When Owsley Met Hammond
Tom Hill/Wireimage (Licensed Through Getty Images)
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Over six consecutive nights beginning on May 29, 1973, acoustic blues adept John Hammond appeared at the Boarding House in San Francisco. On hand for the final two gigs was Owsley “Bear” Stanley, who recorded the performances, then set the reels aside with hundreds of others in his archives. Now, over 50 years later, the Owsley Stanley Foundation has released You’re Doin’ Fine — Blues at the Boarding House, June 2 & 3, 1973, the latest installment in its Bear’s Sonic Journals series, which showcases Hammond’s authority and aptitude.
The 45 tracks presented on You’re Doin’ Fine feature Hammond in his full-on solo acoustic glory, pulling sublime sounds out of his National resonator guitar. As he explains within the 60 page booklet that accompanies the recording: “Solo is like a black and white photograph as compared to a colored photograph with all the shades. Color is like playing with a band; you have to put together the other sounds in order to make up a whole. Black and white can be more stark and real, and more powerful than color.”
Hammond, who was a decade into his recording career at the time of these shows, yet still only 30 years old, presents a range of blues styles, including Delta, Texas and Piedmont, while performing the songs of Robert Johnson, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Willie McTell, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter and many others. Before the final set, John Lee Hooker joins the audience and Hammond acknowledges the icon from the stage, then honors him with versions of “Ride ‘Til I Die” and “Ground Hog Blues.”
Although Hammond was fully aware that Owsley was at work, and the two shared a brief exchange that is captured on the release, the guitarist had little recollection of these recordings until the Foundation reached out to him.
“It was a big surprise to me,” he acknowledges. “What happened was that, maybe a month before they told me about the tapes, they sent me a box set on Doc Watson [Doc & Merle Watson: Never the Same Way Once]. That was fantastic. I was very impressed with the sound and with the performance, and then they said, ‘We’ve got something on you that was recorded at the same venue.’ Then they shared a sample of that and I thought the sound was amazing. It’s hard for me to listen to myself live. I get emotionally confused somehow. So when I heard how clear everything was and how intense the feeling was, it seemed very special.”
Hammond’s entry point to acoustic blues took place at age 7. He remembers: “In 1949, my father brought me to hear Big Bill Broonzy, who was a friend of his, at a church in Washington Square in New York. I was truly impressed and got to meet him afterward, which left a very serious impression. After that, I just seemed to gravitate toward blues and I got into it big time by the time I was in my early teens.”
He attended Antioch College for a year, striking up a friendship with fellow student Jorma Kaukonen that continues to this day. Indeed, Jorma contributes an essay to You’re Doin’ Fine, writing in part: “You are hearing a fully mature young artist who owns his persona. As a true solo artist, John brings the power of a full on blues band to the stage. He needs no supporting musicians in this context. His guitar, his voice and his harp transport us into a world where there is only blues. Today, where most of us who play ‘acoustic’ music plug into all sorts of gadgets to sound like we’re not plugged in at all, John is pristine in a transcendental way. Consider that these recordings were made a little more than a decade after his sojourn in Yellow Springs. He was born with this depth and maturity! John is one of those rare artists who has what I like to call ‘purity of intent!’”
By June of 1973, Hammond had established himself as an acoustic blues artist, although he was hampered for a few years by the reluctance of certain folk venues to hire him. He recalls: “Blues was not appealing to a lot of these club owners because they felt it wasn’t folk music or it wasn’t appealing to the kind of crowd they wanted. But I was not deterred. I told them: ‘This is what I do and it’s in the American vernacular,’ and then I would go on and on about how important it was. In the beginning, it was tough. I think the rediscovery of artists like Son House, John Hurt, Bukka White and that generation spurred the idea that acoustic country blues was more acceptable. When it was included at the Newport Folk Festival, which was one of the criterions, that was a biggie.”
He performs six Robert Johnson songs on the release, during an era when Johnson’s work was being rediscovered. Hammond’s dad, the renowned producer with whom he shares a name, had listed Johnson as a performer on the momentous From Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall in December 1938, only to discover that the musician had died a few months earlier. Hammond reveals, “My father had four 78s of Robert Johnson in his own collection. When I saw that he had these, I was blown away. Robert Johnson’s guitar techniques are incredible and he has a range of in-your-face, intense rhythmic stuff to very delicate innuendos, and it’s the whole package. What knocks me out about him is the feeling in his vocals. It’s just very intense.”
This descriptor also applies to Hammond’s own musical expressions. Tom Waits, who opened the Boarding House shows, shares his thoughts in the You’re Doin’ Fine liners, declaring: “We were unprepared for this obscure incarnation of the Blues… that came from deep in the earth and deep in the South and from deep within John, as his tongue lashed out with such articulation… John sang with the voice of a wind that was trapped in a doorway, and we were being hoodwinked and then left in a hurricane and as they say, ‘being held up entirely by trees.’”
The two musicians met during this run and would become lifelong friends. Hammond later recorded Waits’ material for his 2001 album Wicked Grin, which Waits produced. Hammond names it as one of his career favorites, stating, “The songs that we selected to play were ones that I had not ever heard before, so it was a big deal. That was a special record, but I think this one that’s being released now is up there with it.”
He adds, “I was aware that it had been a hot night, but when they approached me with the recording and I realized that Tom Waits opened and that John Lee Hooker was in the audience, that was something else. This is [the Foundation’s] take on what they wanted to have as a blues record. I was very flattered by that and I’m still very flattered. I’m just knocked out.”
