Jesse Fuller
For a very long time I had thought about listening to Jesse Fuller, but I never got around to it. In case you haven’t heard of Jesse Fuller, he is probably best known for his song, “San Francisco Bay Blues”. It has been covered a number of times, and Eric Clapton performed it during his famous MTV “Unplugged” show.
Jesse’s music has a certain kind of infectiousness about it. It is bouncy and engaging. I just want to keep playing it. I am glad I picked up this CD, also titled, “San Francisco Bay Blues” for several reasons.
Motivation and Jesse Fuller
First, the short biography that is on the inside of the CD case is very inspiring. Jesse lived to see two centuries, born in 1896, lived through the 20th century and died in 1976. Jesse was given away by his mother to be raised by another family were he was severely abused. He lived a hard life, working at scores of different jobs, travelling across the country. But in spite of his difficult childhood he became a happy, productive man. Also inspiring, for other older musicians, Jesse did not become a professional musician until he was in his 50′s. For some, much like Colonel Sanders, they blossom later in the season.
Lessons For Home Recording Engineers
Another thing that struck me as I listened to the music and read the supplied information is that Jesse created all of the music in the recordings completely himself with no added help from technology or a back up band. He was his own band. No drum machines. No MIDI tracks. No click tracks. Jesse sang, played a 12 string guitar, played a high-hat cymbal with one foot, played a home made foot operated stand up bass that he called a “fotdella” with the other foot and played the harmonica or kazoo with his mouth. And everything was in tune, in time and musical. Amazing. The album cover says that no additional effects were used to make the recording. Just Jesse.
With the mind boggling array of tools and options that we now have in the typical home recording studio setup, either via external hardware/effects or on the computer, this is an important lesson I believe to learn. More is not always better. I know I have a hard time with the KISS formula (keep it simple stupid) at times. Paul McCartney was always keen to remind people that for him “the song” was the most important thing….the end product…is it simply a good song? Sometimes we can become so caught up in the technology that we lose sight of the most important things: Do we have a good melody? Good lyrics? Is it memorable? Does it hook people?
I highly recommend that you buy yourself some of Jesse Fuller’s music. There is an awesome video on YouTube of Jesse playing SF Bay Blues:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKumuirtwbo
Jesse Fuller
The What Am I Listening To? Jesse Fuller. by Chris Hartzog, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States License.
