Charley Patton and Lännen-Jukka

By Oren Tikkanen, NWF Music Columnist

The story goes that in 1920, a young fellow named “Jukka” left Finland for America, and landed in New York. After working at a few jobs there, he drifted down south, working on the railroads and in the mines of Virginia and North Carolina, then hopping freights back and forth across the country for several years. Along the way, he lived a hard life of hobo jungles, work injuries, boozing, fighting, and occasional solace in the company of women.
He also soaked up the blues and mountain melodies of the time, and learned to play the 5-string banjo in the old, “clawhammer”, pre-bluegrass style that had been transmitted by African slaves to southern whites. Jukka also sang folk songs from Finland, and claimed to have known Hiski Salomaa and other musicians in the Finnish immigrant community. The Great Depression sent Jukka back to Finland, and he settled in a cabin in the woods of Haukivuori. Because he had been to the West, he became known as “Lännen-Jukka.”
Forty years later, in 1973, he was sent a visitor by one of his neighbors. It seems that the neighbor may have been tired of having her grandson – “a greasy-haired layabout” as he now describes his former self – hanging around her cabin all day doing nothing but playing old blues and country music on his guitar. She told the boy go find Lännen-Jukka. “He just sits there playing the guitar alone. He’s been to America and everything.”
So 16-year-old Jukka Karjalainen met Lännen-Jukka sitting on his front steps, playing a banjo – not a guitar – and singing “like Charley Patton, Howling Wolf, or some other
The young man went on, under the name of “J. Karjalainen,” to become famous on the Finnish music scene as a singer-songwriter-electric guitarist. A couple of years ago, when the recording company he worked with developed problems, he went home to his little yellow house in the woods, and learned to play clawhammer banjo. Eventually, he set up a simple but very modern recording system, and recorded himself playing and singing songs of – or in the style of – Lännen-Jukka.

It is a great story – and it might even be factually true. Who can tell? Karjalainen himself remarked to a Helsingin Sanomat writer last October, “Jukka of the West is such a good story, that if it weren’t true, someone would have to invent it,” – reportedly with a “wry expression...(but) with a completely straight face...” And later in the interview, he says, “Jukka of the West also had Karjalainen as a surname,” and then he grins. I might pass over those clues if I hadn’t already had experience with Arto Järvelä’s playing of melodies composed by the mysterious “Hans Lankari,” or for that matter, heard myself telling audiences about my mentor, the “semi-mythical Uncle Taisto.” I will not go so far as to say that some fellows invent the perfect older man if he doesn’t happen to turn up in our lives. Maybe I will suggest that we tend to embroider the reality of our heroes – I’ve even caught myself telling stories about Johnnie Perona, and then wondering if I made them up.
The important thing here is the music and story of Lännen-Jukka, whoever he is, and from whatever era. Now, I’m going to tell you straight away that if you haven’t already learned to love the old, deep, country blues of the Mississippi Delta, or maybe the field recordings of Appalachian Mountain banjo songsters with untrained voices, you are going to wonder, “Just what in the heck is going on here?” Even if you are fluent in Finnish, the slurred consonants and hoarse-voiced delivery may make understanding the words a little difficult. Many of the melodies are not based on the kind of straight major or minor key scales to which we may be accustomed, but are modal, with “flatted 7ths and 3rds” from African-derived blues scales, and from Celtic-influenced “mountain modes.” Even the banjo style is old – arguably some centuries older than the bluegrass-style picking of Earl Scruggs and his followers. I do think that some of the old Finnish kantele tunes and Kalevala-style songs use these modal scales.
What Karjalainen has done is to create a character. Whether “Lännen-Jukka” is his own invention, or if he is “channeling” the essence of an old friend, the character is believable. Indeed, I think I’ve met him a couple of times myself, with different names and faces. Just last summer, there was one old reissupoika up in Thunder Bay who played the mandolin and told me how he was badly hurt in the mines of Manitoba, but was cured by a Cree medicine woman...
Karjalainen’s CD, Lännen-Jukka, Amerikansuomalaisia lauluja, is presented in the form of a hard-cover booklet with disc attached to the back cover. There are extensive notes in Finnish and English on the history of Lännen-Jukka, and all the song lyrics are printed out in Finnish and in English. If your Finnish is as limited as mine, you will have no problems following the text – and one needs to understand the words in order the grasp the story that Karjalainen tells.
For instance, Karjalainen has a “ouija-board” that he says belonged to Lännen-Jukka. The old man had been using it as a kitchen cutting-block, but it is said that it had a connection to a seance that Jukka attended in the mansion of an old widow in St. Paul, Minnesota. Out of that experience came the song “Sormus Se Kulki Itteksensä (The Ring Moved by Itself)”. This song is remarkable for the authentic folkloric style of its words and music. Four times the question is asked, “Missä, missä mun kultain on (where, oh where is my sweetheart)?”, and four times the ring moves itself on the ouija-board to spell out–in English–“d-e-a-d”. The melody is in a modal-minor scale, and if it were played on a 10-string kantele, it would sound like a Kalevala runo, but with the spare clawhammer banjo, it could be an old American mountain tune. “Appalachian-Kalevala” by way of Minnesota – I love it! – and the universal experience of desperately turning to some kind of divination to find out about a loved one could take place on the shores of Lake Ladoga as well as on the banks of the Mississippi.
Another episode in Jukka’s adventures unfolds with “Nancy ja Sally,” as he describes in a bare-bones way his mischievous attempt to carry on simultaneous relationships with two red-headed women. The song comes to a predictable conclusion with Lännen-Jukka escaping out a window.
There are new – or at least, Jukka’s – versions of “Minun Kultani Kaunis On” and “Maailman Matti” and settings for traditional texts that are new to me, such as “Piupali, Paupali” and “Paimentyttö.” Perhaps the most remarkable of these is “Minä, Vili, ja Charlie,” in which Jukka tells of his teaming up with the African-American bluesmen, Willie Brown and Charlie Poole. It is rather like a re-working of the old outlaw ballad, “Isotalon Antti ja Rannanjärvi,” with Jukka teaching his new “brothers” to sing “Härmän Häät” at a juke-joint in Greenwood, Mississippi.
Unlikely? – yes, and also sexist, drunken and debauched. However, there is a feel of “oral history” here, in which a common man tells of his uncommon life in an unedited fashion – with a hint of the tall tale. If we recall those immigrant bachelor uncles – some of whom were runaway husbands, of course – who wandered this continent from one hard job to the next, we can feel the true essence of Lännen-Jukka’s tale. There is a commonality of experience among the millions who give the labor of their bodies to the mines, mills, railroads, factories, and construction of industrial civilization because they have nothing else to offer – and they take their comforts where they find them. Perhaps “brothers” (“sisters”) is not too strong a word.
Although there is nothing overtly political in the story, there does seem to be a message in “The Hobo’s Christmas,” when Jukka sings about the hobo jungle and tells the policeman, “Put away your nightstick, we just want to make it alive through Christmas night.”
This CD and the accompanying tale are so vivid and detailed, that they could easily become a novel. Better yet, I’d like to see Karjalainen work this up into a one-man show in which he could tell these stories – in English to North American audiences–and sing the songs in Finnish. I can see it now – a simple set representing the front of Lännen-Jukka’s cabin in the woods, and the old man comes limping out with a banjo in his hand...
Oh well, what Karjalainen does have in mind is to tour parts of North America later this year in a trio with fiddle and guitar. There is a video clip on Youtube.com of the trio performing “Lännen Lokari” in a Helsinki club, although the quality of the video is not the best.
Perhaps many of us will have a chance to see Lännen-Jukka live when the trio comes here. Meanwhile, I’m not sure where the CD is available. If you read Finnish, try the website at lannenjukka.com .

First published in Summer 2007 issue of New World Finn