The Deep River of Song: Alabama Review

I have heard some of these recordings, particularly"Knock John Booker (To The Low Ground)" for more than 40 years. This is the real thing, the core of Black traditional music. Too much is focused on the blues which sprang out of this kind of music and other traditions at the turn of the century. I came to this music in part out of my own leading participation in the current revival of Black string band music, especially fiddling and banjo.

Now even if there isno real string band here, no fiddling, and no banjo player, the real music and ethos of Black music, the basic rhythms of the church and play music that came from West Africa, as well as the more linear progressions of the blues that point to the area between the coast and the Sahara, are all here in their glory.

Much is said about the great Vera Hall. It is a shame that no one has put out an all-Vera Hall CD so one does not have to collect a dozen different Lomax collection reissues on various labels to have a CD's worth of her singing.

What seems important here is the versions of Black or general folk songs and blues we are used to hearing from white folk singers and white traditional sources like "Railroad Bill," "Hush Little Baby," and "Ain't Gonna Rain No More."

Also the music captured here as children's game songs, or children's games remembered by older people, show a side of blakc music reaching back to the earliest of times."Knock Johnnie Booker" such a song, as I said, has echoed in my mind since I first heard it on a Library of Congress sampler back in the early 1960s.The tune isn't about the funny character Johnny Booker, many white singers sing about following a minstrel version of the song.Instead it is about the reality of being a slave and getting beaten by the Master or the Mistress.But what a rhythm.My friend Clarke Buehling has been trying to teach the world the importance of the Juba Rhythm not just to patting it, but to his 19th Century minstreal banjo playing. But one listen to the Johnny Booker here, especially if you have heard the rhythm around you again in children's games growing up Black, you know what it is.

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