Summertime Brues

Brues and Blews

What goes better with the blues than beer? OK, you got me right away, probably rot gut whiskey and moonshine, but, for the long haul, it's beer.  Cheap wine you say? Probably if you are way down IN the blues, but for getting WITH the blues, beer, at least for me.

Back in the day, or at least my day, Minneapolis had among the funkiest blues scenes anywhere at all. We'd think nothing of stopping in the funky piano bar side of the Silver Dollar Bar at Lake and 35W almost any night to see Lazy Bill Lucas, often with Spider John Koerner or Li'l Sun Glover, and that just couldn't happen in any other US city.  Sometimes Snaker Ray solo, my all time favorite of this scene; sometimes Spider John solo or duo with someone like Lazy Bill, sometimes Li’l Sun Tony Glover.

Of course Koerner, Ray, and Glover probably created a blues scene that could be sort of accessible to the very funky among white America with their Blues, Rags, and Hollers records. They also influenced others across the sea, namely an emerging group starting with B.  I never saw them together at the Silver Dollar or anywhere, but singly or as duos they loomed far above, setting the tone for Blues Heaven.  They were also very nice to Lazy Bill who was one of the coolest people I've ever seen. Lazy Bill played with all sort of luminaries before settling in Minneapolis in 1962, maybe most notably a young Sonny Boy Williamson. 

The Silver Dollar was an old time C&W ballroom and I don't even have any idea who moved it along to the blues scene.  There were all kinds of crazy characters hanging out there almost any night; it was around about 1970 after all.  Hippies, sharkskin suit blues guys, pot dealers - mostly guys as best I can remember, but there were also crazy dancing nights with local R&B stars, Willie Murphy and the Bumble Bees, and various visitors who were recording with, or being produced by, Willie. Not least by far was a young guitar star called Bonnie Raitt, whose first record was recorded with the Bees and Junior Wells out on Lake Minnetonka.  It remains one of my all-time favorite blues records. Murphy and Koerner recorded the fabulous Running, Jumping, Standing Still record that one reviewer said was, “…perhaps the only psychedelic ragtime blues album ever made.”

All sorts of folks could be found playing the Silver Dollar. I saw the classic harp superstar Charlie Musselwhite, with Robben Ford on guitar. Mojo Buford, Muddy Water’s harp man for some time, had his own Minneapolis-based band and played often. The original hard core blues version of the famous Lamont Cranston Band, led by still another harmonica great, Pat Hayes, was a staple, and they could hang with the absolute best. One crazy funky week I spent many nights in a row with a Schells Deer Brand in my hand watching the fabulous Muddy Waters and band. Mud was booked in for a one nighter, and the legend says that they had too much fun and nowhere else to be, so they just stayed.  Luther Johnson, Pinetop Perkins, and all. Mojo sat in several times. I think this was about $5 a crack and unbeatable.

I was in a college hiatus after completing my eligibility as a wrestler, and had spent those years in Winona on the banks of the Mississippi, just above Lacrosse, home of G. Heileman Brewing at the time.  For a reason I never knew, Lacrosse was kind of a Miller town at the time, but I dug Old Style, and it's still a great ice cold lawn mowing beer. Hungry for something more distinctive in a day when there weren't many options, I got into Heileman's Special Export, known to us as the Green Death because it was easy to swill too many of those green bottled slightly skunky tasting bad boys.  Maybe we'd see some Anchor Steam once in a while, but that was really exotic. X was a rice adjunct super refreshing one that wasn't for everyone. It's still good in cans fished from a chest of ice on a smoking hot humid Minnesota afternoon. 

When I landed in Minneapolis and found the Silver Dollar and the other funky blues scene places like the Triangle and 400 there were other possibilities. The freaks were becoming aware of the origins of their night time nectar, and of course most locals at that time originated with a key ingredient from just across the Minnesota River in Shakopee at Rahr Malting. There was even a loose collective R&B/Blues group called the Rahrs and Js after everyone's two favorites.

My memory may be clouded - that's ridiculous - there's no maybe about it! Anyway I can't recall that the SD served anything but Schell's Deer Brand, maybe because of the cool graphics, but it doesn't matter. It was a richer, more malt forward, slightly addictive brew, and I liked looking at the deer while thinking about where Lazy Bill's blues came from. Schells originated this one before the prohibition, and it featured their own yeast. It had the added advantage of often being found on sale at three cases for under ten bucks!

My own blues? Well, my head sort of blew up at age fourteen in 1963 when I first heard Mr. John Lee Hooker Boom Boom Booming, Mr. Jimmy Reed bitching about the Big Boss Man, and Mr. Bo Diddley grooving the Bo Diddley Beat. Just a little bit later The Animals came at it from the Isles by way of the St. James Infirmary, and Bob Dylan blew minds and speakers at Newport with Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper. The Stones, who once opened for Bo Diddley, shook things up further still as they were also channeling McKinley Morganfield, better known as Muddy Waters. Once people got over the shock and awe, Dylan’s Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat had white college kids looking for where it all came from. And of course, those kids discovered it with...you guessed it, beer.

A little later the rising hardcore blues band, Canned Heat, with Blind Owl Wilson, and Bob, the Bear, Hite, did Living the Blues, probably the seminal hippy blues record that I went to sleep with for years in college, and shortly after that, got hooked up with John Lee to complete the bridge from Woodstock back to Clarksdale Mississippi.

In those days it wasn’t lost on anyone that this scene was just a boat or train trip straight up the Mississippi Valley from New Orleans by way of Clarksdale Mississippi. However, it was also a car, or hitchhike trip along Dylan’s Highway 61.  I think a lot of folks believe that Dylan’s 61 had more to do with where he is from physically, but conceptually he is from the intersection of Highways 61 and 49, and I believe that’s where it is at. That is Robert Johnson’s crossroads of course, and way more likely source place than Tofte Minnesota.

So Brues and Blews. Many, many, many, blues players have proved that whiskey and heroin don’t make for a long and lovely life. You just can’t hang in with that intensity of experience. Beer will fill you right up and put you to sleep before you can do anything too radical, unless you just plain want to of course. If you are looking for a great musical ride as you get along the way with a long and lovely life, enjoy your blews with a few brues. Enough is sometimes just right.