Fruteland Jackson

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The Marietta Times Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Students Learn The Blues

By Kate York, kyork@mariettatimes.com

Marietta students have learned many songs in music classes over the years, but today may mark the first time they’re learning one that’s sole purpose is to be “the kind of song you play sitting on a porch by yourself.”

But that’s exactly what Chicago blues legend Fruteland Jackson has planned.

Jackson, who is wrapping up a two-week art residency this week at Marietta Middle School, has been teaching more than a dozen middle school students how to play the blues, leading up to a performance Friday night.

For many of the students, the Blues in the Schools after-school workshops have provided their first real exposure to Jackson’s kind of music.

Sixth-grader Hannah Beals, 12, already knew how to play the guitar, but not the way she has in the past week.

“Blues sounds different and the way you play it is really different,” Beals said. “I think it’s a cool thing to listen to because it’s what they played in the olden days.”

In Monday’s workshop, Jackson taught students how to use a slide so they could practice the “poor man’s distortion” to create a unique blues sound.

“You hit the note and you give it a little shake,” he told students. “It’s the way we used to do distortion in the old days before we had boxes that would do it for us.”

Jackson has been conducting Blues in the Schools programs across the country since 1992, with more than 50,000 students already participating.

Learning to play music helps students build their self-esteem, fosters self-expression and develops higher-level thinking skills, said Steve Wells, vice president of the Blues, Jazz & Folk Music Society, which coordinated the Blues in the Schools program locally.

“We believe that when you get young people excited about music, you get them excited about life,” Wells said. “The power of musical instruction to help students in mathematics, problem solving and critical thinking is well-documented.”

The lessons are about teaching concentration as much as music, Jackson said.

“What we’re really trying to do is get the brain to concentrate on something for four or five minutes and not let it go,” he said. “You have to put yourself in a bubble.”

Sixth-grader Summer Erb, 12, who has been learning to play the harmonica, said preparing for Friday’s concert has been a challenge.

“I had never played before,” she said. “It’s hard just getting the notes right.”

The student band will perform Friday at the school before classmates and teachers and again Friday at 7:30 p.m. at Washington State Community College, in a concert open to the public.

The students practiced “Let the Good Times Roll” with their student singer Monday, saving today as a day to learn the song best suited for a performance on a porch, with no audience to entertain.

Cory Louive, 14, an eighth-grader at Marietta Middle School, said he’s nervous about the concert but has gained at least one thing from his time spent learning to play blues on the bass.

He had never been a fan of blues music before, Louive said.

“Now I am,” he said.

Where: Washington State Community College’s Graham Auditorium.

 

2004 The Frederick News Post
By Karen Gardner - News-Post Staff

Blues singers don't usually ply their trade in schools, but the Blues In Schools program introduces students to an American art form that hasn't gotten a lot of academic appreciation.

This Sunday, May 23, the Bentz Street Raw Bar will host a day of blues music dedicated to raising money for the Blues in the Schools program. Local and regional blues musicians will play continuously from noon to midnight.

Every spring, blues musician Fruteland Jackson spends two days in Frederick schools singing and talking the blues. "He does this all over the country, all over the world," said Steve Norris, a founding member of the Frederick Blues Society.

Jackson brings his program to two schools a day, and so far has performed in front of eight Frederick County high schools and four middle schools. Next spring, four more middle schools will get the assembly.

"He mixes music with a history of the blues," Norris said. "He talks about the progression of W.C. Handy, the St. Louis Blues, Robert Johnson, and he shows how today's music, from rock 'n' roll, rap and country are all based on the blues."

Jackson, 50, grew up in Chicago the son and grandson of cotton pickers from the south. He doesn't remember Jim Crow, nor did he ever hop on a boxcar, but he heard stories about the cotton-picking experiences of his sharecropper ancestors, and has a thriving blues musical career.

Since 1991, he's been visiting schools from elementary to college to talk about the blues, from its start about 1850 and how it evolved through the years. "I give them the tree branch history about how the music of today came from the blues," he said.

Rock 'n' roll is basically blues to a faster beat, he said. R&B is a mixture of blues and jazz.

He tells the kids blues allows them to express themselves in a way that doesn't tolerate rage or anger. When he's talking to children, he keeps the topics clean. He introduces the youngsters to the music of Leadbelly, the prolific early 20th-century author of "Goodnight Irene" who also wrote many children's songs.

"Leadbelly was the B.B. King of his day," Jackson said. "He was the first blues singer to go mainstream." Among the scores of recognizable songs he wrote is "Rock Island Line."

With the older students, Jackson talks about Delta blues, Chicago blues and St. Louis blues, about Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, and about the evolution of music. Calypso music, for example, metamorphosed into reggae and then into ska.

Fruteland is Jackson's given name. He was named after his grandfather, who spent 70 years of his life as a preacher. "I come from a family of preachers and teachers," he said.

Although his background is in music and theater, he found teaching workshops came naturally. "I give them simple definitions," he said. "Blues is the facts of life expressed musically."

As a child, he wasn't interested in the blues, even though his family played it. "I heard their music, but I was a Motown child," he said. "But the seeds were planted. When you grow older and get your heart broken a couple of times, those simple songs take on new meaning."

Jackson spends about half his time on the Blues in the Schools program, which is funded through grants and fund-raisers including the one at the Raw Bar. He started doing Blues in the Schools back in 1991. When he's not teaching workshops, he's singing the blues. Jackson performs at blues festivals, including the Chicago Blues Festival and the W.C. Handy Blues Festival, and at blues clubs.

He also works with music students. He tells them that the blues are a good way to enter into music performance, because it requires only three chords.

Blues in the Schools has spread to Europe. Jackson has made several trips to France to educate students there about the blues. Blues is very popular in France, he said. He is one of four or five musicians who teach Blues in the Schools.

He started doing the program when asked to talk to college students in Charleston, S.C., in 1991. He put together a lecture on the difference between country blues and city blues, and his new career was born. He estimates he talks to 50,000 students in his workshops annually. Some of his musical workshops are for adults.

"Blues music simply mirrors what's going on in society," he said. During the lectures, Jackson plays a little banjo and mandolin, and introduces the youngsters to the early minstrel songs.

He also suggests that his audiences experiment with listening to different types of music. "I encourage them to listen to public radio," he said. "Do they know what they like, or do they like what they know?"

Jackson has paid his dues in the blues world. He may have an e-mail address and a Web site, but he has earned the respect of other singers. At the last W. C. Handy Awards, sort of the Grammy's of the blues world, Jackson was nominated for best acoustic album. He lost to Buddy Guy, which he thinks is an honor in itself. Jackson won a W. C. Handy Award in 1997 for his participation in Blues in the Schools.

He has co-written a book on the history of the blues and a book on how to play the blues.

At the school programs, Jackson encourages the children to write their own blues song. "I tell them 'Sing about something you know about,'" he said. He helped students at a middle school in Iowa write "The Cold Dry Dog Food Blues," written from the perspective of Sam, the dog belonging to one of the students.

"I woke up this morning,

(When) I heard the front door slam

I found a note,

It was from my dog Sam

He said he was leaving

That he had nothing' to lose

But a real bad case of

Cold Dry Dog Food Blues."

---

The Blues Are The facts of Life

THE MISSISSAUGA NEWS

  By JOHN STEWART  March 5, 2003 

Staff photo by Chris Horobin

Fruteland Jackson taught the students at Hillside Senior Public School a thing or two about the blues recently.

Leadbelly dropped by Hillside Senior Public School auditorium Wednesday to sing the Midnight Special.

W. C. Handy strummed the St. Louis Blues. Bo Diddley did a quick little blues shuffle.

Chuck Berry speeded things up to create some rock ‘n roll. Berry sang — appropriately enough — School Days. (Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n roll. The feeling is there, body and soul.)

The heroes of the blues were out in full force for the nearly 700 Grade 6-8 students who jammed into the auditorium to take a crash course called Blues 101.

The teacher was Chicago-based acoustic blues artist Fruteland Jackson, the man who recreated the personas of so many of the great blues masters.

Starting with some of the surviving field hollers and work songs of 150 years ago, Jackson and his guitar, and his trusty rhythm foot, conducted a trip back in time, with stops along the way to sample the country blues, the Delta blues, a the Chicago blues and just about any other blues you care to name.

“The blues are the way things are, not the way you’d like them to be,” said Jackson, a renowned educator who visits some 50,000 students annually through school programs. “The blues are the facts of life. Sometimes life is happy and sometimes life is serious. But whatever life is, that’s what the blues is,” he told students.

The oral historian and winner of the 1997 W. C. Handy award for “Keeping the Blues Alive” demonstrated that the honor was not misplaced. 

“All the musical styles stand on the shoulders of the blues,” he told students. “If you trace anything back far enough — rhythm and blues, jazz, rap or hip hop — you’re going to find the blues.”

Fruteland (named for one of his grandfather’s friends of the same name)  is a musician first and an educator second, he said in an interview. In fact, he records on Toronto’s Electro-Fi label.

He was brought to Hillside through the Toronto Blues Society and a grant from an Ontario Trillium program. Music teacher Brian Hawryluk is a member of the Blues Society. He plays in an all-teacher band called The Blackboard Blues Band. When he heard Jackson was available to come to the school, he jumped at the chance to provide, “a very meaningful experience that enriches the curriculum.” Not only that, he got to hear his favorite music during school hours.

After Jackson’s guided tour of the Blues Hall of Fame, he tested some Hillside students and found they’d learned their lessons well.

Two student volunteers came up on stage at the end of the hour-long show and, if they didn’t exactly wail the blues, they did a fair approximation.

James Melville sang those “I Had Noodles For Breakfast and I Ate Them with Chopsticks” blues.

Nick MacNeill, sporting a fresh cast, lamented his condition with a particularly woebegone version of  the “I Broke My Leg, I Broke My Leg — Real Bad” blues.

As the auditorium of pre-teens giggled in unison, Jackson’s message had been received: “the blues is just the way things are.”

Where Nice, Naughty Meet 

Atlanta Journal-Constitution by Rheta Grimsley Johnson August 1998

They buried Anna Jane Bradley on a recent Saturday morning at New Jericho Missionary Baptist of Doddsville, a church with her name on its cornerstone. She was 89.

They all sang "Amazing Grace" and "Precious Lord." Then Anna Jane’s grandson, Fruteland Jackson, sang solo "When The Pearly Gates Unfold."

The same day, in the afternoon, Fruteland sang the song again, this time at Clarksdale’s Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festival. Once more he sang it for his grandmother, a woman who disliked the blues, who called it the "Devil’s music."

"You better quit playing that sinful music," the old woman would say. "Play me a church song."

So he does. On Saturday afternoon, beneath a perfect Delta sky and a defunct grain elevator, by the tracks with tall grass between them, Fruteland obeys. And with his capable hands on a resonator guitar, that old church song dedicated to his dead grandmother becomes the blues.

Fruteland was born in Sunflower County 44 years ago. But his family, like so many other black families in the Delta, migrated North. He grew up in Eastside Chicago, knowing Jim Crow and cotton fields secondhand, through the tales his folks told. That’s why when he describes his acoustic blues style, he qualifies it. He calls it the "baby-boomer blues," a music that uses the simple cadence of traditional Blues but more modern lyrics.

"I didn’t know Jim Crow," he says, "and I wasn’t run over by a bus."

Fruteland, now living in St. Louis, is dedicated to keeping the blues alive. He even won an award for that.

But Fruteland is honest. He acknowledges the difference between living the blues and playing the blues, as anyone with an e-mail address and a business card should.

Fruteland – his real name: "If I made up a name, would I pick ‘Fruteland’?" – is only one of dozens of performers turning their souls inside out for a modest-sized, mostly local crowd at the annual festival, the best of all such blues festivals. There are no beautiful people, only a few Memphis day-trippers. These are good country folk, with sweet manners, smiles on their faces and Crown Royal in a back pocket. The air smells of barbecue and hot tamales and Delta dust, a luscious combination.

Everyone is eager to hear headliner Ike Turner, performing in his hometown for the first time in 30 years. The Ikettes, four women with gold jumpsuits painted onto ample bodies, warm up a crowd that doesn’t need warming up on an August night. They prance and paw and talk trashy, finally break into "Proud Mary." Ike joins them with his famous bass "rolling."

But somehow, Ike’s segment, with its golden-thighied women and flashiness, is anti-climactic. For these people have a couple of days,-some, a lifetime- of primal poetry under their belts. Flash is superfluous.

Honest Fruteland with his sweet voice and crisp new overalls is better. He understands the intersection of naughty and nice.

"I played my music for my grandmother the first time about a year ago," he says. "I understood why she was uncomfortable with the blues. A lot of blues was words laid across the tunes of old church songs. And those words were about drinking and women and sinning. But I know, too, she was quietly proud of me."

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