Sing Out!, Fall 2005

Jessie Mae Hemphill & Friends- Dare You to Do it Again

This timeless, two-CD project slipped out, almost unnoticed, in 2004. Recorded in an old potato barn on Sherman Cooper’s farm on the outskirts of Como, Mississippi (near where Alan Lomax had taped several members of the musical Hemphill family in the 1950s) it features the soulful, blues-grounded Gospel singing, off-the-cuff commentary and foot-tambourine of Jessie Mae Hemphill, the one-time Queen of the guitar Boogie, accompanied by a raft of local musicians. Unfortunately, there is no indication of who plays on what tracks but, in addition to the pervasive, trance-like percussion of Sharde Turner and the Rising Star Fife and Drum band and drummers Kent Kimbrough, R.L. Boyce, and Cedric Burnside, participants include Robert Belfour, Kenny Brown, Garry Burnside, Chris Chew, Papa Mali, Davis Coen, and Jimbo Mathus among others. Guitarists galore in other words.

Ever since her a stroke in 1993 left her partially paralyzed and unable to play guitar, Hemphill sings only spirituals. She’s lost some of her youthful power and intensity, but her idiosyncratic, utterly raw vocal approach still amazes on rhythm-ribbed chestnuts like “Old Time Religion”, “This Little Light of Mine” and “Motherless Children” as well as on a trio of original Gospel-folk testimonials. She stretches out for over 20 minutes on her relentlessly bluesy “Treat Me Right” (with a droning undercurrent of wailing slide guitar and harmonica), hypnotizes on the rather subdued “God is Good to Me” and rocks right out of the kudzu-cloaked North Mississippi “hill country” on the footloose “I’m Going Home”. A cane fife and drum soaked instrumental workout on “Little Sally Walker” and a deep-soul vocal turn by protégé Ruthie Foster on her own “Runaway Soul” also mesmerize.

Hemphill has been woefully under-recorded during her long career and this labor-of-love concert deserves a wider audience. A DVD of the occasion is also available.