White Man’s Blues
February 8th, 2010 | 12:00 pm est |
By all accounts, Tom Darby and Jimmie Tarlton were an acrimonious duo, thrown together more by opportunity than any pressing desire to play music together, but in spite of the tension between them (or maybe because of it), the body of work they recorded together for Columbia Records between 1927 and 1933 is as singular and distinctive as any in early country or blues. Both were fine guitar players, with Darby generally handling the lead vocals and Tarlton the harmonies, but the difference maker was Tarlton’s striking slide guitar style. Tarlton played with the guitar in his lap Hawaiian style, and reportedly fretted it with a wrist pin from a car. His slide lines give everything the duo recorded an eerie, exotic presence that, coupled with their impeccable vocals, makes them utterly unique. Darby & Tarlton played rags and waltzes and other popular dance forms of the day, but their bread and butter was always the blues, and when you hear people say that country music started as the white man’s version of the blues, what this duo played underscores that notion. Although Darby & Tarlton are musical footnotes these days, “Birmingham Jail” b/w “Columbus Stockade Blues” was a two-sided hit for the duo 80 years ago, selling some 200,000 copies on 78, an impressive sales figure for the time. Ironically, the last song the duo recorded together was “Let’s Be Friends Again,” when it was doubtful the two ever had any great affection for each other. The music belies the connection between them, though, and if they had little personal affinity for each other, they certainly shared the blues.
A brief sample of Tom Darby and Jimmie Tarlton’s work can be heard on the collection Yonder Come the Blues on this site at http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:hcfyxqy0ldke
The blues died with Muddy Waters and no white man can ever hope to come close to the true black blues sound. If a white man plays blues you gotta change the name to something else! Bloose or something.
Please don’t tell Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, Hubert Sumlin, Charlie Musslewhite, Robben Ford, Johnny Winter, Etta James, Eric Clapton or B.B. King, to name just a few, that the blues are dead. And the lable “Blooze” has already been used for such luminaries as ZZ Top, Foghat, Black Oak Arkansas, Humble Pie, etc. Early examples of white blues can be found in a number of British Invasion bands including Rolling Stones, Animals, Yardbirds, et al., all of which are very true to form and show an excellent knowledge of the range and subtleties of the genre. The original artists, including Muddy Waters, were so impressed by the white bands that they made some life-long friendships with these bands (both John Lee Hooker and Buddy Guy, to name but two, have guested with Rolling Stones on tour). In the US, the major proponent of white blues, early on, was the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, out of Chicago. Read the Allmusic article on the band here (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll) then check out the first three albums by the band. You can them move on to Johnny Winter, Roy Buchanan, John Hammond, Jr., Charlie Musslewhite, and follow the AMG links to other similar artists.
The blues is not dead – it is, rather, alive and very vibrant and is an integral part of today’s music scene.
I got the blues right down to my very soul!