Homegrown Radio 3/11/11 – John Hayes

Howdy, folks.  I’m back for week two of my Homegrown Radio stint, & I have a tune for you I think you’ll enjoy.  I also have news about downloading—for free!—the songs from the cd I’ll be selling at my performances this spring & summer.

Today’s song is a great Charlie Patton number called “Green River Blues.”  If you don’t know about Patton, please check out the link to his Allmusic biography; without question, he’s one of the most important figures in the history of the blues in general & the Delta blues specifically.  He recorded 54 sides between 1929 & 1934, & these include some Delta standards—in addition to “Green River Blues,” a short list would also include “High Water Everywhere,” “Stone Pony Blues” & “Moon Goin’ Down.”  He’s a major figure in Robert Palmer’s seminal blues history, Deep Blues—a must read for blues fans even if Palmer’s romanticized view often clashes with a more strictly historical approach (for the latter, I highly recommend Elijah Wald’s Escaping the Delta). 

I recorded this song using the Regal resonator in the key of E in standard tuning—pretty straight ahead—& relied on heavy string damping to create a solid rhythm.  Patton’s rhythms were very complex, & while I’m not trying to imitate his specific rhythmic, I am trying to create a real drive on the guitar.

Now for the download news!  Two ways to do it.  If you’re only interested in downloading a handful of the songs, the easiest way to do this is to go to the DivShare page at this link.   Once on that page, you’ll see an embedded mp3 player that should have “Preachin’ Blues,” the first song on the playlist queued up.  Below that you’ll see a button that reads “DOWNLOAD,” & still further below that, three columns containing the songs.  All of these should be highlighted except “Preachin Blues.”  If you click on a song, it will then appear in the mp3 player.  When you click on the DOWNLOAD button, you will download the song that’s currently in the player.

If you’d like the whole playlist, along with jpg images of the CDs front & inside covers, you can download that as a zip file right here.  The zip file is 49 mb, which is about average for the typical music CD's worth of song.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!  In the meantime, please enjoy “Green River Blues.”