Mississippi Fred McDowell – Heritage Of The Blues
Dating from 1963 to 1968, these dozen tracks stand as prime examples of Mississippi Fred McDowell’s output. Tracked down in the late ’50s by folklorists Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins, McDowell become one of the more widely heard bluesmen during the ’60s country blues revival.
Popular with white urban college students and their non-enrolled or post-graduate pals, McDowell was a perfect entry point into the genre. He was not so edgy as to be daunting, but was a relentless musical presence with sufficient mystery to clearly be the real deal. The soulful bearing of his singing, combined with guitar playing that was facile and quietly impressive — with or without slide — made for a combination that was deeply resonant, occasionally playful, and always believable.
Pete Welding made these recordings nearly 40 years ago, capturing songs McDowell had been playing for decades. After working most of his life as a laborer on farms and in mills, McDowell stepped into his well-past-middle-age career change with a degree of humility also heard here. And that’s why these performances don’t sound old. They don’t necessarily sound new either — they’re simply present, and because of that, timeless.