Product Description
COMING APRIL 11, 2025, RESERVE YOUR COPY TODAY!
JOHN PRIMER
Grown In Mississippi
Blues House
PLUNK! Within seconds, you’re out in a field. Crickets buzz. Something sharp chops methodically into something less fortunate. That recurringly rhythmic pattern synchs the timing of a heavy, exhausted, a cappella moan. “John’s Blues Holler” signals you best put on your traveling shoes.
Because, lest we forget from where he came, John Primer is on a journey – literal, metaphorical, musical – unlike any the Chicago legend has guided us before. To where? Grown In Mississippi says it all: to the cottony flatland where Primer is rooted. Camden, to be exact; the same hamlet that spawned six-string hypnotist Belton Sutherland. Now 62 years since leaving to go make blues history up north – first alongside Willie Dixon, then Muddy Waters, then Magic Slim, then on his own – the singing guitarist has trekked back south to a Clarksdale studio. Once there, an hour’s worth of memories start flowing.
As per Primer’s notes, each of these 14 tracks comes with a personal link. “John’s Crawdad Song” was the first song he thwacked out on a homemade diddley bow. “Shame, Shame, Shame” tips the headstock to early idol Jimmy Reed; “Down In The Bottom” gallops in salute to another, Howlin’ Wolf. Louisiana Red’s slyly insinuating “Let Me Be Your Electrician” was his stepfather’s favorite.
Besides pooling flashbacks, Grown In Mississippi also moonlights as Primer’s bottlenecked album, since only the slightest reason is needed to rake a slide across guitar strings. “Born In Mississippi,” one of seven originals, sheds a constellation of delicate, metallic microtones with that slide’s every glide. His life story is delivered alone and acoustic. “Ain’t Kickin’ Up No Dust,” on the other hand, gets broom-dusted a la Elmore; namely, with electricity and a stomping band. “Walkin’ Blues” hits the road the way Muddy did for Chess in 1950: That is, by sloshing back and forth on slow, deep and methodical swells.
Notable Mississippians come and go, continually collaborating. Watermelon Slim lugs in his lap-laid Dobro; Steve Bell (Carey’s son) slurps on harmonica; Lightnin’ Malcolm gets tapped to perpetually churn the guitar riff that identifies “When I Met The Blues” as North Mississippi Hill Country blues. “Baby, Please Don’t Go” provides a soapbox for the swinging solo Primer uncorks as much as for harpist Charlie Musselwhite’s breezing one. And who better to huff harp on a novel piece of wriggling Delta funk, “Nothin’ But A Chicken Wing,” than the King of the Chitlin’ Circuit: Bobby Rush. You can hear Primer loving life.
A Mississippi odyssey, through and through.
– Dennis Rozanski