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Tradition accomplished
A teenager’s unusual folk-soul experiment comes around again.
By Jim Irvin.
Drifting apart: Terry Callier ventured toward an under-explored crossroad.
Don Paulsen/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
IN 1959, pioneering young blues historian Samuel Charters published his book The Country Blues, the result of many months of dogged, in-person research following the cheroot trail of Robert Johnson and his contemporaries. It proved to be highly influential and won him a gig at jazz label Prestige curating its blues and folk output. One of his discoveries was a young black singer from Chicago with a honeyed baritone, who played acoustic guitar and brought soul and jazz to folk music, in a manner not unlike Nina Simone’s. Terry Callier, a contemporary of Curtis Mayfield, was still only 19 when Charters produced his debut album, a ruminative slow-motion style collision, The New Folk Sound Of Terry Callier ssss (Craft), at Webb Recording in Chicago on July 29, 1964.