Or the Harry Oster field recordings collected in the electrifying Country Negro Jam Sessions on Arhoolie, featuring the fiddle-guitar duo of Butch Cage and Willie Thomas.
King Live at the Regal, I can’t think of any of the great blues singers who were recorded live in a manner that reflected the unparalleled range of moods and emotions that you could take from their in-person performance – unless you count the history-before-it-happened Alan Lomax Library of Congress recordings of Muddy Waters and Son House. He was one of so many who was never recorded properly in his own milieu.
In answer to the Desert Island Disc question (what’s the one record you would take with you to that mythical desert island, assuming all obstacles of technology could be overcome and records still existed?), I’ve always said that I would gladly give away all my records, CDs, recorded music, just to see Howlin’ Wolf shatter reality one more time. Here are just a few, a very few, live recordings that suggest some of that untrammeled freedom. So little of this music has been recorded the way it actually sounds – in the clubs, on-stage, with an audience that is as much a part of the experience as the performer him or herself. It’s the unexpectedness, the spontaneity of the moment that makes it different (same as jazz), whatever expression that hypnotic moment may take. Often the live versions of familiar songs are slower, more drawn-out, they deepen the emotional resonance of lyrics you thought you knew by heart – but not always. With the soul and gospel shows it’s more of the incantatory nature of the experience – I don’t know of anything that can equal the wildness and out-of-control control of a groove that draws you in even as it keeps you at a tantalizing remove. From the first time I saw Lightnin’ Hopkins when I was sixteen years old to catching James Brown and Solomon Burke in person (not to mention Howlin’ Wolf and Jerry Lee Lewis) when I wasn’t much older, I’ve never found anything to match it. Many record producers and engineers see it as an illusion – it looks better than it sounds – but for me it’s the essence of all music.
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