Listening to Prestige 504: Memphis Slim

LISTEN TO ONE: Mr. Freddie Boogie

Bluesville has called upon Memphis Slim before, for a jazzier 1959 session under Willie Dixon's name, featuring Harold Ashby on tenor sax; then two sessions in 1960, one a piano-bass-drums trio and the other piano and harmonica. There was only one more simplification that could be made, and this session makes it--Slim alone with his piano. 

But not quite that simple. On four tracks, he switches over to organ, two instrumental and two with vocals. Slim's rolling piano style is a huge part of his appeal, and the organ stuff is very different, but it offers pleasures of its own.

The instrumental organ tracks are his own compositions, "Celeste's Boogie" ("Cella's Boogie" on the session log) and "Mr. Freddie's Boogie." The vocals are the traditional "Soon One Morning" and "Goin' Down Slow," originally a hit for St. Louis Jimmy Odem in 1941 (and reprised by him for Bluesville in 1960). The two boogies are the more successful experiments.

"Steady Rollin' Blues" and "Three Women Blues" are both Memphis Slim compositions, and each with a debt to previous blues--as has been noted before, a good blues lyric is likely to turn up in a number of songs. Robert Johnson sang about being a steady rolling man, but the real nod here is to Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's 1946 "So Glad You're Mine," covered a decade later by Elvis Presley. Slim borrows from the chorus - "I'm so glad I'm living, and I'm so glad you're mine." "Three Women Blues" tackles the familiar theme of the guy who's only loved three women. Jimmie Rodgers did it a little more sentimentally than some. His three women are his mother, his sister, and his darling wife. Slim's persona has a tougher time: "My mother, and my sister, and the gal who wrecked my life." He borrows more strikingly from from Alberta Hunter, by way of Bessie Smith, who made "Downhearted Blues" one of her best-known songs. Slim sings it: "You know I've got the world in a jug, I hold the stopper right here in my hand / But I'm gonna hold you baby, until you come under my command."

There are lots of songs about big-legged women (a blues euphemism for big butt). Slim has chosen to credit Jimmy (Mr. Blues) Williams's version, though by the time he gets through with it, it is Slim's own. He goes to two legends of the blues for his other two selections: Leroy Carr for "Mean Mistreatin' Mama" and B. B. King for "Rock Me Baby," and he more than does justice to these two masters. "ROck Me Baby" is credited to King and Joe Josea, but it's King all the way. "Joe Josea" was the pseudonym that West Coast indie label impresario Joseph Bihari used when he wanted to claim writing and publishing credit for a song one of his artists had written and recorded for his label.

I've made "Mr. Freddie Boogie" my "Listen to One" to show a different side of Memphis Slim, although his piano blues are really his best work.

Ken Goldstein produced the session. It was engineered by Mel Kaiser, whose specialty was engineering blues and folk recording sessions, but is oddly best known, for those who know about such things, for his Folkways album of science fiction sound effects. The Bluesville release was called The Blues of Memphis Slim: Steady Rolling Blues.