I’m Glad, I’m Glad, I’m Glad

The 50’s and 60’s gave us a lot of delta blues dressed up, first as rock and roll, then as blues rock.  No surprise that Cream applied that treatment – brilliantly, in my books - to I’m So Glad by Skip James.

So if you’re a contemporary of Cream, you go looking for another tune, right?  I mean, what’s the point in re-doing See See Rider after the Animals?  No wait, someone did.  Actually, lots of people.  Nevermind.

Anyway, it turned out if you were Deep Purple you could re-do I’m So Glad and make it totally new.  You know, just weave Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade around it.  Obvious! 

Not really, and that’s what made that psychedelic era so freakin’ amazing.  Thanks to the fearless, restless exploration that dominated the times, a simple little ditty became a psychedelic, early prog rock tour de force.

A Big Deal

This is not, repeat not a political statement:  FDR’s New Deal was the best thing that ever happened to music.

Stay with me.  Without the New Deal’s “make work” projects, Alan Lomax would not have been sent out to collect folk music.  If Alan Lomax hadn’t done that, we might never have heard of Son House, Robert Johnson, Lead Belly, Doc Boggs, Big Bill Broonzy and Skip James.  Woody Guthrie might be an interesting footnote.

If the folk music, white and black, of the south had not been captured and exposed to a broader audience, the Chicago Blues as we know it might never have come into being, “race music” and rhythm and blues might never have been noticed by white kids.  There might never have been a folk revival in the 50’s.

No delta blues?  Nothing in Chicago?  No folk revival?  No:

Beatles

Rolling Stones

Bob Dylan

Led Zeppelin

Cream

Animals

Shall I go on?

Elvis, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins…  life, and culture, as we know it would simply not exist.

I can’t imagine a better use of government money.  Big Bird might just agree.