Asie Payton died of a heart attack on May 19, 1997, in Holly Ridge, Mississippi. It occurred in the early afternoon, while he was driving a tractor in the same fields he'd worked most of his sixty years. For all of 1995 and most 1996, Fat Possum tried unsuccessfully to convince Asie that the world outside Mississippi needed to hear him. But despite living below the poverty level and desperately needing the easy money of a gig, he could not be lured away from Washington County for more than a couple of hours.
Fat Possum succeeded in recording Asie twice: once at Junior Kimbrough's club, and once at Jimmy's Auto Care, Fat Possum's old studio. Obviously, all the songs on Worried were recorded during these two sessions, and originally intended to be demo tapes. At the time, all we knew about Asie was that he lived in a shotgun shack--no phone, no a/c; and that whenever the fields were dry enough for tractor tires, he was working in them. When they were too wet, Asie was impossible to find. He lived in Holly Ridge almost all of his life and, like his father before him, spent Saturday nights playing in one of the two small grocery stores that qualify Holly Ridge for a name on the map-- a place, instead of just a county-road intersection.
Reviews:
This posthumous complement to Payton's only studio disc is something of a revelation. Not only does it confirm that he was a great blues and soul singer (just check out "Back to the Bridge," with its "In the Midnight Hour" riff, or the lazy groove of "I Got a Friend," with its percolating wah-wah guitar line), but it shows the man could play funk too -- "1000 Years" roars out of the speakers straight to the dancefloor, powered by some unexpected horns, and "Need My Help" has all the power of a latter-day Hendrix song. All of that isn't to say he didn't play a lot of gutbucket acoustic blues, too; "Livin' in So Much Pain" is about as down-home as you can get. In many ways, there seemed to be no end to his passion for different styles of music. "Nobody But You" could almost have come out of the Stax studios circa 1965, while "Watch Yourself" is a barnburning R&B/early rock & roll track that kicks like a mule. While Payton's other album showed him to be a man of talent, this offers that talent to its full extent, drawn together from sessions recorded in studios and at the houses of friends. But instead of being a ragtag collection of odds and sods, the result is a soaring testimony to someone who was an unsung great in his lifetime. ~ Chris Nickson, All Music Guide
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One of my longstanding complaints about recent blues releases has been that blues musicians seem to lately be stuck in the past (like many of their jazz counterparts) and that blues seems to be stranded somewhere between Mississippi '32 and Chicago '68 (of course I do realize that my opinion holds the weight of a vivisected gnat). Then I receive a fresh, creative album like Just Do Me Right, and my hopes skyrocket -- only to be dashed by the fact that Asie Payton died of a heart attack back in 1997.
Payton's debut album, Worried, came out in '99, and was thought to be the only album of his that would ever be released. However, thanks to an old friend and some digging around, Fat Possum has been able to release this second recording. Don't think that this is a collection of scraps salvaged from the dumpster and cut and pasted together into a shoddy product. Quite the opposite. Just Do Me Right is some of the best blues I've heard in years. Though the music on the disc spans from 1980 to 1994, it feels as though it's just had its umbilical cut and had been slapped on the ass. Payton, who lived and performed (and rarely recorded?!) in Washington County, Mississippi, was living a tradition he never had to revisit. Therefore, his music seems a bit more sincere than most while also seeming a bit more innovative.
The music has a serious edge to it that cuts along some pure funk (like "1000 Years" and "I Got a Friend") and hard-rocking blues (like the anthemic "Need My Help") while songs like "Lose My Happy Home" feels like it's been mixed by some hipster Paris DJ. Listening to this disc suddenly makes me mournful of the loss of a musician I'd never heard of before while filling me with the joy listening to any music from a true artist gives.
Fat Possum Records:
http://www.fatpossum.com
Bill Campbell
