ELDER UTAH SMITH
Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1906, Smith got the calling to preach in 1923, and within two years he was taking the good word to Pentecostal congregations all over the country. According to Abbott’s account, he had a keen sense of humor: in 1931 he “preached the devil’s funeral,” even lowering a casket into the ground. He was also believed to be able to perform spiritual healings—but he didn’t become a phenomenon till he started playing the electric guitar.
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Though Smith had been using an acoustic instrument for some time, going electric changed everything. His daughter Lulu makes the dubious claim that he was the first black man in America to own an electric guitar; various accounts suggest he began playing one somewhere between 1937 and 1941. Judging from the handful of recordings that survive—among them commercial singles from ’44, ’47, and ’53, all of which featured his theme song, “Two Wings,” on the A side—he quickly developed a unique style. You can hear the raunchy, overdriven chords of what would become rock ‘n’ roll and a touch of the jazz harmonies of Charlie Christian in the manic introduction to “Two Wings,” and once he gets into the meat of the song, shouting out lyrics with bulldozer force over the steady clapping of his congregation—there’s no band on any of these recordings—he bears down on his guitar and cranks out a bizarre kind of minimalist blues that seems almost like a template for the hill country trance boogie of folks like Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside. On a sermon-song like “God’s Mighty Hand,” though, his playing is less about riffs and more about spontaneous licks that function like commentary on his message.
(CAM Jazz)
Eco, Arches & Eras
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