walking upstream…
Mississippi Fred McDowell
photo: unknown (flickr upload) · cc by-sa 2.0 ↗Mississippi Fred McDowell
sourcesWikipedia · All About Blues Music
Fred McDowell picked up guitar as a teenager in Rossville, Tennessee, learning bottleneck slide from an uncle before settling as a farmer in Como, Mississippi, where he played weekend dances for decades in near-total obscurity. Alan Lomax's 1959 field recordings finally brought his droning, hypnotic slide style — absorbing older Delta voices like Charley Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson but bending them toward hill country's rolling, one-chord trance — to a national folk and blues audience. He toured widely in the '60s and '70s, memorably declaring 'I do not play no rock and roll' even as he coached Bonnie Raitt on slide guitar and watched the Rolling Stones cover his own 'You Gotta Move.' He died in 1972, having quietly mentored the next generation of hill-country bluesmen, including his young neighbor R.L. Burnside.
the sound in question
1965
You Gotta MoveMississippi Fred McDowell
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Charley Patton1920s-30s · Delta blues
McDowell came up studying the generation of Mississippi bluesmen who preceded him, and biographical accounts name Charley Patton among the players he saw and absorbed at Delta work camps and juke joints in the late 1920s and early 1930s — Patton's raw, percussive attack on the guitar as a rhythm instrument first, melody second, is a direct ancestor of McDowell's own droning approach.
listen: upstream & here
1929
Pony BluesCharley Patton
1959
61 HighwayMississippi Fred McDowell
listen forPlay Patton's 'Pony Blues' next to McDowell's '61 Highway' — both drive hard on a repeating rhythmic figure, using the guitar almost like a second drummer under a rough, declamatory vocal.
Son House1930s · Delta blues
Son House is likewise named among the Delta forebears McDowell watched and learned from as a young man, and House's slashing, emotionally raw slide playing — using the bottleneck to wail and moan alongside the voice rather than simply decorate it — carries directly into McDowell's own slide style, even as McDowell smoothed House's jagged intensity into something more rolling and hypnotic.
listen: upstream & here
1965
Death LetterSon House
Write Me a Few of Your LinesMississippi Fred McDowell
listen forCompare House's 'Death Letter' with McDowell's 'Write Me a Few of Your Lines' — both use a metal or glass slide to cry and answer the vocal line, the guitar functioning as a second voice rather than accompaniment.
Robert Johnson1930s · Delta blues
McDowell also studied Robert Johnson's recordings as part of the Delta tradition he drew from before settling into his own hill-country variation. Johnson's crisp, intricate slide runs are less an exact match for McDowell's rolling drone than a shared vocabulary — the same bottleneck-on-steel-string language, bent by McDowell toward repetition and trance rather than Johnson's tighter, more compressed song forms.
listen: upstream & here
1936
Cross Road BluesRobert Johnson
Shake 'Em on DownMississippi Fred McDowell
listen forSet Johnson's 'Cross Road Blues' beside McDowell's 'Shake 'Em on Down' — both use a slide to answer and extend vocal phrases, though McDowell stretches the same idea out into a longer, more circular groove.