Delaney Bramlett and David Ralston - Master and Apprentice

I was saddened to hear that rock-blues icon Delaney Bramlett (think Delaney and Bonnie from the sixties) died yesterday - but not so much for the reasons other die-hard musicians are saddened. I confess I didn't know his music so well. And I never personally met the man. This is not a eulogy for a musician. It's my tribute to a type of bond that arguably goes beyond love and has everything to do with music and passion - and nothing to do with sordid eroticism.

In the last decade of his life, Delaney did something he hadn't done much in his career for some time. He took on an apprentice.

Let me back up and say one thing first, and say it emphatically: Delaney Bramlett sang the blues like no one else ever sang the blues, and as well as anyone ever sang the blues. Once you hear Delaney Bramlett sing the blues, you can well understand why he might not be inclined to try to teach someone else to do it. Nothing in Delaney's singing or his voice was artificial or contrived. There was simply nothing to teach.

How exactly do you teach someone to turn pain into sounds that match screeching metal string harmonics? Be clear. Whatever Delaney might do as a master mentor, it was not voice training or technique. Well maybe there were elements of trying to explain how to sound more raspy, or to "hold your mouth like this," but it was not about the technique - it was about scraping the insufferable sweetness off the excruciating yelps of wounded human feelings and letting that sound communicate what is...well...real.

Hell, if anything, Delaney Bramlett would have to teach a protégé how to NOT sing.

Enter David Ralston. David is an Indiana white boy with the soul of a 1950's seventy-three year-old black bluesman. David is arguably the best unsigned guitar blues artist alive - unsigned only because he only does it his way. Not because he's an asshole artist, but because - as he has told me with all sincerity for years - he just can't do music any other way.

Through a long and enchanting process which I won't get into for the sake of space, Dave was recommended to Delaney and Delaney - wonder of wonders - wanted to work with Dave. Authoritative rumor has it that Delaney had previously refused (or simply not been up to) working with Stevie Ray Vaughn when Vaughn requested it. For whatever reason, Delaney wanted to, and/or was up to, working with this young artist from Indiana.

Ralston, bred in Indiana, inspired in Austin, and working as a substance abuse counselor with Marines in Okinawa, Japan resembles Delaney in only one way that I could discern once I started hearing them collaborate. Both David and Delaney have no tuning switches between their guts and their lips. As I've jokingly told David, you have only one switch with two positions: off and on. If you turn on Delaney Bramlett or David Ralston, you get only one thing. And it's always loud. Why must a blues song be loud? Well, what fun is it to cry quietly?

And here is where it gets a little weird (and maybe this is what makes it a lot blues): it can't be "good" and it can't be "bad" because it's just what it is. It's either on, or it's off. You either like it or you don't. But it ain't going to change.

I could tell many stories but if you listen to Delaney sing while David plays guitar sitting at a kitchen table, you'll come as close to crying like a baby as modern man is capable of. Soggy cereal, dude.

David regularly flew from Okinawa to California to spend days at a time recording with Delaney. The man who played on stage with, or recorded with, or personally collaborated with Lennon, Clapton, Allman, Harrison, Hendricks, Joplin and countless musical deities shared dreams, ideas, spiritual insights, addictions, deaths, and a few good, swift kicks in the ass with a wide-eyed, star-gazing apprentice who salivated over, and internalized everything the old man had to say.

David loved Delaney. Delaney wasn't necessarily always kind, always right (either about the music, the production, or his own health), or always available. After all, he was the kid's mentor, not his dad. Delaney was Delaney. One thing Delaney never did, and never could have done, and that undoubtedly caused him not a small amount of annoyance at times, was to make David Ralston be Delaney Bramlett. In this failure, master and apprentice were truly father and son. Totally the same, totally different.

Delaney bled on David's shirt in at least one gut-clenching near-fatal health episode. David never said, but I suspect he shed a tear or two over the old man more than once. Don't worry Dave. Your secret's safe with me. And when I say "old man" I know Delaney was only 69 when he died yesterday. But remember, 30 is ancient for a true blues artist.

If I understand it corrrectly, David was at least indirectly responsible for bringing Delaney and Bonnie back into the same house for at least a short period of time during one near-death encounter. Yes, my understanding is that Delaney and Bonnie did end on good terms. If not, perhaps we can all let this simple account stand as a final peaceful chapter in one of the grandest books in American music lore. Let us let it be. There is good reason to believe it is accurate.

Using a trick I know every songwriter reading this will know and laugh at, I will conclude this by saying, I said all the above to say (blank).

I said all the above to say that apprenticeship is well and alive at a level far deeper than any reality show will ever capture. The life-blood passing of soul and life experience that happened with knight and squire really does happen, and it really did happen between an old crusty blues musician and an eager young neophyte. Now the mantel is completely passed.

Delaney has many close friends and countless acquaintances who will always remember and honor him. Delaney undoubtedly passed on many tips and wisdom bits to many musicians. I don't know. I never met the man in person.

I write this solely on the basis of having known and worked with David Ralston for several years and I purposefully have not bothered him during this time to try to gather, or verify facts or details. But I think I need only direct you to search the internet for the collaborations between Delaney Bramlett and David Ralston (particularly the "blues in the kitchen" video on YouTube) to get that whatever form and essence it may take, the heart and soul of Delaney Bramlett and the history of American California Rock blues music (is that a genre?!) is safely embedded in the chest of David Ralston.

Look and listen for yourself.

Farewell Delaney Bramlett. Though I never met you, I thank you for what you did for soul music and for what you did with David Ralston. And thank you David Ralston for listening to the old guy.

copyright 2008, Barry Dayle Adams, old dam productions, all rights reserved