Locale: Newport, R.I.

By the 1960s, Chicago blues had peaked and a resurgence of acoustic roots music was in full swing throughout America’s college campuses and coffeehouses. At the Newport Folk Festival, older blues artists returned to the stage after being re-discovered by amateur musicologists who had scoured the South in search of their heroes.

Dick Waterman checks in with comments on the rebirth of many of the great artists during this time. Program interviewees include Brownie McGhee, Maria Muldaur, and many others who enjoyed the folk-blues boom first-hand.

The legendary John Hammond performs.

---

Read transcript of this episode (PDF):

When people talk about the crossroads and the blues, they usually mean the intersection of highways 61 and 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi where Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil for supernatural guitar playing skills. Episode 4 can set you straight on that whole story. Episode 7 brings us to what I think is a far weirder intersection: White college kids went down to the crossroads and found a generation of blues men who’d risen from the dead.

Until their “rediscovery” in the mid sixties, many of the blues greats of the 1920s and 1930s had been lost to history. Many that were still alive had stopped performing. A few had even been reported as dead in the liner notes of reissues of their old 78s. What’s it like to flip an album jacket open and read your own obituary?

There were all sorts of strange convergences in this episode. Bonnie Raitt tells a story about Mississippi Fred McDowell playing for a group of enthralled female college students. Another story that didn’t make it into the episode included Bill Monroe, the father of Bluegrass, sitting on the steps of a college dorm talking with Muddy Waters for hours. There was also a great clip we didn’t use about Howlin’ Wolf holding forth on agricultural techniques with some Harvard undergrads at a coffee shop in Cambridge.

My favorite part of the episode is the story of Mississippi John Hurt’s “rediscovery’ in Avalon, Mississippi. His “Avalon Blues” was a map straight to where he had been living ever since he recorded it in 1928. Somebody just needed to look.

Matt Bauer
Producer
Ben Manilla Productions

Citations:

Lightnin' Hopkins, Brownie McGhee, Sonny Terry, and Big Joe Williams, "Ain't Nothin' Like Whiskey", Rediscovered Blues (Capitol 724382937623), ©1995 Capitol Records

Lightnin' Hopkins, "Back Door Friend", Blue Lightnin' (Jewel Records 5000), ©1995 Jewel Records | Buy »

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, "Blues with a Feeling", The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (Elektra/Asylum 7294-2), ©1987 Elektra/Asylum | Buy »

Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, "Brownie's Guitar Blues", Rediscovered Blues (Capitol 724382937623), ©1995 Capitol Records

Mississippi John Hurt, "Candy Man", Newport Folk Festival: Best of the Blues 1959-1968 (Vanguard 193/95-2), ©2001 Vanguard Records | Buy »

Son House, "Death Letter Blues", Newport Folk Festival: Best of the Blues 1959-1968 (Vanguard 193/95-2), ©2001 Vanguard Records | Buy »

Skip James, "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues", Newport Folk Festival: Best of the Blues 1959-1968 (Vanguard 193/95-2), ©2001 Vanguard Records | Buy »

Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, "Key to the Highway", Rediscovered Blues (Capitol 724382937623), ©1995 Capitol Records

John Hammond, "Phonograph Blues", Recorded Exclusively for The Blues, ©2003 Experience Music Project and Ben Manilla Productions

Lightnin' Hopkins, "Shake That Thing", Newport Folk Festival: Best of the Blues 1959-1968 (Vanguard 193/95-2), ©2001 Vanguard Records | Buy »

Mississippi Fred McDowell, "Write Me a Few Lines", You Gotta Move (Arhoolie 304), ©1989 Arhoolie Records | Buy »

Credits