Robert Cage was a Delta bluesman whose music is still well preserved today by Fat Possum Records. Born in 1947 to a grocery store owner in New Orleans, he began playing country guitar at the age of eleven. Cage would move to Woodsville, Mississippi, a city that would become is home and final resting place. When the times called for a move to the electric, he went happily along; hard twangs gave way to hopes of greater fortune. In the end, he settled down and married and took a job as a mechanic. Towards the end of his life he found his way back to his musical roots, but the modern styles he adopted were irrevocable.
1998's
Can See What You're Doing is the only full-length album Cage produced. Part of the appeal of the song "Bundle Up and Go" is that it seems to change every time it's played: sometimes it's a quintessential blues composition, other times the strumming feels more progressive than it should. His rendition can also sounds like a giant improvisation, each hum and mock mimic of note a way for him to stall and keep from remembering the true lyrics. If you're puzzled, listening again and again can never hurt. <TM>
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