4 votes

Mississippi Fred McDowell: You Done Tol' Everybody (1959)

1 comment

  1. DanBC
    Link
    It blows my mind that this was made in 1959. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Fred_McDowell I love this song for this "drone vamp" effect. I also love the production style.

    It blows my mind that this was made in 1959.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Fred_McDowell

    Although commonly regarded as a Delta blues singer, McDowell may be considered the first north hill country blues artist to achieve widespread recognition for his work. Musicians from the hill country – an area parallel to and east of the Delta region – produced a version of the blues somewhat closer in structure to its African roots. It often eschews chord change for the hypnotic effect of the droning single-chord vamp. McDowell's records offer glimpses of the style's origins, in the form of little-recorded supporting acts such as the string duo Bob and Miles Pratcher, the guitarist Eli Green, the fife player Napoleon Strickland, the harmonicist Johnny Woods and Hunter's Chapel Singers. McDowell's style (or at least its aesthetic) can be heard in the music of such hill country figures as Junior Kimbrough and R. L. Burnside, who in turn served as the impetus behind the creation of the Fat Possum record label in Oxford, Mississippi, in the 1990s.[7]

    I love this song for this "drone vamp" effect. I also love the production style.