Bonnie Raitt / Francis Ford Coppola
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This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. One of this year's Kennedy Center honorees is singer and songwriter Bonnie Raitt. She's a ten-time Grammy Award winner, best known for her soulful voice and her hit singles from the late 1980s, Something to Talk About and I Can't Make You Love Me. She's also known for her depth of knowledge of classic blues. We're going to listen to Terry's 1996 interview with Raitt. At the time, she had released a live double CD called Road Tested. That collection featured duets with some of the singer-songwriters and rhythm and blues performers who had shaped her musical style. Raitt was a 20-year-old college student when she got to know and learn from them. Terry invited Bonnie Raitt to bring and play some of the blues recordings that most influenced her. Before we hear them, let's listen to a song from her first album, which was released in 1971. This is the Robert Johnson song, Walking Blues.
Well, you know by that I must have had them walking through.
Bonnie Raitt, welcome to Fresh Air. Hi, Terry. It's a pleasure to be here. You've brought with you some of your favorite recordings, some of the recordings that have really influenced you over the years. So I'd like to start with a recording that you brought by Mississippi Fred McDowell. Write me a few lines. Tell me why you've chosen this. This was recorded in 1964.
Well, I did because I've been performing that song, write me a few of your lines, as well as his Kokomo blues, probably since the first time I met Fred. I was about 19 in 1969, and he was part of the great blues rediscovery in the 60s of all these traditional Delta bluesmen who a lot of times, like Fred, had spent the last 20 years being farmers and then suddenly were discovered by either British or white college kids coming over that just fell in love. And I... got his record on our Hooley Records and learned the song. And then I was honored enough to meet him and travel around with him. And I actually opened a lot of shows for him early on when I was still cutting my teeth and right before I got my first record deal. So he's really my favorite and my closest friend, and I miss him a lot.
And I wanted people to know that when they hear my version on the live album, for example, that this is where we got it, the great Mississippi Fred McDowell. Oh, let's hear it, recorded in 1964.
Lord, when you get home, baby, please write me a few of your lines. Lord, when you get home, baby, slightly write me a few
That's Mississippi Fred McDowell, one of the records that Bunny Raitt has brought with her today for us to listen to. Now, what was it like when you were actually traveling with him and opening for him? I mean, was that one of the first times that you met one of the blues musicians who you liked so much from record?
Actually, I started out with the father of Delta Blues making an appearance in Cambridge at the house of a man who helped rediscover him, Dick Waterman, who came to be a very important part of my life and a lot of lives of blues people. Sun House was staying with Dick Waterman in Cambridge where I was going to college, and I heard through the Harvard radio station that he was going to be there, and this other blues fanatic friend of mine said, would you like to meet him? So it started with that, and then I met Dick Waterman that day. went on to get to hang out with Skip James and big boy Arthur Crudup and Fred McDowell and Mance Lipscomb and then Buddy Guy Jr. Wells were all people that Dick booked. And he had worked with Mississippi John Hurt, who unfortunately had passed away before I got a chance to meet him. But that was my entry into meeting all these great blues people. And part of the reason I took a
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