Skip to main content

Leon Bridges - Steam

Delta blues music is suffused with religion, myths, magic, and voodoo. One of its most enduring and endearing myth is that of the Crossroads. Tommy Johnson an itinerant influential bluesman in the 1920’s and 30’s claimed that his incredible skills as a guitarist were attributed to a meeting with a mysterious black figure at a crossroads. According to the legend, Johnson gave the man, presumably the devil, his guitar to tune it for him and to teach him how to play perfectly in return for his soul. Later on that myth was further embellished by the other more famous, and not related, Robert Johnson, who sang about the famous meeting at the Crossroad.

Many Delta blues singers believed in the power of Mojo, which is a magic spell or charm that gives a person magical powers to succeed in every endeavor, including the art of seduction. The word has become an integral part of daily discourse. The great bluesman Muddy Waters, borrowed an up tempo jump blues song by an obscure blueswoman Ann Cole titled Got My Mojo Working and turned it into a classic Delta style song.


Leon Bridges - Steam
  • Release on: July 23, 2021
  • Genre: Soul
  • Produced by: Steve Wyreman, Nate Mercereau, and Ricky Reed

"Leon Bridges made the cover of Fort Worth, Texas magazine in May 2015 for his vocal accomplishments and his distinctive retro style."

See previous Song of the Day

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Jackson Browne - Kisses Sweeter than Wine

Europe has a rich history of embracing blues and jazz music. In the early 20th century, American jazz musicians began touring Europe, introducing the continent to a new sound that was unlike anything they had ever heard before. Jazz became an instant hit among European audiences, and many European musicians began incorporating jazz elements into their music. Today, jazz festivals are held all over Europe, attracting thousands of fans from all over the world. In addition, many European cities have thriving blues scenes, with local bands and musicians performing regularly. Blues and jazz have also made their way to Asia, where they have found a devoted fan base. Japan, in particular, has a thriving jazz scene, with many Japanese musicians achieving international recognition. In addition, China has also seen a rise in the popularity of jazz music in recent years. Jazz festivals are now held in major Asian cities such as Tokyo, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, attracting jazz lovers from all over ...

Ian Brown - Home Is Where The Heart Is

Talking to artists about how they had adjusted to the pandemic yielded information that normally doesn’t come up during artist interviews. While some musicians lost their main source of income, others were able to continue with their regular day jobs that, given the generally low pay for gigs, often allowed them to be active in the blues. Others were forced to turn to webcasting. In Clarksdale, Lucious Spiller was one of the first to do these shows and was likely the most active, for a year he played every Wednesday night, on Thursday afternoons, a time amenable to Europeans, and on most Saturdays, about as often as he normally performed. Aside from a fall off after the first weeks, support for the gigs, which was almost enough to pay the bills, remained steady until things began to open up in May of 2021. About five years ago, Clarksdale reached the milestone of live music seven days a week, 365 days a year, but that ended abruptly... The contemporary Southern soul market is largely s...

Veronica Swift - A Little Taste

There has always been an uncomfortable tension between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, a cyclical influence that vacillates between inspiration, appropriation and separation. Popular music has broken off into categories of rock, pop, country, and R&B, each with their own origin stories. But R&B and rock, usually codified as vastly different, Black and white styles, have long been intertwined in ways our historical memory may have us forget.  Despite the innovation that comes from separation, rock and R&B always find their way back to each other. In recent years, rock veterans have turned to the genre’s classics for inspiration. Queens of the Stone Age veered from their typical hard rock with 2017’s Villains, a dance y album inspired by frontman Josh Homme’s love of 1920s jazz and swing, other Black genres that laid the groundwork for the popular music of today. The whitewashing of rock’s history has oversimplified music’s malleability and silenced the voices of Amer...