Big Road Blues Show 8/26/18: Gon’ Play It For Lil’ Brother – Unissued Field Recordings from Axel Küstner 1972-1978 Pt. 1

ARTIST	SONG	ALBUM
Big Joe Williams	Jinx Blues	Watergate Blues
Big Joe Williams & Lelia McCarter	When I Lay My Burden Down	No More Whiskey
Big Joe Williams & BL Logan	What You Gon' Do, Sinner	Watergate Blues
Big Joe Williams & Lelia McCarter	Somebody's Been Borrowin' That Heavy Stuff O' Mine	No More Whiskey
Robert Pete Williams	Two White Horses	Axel Küstner Unreleased Recordings
Big Joe Williams	Two White Horses	Axel Küstner Unreleased Recordings
K.C. Douglas	Married Woman Blues / Talking About Tommy Johnson	Axel Küstner Unreleased Recordings
K.C. Douglas	Big Road Blues	Axel Küstner Unreleased Recordings
K.C. Douglas	Catfish Blues / Talking	Axel Küstner Unreleased Recordings
K.C. Douglas	Hear Me Howlin'	Axel Küstner Unreleased Recordings
K.C. Douglas	Good Lookin' Women / Talking about Tommy Johnson	Axel Küstner Unreleased Recordings
Big Joe Williams	Boogie Woogie All Day Long	Watergate Blues
Big Joe Williams	Mean Mistreater Blues	Axel Küstner Unreleased Recordings
Robert Pete Williams	Jesus, He Got My Feet Whilst I Run This Race	Axel Küstner Unreleased Recordings
Juke Boy Bonner	The Tree	Axel Küstner Unreleased Recordings
Juke Boy Bonner	I Don't Want Nobody Steppin' On Me	Axel Küstner Unreleased Recordings
Juke Boy Bonner	America, I Am Your Native Son	Axel Küstner Unreleased Recordings
Juke Boy Bonner	Call Me Juke Boy	Axel Küstner Unreleased Recordings
Juke Boy Bonner	I Don't Want Nobody Steppin' On Me	Axel Küstner Unreleased Recordings
Juke Boy Bonner	I'm A Yardman	Axel Küstner Unreleased Recordings
Juke Boy Bonner	I Was Born In Texas	Axel Küstner Unreleased Recordings

Show Notes:

 

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This is a very special show for myself and my friend Axel Küstner from Germany, who made the bulk of these recordings almost forty years to the date of the airing of this show. This is the first of three shows devoted to Axel’s recordings made between 1972-1978, the bulk from 1978 when he spent six months hanging out, recording and photographing blues musicians across the United States. Axel reached out to me several years back when a letter with articles and photos arrived out-of the-blue in my mailbox at the radio station. He had come across my radio show and noticed we had an affection for many of the same artists, particularly a fascination with field recordings. We have talked regularly ever since. I’ve had Axel on the show first in 2011 and then the following year, mainly playing songs from his 1980 trip to the States which were issued on Living Country Blues USA, a series of albums on the L+R label. We also spun a few unissued sides he captured on trips in the 90’s. This time out almost all of the recordings are unissued recordings from the 70’s, a time when blues popularity was at a low point and the real down home blues was disappearing. The trip, while not the intention at the time, laid the groundwork for his 1980 trip, recording many of the artists he met on that earlier visit. These recordings provide a timeless window into the traditional blues scene that could still be heard around the country, that is, if you knew where to look. Due to the length of this essay, both Axel and myself got a little carried away, I’ve split it up into three parts. You can read part two on Sept.16 and the final installment on Sept. 23.

Europeans long had an interest in blues, and while some blues artists like Leadbelly and Sammy Price came over in the 1940’s, it was Big Bill Broonzy’s tours, starting in 1951, that made the first big impact, opening the door for countless others. 1962 saw the inaugural American Folk Blues Festival organized by German promoters Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau which featured the absolute cream of the blues scene. The AFBF toured annually between 1962-1972 (except 1971) and from 1980-1985. The AFBF influenced a generation of Europeans who witnessed those shows. And, of course, Europeans came to the States: Jacques Demêtre and Marcel Chauvard from France in 1959, Paul Oliver from England in 1960, Dietrich Wawzyn from Germany in 1963, Olle Helander from Sweden in 1964 with the 70’s seeing the arrival of important field researchers like Bruce Bastin from England, Bengt Olsson from Sweden and Gianni Marcucci from Italy. It’s worth noting that at the time Axel was cruising around Mississippi Marcucci was also there and some of the recordings he made can be heard on his Blues At Home series. “I did not meet him and was not aware that he was there,” Axel told me, “until 1980 when I got his 3 Albatros LPs Way Back Yonder – Original Country Blues Vols. 1 – 3.”

K.C. Douglas, Berkeley, Ca., 8/15/1972

The recordings of Axel Küstner fit directly into this tradition. Axel started earlier than most, making his first recordings in the field shortly before he turned sixteen. Two versions of “Two White Horses”, one song by Robert Pete Williams and one by Axel’s blues hero, Big Joe Williams, were captured acapella backstage at the 1972 American Folk Blues Festival and marked Axel’s first foray recording in the field. Axel has something of photographic memory when it comes to important dates and he recalls that this was the first blues concert he went to on March 15th, 1972 in Bremen, Germany and he sat in row ten with his fathers portable reel-to-reel machine. “From then on,” Axel said, “I started taping many blues shows here in Germany of John Jackson, Blind John Davis, Sunnyland Slim, Jimmy Dawkins, Otis Rush, Robert Pete Williams, Honeyboy Edwards, Piano “Dr. Feelgood” Red, Big Joe Duskin, Dr. Ross and a few others.”

A few months later Axel was on vacation with friends of his family in Yorba Linda, California. Prior to his trip he came across an issue of Blues Unlimited that had addresses of blues artists and picked out some of those from California including K.C. Douglas, L.C. Robinson and George ‘Harmonica” Smith and wrote to them, all of whom wrote back. Living in Yorba Linda was David Evans who Axel had already been corresponding with. Axel met up with Evans and the two have remained friends ever since. Douglas invited Axel over and performed several numbers as well as talking about his major influence, Tommy Johnson. “…You know, it was fascinating for me, to meet him and be accepted by him as a sixteen year old blues fan and he started playing the old stuff, “Big Road Blues” and “Catfish Blues” and played his own numbers and then talked about Tommy Johnson…”

The following year Big Joe played a string of one-nighters in Europe and Axel took a train to Berlin on March 30th-31st to hang out with him. He taped two shows in Berlin as well as recording him at his hotel room playing his nine and twelve string for an hour. Some of this material appeared on the albums No More Whiskey and Back To The Roots, the latter his last album issued during his lifetime (reissued as Watergate Blues). One of the details Axel remembers is Big Joe losing his airplane ticket to Vienna and being upset when a black guy (probably a GI stationed there) walked up to him at the airport and said “what are you doing here man and who are you?” Joe replied “I’m Big Joe Williams!” The young black replied “oh man, than sounds like blues, man!,” Axel recalled with a laugh. Unlike the States, Axel noted, Big Joe and his fellow bluesman were treated as living legends in Europe and the venues they played were packed.

Juke Boy Bonner, Bad Gandersheim, W.Germany, 3/20/1976

Axel got to know Juke Boy Bonner when he was in Germany in 1976 and reconnected with him again when he came back over in 1977. Axel was able to get him a gig and took along a friend to drive Juke Boy to the club in Frankfurt. “I mean we were two hippy guys, you know, I had the John Lennon type of glasses and the ponytail and the long beard, and my friend in the back, you know, he  was weird looking with sun shades and long hair and a long beard and he was wearing bluejeans and para trooper boots …While we were driving Juke Boy pulled out his harmonica and started improvising a song about both of us and him going to Frankfurt: ‘…I’m trying to get to Frankfurt to lay down some solid blues/The guy in the front driving is looking kinda weird/And the guy in the back wearing GI boots.'” In “America, I Am Your Native Son”, one of the songs Axel recorded in 1977, Juke Boy sings: “I was born with you baby, America, look like you don’t want me around/I got to come all the way to Europe, just to get enough money to keep from laying around.” And in “I Was Born In Texas” he observes: “You know the black people don’t look at me right/So I got to play for the white boys that wear the long hair.” Axel recorded Juke Boy at his home in Bad Gandersheim and in the Birdland club in Frankfurt. He had been planning on looking him up in Houston when he came over in 1978 but Juke Boy tragically died on June 29 of that year before they could meet up. He was just forty-six years old. The week of his death the Houston Chronicle ran the headline: “Weldon ‘Juke Boy’ Bonner, well-known in Europe, dies alone in his hometown.”

It was a dream of Axel’s to come to the States again for a longer stay. He spent a short time enrolled in photo design at a University but quit after one semester. “It was more exciting to me wanting to go to the States and absorbing the scenery and seeing what was going on over there. I mean it’s a different thing when you see Big Joe in a German club or Juke Boy then being at their home or going to a juke joint or whatever. …I was so impressed with the work of field researchers like George Mitchell, who did a great combination of sound recording, photography and writing …all the other field work done by David Evans and Chris Strachwitz …Bengt Olsson, I admired his work a lot. During the time if you would pick up a record cover or a Blues Unlimited magazine you would see the work of British photographer Valerie Wilmer …that was a huge influence, just focusing on the photography.” In May 2018 Axel got to meet Wilmer for the first time in London.

Axel didn’t have an agenda when he started out: “I never considered it work, I just considered it fun. …I had no academic approach, I didn’t want to get an academic degree doing all that stuff or whatever. I just did it for the fun, out of curiosity, I mean I enjoyed the people …They accepted me. That was big part of the whole thing. They would not look down on me as some kinda crazy kid or whatever. They took me seriously and they were friendly and easy-going. …That was a big part of the fascination that a guy like Joe who I would consider my big hero that I could just sit down and talk to him like I talk to you. I mean, to Big Joe, I mean, he had made records with Bob Dylan in 63′ …to Joe it didn’t make any difference whether it was Bob Dylan or Jimi Hendrix or myself you know.” Joe seemingly knew everyone, from the Beatles to Dylan. “Paul from them Beatles. Last time I saw him he had that Chinese girl with him,” Axel recalls Joe telling him. After Axel left Joe, his friend Blewett Thomas took Joe to meet Dylan who was playing in Jackson, Ms. The first thing Big Joe said to Dylan at their meeting was: “Hey Bobby, you got any bread on ya?!”

Axel saved up for his 1978 trip by working at a nearby post office for six months. Axel recalls an interesting anecdote while working there that has stuck with him: “On the job one day I talked to an older co-worker who was about to retire soon (so he must have been born around 1913 or so) and I told him that I wanted to work for a couple of months to save enough money to travel to the US and he said: ‘Yes, I have been to the US myself, I was a prisoner of war over there’ and then he added, totally unexpected and much to my amazement: ‘They really treated the Negroes over there in a shabby way.’ I still think that this was an intense statement (coming from a former German soldier who had fought a war that promoted totally racist and white supremacist ideas). ”

Roosevelt Holts, Bogalusa, La., 4/17/1978

To plan his 1978 trip he reached out to people like David Evans, Norbert Hess (a German R&B collector who had been to the States) and Giles Oakley (producer of the BBC series The Devil’s Music) for contacts. “I knew fairly well, roughly, who I wanted to meet, like people I met before like Big Joe, or Robert Pete Williams, or Juke Boy, others I knew of like Buddy Moss lived in Atlanta.” Joe Carter was another bluesman he planned on looking up. In January of 1978 Carter came over for a tour. “Joe Carter was still working in, I don’t know, a meatpacking factory or whatever, took his three-week vacation and came over here, played that rough Elmore James type Chicago styled blues …I got to talking to him, I taped the show that evening you know, and took some photographs of course. …I got to talking to him and said ‘oh, yeah Mr. Carter I’m planning on coming to the States in a couple of months and I’d like to come to Chicago’ and on that first meeting he said ‘if you come to Chicago you can stay with me’ and he gave me his phone number and address and I did for six weeks when I got there.”

Axel flew in from Brussels to JFK on April 4th. Louisiana Red, who he had met in Germany, was supposed to pick him up but never showed. Instead he reached out to Tommy Tucker of “Hi-Heel Sneakers” fame, staying with him in East Orange, NJ for a day or two before grabbing a greyhound to New Orleans in time for Jazz Fest. The first musicians he hooked up with were Little Freddie King and Brother Percy Randolph. One day he met the owner of Little Freddie’s building outside who said he just got back from touring Europe – it was Dave Bartholomew. “I didn’t know who he was” Axel chuckles. “I was into the acoustic stuff, you know, and listening to Boogie Bill Webb and Arzo Youngblood on those David Evans field recordings. …I had the addresses that David had sent me of Boogie Bill Webb and Arzo so one day I recorded Little Freddie and Brother Percy at Brother Percy’s home and then Little Freddie and me decided, OK, let’s go see Arzo. And we took a city bus out to the, it was the Ninth Ward or whatever, where Arzo lived and we just went there, hung out and I set up my tape machine and so they started to play, you know, and Arzo he knew Tommy Johnson and he played some of the old Tommy Johnson stuff. …Once you knew something about the music and Tommy Johnson it opened up a door right away into a world that was basically closed to a regular person I would say.” They all jammed together, fueled by pint bottles of Night Train Express. “Then later on that night Boogie Bill Webb, who was a neighbor of Arzo’s, lived just around the corner, walks in with an amp in one hand, and his electric guitar in the other hand and said ‘I heard something was going on here and wanted to check you all out, see what’s going on.’ It was “like a blues dream coming true,” Axel recalled. Boogie Bill had learned from Roosevelt Holts when he was a boy in Jackson, Mississippi. Axel mentioned to him that he wanted to go to Bogalusa to meet Roosevelt Holts and Bill just said “oh, no, no problem we can meet and we’ll drive you up there. “And they did, you know,” Axel laughs. Axel spent two weeks in New Orleans before taking a Greyhound to Baton Rouge to spend time with Henry Gray.

 

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The above article is drawn from a lengthy interview I taped with Axel plus numerous follow-up emails and phone calls to correct details and flesh out his trip. There’s some additional information he wanted to add and I’ve included it verbatim (outside of a few grammatical items) as it was sent to me: