Of the many dozens of
blues and
jazz artists who appeared on-stage at the 1973
Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival, few were as old, experienced, or rambunctious as
Roosevelt Sykes and
Victoria Spivey. Most of the people in the audience were young Americans whose awareness of Afro-American music hardly reached deeper than what might have made it onto television or commercial-driven radio. When
Roosevelt Sykes appeared on-stage with a dapper brim and a long cigar, the young people cheered. When he sat at the piano and began testing the microphone by calling out a series of marvelously nonsensical phrases as if transmitting a coded message to someone in outer space, the thousands of pot-smoking, alcohol-tipping people in the audience laughed and shouted their approval. But when
Roosevelt Sykes began manhandling the piano and singing the
blues in his powerful voice, each and every person within earshot got a dose of the real thing; each listener was permanently transformed by this short, stocky piano player from Arkansas. His penchant for rocking, rolling, hollering, boogying, and woogying are here for all to savor and share, along with
"Dirty Mother for You," a cheerful romp that fairly bristles with lyrics of implied lewdness and lasciviousness.
Sykes prefaced this number by warning his listeners that although the song wasn't intended to be smutty, "I have no control over your minds!" If
Roosevelt Sykes toyed around with human sexuality,
Victoria Spivey's take on the topic was arresting. A veteran of many decades of professional activity (she came up in Texas, made her first recording in 1926, and founded her own
Spivey record label in 1962),
Victoria Spivey always sang about life and human nature using vivid images and uncommonly honest, accurate language. She was the antithesis of tippy-toe nicey-nice
pop music; her "delicately" titled
"You're a Rank Stud" is a fine example of
Spivey at her gutsiest and most uncompromising. This amazing disc is a document of the thriving music festival scene of the early to mid-'70s; it also preserves for posterity the late-in-life personas of two primal archetypes of North American
blues music. ~ arwulf arwulf
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