Sticks Over My Shoulder [coll] – [Mississippi Records]

“In Georgia it is said that a man who wants to learn to play guitar should take his box to the cemetery at night, sit on a grave and throw sticks over his shoulder”??Blues music a la music historian George Mitchell, who recorded blues musicians from Florida and Georgia from the 60′s to the late 80′s. The selection here is Georgian musicians recorded between ’76 and ’79. We got??John Ziegler & Rufus Jones, Jim Bunkley, Jimmy Lee Williams, James Davis, and William Robertson (aka Cecil Barfield!) on here, and all have a unique style.

Ziegler, left-handed, plays a right-handed guitar and Jones plays the spoons, which gives it a down home country folk blues, which sounds a lot like the original Delta blues style. Jim Bunkley’s tracks are very reminiscent of Son House’s style of slapping the shit out of his guitar and sliding up and down like a crazed demon or something, and his last track “The Howlin Wolf” is amazing. Jimmy Lee William plays guitar which is kind of groovy, and earthy, but contrasts his super gritty voice (a lot like the whole album, but his are even more unintelligible). He learned to play harmonica on a rack from his nephew, Buster Brown, who wrote “Fannie Mae.”

James Davis’ father and uncle used to be prominent drum musicians in the area who played house parties and church picnics, playing just a bass drum and a kettle drum. People in the area still refer to Davis’ music as drum music. He has a very electric sound though, like Kimbrough or Louisiana Red. William Robertson, better known as Cecil Barfield, began playing music at five years old when he used a string and a neck pulled across a cooking oil can, then finally budged and got a guitar at 12. Gritty voice and dirty filthy blues riffage.