 |
 It seems a little odd to
pick up a compilation of vintage blues tracks and
find Erykah Badu’s name
snuggled in among the credits. The album, due out
next Tuesday, is called A Brief History of the
Blues — a collection of classic
performances by such masters as Robert Johnson,
Muddy Waters, Bessie Smith and Elmore James.
Erykah crops up in a duet with guitarist and
fellow Texan Doyle Bramhall II on an old Charley
Patton song called “Oh Death,” and
it’s a smoky, soulful take on the tune. |
| Why them? Well, for one thing,
Badu and Bramhall have performed together in an
ad-hoc band called Funk Sway [ now called Edith
Funker ] (along with Prince vets Wendy
and Lisa and Roots drummer Ahmir
“Questlove” Thompson). And Brief
History co-producer Tonio K. says it made
sense to render this song by “the Father of
the Delta Blues” as a duet, because Patton
had recorded it that way with his wife, Bertha
Lee, at his last session in 1934. (The song had
to be represented on this album by a cover
version because of the dreadful audio quality of
all of Patton’s surviving work — the
original masters were destroyed after his record
company tanked, so his tracks have always had to
be dubbed off of scratchy old 78 r.p.m. records.)
And was the jazzy Badu a hard sell to the record
company for a bedrock-blues collection?
“Universal, I’m sure, would have
preferred Joss Stone or something,” Tonio K.
allows. “But we said … ‘No, no, no.’
“ |
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