Joseph Spence’s Bahamian Folk Guitar Revisited

This is the stuff that makes Ry Cooder do backflips. In 1958, folklorist Sam Charters came upon stonemason Joseph Spence playing guitar for some friends who were building a house in his hometown of Small Hope, on Andros Island in the Bahamas. At first he thought there were two guitarists performing, but Spence was the only instrumentalist on the scene. Loosened up by a bottle of rum passed around by the carpenters, Spence agreed to be recorded on the spot, laying down an hour’s worth of material in one take.

At first you think there’s some rowdy drunk on the beach heckling Spence or egging him on. But as “Coming In On A Wing and Prayer” progresses, you realize it’s Spence himself, groaning and mumbling as he plays. Cooder covered it in on 1972’s Boomer’s Story, and got all the mechanics and nuances right. But Spence’s original is virtually impossible to duplicate. It’s a simple melody line, but Spence makes it sound like its being played by an orchestra. His technique is similar to Charlie Patton and his disciple Robert Johnson’s technique of playing lead and bass lines together, but Spence manages to get the middle strings in the mix as well for a depth and syncopation that’s unique and damn near impossible for most five-fingered humans to emulate.

Harry Belafonte covered “Brown Skin Gal,” but Spence’s version is inimitable, like a Junkanoo marching band breaking into a church for an unholy throwdown.

Its an incredible recording, crystal clear and sounding more magnificent than ever in its original vinyl form. Spontaneous and unrehearsed, its still as fine a concert as you’d hear in a great hall somewhere in a stuffier situation.

Even his hymns rocked. Spence actually sings on “There Will Be a Happy Meeting in Glory,” but whatever language he’s singing in is probably not written down anywhere. It’s a sacred, syncopated strut on the beach punctuated by Spence’s unearthly growls, his rhythmic grunts and groans like guttural scatting. But once again his guitar is the star of this show, a stunning stringed entanglement that sounds like three guitars pouring out licks as fast as their owner’s fingers can fly.

Side two kicks off with “I’m Gonna Live That Life,” and once again you can understand large chunks of it before he descends into growly scat like Louis Armstrong on a rum-soaked Caribbean vacation conducting hip-shakin’ services to shimmy to on a tropical beach.

“Face To Face I Shall Know Him” is about as basic Spence gets on guitar, slowing down a bit for this hymn but still doing some earth-shaking with his relentless foot pattin’ backbeat, popping his strings hard for this tropical-flavored churchy processional you can bop religiously to.

The closer, “Jump In The Line,” is straight-up Calypso, or as straight up as Spence gets on anything, but still pulling off tangled fingered manipulation that would have a lesser mortal’s hands tied in knots.

It’s a fitting end to this session, his one-man tropical orchestra kicking up sand as he sways off into the sunset in a piña colada fueled haze of glory.