By Barry Stagg
February 1994
BLIND WILLIE McTELL
"Power and greed and corruptible seed is really all there is." Roger Howse is saying these words and playing electric blues on a disc recorded at Bridgett's Tavern in St. John's. Bob Dylan wrote the words in a song about a blind black blues man who lived in the deep South of the United States and travelled the troubadours roadways of the early decades of this century.
"I travelled through East Texas where many a martyr has fallen." There are plenty of martyrs for Roger Howse to think about when he sings about the hard times of the segregation-bound Will McTell. Howse sings the best version of a Bob Dylan song that I have heard in a long time. I heard The Band sing the same song from their new album a few nights ago and their semi-acoustic version just did not measure up to the straight ahead electric lyricism that Howse and his three piece band put to that live recording.
"There is a chain gang on the freeway." The slave ships didn't bring any Newfoundlanders to shore but the indentured nature of many a Newfoundlander's ancestors roughly conformed to the harsh existence that Blind Willie McTell's people went though in the days before Abe Lincoln brought gun powder and blood together to end slavery as a legal item in the United States.
No dry prose such as this can do justice to a great song from a great album. The Howse album with his band Ruff Trade is the best blues album I have heard since Dutch Mason was in his prime and playing seven nights a week at the Wyse Owl Tavern in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. If you want to do justice to the album just get it on your system and get it real warm to fight back the frost from outside and let the songs play through. As I listen I can feel how Newfoundland has been steeped into these songs and I understand how many in the music industry are so excited about the unique possibilities for electric Newfoundland music. The idea of warm electric blues beating back the cold and the dampness of a Newfoundland night is the stuff upon which musical legends are grown.
"Nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell." The harmony is great, the words are poignant and strong and Bob Dylan's tribute to the great poor blues singer rings out true and sweet for Newfoundland and its plain speaking troubadours. When the atmosphere of day to day living gets poisoned by too much self- serving nonsense, it is uplifting to know that through the foul mist and snow can come some sweet notes of truth.
The plantation system was never too far back in Blind Willie McTell's existence and he had plenty of relatives around who had no difficulty recalling the days when slavery and chatteldom were in full flower. Bad times in Newfoundland bring ready comparisons to the life and times of men trying to make a living and using just germs and seeds of freedom while real freedom seems a million miles away.
While middle-aged office holders hang on to a corrosive social system that has attempted to churn the province into mush, the clear-eyed singer must be prepared to endure shouts of outraged indignation. Ring out truth like a bell and some will hear.
Ultimately, all of us only have our mind, our heartbeat and our will to independence to rely on as we go through life. If we are cowed by others who want to put their own comfortable corruption ahead of social fairness then we do both a disservice to ourselves and to everyone around us. The desegregation movement in the United States got started because ordinary men like Will McTell spoke out and eventually created a torrent of change and reformation. Nobody wins justice by keeping their head down and out of the line of fire.
There is social change demanded in Canada and Newfoundland is just one small part of the overall picture. Everywhere citizens are demanding that jobs and true independent living be given a higher priority than the comfort and income security of those who make their living from the public treasury. The best social program is a job. That is an old saying that remains true. Listen to the blues and get the strength to get up, go on and take back Newfoundland from the elitist grip of the helping professions. Say goodbye to Big Nurse.