Washington Phillips: Jesus Was His Friend

Thanks to Mississippi Records, there’s been a renewed interest in George Washington Phillips. And while that imprint’s retrospective on the singer is surely depleted to the point where Ebay might be the only place to cop What Are They Doing in Heaven Today?, a few other collections exist in greater numbers. None carry such a cover as the Mississippi disc, but Yazoo released Key to the Kingdom isn’t too shabby. The one oddity – apart from Phillips himself – is the fact that tacked on to the end of this performer’s sixteen tracks are four stray shots of blues from Mamie and A.C. Forehand. None of the songs contributed by the couple are anything but quality even if the inclusion serves to take a listener out of the weird trance that Phillips is able to levy on all that hear his music.

A great deal of time in discussing Phillips’ brief career – after coming out of that stupor - has been devoted to figuring out what he’s playing on these tracks. Folks have figured a variety of different things, but seeing as pre-WWII instrumentation isn’t my bag, I’ll leave it to them. Considering that such a topic has so dominated any discourse on the man, though, it is worth noting that whatever variation on the zither that he plays – homemade or not – gives off something of a chiming piano sound, but only if you opened one up and plucked some strings. It’s not too detached from the sound that Mother Maybelle and the Carter family were able to arrive it with a combination of guitar and hammer dulcimer, but we actually know what those folks were playing – and they recorded more than a handful of songs.

To a certain extent, it doesn’t matter what instrument Phillips plied – the resultant songs possess an eerie quality that can’t be found elsewhere in American music. In some combination of early gospel music and country blues, Phillips unlooses a string of religiously themed work that’s befitting of any recent accolades heaped upon him.

Phillip’s “Denomination Blues,” split into two parts, includes his message of finding a way to live well enough to get into heaven. He expounds that whatever religious adherences one might possess, having Jesus is what counts. It’s also interesting to hear the singer move from differentiating between the disparate denominations represented under the banner of Christianity and then move into a discourse on the fleeting nature of physical possessions.

Alongside the overt religious messages sit some of the trappings folks now associate with blues players of the era. Phillips even at one point appropriates the opening verse used in “A Mother's Last Word to Her Daughter” where he sings “By and by, I’m going to see the king/Lord I don’t mind dying/I’m a child of G-d.” The progressions used throughout Key to the Kingdom lend a bit more credence to this cross genre conflagration, but again, where all of this comes from doesn’t matter - being granted the opportunity to hear these sides could equal whatever reward folks think is awaiting them in the beyond. Blasphemous, yes, but true.