The Making of I Watched the Devil Die

When California-based guitarist Chris Cotton arrived in Clarksdale, Mississippi, to cut his solo debut, I Watched The Devil Die, he was essentially “making lemonade from lemons,” he says today. “My group, the Blue Eyed Devils, split up last January, and I called Jimbo to talk about what I should do next. He said, ‘You need to come down here and make your own record.’”

Jimbo, of course, is James Mathus, former Squirrel Nut Zippers frontman, who’s currently running Delta Recording in downtown Clarksdale. A versatile guitarist who’s toured with the likes of Buddy Guy and his own group, the Knockdown Society, Mathus had produced the Blue Eyed Devils’ second album, The Legend of Shorty Brown, at his old studio in North Carolina. He was, Cotton ascertains, “the only person I knew who would have insight into my situation.”

Weeks later, Cotton packed up his favorite acoustic guitar, a custom Larrivee 00-10, and with a documentary film crew in tow, headed to the Mississippi Delta.  “When I found out that this record was gonna happen, I only had about four original songs finished,” Cotton admits. He and Mathus agreed on a concept for his solo album, deciding that spontaneity would be a key theme for the recording. Putting the word out around Clarksdale, Mathus quickly assembled a rag-tag group of musical co-conspirators for an intentionally loose, two-day jam session.

Those musicians included Clarksdale drummer Lee Williams (a virtual unknown), and special guest guitarist Big Jack Johnson. “I’d met Big Jack at a club in San Francisco,” Cotton says. “A friend of mine who’s a DJ at a blues station here introduced me to him at a gig, and suggested that I ask him to play on the record. To my surprise, Big Jack agreed to sit in. It was really exciting – we cut ‘Black Night’ on the first take with a full band.”

Williams was another story entirely: the young drummer (“it’s unclear how old he is,” laughs Cotton. “He says he’s 26, but I think he’s only eighteen!”) idolized established Clarksdale players like Johnson, Sam Carr, and Terry Williams, but he’d been getting into trouble. “Jimbo has been trying to show Lee that he can make some money playing music,” Cotton explains, “so he called him for the date.”  In the studio, Williams opened eyes as his aggressive “Clarksdale boogie” backbeat propelled the session.

The approach proved to be the perfect fit: Although the musicians had never played together before, they gelled in the tiny studio, located in the one-time home of legendary WROX radio station – on the very site where such artists as B.B. King, Robert Nighthawk, Muddy Waters, and Elvis Presley played live over the airwaves.

Cotton plugged in a vintage RCA ribbon microphone, assembled his loose-knit band around him, and recorded everything live – with few overdubs, and, often, no second take. The sound built off the spontaneity – and was honed by the low-fi set-up of the studio itself. The sounds of passing traffic occasionally bled into the mics, whiskey bottles clanked, and at one point, a tube amp blew in the middle of a song. It was an ideal situation for recording a blues album, enhanced even further when it was mixed to analog – tape hiss and all – at Scott Bomar’s Electraphonic Recording in Memphis.

“Jimbo and I share that minimalist approach,” Cotton says. “We let the tape roll, and do it as live as possible. Some of it was kinda janky, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s what makes it perfect.”

Picture a dozen or so downtowners, lured out of their workplaces by the sound of a stinging blues song floating on the afternoon air. They stand out in the street, beneath an open studio window, soaking up the April sun. Then Big Jack Johnson lets a mean riff fly, and the crowd begins to move. “That’s exactly what happened on the second day, when we cut ‘Black Night,’” Cotton says. “Word got out that Big Jack was coming over, and we had nearly twenty people dancing and checking things out!”

Both that song and the title track capture an organic, only-in-Mississippi feeling, while Cotton’s covers of obscurities like Skip James’ “I’m So Glad,” the Mississippi Sheiks’ string band song “That’s It,” and Blind Willie McTell’s “Dying Crapshooter’s Blues” epitomize the life of a down-on-his-luck bluesman yet update them for the 21^st Century.

“Working with a Clarksdale rhythm section changed the feel and even the tempos from what I’d originally planned out,” Cotton says. “If I’d held the session in another town, the album would’ve ended up completely different. In a studio situation, there’s always gonna be things that work and things that don’t, but in Clarksdale, everything fell into place.” Speaking with absolute certainty, Cotton concludes happily that, “This was fate.”