Diary of a Shopkeeper, 24th September

Ramblin’ Red Moodie (r) with accompaniest, believed to be Peedie Wheatstraw (l)

With the Blues Festival raising the rafters at venues across the county, it’s the perfect time to pay tribute to an Orcadian who played a crucial part in the music’s development, but is now almost forgotten. Ramblin’ Red Moodie is not a well-known name in the county. Behind this stage persona is a more familiar identity for students of local history: James Moodie of Redsetter, illegitimate son of the 13th Laird of Melsetter.

As was all too common in the late nineteenth century, choices were limited for a youngster born on the wrong side of the blankets: either work down the notorious kelp mines, or seek a fortune overseas. Young James chose the latter, and joined the many Orcadians labouring in the harsh climates of northern Canada. Documentary evidence is scant, but we do have the lyrics of one of his later recordings, ‘Hudson Bay Blues’:

These snowshoes are made for walking

And that’s just what they’ll do

One of these days these snowshoes are gonna

Walk all over the north-west passage – ooooh!

Eventually, Moodie made his way towards warmer climes. Oral history has it that he was the first person to successfully navigate from Repulse Bay in the far north to the Mississippi River in the deep south, sleeping in a portable igloo that he dragged on a sled. By 1915 he had reached Memphis, Tennessee, where newspaper adverts list a singer called Moodie Waters performing in vaudeville and minstrel shows.

A few years later, his tracks can be picked up again in Birmingham, Alabama, where he appears as a member of a ‘barbershop blues’ quartet called The Moodie Blues. ‘Barbershop blues’ was a short-lived harmony-group offshoot, which failed to survive Robert Johnson’s withering putdown: ‘They met the devil at the crossroads at midnight, and all they got was a short back and sides.’

Around this time, Moodie was discovered by a talent scout for Chicago’s famous Cheese Records. It may have been the label’s name that prompted the lyrics of his first 78, ‘Cheesemonger Blues’, which was a hit in the juke joints of the 1920s. Most who heard it would not have appreciated its Orcadian origins:

You can keep you Gorgonzolas

Your Camemberts and Bries

Cause nothing cures the blues

Like a squeaky farmhouse cheese.

Moodie’s guitar playing was rudimentary: he joked that he’d learned to play by strumming on a snowshoe in Canada. And rather than the more common harmonica, his singing was interspersed by his trademark ‘Redsetter Howl.’ Listeners in the 1930s would have assumed the name referred to a wailing dog, but astute Orcadian readers will spot the reference to the farm he grew up on. Musicologist Professor K. Coffey has written that the Redsetter Howl may imitate the sound of the wind moaning through the Candle of Snelsetter. If so, it’s a remarkable example of Orkney geology making its mark on a major American art form.

Efforts by the record company to capitalise on his unique sound by renaming him Howling Wolf Moodie were thwarted: that name was already taken. Several releases came out by Bogling Coo Moodie, but that didn’t win favour with the southern public, and may have contributed to the decline of the singer’s career. In later years he lived in seclusion in a remote valley near Inverness, Mississippi. In his last known press interview, with a local school magazine called The Central Delta Segregationist, he claimed he’d chosen the location ‘to be closer to home.’ It’s unclear if he was referring to his Scottish origins, or if he just meant that his house was in Inverness, so it was sensible to live there.

Blues singers often reflect on the topical issues of the day, and Moodie was no exception. Sometimes, however, it took the newspapers a long time to reach his isolated log-cabin. The Titanic sink in 1912, but it wasn’t till 1932 that news of the disaster reached Moodie, inspiring his last 78, ‘Cruise Liner Blues’:

Me and my baby we got us the blues

Gonna cheer ourselves up by going on a cruise

Gonna buy fridge magnets, jewellery and booze

Icebergs don’t bother me – gonna bring snowshoes.

James Moodie rambled far from his Orkney home, but never forgot his origins. His gravestone in Shady Grove Cemetery, Mississippi, is in the shape of a giant fattie cuttie.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 27th September 2023. A new one appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations., and occasional small corrections or additions.