Johnny Shines : Too Wet To Plow

The two pieces included here - the song, and the spoken part (from a bonus track called Epilogue) - are from an album released on the Blues Alliance label, called Too Wet To Plow. Johnny wrote the song. The album was recorded in Edmonton, Alberta, over two days in September 1975, when Johnny was 60 years old. Shines was born in Tennessee, just outside of Memphis. His turbulent family - father an alcoholic, mother leaving and returning a few times - eventually moved to Beale Street in Memphis, where Shines heard all kinds of music and street singers. Shines spent a lot of time alone, eventually leaving home at age ten to work in a sawmill, a job he returned to whenever the music life didn't make ends meet. Johnny also spent time working with his mother in the fields, later, at Ninety-Six Corner, Arkansas, where he first heard call-and-response singing, something that influenced his singing style and drove him to want something better than the life of a field worker. In his travels as a young man, Johnny Shines befriended later luminaries of the blues world, Walter 'Shakey' Horton and Chester Burnett (Howlin' Wolf). In 1935, aged 20, Shines met Robert Johnson, and the two joined forces and rambled together over the next three years, until Johnson's death, by poisoning, in 1938. Shines learned bottleneck guitar from Robert Johnson. After his travelling partner died, Shines moved north to Chicago to make his living playing in local clubs. He recorded a couple of albums - for Columbia and for Chess - that never saw the light of day until decades later. Like many bluesmen, he went back to working other jobs, only to be rediscovered when a flurry of interest caused fans, festival promoters and blues hounds to seek out artists who'd disappeared from the scene. With Too Wet To Plow, in 1975, Shines was joined by Louisiana Red and Sugar Blue. (based on the Kent Cooper liner notes accompanying the album).

I met Johnny Shines in 1981 at a folk festival. He'd had a stroke the year before and wasn't able to fret his guitar like before, relying completely on his slide work. It was a little sad to see him struggle that way to play what once had been second nature to him, but he still called up the darkness and despair with his singing. Later that night, I was riding the festival bus back to the hotel. Odetta was aboard, as were Bernice Reagon and the other members of Sweet Honey In The Rock. The last passenger to board, helped by the driver, was Johnny Shines. Odetta began singing a gospel song, This Train. Everyone joined in, Johnny included. We sang eight or nine songs, the driver detouring a little to make the trip last longer. I kept wanting to move closer so that I could hear Johnny better. He had a great blues voice. Johnny Shines died in April of 1992 in Tuscaloosea, Alabama, six days shy of his 77th birthday. DL

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• paganmaestro

[juanfacundors]

muy bueno no hay otras dos palabras para decir

[zaroffhound]

Johnny's vibrato just slew me. thanks.

[theandrewxo1]

i lesson to this every day

[CrossBonesAlex]

You can't beat this one

[BigWillandBluesmen]

Posted this one too, couldnt find it on the tube, I see you did so too,

Wil

[Restlessjohn]

Johnny certainly shines for me! Great video Duke, as always!