Hubert Sumlin R.I.P.

[Rob Hall]

I've seen one reference to this, but I can't yet find confirmation.

[NormanD]

His wikipedia page says he died on Dec 4th (today).

"Down In The Bottom"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le6pc9IH1KU

What a lousy day. Howard Tate and now Hubert Sumlin.

[garth cartwright]

Caught him once at the Spitz sitting on a stool as a guest of a white US band - they did their tunes (which were pretty good) and then Hubert joined them and they played Wolf numbers and he did those lovely, eloquent lead patterns. Looked happy if fragile.

Not sure on how many Wolf tunes he played as there were other guitarists but he seems to be the one associated with many of the most famous cuts.

[Adam Blake]

He was a great, great player. This is a typical Willie Dixon confection, written for Wolf to have a hit single with, but it features a vocal from which Captain Beefheart carved a career, some magnificent horns, a perfect groove and a Sumlin solo that walks on water (Buddy Guy on rhythm guitar was surely listening very intently). The way he floats on top of the beat, anticipating it, pulling it in, letting it go, like a fisherman with a big fish on the end of his line - it's just an object lesson in "how it's done".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ2UadHc_Qg

Blessed Hubert. He never really recovered from Wolf's death. Now they are re-united.

[Alan Balfour]

In R&B Monthly January 1965 part of Mike Vernon's editorial read:

How many people would be willing to pay 10 shillings for a single record (with two titles) of Hubert Sumlin? For plans are a foot. Just drop us a postcard giving name and address: heading card "Hubert Sumlin". If we get a good response something will be done!

Those who took up the offer (99 copies pressed) were sent the following titles:

G with Neil Slaven (g -1). Kenley, 29 November 1964

MBH 10001 Across the board -1 Blue Horizon (E) 1000
MBH 10002 Sumlin boogie Blue Horizon (E) 1000

Guess which idiot didn't take up the offer?

[tulsehill charlie]

Farewell to another fine craftsman of the blues. His music has been around me most of my life, since "The Real Folk Blues" knocked my head off. It's great that he managed to enjoy himself and play till nearly the end. I do like the stuff he recently did with Elliot Sharp's Terraplane (which Garth mentions).
Here's Little Hubert doing all the things he did so well all his life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... OweEOTY4B4

[Alan Balfour]

This work in progress gives an idea of Sumlin's recorded work with the mighty Wolf

http://www.wirz.de/music/howlwfrm.htm

[Adam Blake]

At Garth's request and John Poole's suggestion - here are the pieces I wrote on Hubert:

INCURABLE BLUES: The Troubles and Triumph of Blues Legend HUBERT SUMLIN by Will Romano (Backbeat Books - $17.95)

For those who don’t know, Hubert Sumlin played guitar and right-hand-man to the legendary bluesman Howlin’ Wolf, and played on nearly all of Wolf’s classic recordings as well as being a stalwart of his live band from the mid-50s right up to Wolf’s death in 1976, since which he has recorded and performed sporadically under his own name and with hosts of ad-hoc blues bands in Austin, Chicago etc.

But if you’re reading this then you probably know who Hubert Sumlin is, and if you’re tempted to buy a book about him then the chances are pretty good that you are a guitar player. Will Romano, author of this volume, writes regularly for magazines such as Guitar Player, Bass Player and Modern Drummer, so it’s particularly perplexing that, time and time again throughout this otherwise laudably thorough study, he shrinks from grasping the nettle and actually detailing what it is that Sumlin is doing on classic solos such as “300 Pounds Of Joy” or “Louise” or so many others. It really isn’t enough to just pile on the purple prose when describing playing which obviously Romano feels very emotionally involved with. As a guitarist myself, I was hoping for a slightly more musicological approach that would tell me in specific detail what was going on records I’ve known and loved for many years. This doesn’t have to get prohibitively technical or academic, it just needs to be a bit more specific. The trouble with piles of superlatives and poetic adjectives when used to describe music is that after awhile they all become meaningless and you forget what it is that you’re actually reading about. This is a common problem with blues books written by enthusiasts who are basically trying to proselytize. Romano obviously feels that Sumlin has been somewhat unfairly overlooked and this book definitely has the flavour of a labour of love about it. Romano loves Sumlin deeply, the man and his music, and the book is at its best when he is describing small anecdotes – either from personal recollection or from his many interviewees – which offer a touching and genuinely engaging portrait of an obviously complex and unique individual.

The biography aspect is all present and correct: as a reference book this is a valuable footnote to any reasonably thorough history of the blues – and certainly a pleasure for any Howlin’ Wolf fan. The stories of Wolf’s relationship with Sumlin are the stuff of blues legend and they are well told here. The problem is that Sumlin, however talented, is essentially a sideman who has been thrust most unwillingly into the spotlight since Wolf’s death. He has been poorly served by a blues community who, with the best will in the world, seem to be incapable of getting the best out of him and onto a record that is sympathetically produced and properly distributed. It may be that his notoriously mercurial approach to his art just doesn’t translate into a modern context. More likely, however, is the inescapable conclusion that Hubert Sumlin has never succeeded in emerging from behind the enormous shadow of the mighty Wolf. There is one particularly moving account of a recent festival appearance where Sumlin froze in mid-performance and had to leave the stage. “I got too emotional. I was overcome”, he tells Romano after the gig. “I saw Wolf’s face up there, man. I saw him. He was looking at me and I just couldn’t go on. I couldn’t do it.” This single anecdote, coming as it does right at the beginning of the book, provides the underlying motif for the whole story. To be fair to Sumlin, Wolf was such an enormous presence, so overwhelming a performer and artist, that no-one could have done better under the circumstances. Since Wolf’s death, Sumlin’s career has been one long diminuendo – even as hordes of guitar players, old and young, black and white, have struggled to figure out just what it was that made his contributions so undeniably riveting and unique.

On a more prosaic level, I would have enjoyed a compare and contrast of Sumlin’s style with some of his contemporaries: Albert King, for example, or Freddie King, or Albert Collins. But I don’t want to gripe too much at such a worthy and worthwhile project as this. If you’re a blues buff, buy it by all means – the stories are worth the price of admission, and the discography is very useful – but don’t expect to discover any of Hubert’s secrets. He’ll be taking them with him when he goes.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TALKIN’ BOUT A SPOONFUL

For the record, I would like to state that my favourite bluesmen are Sonny Boy (Aleck “Rice” Miller) Williamson and Professor Longhair, neither of whom were guitar players.

But don’t get me wrong, I love a good guitar solo. I’m a guitarist after all, and it was guitar solos that I wanted to play when I first started to learn. Specifically (and I think we need to be specific), I wanted to play solos like ERIC CLAPTON!

I was about 12 years old when I discovered the music of Cream – the group that Eric Clapton formed with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce upon leaving John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers in 1966. With true adolescent snobbery, I thought that their music was far more worthwhile than any of the contemporary music of the time and I remember saving up my pocket money to buy the double album called “Wheels Of Fire”. It cost £3.60 and when I got it I thought it was just wonderful, I even subjected my jazz loving father to it, and I especially liked the longest track which was a 17 minute version of a song called “Spoonful”, by someone called Willie Dixon. I would listen to it repeatedly and think about how interesting and clever it was.

A couple of years later I bought a 2nd hand album called “The Blues” on the Marble Arch label. It cost me 25p and I bought it for the picture of the guitar on the cover. On the record was another version of “Spoonful” by someone called Howlin’ Wolf. It was only two-and-a-half minutes long but it was definitely the same song: same lyric, same tune, same riff. But it sounded totally different. Howlin’ Wolf was obviously a much better singer than Jack Bruce, this much was clear, then I noticed that the guitar solo was only about 15 seconds long but that it seemed to say far more than the 17 minute version I knew so well, or, indeed the six minute Cream studio version I had uncovered in the interim. I wanted to be loyal to my heroes so it took a while to sink in but eventually I was forced to acknowledge that Howlin’ Wolf’s recording of “Spoonful” was INFINITELY SUPERIOR to either of Cream’s versions and that Hubert Sumlin – the guitarist on the track – was (gasp) BETTER THAN ERIC CLAPTON!!

OK. Calm down. I know that the comparison is very unfair. Both Hubert Sumlin and Eric Clapton were playing what was appropriate for their respective audiences: Black America 1960, White America 1968 – and the point of all this is not to make snide remarks about Eric Clapton (heaven forfend!) but to illustrate the difference between worthwhile and worthless guitar solos. Clapton would never again allow himself such gross self-indulgence, and Sumlin’s work on “Spoonful” is particularly choice. So lets have a look at it.
A basic truth that is often forgotten in the enthusiasm of turning up and letting rip is that your guitar solo must have some relevance to the song. This is also true of instrumental music. As well as anticipating the harmonic and rhythmic circumstances one is likely to have to negotiate, one also has to ask oneself: What is the vibe of the groove? One must also try to remember the absolute golden rule of guitar solos: IF IN DOUBT, SHUT UP.

“Spoonful” was a song that was written by Willie Dixon specifically for Howlin’ Wolf to sing. It was one of a run of hit records that the mighty Wolf enjoyed around the turn of the 1950’s and 60’s and it was, to a certain extent, a pot-boiler. But what a fine pot-boiler! Lyrically it was a variation on a perennial blues theme, a bleak worldview where “ev’rything’s fightin’ ‘bout a spoonful” – of water, or gold, or coffee, or “your precious love” – because those little drops in the spoon can be precious, and people die for them. So it’s a heavy song. A mean, tough song. Musically, it’s a one-chord-wonder: a mid-paced chug on E with a steady rolling beat and a dark, brooding two-note riff – a setting that producer/ songwriter/ bassist Willie Dixon knew very well that Wolf was a master of.

Guitarist Hubert Sumlin, Wolf’s right-hand-man, may or may not be thinking about this as he works the number, running it through with the band to get the groove to sit right. He’s playing his Les Paul and he has set up a tone with plenty of cut. His amp is set just this side of distortion and the sound is thick and weighty. Sumlin comes in on beat two of the first bar. He plays at the octave in standard tuning, basic blues scale, key of E. He starts by bending an A towards B. He holds the bend just below B natural and lets the note sustain for around five beats. A classic opening gambit: it says you’re serious. By ‘worrying’ the tri-tone (in this case E to Bb – Il Diabola Musica!) you are immediately stating dark intent. Of course, it is also an arch cliché of blues playing and what saves Sumlin from predictability is his poise: he places the note perfectly, lets it howl, and lets it lie. This is called STYLE.

When the same rhythmic stress point comes round again he bends a D towards an E, holding it for two beats before following it with a clean E natural played straight. Playing off a syncopated triplet he then falls back on to the bent note between B and Bb and snaps the note off staccato.
This is a completely logical development which heightens dramatic tension for Wolf’s vocal entry by ‘worrying’ the tonal centre just below the fifth of the scale, and then ‘worrying’ the tonal centre just below the octave.

Did you get through all that? Sorry, but I get a little bit tired of writing about music that never writes about music. It’s not that hard to understand. What is much harder to understand is how Cream managed to inflate such a tight, economical and direct song to such a grotesque degree. Nobody ever talks about any of that stuff. It’s a taboo. Guilty males of a certain age choose to remain silent on such subjects as Ten Years After, Savoy Brown, Chicken Shack, Keef Hartley Band, Aynsley Dunbar’s Retaliation. But come on, let’s name them, get it out in the open. Let’s put the analysis to one side for a moment, take a break, and think about all the American tours that these terrible groups undertook in the wake of the psychedelic era. Ten Years After, for example, for many years, held the record for the most American tours undertaken by any British group. Why did they keep going back? All those dope smoke filled dressing rooms, all those blow jobs in crap hotels, all that sordid rock’n’roll fag-ash mythology. And all that lovely money! (Conspicuous by their absence from this indictment are, of course, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac – for reasons that must be obvious to anyone who’s actually listened to ‘Love That Burns’ or ‘Need Your Love So Bad’.)

And where in earlier years the music that these English debauchees had been peddling was straight-forward pop, now it had developed overtones of meaningfulness as they gleefully plundered the songbooks of black American blues artists. Middle-aged, hard-working, professional black American musicians watched in amazement as these spotty, spindly, long-haired white English youths made off with their songs, played them excruciatingly badly, sometimes without even the vaguest understanding of the music’s forms and disciplines, and proceeded to make fortunes. A few bluesmen joined the party, when they realised that they could make some serious money, but many more just shrugged their shoulders and went to work as usual – playing soul more often than not, as blues had begun to lose favour with the urban audience. This process, of course, being monumentally exacerbated when black American audiences realised that their parent’s music had been annexed by a bunch of inept white guys from England. And who was to blame for all of this? Cream. The first kings of the English blues boom trough.

Ironic, or what? Nobody could doubt Clapton’s sincerity about the blues, then or now. But Cream’s success and the wave it created made a material contribution to the death of the blues as a living art form for black American people. If decadence in an art form is its death knell, then I believe history shows that decadence in the blues began when the active bona-fide practitioners of the music realised that they could make a much better living from a white audience by aping the trappings of white English adaptations of their own cultural heritage.

There’s a lovely story about a lesson in the blues - which may or may not be true, but I hope it is - concerning Eric Clapton and Hubert Sumlin. The time is 1969 and The Rolling Stones are bankrolling the recording of an album by Howlin’ Wolf that will become known as “The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions”. It’s basically an opportunity for the Stones rhythm section and various other interested members of the rock aristocracy of the time to work with the legendary man himself. Wolf is old by this time, in his twilight, but still capable of greatness – when he can be bothered. His attitude on the record is decidedly nonchalant. Hubert Sumlin is still there on guitar, an added bonus for the guitar fanciers such as Clapton himself, who has studied Sumlin’s style at length in earlier years, and who has been invited to play lead guitar on the sessions - thereby relegating Sumlin to the rhythm section. But as it turns out, Clapton plays very well in front of his hero, the sessions gel nicely and everybody is in a good mood. So Clapton invites Sumlin round to his house in Surrey for dinner.

On the evening in question, perhaps over brandy and cigars, Clapton suggests that Sumlin view his guitar collection. Filled with bon-homie, he offers Sumlin a gift of any guitar that takes his fancy. Sumlin studies the wall of fine instruments, fingering one or two, but there is nothing there that he really likes. On the floor lies a closed guitar case. “What’s in the case?” he asks. “Oh, nothing”, replies Clapton. Nevertheless, Sumlin opens the case and takes out a battered Stratocaster. Immediately, on playing a couple of notes, he knows this is the guitar. “This is your No.1 guitar, ain’t it?” he asks. Clapton nods. “Well, you said I could pick any one that I liked and I like this one”. So Eric Clapton sighs deeply and gives his No.1 guitar to Hubert Sumlin.

[NormanD]

Thanks, Adam. Both great pieces. Sadly, most contemporary blues is even worse now than back then - it died long before Hubert Sumlin.

[Adam Blake]

Thank you, Norman. Yep, I gave up on listening to contemporary blues a long time ago. I'm sure I told you about the "Fairies Punishment" job I briefly had about ten years ago: I was working part time in the library of a digital radio station when some bright spark collared me and said: "you like blues, don't you?" I admitted that I did. "Here, listen through this lot and grade them for broadcastability, will you?" He commanded, gesturing towards two tea crates overflowing with cd's. So for eight hours a day, for about two weeks, I listened to blues records. It was horrendous. Unspeakable. It temporarily fucked up my Buddhist practice. Every crappy bar-room blues band in the world had sent their cd to this damn radio station - or so it seemed. Stevie Rae Vaughan impersonators, Johnny Winter impersonators, Gary Moore impersonators - all lumped under 'blues'. Unbearable. Every so often, a B B King or a Jimmy Reed or somesuch would appear and they were like lights in an endlessly dark tunnel. It was deeply, deeply depressing. And if it's got worse since then, I know I am right in only listening to old music!

[garth cartwright]

Wonderful pieces, Adam. You write with such eloquence and grace (and wit and fury). And you describe how music is technically made in a manner which us non-musos can follow. Lovely. Wish I could sit down and discuss how that magic is made.

Do Rock's Back Pages pay well? I hope so. Having such good stuff from you they should definitely throw you some coin. Especially as I believe the site owner is from a very wealthy family.

[Adam Blake]

Do Rock's Back Pages pay well? I hope so. Having such good stuff from you they should definitely throw you some coin. Especially as I believe the site owner is from a very wealthy family.

Are you kidding??!! Not a bean, old boy, not a bean. Not even a free subscription. I'm pissed off with them because I sent them my Ari Up piece and never heard a word - until I noticed it was part of their archive.

[garth cartwright]

A wealthy writer exploits poor writers - how wonderful. And they're using you to advertise Hubert on their latest email (which is how I knew you had 2 features up there). I think you should ask for some £££ or demand your writing is removed. The owner is definitely making money off your back.

[Adam Blake]

I would if I was a professional like you, Garth, but I just like the idea that some people get to read my essays from time to time. I'm under no illusions about RBP's exploitative nature. Funnily enough, it was our mutual friend Nik Cohn who warned me about them years ago in an email. They were (understandably) very keen indeed to get him to contribute some of his old essays and he told them where to go in no uncertain terms.

[Alan Balfour]

The trouble with piles of superlatives and poetic adjectives when used to describe music is that after awhile they all become meaningless and you forget what it is that you’re actually reading about.

Too right. Romano is a purple prose purveyor and I found myself underlining in pencil instances. On page 64 there's this buttock clencher Like a wild animal starving for nourishment and never quite getting it, Hubert twists, gnaws. suckles and bites the "hard blues nipple" until it bleeds'. Be still my beating heart, be still......

His Jimmy Reed biography is better.