Pink Anderson - Carolina Blues Man (1961)

A good-natured finger-picking guitarist, Anderson played for about 30 years as part of a medicine show. He did make a couple of sides for Columbia in the late '20s with Simmie Dooley, but otherwise didn't record until a 1950 session, the results of which were issued on a Riverside LP that also included tracks by Gary Davis. Anderson went on to make some albums on his own after the blues revival commenced in the early '60s, establishing him as a minor but worthy exponent of the Pidemont school, versed in blues, ragtime, and folk songs. Anderson also became an unusual footnote in rock history when Syd Barrett, a young man in Cambridge, England, combined Pink's first name with the first name of another obscure bluesman (Floyd Council) to name his rock group, Pink Floyd, in the mid-'60s.

A vast majority of the known professional recordings of Piedmont blues legend Pink Anderson were documented during 1961, the notable exception being the platter he split with Rev. Gary Davis - "Gospel, Blues and Street Songs" - which was documented in the spring of 1950. This is the first of three volumes that were cut for the Prestige Records subsidiary Bluesville. "Carolina Blues Man" finds Anderson performing solo - with his own acoustic guitar accompaniment - during a session cut on his home turf of Spartanburg, SC. Much -- if not all - of the material Anderson plays has been filtered through and tempered by the unspoken blues edict of taking a familiar (read: traditional) standard and individualizing it enough to make it uniquely one's own creation. Anderson's approach is wholly inventive, as is the attention to detail in his vocal inflections, lyrical alterations, and, perhaps more importantly, Anderson's highly sophisticated implementation of tricky fretwork. His trademark style incorporates a combination of picking and strumming chords interchangeably. This nets Anderson an advanced, seemingly electronically enhanced sound. "Baby I'm Going Away" - with its walkin' blues rhythms - contains several notable examples of this technique, as does the introduction to "Every Day of the Week." The track also includes some of the most novel chord changes and progressions to be incorporated into the generally simple style of the street singer/minstrel tradition from which Pink Anderson participated in during the first half of the 20th Century.

Listeners can practically hear Anderson crack a smile as he weaves an arid humor with overtly sexual connotations into his storytelling - especially evident on "Try Some of That" and "Mama Where Did You Stay Last Night." Aficionados and most all students of the blues will inevitably consider this release an invaluable primer into the oft-overlooked southern East Coast Piedmont blues.

Pink Anderson - Carolina Blues Man (1961)

(320 kbps, cover art included)