Groundwater: The Blues Beneath American Music

Groundwater — Rich Pettit (Part 2)
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[00:00:00]

Rich: It's one of the cleverest pieces of writing I think ever in the blues, is Blind Willie McTell's Dying Crapshooter's Blues.

Thomas: This is Groundwater. I'm Thomas Stubbs.

This is the second half of a conversation I had with Rich Pettit on a porch in Atlanta. Rich has been playing the blues on the radio for forty years, WRFG 89.3, long enough that people around here just call him the Blues Professor. He grew up in New Orleans and came to the blues the back way, through classic rock, and stayed.

In the first half, we traced the music out of West Africa and up the East Coast. This half starts back in New Orleans, second lines, the Mardi Gras Indians, a funeral that walks to the cemetery playing a dirge, and walks home playing a parade. And then it heads north to Chicago, to Muddy Waters, to a song a dying man dictated to a blind street singer, [00:01:00] who carried it back to Atlanta and made it last.

And near the end, I ask Rich the question you put to anybody who really knows, "If I'm starting from nothing, where do I go first?" Here's the rest of it

I think New Orleans, is the most important city in America, partly because of it's the place that really birthed 20th century American music.

The blues comes out of that area, and was cooked like a roux in New Orleans, and then starts spreading out. And without that, you don't get the British invasion. You don't get, that sort of thing. And so when

Rich: think about- Yeah.

And one could argue, that New Orleans really helped birth R&B.

Thomas: Yeah. Oh for sure. And there's a hip-hop, a branch of hip-hop called bounce that comes uniquely from New Orleans.

Rich: Yeah.

Big Freedia.

Thomas: Big Freedia, that's, that, that's right. And that's a whole other conversation. She's Big Freedia turned up in an earlier version of [00:02:00] my podcast.

I didn't get to inter- interview Big Freedia, but but some of the music is there. So when ... You grew up in New Orleans, and when did you first hear it as a musical place and not just home?

Rich: Oh, the first time I probably saw live music was, I think I was just in the park, and some band was playing on the bandstand.

And I remember that. I'd yeah, listened to the radio before. And then,

I remember this band on the stand did Cisco Kid, which was a war song that I knew from the radio. But when I first started discovering the uniqueness of New Orleans music was probably talking to older cousins and they'd mention Professor Longhair, Earl King, or Marshabal, who didn't live there but came and performed regularly. And so I had to go check these bands out. So with my fake ID, I would go to Tipitina's. The drinking [00:03:00] age was 18 back then. And, used to be some bars that you could get into very easily without even getting carded.

New Orleans was famous for that.

Thomas: If you could reach the bar, you were old

Rich: But yeah, Tipitina's. There was a place called Jed's that was run by a guy named Jed Palmer. They're they're no longer around, but Tipitina's still is. The Maple Leaf Bar was one of my early haunts that's still ar- around, and it just features all local music.

So I'd go see these bands, and buy their records, and tell friends about them, and, Yeah, the it really is. It's special. And being able to see and discover new bands at the Jazz Festival in New Orleans every year.

So I've discovered a lot of people over the years going to Jazz Fest. I think I've been almost every year since 1982 or

Thomas: Oh, wow.

Rich: And I still have the [00:04:00] ticket stub from my first Jazz Fest. People who kinda balk at the $100 price of daily tickets nowadays would be surprised that it was only $7.

Yeah. And in the early days of the fest, it was even less than that.

Thomas: that. Yeah. I remember a con- a a show at the Jazz Fest I saw some years ago now really well. It was Bonnie Raitt playing blues guitar with a pipe on her finger and, just just

Rich: Yeah. She's come back many times over the years.

Of course. I don't know which year that was, but-

Thomas: don't even know whether she's from New Orleans, but yet she feels like part of New Orleans. The way Dr. John does. He recorded his first a- album in LA, I think, Zydeco Gri, and then but it's the most New Orleans record ever. It just doesn't sound like it could come from anywhere else.

Rich: Oh, yeah. Dr. John l- he was very special. Yeah, I saw him as a young teenager.

Thomas: Yeah. I took [00:05:00] my my daughter Sam, to see him many times in- including when she was small enough to s- sit on my shoulders. We saw him at the Variety Playhouse and yeah, it was always really special.

What other topic, The and it, he... Dr. John reminds me because Dr. John, of course, died a few years ago now,

And

there was a New Orleans tradition that, of course, was going to happen, which is the second line. Do you remember the first time? Have you ever marched in a second line?

Rich: Yeah. Yeah, I've done it a few times. The first time I went to one it was when Big Chief Jolly, the chief of the Mardi Gras Indian tribe called the Wild Tchoupitoulas, passed away. And I was a fan of the Wild Tchoupitoulas. They actually put out a record album on Island Records in the '70s that included all of The Meters and all of the Neville brothers.

Oh, my. And Big Chief [00:06:00] Jolly, he was uncle to the Neville brothers. He also played piano, but as a Mardi Gras Indian, he dressed in his elaborate costume with the rest of the tribe, and they would march the streets on Mardi Gras day. You never knew where they'd be or how to find them. It was just fortuitous if you did.

But yet when he passed away I went. I heard they were having a, service and then they were gonna do a second line to to the cemetery. And so that was really special 'cause we had Mardi Gras Indians and what's traditional in those second lines, a jazz band. Brass mostly. And again, the second line, what you do is you play kinda dirgeful, slow songs on the way to the grave site.

And then after the body is laid in there we march back to where we started, playing joyous happy [00:07:00] jazz music. A lot of it, very gospel-themed stuff. It's appropriate for a jazz funeral.

Thomas: Yeah. I saw my first second line in a James Bond movie.

Rich: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Live and Let Die- Yeah

probably. That- Yeah ... that was filmed in New Orleans. Yeah And,

Thomas: since s- seen the second line when I've just happened been lucky, when I was on the streets of New Orleans near a cemetery.

Rich: Yeah.

Thomas: Yeah. New Orleans is good at that. Where does the In- Indians tradition come from in, in New Orleans?

Rich: They say that was created by African Americans for a couple of reasons. One is that they either admired the Native Americans for their freedom and their traditions and the tightness of the family bonds between the the tribes.

And two, because Indians would sometimes help [00:08:00] hide or move along escaped slaves. And so after Civil War that's, I think, when they began to start sprouting up again. Little neighbor- neighborhood groups would form their own Mardi Gras Indian tribe. They'd adopt a name. They'd select a chief, and then some lower level positions.

And they would create- These costumes that originally looked a little bit more like what you might imagine Native Americans wearing, but now they've become something akin to like Carnival in Brazil, brightly colored peacock feathers, elaborately beaded mosaic breastplates, gloves, boots fake spears, et cetera.

And the tribes get together and they, they practice their chants [00:09:00] throughout the year, working on their costumes when they got spare time at home. But practicing their chants they'll gather at a specific bar for, quote, "Mardi Gras Indian practice."

And and so then when they get out in the streets on Mardi Gras Day they've got some, you could call them songs to perform.

But yeah, it's mostly percussion drums and tambourines and shaking percussion devices

Thomas: I saw a museum exhibit somewhere in the world of New Orleans Indian costumes. And they were un- unbelievably complex things. Beads and feathers, as you say, but just stunning.

Rich: Yeah. I think that the Presbytere Museum on Jackson Square in New Orleans has a lot of rooms devoted to Mardi Gras type stuff.

And I think you can see some costumes there and you can at the cultural center too.

Thomas: All [00:10:00] right. Just a couple more questions. I'm... It's 6:00 AM, you're in the studio. The board's lit. You've got two hours in front of you. How do you build a set? What does the first record have to do, and what does the last one have to do?

Rich: I like I don't like to be in any kind of pattern music-wise. And I would shy away from playing the same song twice in, in a month or maybe three months.

Thomas: Oh, wow.

Rich: So everything's gotta be different. But I'm on for two hours. We take we take the show, and we think of it in 15-minute pieces.

So there's eight 15-minute pieces. And those 15 minutes, each one of them kind of ties together. It might be music honoring someone whose birthday was that day. And so we'll feature three or so of their, most notable songs. Or it might be a certain style of blues. [00:11:00] Chicago blues might be in one 15-minute segment.

Contemporary acoustic might be in another

blues rock in another. And that way I think the music kinda flows together. I, because it, they'd been making blues or recording blues for over 100 years, it, it would be just jarring to me, I think, to listen to crazy blues from 1920 followed by Stevie Ray Vaughan doing Texas Flood.

Thomas: Yeah.

That's quite a range. Yeah. So what's a song that you can't play without stopping whatever you're doing and listening to it?

Rich: There's one I played this morning. It's one of the cleverest pieces of writing I think ever in the blues, is Blind Willie McTell's Dying Crapshooter's Blues.

Which McTell has said in interviews that this is based on a true story. It's a friend of his who was a high [00:12:00] roller, playboy type who fell ill, knew he was gonna die, and he laid out his dying wishes for his version of a jazz funeral to McTell. And it was carried out by McTell.

They brought the body back to Atlanta and gave him the the farewell that he desired.

Yeah. And yeah, if I can recall a lyric or two, Seven, seven pallbearers all dressed in black. Dig my grave with the ace of spades. I went nine men go into the graveyard, eight men coming back

Thomas: That's great.

You

Rich: You should play the Blind Willie version rather than rely on my lyrics- I'll, I'll-

which are a little wrong

Thomas: I'll I will find that for sure.

Blind Willie McTell: Little Jesse was a gambler, night and day. Well, he used crooked cards and dice. The son [00:13:00] of a gang get herded, but had no soul. Heart was hard and cold like ice. Jesse was a wild, reckless gambler. He'd want a gang of chain. Got many gamblers' heart he'd let in pain

Thomas: Somebody finishes this this podcast episode and wants to walk into the blues for the first time, what is one record or room or one name?

Where do you send them?

Rich: Ooh, Muddy Waters. Muddy Waters. That Muddy I think is the most important figure in blues.

Partly he was one of the hugest stars. He recorded from the 1940s up until his death. And you can hear a good range of blues because he started off playing country blues, and then he was playing that trademark electric Chicago blues at the end. But get yourself a good compilation of Muddy Waters' greatest [00:14:00] hits or at least one era of Muddy's recording career focusing on the best.

Thomas: It reminds me of seeing him in, Martin Scorsese made a movie about a concert. It was The Band's final concert.

Rich: Oh, yeah, The Last Waltz. The

Thomas: Last Waltz, and the story I heard is that they weren't...

When he took the stage, they weren't ready,

And

The... It's a multi-camera shoot for the rest of the show, but on the... Muddy, there's really one camera on Muddy Waters, and He does Mannish Boy and, just kills it.

Muddy Waters: Now when I was a young boy At the age of five My mother sure gonna be The greatest man alive. But now I'm a man Way past [00:15:00] twenty-one I want to leave me woman I have lots of fun Wondering man

Rich: Yeah. That's the song that made the album.

Thomas: Yeah, and,

Rich: the movie ... and

Thomas: our f- friend Dr. John is on that show as well. Was on that concert, yeah. That's one I need to go back and watch again. That's a fantastic show. And you just reminded me that, that's maybe where I first heard Muddy Waters was was watching that movie. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

Rich: But it has been. Y- you ask great questions and-

Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate you making the time. I'll talk about music whenever and for however long. As I say I've been the last couple of years I've been diving into this book and I will, i'd be grateful if you read a chapter and give me some comments.

Rich: Oh, sure. All right. Sure. When the book comes out, we definitely gotta do a radio interview over at my [00:16:00] studio. Oh,

Thomas: for sure.

Rich:

Speaker: That was Rich Pettit, the blues professor, and that was the rest of the afternoon. His answer when I asked where to start was Muddy Waters. Mine would be the same. I started there a long time ago, and I'm still going. This has been Groundwater. I'm Thomas Stubbs. The book all of this comes out of is called Race Records: The Lie That Split American Music and the Blues That Ran Underneath.

You can find the show and everything around it at groundwater.fm. Thanks to Rich for the afternoon, the porch, and the radio interview I now owe him, and thanks to you for listening