Rory Block

There are people who play the blues, and people who feel the blues. Rory Block definitely belongs in the latter category. She's been playing country blues for well over thirty years now, gigging all over the world, making records, and finally receiving some real recognition. In both 1997 and 1998 she received the W.C. Handy Award for Traditional Blues Female Artist of the Year, and you know they don't hand those out like Smarties. On thebasis of her new album, Confessions of a Blues Singer (Rounder)you can understand why she keeps on winning; it's a stunning collection of country blues and originals.

Rory has earned every plaudit. Like anyone dedicated to the blues, she's played it when it wasn't fashionable. She's been luckier than many blues players, though; as a teenager she was able to study at the feet of people like Rev. Gary Davis, Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White, and the man who affected her most when she was a teenager, Son House.

"Of the living bluesmen I met, he was the biggest influence," she admits. "Still a greater influence on me is Robert Johnson, but I never met him. Maybe one of these days I should collect all the Robert Johnson songs I've recorded on one CD."

" The most interesting songs to me were powerful vocally and powerful instrumentally."

So how does one person get to hear so much blues? Call it a collision of time and place. Rory grew up in New York City, and at a very young age - thanks in part to her parents - got drawn into what was happening musically, which involved hanging out with a lot of musicians (the roll call includes David Grisman, John Sebastian, Peter Rowan, Maria and Geoff Muldaur) who were jamming in Washington Square Park. After the cops wouldn't let them use the park any more, everyone played at Alan Block's sandal shop in the East Village. It was there she heard Stefan Grossman playing the blues, and Rory Block was hooked. She and Grossman would go up to the Bronx, to the Rev. Gary Davis's apartment.

The Reverend never slowed down to explain anything he was playing," she wrote in the sleeve notes for When a Woman Gets the Blues, "he just shot it at you 100 miles per hour and had a lot to say about it if you couldn't pick it up just as quickly. Of course, it was all in the best spirit of fun. Even Mrs. Davis got in on the act, but mostly to tell the Reverend which songs he might or might not sing under the roof, according to their faith."

They were heady days, the kind of education all the money in the world couldn't buy. Block loved every minute, but she was young and naive enough to believe that this was simply the way the world was. You just spent time with great musicians and learned from real bluesmen as part of the natural order of things.

"It's pretty amazing now when I realize what it really was, and how it would never happen again in that same way. I knew it was great, thrilling, and awe-inspiring. But if I'd known how fleeting and precious it was to be in the presence of, say, Mississippi John Hurt or whomever, I probably would have cancelled all other things and stayed. My hair was standing on end all the time."

When the blues called, she answered, as a player and singer, one of the very few women to play country blues on guitar. At fifteen she hit the road, visiting Skip James and John Hurt in Mississippi, before ending up in Berkeley, right in the very early days of the hippies. But while others were spacing out, Block stuck with the blues. It was her anchor, and her love, most particularly the country blues from the Delta. So it was perhaps inevitable that she'd end up meeting a kindred spirit, Britain's Jo-Ann Kelly.

"I knew her in the Sixties," Block recalls. "I met her in New York City. We were the only female human beings on earth who played blues guitar, and obviously we were both completely serious about country blues. At that point the only other woman involved in blues was Maria Muldaur, and she was singing, not playing guitar. Jo-Ann was one side of the style, the Charlie Patton type of approach, and I was going for the Robert Johnson type of approach. It was fascinating to meet her; she was wonderful." Both of them would record live albums for Women in (E)motion series in the late Eighties.

"We did our shows the same night. In retrospect, it's so terribly sad when I think back. She'd gone one first, then I was going to go on. Then she'd go on for the second set, and I'd go on. I remember her coming into the back room and begging me to finish her show - she said she couldn't breathe. It was awful. I didn't understand at the time how ill she was, but now it's completely clear."

Curiously, Block never found Memphis Minnie, who played a mean guitar in her day, to be much of a role model.

"She was an influence, but without diminishing her, but her guitar style wasn't as interesting to me as Robert Johnson's. The most interesting songs to me were powerful vocally and powerful instrumentally, and that's where Robert Johnson excels."

Back in the day, Block was rumored to play slide with her finger, which would have been an excellent trick, although, as she admits, "it would have been impossible. On my earlier recordings, there is no slide. It's sliding up the neck with my fingers, and then wobbling my fingers to get the vibrato sound. I'd had a lot of trouble trying to play with a slide, and I'd never bothered with it, because it sounds so buzzy and nasty, not like Robert Johnson. Then, not too long ago, I decided I had to get my act together, and go a little further. I'm expected to know how to play my instrument. It was a slow and painful process, and it took me a long time. Even now, I have the rhythms and percussions down, but I don't really have the technique. I use a socket wrench as a slide. For years I couldn't get a bottleneck small enough for my finger. I did try, but they were all bigger than my hand, which is quite small. Then people started bringing me slides. People would give me porcelain slides, which were smaller. That was more my style. I don't put the slide across my entire finger, but just the first knuckle out from the hand. That means getting a small, short slide. It was John Hammond who suggested using a socket wrench. You have to take the knob off the end and sand it down, but it's perfect."

It's certainly extended the range and power of her music, and seemingly given her more confidence across the board of her music. Most Rory Block albums feature an original or two. Confessions of a Blues Singer has two big ones, Mother Marian, a tribute to an old friend, and the epic Life Song (it runs over nine minutes), which is nothing less than autobiography - always a minefield for a writer, but one she handles very carefully.

"I've been asked to write my life story before, and I've always kept the idea of doing it in the back of my mind," she explains. "At one point I began giving it some serious thought, and I sat down to tell the story. It was pretty intense. Then I thought I could put some of it on my web page, since I was always being asked the same question - why does a young white girl from New York City love the rural black blues of the American South? It always amazed me. I do not view people by their skin color, but for who they are. The power of the music was what I was attracted to, not even whether the person singing it was male or female. I thought telling the story would be a useful tool for people. There were four of five different versions on the web site, and with each one I couldn't sleep at night. I thought, 'I'd better not make it that personal.' So I'd re-edit it, several times. It got me really thinking about my life. My stepmother read it and she said, 'You know, dear, you shouldn't talk about people until after they're gone.' And so I edited it again. Basically, it's still very personal. Coming to terms with it being on there brought the song. It felt great to write the song."

Rather than give all the biographical details, let's just say that Block has endured she share of problems and heartaches. She's lived the blues she sings. Life Song is, by far, the most personal song she's ever written, which made recording it a challenge.

"It's very emotional when I record. I feel vulnerable, and it's hard to sing them in front of other people. When I finish and hear them I just feel joy. One of the band members who sometimes plays with me, guitarist Mike Dimicco, happened to drop by the studio - this being Woodstock, so many people you know just drop by all the time - and I said, 'What about putting a part on this?' He took a cassette home, and he came back with his guitar. Then the engineer, who was a bass player, overdubbed his part. We listened to it, and I was crying inside, because it was being said. It makes my life have meaning in the end, to say this is what happened."

"Blues came first in my life, chronologically, and out of country blues came other forms of music that I wrote, and finally came a more comfortable form of songwriting that I now do."

While you might expect Block's compositions to have a very bluesy tone, what surprisingly comes across instead is how much her writing style seems to be influenced by Joni Mitchell.

"That's been said a few times about my songs, and it's fine with me, because I still think of her as the number one, most creative, most talented singer-songwriter ever. She's the quintessential talent, the one everyone is still emulating."

Notably, the originals are placed at the end of the record, after the blues material, although they form a sort of emotional centrepiece to the album. Was that sequencing deliberate?

"It's a form of respect on my part to the greatness of country blues to put them first, and follow with something I've written," Block says. "Blues came first in my life, chronologically, and out of country blues came other forms of music that I wrote, and finally came a more comfortable form of songwriting that I now do. In the initial phase, learning how to write music, I stuck to the tried and true, and I was using standard formats I'd heard, and ingredients not as heartfelt as they might have been. They were my attempt to get familiar with the medium. Then, over quite a period of time, I finally found my voice, a way to write songs that was me. I put aside commercial concerns. I got 100% support for that from reading an interview with Mark Knopfler. He's on one of my albums, and I love his playing. He said always put your artistic consideration first."

And that's what Block has done for some eighteen years now, having abandoned the attempts to mould her style into whatever was the folky flavour of the month. The blues was her first love, and it remains her best love. It's also brought her closer to her young love, her son, Jordan.

"We first sang together on Walk in Jerusalem on Ain't I A Woman, and that's where we connected musically," she recalls."From that point on, when I was doing shows, people would call out for him. So it's become a tradition that he's on my albums, and when I tour with a band he now plays keyboards, sings, and plays harmonica. Because of the loss of my older son, Jordan and I had an unprecedented chance to become friends. Not that we weren't before, but we have an intense bond."

The blues has connected all the dots in her life. They've even helped make er a star (of sorts) in the world of fiction. Linda Barnes, in her Carlotta Carlyle detective series, often has her main character listening to Rory Block albums for inspiration (as well as playing an old National guitar).

"That was wonderful!" Block laughs. "I was blown away. I've met her at my shows in Boston. She came to one of my CD release parties. She looked like the star of her books, except she doesn't have red hair."

Then again, you don't have to look the part to feel it. Why shouldn't a white girl from New York play the blues quite authentically? Why shouldn't Englishmen have a feel for the blues? It's all about what's inside you.

Maybe Rory Block could reinvent herself and become another Bonnie Raitt. But Block is going to follow her hear, although she has great respect for Raitt, who guests on the new album, playing slide.

"In my mind, she's the number one, slide blues, rock'n'roll diva. She can also play country blues, she can play anything. But we think of her style as being more rock blues," and that's not where Block's desire lies.

One thing she never dreamed would be that she'd receive any kind of adulation for what she's done. Selling a few records, playing some gigs, and doing what she enjoyed seemed enough. But lately everything's been coming up Rory.

"I never thought I'd win any Handy awards," she says in surprise, before adding, in utter amazement, "I just won another award in France, acoustic blues guitar artist of the year. The Handy award really blew me away. I really never thought that anyone would ever care about me playing country blues. I cried thinking that this has happened. I was wandering around kissing the award afterwards. I felt that what I'm doing has added up tosomething."

That was in 1997. She had to wonder if it was simply her turn to be honored, or if the judges felt duty bound to give her something. Then, a year later, when she was Traditional Blues Female Artist of the Year yet again, she knew there was something more going on.

"The second time I felt it was real, it wasn't just a fluke or by accident. It really hit me. I feel like I'm walking around in wonderland sometimes."

Except she's not Alice, and there are no rabbit holes. None of this is magic, none of it is fiction. About the only thing in common is that there's a happy ending. Rory Block is finally receiving some credit. She's paid her dues, played with dedication, and it's paid off. To hear her perform Robert Johnson's Hellhound on My Trail or Walkin' Blues is to think that just maybe she's spent a few midnights at the crossroads herself, channeling the spirit of the great man. She's the real deal, and it's all too rare that you can say that of anyone. Be glad she's around.

First printed in Folk Roots

Rory Block

" The most interesting songs to me were powerful vocally and powerful instrumentally."

"Blues came first in my life, chronologically, and out of country blues came other forms of music that I wrote, and finally came a more comfortable form of songwriting that I now do."

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