Tag: Little Walter

Show Notes:

For our last show of the year we drop a wide ranging mix show. We end the year on a sad note as we pay tribute o the recently departed Willie Cobbs and Sonny Rhodes. We feature several new collections today as we hear tracks from great blues crooner Gatemouth Moore and live tracks from Freddie King and Mance Lipscomb. As we often do, we trace the history of a pair of songs; the protest song “Tom Moore’s Farm” and the iconic “Midnight Special.” Also on deck are a set of great harmonica blues, a set of fine blues ladies, some classic pre-war blues and much more.

We open the show with two by Gatemouth Moore. Moore’s heyday as a blues career was short lived, cutting a couple of dozen sides between 1945 and 1947 that saw release on Gilmore’s Chez Paree, Savoy, National with his final records cut for King at the very end of 1947. His blues career came to a close in 1949 when he had a religious conversion on stage at Chicago’s Club DeLisa. After walking off stage he eventually became a preacher, gospel disc jockey and gospel recording artist. Our tracks come from a new 2-CD set on the Jasmine label titled . The set collects all of of his wonderful blues and gospel sides during those years. What really struck me is the inclusion of his first four sides for the obscure Gilmore’s Chez Paree imprint which have never been reissued before including the first version of his immortal “Did You Ever Love a Woman?” which we feature today.

This got me thinking about Gilmore’s Chez Paree and if any other records were issued on the label. I haven’t found any. I did a bit of armchair research about the label and here’s what I found. In 1941 Gatemouth went to Kansas City to take up a residency at the Chez Paree, previously the Cherry Blossom. The club was owned by a Mrs. Gilmore, the wife of the owner of the Kansas City Monarchs, a Negro League baseball team and located at 1822 Vine. Eventually, Mrs. Gilmore decided to start her own label, calling it Gilmore’s Chez Paree. Chuck Haddix wrote: “The Chez Paree, operated by Alberta Gilmore, a civic-minded entrepreneur with an eye on the bottom line, showcased revues traveling on the fledgling chitlings circuit, a loose amalgamation of clubs descended from the old TOBA circuit…. Holdovers from the vaudeville tradition shared the bill with blues shouters, sweet balladeers, and exotic dancers. The Chez Paree offered two shows nightly, but closed promptly at 1:30 a.m., in keeping with Missouri liquor laws.” The building was later converted to the Monarch bowling alley. Then it sat empty for two decades.

From the Kansas City Times of Friday, August 3, 1984: “A two-alarm fire Thursday severely damaged the old Eblon Theater building, a historic two-story structure at 1822 Vine St. “The building was one of the music forums where Count Basie and other music greats helped create the style known around the world as Kansas City jazz.”

Other new releases today come form the Sunset Boulevard label which has issued a several blues collections of obscure and live material by Big Joe Turner, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Mance Lipscomb and Freddie King. The Mance tracks come from a new 2-CD collection of live material titled Navasota. These recordings were captured at the dining hall of Harvard University in 1972 and concerts at the University of Houston on March 2, 1963 and January 24, 1964 as well as performances taped in Navasota, Texas in ‘64.

The Freddie King tracks come from a new 3-CD collection of live material titled Blues Journey. According to the liner notes: “the three discs comprising this generous collection capture King live and in his  mature prime as he criss-crossed the country and the globe, bringing his hair-raisingly intense brand of electric blues to the hinterlands. His younger brother, bassist Benny Turner, was inevitably by his side onstage.”

I had heard Sonny Rhodes had passed but unable to find any obituary. Rhodes received his first guitar at the age of eight as a Christmas present and became serious about playing the blues at age 12. Rhodes began performing around his home of Smithville, TX nd nearby Austin in the late 1950s, while still in his teens. With his first band, Clarence Smith and the Daylighters, he played blues clubs in the Austin area until he joined the Navy after high school graduation. Rhodes recorded a single, “I’ll Never Let You Go When Something Is Wrong”, for Domino Records in Austin in 1958. He also learned to play the bass guitar. He played bass accompanying the guitarists Freddie King and Albert Collins. in his mid-20s, Rhodes returned to California and lived in Fresno for a few years before signing a recording contract with Galaxy Records in Oakland. He recorded a single, “I Don’t Love You No More”, in 1966 and another single for Galaxy in 1967, changing his stage name from Clarence Smith to Sonny Rhodes at that time. He cut a 45 for Blues Connoisseur Records, heard today, in 1977. Frustrated with the San Francisco Bay area record companies, he recorded “Cigarette Blues” on his own label, Rhodes-Way Records, in 1978. Rhodes toured Europe in 1976 and released numerous recordings on European labels. He continued cutting albums on labels like Ichiban, Kingsnake, Stony Plain among others.

Willie Cobbs passed on October 25 this year. Cobbs moved to Chicago in 1951 from Arkansas. In Chicago he he occasionally performed in local clubs with Little Walter, Eddie Boyd and others. He served in the National Guard in the early 1950s and then returned to Chicago, recording a number of singles on such labels as Ruler, a subsidiary of J.O.B. Records. He first recorded his composition “You Don’t Love Me” in 1960 for the Home Of The Blues label. The recording was leased to Vee-Jay Records for release. The song was similar to Bo Diddley’s 1955 song “She’s Fine, She’s Mine” and came close to entering the charts, until Vee-Jay slowed its promotion when questions were raised about its authorship. The song has been oft covered ever since. Cobbs continued to record regularly and later released singles for various labels such as C and F, Pure Gold, Soul Beat, Philwood, Chimneyville and others. He returned to Arkansas in the 1970s, and continued to perform and record for local labels, as well as running several nightclubs in Arkansas and Mississippi through the 1970s and 1980s. He cut full-length records for Rooster and Bullseye.

In the latest issue of Blues & Rhythm magazine is a fascinating article on the the song Tom Moore Blues by Jay Brakefield. It inspired me to play several of the songs on today’s show. The Moore brothers operated a twenty thousand acre farm in East Texas along the Brazos river and ruled it with an iron hand and a good dose of brutality. In Wake Up Dead Man Bruce Jackson writes: “The Moore’s are well known within the units of the Texas Department of Corrections. Some of the inmates are from the Brazos valley, others remember the days when the older Moore’s would have inmates paroled in their custody and would set them to work on the plantation. Descriptions of conditions on the Moore property range from the fabulous to the hellish, often within the same statement.”

The Tom Moore songs came about originally courtesy of Yank Thornton, a man who worked as a field hand on the Moore farm and first sang about his experiences in the early 1930’s. Mance Lipscomb record “Tom Moore’s Farm” in 1960 for Mack McCormick, and before that Lightnin’ Hopkins recorded the thinly veiled “Tim Moore’s Farm” for Gold Star in 1948 which was leased to Modern. A prisoner named Joseph “Chinaman” Johnson, sang a song called “Three Moore Brothers”, which began with the words “Well, who is that I see come ridin’, boy, down on the low turn row?/ Nobody but Tom Devil, that’s the man they call Tom Moore.” Asked about the song, Moore replied: “They’re happy people – they don ‘t always mean what they sing. He laughed deprecatingly, ‘Only I best never catch one of them singing that song.'” The article didn’t provide a discography so here is my attempt to list all the songs about Tom Moore:

Credit goes to Bob Eagle for much of the following information on the history of the song “Midnight Special.” It was first recorded by Sodarisa Miller for Paramount in 1925 with backing by pianist Jimmy Blythe. In its later format, it is a train blues, usually dealing with the trains upon which prostitutes were brought to prisons at midnight for “recreation” with the prisoners.  The melody bears some resemblance to that of  “Creole Belles” (a 1900 composition) and to “Let the Church Roll On” (first recorded in 1926 by the Norfolk Jubilee Quartet). The Thankful Quartette recorded “Let the Church Roll On” for OKeh in 1927, using the melody of “Midnight Special.” Sam Collins cut “Midnight Special Blues” for Gennett in 1927. Romeo Nelson cut ” 1129 (The Midnight Special)” in 1930 but was unreleased at the time.  The theme was recorded prewar by Minnie And Bessie McCoy for RCA Victor in 1939 but not issued, by Lead Belly cut the song for the Library of Congress in 1934, by the State Street Boys in 1935, by Frank Jordan for the Library of Congress in 1936), by Gus Harper for the Library of Congress in 1937), and by Lead Belly With the Golden Gate Quartet in 1940. Postwar it was recorded by Jesse Fuller, Bumble Bee Slim, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Big Joe Turner, Memphis Slim, Big Bill Broonzy and others.

There’s a new memoir out from blues legend Billy Boy Arnold titled The Blues Dream of Billy Boy Arnold. Told in his own words, it’s a warm and engaging book about Arnold’s life growing up Chicago surrounded by legendary blues figures seemingly on every corner. Arnold befriended just about all of them and what comes across is just what a huge fan he was of these men, particularly his idol Sonny Boy Williamson. He was also in awe of  Little Walter who became the harp kingpin after Sonny Boy’s tragic death in 1948. I’ll be airing my interview with Arnold next week but thought I would spin some tracks by some of the harpists mentioned in the book. We feature fine tracks by both Sonny Boy’s as well as a knockout track by Little Walter.