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Wednesday, April 26, 2000
Mala Strana cellar yields blues treasure By Matthew MacLean Blues legend John Lee Hooker has never been to Prague. He might well not have more than a vague idea where Prague is. But chances are Hooker will be thinking quite a bit about Prague within the next few weeks. He will also be thinking about Detroit -- 1949 Detroit -- sometime around late summer. That was when the 33-year-old musician, new in the big city and still virtually unknown in the blues world, met an eccentric young blues fan who'd ventured into the dive club in the city's black district where Hooker was playing and invited him to dinner at his home in the white suburbs. After dinner, Hooker took out his guitar and treated the man and his guests to an unforgettable performance. Hooker's hosts kept pressing him to play the authentic Southern-style blues -- slower, with less boogie but more heart than the city blues that was more popular with record labels at that time. He didn't think anyone would like those old tunes, but after a few glasses of wine and lots of enthusiastic applause, Hooker loosened up and began to play the kind of music he learned from his stepfather as a child in Mississippi. Many tunes were covers of classic old blues songs played on Southern porches for generations; others he composed on the spot. A home recording was made of that performance in a Detroit attic. Fifty years later, that recording -- one of the earliest ever made of Hooker -- has finally resurfaced in Prague, of all places, as the new CD The Unknown John Lee Hooker. The man who hosted Hooker that night and made the recording was Gene Deitch, already well-known in this city for his book, For the Love of Prague, which details his 30 years of life under the communist regime. An animator by choice and a blues fanatic by fate -- as he says, Deitch came to Prague in 1959 under contract to help produce an animation project. He brought as much of his music as he could carry with him -- including the recording of Hooker, who by that time had become a blues sensation. "I played the tape for my new Czech jazz buddies, but I knew I couldn't commercially exploit it because the music belonged to John Lee Hooker," Deitch said. "Finally I put it in storage, in our cellar, and nearly forgot about it." The tape would still be there today, were it not for Paul Vernon, communications liaison officer at the American Embassy in Prague. By chance Vernon (a big blues fan himself) saw Deitch's book and recognized him as the author of cartoons in an old jazz record magazine from the 1940s. Vernon visited Deitch in October 1999, and the Hooker recording came up in conversation. Vernon, flabbergasted, made Deitch promise to search for the tape. Vernon's intervention was the first in a series of small miracles and coincidences that have Deitch convinced that God Himself must be a blues fan. The Hooker recording was made on two tapes. Deitch remembered he had loaned one of them to a jazz and blues collector in New York before he left for Prague. That man, Tony Schwartz, nearly 80-years-old and ill, somehow remembered the tape and managed to find it. The greatest miracle, though, might have been the Prague tape's preservation. Deitch originally recorded Hooker on acetate-covered paper tape -- standard for 1949 but a very fragile medium. Finally transferred to primitive plastic tape, the recording sat untouched for at least 35 years. In those days a typical Prague basement was cold, damp and dust-filled -- about the worst environment imaginable for the preservation of acetate. But Deitch's Mala Strana flat, newly built in 1960, was one of the only buildings in the city to have a radiant heating system. The hot pipes running through the floor also kept the basement fairly warm and dry. Considering the primitive recording and the tape's long hibernation, the quality of sound which engineers were able to restore and digitally enhance in the CD transfer is astonishing. Hooker's guitar (well beat-up, with a big crack in the middle, as Deitch remembers) sounds vibrant and crisp. Background noises, Hooker's tuning and even Deitch's voice come through on occasion. Hooker's boot can be heard counting out the slow, measured beats of many tunes. But even in songs without the foot thumps, one can feel the driving rhythm he infuses into the guitar riffs themselves. Hooker, now 83, might be more surprised than anyone to see his new CD on music store shelves. The recording's resurrection comes almost exactly 50 years after its birth -- still another coincidence -- allowing Deitch to take advantage of an international copyright law that allows its release without the artist's permission, or even knowledge. "I wasn't sure whether I should tell him or not," Deitch said. "I was afraid he might not want it to come out for some reason. And that would be a huge loss." Royalties from the CD's sale will go to Hooker, which should soften the blow. And Deitch has been assured by blues critic Dave Sax, considered the world's top expert on Hooker and also his personal friend, that the old bluesman won't take offense. With Sax's help, Deitch plans to visit Hooker on his next trip to the United States in September. The reunion of the two men will likely include listening to the music they first shared 50 years ago. "I feel like I'm giving something back to the world I love," Deitch said. "I hope they like it. And I really hope he likes it." Matthew MacLean may be reached at features@praguepost.cz TRAVEL
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