#mississippiblues

WIB Listening Party #45: Mississippi Blues

Vincent Abbate Leave a comment

featuring…

♫ Big Bill Broonzy, Volume One – Mississippi Blues

🍺 Ratsherrn Dry-Hopped Pilsener

Words & photos: Vincent Abbate

I usually post these things on Friday afternoon. Perhaps my favorite feel-good time of the week. I generally go pretty hard from Monday to Friday, working and looking after my family. So when Friday afternoon rolls around and I close up shop, a satisfying weekend feeling of freedom sets in. I have pushed through and gotten things done and the Listening Party is one way I reward myself for not being a total goof-off in life.

This time, though, it’s a lazy Sunday. I’m recovering from a friend’s Saturday night birthday party. It involved live music and a healthy variety of adult beverages. As it’s Sunday, I’ve decided to turn this Listening Party into a kind of casual backyard barbecue. We’ll have beer of course, and good, down-home southern-style cooking … aww, who’m I kidding? I’m a New York boy. The barbecues I knew growing up were burgers and hot dogs, roasted peppers, Italian sausage and corn on the cob. We’d eat out on the patio with maybe a ballgame on the radio or my dad’s favorite music playing.

I can definitely imagine the great Big Bill Broonzy having played a barbecue or two during his time on this earth. In fact, I believe there are stories of him playing the fiddle at such gatherings before he switched over to guitar. We’re going to listen to a few classic Broonzy tunes from Volume One – Mississippi Blues, a vinyl EP released in 1955 on the British Nixa label that somehow found its way into my collection. Broonzy mastered rural and urban blues styles during his career and the four-song disc touches on each.

Our beer, Ratsherrn Dry-Hopped Pilsener, comes from the city of Hamburg.

Let’s take it slow and easy this time, shall we?

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WIB Listening Party #43: Golden Boy

Vincent Abbate Leave a comment

featuring…

♫ Watermelon Slim, Golden Boy

🍺 Greene King Double Hop Monster IPA

Words & photos: Vincent Abbate

Two weeks later, I’m still hemming and hawing about the Listening Party, i.e. wondering if there’s any point in doing this. Roughly three weeks into the Russian invasion of Ukraine (the media hasn’t come up with a name for this war yet) and with thousands dead and millions having left their homes and possessions behind, craft beer seems very much like a luxury. But you know what?

I’ve learned once again during this time how vital music is. I’ve been to three live shows! Three! Met old friends and made new ones. Most significantly, I’ve felt in a most profound way the everlasting bond between musicians, promoters, fans and other members of the music community. I think it’s a result of the deprivation of two years of living with the pandemic, the hunger for live music, brought into sharper focus by our mutual opposition to Putin’s war. (That’s my name for this ongoing atrocity.)

So why not? Let’s have a Listening Party. This has always been a celebration of music first and foremost. The beer is a pleasant accessory.

Watermelon Slim’s Golden Boy is easily one of my favorite albums of the past five years. It’s exceptional for any number of reasons, not least of which is Slim himself. We’ll get into it after the jump.

And when I went to the outdoor cupboard in which I keep my beer chilled during the colder months of the year, it was the Double Hop Monster IPA from Greene King that suggested itself. Look, it said. The word “monster” appears in my name. Doesn’t that remind you of someone? That guy with his finger on the button …

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WIB Listening Party #29: Blues From The Delta

Vincent Abbate Leave a comment

featuring…

♫ Skip James, Blues From The Delta

🍺 Chinook Red Indian Ale

Words & photos: Vincent Abbate

Are you ready to get way down low?

I just dug out my CD copy of the Skip James album Blues From The Delta, thinking it might be a worthy Listening Party candidate. It’s been a while since this one found its way into the CD player tray. The purple and violet-tinged Vanguard Records release combines nine tracks from 1966’s Today! with an additional nine cuts from 1968’s Devil Got My Woman. Two previously unreleased recordings bring the total to 20. As my favorite baseball broadcaster might say when noting a player’s stats: That’s just bookkeeping.

Then I skim listened, starting with James’s most enduring title “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues.” Goose bumps. “Special Rider Blues.” Goose bumps. James’s sorrowful moan set my hair on end the first time I heard it and it still does today.

If you’re unfamiliar with the originator of the so-called “Bentonia School” of blues (James was raised on a plantation near Bentonia, Mississippi), this 1998 Vanguard compilation is the place to start, as opposed to the hissy, scratchy relics he recorded for Paramount in 1931 – undeniably great but considerably less accessible.

Over on the beer side of things, we’ll be unscientifically enjoying a bottle of Kraftbierwerkstatt’s Chinook Red Indian Ale. Let’s be clear: I did not choose this beer on the strength of its name. I suppose I could have not chosen it on that basis. Were it brewed and bottled in the US instead of the southern German city of Böblingen, the marketing people at Kraftbierwerkstatt surely would have thought twice about the Red Indian moniker. Just ask the owners of the baseball franchise now called the Cleveland Guardians or the NFL’s Washington Football Club, who are still looking for a new name.

Issues of racial insensitivity aside: The album and beer look great together.

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