Birth of the Blues: Mississippi Fred McDowell

Despite the double negative, that quote sums up Fred McDowell's entire thought process regarding 'updating' his sound when he was recording his raw, gritty Delta blues in the 60's. McDowell was one of the last of the true Delta blues men to be 'discovered' by the folk/blues revival in the late 50's and early 60's. Despite the promise that he could reach a wider audience if he were to 'rock up' his sound, McDowell declined, refusing to stray from the true blues sound he had been playing since he was a teenager.

McDowell was born on January 12, 1904 or so (as record keeping was spotty at best in rural areas at that time) near Rossville, Tennessee to his parents, Jimmy McDowell and Ida Cureay, both farmers. Orphaned early in life, McDowell was raised by an older, married sister in Mississippi. According to an article in Frets Magazine written by McDowell's friend and frequent recording partner, Tom Pomposello, McDowell said 'When I was a boy, the first blues record I ever heard was Blind Lemon Jefferson singing "Black Snake Moan". "O-oh ain't got not momma now". Man, I tell you, I thought that was the prettiest thing I'd ever heard'. And from that, McDowell embarked on learning and mastering the bottleneck guitar.

McDowell said that the first slide guitarist he had ever seen was his uncle, Gene Shields, and although Shields style was a bit unorthodox in that he fashioned his slides from filing down a beef bone from a steak until it was smooth and slid easily over his little finger. McDowell tried the same as a young player, switching from the bone to a knife blade until coming to realization that he would have to switch again to a glass slide to get the sort of volume and clarity he wanted. He fashioned an inch long slide from the neck of a Gordon's gin bottle.

" I was just a young man when I started playing guitar. In my teens, I was. I used to go to dances. I used to sing to the music whilst others was playing. When they'd quit, I'd always grab the guitar, go to doing something with it. I was watching them pretty close to see what they were doing. My older sister-- I nearly forgot-- played a little guitar, but she didn't teach me anything … When I was learning, when I was young, I was playing other people's guitars..."

The young McDowell spent a great deal of time with his uncle, who was playing in a trio with a harmonica player by the name of Cal Payne. According to McDowell, he tried to learn to play from Payne's son Raymond who was a really talented guitarist but found it near impossible. "If you would walk into the room he'd put the guitar down so you couldn't see what he was doing. Then he'd make some sort of excuse like 'I'm tired now' or 'My fingers hurt'", in an effort to keep McDowell from learning anything from him. Others have speculated that this may have been the reason that McDowell was always so open about his own guitar playing and style. "Other musicians may try to lose you when they play with you, to make themselves look better than you," he'd often say, "but they don't know how bad it makes them look".

By 1926 McDowell returned Memphis to look for work, doing everything from stacking sacks of yellow corn, picking cotton, building railroad freight cars and general labor. He was never far from music though, listening intently to Blind Lemon Jefferson and Charlie Patton records. While at a work camp around Cleveland, Mississippi, he went to a juke joint to see Patton, Sid Hemphill and Eli 'Booster' Green. The influence on McDowell was profound. McDowell practiced as much as he could which wasn't as often as he may have wished considering that he didn't own his own guitar until 1941 when he received one as a gift from a friend.

According to McDowell, the first song that he learned was "Big Fat Mama (With the Meat Shakin ' On Your Bones)" by Tommy Johnson. McDowell told Pomposello, "I learned it on one string, then two, note by note. Man, I worried that first string to death trying to learn that song". But it was in Mississippi that McDowell began to refine his sound, incorporating Patton's sound along with countless other bluesmen of the Delta. It was also where he earned his nickname.

In the 40's and 50's, McDowell played regularly in churches, fish fries, picnics, parties and for tips on the streets around Como but scratched out his meager living as a farmer and never really considered himself a true musician. But things changed drastically in 1959 when folklorist Alan Lomax was touring the South recording blues, gospel and American roots music that had not yet been documented. He became the first to catch McDowell on tape. A few of the tracks made it onto an Atlantic records disc of 'native' blues and quickly McDowell was being heralded as a new 'discovery' in blues and roots music. McDowell, he found himself being sought out continually for festivals and concerts on the folk and blues circuit, including the Newport Folk Festival. Fans were stunned by his pure country bottle neck guitar and his raw vocals.

In 1964, when Arhoolie Records President Chris Strachwitz heard the Atlantic disc, he immediately set out for Como, Mississippi to seek out McDowell. The two struck up a strong friendship and Strachwitz recorded McDowell extensively. The Arhoolie releases propelled McDowell into stardom in Europe, launching him on several tours.

McDowell became a bridge between the original blues masters like Patton, Robert Johnson, Son House and Big Joe Williams and the rock and roll crowd, passing along the Delta blues to the next generation. The Rolling Stones were so impressed with McDowell's song "You Gotta Move", they recorded a version of their own for their Sticky Fingers disc. When McDowell received his first royalty check from the Stones version of the song, McDowell remarked that it was the most money he had ever seen.

Although he had been an acoustic blues guitarist throughout the majority of his life, once when McDowell went to England he recorded an album using an electric guitar. Reaction, as one might expect, was somewhat mixed by blues purists, but McDowell was so enamored with playing bottleneck on an electric, he never returned to the acoustic guitar. Although his recording career started late, at the age of 55, McDowell's legacy continues on.

Blues guitarist Mike Russo cites McDowell as a major influence, singer Phoebe Snow contends that she learned her entire approach to music from McDowell but Bonnie Raitt is the one the one artist who practically drips with the same passion and pure blues spirit of Mississippi Fred McDowell. Fred and Bonnie were very close, meeting her as a 19 year old neophyte blues guitarist through her relationship with blues photographer and eventual manager and handler of blues artists, Dick Waterman. The three became close friends and travelled together for several years with McDowell opening several of Raitt's shows and she recorded several of McDowells songs.

McDowell continued to tour and record even after he was diagnosed with cancer until his death on July 3rd, 1972.

Waterman relayed the story of breaking the news of McDowell's death to Bonnie in his book 'Between Mid-Night And Day'. 'Bonnie was in Woodstock making her second album. I called the studio and spoke to Michael Cuscuna who was producing the record. I told him that was important to inform her of Fred's death. Michael replied that all of the recording had been done and they were in the crucial mixing stage. Any distraction would delay the album. I let him know that he was running the risk of someone walking into the studio and casually mentioning that Fred McDowell had died. Michael had to take Bonnie aside and break the news to her.

"Later, I heard that she went into the cabin where she was living and stayed inside all day and all the following night. She emerged the next morning and told Michael that she was ready to resume work". That album, Give It Up, is regarded by many as her best work.

'It was dedicated to Mississippi Fred McDowell.'

Mississippi Fred McDowell is hardly a name that many blues fans will rattle off when speaking of influential artists but if you give him a listen, you will find it near impossible to deny that he was indeed a master of the country blues and slide guitar. Fred once told an interviewer something that in my mind sums up the blues perfectly. "When you hear me play, if you listen real close, you'll hear the guitar say the same thing I'm saying, too."

That seems to just about say it all.