blues singer; guitarist
Personal Information
Born on November 17, 1904, in Bentonia, MS; died on February 9, 1997, in Yazoo City, MS; married three times; children: three (died in fire, 1930s).
Career
Began performing at house parties around Bentonia by 1920; remained in Bentonia all his life, working as farmer and operating front of house as juke joint into 1960s; discovered by folklorist David Evans, 1970; recorded album It Must Have Been the Devil, 1971; began touring after death of third wife in 1985; appeared in film Deep Blues, 1991; performed in New York, 1992.
Life's Work
When he died in 1997 at the age of 92, Jack Owens was perhaps the last living link to the pure Mississippi Delta acoustic blues tradition. Other bluesmen made more numerous and more famous recordings, but Owens had a unique style that showed how blues players shaped musical materials in their own personal ways. Other players from the Delta traveled far and wide, moving north to Chicago in the 1930s and 1940s to help give birth to modern electric blues, or taking their art to college campuses and folk festivals during the folk blues revival of the 1960s and beyond. But Owens remained rooted for his entire life in the place where he was born, in later life receiving a steady stream of visitors who came to hear him play and to learn what blues music was all about.
Jack Owens was born L. F. Nelson on November 17, 1904, in Bentonia, Mississippi, at the Delta's edge. Owens was raised by the family of his mother, Celia Owens, after his father left the family when Owens was five or six years old. Before his father departed, he taught Owens a few chords on the guitar. This is all Owens would keep of father, electing to drop his father's surname of Nelson and adopt the name of Owens instead. Owens also learned to play the cane fife, an African-American instrument with historical roots stretching directly back to Africa, and he may have played the fiddle and piano at times. But it was his guitar skills that caught the attention of local musicians. By the time he was a teenager he had learned a few standard pieces of the music that was just beginning to be called the blues, and by 1920 he was pressed into service playing at local parties and gathering places.
Similarities to Skip James Style
Blues authorities disagree as to whether Bentonia had its own distinct style of the blues, but all would concur that it was home to a group of especially talented players. In addition to Owens and several other musicians who were poorly or not at all represented on recordings, there was Skip James, one of the genuine stars of the Delta blues style. James, who had married one of Owens' sisters, encouraged Owens' musical efforts. James told London Guardian writer Val Wilmer that he said to Owens, "Hey Jack, you done started you something, ain't you?" James and Owens shared a basic style marked by intense, death-haunted lyrics, lengthy, intricate guitar solos, individualistic guitar tunings, and sharp falsetto vocal exclamations. The two sometimes performed together around Bentonia.
Owens' song repertoire overlapped somewhat with that of James, but he also created pieces such as "Jack Ain't Had No Water," which are not known to have been played or recorded by any other musician. Even his recordings of pieces identified with James have a distinct flavor, and it is difficult to compare the talents of the two musicians. The restless James attracted the attention of record-company talent agents and was recorded in his prime, in 1931, but Owens stayed put in Bentonia and was not recorded until he was discovered by folklorist David Evans in the late 1960s--by which time, though still a vigorously active musician, he had achieved senior-citizen status.
Owens was reluctant to leave Bentonia because he feared police harassment. From a modern perspective it is easy to romanticize the life of the traveling blues musician, making a living off nothing more than a guitar and a set of profound reflections, but in fact blues musicians were frequently arrested and charged with vagrancy. "We had bad times here. Bad times," Owens told the London Independent. "They'd hang a nigger just like he was a squirrel." Instead of risking the real perils of life on the road, Owens worked all his life as a farmer in Bentonia.
Remained in Bentonia for Most of Career
In many ways Owens lived the hard life he sang about. He lost his three children in a house fire in the 1930s, and he never learned to read or write. His music catered not to record buyers nationwide, but to the local people who came to his house to hear him play. Owens converted the front of his house into a "juke joint"--a dancing and drinking place where moonshine liquor flowed and dishes such as barbecued goat were served by Owens' wife (he married three times) through a hole cut out of the kitchen wall. Owens often performed with Bud Spires, a blind harmonica player. The two would sit opposite each other with legs interlocked so that Spires could respond to Owens' cues. The juke joint lasted into the late 1960s, long after most such places in the Delta had vanished.
Spires appeared on Owens' only album, It Must Have Been the Devil, which appeared in 1971 and was re-released with added material on CD in 1995. The 1971 album came about after Skip James told folklorist Evans that if he went to Bentonia he could find other musicians like himself who had thus far remained undiscovered. The album, which The Down Home Guide to the Blues called "a beautiful and moving musical experience," offers insight into what the Delta blues sounded like on its home turf. Owens, unconstrained by conventional ideas about the length of recorded songs, lets loose with improvisational structures of varying lengths. The album's title track, more than ten minutes long, is a special highlight.
Even in 1971, It Must Have Been the Devil was a startlingly concrete manifestation of a largely forgotten and heavily mythologized world. The album and the story of Owens' discovery became well known among blues fans, who came to the Delta in search of the true source of the blues. Owens generally rewarded visitors with a performance on the front porch of his home, provided that they honored his request to bring him a bottle of his favorite Hogmouth brand gin. Owens rarely left Bentonia until after the death of his third wife in 1985. By that time, in his ninth decade, Owens was regarded as a living legend.
Owens began appearing at festivals and blues performance venues when he was in his nineties, making his New York debut in 1992 after taking his first plane flight. In 1991 he was featured in the widely praised documentary Deep Blues, and in 1995 he appeared in a Levi's jeans ad, seated on his familiar front porch. In 1993 Owens received a $10,000 National Heritage Fellowship Award. He cashed the check and kept the proceeds in a pouch under his shirt, using some of the money to renovate one of a collection of rusting pickup trucks that had come to rest in his yard. Jack Owens died in a hospital in Yazoo City, Mississippi, on February 9, 1997, and it might be said that the first generation of the blues died with him.
Awards
Received $10,000 National Heritage Fellowship Award, 1993.
Works
Selected discography
- It Must Have Been the Devil, 1971, reissued by Testament, 1995.
- (Soundtrack, with various artists) Deep Blues, Atlantic, 1991.
- The Last Giants of Mississippi Blues: Jack Owens and Eugene Powell, Wolf, 1993.
Further Reading
Books
- Contemporary Musicians, Volume 30, Gale, 2001.
- Rucker, Leland, ed., MusicHound Blues: The Essential Album Guide, Visible Ink, 1998.
- Scott, Frank, Down Home Guide to the Blues, Down Home Music, 1991.
- Down Beat, August 1995, p. 55.
- Guardian (London, England), March 18, 1997, p. 18.
- Independent (London, England), May 7, 1995, p. 65.
- New York Times, February 20, 1992, p. C16.
- All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com
- Hutten.org, http://www.hutten.org/rob/writing/remembering_jack.html
— James M. Manheim
