121: Balling the Jack: The Birth of The Nu-Blues, by Various Artists

Various Artists
Balling the Jack: The Birth of The Nu-Blues (2002)
21 tracks, 68 minutes
Nowhere to stream or download this by the looks of things, but you can pick up a copy of the CD for dead cheap on Discogs…but here’s a cheeky Spotify playlist with most of the tracks on it, if you want to get the gist.

This album is a compilation that makes the case for blues music as a living genre – not just reserved for old men in Mississippi or young white upstarts in 1960s London. The music included here spans a huge range, from field hollers and electric delta blues to modern reinterpretations of the genre through the lenses of punk, hip-hop and the avant garde.

Balling the Jack was compiled by the tireless champion and promoter of off-kilter blues, Joe Cushley. I met Joe first when I was a fresh-faced 15-year-old when he was the manager of Seasick Steve. As well as letting me backstage to meet the man himself, he slipped me this CD too. At that time, I was well into my old blues, but I didn’t really have much of an idea of what had been happening in the style since the 1960s. This compilation changed that. It was my first exposure to many artists, including Diamanda Galás, Reid Paley, Bob Log III and maybe even R.L. Burnside; I can’t believe these legends ever evaded my ears. Listening through this album for the first time was an absolute revelation.

As well as opening my ears to those blues boundary-pushers, this album also gave me my first time hearing music recorded on Alan Lomax’s Southern Journey. In fact, for all the genre-bending stuff on this compilation, I think ‘Murderer’s Home’ by Henry Jimpson Wallace and his group, recorded on Parchman Farm prison in 1959, probably had the most profound effect on me. It’s only 50 seconds long, but it’s absolutely devastating. There is so much emotion, despair in those men’s voices, and the way they sing it is haunting. That track gives an interesting comparison to yesterday’s album, actually: the polyphony works in quite similar ways: Jimpson sings the main line and everyone else follows with almost the same melody but in their own time, so that their voices and their notes are all overlapping like echoes over each other. Marvellous stuff. To stick this on a compilation between tracks by Tom Waits and Chris Thomas King is some genius curation.

This is a great album for those looking for a new direction of listening. It’s a perfect place to start if you want to hear blues warped in any which way. Because there’s so many different styles and time periods represented here, you probably won’t enjoy all the tracks, but I would be surprised if there isn’t something here for you. If my count is correct, Balling the Jack led directly to me buying, finding or otherwise digging out albums by eight of the artists featured – that’s 38%, a ridiculous amount for a compilation album. And from those starting points, it guided me into a whole new world of madness, from the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir and T-Model Ford to Son of Dave and Dogbreath, and, and, and…It’s basically everything you want from a compilation album. Thanks, Joe!