A brilliant update of rural blues and ragtime, earthy and authentic and, at times, spellbinding.
While AUK traditionally shies away from the modern blues idiom we are honour bound to recognise the role that traditional blues songs played in the melting pot of American music in the first half of the 20th Century with the acoustic blues of the early pioneers and then to the later electrification which saw performers like Muddy Waters whelp English upstarts such as The Rolling Stones.
Jerron Paxton, a Los Angeles artist, takes his inspiration from the early blues singers. Playing guitar, banjo, piano, and violin, he is steeped in the sounds of the 1920s and ’30s, drawing comparisons to blues legends like Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Memphis Slim and Mississippi John Hurt. Can a modern man sing the rural blues? Well, as Paxton says in the liner notes, “I was born on the border between Watts and South Central Los Angeles. My culture is a result of the Great Migration like most people in our area. Like many of them we came from the Black Belt (Louisiana and Arkansas specifically) and brought our music, food, and dance with us. The music I play is the folk music of this culture”.
And play it he does. On this collection of original songs, all that is missing is the hiss and dropouts of vintage recordings; he inhabits this old time vibe with a sense of brilliance. It’s apparent from the opening lines of the title track (which opens the album) that Paxton is drinking from the same well as his predecessors. It’s a piedmont finger picking styled song about a relationship gone wrong and had it been plucked from a long lost Lightnin’ Hopkins’ album you wouldn’t be surprised. Most of the album is guitar and banjo based but when Paxton switches to piano as on ‘Oxtail Blues’ he brings the likes of Memphis Slim back to life.
On ‘Little Zydeco’, a medley of sorts, Paxton recalls tunes from his childhood in Louisiana, rural tunes such as ‘Turkey in the Straw’ along with popular ditties by Steven Foster. He closes the medley with what he calls a shave and the haircut lick nabbed from a tune called ‘The Chicken Reel’. Listening to this reminded this reviewer of The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s instrumentals which featured on their 1968 album, “Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy”. This in turn recalled the likes of Ry Cooder, Taj Mahal and Stefan Grossman, artists who were investigating a similar field back in the 70s. On this album, Paxton eclipses their worthy efforts. Those more schooled in the rural blues might be able to mention others as worthy as Paxton but for this reviewer he is just about the bee’s knees. He’s on his lonesome own on ‘Out In This World’, ‘So Much Weed’ is in the grand tradition of Reefer songs although it carries a more modern health message and ‘Tombstone Disposition’ is suffused with dread and despair. An excellent album.
