Mississippi Fred McDowell
The Alan Lomax Recordings

Mississippi Fred McDowell was born in 1904 in Rossville, Tennessee. He began playing guitar at the age of 14. Around the 1940s, he moved permanently to Como, Mississippi, to work as a farmer.
Now it's 1959, late September, and the ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax along with his young assistant and singer Shirley Collins is touring Panola County intending to record mostly unknown local musicians. On the 21st of the month, while McDowell is working in the cotton fields, he hears that Lomax is in Como. Still wearing his work overalls (see the historical album cover image), he retrieves his acoustic guitar and heads to the house of his friend, singer, and percussionist Lonnie Young. Lomax is on the porch, listening to some musicians, but as soon as Fred begins to play his North Mississippi hill country blues, Alan is immediately captivated and fascinated. Without hesitating, he starts recording that bluesman who has the musical history of the Delta in his blood but simultaneously adds new elements, emphasizing typically African (poly)rhythmic sounds. McDowell was 55 at the time, and it's crazy to think that until then, he never had the chance to record anything.
With "The Alan Lomax Recordings," we have a collection of recordings, 23 in total, fundamental to the history of the blues. The charm of these tracks remains intact, having lost none of their expressive and ecstatic force. McDowell seems to have sculpted them in a marble-like classicism from the very start.
Fred has a sharp and nasal voice, dry and suffering, while his guitar is rhythmically powerful and penetrating, thanks to the masterful use of the vibrant and rough bottleneck. McDowell is not there to please the listener; on the contrary, he is there to challenge and penetrate their shell.
I begin by mentioning the obsessive and echoing "Worried Mind Blues," which is perhaps one of the clearest manifestos of McDowell's style: the insistence on maintaining the chord to create a hypnotic sound, contrasted with the fingerpicking, which is always in motion, interweaving and overlapping bass and melodic parts continually.
For me, one of the absolute gems is "You Done Tol’ Everybody"—irresistible for its crystalline and cutting slide with a pounding up and down rhythm, while his voice is deep and expressive. Of a completely different mood is the sublime "Soon One Mornin'," tranquil and intimate but at the same time energetic and passionate.
"You Gonna Be Sorry" features the contribution of his sister Fanny Davis, who plays the comb-and-paper (a kind of homemade kazoo made with, indeed, a comb and paper), and Miles Pratcher (a local band musician) on the second guitar. The two provide an excellent sound and rhythmic texture, thanks to which Fred can break free and weave an unreserved improvisational style. This approach is also found in another exceptional piece, "Goin’ Down To The River", where the comb-and-paper echoes a sorrowful breeze; these two tracks are the most free of all these recordings.
The splendid and compelling version of Bukka White's classic "Shake ’Em On Down," again with Pratcher's guitar and Davis’s slightly wild comb-and-paper, provides the right counterpoint to McDowell's fierce and relentless ride (also interesting is the second alternative version).
The caressing "I Want Jesus To Walk With Me" is sung by the delicate voice of James Shorty, while Fred's melancholic guitar emphasizes the atmosphere.
"Good Morning Little Schoolgirl," a blues classic made famous by Sonny Boy Williamson I, is, if I may say so, the most flirtatious track of all the recordings, but it reveals Fred's other interpretive qualities, besides being another exquisite example of his guitar skills. Another great song is the intense "61 Highway Blues", as well as the excellent reinterpretation of "Drop Down Mama" by Sleepy John Estes, here in a duo with Pratcher.
McDowell also gives us a taste of gospel with the traditional "Keep Your Lamps Trimmed And Burning." In addition to the solo version, there is one with his wife Annie Mae on backing vocals (and also a third instrumental version with just the instrumental part). The other track with gospel sounds is "When The Train Comes Along," accompanied by the voices of Rosalie Hill and Sid Hemphill Carter.
The last song I mention is the penetrating "Fred McDowell Blues;" this one is also in a trio with Pratcher and Davis, one of those sorrowful and obsessive blues that digs into the soul.
To conclude, a short portrait of the man McDowell made by Lomax himself in memory of those September days: «Fred was surprised when he noticed I admired his music so much that I visited him for several nights to record everything he played. He kept telling me he didn’t play like the other musicians he knew. In my opinion, he's simply a modest man because the great blues tradition runs pure and deep within him, and no note in any performance lacks a sweet touch of melancholy.»
I've written too much already, but I must add that we will never be grateful enough to Mr. Alan Lomax for these recordings, which allowed McDowell, who risked oblivion, to embark on a musical career and allowed us to discover one of the greatest bluesmen of all time who influenced a new generation of musicians, starting with R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough.
Indispensable.