Goin’ Down South
The Black Keys return to their roots on Delta Kream
In the early to mid-nineties, I, like many others, fell under the spell of Fat Possum Records, the little-label-that-could based out of Oxford, Mississippi and whose slogan was, “We’re trying our best.” They exposed me to the likes of T Model Ford, RL Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, the Jelly Roll Kings, and others.
My dad with T-Model Ford, somewhere in the ‘90s at the Berkeley Cafe in Raleigh, NC.
It was the perfect time for me to listen because much of the 1990s were a dark time musically. Grunge, post-grunge, alt-rock, even alt.country initially didn’t really ring my bells. None of it grabbed my soul. I’ve always loved the blues, but even some of my long-time favorites by the mid-nineties were putting out all-star ego-fests instead of letting their mojo work (*cough-Buddy Guy-cough-cough). So when I first saw Robert Mugge’s documentary Deep Blues (inspired by the classic book by journalist Robert Palmer, who also acts as the film’s guide), I realized that most of the soul in the blues had never really left its Mississippi birthplace after all - it had just settled in the Hill Country.
Apparently, up in Akron, Ohio, The Black Keys were listening around the same time I was, or maybe a little later. What matters is, they caught the bug and had the means and the talent to expose many, many people to the real deal. Like the Stones decades before who brought Howlin’ Wolf onto a very British, very white television show to educate the masses, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney is unleashing the John the Conqueror Root onto mainstream audiences, and I’m all here for it.
Their latest, Delta Kream, returns them to what made them want to play music to begin with: those long, droning, trance-like blues that ooze sex and steam. Listening to it made me reach back to those Fat Possum albums of the ‘90s, as well as the other labels who helped bring the sound of pure juke joint sweat out into the daylight for the whole world to smell.
So here’s a sampling of some of my favorites from back then and beyond as a sort of supplement for Delta Kream.
Now head down south with “a ass pocket of whiskey” and get funky.
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