This week’s “Kultur” interview with the heavenly Sheran Goodspeed Keyton could’ve gone on and on, mostly because I love both solemn, old-time gospel music and rough, dirty-minded, pre-WW II blues. Why should they be separated in any diet of serious American music? They fit together so nicely, one dependent on the other.
No other gospel tune makes me tear up like “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” and here’s a royal version by Mahalia Jackson that’s much more effective if you know the lyrics.
Meanwhile, no other blues artist astounds me like Bessie Smith — a case can reasonably be made that she is the most influential singer of the 20th century. She appeared on film only once in 1929. The sound on that one is less than ideal, so check out one of my fave Bessie tunes, “Empty Bed Blues.” Few people in pop music today – female or male, gay or straight (and Bessie was a little bit of all four, by most accounts) – could get away with singing so pleasurably and explicitly about fornication. (Great lyrics: “He boiled my fresh cabbage/And he made it awful hot/Then he put in the bacon/It overflowed the pot”).
