# A Poor Wayfaring Stranger



## JM (Jun 2, 2010)

[video=youtube;orU_iuBtY-I]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orU_iuBtY-I[/video]


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## C. M. Sheffield (Jun 2, 2010)

JM,

Between this and the last video you posted, I can tell we're a lot alike. If not for the continent between us, we'd enjoy close fellowship.


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## JM (Jun 2, 2010)

I'm happy you liked this one, I'm working on another but need to take more photos.


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## Wayne (Jun 3, 2010)

Can we trade favorite songs? The plaintiveness of this one by Howlin' Wolf--so powerful, esp. when you realize even something of the terror evoked in the Jim Crow era when suddenly there was a knocking at your door in the middle of the night...

[video=youtube;dU_wUcwooc8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU_wUcwooc8[/video]


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## JM (Jun 3, 2010)

Love it.


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## Wayne (Jun 3, 2010)

Glad you like that one. From the liner notes:



> The first of Wolf's "soul songs" to be heard was "Moanin' at Midnight," sold by [Sam] Phillips to Chess. Its sound is a molten blur of Wolf's harp, Willie Johnson's jagged guitar and Willie Steele's flapping drums, chaotic yet right on time. The effect is an auditory fever dream, heightened by Wolf's paranoid lyrics.
> Wolf sings the standard blues I-IV-V changes, but his House Rockers, as if mesmerized by their own groove, never leave the I chord. This can't be dismissed as a matter of technical deficiency since, in earlier sessions, the same musicians adroitly navigated standard blues changes and guitarist Willie Johnson even displayed a penchant for jazzy takeoff solos. "Moanin' at Midnight" wasn't a primitive mistake : it was a conceptually daring reduction of the blues. "On those early records," Wolf told Pete Welding, "I was the one who told the guys what to play, how the music was to go. Now, the bass patterns on those records, they are mine -- that's my bass. Some of those numbers are just one chord. There are no changes to them; *that's something I got from the old music."*


 [emphasis added]


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## JM (Jun 3, 2010)

The Rev. Gary Davis...must've been Reformed, look at his cigar.

[video=youtube;g5qx0I2tyTI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5qx0I2tyTI&feature=related[/video]


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