Notes of a Defeatist

Pop Matters has an excellent review of the incredible new Black Keys album, Chulahoma a love letter to Junior Kimbrough.

“Kimbrough, whose idea was simple enough, was a master practitioner of “trance blues”—the art of playing the same chordal progression over and over until it gets into the listener’s pores and oozes out of his/her skin and into his/her soul.  Easy, right?  Not unless you can play a detuned guitar like Kimbrough did.  He started with what local (Mississippi) musicians called “Spanish” tuning, and then from there, downtuned to his own liking.  Kimbrough, like most blues musicians at the time, didn’t use a pick—he used his fingers to pluck both the bottom end and either a chordal rhythm or solo at the same time.  He also sang in a tough-to-decipher pleading wail, but a clue as to what he wanted would be evidenced by the fact he fathered 36 (yes, that’s correct—thirty-six) kids.  Okay, so Junior was horny—does that make him a bad person?

Point is, it’s damn near impossible to imitate Kimbrough—his guitar playing was nothing if not unique.”