Song of the Day 7/14: Jake Xerxes Fussell, “The River St. Johns”

Jake Xerxes Fussell is an old-fashioned folk musician, interested mostly in preservation of songs that are still in the public domain. This song, the single from his newly released album “Out of Sight,” is taken from a WPA recording from the ’30s of a blind preacher in South Carolina recalling the call of a fishmonger from his youth. Fussell turned it into this haunting tune.

I tracked down the original WPA recording that Fussell started with, and it’s obvious that more than simple preservation is going on here.

Fussell started playing this live a couple of years ago, and it sounds almost as good solo.