Blind Willie McTell (born William McTier) is generally regarded as one of the finest blues players of all time. His songs have been covered by the Altman Brothers and the White Stripes, and Bob Dylan sang ‘Ain’t no-one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell’. Unlike the musicians of the Mississippi delta, McTell’s playing is upbeat on the whole, and his repertoire spanned numerous genres, including gospel and ragtime.
Blacks of McTell’s era lived a peripatetic life, with few records and details surviving. Even censuses were incomplete or inaccurate, and it is easier to find comprehensive lists of lynchings than of black weddings. In order to build up a complete picture of McTell’s life, then, Gray must search out relatives, and the descendents of those who knew him. In doing so, and uncovering the most basic scraps of information that can add colour to a history, Gray’s story broadens in scope to give a fascinating account of life in Georgia for a people for whom slavery was a recent memory, and segregation a fact of life.
Blind Willie himself faced fewer of these depredations than many of his race and class. As a musician, he was able and willing to ‘play the game’, and was sometimes engaged as an entertainer from whites. Blind from birth, perhaps he was also regarded as less of a threat than other blacks, and thus treated preferentially (to a degree). However, the world in which he lived was vicious and squalid. Segregation was ruthlessly enforced by ‘lynch law’, and Gray details the routine sexual exploitation of black women by young white men.
This disenfranchisement (literal and metaphorical – blacks were denied the right to vote in Georgia’s Democratic primaries, effectively removing any political say from them) led to the rise of violence among the coloured underclass, which was reflected in the violent imagery of blues lyrics. This link between urban poverty, social alienation and hostile musical imagery can still be found in modern American cities, and increasingly too in the UK.
While a lot of the book focuses on the early part of McTell’s life, he also manages to place the singer in a modern, post-World War II context, which contradicts the traditional image of the wandering bluesman. Although Blind Willie died too soon to be ‘rediscovered’ as so many of his contemporaries were, he received some recognition in his lifetime from enthusiasts, who made some vital late recordings of his work.
The man himself is a slightly shadowy figure, and our picture of him is coloured by hearsay. Those who knew him are often keen to attribute supernatural powers to him. While it seems that he had a remarkable capacity to travel unaided, despite having been blind from birth, and was gifted with superb hearing, tales of his being able to distinguish between denominations of paper money by touch are embellishments. Perhaps such tales show how streetwise and proud the man was, determined to show himself to be every bit the equal of his sighted peers.
Many of Gray’s interviewees are unreliable, thanks to the passage of time or their own agenda, but the author’s frequent quotations provide the story with the feel of an oral history that is appropriate to the subject matter. The book serves to preserve the dialect of the Southern states, and is richly evocative.
While Gray struggles to pin down exact historical details, thanks to slovenly official record-keeping, he finds that the Southern establishment is much keener to recognise Blind Willie now than it was during his lifetime. Thomson and Statesboro, the towns most readily associated with him, are locked in a struggle for his legacy, and whatever advantage it can bring through tourism or prestige. McTell’s image stands tall in a hotel he could only have set foot in as staff, and the railroads he trudged along have been turned into a tourist trail.
Throughout the narrative, we are bought closer to an overall picture of Blind Willie McTell, and a wider understanding of the life he would have lead, as a wandering musician. Gray is a skilled writer and researcher, and can wring meaning from apparently tiny details. The practical nature of his research also makes for good reading. For example, his attempts to take a photo of the hospital in which McTell died (now a prison) turn into a heavy handed encounter with southern law enforcers, and the boredom of weekends in small town Americana are woven into a reverie on the historical forces and events which shaped this culture over the past 250 years.
Gray’s willingness to collaborate with local archivists and historians also bear fruit, as he is exposed to both crankpot theorists and smalltown researchers who can point out flaws in conventional wisdom.
Blind Willie McTell is essentially a nostalgic figure. A minor commercial artist at the time, able to scratch a living and provide a decent funeral for his wife, before dying in poverty, McTell’s legacy is inverse to his ability. His 12 string, relaxed playing style did not influence future generations in the way that Robert Johnson or Lead Belly did. Aside from clusters of devotees, he has never received popular acclaim.
There are those who recognise his importance, however. In his song ‘Blind Willie McTell’, Dylan uses the singer as a starting point from which to explore the condition of Southern blacks, from the ‘slavery ships’ to the ‘chain gang’. In this book, Michael Gray again shows us that, aside from being a musical genius, McTell can act as a gateway to a greater understanding of race relations in the US, in the pre-civil rights era.
A deep knowledge of McTell’s work is not essential to the enjoyment of this book, although I can’t imagine anyone reading this and not wanting to hear more. Gray has managed to bring together social history, travelogue, culture and politics into a fascinating, interweaving narrative, richly evocative and full of human interest.
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