Bruce Cockburn
Bruce Cockburn has spent more than five decades writing some of the most enduring songs in Canadian music, and on his new album, 'The Blood of Others,' released October 16th through Sunset Boulevard Records, he turns his attention to the songs that shaped him long before he wrote a single lyric of his own.
The album gathers material written by others, tracing a musical lineage that stretches from the gospel and blues records he heard as a child in Ottawa to the folk clubs and coffeehouses where he first found his voice. "What began back in the eighties as a vague notion grew over time into a strong desire to put together a collection of material, written by others, that I found sticking to the edges of my musical landscape," Cockburn explains. "The accumulation of these songs started in the sixties, before I'd even begun to try to create my own."
The album's title comes from an unexpected literary source, Simone de Beauvoir's novel of the same name, written during the Nazi occupation of France. "Among other things it deals with personal responsibility in the face of scary oppression, and the kinds of choices people make," he says. "I have borrowed the title because it seems perfect for an album of songs I didn't write."
'The Blood of Others' opens with "Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down," a Robert Wilkins gospel number Cockburn first encountered on an early ‘70s compilation. "Wilkins' powerful bottle neck guitar and passionate singing made this conversation with God instantly memorable," he says, noting he reworked the arrangement using the angular harmonies of his DADGAD tuning. From there, the album moves into "As Time Goes By," the Herman Hupfeld standard forever tied to Casablanca. "Who doesn't love the scene in Casablanca in which Dooley Wilson plays this song, Ingrid Bergman at his side?" Cockburn says. "I thought I should include the original preamble, which gives the familiar part of the song a context, but it seemed to want an update. Hopefully Herman approves."
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The album also traces Cockburn's early fascination with jazz and ragtime through "Buddy Bolden's Blues," a song he learned not from a record but from a book. "My friends were singing country blues and old timey music," he recalls. "I was drawn to the somewhat more sophisticated style of ragtime and early jazz." That thread continues on "You Belong to Me," a song Jo Stafford's voice carried into his childhood home. "Jo Stafford's gorgeously true voice was all over the radio with this when I was five," Cockburn says. "The geographical references were exciting, awakening the travel bug in me years before On the Road lit a fire under it."
Elvis Presley's influence looms large on 'The Blood of Others' as well, most directly on "That's Alright." "Elvis Presley hit the radio in Ottawa right when I was hitting adolescence," Cockburn says. "He was captivatingly charismatic of course, but the guitar. Scotty Moore's leads, by turns raucous and tender, bred a burning desire to play the instrument." Cockburn notes his own version leans closer to Arthur Crudup's original recording than to Presley's.
A hometown connection surfaces on "Four Strong Winds," the youngest song on the record. Cockburn credits Le Hibou, the Ottawa coffeehouse he calls his spiritual home, for introducing him to the song's writers, Ian and Sylvia, who played the venue regularly through the sixties. "We were all very excited when their song showed up on the radio," he says.
Listen on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4sh4MHP7lhrSUakxwZzwqz?autoplay=true
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