Tonight is the first night of the annual Bull Durham Blues Festival at the old Durham Athletic Park. Headlining the show are Hubert Sumlin and Pinetop Perkins, with the Willie "Big Eyes" Smith Band.
You don't have to know that these guys were part of the Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf bands to know that this is going to be one amazing set of music. All you have to do is say the names out loud and listen to the way they sound coming out of your mouth.
Go ahead, try it.
Hubert Sumlin.
Pinetop Perkins.
Willie "Big Eyes" Smith.
If there is a better name for a performer in the history of the blues than Willie "Big Eyes" Smith, i can't think of it. That name ranks alongside Durham's own Blind Boy Fuller, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and Big Mama Thornton at the top of the pile.
The Blues Festival runs two nights, and it's gotten a bit pricey at $35 a ticket, so i generally only go for one night. Last year was a tough choice, with Bo Diddley headlining one night, and Ruth Brown the next. Between them they've got something like 120 years in the music inudstry.
I eventually decided to catch Bo Diddley's set, as i'd seen Ruth Brown back in 98 at the festival. He's what, 77, 78 years old? And still an electrifying performer. There was a moment toward the end of his set. My friend Peter's teenage daughter was lying on the blanket, half asleep. Bo was pounding out the rhythm on his square guitar, and i nudged her awake. "You don't want to sleep through this," i told her. I was thinking of a moment to come, maybe 50 years from now, when Bo Diddley and i have long since passed from this earth, when she might be sitting with a teenage grandchild, and on the radio, or however our kids and grandkids will be listening to music then, might come some mid 21st century rendition of that beat. You know how it goes. Bum ba bum ba bum, ba bum bum, bum ba bum ba bum, ba bum bum.
"Bo diddley bo diddley, where you been?
Said around the world, now I'm back again."
And i wanted her to be able to say to this as yet unimagined child, "Hey, that's the Bo Diddley beat. I saw him when he was almost 80 years old and i was a kid."
Imagine it. How many years of Western music do we have stored away going back to the earliest transcriptions of sacred chorales? Six hundred years, a thousand? And in all that time, how many people have had a beat named for them? There's no Beethoven beat. There's no Aaron Copeland beat. There's certainly no Philip Glass beat.
But there is a Bo Diddley beat.
Bum ba bum ba bum, ba bum bum.
Earlier this summer, former Durham resident and musicologist
Scott Ainslie did a set on a Sunday evening at the amphitheater behind the Sarah Duke gardens. Scott's a pretty engaging entertainer, and even though he's actually presenting a lecture on the history of the blues and southern popular music while he's performing, you don't realize it until a couple of days later. He pulled a genuine one string cigar box and broomstick guitar out of his bag of tricks, and started describing how it was made, and how it was played. He mentioned that it had a lot of names in different parts of the south, but that in certain parts of rural Georgia, it was called a diddley bow. And as he picked, up with his fingers, down with his thumb, you could hear the beat start to form.
Bum ba bum ba bum, ba bum bum.
"Hey, Bo Diddley.
Bum ba bum ba bum, ba bum bum.
Hey Bo Diddley."
"My love is bigger than a cadillac.
I try to show you but you drive me back."
So, tonight.
Hubert Sumlin.
Pinetop Perkins.
Willie "Big Eyes" Smith.
I hope it doesn't rain.
Labels: Blues Festival, Durham
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