Al Cook - Blues Songwriter from Austria

Al Cook is a tireless traditional blues song generator. He takes themes, musical fragments and lyrical phrases from the blues corpus, combines them with his own stuff and ends up with original songs. Some of these are better-written “traditional” songs than the actual traditional songs he draws from.

On Moving Back to Alabama on Cook’s album “The Birmingham Jam”, for example. He takes a couple of lines from Charley Patton’s Going to Move to Alabama. Patton sings, “Say, mama got the washboard, my sister got the tub, my brother got the whiskey, mama got the jug.” In Cook’s song, “My sister got a washboard, my daddy got a jug, now give your kinfolk a great big hug” merges the Patton lines into a song with more depth and interest. It is the story of a family moving back to Alabama from Chicago after their dreams of a better life did not come true. It has a linear narrative, and some imaginative phrases –“It’s so cold in Chicago the birds can hardly sing; they’d freeze in flight if they could spread their wings. They’re flying back to Alabama…”

Al Cook is from Vienna, Austria. So he is writing not only in a foreign language, but an idiomatic subset - blues idiom. After 50 years of listening and playing traditional blues, his fluency in the blues is obvious. He thinks about what he is doing, and his place in blues tradition, as evidenced by the blog entries on his web site. I find his vocal stylings a little too imitative of the older black blues artists, but then again, he is creating a historical representation foremost, a personal expression second. His imitations are top-notch by the way.  

I sought out Al Cook’s music on a tip from David Evans, author of “Big Road Blues” and perhaps the preeminent academic of blues music. Evans describes himself as a traditionalist where blues is concerned, and probably doesn't share my concern that modern blues songwriting is generally poor. Cook is a living example of the formulaic blues composers that Evans discusses in his book (and in a large body of academic writings in publications such as The Journal of American Folklore).

Al Cook released an ambitious project in 2013 – “Mississippi 1930 – A Fictional Journey to the Land Where the Blues Began”. He wrote the songs as far as I can tell. But they sound authentic old blues. Example – Jake Liquor Blues. Cooks spoken introduction to the song states he wrote it to honor Tommy Johnson, who recorded Alcohol and Jake Blues in 1930.1. Cook’s song is very different but has a very similar feel. This is what he does so well. (Cook’s song is also different from Ishman Bracey’s 1929 song with the same title.)  

Here’s my take on Al Cook – he’s written (and still writes at age 70) a ton of formulaic blues songs that use the phrases, meanings, feel, structure and sense of traditional blues. He probably does it better than you or I can. So, instead of writing your own lame, formulaic songs, think about using some of his good ones.  

Notes.

1. Someone recently paid $37,100 for a mint condition 78rpm record of Tommy Johnson's Alcohol and Jake Blues. The highest ever for a 78.