DENNIS McMILLON
Dennis McMillon Lyrics
« on: September 13, 2014, 11:59:05 AM »
Hi all,
North Carolina musician Dennis McMillon had one day in a recording studio in Linden, New Jersey in August of 1949 at which he recorded four titles. He really was a wonderful player and singer, and the songs can be found on the JSP set, "Blind Boy Fuller", Vol. 2", a terrific set which also includes all of the early titles of the Cedar Creek Sheik, Rich and Willie Trice, Floyd Council, Sonny Jones and some other players.
McMillon played "Woke Up One Morning" out of Vestapol tuning, using a slide sparingly but effectively in the course of his rendition. His time, ideas and execution are all stellar, as is his singing. It's always tantalizing to hear a single performance that is so strongly characterized and inventive by a player working in an alternate tuning that he/she didn't utilize for any other tunes in his/her recorded repertoire. McMillon accorded just about equal space for vocals and instrumental solos on "Woke Up This Morning". Here are the lyrics to the song, and I am attaching an .mp3 of of it for folks who don't have access to the recording and have never heard it. There is not currently any video of this performance up on youtube. One peculiarity of the recording (or possibly just JSP's re-issue of it) is that it has variable reverb; in the course of the second and third solos, you can hear reverb, which previously in the rendition sounded like normal room sound, come on like gangbusters. If this was an attempt to "sweeten" the sound, it was completely unnecessary, at least from my point of view. Here is "Woke Up This Morning":
Blues singer and guitarist who recorded for Regal in 1949, Born 1910 in South Carolina, he migrated to Pennsylvania to work in the steel mills around Bethlehem. He died in the early 1960s and is buried in Bethlehem, PA.
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