From: "Doug Bright" <75366.2463@compuserve.com> To: Subject: Article: August, 1982 Date: Saturday, April 08, 2006 6:13 PM AUGUST 1982 JOHNNY SHINES: THE LEGEND THAT ALMOST WASN'T By Doug Bright Musical performers come in all shapes and sizes, grades of quality, and degrees of success. At one end of the spectrum are those who make it on management-engineered sex appeal and friends in high places despite a level of artistic merit that shouldn't have carried them past the office lobby. As prime examples of this category, consider Fabian in the late Fifties or Nancy Sinatra in the late Sixties. On the other extreme are those lonely, ill-fated geniuses who spend an agonized lifetime discovering that the glittering door that admits the mediocre is for them a mysteriously unyielding brick wall. Some are discovered only after they've become too tired to care. Others live out their lives in indigent obscurity and only afterward, when it can do them no good at all, is their genius finally recognized. The greatest tragedy is that for every one of these, there are probably ten more who simply remain unheard. But all this simply renders artists like Johnny Shines all the more valuable, overdue though their recognition may be. The blues as a specific idiom originated near the end of the nineteenth century, growing out of the primitive field hollers and work songs of blacks in the rural South. At this period of time the guitar was becoming increasingly prominent, and its portability and capacity for "bent notes" peculiarly suited it to this highly personal black art form. In the 1920's and '30's, Northern record companies began to see a definite market potential in ethnic music. Consequently, rural blues singers like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Robert Johnson gained a wider audience than they could ever have imagined. As more and more blacks moved north to find work in the major cities, conditions were right for a new dimension to the blues market. The demand created by record distribution, small as it was, fostered nightclubs and dance halls where the blues could be heard. As the Thirties passed into the early Forties, a growing number of rural bluesmen was moving north to seek their fortune. In September of 1941 Johnny Shines, age 26, boarded a train in Memphis, bound for Chicago. Having played the circuit of smoky Southern roadhouses with people like Big Walter Horton and Robert Johnson, he decided that this was the time to make his move. Beginning with his first gig in a place called Frost's Corner, he played various blues clubs around Chicago and sometimes organized bands for club dates in other cities. Apparently the income from these engagements was sparse, so he survived as construction worker by day and musician by occasional night, patiently waiting for the big break. When Lester Melrose from Columbia Records discovered him, it appeared that Johnny Shines was on his way. A recording session was arranged, and the result was a side called "Ramblin'". According to one historian, it lacked the brilliance of later recordings and contained none of Shines' impressive slide guitar. For this reason or a more bureaucratically trivial one, it wasn't released. A couple of years later he recorded "Brutal Hearted Woman" for Joe Brown's J.O.B. label, accompanied by his long-time Memphis associate Walter Horton. Apparently, nothing much came of this one either. In 1950 it looked like the long-deserved break had arrived. Finally noticed by the prestigious Chess blues label, Shines recorded a song called "So Glad I Found You" under the name of Shoe Shine Johnny. Deciding that this side would run competition with a Muddy Waters record which they were in the process of pushing, the Chess brothers never issued it. For the next eight years Johnny played occasionally, supporting himself as a construction worker. By now he had given the music business seventeen of the best years of his life and had little more to show for it than when he started. Disgusted with the petty politics of record companies and promoters, he left the music business altogether in 1958. Whether Johnny Shines knew it or not at that disillusioning time, the faintest stirrings of a new musical movement were beginning to be felt. What started a decade earlier with Pete Seeger and the Weavers grew into a Greenwich Village folk cult and finally culminated in the Newport Folk Festival of 1959. As this annual event continued into the Sixties, more and more ethnic performers were called out of rural Southern obscurity to play their own traditional music to audiences of Northern college students. Record production and distribution had come a long way since that fateful day in 1941 when an idealistic young Johnny Shines caught the train from Memphis to Chicago. Indeed, the state of the record industry and the folk revival in the Sixties made the opportunity offered by Chicago in the early Forties look like a neighborhood bake sale. As more and more black bluesmen were discovered, recorded, and booked on international tours, it was only a matter of time before the Yankee blues revival would catch up with Johnny Shines. In 1970 Biograph Records issued Johnny's first album, which included his 1946 take of "Ramblin' Blues". Since then he's made several albums on a variety of labels and toured extensively. One of the latest of these albums was recorded by a Canadian company called Stony Plain and acquired by First American Records here in Seattle. The album is simply entitled COUNTRY BLUES. This record is not only a revealing portrait of a blues giant, but a dynamic lesson in black history as well. In the powerful "Slavery Time Breakdown", Johnny Shines illustrates the development of the blues from the primitive field hollers that served as a vehicle of veiled communication. Another Selection, which Johnny titles simply "Goodbye", is an old semi-spiritual farewell song of slaves separated from their families by the white man's auction block. It's obvious from Shines' articulate explanation of the song's origin and his unforgettably moving interpretation that here is a man who, like Alex Haley, keenly identifies with the suffering of his ancestors and knows how to convey it in a way that leaves a permanent impression. The rest of the primitive blues on this album is both vocally and instrumentally quite reminiscent of Robert Johnson. Shines is adept at both slide and conventional blues guitar, but he uses the slide somewhat sparingly on the old-style solo blues selections. His best slide number on the album is "I Went To The River To Drown". To me this record is ample proof that Johnny Shines is the greatest living exemplar of the so-called Delta blues style, and as such, he certainly deserved at least as much recognition as his contemporary, Robert Johnson. Impressive as Johnny's primitive blues style is, he's at his absolute best when a light instrumental accompaniment renders him free to express the full melodic potential of his guitar. The unnamed harmonica player, electric bassist, and acoustic rhythm guitarist provide a tasteful backup that perfectly accents Shines' expressive guitar and vocal style. Especially on "Down In Spirit" or the stridently plaintive "Worried Blues Ain't Bad", his voice conveys a depth of emotional intensity that's almost unfathomable. In preface to a compelling Fifties-style ballad called "You're The One I Love", he explains, "Most everything I write really comes from my own soul, heart, and mind." As a whole, the COUNTRY BLUES album presents Johnny Shines as not only a powerful artist, but also a man of intelligence and sensitivity who's a million miles away from the coarse, ignorant, animalistic stereotype of the country bluesman. When you get through listening to this record, you'll feel that you've not only discovered an artistic giant, but a personal friend of the quality that common experience provides somewhat sparingly. ----------------------------------------