Search - Ishman Bracey :: Complete Recorded Works In Chronological Order, 1928-1929

Gone to the cemetary, found the grave of Ishman Bracey empty

Anita Fix | Alcazar in the Land of Enchantment | 11/29/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Ishman Bracey was an original amongst originals, as all bluesmen were in a way Outlaws among Outlaws, as no two played the same song the same way twice. But Ishman was lucky to have had such a rare kindred spirit in bluesdom in his bestest friend and lifelong inspirational partner Tommy Johnson. Two Old Crow's if ever there were two regulars hanging for life in the same ancient tree or seated at the same bar stools reserved exclusively for each. Telling that these two local cronies spent near everyday of their lives at each other's side yet their music is wholly singularly each's own and expressive of each's spirit. Those were days when if one played a traditional song note for note of someone else's accomplishment it only showed you were not a real musician and had no right to steal, or worse, forge a fakery and mock another...thus no song was played the same way twice in a music who has no equivalent in America today as far as spontaneous purity goes. There is no place on the planet where a music as versatile and divers as that of the entire state of Mississippi is where some unknown night only the dog star shone there rose out of a soil as dark as coffeegrounds a 100 bogey's hollerin? the blues everywhere two roads crossed one another. A state that boasts a delta valley that only the Nile in Egypt can compare to for sheer size and grandiose beauty, as well as the richest soil in the world! The Jester Ruthless purports with abundant evidence a meteor landed in the vicinity of Clarksdale, in the very heart of the delta around 1926, and that explains why the Devil's got no dice on Mississippi Bluesmen, and could relax whenever he made his way down from Memphis all the way to Jackson, the unholy capitol of rough and lowdown juke joints where Tommy and "IshY" hung out before and after their glorified return from up north in the deltalands where Tommy's Brother tells he use to boast the devil hisself sat down and learned him how to play the git-fiddle a year ago he could barely keep tuned rightly!
But Ishman! Along with Tommy among the first musicians that converted a man who at long last, on the verge of musical impotence and lost of all hopes had found his music, as Brion Gysin and William S. Burrroughs promised that: "When you hear the music that is YOURS you KNOW the first time your hear it you will never need any other..." Ishman's "Saturday Blues" is as much a classic to me as is Tommy's "cool drink of water", the first track either of them laid down, which always tells a song's significance in any session a bluesmen recorded way back then. They take the same sing and make it their own and noone else to repeat! The last two tracks with Charlie McCoy from Late Summer 1928(no need to reveal his other more infamous persona, you'll figure it out, only bluesmen have as many names as some writers expand their own as they reach a new season in a new age calling them a different name from now on)"Trouble-Hearted Blues" and "The Four Day Blues" are standouts as there is NOTHING like them among any Blue Musician, played slow in Spanish tuning, with a solemnity only Sam Collins or Skip James equals such falsetto tremellowed lamentations. The Surreality of the lyrics makes those two songs even more poignant.
There's a great photo of Ishman on the green cover of Yazoo's "friends of Charlie Patton",both back and front, that provides a face and a man to associate when these men jump out through your speakers and scream in your face or tap you on the with a ghostly composure on the shoulder so unexpectedly you jump right out of your skin to realize the immediacy and immortality of a Blues as solemn and real as Ishamn's Blues is, as valid as the day they were set down, as the blues is a human constant that does not fade...but the music can be forgotten how to be played, ( a travesty, an excruciating, calamitous loss, a sadness like the loss of the Buffalo) ...the music isn't played like a classical piece that takes concentrated composure and conscience care; the blues is more like a man set free, it makes meatballs of mathematical of equations fit on a fret board big as a two-by-four. it's what's done inside the man (or woman) that makes a music that wholly takes possession of you and lets you spend some time free of the sufferings finally made into a beautiful thing, like a sore battle won by both sides surrendering...it's a healing procedure that is evident in Ishman's first two sessions.
Also of prime importance: one cannot own just Ishman or just Tommy, they are a pair today as much as in the 1920's, who lived a long time influencing entire generations in person, not from off a record. Together they defined a style not strictly adhered too as dogma, but followed like ritual that's recognizable whence your ear's tuned right to be able to fathom the Country Blues of Southern Mississippi. (JACKSON BLUES 1928-1938 is one of Yazoo's Greatest Gifts) Both kept on living hard, doing drugs and booze and playing/partying all-night gigs and getting in trouble everywhere like two men who together never let youth's spontaneous good time slip away like the days did. Their lives are as dramatic as their music, one can be assured of that!
But a touching tale is that when Tommy died, Ishman set down the devil's music and his ways and never played the blues again but became a preacher of God; so much did the death of his friend affect him. It's a tragedy as touching as Vincent and Theo, or Barbecue Bob and his Bros. Or Robert crumb's own brotherly intimacy he grew up in the confidence of. Like Ishman and Tommy did everything together, without one both suffer to an overwhelming degree, So buy the both of them together and keep them side by side if you get the original recordings with minimal remastering from DOCUMENT or WOLF
(Those Hardcore Blues purists and traditional Fanatics that the Austrian's are, they issue everything in complete editions no matter how many cd's it takes to fill and all's in chronological order! A true labour of Love as sincere as the cronies at Yazoo is!)
or sample them together on "Master of the Delta Blues: :the Friends of Charlie Patton" from Yazoo first. [...]"