Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995
I’ve been reading with interest the reports about the Woodstock reunion in New York. I watched some of the TV coverage of the singers and bands that played, especially intrigued by the ones who had also played 25 years ago in the mud of Yasgur’s farm. They were all, like me, a little fatter, hair a little thinner, and not a whole lot wiser. The heavy philosophy about Woodstock’s meaning and contribution to my generation is over my head, though. Woodstock then and now was way back east, after all, and I didn’t even like most of the music. The albums I spent my cash on were not Crosby, Stills, and Nash or Richie Havens or Creedence Clearwater. For me, it was always the blues.
I bought John Hammond’s first album back around 1968. I listened to it over and over until my college roommates ripped it off the turntable. “But, ‘Who Do You Love’ and ‘Hellhound on My Trail’ are really good for studying,” I told them. I also bought records by Furry Lewis, Robert Johnson, Albert King, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and other bluesmen, but John Hammond’s versions of blues classics were so crisp and well-engineered. The Vanguard people made this music so accessible to a white kid from Southern California majoring in English literature.
When I first saw the notice tacked to the bulletin board at the post office of John Hammond’s concert here in Nome, I stood transfixed. How could this be? How could a funny little frontier town on the Bering Sea be hosting a bluesman I’d admired for 25 years? I’d never noticed his concerts advertised when I lived in Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, or New York City. Twenty-five years it had taken me to see this guy and here he was, delivered by the Nome Arts Council on a platter of Nome beach gold.
On a drizzly Thursday evening, my family arrived early at Hammond’s Nome gig. We slapped down our twenty dollar bill, and all six of us planted ourselves in the front row chairs. The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up when I heard the unseen Hammond tuning his guitars and picking a few bluesy lines backstage. Wearing a fluid black suit and silk purple shirt, John Hammond wrapped his tall frame around his two guitars and a fistful of harmonicas. Not one for small talk, he promised a bunch of blues and delivered it gritty, sexy, smooth, funky, and soulful. He stomped a handsome left black shoe, soaked his shirt in sweat, broke one thumb pick, and replaced one G string on his old metal guitar. With the exception of my sons’ favorite cut “Got Love If You Want It” from his latest CD (Leo may still have one left at The Music Mart), Hammond played it all. From Robert Johnson to Son House on the dirt roads of the Mississippi Delta to the alleyways of Chicago, he painted it all in blues at the Mini-Convention Center that night. He was a lightning rod of feeling for two glorious sets.
We were a well-behaved crowd. It was the first time I’d ever heard blues in a place where nobody smoked, nobody got drunk and rowdy, and nobody badgered me about a two-drink minimum. At intermission, my kids ate eight hot dogs between them and waited in line maybe a minute for each one. We all did a lot of clapping and hooting after each number but it wasn’t really expressive enough to show Hammond what an incredible night this was. His August concert was my “Summer of Love,” a personal reunion with my 20-year-old self, and the musical passion that began with his Vanguard album. My thanks to the Nome Arts Council for keeping the blues alive. You can have Woodstock. I’ll take Nome. And I could get out of the mud, too!