Here’s a cosmic riddle for you: A blind man and a mod walk into a bar…. Is it a coffee bar, with a make-shift stage on a corner platform, attended by the beatnik intelligentsia?, or is it a sweaty discotheque packed with beautiful people unabashedly swinging their hips? It’s definitely a transmogrifying chamber where the musical output of a sharecropper or convict from the work farm can be turned into sexy jazzbo stylings through the sleight of hand of some nifty cultural appropriation and syncopated finesse.

There are many manifestations of the “blues” and here we have two vastly different - practically unrecognizable from each other - masters - Sleepy John Estes (1899-1977), and George Fame (born 1943) - existing across the pond, across generations, and across many layers of lived experience, but bonded by their singular love of this primitive music that started in the Mississippi delta, and went on to conquer the world.

SLEEPY JOHN ESTES

Everybody thought that Sleepy John Estes was dead because Big Bill Broonzy said so. Blind in one eye, folks called him “sleepy” because of a low blood pressure disorder, or some believed he had narcolepsy. He started recording in the 20’s with Hammie Nixon on harp, made some records, went basically “radio silent” throughout the 40s and 50s until Sam Charters rediscovered him in 1962, blind and frail, and kick-started his late in life fame. “Rats in my Kitchen” was recorded at Sun Studios in 1952, but it wasn’t until 10 years later that his recording career gained traction, fueled by those he was influencing across the pond, like Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin. Sleepy John always wrote about his life, and this record has an almost journalistic authenticity.

GEORGIE FAME

What can one say about Georgie Fame? The man has style for days, and it was thus from the very beginning - in shark skin suits, tab collars, and skinny ties. Born in 1943 as Clive Powell, Georgie Fame and his Blue Flames made their bones swinging his Hammond organ in the mod clubs of the early 60s, and had big commercial hits with Yeh Yeh, and The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde. Recently, he’s name checked all over the place, and has done notable collaborations with Van Morrison and others.

In Parchman Farm you can hear the undeniable influence of the coolest of the cool white blues men, Mose Allison, and the organ of Booker T and the MGs’ Green Onions - a persuasive combination. I’m sure that Bukka White, who wrote this bottle neck Delta blues shouter in 1940 had no inkling that his experience in the Mississippi State Pen would become such a sexy signature tune. You never can tell….