BIG JACK JOHNSON & THE OILERS - Memphis Barbecue Sessions

By Kevin Ransom
News Special Writer

   It's always been important to bluesman Big Jack Johnson that he sing his own songs.      But because Johnson was born and raised in Lambert, Mississippi, deep in the heart of the Delta - and therefore steeped in the music of the blues masters -- he decided it was time to make a record that paid homage to the giants who inspired him.    So, after making several albums that focused on his own compositions, Jack Johnson has a new disc, "The Memphis Barbecue Sessions," that lets him loose on tunes by such legendary blues figures as Willie Dixon, Elmore James, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker and Jimmy Reed (and also includes a few of his own songs).     That's a daunting task-laying down eight recorded versions of songs written by blues heavyweights, on a single album, in a way that shows sufficient respect for the originals-but without making them sound like blues-museum artifacts.
     And check this out-he didn't dodge a bullet by doing lesser-known tunes by the masters. He stepped right up and tackled, head-on, songs that are not only signature tunes by these legends, but also some of the most-covered tracks in the blues canon: the Wolf's "Smokestack Lightnin'," Walter's "My Babe," Elmore's "Dust My Broom," Reed's "Big Boss Man," etc.    "Yeah, I was listenin' to those guys when I was just a little kid, and they're the ones who made me want to play the blues," says Johnson, who comes to the Firefly Club on Thursday with his band, the Oilers.  "When I heard those songs, I liked what I heard,  and I tried to imitate everything that I heard. I loved those guys, I loved their sound, and I wanted to keep those sounds with me, keep 'em close to home.
   "There were a lot of other tunes I could have done on this record, but these songs still need to be heard today," says Johnson by phone from a tour  stop in St. Louis. "The music they put out today all comes and goes so fast, all this rappin' stuff, and it's gone in a minute. But these old blues songs is the real stuff, and it'll never go away."
   One reason "Memphis Barbecue" works is that the recordings are stripped-down affairs, allowing Johnson's feral vocals and scrappy guitar their full range of expression, instead of locking them into the strictures of full-band treatments. Many of the tunes indeed have the casual, off-handed   feel of a guy sitting on his back porch, tossing off tunes and taking the occasional pull from a bottle of whiskey while ribs sizzle on the grill. On "Smokestack Lightnin'" - the original was perhaps the most scarily seductive three minutes in blues history --  he even dares to approximate  the Wolf's shivery midnight howl.

   On a few tunes, just for variety and texture,  Johnson calls on a couple of blues cats from different backgrounds. One is Pinetop Perkins, the venerated blues-piano man who played in Muddy Waters' seminal Chicago-blues band. The other is Kim Wilson, who lends the proceedings the same kinds of lascivious blues-harp licks he played on some of the rocking-Texas-blues recordings of his former band, the Fabulous Thunderbirds. Producer/drummer mark Carpentieri lays down some shuffle grooves on three tracks. Otherwise, "Memphis Barbecue" is all Jack.
   "Yeah, I wanted to just play the guitar and sing, so people could hear my  own sound, you know, without other guys playin'."
   When Johnson was growing up, his father was a fairly high-profile guitarist and fiddler around Lambert and nearby Clarksdale, and Johnsonpicked up the guitar early. By 13, he was sitting in with his father's band
and began building a rep for his rough-and-stumble fretwork. When he was 26, he hooked up with some local blues slingers for a jam session that turned into a 20-odd-year musical partnership. Dubbing themselves the Jelly Roll Kings, that ensemble recorded four ablums between '78 and '97.    Although Johnson has been playing the blues circuit, both by himself and with the Kings, since the early '70s, he never made a living from his music until the last eight or 10 years.     Before that, he worked a day job as an oil-truck driver. His first solo recording, "The Oil Man," was released in 1987, and echoed with Johnson's juke-joint influences. In '91, he released "Daddy, When is Mama Comin' Home?," a more uptown effort that displayed the influence of B.B. King's urban-blues stylings, complete with swinging horn arrangements. Subsequent releases included "We Got to Stop This Killin," in '97 and the appropriately-titled "Roots Stew" in 2000.
   As a lyricist, Johnson has spread out beyond standard blues topics--lyin', cheatin', hard livin', evil-hearted women, messin' with the kid, etc.--and tackled modern-day social problems on songs like "Crack-Headed  Woman" and the title tracks to "We Got Stop This Killin'" and "When Is Mama Comin' Home?"
   "Well, that's no big thing," says Johnson. It's just that there have been  so many blues songs, talkin' about the same thing, over and over, and so many words have already been, written about 'em. So in my own songs I just try to find something else to sing about."

   Kevin Ransom is a Detroit-area writer and music critic. He can be reached  at kevransom@aol.com.