(This guide was originally published in 2005, before Chris Whitley’s passing. It’s been expanded and edited, but may still contain a few vestiges of its original form. Apologies in advance.)
Let’s talk about the blues.
It only seems appropriate, after all, given that it’s Tuesday, the bluesiest day of the work week — last weekend a distant memory, Friday a tantalizing speck on the horizon — and given that we haven’t really had a blues discussion here before. Oh, sure, I’ve mentioned the blues, usually as a reference point for something an artist is doing, but that’s mostly just laziness on my part. It isn’t that I’m a blues scholar, able to draw lines between pop and jazz and rock and blues; it’s that the blues is where pretty much everything comes from, so it’s usually an easy connection to make. The blues, as a genre, is the primordial sludge of American music. You can’t get away from it (at least, not if you want to write a good song) — it’s who we are. People who say they don’t like blues music don’t have any idea what they’re talking about; what they’re usually reacting to is an image in their confused brain of an evil-eyed man in a pork-pie hat, his chair tipped back against the wall next to the jukebox, guitar on his lap, muttering something about how his baby done left him.
That isn’t the blues. It’s a spot on the blues’ pinky fingernail. It is, though, a helpful starting point for today’s discussion, because it’s illustrative of the 20th-century archetype of the bluesman, and serves as a useful backdrop for today’s Popdose Guide to Chris Whitley.
Initially, Whitley appeared to be a fresh update on that evil-eyed guy leaning up against the jukebox, but over time, he proved himself to be something else entirely. An inveterate wanderer — both literally and figuratively — who seemed almost incapable of doing the same thing twice, he fidgeted restlessly with the established form and shape of the genre for over a decade before his untimely death in 2005. But like any great songwriter, no matter which way he approached the blues — stripped-down National guitar, turntables and beats, or other angles entirely — his vision held true. He embodied the blues — but not the bright, cuddly approximation favored by B.B. King and guys who wear Dockers. Whitley’s music breathes rheumy breaths; it rises with a menacing rattle, falls with an unsteady hiss, and drips with the burning dread of approaching death. It may not always be pretty — in fact, it’s often damn unsettling — but it’s usually great and always unflinchingly honest.
Here we go. (more…)
