Blind Willie McTell & Curley Weaver 1949 – 1950.
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BDCD-6014 Blind Willie McTell & Curley Weaver 1949 – 1950
This disc presents the Curley Weaver session(s) for the Sittin’ in With labelof late 1949 or early 1950 and the McTell-Weaver session for Regal in 1950. Their voices are a bit worn from over two decades of daily performing and travel under not always the best of conditions, but their talents are otherwise undiminished. Like Billie Holiday’s singing in her final years, the effect is still quite moving.
Weaver’s Sittin’ in With tracks appear to represent the core of his repertoire and show him deeply embedded in the Georgia blues tradition, with a particular debt to McTell. Two of the tracks have a second guitarist, who plays a six-stringed instrument and appears not to have been McTell. Contrary to some published reports, McTell and Weaver both play guitars on all of the Regal recordings except two takes of a slow gospel song. McTell is the dominant vocalist. His secular material is a typically eclectic mix of new versions of blues he had recorded earlier, adaptations of blues hits by other artists, and pop standards
Of McTell’ s pieces derived from recordings by other artists, Don’t Forget It is based on a 1939 Tampa Red record, but McTell and Weaver give it an almost proto-rockabilly treatment worthy of the Everly Brothers. It was a strong start to their session, proving that there were no flies on the Pig ‘n’ Whistle Band. If Regal had released this track, it might have been the elusive hit that McTell had sought for his entire career. The politically incorrect A to Z Blues was a piece McTell would record again in 1956, but it goes back to a 1924 record by Butterbeans and Susie, who were frequent performers in Atlanta’s 81 Theatre. Most of McTell’ s verses are new. Curley Weaver’s four blues are a similar mixture of original and derivative material.
In this session Blind Willie McTell made his first commercial recordings of older popular songs. He probably had a substantial repertoire of such numbers that he performed by request at the Pig’n Whistle and the Blue Lantern. Pal of Mine was a pop hit of 1921, although McTell associated it with World War One when he recorded it again in 1956. Honey It Must Be Love is a piece he had performed in a 1940 documentary recording session for John A. Lomax, and he would record it again in 1956.
The fact that McTell recorded seven spiritual tunes is indicative of his turn toward religion in his late years. The remaining four religious songs presented here are gospel compositions of the 1930s that were widely recorded in the post-war years. They would have been enhanced with more vocal support, such as the nice falsetto humming that Weaver contributes on the second take of Sending Up My Timber. With recordings such as these, McTell was indeed preparing himself for a home and a permanent place in the history of folk and popular music
Further recordings by Blind Willie McTell can be found on Document BDCD-6001 Complete 1940 Library of Congress Recordings and DOCD-5677 Triple CD Set: Blind Willie McTell – Statesboro Blues (Complete Recorded Titles 1927-1935).
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