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Duke Ellington's early records all sound to me like jaunty death-marches--"East St. Louis Toodle-oo" even ends with a quick quote from Chopin's "Funeral March."
I suppose "Strange Fruit" would be too obvious?
Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" is a weird, wordless moan that'll raise the hair on your arms.
Robert Johnson, of course, had a thing about damnation and the Devil, and it's a huge part of his mythology: "Me and the Devil," "Crossroads," "Stones in My Passway," et cetera. There are zillions of versions of these, by every blues hack who's ever played slide.
Chris Whitley is a young(ish) white player whose own stuff is both eerie and deeply sexual--he's blues-based, but with strong dashes of psychedelia. Give a listen to "Dust Radio" from his album Living With the Law, or to his all-covers record Perfect Day. It's odd, fragile, disorienting stuff. What ties it to the best of the old blues, I think, is that Whitley genuinely sounds like he's scared half out of his wits most of the time. |
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