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Have you ever seen Bonnie
Raitt, B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Keith Richards or Ronnie Wood play
slide guitar where they slide a bottle slide up and down the neck of
electric guitar? When you see them or any other musician
playing like that, you're seeing the influence of Elmore James come
across the generations at you!
You've heard some of Elmore's
songs without even realizing it--Stevie Ray Vaughn covered "The Sky
Is Crying" in to a top hit. "Shake Your Moneymaker", a song
long performed by Howlin' Wolf, is an Elmore James hit that's been
covered by Fleetwood Mac, George Thorogood and the Destroyers, the
Black Crows, and others.
In 1999, I journeyed deep into
the Mississippi Delta on my "blues history tour", where, in Holmes
County, MS, I stopped at an intersection, totally lost when the
"blues tourist" map directions turned out to be all wrong. I'm
sitting there in the car when two African-American men pulled up and
asked if I needed some help. I said, "I'm trying to find the
New Port Baptist Church where a famous bluesman is buried."
They both smiled and one exclaimed, "Oh, you want to see where
El-moooore is...follow my brother-in-law and me." They turned
their pickup truck down a paved road and cruised along for about ten
minutes, when they stopped, and pointed into a churchyard.
Parking the car, I wandered
around and found the last resting place of a forefather of both
electric blues and rock-n-roll, Elmore James.
I remember walking around his
gravestone thinking, "How many people play like him? How many
rock songs are based on his playing? How much did Elmore give
us?
The answers eluded me since my
questions asked so much.
But you can bet while I was driving
away, I was playing some rock-n-roll, namely Stevie Ray
Vaughn's cover of "The Sky is Crying" at top volume to
say, "Thanks, Elmore!"
* * * * *
For more information on Elmore James,
visit these great web sites:
Elmore James Links (includes a clip of
"Dust My Broom)
The Rock-n-Roll
Hall of Fame Page on Elmore
and his induction into the Hall of Fame. The Hall also
lists several
of his songs on their list of 500 songs which shaped
rock-n-roll
Junior's Juke
Joint page on Elmore James
(more pics than I have of Elmore's resting place)
Your Music
Link's page on Elmore (includes more music clips on a
sub-page)
Sliding
Delta's page on Elmore
Joel Snow's
page on Elmore (with
performance pictures!)
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