Jimmy Page
Don’t Send Me No Flowers

As I walk backwards like one of Bubba’s shrimp in the swampy bay of Rock-Blues, I come across this 1980 copy titled “Jam Session”, credited to Jimmy Page & Sonny Boy Williamson (2) & Brian Auger. This is the Japan reissue of a session recorded on January 28, 1965 at IBC Studios in London. The first edition was actually titled “Don’t Send Me No Flowers” and was released in 1968, more properly credited to Sonny Boy Williamson (2) With Brian Auger & The Trinity / Joe Harriott / Alan Skidmore / Jimmy Page. But marketing rules changed reality starting in 1972 when—first with the title “Faces And Places Vol. 8”, then with “Special Early Works Featuring Sonny Boy Williamson”, and finally with the plain label “Jam Session”—they wanted to make it seem like at the center of the project was the virtuoso guitarist from Led Zeppelin, by then the greatest Rock band of all time.

Luckily, today we have streaming platforms, and I had been looking for this vinyl for a long time, even though I knew the truth: Page’s guitar here you hear as much as Muddy’s in “Waters At Newport 1960”—practically nothing! It’s a live jam session, with no overdubs or retakes, from the days of the “American Gods”—an expression associated in mid-sixty England with a quartet of American artists who, in a very short period, came to define electric blues for the British: Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson (II), and Little Walter. In England, students breathed the air of revolution; so music that spoke of life on the road, following in the footsteps of the great blues tradition reinterpreted in a modern way, seemed to arrive at just the right time. Many of the great English bands born in the ‘60s came out of this vibrant music scene, with Black musicians who back in the States worked on assembly lines or in steel mills and used their vacations to tour Europe, playing with white session musicians passionate about Blues.

At the time, Sonny Boy wasn’t so down and out and enjoyed a certain following in his homeland, albeit in the circuits and charts reserved for coloured artists. Of the “Big Four” of Chess (Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Little Walter, and Sonny Boy), Sonny Boy is by far the least famous: he would often call himself “a man from the 1800s”, but today it’s generally recognized he was born at the dawn of the twentieth century. Add to this the fact that this extraordinary artist didn’t really start a recording career until the 1950s (he must have been about forty when he released his classic “Mighty Long Time”), and, to finish with a flourish, Sonny Boy Williamson was content to live the life of an itinerant bluesman and roamed wide and far, recording only sporadically compared to Muddy and the Wolf, who tended to stay in Chicago, regularly dropping in at 2120 South Michigan Avenue to record. His itinerant nature was a perfect fit with the new trend of recording outside the United States, which began with “Sonny Boy Williamson And Memphis Slim”, recorded live at the Blue Bar in Paris on December 1st, 1963. This was followed by the crossing of the Channel where “Sonny Boy Williamson & The Yardbirds” was born, recorded live at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond on December 8, 1963. A similar live session, with Eric Burdon’s Animals, was recorded at the Club A Go Go in Newcastle on December 30 of that same year. Of all of them, though, the most successful collaboration across the Atlantic was precisely this one with Page and Auger.

A born bluesman, Sonny Boy was called “the father of modern blues harmonica”. His feelings always come through. Always blues. Most of all, it’s his incredible sense of timing and rhythm that sets him apart. When he sings, he uses pauses and intervals with as much importance as the words themselves. And where the voice rests, his harmonica speaks. But Sonny Boy drank. He drank a lot, and died in his sleep of a heart attack less than four months after this recording. What age exactly is hard to know, given his date of birth is uncertain (1899, 1908 or, most likely, 1912). Even the stories circulating about this January 1964 session highlight the drinking habit of this always-much-too-little-remembered bluesman. “Sonny Boy walked into the studio”—reads the book “Hammer Of The Gods”—“he opened a bottle of scotch by breaking off the neck, signaled to the astonished young musicians, tried the tracks once and recorded them without further ado. The sessions took place in total chaos: Williamson kept confusing the musicians with long pauses and arcane blues structures apparently invented on the spot.” Page himself said that he and Williamson actually rehearsed the material a few days earlier at Sonny’s manager’s apartment. But when it came to recording, Williamson had forgotten all the arrangements. Sitting in a circle, with Sonny Boy getting drunk, they nonetheless managed to record an album in just three hours.

Page was entrusted with the solos for “I See A Man Downstairs” and “Little Girl, How Old Are You?”, but for the rest Sonny Boy buried him with his amplified harmonica. This, of course, goes not just for the guitarist but also for Brian Auger: although more present than Jimmy, he appears no more than a supporting player, like all the other musicians, for that matter. Listening leaves no doubt: calling the shots in the studio was the American bluesman, the only real star of the record. In this sense, the work can definitely be considered a genuine example of visceral American blues, even though it was played in England by predominantly white local musicians and even though the band’s leader considered them not very skilled in interpreting Black music—a notion, by the way, that’s absolutely far from the truth. The album is more than listenable; I’d dare say it’s fun, especially if you like traditional blues sung by an old son of a bitch singing about schoolgirls or something of the sort. Less so if, on the other hand, you’re seeking Jimmy Page’s presence, here reduced to a mere bit part, a simple sideman at the service of a Blues master.

TRACKLISTING

A1. Don’t Send Me No Flowers

A2. I See A Man Downstairs

A3. She Was So Dumb

A4. The Goat

B1. Walking

B2. Little Girl, How Old Are You

B3. It’s A Bloody Life

B4. Getting Out Of Town