Rory Block Biography

 

“Probably the most persistent and enthusiastic requests from my fans for anything outside of the blues genre has been the repeated calls to record a Bob Dylan tribute. As with all my recordings, the songs that move me the most deeply, touching heart and soul, are the ones I choose to record.”   Rory Block

 

Taking a break from her award-winning Power Women of The Blues series, which has shone a light on women songwriters and performers over her three most recent albums, Rory throws her skills as a finger-picker and traditional blues arranger behind one of the greatly respected leading artists and songwriter of all-time: Bob Dylan. Performing all instruments herself, Rory combines acoustic and slide guitars, as well as drums and acoustic bass, to create a one-of-a kind arrangement of Dylan’s songbook.

 

Rory Block is a Gold-album selling and 7-time Blues Music Award winner, widely regarded as the top female performer of traditional country-blues. Rory’s commitment as a blues preservationist with an ear for finding the soul of every song she performs has rewarded her with accolades from the blues and roots music community.

 

Positively 4th Street Musings:

 

In March of 2020 we took a leap into the great unknown, and began broadcasting 90 minute shows every week from home. This unexpected journey has lasted over 4 years, and led to countless informal forays into a broad range of material by numerous artists current and past. Probably the most persistent and enthusiastic requests from viewers for anything outside of the blues genre has been the repeated calls to record a Bob Dylan tribute. But how would I, an artist associated almost entirely with blues for over 30 releases, suddenly switch to recording songs by one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived? Thinking wouldn’t help. It had to start, simply put, by plugging in the mics and pressing record. It’s always a mystery… 

 

As it happens I grew up in Greenwich Village and was a teenager when Bob Dylan’s songs were becoming huge hits. We didn’t think it unusual to spot John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, or Bob Dylan walking down west 4th street at a time when the area was overflowing with musicians of every description and level of fame. My father’s place of business, The Allan Block Sandal shop, was a centrally located and well known hub for local musicians, and west 4th street, where it intersected the one block long street called Jones street, became the center of my universe. By the time I was in my 20’s, Dylan was one of the most famous names in the music business.

 

It was during the 1960’s that I walked into Dad's sandal shop and saw an artistic looking man sitting and talking with my father. I was aware of who he was, a musician and local resident- but I was raised to respect peoples’ privacy and not fawn over anyone, known or unknown. It was just part of the general musical atmosphere that characterized the place and time. The following is excerpted from my autobiography When A Woman Gets The Blues:

 

DYLAN AT THE SANDAL SHOP

 

"I remember the hat, and the youthful face. He was not yet famous, so at that point he was among the many interesting people stopping by. He may have recently been signed to a label, but I don’t think his first album had come out yet. When I walked in he was sitting there talking to my dad, and I remember thinking that he had a very unique, artistic presence. After he left Dad told me something about the conversation. He said that Bob was a poet first and foremost who really didn’t care for the ‘business' side of things. His priorities lay in being true to his art. Right away I resonated with the message.

 

I understood it to mean that Dylan had integrity that he would not compromise. I also understood from this that it was OK to buck the system, to reject the shiny, glossy world of business in exchange for artistic honesty, a lesson which stood me in good stead many times over the years. It was an inspiration and the way I was raised to feel about music. People like Bob Dylan served to reinforce this important, grounding piece of information."

 

 

 

Choosing the Material:

 

As with all my recordings, the songs that move me the most deeply, touching heart and soul, are the ones I choose to record. This is always based on songs that leap up and cry out to me. It has everything to do with the message, the melody, and the energy in the song- and luckily, there is never a shortage of incredible songs to choose from.

 

The songs:

 

1. Everything Is Broken After the album was completed, having reached over 50 minutes in length, Holger Petersen of Stony Plain Records pointed out the wisdom of adding a straight-out blues song to round things out. I chose Everything Is Broken, which turned out to be just the fresh touch we needed. After that I felt ready to release the record into the vibrating world of sound waves that last and travel forever in outer space. Quite possibly some day, a million years from now, Everything Is Broken will be captured in another galaxy where someone may find it to still be relevant. When you think of it, the laws of entropy and thermo dynamics will always cause everything we know and love to break down, malfunction, or otherwise need repairs. That’s why this song is so relatable. It's also very funny, which made it a blast to record. Everything in the outro is true angst from my life.

 

The guitar: My method is to establish a tempo, then put down a click track, which I usually play by hand. This gives the track a little bit of an organic feel. Then I play a root part, often overdubbing a second layer in a different tuning (country blues style). From there I add bass parts, any other layers, and if the track calls out for drums, I create a program, usually hand placed, measure by measure. Last, I play slide. That’s the most exciting part of the process for me. I get to step out, soar around, and test my mettle. Sometimes a track calls for simplicity, other times it wants to be full speed ahead. Everything is broken needed a full throttle approach.

 

2. Ring Them Bells was the first song I recorded on this project. I chose it because I loved the powerful lyrics, the gospel theme, and the melody. But despite being the first, it was the last to be completed, even receiving adjustments after we added Everything Is Broken- but that’s a long and winding tale for another time. Finally, by some miracle, Ring Them Bells came together, and now when I hear it I feel like it’s right where I needed it to be.

 

The guitar: This track was illusive from the first session until after the project was supposedly finished. We kept revisiting it because one element or another would invariably present problems. It was recorded live with guitar and vocal together, old style, with no click track for tempo reference. This created no end of headaches when adding additional layers, as nothing locked in, tempo or tuning. The problem was made worse because I had tuned the guitar well below pitch for the sake of the vocal- but the strings were so loose that the root guitar always sounded out of tune. I added overdub after overdub to cover the original, but it was always clearly audible on the vocal track. At the last minute, after adding at least two different tracks in the bass range, it seemed to find the proper balance, and the dissonance faded into the background.

 

Then there was the tempo challenge. You can hear the track speeding up slightly at the bridge, and then it rushes into the drum parts, but in the end it just seemed to add urgency and excitement. There really is no solo part on the song, though slide is used to bolster and strengthen in the background. 

 

3. Like A Rolling Stone Possibly my favorite and most evocative Dylan song, this one just rolled out as if it was playing itself. It’s often when I don’t think I can do something that it comes out the best. If only I could explain how every brick I ever walked on in Greenwich Village cried out with this iconic song. The song is epic, life changing, and forever imprinted in the story of my consciousness. 

 

The guitar: The guitar parts (and vocal), were all “take 1,” and they harmonized together as if they had been written out in a chart. The effect of this seemed to land somewhere between the acoustic roots of the song and Dylan’s later evolution into electric. The original drum parts were so amazing that I tried to follow the pattern as closely as I could because the drum really leads the song, section by section. Then there are the astounding words- intriguingly honest, sometimes painful, can’t-look-away kind of words.

 

4. Not Dark Yet This song is a sermon. Not figuratively, but literally. This is another gorgeous Dylan song that releases a mysterious power into the cosmos. I couldn’t believe the meaning that jumped out of every word. “It’s not dark yet.... but it’s gettin’ there.” Make of it what you will.

 

The guitar: With slide, there’s a whole different feel between rocking out, and the poignant, lingering notes of a ballad. Then it’s all about tone, and less is more. Once again these guitar parts unfolded on auto-pilot and were right where they needed to be on the first take. Sometimes I listen to a recording and wonder who played it and how it came into being, as if I wasn’t there. I comfort myself thinking my first effort is just a guide- a demo, something we can fix later- but honestly, we almost always stay with the original. Later Cindy Cashdollar played a solo on her Weissenborn baritone guitar, and when we listened back to both of our solos at once, they wove together perfectly and formed harmonies in an amazing way. 

 

5. Mr. Tambourine Man This was the iconic ballad of the times, taking me back to everything I can point to and recognize about the place where I grew up. In my book "When A Woman Get The Blues” I have a chapter called “The Piebald Man.” We all saw this character tripping the light fandango down the Village streets. If he wasn’t the Tambourine Man I don’t know who was.

 

The Guitar: After trying several different directions for the guitar part on this track, ultimately I decided that the only thing that would work was the driving strumming of the original Dylan track. It was surprisingly difficult to hold it together while repeatedly drilling down with a flat pick. For one thing it invariably flew out of my hand. I gained a whole new level of respect for the strong rhythm guitar played by Dylan on these masterful early songs. Sometimes the simplest sound is the hardest to achieve, something my dad often told me, along with “It’s harder to play slow than to play fast.”

 

6. Positively 4th Street This is another all-out killer song from the Dylan catalog. Up there with Like A Rolling Stone, the painfully honest, biting, gritty words paint a personal picture of post-relationship dynamics we can probably all relate to. Bob always gets to the heart of the matter, and says it better than anyone else could- all without apology. Whoa baby, “You gotta lotta nerve to say you are my friend...” In my view this kind of boldness is incredibly refreshing.

 

The guitar: I tried a number of different approaches, but nothing hit the nail on the head. It took a lot of experimenting to find something that didn’t sound all-out weak. For some reason my version kept seeming painfully slow, even though we had matched the tempo to Dylan’s version, which never sounded slow at all. Crazy stuff. So this meant I needed to add some energy. The original track had those incredibly iconic organ riffs played by Al Kooper, that drove the original in such a spooky and recognizable way. Eventually I put parts in the open spaces that gave a nod to some of Kooper's lines, and that enlivened things. Of course the slide came last, and at that point I had an out of body experience. I think I could have gotten a lot more edgy and sarcastic with the vocal, but Rob kept liking what was happening, so I left it alone. 

 

7. A Hard Rain’s-A-Gonna Fall Part of why Dylan became so famous and beloved must be the way he hit every nail on the head with a precise blow, speaking “Truth To Power,” and bringing a sense of hope to the hopeless- those who watch governments running amok in complete opposition to the needs of the people. What has become of “Government of the people, by the people and for the people”? Dylan explains it in characteristically vivid terms, as relevant today as the day it was written.

 

The guitar: Ultimately I chose the same steady strumming approach I used with Tambourine Man, laying down a traditional flat picked sound for the foundation. After this I wanted something to add variety, so I tuned the guitar below pitch to a wild open tuning and just started playing arpeggios. We loved where it went, just had to find the right place in the mix to keep all the elements separate and not step on the vocal. 

 

8. Mother Of Muses I had never heard this one before, but discovered it among the tracks on Rough and Rowdy Ways. The song seems to be part jazz, part classic ballad, but also partly crafted out of some entirely new basic element- not hydrogen, helium, oxygen or iron, not copper, gold, aluminum or uranium, but something entirely new, quite possibly from a different dimension. Scientists confirm that there are parallel dimensions, ones we cannot see- so this is not just a figment of an overactive imagination, but a mathematical likelihood.

 

The guitar: This song was yet another one where the guitar part landed in the right place immediately. Experimenting as usual, we played take 1 and take 2 back together with no expectations- they harmonized and sounded like an old-time music box. This is why the outro is so long- because I just couldn’t let go of the intertwining melodies, and it allowed me to relax and fly free in a higher vocal register, something I learned from singing gospel.

 

9. Murder Most Foul I don’t think there is much I can say that will add to the shattering honesty of this historic tale. No one other than Bob Dylan could lay out the facts with this much power, without apology, pulling back the curtain on the depth of corruption which exceeds our ability to grasp. I still envision a full length documentary video to go along with this one. Haven’t found the film maker yet, but this song is too important not to pull out the historic footage.

 

The guitar: I don’t think there is much explanation required on this one either. The guitar needed to be done with the simplest possible approach, unadorned, a support layer beneath the immense weight of the story. From time to time I added a little emphasis for emotional value, but that’s all, until the slide on the way out, where the heart aches, reflecting on the history. Then, radio silence. That’s all I can say. We cry each time, remembering the day.

 

• Rory

​

Rory Block, Premier Acoustic Blues Artist

By Don Wilcock

 

"I live and breathe music."

Rory Block

 

Rory Block may not see herself the way her fans, the music world, and the press view her career. But seminal Blues guitarist Robert Johnson’s grandson Greg Johnson says, “When I hear Rory Block’s music, it’s as if my grandfather is here all over again.” Rolling Stone Magazine credited her with recording “some of the most singular and affecting Country Blues anyone, man or woman, black or white, old or young, has cut in recent years." 

 

In a career that has thus far produced 36 albums, six Blues Music Awards, and numerous world tours, Rory Block's fabled odyssey finds her at the absolute height of her talents, and at the top of the touring world, while at the same time living life as a music producer, author,  ordained minister (she refers to it as "Preaching the Blues"), a music producer, festival promoter, mother, wife and friend to thousands at her ChurchLIVE venue in rural Chatham, New York.

 

The Blues Foundation wrote “Today she is widely regarded as the top female interpreter and authority on traditional country blues worldwide." It can easily be said that she is the best acoustic blues artist performing today, having been nominated in January 2020 for the Blues Foundation’s prestigious Koko Taylor Award as Traditional Female Blues Artist, coming off a 2019 award for the Acoustic Artist of The Year.

 

Rory Block is the standard bearer for early American roots blues- a celebrated, multi award winning artist, and a songwriter whose originals ring with unadorned power and truth. Everything she performs becomes anointed, whether songs by legacy artists like Son House, Robert Johnson, or Bessie Smith. Asked how she finds the common denominator in the wide ranging styles and experiences she sings about, she responds “No matter what the outward circumstances, we all share in the same universal experiences, we’re all essentially rowing in the same boat, which is life. You can be an anointed painter. You can be an anointed writer or musician- it’s about doing what you love, and allowing a spirit to come through you that channels something bigger than you.” The New York Times called her playing “perfect, her singing otherworldly as she wrestles with ghosts, shadows and legends.” People Magazine said it simply, "If you like music steeped in tradition and genuine feeling, this is your woman." 

 

The daughter of a Greenwich Village sandal maker and influential country fiddle player, she spent her childhood surrounded by the likes of John Sebastian, John Hammond and Maria Muldaur who frequented her dad’s Saturday afternoon jam sessions. Bob Dylan lived just a few doors from the Sandal Shop at the height of the folk music revival of the early ’60s. She remembers seeing the young Dylan visiting with her father and found inspiration in his unique artistic presence.

 

She cut her first album at age 12 backing her father on The Elektra String Band Project, a folk concept album featuring many of the dedicated musicians who were part of the folk revival of the 60's. At 14, blues guitarist Stefan Grossman introduced her to Delta blues giants Son House, Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and Bukka White, all of whom she would later honor with her Mentor Series of tribute recordings on Stony Plain.

 

After running away from home at age 15, she and Stefan hitch-hiked their way to the west coast, which boasted its own unique roots music scene. There she met Mississippi Fred McDowell and a host of other luminaries while continuing to build on the foundation of her own musical inspiration. She recalls playing Tommy Johnson's "Big Road Blues" on stage at the Jabberwoke Caffe in Berkeley, when someone in the audience jumped up and shouted "She plays like a man!" “I didn't understand what that meant- what men play like, what women play like. I didn't see divisions or categories, I didn't separate myself by age, gender, race, demographics or even centuries… those things felt irrelevant. The music and the passion was deeper than anything outward. I was inspired by the powerful forces around me when I was growing up, and that's how it happens.” 

 

Back on the east coast she accompanied Stefan to the home of Rev. Gary Davis, where a handful of fortunate students, including David Bromberg, Roy Bookbinder and Woody Mann, showed up to take lessons. “I remember the warm lighting, the framed 'God bless this home' plaque on the wall, the doilies over the arms of the thread-bare chairs. He and Stefan would start the lesson. The Reverend would play at full speed and you had to leap in. He never stopped to explain, you just had to keep up. That was very typical of the way players learned from each other in the early days. They didn't have teaching videos- you were never going to be spoon-fed. You had to get really good at learning by watching and working hard.”

 

When her original song “Lovin' Whiskey” became a gold record in Holland, fans repeatedly thanked her for its message of surviving a relationship with an alcoholic, saying that the song had given them the strength to make it through and move on. It was then that she realized she was having an impact. And with this realization came an acceptance that she was not just someone who happened to sing and play guitar, but was uniquely driven by a mission to keep the old music alive, and to write songs about the most intense matters of survival and triumph- this, to her, became the essence of blues, and this is what has defined her musical journey.

 

Maybe it was the letter from a man who decided not to kill himself after hearing Lovin' Whiskey.

 

Maybe it was all the letters she received after her son Thiele's memorial album "House of Hearts."

 

Perhaps it was the moment Stevie Wonder played harmonica on "Gypsie Boy" while she stood next to him in the studio with tears rolling down her face.

 

Maybe it was when Mark Knopfler played a heart wrenching solo on Rory's song "Faithless World,"

 

Or when she and Bonnie Raitt played "Big Road Blues" together on stage.

 

Whatever the moments were, they collectively helped her to realize that she was having an effect on people, that the music that had saved her own life was universal and that she had an important mission to expand on its legacy. And gradually, she became too busy to recognize that she was becoming as iconic as her mentors – and as talented. 

 

Parcbench stated: "Rory Block is an interpreter par excellence... she has an uncanny ability to capture the essence of the original while letting her own artistry shine through. Her voice comes with its own, instantly identifiable survivor's rasp, and her guitar work is equally stunning. There is no doubt that someday there will be many a tribute album to the great Rory Block."

 

“There’s a real level of comfort I feel as I get more and more experienced, more mature, less insecure and more determined,” says Rory today. “I know what I’m doing. I’m still here, and I might as well stay the course and do it as fully and completely as possible. Now there’s a freedom in it. Perhaps there is a mantel of protection in the realness of blues itself. No matter what else happens or goes wrong around me, the music provides the life boat. I want to use this opportunity to do something of value for others. That right there is the essence of what I need in my life- to be of service. That’s why I’m here.”

 

Her latest CD, Prove It on Me, is the second in her Power Women of The Blues series that began with her 2018 release A Woman’s Soul: A Tribute to Bessie Smith. This recording is an important step forward. On it she finds a new more mature voice uniquely her own while paying homage to some of the groundbreaking blues women of a bygone era.

 

On Prove It on Me she erases the decades, breathing fresh life into Ma Rainey’s version of the title cut and Memphis Minnie’s “In My Girlish Days” interjecting them with both a sass and sensibility in a clarion call torn from today’s headlines. Plus, she introduces us to some women who got lost in the rewriting of a musical history that figuratively buried some of the best female singers of the ’20s and ’30s with: “He May Be Your Man”  by Helen Humes, who replaced Billie Holiday in the Count Basie Orchestra in 1938; the attitude dripping “If You’re A Viper” originally released by a Chicago singer known as The Viper Girl Rosetta Howard; and “I Shall Wear A Crown” by blind gospel singer Arizona Dranes.

 

"With this recording I decided to celebrate some of the great female artists who were not as well-known (with the obvious exception of Ma Rainey and Memphis Minnie). Women of that era were certainly not given support to leave home, children and families to hop a freight train and go from bar to bar,” explains Rory. “Society really would have frowned utterly on that, and women knew it. They didn’t have permission to go out there as much as men did. Their recorded material might have been left in the back of an archive somewhere, and perhaps not widely promoted as a result. Some of their recordings probably got swept under some rug somewhere, and many great women artists essentially disappeared. Still other voices did make it through, people like Big Mama Thornton, Rosetta Tharpe, Sippie Wallace, and some of the women who sang jazz like Ella Fitzgerald, and also gospel, like Mahalia Jackson. Knowing the above, my goal with Prove It On Me was to bring to light some of these great talents who for whatever reason did not become as famous.”

 

The surprise bonus on Prove It on Me is a Rory Block autobiographical original “Eagles,” with its lyric: My parents did not want me/They were just too young/Their lives and dreams were calling/Taking care of number one/So I grabbed a guitar/Touched the strings of steel/Never put it down,/the way it made me feel.

 

Sure to become a signature song with as much pathos as anything Willie Dixon ever wrote for Koko Taylor, it was the last number recorded, an afterthought that took on a life of its own. “It turned out to be a different tempo and chord progression than the original song I set out to record – in essence it was a whole other song, so I either had to abandon it or create something new. I was listening to it really loud in the studio, and all of a sudden, I got this hair raising feeling about what it needed to say. So I just started scribbling words, and singing. I wondered, ‘Is this as powerful as I think it is?’ I got swept away, and decided I had to write that song.”

 

Rory Block, today’s everywoman, finally recognized for what she’s grown to be, the premier voice of today’s acoustic blues guitar, renewing the promise of long forgotten blues women of the past and adding new energy that’s a piece of her heart. “My husband, Rob and I, we talk about it a lot. We jump into the car every day and listen to whatever we just recorded. That’s what gives us energy. That’s what gives us purpose. I think to myself if I’m ever not recording, there’s going to be some kind of dropout to my life. There’s going to be some kind of void. I always have to be surrounded with music to feel the energy I need to live. I mean, its energy, its spirituality. I live and breathe music.”

 

The songs on this recording celebrate the following artists, and are inspired by their original recordings listed below:

 

• Helen Humes

He May Be Your Man – Helen Humes, EMI April Music (Canada) Ltd

 

• Madlyn Davis

It’s Red Hot – Madlyn Davis, Spikedriver LLC

 

• Rosetta Howard 

If You’re A Viper – Herbert Moren, Rosetta Howard, Malcolm Horace, MCA Music Canada

 

• Gertrude “Ma” Rainey

Prove It On Me – Ma Rainey, Public Domain

 

• Arizona Dranes

I Shall Wear A Crown – Traditional

 

• Eagles – Rory Block, BMI

 

• Lottie Kimbrough

Wayward Girl – Sylvester Kimbrough, Winston Holmes, Spikedriver LLC

• Memphis Minnie

In My Girlish Days – Ernest Lawler, Songs of Universal Inc.

 

• Merline Johnson (Yas Yas Girl)

Milk Man – Copyright Control

 

• Elvie Thomas

Motherless Child – ELVIE THOMAS,  Elvie Thomas, Boot House of Tunes

 

Produced by Rory Block and Rob Davis

Executive producer – Holger Petersen 

Recorded, mixed and mastered by Rob Davis, in Aurora Productions Mobile Studios

Graphic design – Mark Dutton, Halkier+Dutton Design

Photographer – Sergio Kurhajec

 

Rory block and “The Rory Block Band”

All vocals – lead and harmonies

All guitars – root & support guitars, slide, bass-played-on-guitar

All drums – guitar bongos, oatmeal boxes, percussion, played by Rory Block

Sounds – Rob Davis