It’s real spiritual.” Like all of the country’s major Atlantic ports, Charleston County is American cultural bedrock. Water is a life force, is rebirth and renewal.

water had such a profound impact on our traditions and the culture-what we ate, how we lived. Or rapper and activist Benny Starr, whose song “Resurrection” (track 23) opens with a reflection on the landscape: “Where I grew up . . . Or Charlie McAlister, a singer-songwriter who created homemade ditties such as “Paradise” (track 9), with its wholly original sound. Listen to Alice Wine at home in Johns Island, who first shared the lyrics “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize,” an update of the hymn “Hold On” that became the famous civil rights anthem (track 21). Here is a land rich in musical innovators. Jamerson arrived in Detroit in high school from his native Edisto Island in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, the state’s southeastern coastal region distinct for its geography and culture, of which Charleston is the main city. More No. 1 hits, the label notes, than by Elvis, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Rolling Stones combined. I’m telling you all my secrets now.” Jamerson died at just forty-five in 1983, and because Motown didn’t attribute the players on its sessions for years, his influence went largely unappreciated in his lifetime the list of songs to which he contributed-as the anchor for the house band, known as the Funk Brothers, from 1959 until 1973-is staggering. I look at people walking and get a beat from their movement. “I picked things up from listening to people speak. I created, man,” he told journalist Nelson George. No one could hear what he heard beneath a chord progression and melody. recording sessions, when Motown Records producers would give James Jamerson, the studio’s in-house bassist, the charts for new songs, they provided him only the chord changes with no actual bass lines.

Order the South Carolina Music Issue & SamplerĪt Hitsville U.S.A.

Echo jason walker fingerstyle