In 2007, while rolling through the American night in a ramshackle retirement home vehicle badly disguised as a tour bus, blues legend
Charlie Musselwhite and
North Mississippi Allstars' guitarist
Luther Dickinson engaged in conversation. The younger man related
Alvin Youngblood Hart's philosophical desire to live as a "freedom rocker." The wily elder bluesman listened to his words, then looked out the window and knowingly pointed at the rising moon. He replied: "New Moon Freedom Rockers." Back in Mississippi at the Zebra Ranch studio,
Musselwhite and
Cody and
Luther Dickinson joined forces with their dad, roots rock legend
Jim Dickinson (who promptly added the words "Jelly Roll" to the band's name),
Alvin Hart, and
Jimbo Mathus, with
NMA bassist
Chris Chew and Paul Taylor as guests. They circled chairs, placed mikes, and hit "record." Afterwards, the session tapes were archived. They sat in the vault until
Jim Dickinson passed in 2009, and they became apocryphal. Stony Plain's Holger Peterson contacted
Luther and
Cody about releasing them.
This program of standards, covers, and originals is loose, organic, and rousing. Before
Musselwhite opens his mouth on first track "Blues Why You Worry Me?" the room's warm sound embraces and beguiles the listener. It's crackling, immediate, and always present, and it too is a collaborator. When
Musselwhite sings and wails on harmonica, the band's swinging shuffle envelops him in tinkling piano, slide, electric and acoustic guitars, and a bumping bassline.
Hart takes on
Robert Johnson's "Pony Blues" has fingerpicked electric guitar funkiness and a souled-out grainy moan amid clattering snare, slithering harp, pumping piano, and slide guitars. The singer wrangles and roams through the lyric, gathering speed and intensity with each verse.
Mathus' slippery "Night Time" is steamy and slow; his vocal rises to meet and punctuate the band's slow-burning juke joint roil. All bets are off when
Jim Dickinson delivers the ragtime barrelhouse standard "Come on Down to My House." With
Luther's mandolin, harmonica, fiddle, and guitars, his piano digs into the progression as
Musselwhite adds backing vocals.
Dickinson's laconic delivery and playing are irreverent and salacious -- a rent party aesthetic.
Mathus adds another bottle-tipping rag with "Shake It and Bake It."
Hart's revisioning of
Jimi Hendrix's "Stone Free" is delivered as a faithful but nasty, sharp, funky blues. The juke joint setting for
Jim's delivery of
Wilbert Harrison's boogie "Let's Work Together" is rawer than
Canned Heat's.
Musselwhite's poignant, "Strange Land" choogles, rolls, and tumbles like a freight train careening off the track, with killer six-string interplay between
Luther,
Hart, and
Mathus.
Hart's closing read of the
Mississippi Sheiks' "Stop and Listen Blues" is delivered with joyous jug band grit.
New Moon Jelly Roll Freedom Rockers, Vol. 1 is a good-time stunner and worth the hype its lineup boasts. This informal session offers Delta blues and roots music without pretention, artifice, or pedantry, not as an archival referent or re-creation, but a vibrant, evolving musical tradition. Here's to hoping there's enough left over for a second volume. ~ Thom Jurek