Fifes and quills

Flutes or pipes are not very common in blues recordings, because in the 1920s they were already part of the past, and had been replaced by the harmonica. In the blues, there are of two sorts :

The quills

Everybody with an interest in music should read Land Where The Blues Began by Alan Lomax.
When Alan Lomax came first to the hill country near Senatobian, in northern Misssissippi, in 1942, he met Sid Hemphill, a multi-instrumentist, born around 1876. Hemphill showed him the quills, "a set of hollow canes of varying lengths, bound together with the tops even". They are the same instrument as the Greek or Romanian panpipes, or the Inca's rondador. The quills were of various sizes, 4-tube to 10-tube for Sid.

In my first post about Indians and the blues, I'd put a recording of Sid Hemphill playing the quills in a fashion that called back to his African and Indian roots.

"Them's the quills...that's old folks' music. Music of olden time. Back yonder almost everybody used to play on quills. Now, ain't hardly common no more."

Henry Thomas : Old Country Stomp (buy) (Chicago, june 1928)

Another great quills player was Henry Thomas, who recorded 25 sides for Columbia in 1928. Being born in the 1870s, like Sid Hemphill, he was one of the oldest blues musicians ever recorded. The song above is an old square dance tune from the 19th century.

Read more about the quills here in this great Web page by a guy named Norm Sohl.
Ed at the great blog The Blue bus made also a great post about the quills.

The fife or fice



In Land Where The Blues Began there is this great description of Napoleon Strickland making his fife :

Majesterially, he draws the red-hot poker out of the coals and, holding up a section of cane, says, " Now this is something you go fishing with, but I'm gonna fix it so it will make music." He puts the cane down on the floor and, holding it steady with his foot, burns the first finger hole into the barrel, then puts the poker into the coals again. " Now I'm gonna show you how I make it sing."
He holds the flute uo to his lips and licks the place where he will blow it. Then he burns in that hole. Next he licks his other fingers and spreads them along the barrel, locating the other finger holes in accordance with his normal way of spreading his hand along the barrel when he plays. These tuning points are marked with spit. He nicks the chosen witted points with his big clasp knife - "See, I takes my knife and I swings each one of them out."
"How far apart do you put the holes ?"
"About half an inch, I think"
Here we witness black magic. No micrometer, not even a ruler or a pattern, has controlled the tuning of his fife. The finger holes are simply set a comfortable and familiar distance apart, where his fingers naturally fall when he's playing. He carefully burns out and enlarges these holes, one after another. He delicately touches the end of the cane. "When the sound come out this end, you got it made." Napoleon opines. "Now I'm gonna burn the jintes out of the cane." So saying, he pushes the red-hot poker up the barrel of the new fife, and as he burns through each joint of the cane, delicate notes of smoke rise in the kitchen air. Withdrawing the poker, he blows the barrel of the fife clear of smoke, shavings, and cinders. He rubs the cane to cool it off. "Now," he says proudly and with his widest grin, "here's the fice, and i'll do it like this."

Of course, fife is often accompanied with drums (and I soon will post about that style).
Ed Young was another fife player that Lomax met on his hill country trips. Here is a improvised version of "Joe Turner" he recorded with white banjo player Hobart Smith.

Ed Young & Hobarth Smith : Joe Turner (buy)



(this photo and the first one were taken by Alan Lomax).

The Blues has Indian blood

When asked about the origins of the blues, everybody says "Africa" and maybe "Europe", but what about the first settlers on the American continent, the Amerindians ?

I really think they had their part. In the South, there has always been ties between Indians and Afro-Americans. Check out this wikipedia article on Black Indians for more info. And Indian music, especially from the Southeastern tribes, bears resemblance to the blues in its hypnotic rhythm and pentatonic scales.

A good example can be found in the Hemphill family in North Misssissippi. Sid Hemphill, a multi-instrumentalist musician who was discovered by Alan Lomax in 1942, was the son of a Choctaw Indian. When he played the quill, the heritage was more than apparent.

Sid Hemphill - The Devil's Dream (buy) (1942)


His granddaughter Jessie Mae, who passed away in 1993, recorded a few albums in the '80s. She played her own hypnotic brand of blues, typical of the hills country, on the electric guitar, with a tambourine attached to her foot, or leg bells, in the Choctaw manner.

Jessie Mae Hemphill - My Daddy's Blues (buy) (1987)

First time I heard about a possible Indian influence on the blues was from French blues and country scholar Gerard Herzhaft, in his book Americana : Histoire des musiques de l'Amérique du Nord (I guess you don't need a translation), and then at a conference about the blues he gave once. For him, Indian influence shouldn't be underrated for two reasons :

- The ties between Amerindians and Afro-Americans, especially in the Mississippi valley. In some places Indians and Africans were enslaved together, in other places Indian tribes absorbed fugitive slaves (or enslaved them, but with much better life conditions). That led to cultural exchanges and intermarriage. Again, check out this wikipedia article on Black Indians for more info.

- Musical styles from Southeastern tribes, like the Cherokee, have common traits with the blues : pentatonic scale, call and response structure, hypnotic beats, and the use of "floating verses".

I find this idea kinda appealing, but I have difficulties to go further and find more "scientific " documentation about it. I don't know American Indian music very well, and all I found was numerous recordings from Southwestern Indians (Navajo, Hopi, Apache) or Great Plains tribes. No Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw traditional music. A lot of New Age stuff with synthetisers. But I did find something extremely exciting that I saved for a further post...

The Hemphill Family

I was looking for songs that reflected Indian music influence on the blues, and I thought of the Hill country style of North Mississippi. Maybe fife and drum ? And then yesterday, in my shower (that's where most of my ideas come to me, contrary to my President who gets his ideas while shaving... Sometimes I wish he could grow a beard) I thought about the Hemphill family as described in the Alan Lomax book Land Where the Blues Began. I went to my record collection and that was a hit.

Every folk and blues lover should read that Lomax book, and especially the chapter when Lomax meets Sid Hemphill in 1942. Hemphill was born in 1876, which makes him one of the oldest blues musicians ever recorded. His father was a Choctaw Indian. On one of the field recordings Lomax made with Hemphill, there is one instrumental played on a ten-note quill that is really fascinating.

Everyone (including Lomax and Scorsese in his documentary) was very quick to point out African influences when hearing fife and drum music, but the hypnotic beat and the muffled shouts sound very Indian to my hears.

In this part of Mississippi music is a family affair. There is this moment in the Lomax book when, during the second meeting between Alan and a very old Hemphill in 1959, a young girl steps out of the house playing a big drum. She's Jessie Mae, Sid's granddaughter and she recorded in the '80s a few singles and a couple of albums.

Jessie Mae plays electric guitar, bass and snare drums, and on several songs a tambourine attached to her foot, or leg bells obtained from Choctaw Indians to emphasize this part of her heritage. She electrified her ancestors' music but still plays these hypnotic beats that characterize the regional style of the Hill country (Tate and Panola counties).

Now what do you think of this ? Are there links between Indian music and the blues (or any form of popular music ) in your opinion ?