On The Road With Musician,Charlie Musselwhite

King of the blues, Grammy Award-winning music legend Musselwhite, as soon as hoped to see the world however by no means imagined doing it as a musician. Now, this multi-award-winning artist has simply launched Mississippi Son his 40^th album and is on the highway once more. In contrast to his former albums that includes his virtuoso harmonica enjoying and backed by a full electrical band, Mississippi Son (Alligator Information) is entrance porch nation blues specializing in Musselwhite’s acoustic and electrical guitar enjoying and straight-from-the-soul vocals (though Musselwhite additionally performs sensible every-note-matters harmonica).

Charlie Musselwhite, who till lately, was residing in Northern California, has moved again to Clarksdale, Mississippi within the coronary heart of the Delta. It was at Clarksdale Sound Stage the place he recorded his newest back-to-the-roots album celebrating his Mississippi blues heritage. The 14 songs on Mississippi Son (eight are originals) embrace songs by Charley Patton, Large Joe Williams and Yank Rachell. Every displays on Musselwhite’s private tackle the world round him.

Born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, Musselwhite’s household moved to Memphis when he was three. On the age of 18, Musselwhite moved to Chicago and taught himself each harmonica and guitar. Later, he realized guitar from his good friend/enjoying accomplice/roommate, Large Joe Williams. (Musselwhite dedicates a track on the brand new album to Large Joe Williams and information it with certainly one of Large Joe’s guitars).

Within the early Sixties, Musselwhite started to deal with harmonica enjoying, studying from Large Walter Horton, with whom he recorded on the famed Chicago/The Blues/ At the moment! sequence on the Vanguard label. He reduce his first album, Stand Again! Right here Comes Charley Musselwhite’s South Aspect Band, launching his profession, which has thus far, lasted virtually 60 years. Musselwhite has produced 40 albums and performed 1000’s of gigs world wide.

I caught up with the blues king on a ship in Puget Sound [Pacific Northwest] had been he was on a short trip together with his with, Henrietta (who can be his supervisor) and household, earlier than resuming his U.S. summer season tour which can final till mid-October.

You name your blues “secular non secular music.” Are you able to elaborate on that?

For me, blues is extra than simply one other form of music. It is not some fad. It has substance to it. It is deeper than music. It is about life. It might accompany you thru life and enable you to dwell that manner. it is form of a philosophy, nevertheless it’s all the time there for you.

Your albums have included straight blues with components of jazz gospel, Tex Mex Cuban and quite a lot of different world music. What made you resolve to return again to your roots on this album?

Effectively, I did not even give it some thought being an album. It was through the pandemic, and all the pieces was shut down. I had quite a lot of day without work and I used to be at Gary Vincent’s Studio, Clarksdale Sound Stage, solely three blocks from me in Clarksdale. He is bought quite a lot of guitars and he is a guitar participant and songwriter and his studio has actually good studio high quality microphones.

I used to be simply playing around enjoying guitar and he mentioned, you understand, we must always tape these tunes. I mentioned, positive, go forward. I am simply enjoying tunes I prefer to play as a substitute of sitting at house alone. At one level he mentioned, ‘this could possibly be an album.’ We introduced in a bass participant and drummer on a couple of tunes. It simply form of by chance occurred.

How do you are feeling about this album in comparison with your different albums?

Effectively, I am positive completely happy most individuals prefer it so properly. You may’t please everyone, so that you would possibly as properly simply please your self, and doubtless anyone else will prefer it.

What’s your favourite authentic track on this album and why?

It’s “Blues Gave me a Trip” off the highest of my head, however tomorrow I may need a unique reply.

Is the track, ‘Drifting from City to City” based mostly on what you have been doing all of your life?

Just about. My music displays what I have been by or how I really feel.

You mentioned all of the tunes you wrote are extensions of you. As an illustration, the track “The place the Frisco left the Shed’ is predicated on a imaginative and prescient you had. What does the phrase ‘when the Frisco left the shed’ imply and what was your imaginative and prescient?

The shed is the place they work on the engine. I’ve heard that phrase earlier than in different blue songs. There’s quite a lot of floating verses —they name them— which present up in songs again and again. I believed that picture was sturdy. it is exhausting to explain, however I simply preferred the way in which that sounded. And it looks like quite a lot of my life has been round railroads. The place I grew up, the window panes would rattle when the trains handed by. One other time I lived in an space referred to as the Iron Triangle as a result of it had three railroads. The place I dwell in Clarksdale, the prepare crosses the river a few block from our place. I may nearly hit it with a rod.

What would you like your listeners to remove from this album?

I am simply attempting to play actual blues. For me quite a lot of what passes for blues at this time is simply actual busy. Rock blues. It is all about approach. It looks like these folks don’t perceive what actual blues is. They use the music to assist their approach when it ought to it’s the opposite manner round, the usage of your approach to assist the music. It jogs my memory of anyone who has an enormous vocabulary however nothing to say. The place’s the music? I do not get any extreme coronary heart. In order that’s the place I try to return from: from my coronary heart.

What does the blues imply to you?

It is all the time been my comforter, even after I was a bit of child after I first heard the blues. I preferred every kind of music, however blues appeared like how I felt.

Final time I interviewed you for the e-book, Masters of the Harmonica you mentioned while you had been a child you needed to see the world. What made you need to journey the planet?

I used to be curious concerning the world and totally different cultures and folks, the meals they ate, the customs they’d, how they thought of issues. I did not need to be caught in a single place and never know what else was on the market.

You ended up touring the world, not as a vacationer however as an expert musician. Do you could have any thought what number of nations and cities you have performed?

It’s in all probability simpler to provide you with what number of I have never!

What’s your favourite place to go to?

Effectively, house is all the time fairly good. I spent so a few years away from house that being there may be virtually unique. The pandemic was a refreshing break for me as a result of I spent a lot time at house and actually loved it.

Are you making up for misplaced time from Covid?

I am form of easing again into it, getting within the van and hitting the highway, going from city to city to city like I’ve previously.

Whenever you’re doing gigs, do you could have time to go to as a vacationer would?

I do if I will someplace like China or Europe. I am attempting to rearrange to remain there some time after the gig is over. I need to go under the floor and be with the folks, not simply as a vacationer however see how folks dwell there.

Are you keen on any tradition?

Every part’s bought one thing distinctive. I can converse some Spanish, but when you understand a Romance language, you may get by. And the meals is absolutely fascinating somewhere else. I attempt to go style native meals, not the place the vacationers go. Each place appears to have one thing distinctive.

What are a number of the stuff you love about Europe?

They’ve such an awesome prepare system. You may go from the center of 1 city in a single nation to the center of city and one other nation. You do not want a automotive as a result of the place you get off is each degree of lodge from reasonably priced to non-affordable. I have been throughout Europe on trains from Italy to Oslo. On a prepare you see folks’s backyards, you see the laundry hanging up. One other factor is each tradition has music just like the blues. There is a man singing about “my child left me” in each nook of the world.

And the way about enjoying with musicians from different nations?

It is fascinating, even when we will not converse the identical language. Should you’re enjoying from the center, you’ll be able to play collectively simply.

What’s your subsequent challenge after this tour?

Effectively, I’ve one other album within the can, a band album, nevertheless it received’t see the sunshine of day for in all probability one other 12 months or so.