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The Sound of Real
July 6, 2006    File under: America , Information Technology , The South

Yesterday, I picked up the latest Cash CD which I am enjoying, though more than ever I am thinking about the sound of his oldness, which seems more and more important to the experience of Cash in recent years. In the most immediate frame, it's impressive in its expressiveness, not of anything in particular beyond hurt or pain, an audible measure not simply of age but of pathos and thereby of artistry. But, of course, it's also a measure of his venerability, his longevity, even of his particular biographical difficulties, his long abuse of alcohol and drugs and, more recently, the loss of June Carter Cash. And in this disc, the sound is here, the slight tired that has become the timbre of the last few volumes of the American recordings and even the interesting hiccups in the tempos of the songs, Cash's variance with the traditions he continues to engage, something you can hear precisely because so many of the songs are covers.

Like Paul, I'm taken with "God's Gonna Cut You Down," which seems to address the not-too-old performance of it (under the title "Run On For A Long Time") by the Blind Boys of Alabama. In Cash's version, drums and hand-claps help build the country-church feel that's important to the song while an acoustic guitar, played with a slide, connects the performance to the blues tradition; in the Blind Boys' version, an upright bass carried both melody and rhythm under the gospel harmonies that made me forget that even Elvis recorded this tune.

There's a wonderful feeling in the Cash album, all the way through, and it's especially audible in this song when Cash sings about God's calling him by name, by his first name. Against the background of the Cash legend, we are invited to read the song as a miniature narrative of his conversion from his hard-drinking years, a turn back to gospel roots, which is exactly what the song calls for. There's something anamnestic about it. Strongly so.

Powerful as it is in its narrative and in its self-reading, it wouldn't be nearly as affecting, I think, if it weren't so heavily acoustic. Everything here is acoustic, from the percussion to the accompaniment, to the voice. This is, again, part of the second or third coming of Cash, the unadorned, the stripped down, the bare to the barren. But in moments like these when Cash addresses a blues tradition, the acoustic—the aggressively acoustic qualities capture me particularly.

I'm now working on a lecture about the electrification of the blues and the ways in which, historically, acoustic and electric sounds have connoted sincerity (or the lack of it), with deeping interest in the racial complexity of blues diasporas, and my time with this latest Cash record is helping me bring it, somewhat, into focus.

Blues, guitar-based blues, is rooted in the Mississippi Delta. The recordings of Delta musicians in the Delta itself are often referred to as country blues, though this must be a retronym, something applied to the music after it had, in some obvious persons, moved to the city, most notably to Chicago, for what distinguishes country blues from the Chicago-based blues of, say, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf (both of whom recorded some early work in the Delta, is electricity. The tonality is the same, the scales are the same, the rhythm is the same, even the songs are the same, in some cases. Once blues moves to the city, it is louder, and it gains some new timbres—Muddy's guitar, for example, gets a little cleaner in its high-note slide solos, Hubert Sumlin's work on Wolf's records can also organize around various single-note lines rather than voluminous chords that mark the work of someone like Mississippi Fred McDowell—but in many ways, it's the same music. As Muddy Waters once explained, they just plugged in to be heard.

Ironically, however, despite a relatively strong increase in audience through the agency of modern record companies and radio stations and an importantly influential hold on American music in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in some ways the electrification of the blues ensured the gradual silencing of the blues. Electrified and citified, the blues seemed to become more accessible to white listeners and, more importantly, to white musicians, who adopted blues forms, especially blues solo guitar, and by the mid-1960s the most popular blues musicians in the world may have been the Rolling Stones.

To the Stones' credit, they did a lot to recognize the influence and the importance of black blues musicians. As Muddy Waters would say: "Before the Rolling Stones, people didn't know anything about me and didn't want to know anything. I was making records that were called 'race records'. Then the Rolling Stones and other English bands came along, playing this music, and now the kids are buying my records and listening to them."

But at the same time that the rise of blues-inflected British rock was becoming more and more popular and drawing attention to blues music, the interest of many white consumers turned to the country blues, and musicologists and afficianados scoured the country in search of new talents and lost musicians, like Son House, who was "re-discovered" in Rochester, New York, in 1964 (or so), and brought to public attention as a solo acoustic guitar player and singer. More and more, authenticity of black blues music was measured by the lack of electricity. More largely, sincerity itself, in the cultural imagination, seems to have been tied to lack of electricity, as is witnessed in the uproar over Dylan's acoustic set at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 (or in the story of this uproar, which some dismiss as legend).

Though against these developments the perseverence of musicians like Muddy Waters and the emergence of funk and the continued rise of James Brown as a major music figure are all even more miraculous than they seem at first, there's still something about the association of sincerity with the acoustic sound that is especially tragic for the blues musicians, especially since folks like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf had to move north to gain access to electricity, even at a time when the South was extensively wired for electricity. There's something about the situation in the mid-1960s that requires blues music to return to the Delta, to sound poor, even when the increased prosperity of some of the genre's greatest musicians is largely dependent on their move out of that Delta.

Now the Delta is thoroughly electrified, in its music especially, as the work of greats like Junior Kimbrough and R. L. Burnside show, and the electric North Mississippi sound has made bands like The Black Keys possible. Even the White Stripes betray a strong North Mississippi influence as they cover songs like Son House's "Death Letter." And in many ways, this issue of authenticity seems historical rather than contemporary.

But in Cash, it's all renewed. At least for me.

I remember getting the first American Recordings album and thinking, as Cash alternated between songs of devilment and songs of prayer, that in many ways this was an answer to, if not an out-and-out remake of, Son House's Delta Blues and Spirituals. Of course, the rhythm isn't peculiar to blues, and it's even a bit problematic to separate blues from country or folk music fundamentally, especially since the musics were very closely intertwined in the days of the Mississippi Sheiks and Jimmie Rodgers, before "race records" were introduced as market segmenting devices. But Cash, in the studio with Rick Rubin, manages to evoke the intersections of race in American music since the mid-1930s.

That Cash, as a singer and song-writer, shares gospel roots with musicians like the Blind Boys of Alabama, makes this sort of evocation inevitable. That the present offering sounds so wonderful, so energetic, makes me wonder at the status of the racial dimension in this music and at how long it will continue to be a part of the experience of this music. That Cash also sounds tired in places makes me wonder if this will fade, something I both want and do not want.

Is there a peace that won't forget? And if so, what will it sound like? Will it sound real? And can we sing it together?

Posted by Jake Adam York at July 6, 2006 5:08 PM



COMMENTS

Interesting points, Jake, and well said. I've long been a fan of the blues; and for the most part, I've always preferred acoustic blues. One reason, I think, is that I love to play along with the recordings--and for a long time, I couldn't afford an electric guitar and amp.

Now, however, I still find myself drawn to the acoustic blues recordings. I've never thought of "sincerity" as being a reason that I like these recordings. I'm drawn to the elemental nature of these acoustic recordings. There's an earthiness to Leadbelly, a mixing of tones in his guitar and voice. For me, he evokes the deep south in its contradictions and beauty. He himself is a myth--similar to Cash.

I, too, like the way that Cash joins country blues tradition with gospel--though, as you point out, these things aren't easily separated.

For me, it's hard to beat his recording of "Hurt," a song that seems so tired, so old, so worn out.

Those final recordings are a majestic testament to the man's talent and vision.

(I'd be interested in hearing more about your lecture, by the way).

Posted by: Jeff Newberry at July 8, 2006 8:05 AM