“Stepson of the Blues: A Chicago Song of Survival”” by Larry Hill Taylor with Bonni McKeown (Peaceful Patriot Press)

Larry Hill Taylor is the stepson of the late Eddie Taylor, who served as second guitarist for John Lee Hooker, but made an even more significant impact as the architect of the “Jimmy Reed Sound”, one of the most influential and commercially successful blues styles of the 1950’s/60’s and beyond. Eddie Taylor later recorded under his own name, but never achieved a level of stardom commensurate with his musical importance. The Taylor family is a multi-talented one, as Taylor’s wife, Vera (Larry’s mother), was a well-regarded singer, Larry himself is a drummer/singer/bandleader of some repute, while his brother Eddie Jr. and sister Demetria are also known on the Chicago blues scene.

On the surface, none of this would appear to make Larry Taylor’s life story so momentous that it would justify the publication of his autobiography. The history of Eddie Taylor and Jimmy Reed would be more likely to attract casual readers than that of Eddie’s stepson. But Larry Taylor has a compelling story to tell - several of them, as a matter of fact. This book, co-authored by Larry’s former manager, Bonnie McKeown, herself a blues pianist who has logged time in the Chicago clubs, is - when all is said and done - part autobiography, part diatribe. Larry Taylor feels misused by the blues establishment, he feels his fellow black Chicago blues musicians have been misused, indeed he feels that black blues musicians in general have been dealt a dirty deal. And he’s angry enough to try to do something about it, by laying his own career and reputation on the line to shout out to the world that something extremely unfair has going on in the world of blues for a long time, and the situation is not getting any better.

The first section of the book is more about his Mississippi family origins, his upbringing in Chicago, his various adventures and misadventures, his musical education, etc. In one sense, his childhood reads rather like you might expect a fairly typical Mississippi-rooted, urban ghetto childhood in the world of the blues to read. But of course, no one’s life is ever really as typical as anyone else’s. Taylor’s youth was enlivened by the presence of some of the all-time greats of the blues, who regularly visited his parents in their home, thanks to Eddie Sr.’s vaunted position among the blues royalty of his day. Young Larry picked up tips and lessons from the greats, and kept their words of wisdom to heart, while also getting to see them in their less public moments.

Larry’s life begins to take a less stereotypical turn toward his future career as a bluesman, when he joins a neighborhood street gang. This may well be a part of many modern-day blues musicians’ background, but it’s one which has become so associated with hip-hop in the outsider’s eye - of course, there was no hip-hop when Taylor joined up in the 1960’s - that it takes the reader by surprise. Soon Taylor finds himself involved with martyred Black Panther activist Fred Hampton, and with the Nation of Islam, again not a “typical” blues background, but one which helped instill a particular sense of right vs. wrong into the young Larry Taylor.

Then his life falls apart, when he is falsely accused of being a child molester, which leads to a horrifying round of legal injustices, incarceration in a veritable hell-hole of a prison, and intrusive psychological evaluations which led to some pretty harrowing treatment. The fact that the Taylor family was complicit in Larry’s imprisonment - perhaps feeling he could simply be scared straight, without any thought of how damaging his experiences would be - is a blotch on Eddie and Vera Taylor’s reputations.

Larry’s story doesn’t get any prettier once he gets out of a prison. As he tries to find steady work in the low-paying, jealousy-ridden, dishonestly-run Chicago blues clubs, he suffers through problems with women and develops a serious hard-drug addiction which he has a great deal of trouble shaking to this day. He also finds himself hounded by what he assumes to be FBI spies, seemingly lurking around every corner. Quite honestly, there are times when this comes across as a paranoid obsession, but it’s his life, and I can’t say he’s mistaken or lying.

But while the second half of the book covers these and other personal subjects, what really sticks with the reader in the latter stages of the book is Taylor’s full-throttle expose of the current blues scene. We learn that even in Chicago blues clubs which, judging by the city’s reputation, one would expect to be dominated by hard-core African-American blues musicians, white musicians - make that white rock musicians posing as blues musicians - often get the best-paying jobs, except of course for a handful of long-established superstars such as Buddy Guy and B.B. King. Taylor points out in various contexts that what black fans listen to and call blues is a very different thing from what white fans call blues. Black blues fans include what was known in the 1960’s as “soul music” as part of their steady diet, whereas white blues fans eschew “soul-blues” and prefer rock-oriented music which may or may not have solid roots in the blues. Even a cursory observation of the Southern Chitlin’ Circuit soul-blues sales charts vis-a-vis the playlists of the typical white DJ posting to Yahoo’s blues-dj list will support this contention. This dichotomy severely impacts black blues musicians who try to make a living in areas where the better-paying clubs cater to white fans, and has essentially left us with two competing musical scenes, both known as “blues”, one white, one black.

Taylor goes on to castigate the blues establishment as a whole, as represented by the Blues Foundation (which tellingly took W. C. Handy’s name off their long-established annual awards) and by many of the people who post on the Internet’s often-controversial BLUES-L listserv (where Rory Gallagher and Gary Moore are thought by many to have been the Kings of The Blues). Some blues fans may consider Taylor’s screed to be sour grapes, the rantings of an artist who has failed to crack the upper reaches of blues stardom and has become embittered as a result. However, I know from my own experiences (as a white college professor in his 60’s, so race, age, and position are not necessarily factors; by comparison, Larry Taylor is 55 years old) that the blues scene can be very difficult for anyone to crack. As someone who has lectured on blues, written about blues for some 40 years, and taught university-level courses on blues, I am still totally lacking in credibility among Western New York blues fans. The latter tend to gravitate toward what I call “biker bar” blues, the hard-core audience for which can be extremely narrow-minded about what they will accept or reject as blues, and who often show themselves to be quite intolerant of opinions on this subject that differ from their own.. My perspective on the matter comes, of course, from a very different angle than Larry Taylor’s, and unlike him I don’t need to depend on blues as my source of income, but I can easily understand where he’s coming from. I don’t blame him at all for being frustrated, and I applaud his boldness for taking a strong, if unpopular stance on this subject.

Of course, the people who most need to read this book and think seriously about what he has to say will probably ignore it. ‘Twas ever thus. So many negative things have happened in Larry Taylor’s life that the book simply cannot be a pleasant read, something light to skim over without giving it a second thought. But in the end, his faith in Islam (which he discusses in an Appendix) serves to see him through. This is, after all, a tale of survival. I hope he gets the right people to listen.

More information on the book, including ordering information, as well as a sample of Larry Taylor’s music,may be found at http://www.stepsonoftheblues.com/

“Lightnin’ Hopkins: His Life and Blues” by Alan Govenar (Chicago Review Press)

Sam “Lightnin’” Hopkins (1912-1982) has been dead for 28 years, but remains an iconic figure among blues fans, including many who were not yet alive during his lifetime. To many people, Hopkins represents post-WW2 down-home blues at its purest level of authenticity, even when played on his instrument of choice, the electric guitar.

But how much do blues fans really know about Lightnin’ Hopkins, and exactly how far removed was he from the “taint” of show business, or the modernization of urban influences? Part of the reason we think of Hopkins as a bastion of rural Texas blues values is the mythology which has grown up around him. As Alan Govenar, a greatly respected chronicler of the Texas roots-music scene, makes clear in this first-ever full-length biography of the man from Centerville, Lightnin’ Hopkins in large measure created and disseminated his own myth.

To be sure, this hardly makes Sam Hopkins unique among bluesmen of any period. Not many blues artists from earlier eras have left us autobiographies in which they explain themselves and their art, though many have been interviewed and documented by collectors and historians. But even autobiographies cannot be relied upon; Big Bill Broonzy comes to mind in this regard. Many interviewees have been known to answer straightforward, fact-seeking questions with colorful tall tales, relating “experiences” which they think people would like to hear, or which they feel would fit the interviewers’ preconceived notions. Not enough documentation was done during the early, pre-war era of the blues, making it difficult for authors to check for accuracy or multiple views of the same events.

Lightnin’ Hopkins may have come from a slightly later era, when one would have hoped hard documentation would have replaced the gushing admiration of colorful stories. But even so, he first came to the fore when white blues collectors still had not yet done crucial research, and were all too ready to make suppositions based on insufficient knowledge mixed with stereotypes. Thus, Hopkins was able to get away with painting ever-changing word portraits of his life. Couple this with the fact that little documentation was done of African-American music (and life in general) during Hopkins’ younger years in rural Texas, and you have mythmaking opportunities galore. Alan Govenar makes a valiant effort to separate fact from fiction, to make sense of the contradictions, to follow the complex arc of Lightnin’ Hopkins’ life and career, to fill in as many gaps in the record as he can. Holes remain, and most likely always will. Nevertheless, this book strikes me as a fair, unbiased, and believable, providing unprecedented insight into the life and music of an enigmatic, self-made mystery man.

Not surprisingly, the weakest part of the book is the section dealing with Hopkins’ younger, rural years. Govenar has interviewed a few relatives and childhood friends, but by and large the trail has gone cold, particularly since Lightnin’ claimed to have left home to become a traveling musician at age 8. (He subsequently had very little schooling and remained functionally illiterate his entire life.) We find him receiving encouragement from Blind Lemon Jefferson, followed by a stint accompanying singer Texas Alexander in the years after the latter’s period of relative recording stardom. But Hopkins really emerges musically in the big city, Houston, where he spent most of his adult life. He originally performed for strictly segregated black audiences, and indeed had several Top 10 hits on the r&b charts in the late 1940’s and early 50’s. He continued thereafter to present himself differently to black ghetto audiences, with whom he felt comfortable and could identify, than with the white audiences who came to dominate the last 20-plus years of life. Govenar suggests that experiences with record companies, folklorists (including the influential Mack McCormick, who is portrayed in a most unflattering light), bookers, etc. led Hopkins to mistrust most of the white people he came into contact with. (Arhoolie Records’ Chris Strachwitz was a refreshing exception.) The combination of lack of education and mistrust led him to demand payment-in-full for every song he recorded as soon as he finished recording it, either refusing to sign contracts which could potentially have brought in considerable, much-needed royalties, or to ignore without a second thought those contracts he did sign.

Hopkins was a bristly fellow, one who enjoyed his alcohol rather too much, who gambled away what little money he earned from his music, who had a very violent streak, and a very highly developed ego. He spent (by his own reckoning) a dozen or more stretches in jail for assault and related charges. But with the right people, he could be a bosom friend and companion, in particular with the woman he called his “wife”, who actually had a legal husband and children with whom she continued to live at night while spending her days with Hopkins. His dislike of travel early in his career, followed by a virtually disabling fear of flying once he realized that he could make far more money on the road than in the bars of Houston’s Third Ward, held back his career. But his distinctive recording style and highly mannered give-the-audience-what-they-want live performances eventually made him prosperous well beyond his expectations. Govenar follows these developments in an easy-to-read, yet highly detailed manner. In particular, there is much detailed information about most of Hopkins’ recording sessions, beginning in 1946 as half of the recording duo of Thunder and Lightnin’ (with pianist Wilson Smith; it was this nom-de-disque, supplied by a record company, which resulted in Sam Hopkins becoming known as “Lightnin’).

Govenar’s portrayal is eventually a sympathetic one. Despite Hopkins’ difficulties as a person, his music and artistry far transcend his personality and defy easy analysis. I rather wish Govenar had spent more time discussing which portions of Hopkins’ improvised lyrics were indeed spontaneously generated and which were built from traditional, floating-verse sources. But this is a biography, after all, neither a musicological tome nor a study in poetics.

Because he recorded for so many labels and was subject to so many reissues and repackagings, Hopkins’ discography provides special challenges for researchers. However, Govenar includes a list of Lightnin’s sessions, complied by Andrew Brown and Alan Balfour, that is probably as complete as one can get. A full discog, listing all reissues, remains for another day.

In all, this is a very successful and satisfying book, which will appeal greatly to blues fans, and could reach a wider audience a

Adam Gussow - Journeyman's Road

I actually began to read this when it was sent for review three years ago. But, unfortunately, considering the nature of the book – a compilation of separate articles, many from “Blues Access”, as well as a variety of other sources – it was all too easy to put aside and not pick up for the longest time. Thus, the long delay, which has nothing to do with the quality of the book.

Adam Gussow is now an academic with impeccable credentials, teaching literature at the University of Mississippi. However, he formerly played regularly on the streets of Harlem as harmonica sidekick to blues singer/guitarist Sterling “Mr. Satan” McGee, under the curiously Biblical name of “Satan and Adam”. Professor Gussow sees himself during this street-musician phase as being a white apprentice to a black master of a black musical idiom, thus the use of the word “journeyman” in the title of the book.

New York City is not a location generally associated with blues music. To be sure, many of the vaudeville blues divas of the 1920’s spent much of their performing time in the theaters and recording studios of New York, as a sort of undervalued adjunct to the Harlem Renaissance. Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Josh White, Rev. Gary Davis, and a host of lesser-known Carolina bluesmen found their way to New York during the 1930’s and 40’s. The Greenwich Village folk scene of the 1950’s/60’s shared (with Cambridge, MA) in the development of the first generation of blues-influenced white singer-guitarists (such as Dave Van Ronk and John Hammond).

There are still blues performers on the New York club scene, but it has rarely been thought of as a “blues town” in the past several decades. One of the most valuable aspects of Gussow’s book is that it documents not only the work of Satan and Adam, but also that of a number of other New York-based performers, many of them quite obscure. The book also contains many insights on what it is like to be a late-20th-century bluesman on the road and in Europe, as well as on the streets and small blues bars of New York. There is also a heartbreaking look at the dissolution of Mister Satan’s musical career (but with a note of hope at the end; since the book was published, the duo has resumed performing on an occasional basis).

The first part of the book gathers together most - why not all? - of a series of columns Gussow wrote for “Blues Access” magazine, mostly in the 1990’s. These are more journalistic than academic in tone. Even so, he is a very literate writer, and will use academic jargon (talk of dialectics, Postmodernism, etc.) to make his well-considered points. Among his assertions - which I wholeheartedly endorse - is that there are no easy answers, no one-size-fits-all explanations for either the historical development or “meaning” of the blues. He is also very conversant with the social history behind the blues idiom. For example, one very affecting segment discusses the role lynching played in the development of the blues.

The English professor in Gussow emerges in the second half of the book. There is a substantial look of what might be termed blues-as-literature and literature influenced by blues. The majority of the works he discusses are works of fiction, a genre rarely encountered in lists of essential blues reading. Included is a fascinating paper on blues influences on the writings of William Faulkner, which non-academic readers may find much easier to digest than most serious literary criticism.

This is a somewhat slim volume (188 pages), but there is a lot to chew on here, a great deal of variety, fact, opinion, and views of many subjects not already done to death on the ever-growing blues bookshelf. It would not be my recommendation as a beginner’s intro to blues, but the faithful will much of interest here.

“Journeyman’s Road: Modern Blues Lives From Faulkner’s Mississippi to Post-9/11 New York” was published by the University of Tennessee