photo #8924086

On January 12, 1904, "Mississippi” Fred McDowell was born in Rossville, TN. He was particularly renowned for his mastery of slide guitar, a style he said he first learned using a pocketknife for a slide and later a polished beef rib bone. Mississippi Fred McDowell's story is a fascinating one. He was a laborer who played local house parties, and for most of his life he was relatively unknown. In 1959 Alan Lomax and his assistant Shirley Collins made his first recordings, and shortly after the recordings were released, McDowell went out on the festival and coffeehouse circuit. Later he traveled several times to Europe, and he was a major inspiration to younger artists, including Bonnie Raitt and the Rolling Stones, who covered his song “You Gotta Move.” He has also been a major influence on guitarists who play in the bottleneck slide style. Albert McCarthy: McDowell’s performances have a certain introspective quality that is compelling. His repertoire is not a wide one and many of his numbers make use of stock blues verses, but his presentation, with lines tailing away and the strong interplay of voice and guitar, is a highly personal one rooted in what is now thought of as the Mississippi tradition. The intensity of his best work stems from his total involvement in his music, for his voice is not a strong one and he does not rely upon physical power in any sense, while his music is a summary of his life and experiences to date. This is music that owes nothing to artifice but simply makes its impact through the total honesty of the performer. Of all the blues singers of the older school who have been discovered or rediscovered in recent years, McDowell strikes me as the most impressive.