Album Review: Too Close

"Bishop" Joe Perry Tillis first attracted attention as a migratory blues musician while roaming the south of the United States more than 60 years ago. He is a relatively unknown genius who played a style of blues that kept alive the traditions that inspired the likes of The Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton. He died in November 2004, but not before his unique approach to gospel blues had been preserved on record for the first time.

Tillis, who was one of the final performers of rural African-American music, was born in 1919 in Elba, Alabama. In the 1940s, Tillis played the Chicago blues circuit alongside all-time greats like Muddy Waters, Furry Lewis, Blind Willie Johnson and John Lee Hooker. The reason Tillis has never received the recognition garnered by many of his contemporaries is that he refused to record his music, explaining that he made more money playing live than he ever would by making records.

When a revelation convinced him blues was the devil's music, Tillis moved back home and began preaching the gospel, before once again picking up his guitar and forging his unique brand of gospel blues. Tillis continued playing his version of the blues, signing gospel and preaching - despite going blind in the 1950s - up until his death in November 2004. Never ordained, he adopted the title Bishop because of his work at Our Saviour Jesus Holiness Pentecostal Church in Samson, Alabama.

In 1972, Swedish music archivist Begnt Olsson tracked down Tillis at his church in Samson, Alabama, and recorded the tracks that comprise Too Close over three sessions. Tillis was frail, but played guitar, both electric and acoustic, with a trembling fragility and world-weariness that is truly transcendent.

Combining testimonies and extended hymns, Tillis' sound is musically similar to the blues, but his lyrics are totally in praise of the Lord and entirely without the dark overtones that usually proliferate in the blues.

God Don't Like It and Nobody's Fault But Mine sum up Tillis' reasons for turning toward the Church and abandoning his past lifestyle, whilst Kennedy Moan and Tell Me Why You Like Roosevelt both highlight Tillis' political and social concerns. His slide guitar on the final track, Do You Know The Man, is stunning and his voice is fuelled with an enlightenment all but unseen in the 21st Century.

Tillis' unique gospel-blues style needed to be preserved and, for capturing a now largely extinct form of rural blues, Too Close is an essential document. The only shame is that this will be the virtuoso's only ever album.