Track By Track: Luther Dickinson Creates ‘Magic Music for Family Folk’
“Music in the car is such a big thing. Driving to school, driving to the grocery store is the one time when the family is all together,” says North Mississippi Allstars’ Luther Dickinson, as he shares the impetus behind Magic Music for Family Folk. “Being a touring musician, I wanted to make some music that they would dig and that they could listen to in the car when I’m not there to keep them company.”
“The thing about music is it can be your friend, it can be your companion,” he adds. “Music at its purest form is best when it’s just for fun or to pacify your loneliness, sorrow or anxiety. It can be a form of community, a form of self-healing. I wanted them to have that.”
Magic Music for Family Folk presents 10 covers, followed by a Dickinson original, which closes out the album. He first heard many of the songs—by artists such as Furry Lewis, Mississippi John Hurt, The Meters, The Staple Singers and John Lee Hooker—while growing up in a household suffuse with music, via his father, the renowned producer and musician Jim Dickinson, as well as his mother, Mary Lindsay Dickinson.
The initial recording sessions, which took place five years ago, include contributions by Dickinson’s mom, along with his two daughters, who were four and nine years old at the time. The roster also includes a variety of musicians who performed while they were visiting the Dickinson family at home, including Allison Russell, JT Nero, Yola, Lillie Mae and Shardé Thomas.
Dickinson points to the album title and notes, “So many of these songs I learned from my dad and his friends in the Memphis folk community. They had originally learned them from elders. That’s when I realized that this is the fourth generation of people digging these tunes, which is where the magic music concept came from.”
Are You Sure
I discovered this song with my family. I didn’t have The Staple Singers’ record Be Altitude growing up, but I knew the hits. Then I bought it, and we played that record on the family turntable for a whole summer. “Are You Sure” really stuck out. I love the message and the singalong melody, and I was like, “I need to put that on the album.”
It was later—I’d already recorded most of the record— but when we fell in love with that song, I put it on the album for the message. A lot of this album is to teach the kids how I feel about life.
It’s kind of sobering how songs with a moral slant or protest songs or topical songs of decades past still ring true. The old human problems still keep popping up. Those old songs never grow old.
I think it’s a song that a young person can keep with them. They can have it in the back of their head at any kind of moment in life and can get something out of it in some way.
I’ve been working with Mavis for years. In the late ‘90s, we started doing “Freedom Highway,” but there was one lyric we could not understand. So my mom called Yvonne Staples. She got the office number, asked her for a lyric sheet and we’ve been friends ever since. Mavis Staples is such a beacon of hope. That whole generation— Willie Nelson, Phil Lesh, Mavis Staples, Buddy Guy, Bob Dylan—are in their 80s and 90s and still throwing it down. It’s so inspiring.
They All Ask’d for You
My father turned me onto this song as a young kid. He was playing me songs that he thought I would dig. So he would play a song and explain it to me—the lyrical twist or what it was about. I remember he played me this Meters song and the joke of “They All Ask’d for You” just stuck with me. He was like, “Listen, they’re saying ‘the elephant ass,’ ‘the tiger ass.’ They’re saying ass as a joke.” He pointed that out to me. When I started collecting songs and thinking about songs for this, I thought that would be playful.
Later in life, I grew to become friends and make a whole lot of music with George Porter. So much of what I’ve done, I learned from the Mississippi community, but later in life, I would go down to the Maple Leaf and play with Johnny Vidacovich and George Porter. They would have no setlist, not even songs. We would just play music freestyle for two, three hours. It used to scare me to death, the way they taught me to roll, as they call it—“We’re rolling!” That’s served me so well, playing with Phil Lesh, The Black Crowes or whoever. I’m able to lose that fear and just be able to be creative in the moment, on the spot.
So this was a tribute to George. Later, I played that song with George after I had learned it, and it came back into my life. He told me it was a song that Zigaboo’s mother sang to him. So it really comes from Zigaboo’s family, which I thought was really sweet.
Crawdad
I thought my mom used to sing this one to me, so I asked her to sing on it. She was at the house and she sang on some of the record, because when we were younger, she would play her little guitar and sing from another perspective than we got from watching our dad. We would watch our dad and his friends, but my mom would sit on the bed, sing to us and teach us. She was a more hands-on teacher than my dad in some ways. But it’s funny because she didn’t remember that song and didn’t really know it.
My youngest daughter and I were just practicing it because we’re doing a CD release party at a record store, and I invited both of my daughters to sing. It’s the third time today we’ve practiced—she’s reading along in the songbook and singing along. When we recorded it she was four, and on her first session, she was just singing syllables and sounds, but she has a nice natural musical energy. It’s really fun singing with them.
Old Blue
Furry Lewis was the godfather of the Memphis bohemian scene. There was true reciprocal love between Furry Lewis and the folk music community of Memphis. My dad and his friends had a band called Mud Boy and the Neutrons. They would play a lot of Furry Lewis material and they passed it on to us. So we have this band called Sons of Mud Boy, and we keep that repertoire going—we get together just for fun. I’ve heard that song my whole life, and just like “Turkey in the Straw,” I like these crazy ramshackle stories about barnyard animals.
“Old Blue” is a sweet love song to a dog. My favorite thing about “Old Blue” is the last verse—“When I lay this guitar down, get to heaven and get my crown, first thing I’m going to do is grab my horn and blow for blue.” I love that phrase, “When I lay this guitar down.”
Beulah Land
There weren’t recording dates for this album, per se. We would just record socially. Part of it was I wanted to expose my kids to the idea that music can be fun and casual and something you do with friends.
We might do it when JT and Allison from Birds of Chicago came over for dinner. Our daughters are friends, we’re family friends and they would come over. They even stayed in our house when they first came to Nashville.
With Yola, who also stayed at our house when she first came to Nashville, we were having a dinner party. Allison and JT were already there. Allison was doing her banjo, clarinet and vocals, then Yola rolls up. She walks in the door, I sit her down with the headphones and hit record. She showed up and just laid it down. It’s one of my favorite things.
It was funny, because she’s British, afterward she was like, “Wow, I could tell immediately that there was some heavy vernacular going on.” I used to be real careless about singing gospel music just because I liked the melodic sense of country blues gospel. If you study Mississippi John Hurt or Mississippi Fred McDowell, their gospel songs have a different approach melodically and structurally than the blues. I always loved that, but I was real careless about singing gospel stuff in secular situations. But now I like the more vague spiritual songs like “Beulah Land.” It’s not going to alienate or exclude anybody.
Old Hen
Gus Cannon was another one of the great Memphis artists that the bohemian kids befriended. He was a jug-band musician with his band Cannon’s Jug Stoppers. They were a huge influence on the Grateful Dead. It’s so funny, both the Grateful Dead and my father’s band, Mud Boy and the Neutrons, started as jug bands, and then they went psychedelic rock. They weren’t faking the funk, if you know what I’m saying.
I remember being in the single digits and dad showing me a Gus Cannon record, then playing “Old Hen.” He made a record on Stax [Walk Right In]. I have no idea why Stax Records made a Gus Cannon record. It’s one of the most freaky, weird, old-timey records you’d ever want to hear. I remember being a little kid and my dad putting it on the turntable and being like, “Check this out.” It was an old man with a banjo sitting in front of a potbellied stove and singing about a rooster laying an egg. That’s what we call barnyard psychedelia.
Turkey in the Straw
I think there’s a version of this song most people know that I’ve never heard. I’ve only been around this Furry Lewis version, which is so bizarre. There are some verses that I would never sing in public for different reasons, but this is my take on the Memphis version by way of Furry Lewis. He probably had his own lyrics and his own melody that differed from other versions. I’ve straightened out the phrasing a little bit. It’s kind of like a spoken-word thing on top of a rhythm and it’s still evolving.
Chicken
“Chicken” is a Mississippi John Hurt song that I learned from Willie DeVille. He came to Memphis and my father produced his record [Horse of a Different Color]. This was an era where dad would hire me to play guitar. So it was Spooner Oldham, Roger Hawkins and David Hood—the A-team session guys—and then I’d be the young guy. I didn’t know that song but Willie asked me to learn it so he could record it. Then it came back around when I was singing to the kids.
Boom Boom
This one’s almost sketchy because it’s such a sultry song from John Lee Hooker’s old man’s stance. But I used to sing it to my kids when they were toddlers—“You got dimples” and “I love the way you walk.” “Boom boom boom,” the whole thing—I don’t know, it’s like I’m flipping it inside out onto itself.
Pay Day
My friend Dominic Davis plays bass with the Allstars sometimes. He grew up with Jack White—he’s in Jack White’s solo band, and he’s a dear friend. He and his wife have kids and they’re another group of musical family friends. When I told him about the kids record, he was like, “Oh, you’ve got to do ‘Pay Day.’” I asked him, “The Mississippi John Hurt song?” He was like, “Yeah.” That’s because it was his son’s favorite Mississippi John song. But I had never focused on that song.
So I went and listened to all the versions, found my favorite, bought that vinyl and started listening to it. “Beulah Land” was on it as well, so both of those songs I owe to Dominic Davis.
I never fully comprehended what the phrase “keep my skillet good and greasy” meant until studying this song. It means that every day you’ve got some meat on the stove, so you’re keeping your skillet good and greasy.
I love old-time Southern vernacular. Dudes like R.L. Burnside and Otha Turner spoke in poetry. It was just gorgeous. R.L. Burnside was a genius with his words—jokes and poems and stories and obviously lyrics. Otha’s speech was also fascinating, and in studying his vocabulary and vernacular, I learned that a lot of rural speech patterns were much more proper than the way I talked. I’d go study the history of these words or phrases and see that not only did they make sense—I was the ignorant one for not always understanding them—but they also went way back.
Whatever River
This song is in the family of songs that I write for my kids in case they’re ever curious or lonely. It’s a simple sentiment— “I’ll always be there in your heart” or “Look to the sky, the same stars shine on you and me.” It’s for when I’m on tour, when I’m away for work or even when I’m dead and gone.
I try to teach my kids that whatever you believe is OK. What other people believe is also OK, as long as they’re not trying to force that on you and encroach on your space and belief. It’s like the golden rule— treat others as you would have them treat you. What you hold in your heart is real for you.
I believe that music is a realm in which one can commune with their loved ones. That’s one of the vibrations I resonate with. When I play music, I’m thinking about my dad and my elders who taught me. If I’m singing an R.L. Burnside song, I’m thinking about R.L. and how funny he was and how sweet he was to me. That’s also true for Otha Turner or Furry Lewis through my dad. I’m also thinking about having fun and communicating with the people. It’s not heavy, but if I’m singing a sad song, I might be thinking about missing my family back home.
A few years back, I wrote a song called “Living Free.” It’s not a political song, it’s a song about the human condition. A lot of terrible things have happened and I never want my kids to take me to task for making records and writing words that I say over microphones and not speaking up.
I leave these breadcrumbs for my kids in my songs in case they ever want to know how I feel or where I stand.
