#10 All Around Man

 

Album: Against The Grain, 1975

Also: Blues (Deluxe Edition) 2019

 

Having fulfilled his six-album requirement with Polydor Records, Rory Gallagher headed for pastures new with Chrysalis Records in 1975. Against The Grain, released on October 1, 1975, was his first album with Chrysalis. Among the album’s track listing is bluesman Bo Carter’s ‘All Around Man’.

The blues appealed to Rory from an early age. Though famously associated with Cork and Ballyshannon, Rory spent several years of his childhood living in Derry, Northern Ireland, where his father Danny’s family came from. At the time there was an American naval base in the area, so the American Forces Network radio was easy to pick up locally. A young Rory tuned into this on the family radio one day and was immediately taken by what he heard. His brother Dónal recalls being spooked by the sounds coming from the radio and running out the room! However, despite a scared wee brother, Rory from that point took in everything he could, from books, radio, and records, learning what he could about the blues.

 A key component of Rory’s output are his own interpretations of the work of the blues masters. He would feature these both on his studio albums and live shows. They are a treat, with the side effect that they may also get the listener exploring the blues for themselves! One blues group Rory enjoyed was The Mississippi Sheiks - his song of the same name can be found on 1978’s Photo Finish. The Mississippi Sheiks comprised of the Chatmon brothers Arminter, Sam and Lonnie alongside Walter Vinson, formed in 1928 and popular through the early to mid-1930s.

Arminter Chatmon was born in Bolton, Mississippi in 1892. Under the name Bo Carter, he began recording classic blues, but also specialised in the ‘dirty blues’, songs that were of a more suggestive nature, ranging from drugs to sex. These were pretty much banned from radio, but in the pre-World War Two era, were popular, primarily heard in juke joints.  ‘All Around Man’ was just one such song Arminter Chatmon recorded as Bo Carter and can be found album Banana In Your Fruit Basket, Red Hot Blues. The songs on the album are meant to be tongue-in-cheek, as well as somewhat suggestive.

 When Rory came to tackle ‘All Around Man’, his nephew Daniel said on the promotion for 2019’s Blues album that, “Rory pretty much re-wrote the lyrics on it, kind of, because the original’s quite pornographic! And Rory kind of made it a bit more subtle about what this guy, who’s an all around man, might do for you. Rory sort of changed the lyrics, like I say, to be a little more his taste – he was very shy about things like that!”

 Listening to the Bo Carter original, it is safe to say that Rory’s version is perhaps a little safer to listen to in a more general environment! In this instance, we will skip showing the lyrics and suggest listening to the Bo Carter video here if you are curious about what Rory rewrote.

Perhaps the seminal performance Rory did of ‘All Around Man’ was on his Old Grey Whistle Test special of March 2, 1976, which was also his 28^th birthday. On it, Rory flies through rip-roaring slide on his 1958/59 Fender Esquire (a guitar which was lucky to still exist after being run over by a baggage handling buggy during one US tour!), before switching to blues harp for an epic solo. How he managed to keep up the breath is quite astounding, harmonica being an instrument I have found to require ‘a lot of puff’! This also features on the deluxe version of the Blues album, a record that is well worth the investment, and a great introduction to the blues. This performance of ‘All Around Man’ is now somewhat revered and is well worth the watch.

In the late 1920’s Arminter Chatmon started to lose his sight. He performed for some time after this but fell away from music. He moved to Memphis in 1940 and he died there on September 21, 1964 from a cerebral haemorrhage, after already had several strokes.