The Return of Koerner, Ray & Glover

Koerner, Ray & Glover 1963

Over the next couple of years, Koerner regularly toured the UK and I saw him perform on numerous occasions. I never tired of his early “hits” like Crazy Fool, Creepy John, Good Time Charlie, Whomp Bom, Good Luck Child and Ramblin’ And Tumblin’, and especially his trio of “epics”, Duncan And Brady, Hangman and Rent Party Rag, which he would spin out into free-association tall-tales lasting 10 or 15 minutes; never, I swear ever, even remotely similar two nights in a row. He was the only one of that era’s American white bluesmen who was really seriously admired by us chaps on the British country blues scene like Jo Ann Kelly and Mike Cooper.

Ray and Glover never made it over here. They remained a mystery, especially since even on the three K,R&G albums, Koerner and Ray rarely appeared on the same track, instead tending to contribute solos or duos with Glover’s fine harmonica work. Ray had a more brooding presence, a darker, more Leadbelly-like sound that seemed overshadowed on disc by Koerner’s fireworks. When the Red House re-issue of Blues, Rags & Hollers came out this year, I was actually quite surprised by how good he’d been all that time, and how I’d consistently underrated him all these years. And when it turned out that they were back together and going to perform at Winnipeg Festival, one of the planet’s finest folk events and where I was going to be anyway, I was an exceptionally happy chap.

I’d kept in touch with Koerner over the years, through periods when he came and went, retired and disinterred himself, rejected his old repertoire and reinvented himself singing all those famous American folk songs that you always read in songbooks – you know, Acres Of Clams, The Old Chisholm Trail, The Young Man Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn, Abdullah Bulbul Amir – but nobody ever actually sang. In the ‘70s, no longer with Elektra but usually still featuring the company of pianist Willie Murphy with whom he’d created the 1969 album Running, Jumping, Standing Still, he’d started recording those things for a tiny independent label run by Dave Ray.

He last came to Britain at the turn of the ’80s, appearing at Cambridge and a few clubs. He stayed with us for a few days, coinciding with the first visit to these shores by Chris Smither, if I remember correctly, and there was one daft night when we all lay on our backs at 4 a.m. in the local park while Koerner talked us through basic astronomy. Then he disappeared for a few more years until he finally reached his current recording home, the growing Minneapolis-based company Red House.