(Acoustic Blues) [WEB] Rory Block - Hard Luck Child: A Tribute to Skip James - 2014, FLAC (tracks), lossless

For a good while, now, one of the most faithful practitioners of Delta Blues has been a white woman from New Jersey. Blues troubadour Rory Block, whose first record goes all the way back to 1975, has never been more full of youthful vitality when she delivered with one of the finest-ever tributes to Robert Johnson (The Lady and Mr. Johnson (2006). Following that, she launched her celebrated Mentor Series, each album earnest, informed salutes to other Blues giants. They were earnest and informed for a very good reason: as a youth, Block spent significant enough time with all of these members of Blues royalty — Son House, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Rev. Gary Davis and Mississippi John Hurt — and they influenced her own path in her musical career.

The fifth album in her Mentor Series celebrates the music of the man who Block states is “central to the incredibly powerful style we called Country Blues.” Nehemiah Curtis “Skip” James, like House and Bukka White, recorded some sides in the early 30’s that became very influential and led to his rediscovery in the 60’s. James recorded some two dozen songs for Paramount in 1931, and this pool of haunting, unequivocal and profound blues provided the material for most of Block’s new release Hard Luck Child, A Tribute To Skip JamesStony Plain Records).

But first, Block introduces us to James in her only original of the album, “Nehemiah James,” in which she tells James’ life story, touching on the pull of ministry that would soon lure him away from music making (and bootlegging) and set in motion his long hiatus. “God called him to preach the blues,” Block sings, and she refers to the paradoxical link between the God-praising church music and the secular blues that James thrived within when observing that “Gospel and blues hold hands.”

As with the other Mentor Series album, Block does it all; vocals, acoustic guitar, slide guitar, and like those records, Block plays in her own style, which is, after all, a distillation of the styles of all of these mentors. In doing so, she finds the balance between evoking these old spirits and imposing her own. It’s hard to separate Block’s singing from her acoustic guitar (or guitars usually supplement by a slide guitar), her skill at this is advanced such that she can put all these components together as an integrated package. Still, it’s hard not to appreciate that sweet slide work, especially on tunes like “Special Rider Blues” and “I’m So Glad,” famously covered by Cream in 1966. Even her refined fingerpicking style often stands out, as on “Little Cow and Calf Is Gonna Die Blues.”

“If You Haven’t Any Hay, Get on Down the Road” was originally rendered with James’ unorthodox piano style (which in some respects was a precursor to Thelonious Monk), and Block’s adaptation of it to guitars required some ingenuity on her part, such as tuning down a guitar down to where it’s practically playing a bass part.

Other times, Block excels in projecting the dark mood of many of James’ songs. “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues” is one of the few songs of the Depression to come out during the depths of it that made no attempt to sugarcoat the despair of the times, and you can feel it when James sings about it from this song. You can feel it from Block, too. Perhaps the quintessential Skip James song is “Hard Luck Child,” which Block faithfully recreates, except that she slows it down a bit and in doing so, amplifies the sorrow already inherent in the song.

It’s great to see the blues continue to evolve but it’s important to never forget where it evolved from. Rory Block makes damned sure we don’t forget; Hard Luck Child, A Tribute To Skip James illuminates the lineage back to the Mississippi Delta just as her prior five tribute albums did.