A truly remarkable, fascinating document, sounding more raw, real, and of a singular moment than just about any other roots record, making your Leadbelly and Blind Lemon Jefferson collections sound downright overproduced by comparison.
Largely percussionless but for the odd yelp and stomp, writhing under a sweaty sheet of tape hiss, the music wheels in and out of place like a dying rooster, and feels about as fleeting. Hemphill was all of 65 by 1942, and fully blind besides, when Alan Lomax ventured to his home in Mississippi to put these songs to disc.
I don't know exactly where or how they set up, but the music inspires the mind to wonder: the guitars droning like countless mosquitos, like heat itself, a stray rush of drums in the 4th act coming on like a sudden storm. This record captures a moment, and that moment's flickering, gasping musicianship is the reason to listen.
To be frank, the music isn't pretty, and it isn't fun. But its the vehicle to that moment and its energy, and everyone with any kind of interest in music ought to experience it at least once 4/5
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