A Riposte and a Contrarian View, Part Two

1. Jack Hammer – “Street of Love,” “Sarajevo”  

Piet Botha has kept Jack Hammer going as the parallel project to his solo career as Afrikaans rocker and on paper this Southern rock influenced band sounds exciting. I saw them play at a disastrous rock festival in the Good Hope Centre in the late Eighties and they were an impressive live act. Unfortunately, their early recordings, at least the CD albums Ghosts on the Wind (1994) and Death of a Gypsy(1996), from which these two tracks are taken, don’t do the music justice. The mix is terrible, with the vocals upfront and the guitars mixed way down, making the performances sound muddy and powerless. Where the band should roar and scamper, it merely bleats and plods. These are the most irritating set of mixes since the All Night Radio albums, which have the same issue.  It is only with The Pilgrim (2005) that the production values  are excellent and showcase the full extent of the band’s live power.

Apart from the ill-conceived mixing, Botha’s vocal styling, of not actually singing but kind of intoning, in a portentous ponderous fashion, his “meaningful” lyrics, tends to drag over the length of the songs, never mind the duration of a full album. This would have been mitigated had the guitars behind his voice been louder and more assertive, but the focus is so intently on the vocals that the irritation factor is quite high.

I bought these two albums because I’d read about Jack Hammer, remembered Piet Botha from the late Seventies and dearly wanted to love the music because it seemed that Jack Hammer played exactlythe kind of Southern guitar rock I like a lot. I was terribly disappointed and have hardly ever listened to the albums after I bought them.

Piet Botha might be legendary for his long musical career  with Jack Hammer and as solo Afrikaans act, but these two songs, at least as the tracks of the respective parent albums, are nowhere close to it.

2. Just Jinger – “Sugar Man”

Art (now Ard) Mathews ran Just Jinger and then Just Jinjer from 1997 to 2000, and operated in the anthemic rock realm, also occupied by Watershed and Prime Circle, both of which are still active, which is not exactly my fave but these bands generally have a couple of good tunes one can sing along to a a festival while waving a lit Bic lighter.

In just Jinjer’s case “Shallow Waters” and “Stand in Your Way” represents the best of the bunch but there are other good, if unfamiliar to me,  tunes on the Greatest Hits(2001) album, probably the only Just Jinjer record one needs to own, which also includes the reverent cover of “Sugarman,” a signature song of a real legend, Sixto Rodriguez.

This version of “Sugarman” is nice enough but it’s not so different to the original or just a quirky interpretation to make it interesting, and neither the band nor this recording are legendary. It’s not even remotely the best the band did.

3.  Koos Kombuis – “Who Killed Kurt Cobain”  

Although there are many Afrikaans speaking musicians in South African rock bands, and quite a few Afrikaans rockers, this list mentions only Piet Botha and Koos Kombuis. Valiant Swart must be as “legendary” and I suppose the list is of its time, 2002, and might look a lot different if it were more contemporary but I would seem, for whatever reason, that Brian Currin has never seen fit to update his picks. Perhaps he simply has no eyes for South African rock released in the 21^stCentury.

 “Who Killed Kurt Cobain” is from Madiba Bay(1997), Kombuis’  4^thalbum, and possibly the last good one, where he is an Afro-optimist, still basking in the light of the newly democratic South Africa led by President Mandela, still something of a rebel and fringe artist though he was already heading to the mainstream at a good clip.  He was shortly to be disillusioned by the new regime and its egregious failings, and in his later records he comes across as the chubby, White, middle class, ex-rebel he’s become. Nowadays he is in the mainstream, a national treasure.

Anyhow,Madiba Bay is the first, and possibly only, album where Kombuis performs a mix of Afrikaans and `English songs, possibly an attempt to pander to his English language following or to get some international exposure, who knows.  “Who Killed Kurt Cobain” is a predictable conspiracy song. It doesn’t number under the best songs on the album  and has never become a Kombuis classic, and rightly so.

4. Julian Laxton – “Celebrate”  

Well, here’s a bone fide legend, innit? Laxton was the guitarist for Freedoms Children and an in-demand session guitarist after that and, as far as I know, owns a popular bar in Gauteng and possibly still plays low key gigs. 

Post Freedoms, he kicked on with a solo career and with this tune, and “Blue Water,” from Celebrate (1977) he gave us two prime examples of the fusion of rock and disco he called “glot rock” that are still exciting to listen to, especially at high volume. Pretty much dumb entertainment but joyful nonetheless.

5. Little Sister – “No Man Shall Fall,” “Dear Abbie “ 

Because the band is led by sisters Debbi and Jenni Lonmon, one could see them as South Africa’s Heart, especially the late period, big power ballad Heart. Little Sister was a good, solid workmanlike ensemble, for the decade between 1989 and 1999, with no brilliance but some heart-warming tunes, such as these.

6. Mauritz Lotz – “Six String Razor”  

How a faceless session guy could be a legend is a good question; perhaps he’s a legend in the studio amongst his peers and the acts he plays for. This track is the title track of his 1990 debut.

7. McCully Workshop – “Buccaneer”  

McCully Workshop is a bit of a local legend, one of the pioneering South African progressive bands from the late Sixties / early Seventies, who found themselves with a couple of pop hits in 1977 with “Chinese Junkman” and “Buccaneer”  and the latter, in particular, is still the one song by which most people  remember them. There may have been other, earlier hits, but I don’t recall any.  I disliked both these songs when they were released and I still can’t stand them.

My only memory of the band is of a performance at a University of Stellenbosch  “Karnaval” gig around 1974 or 1975 (pre “Buccaneer”), where they were the headliners amongst presumably the cream of the then Cape Town bands, and performed a rousing version of “Midnight Special,” in which they used the F-word to outrage the nice, god fearing Afrikaans students. I have no clue what the other songs in their repertoire were because this was the first, last and only time I heard the band perform. (I was too young to be allowed onto the festival site and was forced to experience the gig from the other side of a fence, with the bands out of sight.)

For now McCully Workshop is just a nostalgic memory, and if they still perform, it’s far and few between. I guess it’s good to be remembered for at least one hit but it’s a pity that it’s “Buccaneer,” a rather silly, inconsequential tall tale song with a hummable tune and lovely harmonies but nothing else of distinction.

8. Morocko – “Bowtie Boogaloo”

I don’t know who JB Arthur is or where he is now, but this 1981 release seems to have been his one and only shot at stardom, backed by names I recognise as some of the top session men of the day, and with a catchy tune that is borderline schlock. The SA Rock Encyclopedia bio mentions Prince as an influence; this is stretching the bounds of credulity. The music sounds like a  throwback to the bad disco of the Seventies with no hint of innovation or that, in fact, the Eighties have arrived.  

9. Otis Waygood Blues Band – “Fever “

For some reason I cannot recall, Otis Waygood Blued Band was the first local   band (they hailed form Rhodesia, as it then was, but made their bones in Cape Town I took note of when I was about 10 or 11 years old and not very knowledgeable about pop or rock in general. 

I bought the eponymous debut album from 1970 in its RetroFresh CD format in about 2003, and the second and third albums a couple of years later, and was mightily impressed. The debut was an impeccably produced mix of blues, rock and progressive flute trappings that could stand its ground against anything of similar nature recorded in the UK or USA. It is a landmark album in the annals of South African rock.

Their feisty take on “Fever” is highly entertaining but the other tracks on the album are as good.

Simply Otis Waygood(1971) and Ten Light Claps and a Scream(1971) are hugely disappointing, not only because the band no longer plays blues but also because both sets sound like uninspired,  often piss-poor, improvised studio jams recorded in a day to fulfil contractual obligations. The records are not literally unlistenable but I can’t think why one would want to waste time on them when the inspired, energised and inspirational debut album is available.

Otis Waygood should have broken up after their debut and  their legend would have been wholly untarnished.

10. Peach – “Nightmare,” “Complicated Game” 

In the wake of the success of Clout, there was a bit of a rush to manufacture the next all woman band, and there were a couple. Pantha gave us PJ Powers. Peach was the punk  / New Wave group, with a male guitarist, released one okay-ish album On Loan for Evolution,and also competed for a Sarie award with their debut single “A Lot of Things.” They wrote most of their own songs  except for “Complicated Game,” an exemplary cover of an XTC song.

It seems that the band members were of Johannesburg Greek extraction and every chose a nom de plume,of which Carol Wood-Greene was the most un-punk but possibly the most subversive too.

I prefer “A Lot of Things,” to “Nightmare” but that could just be because it’s the tune I heard first. The music is gritty and tough, the attitude is suspect and one can’t escape the suspicion that this was band made by male promoters who discarded them  quickly when there was no more money to be made.  

11. Rabbitt – “Hold On To Love,” “Charlie,” “Hard Ride”

Rabbitt represents my first experience of how a band can be hyped  and if they started as session musicians with serious chops, and a neat version of Jethro Tull’s “Locomotive Breath,” it was soon more about image, and the pretty boy good  looks of a post-Bay City Rollers rock band and teenage female hysteria. Rabbitt-mania, anyone?

“Charlie” was the first and possibly biggest, hit, a lovely, sweet ballad dedicated to a guy named Charlie, yet the music was mostly rock of a rather highly tooled sort, with the accent on the chops and sophistication of arrangements. Never really my taste because it was too smooth and over produced for my liking.

The band broke up after two albums, probably because they too, were screwed by management and label, and the various members went their own solo career ways. Duncan Faure, ironically, played for a late version of the Bay City Rollers. Trevor Rabin joined Brit prog rockers Yes and wrote their biggest ‘80s (and probably ever) hit, “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” Neil Cloud and Ronnie Robot achieved far less success.

For a while Rabbitt-mania was a thing, if heavily hyped and manipulated, and it was as exciting as it was short-lived. South Africa was just not big enough to support the career of an ambitious rock band and at the time, trying to “make it” anywhere else was not in the cards for SA rockers, hence the quick, bitter demise. 

12. Radio Rats – “ZX Dan”  

“ZX Dan” was released in late 1978 and kind of in the wake of Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing.” Both songs featured lengthy, delirious, tuneful outro guitar solos that made them, to me, instantly memorable. The lyrics of “ZX Dan” told a banal sci-fi story of an alien who wants to tune in to rock and roll, and reminded one of Bowie’s “Starman,” though the comparison was unfavourable. 

Having said that, the tune had a lot of airplay on Radio 5 and became a solid chart hit, the first and last The Radio Rats ever had. Into the Night We Slide, the parent album, is a mix of  consciously weird, yet not very tough,  rock ‘n roll that was a bit of post New Wave fresh breath of air in the local scene but forty years later it sounds twee, amateurish and not nearly as strange as it might have been at the time. For all it’s rather terrible lyrics, “ZX Dan” is by far the best thing on the record.

Jonathan Handley, songwriter and guitarist, apparently kept Radio Rats going, and even developed a couple or other bands, but has never been more than a brief entry in the annals of SA rock.

13. Margaret Singana – “Tribal Fence”

Margaret Singana hubristically called ‘Lady Africa,’ as if she were the only African female vocalist ever, became famous in South Africa, at least amongst the White public, as the voice of the recorded version of the musical Ipi ‘n Tombi and then achieved cachet with White musicians and radio as the acceptable face of local Black music. “Tribal Fence” was written by Ramsay Mackay of Freedoms Children and Singana’s recording must have been designed to be  cross over hit for her between Black and White popular music, much as PJ Powers and Hotline, albeit a few tears later, attempted the same.  Nice enough and perhaps a tad daring but hardly epoch shattering.

14. Neill Solomon – “Roxy Lady”

I don’t recall ever hearing this tune from 1980 by Mr Solomon and the Uptown Rhythm Dogs but maybe I did because I think of it as yet another pseudo sophisticated jazzy funky pieced of pablum. The title is cringe worthy and though the band may have been amazing musicians, it’s a retro snooze fest.

15. Stingray – “Better The Devil You Know”

As I understood it at the time, Stingray was a project band formed from seasoned session musicians with an eye on the kind of AOR rock success enjoyed by Boston, Toto  and similar melodic metal bands of the time.  this kind of soft rock, pop crossover was  tepid, by-the-numbers heavy rock with no nous, no verve, no power and no glory. This release was from 1979 and the band never saw the ‘80’s.

16. Suck – “Aimless Lady”

in 1971 Suck was a shock rock band, apparently specialising in cover versions of heavy bands of the era, such as Grand Funk Railroad, whose tune this is, King Crimson, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, and which released one album, Time to Suck, and disappeared, becoming legendary probably because of obscurity rather than the quality of their music. It’s extraordinary that a cover band could have been able to release a record and it’s probably a grand testimonial to the ‘underground’ scene of the time but none of the performances on the album are essential listening other than for the historical record.  The band didn’t quite suck, but they kinda blew.

17. Sweatband – “This Boy”  

In 1984 and 1985 Sweatband, fronted by the young, sexy Wendy Oldfield and the guitar god John Mair, played venues in Stellenbosch, trying to make a name for themselves, and then moved North to the Big Smoke of Johannesburg where the career took a massive leap forwards, with big management and a record deal. When Sweatband returned to Cape Town in 1986, they had a swagger second to none and a  bunch of great tunes on a rather good debut album.  “This Boy” and “Shape of her Body” were the best songs but, apart from one weak track, the album was all killer and no filler and arguably the best SA pop rock album of the decade.  Mair could write a catchy tune or riff and play them with the insouciance of the truly talented. Sadly, the band fell apart after a few years, apparently, typically a victim of their own success, bad management and a debt crisis. Oldfield had a briefly successful solo career while Mair went back to paying solo gigs in bars, drank too much and died. Sweatband ought to have been much bigger than they were but the Eighties were not the best time to be a South African rock musician with aspirations.

18. The Spectres – “Be Bop Pop,” “Teddy Bear”  

In about 1987 The Spectres, like so many other Johannesburg bands, played a bunch of gigs in Cape Town, probably during the festive season and impressed with high energy and a bunch of tuneful pop rock songs. At the time The Believers, with a similar line up, were active in Cape Town  one could make a direct comparison between a Cape Town band who was accomplished but seemed to put style before substance and the Johannesburg group who were as accomplished and yet more fun to listen to.

“Teddy Bear” was the big hit, a rather twee piece of fluff pop, and I was surprised by it because from the gigs they sounded more serious than that but I guess lyrics often didn’t translate well in a live situation, because of poor club sound. 

The Spectres had a couple of radio hits, then disappeared without trace. Their one album contains the hits and filler, which suggests that the talent wasn’t really much to speak of. Tara Robb, the vocalist, died in 2000.

19. Tribe After Tribe – “Damsel (As I Went Out One Morning)”  

I went to see Tribe After Tribe  play a New Year’s gig at  the Weizmann Hall in Sea Point in probably 1984, and for the first 30 minutes or so Robbi Robb did nothing but harangue the crowd, whether he was genuinely pissed off about something or it was simply a device to get the blood going, until the audience, who put up with his abuse, was audibly pissed off in turn, yet stayed put, and then the band played a blistering set of the toughest, loudest, densest rock I’d ever heard from a local act, comparable only to Sweatband’s home coming gigs in 1986, after making a breakthrough in Johannesburg, and Arno Carsten’s New Porn collective in, of all places, Wellington, in October 2004.  

The original rhythm section comprised of Fuzzy Marcus (bass) and Bruce Williams (drums) previously of Baxtop, while Robb came from Asylum Kids;  hippy rock roots with punk / New Wave roots.

“As I Went Out One Morning (Damsel)” (the correct title) is a take on a Bob Dylan song from John Wesley Harding, a surprising choice for a cover, especially of a Dylan tune, and though well played, not that captivating. Perhaps it was the only palatable song from the debut album that the SABC was prepared to give airtime to at the time.

Robb took the Tribe After Tribe brand to the USA, Los  Angeles to be exact, and  followed a longer career path there than he did in South African and I don’t even know whether the band has ever played in SA again. 

20. Via Afrika – “Hey Boy”  

Via Afrika’s early Eighties mix of electronics and African rhythms still sound revolutionary and innovative to this day. René Veldsman had a brief, unsatisfactory solo rock career before Via Afrika, before she hit creative pay dirt in a collaboration with two comrades who were not necessarily the greatest musicians but had attitude and the inquisitive, we-can-do-anything energy of youth.

The two albums, Via Afrika(1983) and Scent of Scandal(1984) are South African classics and, for my money, both number among the top ten best local rock albums of the decade. Nobody else sounded like this and more than 30 years later the records still sound avant garde.  “Hey Boy” was a club hit in Cape Town in the late Eighties.

A Riposte and a Contrarian View, Part One

Taken from the SA Rock Encyclopedia, the following 40 acts are, according to Brian Currin, a list of supposed Top 40 South African Rock Legends. These artists are undeniably South African and some of them might have been popular, and good, but I think calling all of them “LEGENDS” is hyperbolic. When these acts arrived on the scene and were prominent for a while, the local rock scene was a fraction of what followed after 1994 and these acts could not only be touted as the best gigs in town, but pretty much as the only gig in town. The competition wasn’t very stiff and often mediocrity won simply because the musicians had the ambition and the drive to record their tunes and release them, regardless of quality. Obviously, this list is based on Currin’s opinion and reflects his taste for AOR (classic) rock and though I concur with some selections, I don’t agree with all of it and believe that another view is important; if it’s a revisionist view, so be it. Not everything released in this country is good; there’s lots of mediocrity and downright awfulness too.

It’s all very well to support your local artists but boosterism that’s blind to the reality that not all musicians are geniuses or can write good songs, and that one shouldn’t confuse technical ability with creative talent,  serves no-one.  Firstly, it doesn’t provide the reader with an objective as possible appreciation of any record or performance, and, secondly, unreservedly praising musicians regardless of whether they’re doing well or giving us workmanlike crap, doesn’t give them the opportunity of an unbiased outside view that could be of more use than only praise. Good musicians know when they’re playing badly or make mistakes and don’t much like it when fans don’t have the confidence to tell the truth.

Currin is of the “don’t criticise local acts” school of music appreciation and bis support for South African rock is admirable. In my mind, the best of what our musicians have produced over the years, need not stand back for anything so-called “international” acts have done and the mere fact that a band is from the UK or USA doesn’t automatically make then good.

I own, and have listened to, many of the records Currin deals with and my critical view is derived from this independent assessment and I believe (I would though, wouldn’t I?)  that my view is more practically valuable than Currin’s.

Having said that, the SA Rock Encyclopedia is a good source for those researching  SA rock music history.

1. The A-Cads – “Hungry For Love,” “Roadrunner”

A mid-Sixties band I’ve never heard.

2. Asylum Kids – “Fight It With Your Mind,” “Schoolboy,” “No, No, No, No”

Agit-pop alternative rockers (influenced by punk and New Wave). Robbi Robb, lead singer, songwriter and guitarist, subsequently formed Tribe After Tribe  and later decamped to Los Angeles to make  a go of it. He might still be gigging but has hardly set the world alight.

”Schoolboy” made it to the shortlist of the Springbok Radio Sarie Awards (the SAMA of its day) as part of the best pop, or rock, or alternative, list and if the entry was forced on the band by the record company, it’s still an oddity in the band’s CV as well as being a stupid, trite song.

“Fight It With Your Mind” is the best track, a feisty, fiery slice of angry confrontation with the powers that be and a song Asylum Kids should be remembered for rather than the simplistic “Schoolboy.”

3. Robin Auld – “Baby, You've Been Good To Me,” “Perfect Day”

Auld is still living, recording and gigging around Cape Town and is now a senior statesman remnant of the mid-Eighties school of local rockers. Originally cast as  the blond, blue-eyed surfing guitar player, he led  a rocking band (Z-Astaire) and wrote some affecting, emotive tunes, of which “Baby, You’ve Been Good To Me” (1985) is probably the best and to this day still a nice little earner from radio play royalties. The other big hit is “All of Woman.”

“Perfect Day” (not the Lou Reed song), is cast in similar reflective vein, though hardly as classic  as “Baby, You’ve Been Good To Me.”  Auld is a journeyman rather than an example of brightly burning creativity. Seemingly, he surfs, he smokes a bit of weed, and he writes philosophical songs that are entertaining enough in concert. Auld’s greatest achievement is longevity and continued appeal, probably mostly to the audience who were young when he was, and partied along on a summer weekend afternoon in front of the Da Gama Hotel in the Strand.

4. Ballyhoo – “Man On The Moon”

A bunch of South Africans fronted by a Brit, Stewart Irving, who wrote and sang this crappy, cheesy pop ballad, and whose keyboard player, Attie van Wyk, became a big player in the local music scene by founding Big Concerts.  “Man on the Moon:” (1980) was a monster, irritating pop hit and receives a surprising amount of air play to this day. Typical one hit wonder stuff. This song, though it hit a chord with the lowest common denominator of pop fan, is just bad, one of those tunes that only grates on the nerves when one hears it.

5. Baxtop – “Jo Bangles” 

In 1979 Baxtop won a Pop Shop Battle of the Bands competition with this song. Not only did the band, in the punk and New Wave era, look like a tragic throwback to the by then archaic, obsolescent hippy era, but this bluesy soft rock tune also sounded out of time even if it was catchy. It’s by far not the best song on the band’s one and only LP, Work It Out(1979.)  “Dr Watson”, “Golden Highway” and “Night Time Train” are probably the best guitar driven rockers but the lyrics generally are at best workmanlike, at worst just lazy. 

Larry Amos, lead singer, songwriter and lead guitarist, is still working in Gauteng, and Tim Parr, the second guitarist, formed the more successful EllaMental in the mid-Eighties and is now a solo artist, but Baxtop didn’t last, leaving us just one album of derivative, retro guitar rock, expertly played as it was, but not very engaging. Again, a one hit wonder, and I would rather call Baxtop an example of wasted opportunity.

As an aside: Piet Botha also competed in this Battle of the Bands, as leader of a leaden, plodding heavy band called Raven.

6. Big Sky – “Waiting For The Dawn,” “Slow Dancing”

Steve Louw was the founding member, lead vocalist, songwriter and rhythm guitarist for my top favourite local band of the Eighties, at least as a live incarnation, because their two albums mostly sucked, All Night Radio, which didn’t amount to much commercially. When that band failed, he formed Big Sky, a kind of project band, with session musicians to help him indulge himself in his passion for, well, big sky pseudo-Americana. Sadly, the concept sounded better than the execution.  Even so, Big Sky has a much larger recorded legacy than All Night Radio ever did and benefitted from much better production. The tunes sound good, the lyrics have improved and the musicians put some back into it but, as with All Night Radio, Louw’s weak, colourless voice ruins the effect and the playing is too slick for proper roots style music.

Louw is the perfect example of ambition and drive triumphing over actual talent. He became a rock musician, and star of sorts, not because he is amazingly creative but because he simply went ahead and did it. He wrote songs, recruited musicians, recorded the songs and released them. That’s how a career in the arts can be achieved.  A mediocre talent who works hard at achieving his goals will do better than a genius who can’t be arsed. Louw cannot sing, writes middling songs and prefers recording where all the gritty parts are smoothed out and buffed to a sheen, avoiding anything quirky or, indeed, rocking. If you want to be a roots rocker, you gotta have some grit, some roots and some genuine feel for a groove. Steve Louw ain’t got none of that. 

He’s not legendary. He built a musical career on hard work, not on talent, and not on creative achievement

7. Piet Botha – “Goeienag, Generaal,” “Sien Jou Weer”  

Piet Botha has a dual career” (a) as leader, songwriter and vocalist for Jack Hammer, his version of AOR Southern Rock, I guess; and (b) as solo Afrikaans troubadour.

‘n Suitcase Vol Winter(1997), from which the above songs were taken, was his Afrikaans debut and is probably the best of the releases that followed, with the best known songs, except for Die Mamba(2003), which is a true classic of creative song writing, inspired playing and high production values. Botha’s schtick is a way of talk-singing that  is supposed to lend weight to the ruminating, philosophical, trite, songs but often just weighs them down into boring plods. Botha never counts down a fast rocker. 

Lyrically, he investigates the past, from the futilities of the Border War in Namibia  (”Goeienag, Generaal”) to the ravages suffered by die Afrikaner population during and after the Second Anglo Boer War. It’s at the same time indicative of an alternative, critical Afrikaner view of Nationalist politics and a kind of celebration of it. Namibian War is bad: Boer War is good.

As pioneer of adult Afrikaans rock, I guess one could call Piet Botha a legend, and also for the longevity as working musician in South Africa but whether he could ever be considered one of the greats, and not just a survivor, is open to argument. 

8. Bright Blue – “Weeping,” “Window On The World” 

With “Window On The World” Bright Blue announced itself as a  lively, literate, somewhat subversive, mbaqanga influenced pop band from Cape Town but seemed lightweight and frothy, of little consequence, yet with “Weeping” the band cemented itself in the popular music pantheon with a stone cold classic of a protest song, born in the heart of the darkness of the South African State of Emergency of the mid- to late- Eighties. “Weeping” is, as the cliché has it, a sweeping indictment of the National Party government and its repressive policies yet it became a hit, and received much airplay on Radio 5, before the people who decided these things realised what the song was about and promptly banned it from the airwaves.

In this case I would say that “Weeping” is the legend, not so much the band, which didn’t last any longer than most South African bands of the era.

9. Circus – “Conquistador”  

Hmm, Circus, a legend?  I doubt it.  The band was a late Seventies would-be glam prog rock group, with a vocalist in a harlequin costume and make up, and was one of the bands of the time that fell victim to managerial sharp practises and record company ruthlessness, but that’s about all. “Conquistador” wasn’t a bad little number though it’s a cover of a Procol Harum song, and the other ‘hit’ that Circus managed was Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s “Delilah.”  From this one would imagine that Circus earned their living as a human jukebox in hotels and bars in Johannesburg but had little of their own creativity to contribute. 

10. Johnny Clegg – “Kilimanjaro” (with Juluka), “Scatterlings of Africa” (with Savuka)

Mr Clegg has moved, like Koos Kombuis, from operating guerrilla-like on the rebellious fringe of the South African rock scene to being an elder statesman in the middle of the mainstream, heaped with honours and adulation for his steadfast championing of Zulu culture and consistent battle against the erstwhile political establishment. The National Party is gone and Johnny Clegg lives on.

I’ve never been a fan. I generally like the music of Black South Africa, especially the old school mbaqanga and jive variants, but I’ve always had my doubts about Clegg’s cultural appropriation of traditional Zulu music, adapting it for a White, and, (notoriously) in the Eighties, for an international audience, to create a pop hybrid that has little appeal to me but. Has been commercially successful for Clegg.

In the early to mid-Eighties, when  Juluka was a revolutionary innovation in local music, it seemed that every liberal, left wing student  household had one or two Juluka albums, possibly as a badge of how cool the owner was.  Some Juluka tunes received airplay, despite the subversive nature of the band, such as “Scatterlings of Africa” and ”Summer African Rain,” and I always questioned how much of a dangerous maverick Clegg could be if the SABC, notoriously prone to censorship, was prepared to play his music. 

When Sip[ho Mchune, the second founder member of Juluka, left the band, Clegg regrouped as `Savuka  and it was about this time that his “White Zulu” status became legendary in France and his record company started promoting him as a breakout South African artist, with “international” (dance) remixes of his most popular tunes. These “international tracks” might have been of their time but they grate even more than the original versions. However, along with Mango Groove, Clegg became a big concert attraction in South African too, fully leaving behind the modest, guerrilla beginnings of his career. Hard graft and persistence paid the usual showbiz dividends.

Johnny Clegg, is probably legendary for what he’s achieved,  and rightly so, but  a lyrically trite song like “Kilimanjaro”  is hardly the epitome of a legendary tune or even one of Clegg’s best. ”Impi” is my favourite.

11. Dog Detachment – “Waiting For A Miracle”  

If I have it right, Dog Detachment started as a punk or New Wave type group, and  then developed into a mid-Eighties type of “alternative” band, looking to the melodic, anthemic style of the likes of Duran Duran, and proto-Goth bands,  and began writing some big tunes, like “Waiting For A Miracle,” from their best album Fathoms of Fire(1985), which gave them a popular hit on Radio 5 but, alas, didn’t propel them into a long, successful career.  They released three albums, lasted perhaps 9 years and didn’t survive the Eighties.

The songs were pleasant and hummable, but this is not a legendary band by any stretch of the imagination. They just didn’t have the legs.

12. Lesley Rae Dowling – “”Grips Of Emotion”, “The Spaniard”  

Ms Dowling is what one would now call a grand dame of the AOR side of the South African music scene, emerging as a piano playing singer songwriter in Cape Town in the late Seventies, with an extraordinarily warm, deep voice, writing literate, adult songs. As far as I recollect, she was a contemporary of David Kramer, who achieved a great deal of commercial success, while she got married and seemed to prefer being a farmer’s wife to being a working musician.

Dowling did maintain a musical career  but not high profile and these two songs are early tunes, both from her debut album Lesley Rae Dowling(1981.) it‘s telling that none of the later compositions ring a popular chord; although there was radio exposure once, I wouldn’t think she fits the programming demographic of any local station at the moment. Perhaps Lesley Rae Dowling can be listed under legendary because she was a ground breaker at the time, not being a frothy pop performer, but a serious musician, though she hardly bestrode the South African music scene like an unchallenged colossus.

13. EllaMental – “See Yourself (Clowns)”   

Tim Parr followed the backward looking Baxtop with the very much forward looking, contemporary, sleek Eighties pop rock of EllaMental, featuring the striking looks and vocals of Heather Mac. For a while, from the mid- to late-Eighties, EllaMental represented the intellectual, activist side of the local scene, had some hits and were featured on rock radio, touted to be a big thing indeed. It didn’t last and the attempt to build an “international” career, in the days of the cultural boycott, didn’t work out.

“See Yourself (Clowns)” (1985) is a good example of the bright overproduced Eighties style but it’s hardly a classic nor can EllaMental ever truly be considered a legendary ensemble. The band didn’t achieve enough or last long enough.

14. éVoid – “Shadows,” “Taximan”   

Lucien and Erich Windrich were obviously influenced by the British New Romantic movement of the early Eighties and then discovered, perhaps with a nod to what Adam Ant was up to, that a bit of cultural appropriation would provide a striking image, threw in some electronic beats and came up with a couple of striking tunes, in 1983 and 1984 respectively, to brighten up the local scene, like Via Afrika, with African inflected pop, lightweight as it was.

Eventually, like EllaMental, the Windrichs tried to further their music career in the UK and seems to have made more of a success of it, though by now, I guess, it’s as a nostalgic act, repeating their few hits ad infinitum, rather than as innovators.

Again, though the tunes would fit in nicely amongst the  others in a neat compilation of SA pop, this is not legendary stuff.

15. Falling Mirror – “Johnny Calls The Chemist,” “Making Out With Granny” 

For roughly a decade from 1979 Nielen Marais/Mirror and Alan Faull ran the Falling  Mirror project, from the prog rock post punk oddity of Zen Boulders, with the earnestly, and often risible, poetic lyrics of Mirror and the highly accomplished but slightly out of fashion music of Faull, and after three albums they came up with Johnny Calls The Chemist(1986), arguably the duo’s best and most definitive record and possibly one of the top five South African rock albums of the Eighties, not so much because it’s that good (and it isn’t as wonderful as some would like you to believe) but because of the popular nerve it hit, the zeitgeist it illuminated and because, plain and simple, this is the record that made Falling Mirror. 

“Making Out with Granny” is from Zen Boulders.

Mirror’s lyrics are pretentious, he tries to be oblique and mysterious yet is simply  obscure, silly and unpoetic. The music is still reminiscent of prog rock and still sounds surprisingly good and the songs would have been so much better if Mirror was a decent lyricist.

16. Freedoms Children – “1999”  

Freedoms Children may well be legendary, from the days when “underground” meant heavy prog rock and when having long hair was a radical anti-establishment stance in South Africa. Astra(1970), from which this tune is taken, is the best of the three albums the band released. Despite the promising title of Battle Hymn of the Broken Hearted Horde(1968), it’s  just late Sixties heavy, prog pop and Galactic Vibes (1971) re-treads Astrawith diminishing returns.

Although Julian Laxton was a driving force in the band, the music on Astraseems to be dominated by keyboards, in true prog fashion, rather than being a full blown heavy guitar record, and “1999” is an interesting choice, probably just a favourite, as the featured tune to characterise Freedoms Children. This is one of those records where listening to the whole thing is definitely more rewarding that the isolated parts.

17. Crocodile Harris – “Give Me The Good News,” “Miss Eva, Goodnight”  

Mr Harris is really Mr Graham from Somerset West, who had a mixed bag of a pop career from the fiery glam rocker “Miss Eva, Goodnight” in 1974, through a hiatus to the bigger hit of “Give Me The Good News” in 1982, a few minutes of feelgood MOR schlock that to this day, if the man is still performing, would be the elongated showstopping finale to gigs. I prefer the earlier tune, because it’s a rock and roll thing and because it was released when I was 15 and very susceptible to this kind of froth, where the slower tune was released when I was doing National Service, not in need of this type of alleged good news, and still very much a louder, faster kind of guy.

Okay, so Crocodile Harris is a two hit wonder, but he’s no legend. He’s just a pop performer who’s possibly managed to parlay a career out of these songs but hasn’t given us anything else of value.

18. Hawk – “Here Comes The Sun”  

I tend to think of Hawk and Freedoms Children as two sides of the same early Seventies South African “underground” rock coin, but there are few similarities other than sharing a geographic neighbourhood. Hawk started later and were, perhaps because of the times, more focused on the African cultural influences around them than Freedoms Children, though both bands were strongly progressive. “Here Comes The Sun” is an anodyne version of an inconsequential  George Harrison tune, well performed but pointless, unless it was a cynical attempt at commercialism from a band that hardly have thought of itself, or be considered by its audience, as a pop group. 

Hawk may be legendary for much the same reasons as Freedoms Children, and must be given credit for trying to make it in the UK, as Jo’burg Hawk, but this tune is an idiosyncratic, and inexplicable, choice to illustrate what Hawk was about.

19. Hotline – “You're So Good To Me,” “So Cold”

Hotline had two stabs at stardom. The first was as a bog standard, plodding heavy band, featuring the powerful vocals of PJ Powers, and the second one was as pioneers of the fusion of rock and mbaqanga, and this second wind was where the success lay, with  hits such as “Feel So Strong” (with Steve Kekana) (1982) and “Jabulani” (1984.)

These two tracks are the A and B sides of the single from the debut album Burnout(1981.) My guess is that they get zero radio play nowadays. “Jabulani” is the lovely little earner to this day, and probably still in P J Powers’ set list as closing number.  

The lesson to learn from Hotline is that they adapted, however cynically or commercially driven, when they realised that their Afro rock fusion (“Feel So Strong”) was more popular and appealed to a larger audience than the  heavy sludge. A bunch of White rockers listened to mbaqanga, and presumably other African stuff, learnt some licks, sanitised for the broadest possible market, and rode the commercial wave for as long as it lasted. 

Hotline and PJ Powers must be lauded for bringing the township to South African rock radio and for going to the townships to show solidarity. 

20. John Ireland – “You're Living Inside My Head”

“I Like…” (1982) was probably a bigger, more memorable hit in a recording career lasted from 1978 to 1986, but the earlier hit from 1978 is pretty good too. this does not make him a legend, though. Just a musician who had the opportunity to record his music for a good innings though only managed the two hits.

An appreciation of Ginger Baker

Peyer Edward ‘Ginger’ Baker was  the first drummer who interested, intrigued and enthralled me as a musician. There was  Keith who had a similarly busy, yet wilder style of drumming, and Mitch Mitchell who also had a jazz grounding and whose work with the Jimi Hendrix Experience was quite innovative and gave Hendrix  a drum groove to work off that was not to many miles distant to what Baker was doing  for Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce in Cream,  and there was Ian Paice of Deep Purple, who played the first drum solo  I ever heard (on Made in Japan), and later there was the ultimate, monolithic heaviness of John Bonham. Somewhere in the mid-Seventies, when I was in high school, a couple of my schoolmates kept insisting that Carl Palmer was the best drummer in the world, apparently simply because he’d won a drum poll in some rock publication.  I wasn’t into Emerson, Lake & Palmer or prog rock in general, so I had no idea what Palmer sounded like and could care less.  Some writers of the NME thought that the drummer of Chic was god, and of course there were always high praise for the Motown drummers and the best blues backbeat drummers  To some, Ringo Starr is the most unsung, underrated rock drummer ever and Charlie Watts the absolute best rock drummer.

The list is probably endless. In every generation and in every genre there has been, are and will be superlative drummers, but there is only one Ginger Baker and he was the guy who made me listen to the drummer instead of just the lead guitarist, or any other instrumentalist for that matter, and showed me that drumming wasn’t just a matter of keeping time and holding a groove, but could be as captivating and rousing as any guitar solo, or as intricate as any other musical part.in a rock arrangement.

This epiphany came very specifically with the CD version of Cream’s Disraeli Gears(1967) album though this was by far not my introduction to the band or its recorded output. I’d read about Cream in The Story of Pop, a book-form publication of a part work and after a couple of years started buying the albums, first a double album version of the two Live Cream albums (which included a very long version of the drum solo feature, “Toad”), then Best of Cream,  a German version of the debut album and, finally, the LP of Disraeli Gears.

In the early ‘90’s I began replacing the LPs with the digital versions and Disraeli Gearswas the first. Up to this point, I’d been most impressed by Eric Clapton’s guitar playing, as an obvious focal point for a guy who was into rock and blues guitar but had also taken note of Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker’s contributions as separate but equal building blocks in the Cream sound, but the digitalised, crystal clear mix of the Disraeli Gears CD was a mind blowing revelation when listened to over earphones. 

I don’t know whether the Disraeli GearsLP had a mono mix, or whether the analogue mix simply forced the instruments into a denser whole comprised of three parts, but the CD mix provided one with am audibly clear distinction between the three instruments and now I could indeed pay attention to the drumming as an individual component of the ensemble and more or less ignore the guitar and bass while doing so, and this is where I truly appreciated what Ginger Baker was doing.

The style is one of energetic, restless, unfussy, driving polyrhythms that serves as much as an urgent persuasion  in any tune as the bass or guitar do, and one can believe the explanation that the group played as three soloists rather than as rhythm section and lead instrument, as is the case in so much of rock. Baker, and I guess this is also true of Charlie Watts who has a completely different style of playing, always saw and described himself as a jazz drummer and approached his playing in Cream with that mindset. Even in the heaviest Cream material, such as “Sunshine of Your Love” or “Politician,” the deft dexterity of the Baker touch serves to mitigate what otherwise, in the hands of a lesser drummer, might have been ponderous, heavy sludge.

Baker’s playing  contributes, along with Jack Bruce’s bass, to make the 2005 Cream reunion concerts halfway decent because they are the only members of the band that remain true to what Cream originally sounded like. Clapton’s guitars of choice and style of playing are nothing like what he sounded like with Cream and this drags down the performances to the level of a lead guitarist with a rhythm section. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere in my appraisal of these concerts and the live album released in their wake, this version of Cream sounds like a Cream cover band.  Because Baker always was, and is, a jazz drummer, his style didn’t change much over time, apart perhaps from constraints on energy caused by age, where Clapton’s approach and style certainly did.   Clapton plays as well as ever but how he sounds now and how he plays doesn’t fit Cream anymore; Baker remained  true to the initial impulse and spirit of Cream.

As songwriter, Beker’s contribution to Cream is much less successful or essential.  Only `’Sweet Wine” (Fresh Cream) (1966) and “Pressed Rat and Warthog” (Wheels of Fire) (1968)  have any merit. His other compositions on the Cream albums may be brilliant as jazz tunes but don’t work as rock songs because they lack the musical dynamism of the rest of the material, are rather boring and lyrically poor.  Especially in the interviews conducted for the DVD release of the 2005 Royal `Albert Hall shows, Baker comes across as a truculent old curmudgeon, who still intensely dislikes Jack Bruce, and who is still hugely dissatisfied with his share of song writing royalties from the Cream period, partly because his practical contributions to popular tunes, in arrangements or riffs, aren’t recognised as being part of the song writing, and hence no song writing credits or royalties, and partly because Bruce (according to Baker) unfairly hogged the song writing, giving him, and Clapton to a degree, no chance contribute material and therefore making a ton of money and screwing Baker out of the  opportunity to do the same. 

However the income from Cream was divided, I believe that the split on song writing royalties, or Baker’s lack thereof, is probably about right going on the evidence of the tunes Baker did manage to get on the records. One would think these were the best and if they were the best, we’re far better off for having far more Bruce / Brown  compositions (and the odd Clapton song) than Baker tunes. Even “Do What You Like” off Blind Faith(1969) is just a long, tedious dirge of a jam that doesn’t seem to have inspired the other guys in the band to put their backs into it.

Baker’s motto, in drum talk, seems to be “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it,”  and he should just let his drums do the talking. Then there can be no challenging him.

I haven’t heard much of Baker’s work post Cream though I know of it, such as the big band Ginger Baker’s Air Force (of which I’ve viewed a couple of clips on YouTube), the work with Fela Anikulapo Kuti (I have the “live” album and the Felaalbum on which Baker plays), Baker-Gurvitz Army (of which I’ve viewed a couple of clips on YouTube), BBM, any  of the jazz albums, or anything else for that matter, mostly because the other stuff represents music I don’t care for or seems no more than money making projects, much like the much vaunted Cream reunion of 2005, designed to provide Baker and Bruce with nest eggs, rather than Clapton whose career has ticked over nicely since Cream broke up.

I’m in two minds whether Ginger Baker is refreshingly forthright and honest about the good and bad in life, especially the bad, or whether he’s just a bitter old guy who, despite his undeniable talent, was incapable of fostering and nurturing a successful career in music, such as Clapton did, or being seen as a creative genius such as is the view of Bruce. Having said that, Baker’s views are entertaining and not necessarily wrong if not always PC.

After having lived in Nigeria for a couple of years, and floating around in the world after that, he settled on a farm outside Tulbagh in South Africa where he breeds (or bred) polo ponies and it’s a rather odd destination but there are worse places in the world to  leave your hat. I should have made an effort, seeing as ow Tulbagh is not so far from Cape Town, to go see him and at least shake his hand or something, but I’d imagine there is no shortage of  fan pilgrimages  and he might not be keen on meeting the likes of me who cannot speak authoritatively about his life’s work, or just jazz in general,  and is simply stuck on his work with Cream, which represents three years out of his life more than 50 years ago. 

Those three years  are arguably, in rock terms, the high point of his career and the source of fame on which the rest relied at least to certain extent, but for a progressive, creative musician that must be an albatross.  Many “classic rock” bands make a lucrative living on the live circuit, playing their well-known hits to fans who don’t want to hear anything else. Though Clapton plays some Cream material and Jack Bruce seems to have enjoyed playing “Politician” with all and sundry, if the various YouTube clips are anything to go by, the blessing of Cream is that the group never did this, apart from the cash grab of the 2005 reunion, and Ginger Baker recorded enough material with other bands and collaborators to ensure that his musical memory should survive for many years, if of lesser interest than the more commercial work of Clapton.   A “best of Baker: compilation, if it doesn’t feature Cream or Blind Faith, will no doubt be of selective interest, probably only to die hard aficionados.

Be that as it may, I will probably never meet Ginger Baker, much as I probably will never meet Wilko Johnson, the Big `Figure or John B Sparks , and will definitely never meet the late Lee Brilleaux, the four founding members of Dr Feelgood, the more contemporary band I  discovered at about the same time as I started listening to Cream, and who represents the other side of the blues rocking coin to Cream: workmanlike pub rock with flashes of genius versus gloriously inventive stadium rock. Most of our rock heroes come from our teenage years and these seven guys, the members of Cream and Dr Feelgood, are my rock gods, not necessarily and not only because of technical virtuosity or creative brilliance but because of the visceral excitement the music had for me.

And that is the bottom line to Ginger Baker too. I don’t care whether he is technically the best drummer ever, or even whether he is considered as such; what I do care about is that intense thrill of listening to him doing what he does best when he pushes Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce on to the greatest, exhilarating heights of rock improvisation and, as I’ve mentioned, he’s an excellent, exciting studio drummer too.

Robert Johnson did not meet the Devil

Not many facts about Robert Johnson are known, even with recent discoveries and the narratives of musicians who knew him, but one thing is certain, and that is: he did NOT meet the Devil, or any incarnation of the Devil, at any crossroads whether in Mississippi or anywhere else. 

This truly hoary cliché is trotted out every time someone writes about Johnson or makes a documentary about him and it’s always in the context of explaining how he went from being a poor guitar player. mocked by his elder peers, to being by far the best, most innovative blues guitarist of his time with an influence that spread further and wider than almost any of his contemporaries or successors.

The explanation is obvious and simple. He left his stomping grounds, where he was known and under rated, and spent time elsewhere practising hard and acquiring the skills and nous, and developing the creativity that made him the legend his is today. In every generation there are a few musicians who transcend their contemporaries, such as, for example, Jimi Hendrix,  who came to England and absolutely astonished his fellow musicians and audiences not with his, to them, otherworldly guitar playing yet nobody has every seriously suggested that he, too, had sold his soul to the Devil. Hendrix got good because he practised a lot an played a lot, and was astonishing because the English audiences allowed him to be the freak his creativity demanded he should be to be innovative beyond the limitations of the blues and R & B roots he came from.

This must be true for Robert Johnson too. He practised hard and gained experience away from the scrutiny of the people who knew him as a struggling guitarist and had no chance to see him develop gradually as would have been the case if he’d stayed around.  The change in his abilities was more awe inspiring because of the time spent away than if the audiences and other musicians had observed the incremental changes and improvements that would have occurred over time. It‘s like someone going away with a full head of hair and returning bald, simply because of male pattern baldness that nobody had anticipated.

And, my guess is, once Johnson had achieved technical mastery, his enquiring mind and inquisitiveness, creativity  if you will, led him to bend and break the rules of what blues playing was supposed to be.  It’s a cliché of art that the artist must learn the rules  and techniques of craftsmanship, composition and colour  before  discarding them, and I would imagine the same would apply to musicianship. Blues is a very traditional music and can be somewhat hidebound, and formally restricted, and many blues musicians are capable of doing no more than learning the formal requirements and playing the same thing and in the same way all the time, once mastered.  Some of the most brilliant classically trained musicians will never improvise regardless of the peerless abilities they may possess and it’s doubly true for most mediocre musicians who never stray beyond the formal strictures of whatever music they play. They can’t imagine that there is another way and they don’t have the technical ability and sense of what if, to think outside of the musical box they find themselves in.

Typically, a musician would learn (some originals, whether completely so or reworked standards, and some well known songs by other artists) enough songs for an hour or two of playing time  and then sustain this repertoire throughout his or her career, being the most popular, in demand tunes every audience would want to hear. Recording artists had to write or find new material more often to avoid repetition but even so, in performance, relied on the greatest hits. 

This is where Johnson was different and if he hadn’t had the technical expertise too, might never have achieved the fame he has, part of which, no doubt, is down to his early, mysterious death and mostly unknown life. There are 29 known Johnson compositions and all of them, some in different takes, are available on record.  This canon represents some of the best known and most often performed blues songs ever and are claimed to be at the root of a great deal of what came to be known as rock and roll and the early death must at least be partly the cause of Johnson’s celebrity and high regard in which these few songs are held.

King of the Delta Blues Singersis the record that brought the musician to the attention of and inspired so many young Whit blues musicians in the Sixties. Before its release only avid, obsessive record collectors would have known of Johnson because the music was available only on 78s and then rarely. After its release, he truly became the legend he is today. When John Hammond searched for Johnson in the late Thirties he was already dead but not yet legendary; many of the older bluesmen who’d recorded in the Twenties and Thirties, and then faded away, were rediscovered by blues detectives and became famous, at least amongst White blues  aficionados, but Johnson was long gone and therefore elevated into godlike status, unlike, say Son House, who was as influential in his day but very much alive to play his trademark tunes to White college audiences.

I bought King of the Delta Blues Singerswhen I was in my late teens or very early twenties, because is was very interested in the blues albeit the electric blues of Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, John Lee Hooker and Elmore James. I’d read about Johnson and this record and when I saw it at a discounted price in some record store, I grabbed it. At the time I was not ready for what I heard as a crude, grating somewhat primitive acoustic sound. The loud, energetic, exciting ensemble sound of the Muddy Waters band was more to my taste. I did not like folk type music much in the first place then, preferring faster, louder, and it was many years and much musical growth later (and on the way I began appreciating all kind of other folk bluesmen) that I developed more of an affinity and appreciation  for Johnson’s music.

I’m no musician and cannot comment on any of the strictly musical aspects of what Johnson did and accomplished but I can dig the way he plays and the structure of the tunes and the intriguing lyrics of some of the best songs, even if so many of the tropes might have been in the folk tradition already or were repeated, in many variations, by songwriters who followed. Even so, he is not my favourite bluesman and I still find It somewhat hard work to listen to his songs and especially a whole album of them. That one record is still the best exposure to the oeuvre and I’ve never been tempted to buy the double CD release of all the recorded versions (alternate takes) of his songs. Listening to a bunch of Johnson’s performances at one time is still hard work for me.  

Many blues musicians have done their takes on the classic Johnson tunes (Fleetwood Mac’s piano driven version of “Hellhound on my trail” is a particular favourite) and the likes of Peter Green’s Splinter Group with The Robert Johnson Songhookand Eric Clapton with Me and Mr Johnson, represent the best, with Clapton edging out Peter Green mostly because the Splinter Group’s versions seem a tad too jolly and slick. In his heyday, Green would have been the perfect Johnson interpreter because his vocal tones and inflections had more of the deep blues about them than Clapton has achieved. 

I don’t understand why the myth of the deal with the Devil at the crossroads persists. It must be clear to everyone that Johnson got better, just like every other musician, by practising hard and long, and that he was a very creative, original songwriter, and shone in comparison to the many journeymen, unimaginative bluesmen around him at the time. I’d also bet that the myth of the crossroads, apparently quite an old tale, was applied to him after his death at a relatively young age, to add to the mystery and legend for the sake of commercial interests.