Article contributed by Doug Bygrave.Eddie “Bluesman” Kirkland has a presence that is very difficult to ignore.
Not only does he have biceps to match Schwarzenegger’s; shirts that would look at home in Gary closet, and seemingly hundreds of hideously coloured turbans, but he shouts with a fierce voice, lyrics sweet and sincere enough to make even Donny Osmond puke, all the while standing on his head and mauling his glitter smothered guitar!
One has to wonder why this man has been largely ignored by the record companies and record buyers for so long.
“Bluesman” was born in 1928 in Jamaica and raised on a farm near Alabama, doing that thing that all great bluesmen seem to do before they become great bluesmen – picking cotton.
Initially a harmonica player, he began playing guitar for local parties and peanut shellings in his early teens, and fell under the influence of blues pioneers such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Minnie, Tampa Red and later Lightin’ Hopkins and Arthur Big Boy Crudup.
Country music, as well as spiritual and gospel, also had a massive influence in moulding young “Bluesmen” sound – as he was later to say, “as long as it’s got feelin’ it’s the blues”.
After traveling a few years with the Sugar Girls Medicine Show, he eventually found himself in Detroit in 1948, working on the Ford Assembly line during the day and spending his evenings either boxing or playing house parties.
“I used to take my guitar and walk through the neighborhood pickin’ that guitar, man. About eleven o’clock, twelve o’clock at night. People’s shades would go up like that. They’d go to the phone and call their friends. Beggin’ for me to come in. Before you know it, man, there’s 15 peoples in the house”.
It was at one such house party that he met John Lee Hooker, and developed a relationship that served them both well for 4 or 5 years, touring and recording together regularly through to 1953.
Eddie “Bluesman” Kirkland’s first recordings under his own name were for Detroit’s RPM label in 1952, backed by Hooker, and he recorded sporadically through to 1962’s classic “It’s the Bluesman”, a mesmerizing album combining Kirkland’s gritty down-home sound with the sophisticated uptown musicianship of sax and god King Curtis and stellar guitarist Billy Butler.
He also toured with Otis Redding for a few years in the 60’s, and since then has been carving his niche as a wild and merciless performer throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia.
Eddie “Bluesman” Kirkland is a highly distinctive singer and guitarist, with the ability to infuse his deep blues attitude into any musical style he tackles, from, disco to reggae to grunge.
His style does not readily fit into the regional pigeon holes into which we tend to separate bluesmen.
His voice has the dynamic authority of a true blues shouter, crackling with vitality and animation.
And as a guitarist, this man’s licks are next to impossible to copy!
He has gone to the point of mastering his guitar in 14 different tunings, just so he can’t be imitated.
As he puts it, “You got to compete with the young musicians out here in the world today. When I get on the stage with a young guy, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan or whoever, he can’t walk all over me. It don’t make no difference who he is, ‘cause I got something that he gonna scratch is head when I play it. He’s wonderin’ what in the hell goin’ on there, what’s he doing’?
Kirkland is also a fine harmonica player.
Whilst technically he won’t make the ghosts of the Sonny Boys or the Walters lose any of their well-earned rest, his harmonica is a rough-shod good time, often reaching that wide-mouthed raucousness reminiscent of James Cotton.
Surprisingly, Kirkland’s material has been very rarely covered, probably because of the intensely personal nature of his songs and the fact that, until recently, his music has been so hard to come by.
Probably his most well-known song is “I Must’ve Done Somebody Wrong” – recorded originally on a small label by “Bluesman”, he asked Elmore James to record it. According to Eddie, Elsmore went off to New York to cut it, “but didn’t put my name on it. Didn’t give me no credit. Three months later he died. So that’s the way it goes sometimes”.
Eddie certainly has been shamefully under-recorded in a career that has had too few ups and far too many downs.
Without doubt, the pinnacle has to be the afore-mentioned “it’s the Bluesman”, “Daddy Daddy” must stand as one of the greatest blues performances of all time, boasting a mercilessly irresistible groove, a rough-hewn vocal delivery of a wonderfully trite lyric, jagged guitar and the world’s most amazing backing vocalist (he sounds like Jimmy Reed, only even more inebriated).
1993’s live “Some Like it Raw”, spewing over with outrageous guitar mayhem, is also a terrific example of the kind of full-frontal assault this man delivers to his audiences every night of the week.
The remainder of his albums (of which “Have Mercy” is the strongest) generally suffer from accompaniment ranging from uninspired to incompetent, and lack luster production that not even Eddie’s energy can surmount.
Doug is a currently Treasurer of the Auckland Blues Club and is the guitar player in The Flaming Mudcats.
