Eddie Boyd, who moved to Finland, regretted the praise song he made for Helsinki: “There is deep-rooted racism in this country”

Blues

Pepe Ahlqvist & Jukka Gustavson: Stovall, Coahoma – A Tribute To Eddie Boyd. Bluelight Records. ★★★★

Eddie Boyd: The Brotherhood Sessions. Blue North. ★★★

Helsinki In early 1970, a new “African-style” decorated night restaurant, Safari Club, was opened on Eerikinkatu, and live music performers were hired as ushers. One of the first was an African-American pianist, singer and songwriter in his sixties Eddie Boyd.

His career didn’t start off well. The first name was wrong twice in Helsingin Sanomat’s entertainment announcement, and the expectations did not meet anyway – both ways. The restaurateur had demanded to “play tango and all kinds of other dance music”, as Boyd recently told the Finnish Blues News magazine.

At the same time, Boyd suspected that he had only been hired because of the restaurant’s “skin color that matches the name”, not as a distinguished blues professional. “In my life, I have never performed in a place with such a depressing atmosphere.”

Still, he stayed in Finland. Boyd already fell in love with a Finn in the spring Leila Hirvosenmoved to Helsinki in autumn and summer 1970 and lived with him on Helsinginkatu until his death, until July 1994. Next to the front door of Crab 12 C from those years, there is still a plaque that was installed by the Finnish Blues Society of blues enthusiasts in 2009.

Boydin so the memory lives on, and so does the music, now by Pepe Ahlqvist and Jukka Gustavsonin in bloody versions. They have employed a guitarist Tomi Leinon with the trio, an album whose core is composer and lyricist Eddie Boyd, a songwriter who has been recording for forty years.

The most obvious choice is his only number one hit Five Long Years (1952), a typical blues story about a man left by a girlfriend. Sung by Ahlqvist’s trepidation, it really oozes the pain of disappointment, which is accompanied by Hammond organist Gustavson’s piano solo. It sounds invigorating, because usually the gripping feeling is composed by an electric guitar – like for example Eric Claptonin and B.B. Kingin recording Five Long Yearsin in versions.

The line-up strongly supports the existence of this album – familiar with traditions, but not stuck in them. A song could be used as a metaphor for an attitude that takes into account the passage of time The Blues Is Here To Stay (1959), where Ahlqvist replaces the word “mambo” with the word “hip hop”.

Only deviation is the album’s new title track Stovall, Coahomawhich stylistically reaches back to Boyd’s childhood to the 1920s. He grew up as a teenager in the fabled birthplace of the blues in Mississippi, on the cotton plantations. It also becomes the name of the album Stovall, Coahoma.

The album’s motive remains unclear, as nothing was written to accompany it. Or maybe the album’s core audience is blues consumers? It would have been appropriate to tell Boyd’s story at least from the years in Finland and to reflect on his importance.

Lack of a record dating back to Boyd’s Helsinki years The Brotherhood Sessionswhich covers the editorial manager of Blues News, a magazine focused on blues music Pete Hoppula outlines the background of the publication.

This album is not related to Finland. Boyd, who moved to his former hometown of Chicago in 1974, recorded the album’s eight songs with his friends, apparently without any big plans. The recording is not the best, although it emphasizes the randomness of the situation.

The central song of the session is a social one emphasizing equality Brotherhoodwhich Ahlqvist and Gustavson also interpret on their own album.

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“I tried to give a little warning.”

Boydin the most famous Finnish song, closing the album by Ahlqvist and Gustavson Praise to Helsinki (1970) is just wishful thinking next to it. Later it was revealed that Helsinki did not deserve his praise.

“Eddie was very excited at the beginning that there is no racism in Finland, even though I tried to warn a little. In that high state, he then made the Helsinki song, which he later also regretted,” he recalled Leila Boyd under the unveiling ceremony of the plaque in May 2009.

The same tone was already in Boyd’s 70th-anniversary interview published in Helsingin Sanomat in 1984, according to which everyday life in Finland and Helsinki had turned out to be “lousy”:

“There is very deep-rooted racism and brutality in this country.”