A Jelly Roll Anthem? Shake it and Break it - Charley Patton

Peter Lawson messaged me yesterday with this fabulous piece of music. He suggested it as an anthem for The Jelly Roll Factory.... and I happen to agree with him. 

Here:s the lyrics from the first verse.... 

You can shake it, you can break it,

you can hang it on the wall
Throw it out the window, catch it 'fore it roll
You can shake it, you can break it,
you can hang it on the wall
...it out the window, catch it 'fore it falls
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
Everybody have a jelly roll like mine, I lives in town
I, ain't got no brown, I, an' I want it now
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
You can snatch it, you can grab it, you can break it,
you can twist it, any way that I love to get it
I, had my right mind since I, I blowed this town
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
Jus' shake it, you can break it,
you can hang it on the wall
.. it out the window, catch it 'fore it falls
You can break it, you can hang it on the wall
...it out the window, catch it 'fore it...
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
I ain't got nobody here but me and myself
I, stay blue all the time, aw, when the sun goes down
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
You can shake it, you can break it,
you can hang it on the wall
... it out the window, catch it 'fore it fall
You can break it, you can hang it on the wall 

...it out the window, catch... 

•     

Jelly Roll Team Profile - Peter Lawson - Musicologist

I grew up in the hills of east Tennessee. Thanks to my music-loving parents, my nursery rhymes were mostly songs by the Impressions, Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters, Carole King, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, Randy Newman etc., and I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t sing along with any Beatles song that happened to come on the radio. My obsession with music of all kinds continued through childhood into adolescence and gradually expanded, especially after a middle school band director heard me goofing off and told me that I actually had a pretty good baritone voice (I’ll never know whether he really meant it or was just trying to shunt me off into the choir). When I left home to study at Brown University, I ended up taking music on as my major and performing with the University Chorus.

After graduating from college I moved to Los Angeles, where I earned a PhD in musicology at UCLA while continuing to perform regularly, primarily vocal music of the renaissance and baroque periods. While pursuing my degree, I was incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to assist and study under some of the greatest musicological minds of our time, including my advisor Mitchell Morris, MacArthur fellow Susan McClary, and Elijah Wald, whose Blues course, which I assisted twice and taught once, completely reshaped my way of thinking, not only about blues, but about the entire history of popular music in America.

Since I completed my studies in the Spring of 2015 I have been in Hamburg, raising my one-year-old son, teaching English, and taking any opportunity I can get to sing, relearn the guitar after a decade-long hiatus, and hear music wherever I can find it. I’m thrilled to be a part of the Jelly Roll Factory project not just because it allows me to proselytize about the early blues and jazz music that I already love but also because of the new and much needed opportunity for personal expression that it offers to me and to anyone in Hamburg who wants to take advantage of it.

(More to come from Peter on the history of this amazing music in the near future. Look out for his article on the history of the Jelly Roll in American culture. Ed)

Jelly Roll Team Profile - Jake Yanachek

I was born in New York City and raised not far away in the suburbs. As I look back, it was a great place to live; close enough to the city, but far enough away for m to know there was much more to life than suburbia. The search for "something else" -fueled by my love of Kerouac, loud music, and movement of any kind- brought me west at the age of 18. I began university in San Francisco, California and eventually finished in Phoenix, Arizona with a B.S. in Urban Studies, where I focussed on the cooperation of municipalities and non-profit service providers.

 

After finishing my studies, I moved back to New York. This move was short lived, however, as the place where I grew up had become much too small. I started traveling in my early twenties, eventually making my way through Central America. Along the way, I met a beautiful German girl who invited me to come visit Hamburg. There wasn't much tying me down at that point, so I jumped at the opportunity. I found myself in Hamburg in May, 2014 with no job, no visa and dwindling cash. I quickly realized that I wanted to stay (for the girl, less so for the grey city) and found a solution: busking.

I spent the summer of 2014 on the streets of Hamburg with an acoustic guitar, an empty box and a growing repertoire of songs to play. I had never done anything like this before. I'd always wanted to play in the NYC subways, but I was always somehow intimidated. It was still a bit unnerving in Hamburg (after all, you never know if you'll be praised, harassed, chased by cops or beggars, etc...) but it had become my job. I made nearly 2000 Euros that summer; it was enough to sustain myself until my Schengen visa was up.

I returned to HH for good in November, 2014. I completed a teaching certification course and have been working as an English teacher ever since. From time to time, I still busk.

 

Music has always been a passion of mine. I began playing guitar at 13. My Mom took me to my first concert at Madison Square Garden shortly after that. I've been fortunate to have been able to travel to may different places to see live music. The Jelly Roll Factory allows me to combine my skills, previous experience and passion for music into one project.

And if you see me on the streets, throw me some change.

Jelly Roll Team Profile - Joe Holloway

I grew up in a musical household, in the West part of Cornwall, in the UK. My dad had an upright piano, and an old nylon-string guitar that I would attempt to get my tiny arms around until I was old enough to start having real lessons at age 8. I started learning classical guitar, and then later switched to electric when I started to develop a taste for modern pop punk bands like Green Day and Blink-182. Through school and college from the age of 14, I played in several different heavy rock bands, performing locally at festivals and in bars until I moved away to Manchester to attend university.

I completed a B.A. in Popular Music in 2014, before moving to Hamburg. Musically, it was an eye-opening experience, as a big part of my course was continuously working with other musicians in different groups, and experimenting with all kinds of genres. I had the opportunity of moving from guitar to bass and drums with different groups, and so was able to get a feel for what it takes to work in a band.

I also became interested in the recording process, and for my course's final project, I chose to write, record, mix and perform all parts of an album, as well as write a report explaining every productive and creative decision I made. Through this process, I gained a lot of experience in mixing and sound engineering, as well as in using recording software such as Logic Pro X.

Since moving to Hamburg, I've become involved with various music projects, The Jelly Roll Factory being one, and have also continued to pursue my own solo projects. I met my friends on the JRF team through working at Hamburg School of English, and I'm very excited to see what we can achieve.

The True King of Rock n Roll - Robert Johnson

So why was Bobby J the greatest of them all?

Robert Johnson was an normal lad in the Delta in his early 20s. Married and expecting his first kid.. Sadly neither survived child birth. And thus began the life of the blues, the real pain of real life. You can't sing the blues if u ain't got no pain to fuel it.He had buckets of it...

It is said he was a very average guitarist and was ridiculed by his mentors Son House, a three times murderer, and Chalrey Patton, the first king of the blues. Charley Patton was by most accounts a nasty drunk and tight with his money, however his recorded work is some of the most brilliant blues ever performed. These men literally told Robert Johnson to F*** off with his terrible playing. So he did.

Robert Johnson spent nearly 2 years learning from a man called Ike Zimmerman. He absorbed all the information and practiced endlessly. From this came the Robert Johnson sound we know today.

His lyrics were dark. The man had sold his soul to the Devil at a crossroads after all. ;) The blues was seen as the devil's music and Robert Johnson milked that persona with songs like: Me and the Devil Blues, Crossroads Blues, Preaching Blues and Hell Hounds on my Tale. The latter is regarded as one of the greatest songs ever written.

The crossroads myth dates back to Tommy Johnson 15 years earlier when he proclaimed the devil re-tuned his guitar, played a lick on it and suddenly he could play the blues. (the wonders of open tuning)

But why was Bobby J so far ahead of everyone else? He was creating electric guitar sounds from a cheap Gibson and a bottleneck. He took his peers music so much further. He was 20, 30 years ahead of his time in what he was attempting to do with the guitar. Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, The Rolling Stones and pretty much every rock musician sights Robert Johnson as one of the greatest influences.

To really understand this we need to compare him to his peers. Namely: Son House, Charley Patton, and other influences like Skip James or Peetie Wheatstraw. Below are a some of their songs:

Son House – Death letter Blues

Charley Patton – Mississipp Boweavil Blues

Skip James – Devil Got My Woman

Peetie Wheatstraw – Gangster's Blues

Robert Johnson took everything one two three steps further, introducing off beats and timing which we associate with rock n roll rather than the blues. There were voodoo drum beats, Gambian sounds, field hollers, railway songs, chain-gang chants echoing throughout. Below are a few Bobby J songs. The change in dynamic between these and the tracks from his peers is clear. Robert Johnson was a once-in-a-lifetime. The bridge to all the music that follwed and the true king of Rock n Roll.

Crossroads Blues

Hellhounds on My Tail – (This is influenced to Skip James)

Daily Motion Link To Bobby J

Preaching Blues (and up jumped the devil) (Patton/House slide influence but totally revolutionised by Bobby J)

Daily Motion link to Preachin Blues 

(Due to the very tiresome GEMA regulations I can't find many of the Robert Johnson tracks... and as a 70 pma Jelly Roller.. what the HELL are GEMA protecting it... these are questions the Jelly Roll Factory wants answer on!)