From Hell to Gone and Back
Vanguard Records
by William Michael Smith

One of the goals of Rockzillaworld is to properly revere Texas varied music traditions while also exposing our readers to the state's vibrant new music. Beginning with three live tracks of the Brazos Valley rural blues of Mance Lipscomb and moving through a progression of seminal Texas artists to a closing with the sophisticated brassy big beat blues of Lee Roy Parnell, From Hell to Gone and Back traces the development of Texas blues as accurately as any scholarly tome.

Mr. Manscomb's plunky blues provide a direct connection to the brutal conditions of slavery in the cotton fields of the Brazos River valley. A Navasota, Texas native born April 14, 1912, Manscomb was a sharecropper. While he may not have written "Came on the river in 1910/they was workin' those women just like men," he grew up knowing people who had been there and done that. His three live tracks here ­ "Freddie," "So Different Blues," and "God Moves on the Water" ­ are as raw and vibrant as the original Robert Johnson or Blind Lemon Jefferson recordings. We are treated to the Texas versions of songs that have been passed down through generations and have migrated across the South experiencing subtle variations of lyric, emphasis, and style.

The segue from Lipscomb's commentary on the sinking of the Titanic in "God Moves on the Water" to his cousin Lightnin' Hopkins' "Baby Please Don't Go" demonstrates the strong links between the two men's styles as well as the subtle differences. Lightnin' was heavily influenced by Lipscomb, as was virtually every bluesman of the World War II generation. Sharecropping wasn't for him, and while Hopkins didn't migrate north to Chicago as so many southern players did, he did leave the Piney Woods town of Crockett for Houston, where he cut quite a figure. Hopkins added electricity to his playing, and his amplified hollow-body guitar brings the Manscomb rural sound into the realm of John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. On "Shake That Thing," Hopkins uses a drummer to augment the sound, but as many drummers and bassists discovered in Hopkins long career, it is one thing to play drums for him, it is a whole other feat to play drums with him. Hopkins is perhaps best known for his version of "Mojo Hand" (which, in typical Hopkins modesty, he claims to have written) and he tears it up here. But Hopkins' final track, "Where Can I Find My Baby," reverently harks back to Manscomb's field hand style. Hopkins may have been a big-city player, but his sound always contained a strong rural element.

With the opening Telecaster notes of "Ball and Chain," it is obvious the blues has truly moved to the big city. Big Mama Thornton was from Alabama, but she came to Houston where she recorded several albums for Don Robey, the first African-American to own a record company. Thornton was a huge influence on both blues and rock and roll. Backed here by a sophisticated big band sound complete with harmonica, tenor sax, and piano, she gives her typical big-hearted performances of "Hound Dog" (covered by Elvis Presley), "Ball and Chain" (which became Janis Joplin's signature piece), "Rock Me Baby" and "Mr. Cool." Guitarists Steve Wachsman and Cornell Dupree prove they are the equals of any of the Chicago electric guitar masters, both sounding here very much like Houstonian Albert "Iceman" Collins. This CD is worth the price just to have these four blistering live tracks from this legendary and hugely under-exposed performer.

Pee Wee Crayton is very much in the big band sound of Thornton but, like T-Bone Walker and others who migrated to California, he smoothed many of the rougher edges off his sound, his jump blues coming ever closer to the sophisticated club sound of Chicago. His vocal style was influenced by Charles Brown and Guitar Slim (Eddie Jones), and Crayton offers a red-hot cover of Jones's classic "Things I Used To Do" that demonstrates how far the electric guitar could be pushed within the context of a blues piece. There is no doubt after listening to Crayton's tracks (Earl King's "Let the Good Times Roll," the Ray Charles/Percy Mayfield tune "But On the Other Hand," and Crayton's "Blues After Hours") that Stevie Vaughn was intimately familiar with the work of Crayton.

Lee Roy Parnell takes the Thornton and Crayton ideas and transports them into the 21st century with his salty "Crossing Over." Hearing the three bluesiest tunes from Parnell's 2001 Vanguard debut, Tell The Truth gathered here as a set, one gets an entirely different feel for Parnell's work than when listening to the entire album with its sprinkled forays into other genres. Parnell has been a frequent guest of the Allman Brothers during his career, and "Crossing Over" is very much in the Allman vein. Parnell is hardly a one-trick pony, as he demonstrates his mastery of the downbeat Texas blue-eyed soul tradition on a duet with Bonnie Bramlett, "Breaking Down Slow."

From Hell to Gone and Back is a wonderful compilation. Not only is the music muscular and soulful, it serves as quite an accurate reference text on Texas blues traditions, connecting the dots between the early players and the current scene. It beautifully demonstrates that, despite covering 75 years of blues playing and styles, the oldest pieces here sound just as vibrant as the latest. This is not only a testament to legendary performers like Mance Lipscomb and Lightnin' Hopkins, it is also a testament to the performers like Parnell who have found the value in the old and kept it alive in new, refreshing forms that still faithfully echo the seminal works.

* www.vanguardrecords.com The album contains several previously unreleased live tracks by Lipscomb and Hopkins from their mid-60s appearances at the Newport Folk Festival.

 
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