{"id":4122,"date":"2018-11-17T02:00:28","date_gmt":"2018-11-17T07:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=4122"},"modified":"2020-11-21T15:08:10","modified_gmt":"2020-11-21T20:08:10","slug":"future-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/future-blues\/","title":{"rendered":"Future Blues (Willie Brown\/Son House)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Future Blues (Willie Brown\/Son House)\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/B2bL1KI--u0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This is one of the defining Delta blues guitar pieces, apparently originated by Charlie Patton, though I got it from Willie Brown and Son House. Brown&#8217;s version is the one that was titled &#8220;Future Blues,&#8221; and I first came across it in Stefan Grossman&#8217;s <em>Delta Blues Guitar <\/em>instruction book. That was the first book of tablature I <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4123 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Grossman-Delta-Blues.jpg?resize=233%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"233\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Grossman-Delta-Blues.jpg?resize=233%2C300&amp;ssl=1 233w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Grossman-Delta-Blues.jpg?w=350&amp;ssl=1 350w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 233px) 100vw, 233px\" \/>owned, handed down from my half-brother Dave, and I never managed to learn anything from it. Some of his later books were very helpful, but I&#8217;m convinced that this kind of Delta blues doesn&#8217;t translate to the printed page &#8212; it&#8217;s all about the rhythm and feel, and knowing what notes someone is hitting doesn&#8217;t help much. Another thing that didn&#8217;t help was that at that point I hadn&#8217;t heard Willie Brown&#8217;s version, or House&#8217;s, or any of the various songs Patton sang with a similar arrangement, or Tommy Johnson&#8217;s &#8220;Maggie Campbell&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That problem was rectified when I was living in New York and spending all my money at Dayton&#8217;s used record store on Broadway <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/crow-jane\/\">(a story told in an earlier post)<\/a>. One LP I found was called <em>The Blues <\/em><em>Tradition<\/em>, and I bought it just for the two Willie Brown tracks &#8212; the only two he recorded as a lead singer and player &#8212; both of <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-4124\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Blues-Tradition-LP.jpg?resize=261%2C260&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"261\" height=\"260\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Blues-Tradition-LP.jpg?w=300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Blues-Tradition-LP.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 261px) 100vw, 261px\" \/>which were in the Grossman book. They were great, and I learned his &#8220;M&amp;O Blues,&#8221; but I didn&#8217;t even attempt to learn this one. I was 16 years old, studying with Dave Van Ronk, and this style of guitar was too different from anything I knew how to play.<\/p>\n<p>Honestly, the hard Delta style Patton pioneered was always something I admired more than enjoyed. It&#8217;s incredible music, but I was more comfortable with Mississippi John Hurt or Willie McTell. So that was that for the next twenty-five years&#8230; until I wrote a book called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/rjohnson.html\"><em>Escaping the Delta<\/em><\/a>, focused on Robert Johnson. Since I was writing about Johnson, I needed to understand his musical world, which meant immersing myself in his music and the work of his local mentor, Son House &#8212; not just listening to their records, but playing their pieces to get a physical sense of what they were doing.<\/p>\n<p>I still didn&#8217;t add much of that music to my performing repertoire &#8212; one of the lessons I took away was that most of Johnson&#8217;s guitar pieces were full of empty spaces to be filled with his supple, soulful voice, and I didn&#8217;t have that voice, much less House&#8217;s awesome shout. But I started playing Johnson&#8217;s version of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/walking-blues\/\">Walking Blues<\/a>,&#8221; and then I fell in love with the way House did this one.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4125 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/son-house.jpg?resize=300%2C237&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"237\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/son-house.jpg?resize=300%2C237&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/son-house.jpg?w=304&amp;ssl=1 304w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>House called this &#8220;The Jinx,&#8221; and he played it slower than Brown, at least when he was recording. As I recall, I started by learning his version, then mixed it with Brown&#8217;s. In any case, it turned out to be a conceptual breakthrough for me: Like a lot of white revival players, I always felt more comfortable with my blues guitar playing than my blues singing, and as a result I tended to work out a guitar part, then try to sing over it as best I could. That was particularly tricky on pieces like this, because of the way the rhythmic accents switch between on- and off-beats &#8212; but listening to House, it struck me that his guitar was following his singing. So rather than trying to perfect the guitar accents , I tried to concentrate on my singing and let the guitar follow&#8230; and to sing it like I was involved with the lyric rather than trying to sound like House or Brown&#8230; and suddenly everything felt right.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe a little too right &#8212; when I listen back, my version strikes me as overenthusiastic in spots &#8212; but what the hell, it&#8217;s a lot of fun.<\/p>\n<p>The lyric I sing is a mix of Brown&#8217;s verses and some from other House songs, including his terrific rejection of theological certainty:<\/p>\n<p><em>There ain&#8217;t no heaven, ain&#8217;t no burning hell<br \/>\nWhere I&#8217;m going when I die, can&#8217;t nobody tell&#8230;<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>(Incidentally, the Willie Brown who recorded this is different from the one who recorded &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/ragged-and-dirty\/\">Ragged and Dirty<\/a>,&#8221; though they are sometimes confused with each other &#8212; including, oddly, by Alan Lomax, who recorded both of them.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is one of the defining Delta blues guitar pieces, apparently originated by Charlie Patton, though I got it from Willie Brown and Son House. Brown&#8217;s version is the one that was titled &#8220;Future Blues,&#8221; and I first came across it in Stefan Grossman&#8217;s Delta Blues Guitar instruction book. That was the first book of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/future-blues\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Future Blues (Willie Brown\/Son House)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Future Blues (Willie Brown\/Son House) - 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That is partly a statement about his talents and partly about when I heard him and how he affected me, personally. Like most people who were around in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Son-House-LP-e1720864029890.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3701,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/ragged-and-dirty\/","url_meta":{"origin":4122,"position":1},"title":"Ragged and Dirty (William Brown\/Sleepy John Estes)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 26, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"No one knows anything about William Brown, the versatile singer and guitarist who recorded two songs (or maybe three) for Alan Lomax in 1942. All we have is the music, and it is startlingly distinctive, including two masterpieces of acoustic blues -- both inspired by recordings, with guitar parts that\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Sleepy-John-Estes-and-Yank-Rachell-300x200.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3405,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/big-road-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":4122,"position":2},"title":"Big Road Blues (Tommy Johnson)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"February 24, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Spending the winter of 1987-8 fronting a blues band in Sevilla got my chops up like never before, and also got me back into pre-war blues (or country blues, fingerstyle blues -- the kind of blues that shaped my understanding of the guitar). I'd never stopped playing that music, but\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Tommy-Johnson.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4729,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/mississippi-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":4122,"position":3},"title":"Mississippi Blues (William Brown)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"March 17, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Mississippi Blues\" was recorded in 1942 by a terrific guitarist and singer named William Brown, along with \"East St. Louis Blues,\"\u00a0 \"Four O'Clock Flower Blues,\" and, probably, \"Ragged and Dirty, \" which I've written about in a previous post. That's all we know about him, and even that is not\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/william-brown-card-e1709791331734.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5986,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/hoochie-coochie-man\/","url_meta":{"origin":4122,"position":4},"title":"Hoochie Coochie Man (Willie Dixon\/Muddy Waters)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 2, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I have to start this post with a Dave Van Ronk story: As he told it, he was playing on a blues festival someplace and arrived late, not knowing who else was on the bill. He rushed onstage and did his show, ending with a romping, stomping, macho version of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Muddy-Waters-and-Willie-Dixon-e1761955651631.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3696,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/bye-bye-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":4122,"position":5},"title":"Bye and Bye Blues (Tommy Johnson)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 19, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The first trip I made after getting\u00a0 back from Africa was to the Mississippi Delta, where by a series of unlikely coincidences I ended up as part of the band for the dedication of Robert Johnson's grave marker. I've told that story in my book, Escaping the Delta, but the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Kenny-Robbie-EW-at-Robert-Johnson-memorial.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4122"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4350,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4122\/revisions\/4350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}