KING
GUITAR
– Review by Joe Milazzo for www.allaboutjazz.com
- May 2001.
What
makes a blues performance "authentic"? It's a question loaded with an
excess of assumptions (about ethnicity, about geographic origins, and about the
content of an individual's character), but any answer can only be found in what
transpires between an artist and his or her audience. If the blues is more than
just a form, if it is a living organism capable of crafty adaptation, however,
the ramifications of blues as an expression cannot slip from consideration. So,
call Messer a meta-bluesman if you like, a musician who chooses to make explicit
his own accumulated experiences as a listener - and not just of blues - in his
playing; its no knock. Messer is an incredibly fluent slide guitar-slinger whose
performing persona is rich in emotional idiosyncrasies. On an electric
instrument, he has a hot tone that spatters like a heavy iron pan full of
bubbling fatback. On his un-amplified National Steel and lap instruments, Messer
can produce glissing cries, smear notes and obscure the harmonic resolution of a
phrase or an entire song with tremolo, and produce a ghostly shimmer as he picks
out a line and allows the ring on his finger, suspended over the muted strings
higher up on the fret-board, to waver, metal against metal. Messer also happens
to be an Englishman who has been likened to both Ry Cooder and Van Morrison.
And, flattering as these comparisons must be, they hardly do justice to the
range of styles which sustain his own inventions. Add Bert Jansch, John
Cippolina, Tampa Red, Peter Tosh, Chet Atkins and King Sunny Adé to the list.
KING
GUITAR is an extremely well-programmed and generously filled-out compilation of
tracks drawn from over a decade's worth of independent recordings -- Slide
Dance (1990); Rhythm Oil (1993), Moonbeat (1995) and National
Avenue (1997) -- with some new tracks recorded in 1999 tossed in for good
measure. The most immediately striking of the performances here are the two
featuring quixotic Texas giant Jesse "Guitar" Taylor, "Worried
Life" and a nearly nine minute mining of the rich resources in the
“Cannonball Blues”. Messer effectively defers to Taylor on these tracks, and
the elder statesman's solos are all one has come to expect from this artist; his
solo on "Worried Life" especially moves very far afield from 12-bar,
tonic / sub-dominant / tonic / dominant structures. But it is Messer's
arrangements, which juxtapose elements of reggae, Zydeco, Fela Kuti-ish horn
parts and Chicago blues that are the real stars. On "Lone Wolf Blues",
Messer takes center stage, his almost obsessively distorted (shakes, whoops, but
nothing so obvious as a howl) electric lead laid over dub "riddims"
and piercing Farfisa organ. "Rising Sun Blues" is arranged for just
voice and electric guitar, and it is a tour de force of the best kind. Messer's
chordal work is spine-tingling, and, in his single lines, he worries single
notes until every last bit of nuance is wrung out of them.
Still,
Messer's acoustic work is his most special. He approaches Roy Acuff's
"Steel Guitar Blues" almost from the perspective of the first
bottleneck guitar players like Casey Bill Weldon and Kokomo Arnold, mindful of
the sound of the Hawaiian slack-key masters. The sense of melancholy this brings
to this old showcase piece is both entirely traditional and utterly fresh. The
two takes of the new "Drivin' Wheel Blues" are as different as they
can be, one relaxed and animated by wry humor, the other employing a loping
hip-hop beat that gradually picks up a threatening momentum as the lyrics
obliquely pile up the details of a "low down dirty deal". "Diving
Duck" has strong overtones of old English balladry, and guitarist Ed
Genis’ complex pickings are in a bright major key. But "Moonbeat"
is a classic blues tale of love in vain that evokes Bukka White's "Sky
Songs" in its metaphors; Messer's guitar sounds limpid, cloudy at first,
slowly becoming more and more penetrating, like the chill of the night about
which he's singing.
Hard
as it might be to believe from a blind listening, the basic personnel of
Messer's back-up band remains stable, playing with real fire, taste and
versatility. Messer's lead vocals, full of flattened vowels and plain-spoken
blue notes, sound as if they belong less in the industrial pall of Britain
and more in the hard scrabble of the Appalachians. But the original
lyrics, most of them by Terry Clarke, and important second presence on many of
these performances, sport a visionary, beatnik-like imagery. "King
Guitar" itself is an invoking, calling out a roster of the instrument's
greatest demiurges, but is also contains lines such as "Palm wine and
turpentine - You drink that stuff in four-four time". Occasionally, as on
"Robert Johnson's Wake", the lyrics detract a little from a truly
compelling instrumental performance; this wake ends with a stomping procession
that is part New Orleans second-line jubilation and part tent-revival rapture.
But, whatever the words, Messer accords them the utmost respect, his guitar
responding to their sense, syntax and sound with real sympathy.
All
in all, this music may be too "all over the map" for some tastes,
damned by the chameleon-like testimony to its own eclecticism. Harrowing in the
manner of Otis Rush Messer is not, nor is his rhythm as infectious as, say,
Lonnie Johnson's. In fact, in a few performances, Messer's playing is too
measured to be as exhilarating as it tries to be ("Crow Blues", which
is otherwise lovely). But his is a clear-eyed music honest about both the joys
of living and the beauty to be found in certain kinds of sadness. Vibrant and
imaginative, Messer's playing thrusts deep down to a stratum in the musical
landscape where the roots are all tangled up. Messer cuts through any confusion
without severing any vital connections, and it's a cleaving that, at its best,
feels as real as any conventional catharsis.
Track
Listing: King Guitar / Living
in Rhythm / Lone Wolf Blues / Crow Blues / Step Right Up / Drivin' Wheel Blues
Part One / Worried Life / Steel Guitar Blues / Rollin' ‘n’ Tumblin' / Right
Hand Road / Drivin' Wheel Blues Part Two / Diving Duck / Rising Sun Blues / I
Can't Be Satisfied / Robert Johnson's Wake / Cannonball Blues / Moonbeat
Personnel: Michael Messer - vocals, slide, lap steel and rhythm guitar; Ed Genis - rhythm and lead guitar; Andy Crowdy - bass; Simon Price - drums; Sharon Vanbinsbergen - harmony vocals; Jesse "Guitar" Taylor - guitar; Terry Clarke - backing vocals, rhythm guitar; Slim - accordion; Tim Hill - saxophone; Doug Cox - Dobro; Ron Casat - keyboards; Mike Lent - bass; Phil Wipper - drums; Jeffro Robertson - drums; Mary Genis - bass, harmony vocals; Louie-G - turntables, samples; Dean Roderix - percussion, harmony vocals