Future Blues — Willie Brown

#365Songs: February 5

When I’m writing #365Songs essays, I like to have a theme, and I like it to emerge in the moment. That is to say, I like it when one post leads to the next, even as I don’t know where I’m going.

Yesterday, I was in Detroit rock city talking about the future now. Today, I’m in the Mississippi Delta with the Future Blues.

A long time ago, before the internet, the only way to learn about the country blues was to read books and liner notes. Of which there weren’t, frankly, all that many. And the only way to learn how to play the country blues was to devour the tablature books that Stefan Grossman published. This was one of them:

In this book was a song by a man named Willie Brown. The song was called “Future Blues.”

I would come to discover much later—at least as far as the guitar parts went—that Willie Brown was essentially doing his best Charley Patton imitation throughout the song.

Regardless, I found the performance completely hypnotizing. I had never heard a guitar played like this before. It was so rhythmic, and so percussive, and so strange, and so … hard. I was captivated.

When Brown’s voice comes in, it’s equally shocking and hypnotic. The voice is harsh, strained, and grainy. There’s both an urgency and an insolence to it—somehow simultaneously carefree and desperate.

This binary is reflected in the lyric as well—examples include:

Well, I know you see that picture
Now, Lordy, up on your mother’s
Up on your mother’s, mama’s shelf
I know you see that picture now
Up on your mother’s shelf
Well, you know bout that
I’m gettin’ tired of sleeping by myself

You can’t help but wonder—when listening—how we got from this strange and wildly erratic sound to the utterly formulaic 12-bar shuffle that would become the omnipresent sound of the blues within just a few decades.

And yet, in a way, Brown himself lived the story that contains the answer.

“Crossroads Blues” by Robert Johnson is perhaps one of the most well-known of all country blues songs, and Willie Brown is famously namechecked in the lyric:

You can run, you can run, tell my friend boy Willie Brown
You can run, tell my friend boy Willie Brown
Lord that I’m standing at the crossroad, babe
I believe I’m sinkin’ down

It was Robert Johnson who would canonize the all-too-familiar chunka-chunka rhythm that continues to undergird so much of the 12-bar blues that would follow. You can hear it most clear in Johnson tracks such as “Kindhearted Woman Blues” and “Ramblin’ on my Mind.”

As legend has it, Willie Brown was part of the formidable trio of musicians that also included Son House and Charley Patton, who would serve as major inspirations for the young Johnson. This positions Brother Robert as the bridge between the wildness and weirdness of early country blues and the formulaic electric shuffle blues that would define the Chicago sound.

Johnson tried to cover all his musical bases in the limited time he had. In one musical moment, he’d be channeling Skip James with “Hellhound on my Trail,” then in the next, he’d be copping Son House licks on “Preachin’ Blues.” On “They’re Red Hot” he sounds like a sped up cross between Willie McTell and Willie Johnson, while on “Come On In My Kitchen,” he offers a slowed down and decidedly more mournful twist on “Sittin’ on Top of the World” by The Mississippi Sheiks.

And while titans such as Muddy Waters borrowed liberally from Johnson’s miraculous slide guitar technique for early performances such as “Rollin’ and Tumblin’,” it was ultimately the comparatively leaden groove of “Sweet Home Chicago” that would become the bible for the modern blues sound.

All of which is to say that Willie Brown’s “Future Blues” represents an essential Point A in the migratory story of the blues.

By the way, if the name “Willie Brown” conjures up a memory you can’t quite put your finger on, it could be that you’re thinking of the movie Crossroads, in which a young, blues-inspired guitarist played by Ralph “Karate Kid” Macchio goes on a road adventure with a man who claims to be THE Willie Brown of Robert Johnson fame.

The real Willie Brown only recorded a small handful of songs in his 52 years on this earth, and because he passed away before the whole blues revival in the 60's—during which Son House, Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, and many more country blues musicians enjoyed late-life recognition—he never knew just how influential those few songs would be.

No wonder he couldn’t tell his future.

Can’t tell my future
And I can’t tell my past
Can’t tell my future
And I can’t tell my past
Lord, it seems like every minute
Sure gonna be my last

~

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