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‘I saw the Mississippi Sheiks…’ – time-travelling and dreams in music

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Colin H on imaginary meetings in songs

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  1. The text didn’t post. Here it is…

    I’ve received a courtesy copy of the forthcoming Rory Gallagher BBC box set and watched one of the two Blu-rays of concert performances – fantastic stuff. I’m not a diehard Rory fan, to be honest – I like certain songs and I love the spontaneity of his playing, and I much prefer the trio format of his career (1971-72 and then 1978-91) to the middle-70s era when he had a tinkly piano player (coinciding with rather stodgy material in my view – other views are available, such as those of 95% of his fans I suspect). I’m also unfashionable in really liking his early 90s live performances – several of them televised in various European countries – with up to a five-piece band.

    Like Jimi Hendrix, for instance, watching Rory as opposed to simply listening brings a totally new dimension – you can see the invention in the moment, the jeopardy and excitement involved.
    Probably my favourite Rory song is ‘The Mississippi Sheiks’, which he recorded for a 1978 album – in an epic arrangement with loads of layered guitars – and performed onstage (with only one guitar, yet seemingly conjuring up almost all of those layers) for only a couple of years after that as far as I’m aware – happily, coinciding with a few TV bookings, including BBC’s ‘Rock Goes To College’ in 1978. I’m always amazed that the song is overlooked when ‘best of’ compilations come around.

    The lyrics are a brilliant conceit – based on a dream (real or imagined, I don’t know) of seeing the 1930s blues ensemble ‘on the corner of the street’ and hearing what they sounded like. The Sheiks recorded a number of 78 rpm records between 1930-35 and after that, two of the members, Bo Carter and Walter Vinson, performed and recorded in other capacities, being rediscovered during the 1960s folk/blues revival in that decade – along with Mississippi John Hurt, Mississippi Fred Dowell, Skip James, Son House and the rest (actually, both Skip and Son were from Mississippi, but didn’t feel the need to stick it in front of their names; Mississippi Fred was actually from somewhere else entirely!). Bo and Walter recorded a valedictory album as The New Mississippi Sheiks in 1972, and some of the original unit’s recordings would have been available across blues LP compilations by that time. Probably their big contribution to ‘the blues’ – and actually to hillbilly music as well – is their original 1930 composition ‘Sitting On Top of the World’, subsequently recorded by dozens of people in those two areas of music.

    There is precisely one photo of the 1930s Mississippi Sheiks (easily found online) – Walter, Bo and Sam Chatmon, I think – which would have appeared in blues magazines or books in the 60s/70s, which Rory would have seen. One might assume this is the one Rory is basing his dream on – but no, he’s telescoping two photos into one, and also two bands into one, because his song goes on to mention (Joshua) ‘Peg Leg’ Howell. We’re told ‘his gang were making quite a sound’.

    Howell – from Georgia, not Mississippi – was a street-corner musician, performing in Atlanta in the 20s. He and his players Eddie Anthony and Henry Williams, often credited as Peg Leg Howell and His Gang, made several records between 1926-29. (Howell was also ‘rediscovered’ by folk/blues aficionados in the 60s, just in time to make one new record.) And just like the Mississippi Sheiks, there is precisely one photograph – again, three men on a street corner, this time with instruments, two guitars and a fiddle.

    Rory conjured a whole world out of these two photos:

    I saw the Mississippi Sheiks,
    On the corner of the street,
    Oh, was it just a dream,
    Like I’ve been traveling in a time machine.

    So come along with me,
    Back to the southern streets,

    I saw old Peg Leg Howell,
    His gang was making quite a sound,
    I heard Bo Carter wail,
    And that git-fiddle-combo played.

    Come along and see,
    The Mississippi Sheiks…

    Writing songs based on history and imagined interactions with – or scenarios therefrom – is probably an under-used device. Rory refers to both ‘a dream’ and ‘a time machine’ in his lyric early on, as explanatory devices to suspend any disbelief that needed suspending. Once that’s out of the way, he has fun with the conceit of making these fuzzy images come to life with a little imagination. Most biographies of Shakespeare are pretty much the same conceit – a handful of known facts, a couple of paintings and a load of best-guess imagination.

    Hearing/seeing Rory perform ‘The Mississippi Sheiks’ on ‘Rock Goes to College’ reminded me of Northern Irish bluesman Ronnie Greer’s composition – his only composition, I think – ‘Going Down to Clarksdale’, which uses a similar device – not specifically photos (though perhaps) but certainly references in books to people and places in blues history – clubs, crossroads, towns – with Ron linking them in the form of an imagined travelogue. It’s a terrific song – and Ron may well be performing it in his pub shows in Monaghan next weekend (one of which I’m of a mind to attend). Who knows, there may well be younger people there who’ll end up writing songs beginning with the line ‘I saw ol’ Ronnie Greer, down at Terry’s Bar…’ 🙂

    And so the blues roll on. I’ll put the ‘Rock Goes to College’ performance of the song in the next comment – albeit from an old TV broadcast. Rest assured, the Blu-ray in the box set is in pristine sound and vision.

  7. It’s not a supernatural encounter as such but expanding it to accounts about great bluesmen, Eric Bibb has a fine song in which Bukka White tells of his talented first cousin once removed and predicts big things for him and invites him to stay with him anytime he wants (which, indeed, he did):

    ‘Tell Riley he’s welcome to stay.
    Mark my words, he’s gonna be big some day…
    …mark my words, he’ll B.B. King someday.’

  8. Lovely post, Colin. I agree, it’s a fine song. At the Rory Gallagher festival in Ballyshannon last year I enjoyed the set of a Rory tribute band rather cheekily calling themselves The Mississippi Sheiks.

    Looking forward to the BBC set as well. I normally steer well clear of these £100 plus mega box sets and stick with the 1 or 2 CD edited versions but this one could tempt me. I must say I think Donal is doing a great job in looking after Rory’s legacy – a model in how to do it.

    • Actually, it’s Donal’s son Daniel now looking after things (with Donal happily retired, advice to offer if need be). I guess the recent RTE/BBC NI broadcast Rory documentary was Donal’s valedictory project – it was very much Donal-led on screen, as a sort of travelogue through his own time with Rory – a brilliant device.

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