon was a flashy
new Cadillac, their artillery a four-channel Magnecord tape recorder, and
their ammunition reels of magnetic tape and rolls of cash."
Ace Records is packaging these historic - and musically great -
recordings into The Modern Downhome Blues Sessions. For this first volume
"Arkansas and Mississippi, 1951-1952" we are concentrating on the
recordings that Joe Bihari and his young talent scout accomplice Ike
Turner made between November 1951 and January 1952 in North Little Rock,
Arkansas-.-and in Greenville and Canton, Mississippi. The featured artists
are enough to make any self-respecting blues collector salivate with
anticipation: Elmore James, Boyd Gilmore, Drifting Slim, Junior Brooks,
Sunny Blair, Houston Boines, Charley Booker and Ernest Lane. Otis "Red"
Boyd is the odd man out, with a rare example of Mississippi big band music
- it's almost downhome jazz.
Modern Records' partner Joe Bihari had made his first field trip to the
South around September 1951 following the terminal breakdown in relations
with Sam Phillips. This was after Rocket "88" by Jackie Brenston and Ike
Turner ended up on Chess instead of Modern, and became a #1 R&B smash
hit. Until then Phillips had been recording Modern's Memphis-area artists
including B.B. King, Joe Hill Louis and Rosco Gordon. Following the split
with Phillips, the first recording location was the "colored" YMCA in
Memphis. It was here that Joe Bihari hit paydirt with B.B. King's 3
O'Clock Blues, thus encouraging Modern patriarch Jules Bihari to authorise
further excursions into the South. The excitement level was high enough
for the Biharis to launch a new - albeit short-lived - label for these
field recordings, Blues & Rhythm, in February 1952.