11 Mar 2018

New Horizons: White Women Sing the Blues

From New Horizons, 5:00 pm on 11 March 2018

Prompted by a new album by Idaho singer Eilen Jewell, William Dart listens to a number of white women singing the blues.

Eilen Jewell - Down Hearted Blues, cover art

Eilen Jewell - Down Hearted Blues, cover art Photo: Signature Sounds Recordings

The programme is not exclusively white, nor feminine.

Click on the link above to listen to the complete episode including some full tracks that were snipped off for the radio edit.

Here are some of the tracks featured...

1. Muddy Waters, feat Mick Jagger - 'Champagne and Reefer'

Of course, people other than white women sing the blues too. Here's a couple of guys who seem to know what they're doing.

2. Dinah Shore - 'Dinah's Blues'

Dinah Shore may have hailed from Tennessee, but her Russian-Jewish stock placed her in another world from the likes of Sleepy John Estes, Furry Lewis and Memphis Minnie.

Yet one of her breaks back in 1940 had her appearing on NBC’s tongue-in-cheek variety show, The Chamber Music Society of Basin Street, backed up by Dr Henry Levine and his Barefooted Dixieland Philharmonic. Tagging both the radio station and RCA Victor records, Leonard Feather’s lyrics for Dinah’s Blues have Shore offering her own personal spin on a well-known blues tune.

3. Claire Austin - 'See See Rider'

If you’re after the emotional engagement usually associated with the blues, look no further than Claire Austin from Washington State, who made just a handful of extraordinary recordings in the mid-fifties.

4. B.B. King, feat Bonnie Raitt - 'Baby I Love You'

When the 72-year-old bluesman B.B. King called on 17 musicians to join him in his 1997 Deuces Wild album, Bonnie Raitt was there, alongside the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and, less expectedly, Dionne Warwick. King and Raitt didn’t quite sing the blues, but both picked up guitars to lay a bluesy groove on this 1967 Ronnie Shannon song, written for the Aretha Franklin.

5. Eilen Jewell - 'Queen of the Minor Key'

Idaho singer Eilen Jewell's music is difficult to file into any readymade style box. When the tempo takes off and the music swings, you can hear the singer’s adoration of Billie Holiday. Elsewhere, she seems more like Iris De Ment without the twang, a Southern singer-songwriter with Nashville on her mind.

The title song from her 2011 album Queen of the Minor Key shows just how central guitarist Jerry Miller and husband drummer Jason Beek are to her sound. Miller sets off with the shakiest major/minor chord that you’ll ever hear, while Jewell prepares her tale of gypsy doom.

Here's a live performance...

6. Eilen Jewell - 'It's Your Voodoo Working'

Eilen Jewell has the same team around her for her latest release, an excursion into Blues country, titled Down Hearted Blues. She picks up classics from the likes of Willie Dixon, Alberta Hunter and Memphis Minnie, opening her set with a Charles Sheffield R&B one-shot of the early sixties. It’s a dark and swampy delight.

7. Alberta Hunter - 'Downhearted Blues'

The title track on Eilen Jewell's Down Hearted Blues is by Alberta Hunter.

Ok, so sometimes you just need to get back to the original...

Music Details

'Song title' (Composer) – Performers
Album title
(Label)

'Can Blue Men Sing the Whites' (Innes/Stanshall) – Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
Cornology
(EMI)

'Champagne and Reefer' (Waters) – Muddy Waters feat. Mick Jagger
Checkerboard Lounge: Live Chicago 1981
(Eagle Vision)

'Dinah’s Blues' (Feather) – Dinah Shore
Essential Hits
(RCA Victor)

'See See Rider' (Rainey/Arrant) – Claire Austin
When Your Lover Has Gone
(OJC)

'Baby I Love You' (Shannon) – BB King feat. Bonnie Raitt
Deuces Wild
(MCA)

'You Can’t Take My Song Away' (Jewell) – Eilen Jewell
Boundary Country
(Eilen Jewell)

'Queen of the Minor Key' (Jewell) – Eilen Jewell
Queen of the Minor Key
(Signature Sounds)

'It’s Your Voodoo Working' (Sheffield) – Eilen Jewell
Down Hearted Blues
(Signature Sounds)

'Nothing in Rambling' (Lawlers) – Eilen Jewell
Down Hearted Blues
(Signature Sounds)

'Down Hearted Blues' (Hunter) – Alberta Hunter
Remember My Name, Original Soundtrack
(Columbia)

 

Get the RNZ app

for easy access to all your favourite programmes