On Alan Wilson

[Circa 1999] - Guitarist, harmonica player, second-vocalist and founder of the Canned Heat Blues Band, Alan Wilson, along with his bandmates Bob Hite and Henry Vestine (and Mystical Piedmont Guitar Ace cohort John Fahey), was among the most successful of musicians to emerge from early '60s blues researchdom. Born in Arlington, Mass., a dry town, Wilson was a great collector of blues music who traveled through the South to meet the music's originators, and he was also it turned out able to play the music as well. Unfortunately he faltered at the hand of drugs and booze in the last days of what one would have wished would have been a longer life. He died (and was overshadowed) in a 1970 Curtained-Triad that included Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.

Finding the voice is important in any poetry. It would be absolutely asinine to suggest that blues and blues poetry are not intrinsically Afro-American forms, and that the non-Afro-Americans employing these forms will at least start on shaky ground ( horton! ) and are most likely in any case to stumble and fall into phoniness. Even if they may find words that fit, the voice will give them away. While there are a fair number of 'white guitars' that stand now in the blues pantheon, there are few white voices. Peoples' histories being so different, that's not surprising.

But Al Wilson had a special voice. It was closely akin to Skip James'. It was sad and high, and he'd let it break if it would. "Going Up the Country" and (especially) "On the Road Again" were Canned Heats' great hits, and they were Al's numbers, and they well summed up a mood ("Oh Happy Day," "Bad Moon Rising," "The Thrill Is Gone," and "All Along The Watchtower" only otherwise came as close) in a dark time. Like John Hurt he had more the approach of a 'songster' rather than a bluesman -- but it's the blues he songsters bout and it works. He sang his own true song, and his few samples now available are in downright contrast to, for example, the wormy blues stylings of Ten Years After's Alvin Lee. Work and thought and feeling are the difference.

To read a farewell (February 18, 1971, page 30) interview with Pete Welding in "Rolling Stone" magazine is to learn first of all that Al was very smart and second of all that he thought a lot about voicing the blues. He remarked that it was easy to musically notate Pop Staples' spoken intro to "Why". Too, he told Welding, and we must guess that he touched bases with Poet Chales Olson once: "The answer does not lie in trying to reproduce [the Mississippi Bluesperson's] syntax." He took great pains, he said, to not fall into patterns of excessive choppin[g] off of final "g's" in "ings" and so forth." He wanted to get patterns that fell more naturally off his New England tongue. Said our departed Al:

" ... the thing about words, why they are important in singing the blues melodies using those four or five notes in the standard blues mode ... you get to know those notes very clearly if you use them a lot, and then you use those notes conversationally. That is, you pattern the words to rise and fall in a way similar to the way that you would speak them, and construct the words not just any way but so they flow naturally with the flow of the melody."

For a new visitor to the blues form Wilson's postcomp Rolling Stone interview suggests that there are Four Stages to consider:

One. Singing traditional blues lyrics in the same order as they might appear on record.

Two. Taking all traditional lyrics from different recorded versions of the same song and mixing them up. [He notes that Canned Heat's version of "On The Road Again" is a compilation of words from several recordings by Floyd Jones.]

Three. Using a number of traditional phrases put together in a new relationship. He cites Canned Heat's "Turpentine Moan"* and "World in a Jug."

Four. Introducing more of the word syntax and ideas that are closer to your way of speaking in everyday life. Bob Dylan's genius work on the 1997 "Time Out of Mind" we think is something of this ilk -- somewhere between Wilson's Category Three and Four.

As the Blues Poetry Manifesto suggests: To live the life, to learn the music, to learn the story -- this is important to the Blues Poet.

For future consideration: Wilson's (and Bob Hite's) re-issue efforts are notable. Their backing of a series of 1968 sessions for World Pacific Records (that included Shakey Jake, Mick Taylor, Sunnyland Slim, Luther Allison) created some great music, and, apparently, parties ... Although he is far from famous, Al Wilson took part in that famous event, Woodstock. If you review his sad, off-key performance in the Woodstock movie you can guess he is on his way to elsewhere ... For us, "Rolling and Tumbling," Canned Heat's first hit, was cosmic. We first heard it on black Milwaukee radio, and it eclipsed Jimi Hendrix, and equalled Muddy Waters in our blue heaven that summer of '67.

Al Wilson Quote: "New technology can lead to new means of expression ... blues of the early Fifties [would not] have been as strong ... had not electronic amplification come along."

* Sunnyland Slim played piano on Canned Heat's "World in a Jug."

Last update: 10/4/2003; 5:00:35 PM.