West Georgia Blues could just as well live as a black stack of shellac 78s. Justifiably and contentedly so, since its sepia-tinted performances are indeed that heroically old-school to the core.
Yet for as much as “Earthworm Basement Blues” rocks out, circa 1928—jangling down the dirt road on guitar, percussively snapping its bass strings for extra propulsion, as was the fashion when Charley Patton was running his stylistic shop in the Delta—the grumble is anything but a musty museum piece reeking of mothballs and rehash. As are the 14 other originals, this song is vibrantly brand-new to the max. It’s just entrancingly backdated.
Which is why only Jontavious Willis—flame keeper, time traveler, life of the house party—could have made this album. The signature is that personally creative throughout. And, no, despite sounding so, Willis was not born in 1896, as were Tommy Johnson (Mississippi’s originator of the midnight crossroads deal) and Blind Blake (the Piedmont’s fingerpicker extraordinaire)—with both of whom the west Georgia native would have had a whooping good time comparing notes, given the breadth of his creativity’s range. Surprisingly, Willis was born in 1996. He’s not yet 30. Yet he’s already a major shot in the arm of acoustic blues, as was Taj Mahal in the 1960s and Keb’ Mo’ in the 1990s.
Willis’ arrival was officially announced by Blue Metamorphosis, a self-produced and self-released debut. That was 2016. The second album, 2019’s Spectacular Class, almost scored gold at the Grammy Awards, giving Delbert McClinton’s Tall, Dark, & Handsome a run for its money as the Best Traditional Blues Album. Mighty impressive for only one’s second time at bat. Likewise impressive was having two of your hugest fans produce the album: mentors Taj and Keb.’ West Georgia Blues now reverts to a DIY production, where both confidence and imagination skyrocket far higher, making for an immersive experience.
With qualities best described as downhome, a penniless “Rough Time Blues” and the tomcatting “Charlie Brown Blues” are rustic country blues with all the splinters intact. The same goes for “Broken Hearted Moan,” a deeply brooding communion between a man, his agony and the steady trudge coming off his likewise agonized guitar. “Too Close to the Finishing Line” is palpably Mississippian in how a bottleneck slide shaves off curlicue notes, precisely echoing each word hung in the air until the central lick makes its stepped descent, just like Robert Johnson did with “Come On in My Kitchen” or the Mississippi Sheiks did a small handful of years before that with their “Sitting on Top of the World.” For three minutes apiece, you are back on a distant night when the warm glow of a kerosene lamp illuminates partyers quaking the floorboards in line with a lone guitarist’s pushy rhythms. But Willis’ thick, mudslide voice and its inflections are just as vital to powering this Wayback Machine.
The landscape keeps changing. “Squirrlin’ Mama,” for instance, catches air with its Piedmont flair, all fizzing, agile fingerwork fishtailing back and forth, whereas a similarly time-warped piano and some light drums prefer to trot. “A Lift Is All I Need” gets the old soft shoe from that guitar reengaging Ethan Leinwand’s piano in graceful yet frisky dialogue, layering jazzy lines atop cascading keys, the way Scrapper Blackwell used to do with Leroy Carr when the Roaring Twenties were about to get deflated by the Great Depression. Yet for Old World blues, Jontavious travels even further back, doing you one better than going unplugged. “West Georgia Blues” goes uninstrumented, taken down to barest bones: sung a cappella. That is a brave act, darting right out of the starting gate as the first thing you hear … as well as for being the title track.
Boldness doesn’t halt there. The setlist also lunges forward, honoring the evolutionary timeline when country blues reared up, plugged in and shook the shack. Given electrical juice—enough electrical juice to be gloriously overdriven without regard for etiquette or eardrums—“Lula Mae” breathes flame. But she’s tame compared to “Jontavious’ West Georgia Grind,” which can’t get notes out fast enough from the guitar, piling up on one another in a fantastically rowdy rush that swallows up the poor goner of a piano and everything else in the room. Its loud, jagged, boozy stomp is perfect for getting bombed to.
So, yes, West Georgia Blues serves as a unique portal back to a time when fellow blue Georgians like Blind Willie McTell and Barbecue Bob were supplying soundtracks to street corners and backcountry frolics around the state. However, Willis’ lyrics, emotions and associated situations defy any time-stamp, speaking universally across the generations for as long as mortal man continues piling up problems over which to groan.
Yet to leave no room for doubt that Willis’ songwriting and arrangements could leap through all the years at will, “Keep Your Worries on the Dance Floor” convenes a modest, amplified band around which a celestial Wurlitzer orbits, its keys twinkling away. This shot of sunshine—a soul-blues, of sorts—packs a lot of personality and snake-hipped moves into a perky pick-me-up. It’s an earworm that sticks around long after the magical portal closes every 48 minutes.
Label: Strolling Bones
Release Date: 8/16/24
Artist Website: jontaviouswillis.com
Reviewed by Dennis Rozanski
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