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 It’s not my place to say if these two discs are the “real blues” or
not—that’s a
discussion for pointy heads than mine—but this pair from downhome smokehouse
Fat
Possum sure sounds authentic as hell. The late Charles Caldwell (who died in
2003 before this disc, his sole recorded effort, was released) and Georgia
farmer Jimmy Lee Williams sling stripped-down, country blues with little
accompaniment (T-Model Ford’s drummer Spam thwacks along on three tunes for
Caldwell) but acres of raw emotion and years of experience.
Caldwell has a mournful, well-deep voice that wraps itself around his spare,
stinging guitar like an oil-soaked cloth; that’s all he really needs to push
the
listener into a dark corner, fragrant with rich, recently tilled dirt,
gasoline
and maybe a hint of animal blood. Caldwell’s no-frills approach to playing
also
carries over to his writing, as evidenced by his song titles--“I Know I Done
You
Wrong,” “I Got Something To Tell You,” “I’ll Do Anything You Say,” “Alone
For a
Long Time.” When Charles says he’s lonely or sad, you know it’s going to
take
him an eternity and then some to pull himself out of that hole, and when he
lets
someone know that he plans to settle a problem and right quick, you know
it’s
gonna be barnyard justice—swift, final and solved by the nearest farm
implement.
Critics are probably going to make serious hay over the bittersweet irony of
the
final track, “Remember Me,” and how it serves as a fitting epitaph for
Caldwell.
Me, I think it sounds like he’s having a damn good time, which is probably
how
he’d like to be remembered. Wouldn’t you?
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 Besides having one of the best album titles in recent memory,
Jimmy Lee
Williams’ Hoot Your Belly manages to sound even more lo-fi than
Caldwell’s record. Recorded in 1977 and 1982, Williams’ droning slide guitar
and
thick Southern accent combine on these rough home recordings into a
hypnotic,
honey-and-bourbon-steeped drone that sounds very much like archival
recordings
from the Thirties; the fact that he sounds like he’s making the tunes up on
the
spot (which would explain such odd-but-charming titles as “What Makes
Grandpa
Love My Grandma So” or “Whiskey Headed Woman”) or remembering them as he’s
playing them adds greatly to the sense that these recordings were a once and
only once kind of thing. Blues fans—of all stripes—should be pleased that
someone was there to catch it all on tape.
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