Kathleen Loves Music

Mississippi Fred McDowell
Live In New York

Produced by Tom Pomposello, Dick Pennington, and Fred Seibert
Engineered* by Fred Seibert

Click the titles to play.
2nd edition, Spring 1972

1. Shake ‘Em On Down
2. I’m Crazy About You Baby
3. John Henry
4. You Got To Move
5. Someday
6. Mercy
7. The Lovin’ Blues
8. White Lightnin’
9. Baby Please Don’t Go
These MP3s are CD quality, 320kpbs

1999 edition; released as “Live at the Gaslight.”
Disc 1
1. Shake ‘Em On Down
2. Fred’s Worried Blues *
3. Mercy
4. Jesus is on the Mainline *
5. When The Saints Come Marchin’ In *
6. Someday Baby
7. The Lovin’ Blues
8. White Lightnin’
9. You Got To Move
10. Louise *
11. Baby Please Don’t Go
Disc 2
1. Goin’ To The River (Carry My Rocking Chair) **
2. Shake ‘Em On Down **
3. 61 Highway *
4. John Henry
5. My Babe *
6. I’m Crazy ‘Bout You Baby **
7. Red Cross Store *
8. Levee Camp Blues*
9. Good Mornin’ Little Schoolgirl *
10. Don’t Mistreat Nobody (Cause You Got A Few Dimes) *
11. Get Right*
12. Good Night (Spoken Outro) *

* Not included on the original editions
** From the original editions

All songs written by Fred McDowell and published by Tradition Music Co. (BMI) except where noted.

Mississippi Fred McDowell: vocals, guitar
Honest Tom Pomposello: bass guitar
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When I was young and naive, my friend Tom Pomposello and I thought it would be cool to be incredibly successful with a record company that recorded obscure blues and jazz. We named it Oblivion Records.

Click here to read some of the stories behind this album.

And click here for covers, photographs, and other printed ephemera from Mississippi Fred McDowell: Live in New York.
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Credits from the original releases:

MISSISSIPPI FRED MCDOWELL
Live in New York
Oblivion Records
OD-1

Fred McDowell: vocals and electric bottleneck guitar
Tom Pomposello: bass guitar (2nd guitar on “Shake ‘Em On Down”)

§ Recorded on November 5, 1971, at the MacDougal Street Gaslight II, in New York City.

Produced by Fred Seibert
Executive Supervision by Richard H. Pennington, Jr.
Liner Photo: Valerie Wilmer
Logo Design: Lisa Lenovitz
Graphics: the Oblivionettes with Lisa Lenovitz
Typesetting: Bridget Deal and the Bridgettes
Thanks much to David Reitman, Steve Heller, Ruth Rock, Billy M. and Slim Langbord. Really.

Sidebar box:

If this disk is not available at your local superior record store, mail the tidy sume of $4.98 (foreign customers use I.M.O.) to:

Oblivion Records
P.O. Box X
Roslyn Heights, New York 11577

Dealer inquiries invited –
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LP Liner notes:
1st edition, Spring 1972

In 1959 folklorist Alan Lomax ventured into northwestern Mississippi during a recording field trip of the Southern USA. He passed through the town of Como, situated between Highways 51 and 55. Lomax explained that he was from a record company and asked whether there were any local musicians that he should hear. Among the first names given was Fred McDowell. Lomax found Fred at home that evening and proceeded to record him. Fred played well into the night for Lomax (the session lasted from 8 p.m. until about 7 a.m. as Fred recalls it). When Lomax finally departed, he left Fred with promises that these recordings would bring him world repute and a great sum of money. Lomax was at least half right. Despite the fact that the payment was nominal, the recordings were greeted with abundant enthusiasm. Even though only eleven songs were released (on two Prestige LPs: Deep South-Sacred and Sinful; and Yazoo Delta-Blues and Spirituals; and two Atlantic LPs: Sounds of the South; and Roots of the Blues), the reaction was immediate. The blues world had discovered Fred McDowell.

Subsequent to the Lomax recordings things began happening and Fred found himself in the middle of a new career. There was a whole new audience anxious to hear his brand of the blues. In 1964 both Arhoolie and Testament issued solo LPs by Fred. In July of that same year Fred was a featured artist at the Newport Folk Festival (selections from his performances were issued on three separate Vanguard albums). Then, in 1965, Fred visited Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival. He was enthusiastically received wherever he played.

In 1966 he recorded a second album for Arhoolie. This contained the song that the Rolling Stones were soon to “borrow” – “You Got to Move” (incidentally, if Fred is ever paid the royalties for this song, he should earn more than he did on any of his own albums). More releases followed on Testament, Biograph, Polydor International, and Milestone.

Then in 1969 came a second tour of Europe. In Britain he recorded his first solo album using electric guitar – Mississippi Fred McDowell in London (Volumes I and II on Sire and Transatlantic). The reaction was a mixed one. Everyone loved the music. But Delta blues on an electric guitar…? One critic commented that he thought some of the “subtlety” of the acoustic bottleneck’d high E string was lost with the electrified instrument. But the new sound was so compellingly ominous that its beauty was irresistible.

More electric albums followed. Blue Thumb’s Memphis Swamp Jam featured three cuts with Fred on electric guitar and accompanied by Johnny Woods on harmonica (later a full album by the two was issued on Revival Records). Arhoolie followed suit with Fred McDowell and his Blues Boys which featured Fred accompanied by acoustic guitar, electric bass, and drums. Then came the now legendary I Do Not Pay No Rock and Roll album on Capitol. Most reviewers of contemporary music were astounded. Blues Unlimited called it “…a perfectely fine LP, beautifully recorded in stereo and and performed with the usual McDowell power and verve. Hmmm.” Rolling Stone went so far as to say: “Well, do you have to hear any more – this is one mother of a record.” I’ll never forget one of my musically naïve friends saying: “I never thought blues music could sound like that.” Still, there were some holdouts. Bob Groom, a great fan and admirer of Fred’s and the editor of Blues World magazine wrote: “…not the best McDowell LP, but nevertheless recommended to all his fans… and for the first (and I hope lat) time Fred is accompanied by a heavily electrified rhythm group.”

I never could understand such criticisms for a variety of reasons. Perhaps, though, the best reply is by Bob Groom himself who wrote in his book, The Blues Revival: “Old and new blues cannot be compared, only contrasted…” Which brings us to this album – it’s electric, it’s heavy, and most important, it’s Fred McDowell, the way he likes it, today. Viva!

– Tom Pomposello

Now I want you all to know that Honest Tom is the boy who plays bass and 2nd guitar on “Shake ‘Em on Down” with me on this album. You know he first came to me and said, “Fred, can I come up and see you, you know where you’re staying?” Well, I wasn’t doing anything up there alone and I told him to come up. When he got there, he brought three instruments with him – a guitar, a harmonica, and a bass, and he asked me to say which one he was better at. Well, I carried him over on the harmonica. Alright, I said, let’s got to the guitar. Next the bass – I said, “hold it right there baby, that’s the one.” Tom, it’s been a real pleasure to have you play with me. Roll baby.

– Fred McDowell
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LP Liner notes
2nd edition, March 1973

Well, as this album is about to go into its second pressing, and I sit here and read back the notes that I hastily put together for the liner about a year ago, it all seems strangely inappropriate – I say ‘strangely,’ but not really, I guess. Fred McDowell passed away on July 3, 1972. The details and circumstances are known to those of you waho are interested, I’m sure. You know, there is really no tactful way for me to express my thoughts now when I think about Fred, not withour making trhese notes sound like some kind of testimonial. And I don’t like that idea at all. Record liner notes never make good testicmonals anyway. The thinks Fred accomplished as an artist, those people whom he touch through his music, those of us who were lucky enough to know him personally and be taken under the spell of his Misssissippi myustique; thse are things which account for a far greater testimonial than anyone can ever put down on paper, because they’re written in people’s hearts.

So here I say I’m not foing to do it, and I do it. But I hope you’ll understand. As a student and an admirer of Fred’s music, I’m gratified in knowing that his legacy I s adequetly represented on disc. As a musician I take real pride in having been a small part of this msuci. The way it turned out, this album represents the last material that Fred was to record. I think that this album is an important one (although I do not feel it’s his most important) in that it presents a side of Fred McDowell that so many people will always remember.

The years 1968-1971 were the most rewarding for Fred in many ways. From a financial standpoint, he finally began to make a living from his music. He was well over sicty years of age when he was ultimately able to quit farming and devote his energies to music and his concert appearances. He purchased a mobile home for himself and his wife in Como, Mississippi. Later he even bought a new car, the first new car he had ever owned. From an artistic standpoint, these were the years that most people were exposed to Fred’s brand of blues. He was constantly in demand for convert dates, so much so that Dick Waterman, his manager and booking agent, couldn’t keep up with them all. He played all the American cities that had blues enthusiasts: Memephis, Chichage, Boston, Philadelphia, Ann Arbor, Portland, Notre Dame, Berlely, and of course, New York, He also frequented Canada, and twice toured Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival.

These were also the years he began plahing with electric guitar. It was different alright: electric delta blues, bottleneck style no less. But audiences and critics loved it. The editors of the Official Programme of the 1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festival wrote of him:

“Fred McDowell is undoubtedly the finest bottleneck guitarist alive, and many people believe his is the best who ever lived. (Bottleneck style guitar playing is done by placing either a broken off bottleneck or a highly polished pieve of pipe on the small or ring finger of the chording hand. This technique enables the guitarist to make the guiar sing with the tone incredibly similar to an anquished human voice.) He learned bottleneck from his unclue, who used a ground bone on his finger, and Fred McDowell perfected the stule that made him the legendary guiarist he is today. If one listens carefully to Fred it soon becomes apparent the guitar sings every word he sings. This is Mr. McDowell’s style,and in the performance of it he has no equal.”

This album was recorded live in concert, and as such is indicative of the type of performance that audiences came to excpect from Fred. His raps. His deliberate and forceful slide work combied with those spontaneous lyrics. His uncompromoissing renditions of his “greatest hits,” never playing them exactly the same twice. Yet, in another way, whether he was playing for a handful of loyalists at one o’clock A.M. in the Village Gaslight or to an exurberant blues audience ar the Ann Arbor Festival, he did play it all the same – from his heart. I know that may be a bit of an overworked phrase, but I also know that it was really true of Fred McDowell. I used to watch him from the side where I sat next to him, where only I could see hehind those sunglasses. He’s be playing one of those slow blues and he’d have his eyes closed, nodding his head in rhythm. And at the same time he’s be planning the next stanza, maybe deliberately leaving off a word or two at the end of a line so he could let the vocalized slide fill the missing syllables. Anyhow, all this is to say what Fred said so much more concisely the night these recortdings were made: “I hope you’re all enjoying my type of playin’. That’s my type of playin’ y’all. And that’s the blues. ‘Cause you know know a lot of people don’t know what the blues is. But I do. Blues is a feelin’, you understand. And I really fell what I’m playin’.”

SHAKE ‘EM ON DOWN was Fed’s showpiece. As he admitted, this is as close as he got to rock and roll. The folks down in Mississippi nicknamed him “Shake ‘Em” for this number. In fact, there probably never was a country barbeque that Fred attended where he could get away without perfomrning it. I remember that sometimes when he did this in concert he used to get up and dance while playing it full out. It’s don here with two fuitars, both bottleneck, with alternating and simultaneous leads.

I’M CRAZY ABOUT YOU BABY is one of those spontaneouls, off the cuff things I was talking about. When Fred says, “Tom, we haven’t play that yet,” he means it. Pete Welding in his review of this album for Living Blues commented that this number is “by far the best performance on the album and especially lovely, resilient, stunning, slow blues played and sung with great feeling, even the tubby distant sound of Pomposello’s bass guitar adding to the muisc’s effectiveness by giving it a vaguely ominous quality.” (Hmm.)

JOHN HENRY has got to be the oldest folk blues in existence. Some musicologists trace it back as far as the 1880’s. Fred heard it as a boy, learned it, adapted it, and even re-adapted it with his own arrangement. The long instrumental intro is meant to convey the idea of something picking up steam.

YOU GOT TO MOVE is the hardest song for me to comment on objectively for a variety of reasons. It always seems ironics tome that if it weren’t for the Rolling Stones’ rendition of this number, Fred’s name might not have been known to a lot of people. However, the real irony lies in the fact that once the Stones credited Fred with the authorship they remained true to form and made use of an unfortunate legal loophole which held up Fred’s royalty payments. Look, it was Keith Richard who said in a Rolling Stone interview that “Maybe once every six months someone’ll come through with an album. An Arhoolie album of Fred McDowell. And you’d say: There’s another cat! That’s another one. Just blowin’ my mind…” Actually, all you need to do is listen to the Stones’ verision on their Sticky Fingers LP, compare it to Fred’s version, and you’ll know immediately frojm where their arrangement is copped. I think a further or more precise explanatin seems rather pointless and unnecessarily maudlin and would fuel to a fire that is only now beginning to die down. But I guess you should know that Fred wasn’t paid anything that even approximated a partial royalty payment until just days before he died. OK, enough of that. Let me tell you what Fred used to say about this song: “A lot of people whoever hear me sing this song would ask me, ‘What does it mean, you got to move?’ Well, this is a true song and one that has two meanings. Now you know why I say that? You know, a lot of people don’t own their own homes. So you pay so much a month for rent. Now when you get hehind, well,maybe the landlord’ll allow you to skip the first month or so. But when the third one comes, if you ain’t paid up you comehome one evening and you find your things sittin’ out on the street. You see, you got to move… And not only that, but here’s the more important meaning. We’re all sittin’ back listenin’. When this is over, maybe you plan to go out to next door. But you know, you may not live to walk out that door. If you fall dead, if you happen to die, you done moved. That’s one debt you can’t dodge. When the Lord gets ready, you got to move.”

SOMEDAY IS A BLUES that a lot of people have recorded thematic variants of. Muddy Waters calls his “Trouble No More” and Big Maceo Merriweather titled his version “Worried Life Blues.” Be that as it may, like Fred’s they all derived from Sleepy John Estes 1935 clasic “Someday Baby Blues.” The thing to watch for here is the patented McDOwell syncopation. Listen to the way he plays slightly off the beat while singing on it. Yeah, it is rather difficult.

MERCY is a really powerful slow blues especially in terms of Fred’s vocal work. The melody rigg was one that Fred used quite often, but the lytics were almost always improvised in accordance with his “mood.” The result is seem immediately in the opening stanza, which consists of some unusual lyrics (unusual for Fred that is) and lines which are of uncertain origin. “Everyone’s cryin’ mercy, Lord what do mercy mean? Well, if it means anything, Lord have mercy on me!”

THE LOVIN’ BLUES is a song with a universal meaning. The lady in question is a delta woman. Fred’s delta woman. The song deals simply with the joys and sorrows of being in love. “You know you got a home little firl, so long as I got mine.”

WHITE LIGHTNIN’ was not included on the first editin of this album, but nonetheless we chose to substitue it for “Goin’ to the River” which already has been issued a number of times on some of Fred’s other albums. I know this is bound to annoy some people as well as foul up the annotations of discographers everywhere, but I assume the responsibility based on the fact that this song is important as one of Fred’s last compositions. In some ways it’s related to “Smokestack Lightnin’,” but not really. Adter due consideration we also decided on the substitution because it’s a song not too many of Fred’s fans got to hear. (Althought one of Fred’s Arhoolie albums contains a similar piece titled “You Ain’t Treating Me Right.”) Besides, where are you gonna find lyrics like: “Wake up baby, get you big legs off of me. Put your left left leg baby, where you right ‘un oughta be.”

BABY PLEASE DON’T GO was written in the 30’s by Big Joe Williams and has always been a popular tune with bluesmen and audiences alike. The version here somes off as uniquely McDowell with shades of “Shake ‘Em On Down.” This one’s another rocker, and was likewise on of Fed’s most requested pieces in later years. If you listen carefully you’ll hear another Fred McDowell trademark: See if you can count how many tempo accelerations the song contains.

– Tom Pomposello, March 1973

[Library of Congress Number 73-760456 applies to this record.]

The record you are holding is different from the original press run of od.1: on side two, “White Lightnin’” has been substituted for “Goin’ to the River”: the tapes have been remastered and a high quality pressing plant has been employed for an improvement of technical quality; and, the back liner has be rewritten. We hope you enjoy the improvements. If this disc is not available at your local superior record store, send $4.98 (foreign customers use I.M.O.) to:
OBLIVION RECORDS, BOX X, ROSLYN HEIGHTS, NEW YORK, 11577.
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2-CD set Liner notes
Last release, 2000

It is not the easiest task for me to write the liner notes to a Mississippi Fred McDowell album, not without having them read like some kind of testimonial. It is especially difficult because this particular record turned out to be Fred’s last recorded album, although it was never intended that way. Fred died as a result of serious abdominal ulcers on July 3, 1972. This recording was made during the end of his last tour during the winter of 1971. As a student and occasional bass player with Fred McDowell, my life became so entwined with his, that I suppose for me to write an impartial evaluation of his music would be nearly impossible. But then, no one said that these were to be impartial. The funny thing is that record liner notes never make good testimonials. The things Fred achieved as an artist, those people whom he touched through his music, those of us who were lucky enough to know him personally and be taken under the spell of his “Mississippi mystique”- these are the things which account for a greater testimonial than anyone can ever put down on paper, because they’re written in peoples hearts.
Nonetheless, this album becomes a tribute, of sorts, to one of America’s greatest bluesmen. Personally, I would like to devote a majority of this space to a discussion of his accomplishments during his later years. (For those who are interested in an in-depth profile of Fred’s life, personal recollections, biographical background, and analysis of his bottleneck guitar style, I would like to refer you to an article which I wrote for the November 1977 issue of Guitar Player Magazine, which is posted at www.livearchive.com).

I will say that Fred McDowell was one of the most remarkable men I ever met. A more “giving” musician I cannot imagine. He was the kind of man who would take the time to discuss his experiences and share his music with anyone who was interested enough to ask. I believe that this album captures one facet but enthusiastic audience, working for them and playing to them.

–Tom Pomposello, 1999
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§ Recording notes by Fred Seibert, 2007: Originally recorded for broadcast on WKCR-FM, Columbia University, using a high quality, one track Nagra recorder intended for film and field recording. Microphones were Shure and Electro-Voice, the mixer was a Shure M68. I asked my great friend Roy Langbord to split the taxi fare, lug half the equipment, and help with the (easy) set up at Greenwich Village’s Village Gaslight. We were both rewarded with not only the great performance by Fred and Tom, but by the first New York appearance of Bonnie Raitt, who share Fred’s manager (Dick Waterman). The equipment was improperly borrowed, my rationale that I was making the recording to be played on my weekend blues show, which I did. Within a few months Tom Pomposello and I decided to start Oblivion Records with the Fred McDowell sessions being our first release.
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I’m posting many of my out-of-print record productions from the 1970s. Travis Pomposello and I are the owners of these master recordings.