5:15pm Monday 6th July 2009
By Nick Churchill
These days Blind Blake would probably enjoy centre stage at Womad, but for more than 30 years from the mid-1930s he was playing to wealthy tourists (and after-hours local staff) at the Royal Victoria Hotel, Nassau (long, long before it became funky).
He got to play his best known song, Love, Love Alone, about the affair of Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson, to the Duke of Windsor, who apparently loved it. Whether he’d have appreciated the ribald sentiments of Consumptive Sara Jane is not known, but clearly Brian Wilson loved John B Sail so much he reinterpreted it as Sloop John B.
These songs blend a calypso lilt with jump jazz, traditional folk music and the germ of what would become reggae. They are utterly charming.
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