Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

It was Lonnie Johnson who gave the title to today’s program when exclaimed, “Violin, sing the blues for me!” during a recording session for Okeh Records in 1928, released under the name the Johnson Boys. The title was also used for a collection of violin blues on the Old Hat label which we feature extensively on today’s show. We also feature a number of tracks from Old Hat’s companion CD, Folks, He Sure Do Pull Some Bow! The violin once played a significant role in the early history of recorded blues. As collector Marshall Wyatt points out, “the violin once held center stage in the rich pageant of vernacular music that evolved in the American South… and the fiddle held sway as the dominant folk instrument of both races until the dawn of the 20th century.” Today, outside of a few exceptions, African-American music has mostly abandoned the violin to white country fiddlers. Many black musicians active during the 1920s and ’30s came from a string-band tradition rooted in the 19th century, an era predating the blues when fiddles and banjos were the predominant instruments, and guitars a rarity. Black fiddlers and string bands were still common in the South throughout the 1920s, were not entirely ignored by the record industry, but were they were certainly under-represented. Some black string bands incorporated blues into their repertoires in order to keep abreast of trends. As the record business began to rebound in the mid-1930s, musical trends became rapidly modernized due to the spreading influence of mass media, and black fiddlers found even fewer recording opportunities. Below you will find some background on some of today’s featured artists.

Bo Carter, who played guitar and violin, was one of the most popular bluesmen of the ’30’s, cutting over a hundred sides between 1928 and 1940. He also worked with his brothers, Lonnie and Sam Chatmon, in the popular Mississippi Sheiks band. The Mississippi Sheiks were one of the most popular string bands of the late ’20s and early ’30s with a repertoire that drew upon all facets of black and white rural music: blues, pop music, hokum, white country and traditional songs. Their rendition of “Sitting on Top of the World” has become an enduring standard. The group consisted of guitarist Walter Vinson and fiddler Lonnie Chatmon, with frequent appearances by guitarists Bo Carter and Sam Chatmon, who were also busy with their own solo careers.In addition to featuring several tracks by Bo Carter and Mississippi Sheiks, we also hear the Sheiks backing Texas Alexander on the topical “Frost Texas Tornado Blues.” On April 9th 1934 the group backed Alexander on eight numbers.

Beginning in 1926, Peg Leg Howell performed a number of guitar blues for Columbia Records in Atlanta, but he also joined with his “Gang” to record rollicking stomps and rags, led by Eddie Anthony’s wailing fiddle. Our selection, both sides of a 78, “New Jelly Roll Blues” b/w “Beaver Slide Rag” were recorded on April 8, 1927 and advertised in the Chicago Defender. He arrived in the city in 1923 and was recorded by Columbia in November 1926. Howell’s first session featured him solo and are certainly appealing but it’s the rough, exciting stringband music he recorded with His Gang that really grabs attention. The gang consisted of Henry Williams on guitar and the infectious alley fiddle of Eddie Anthony. The duo backed Howell on two dozen sides. Williams apparently died in jail in January 1930 while serving time for vagrancy and Anthony passed in 1934, after which Howell gave up music. Henry Williams & Eddie Anthony cut one 78 together in 1928, the stupendous “Lonesome Blues” b/w/ “Georgia Crawl.” Singer Sloppy Henry cut sixteen sides between 1924 and 1929. At a 1928 session he was backed by Peg Leg Howell and Eddie Anthony, heard to good effect on the colorfully titled “Long Tall, Disconnected Mama” in which Anthony exclaims “I got good chicken and this vio-leen.” Eddie Anthony also recorded as Macon Ed with the mysterious Tampa Joe, cutting eight sides in 1930.

Will Batts was a fine fiddler based in Memphis who worked with Frank Stokes and Jack Kelly. Frank Stokes and partner Dan Sane recorded as The Beale Street Shieks, a Memphis answer to the musical Chatmon family string band, the Mississippi Shieks. Stokes was already playing the streets of Memphis by the turn of the century, about the same time the blues began to flourish. A medicine show and house party favorite, Stokes was remembered as a consummate entertainer who drew on songs from the 19th and 20th centuries. Solo or with Sane and sometimes fiddler Will Batts, Stokes recorded 38 sides for Paramount and Victor. Jack Kelly is believed to be from North Mississippi but spent most of his life in Memphis where he sang on the streets and worked with musicians like Frank Stokes, Dan Sane, Will Batts and later Little Buddy Doyle and Walter Horton. In 1933 he cut 14 sides by the South Memphis Jug Band which included Will Batts on violin, Dan Sane on guitar and D.M. Higgs on jug. He cut ten more sides in 1939 with Batts, and Little Son Joe. Kelly’s last known sides were made in 1952 with Walter Horton for the Sun.

Both Lonnie Johnson and Big Bill Broonzy are best remembered for their guitar playing but both also played violin and luckily recorded with the instrument. By the time Lonnie Johnson recorded his “Violin Blues”, he was already one of the most prolific and influential musicians in blues. Johnson himself led a long and illustrious career as a guitarist, and is primarily remembered for his dazzling guitar work. But it was the violin that first captured his imagination, and his early career in New Orleans was spent honing his skills as a fiddler, first in his father’s string band, then as a young professional performing on excursion boats along the Mississippi. Johnson signed with Okeh in 1925, and played violin on nearly two-dozen early recordings. The State Street Boys were a studio group who cut eight sides in 1935. The group consisted of Big Bill Broonzy (who plays violin on our selection “Rustlin’ Man” plus four others), Jazz Gillum, Carl Martin and others. Martin was also a member of the The Tennessee Chocolate Drops, a group consisting of Howard Armstrong, Ted Bogan and Carl Martin.

Charlie McCoy ranked among the great blues accompanists of his era and his accomplished mandolin and guitar work can be heard on numerous recordings in a wide variety of settings from the late 1920’s through the early 40’s. His brother Joe McCoy was well known for his association with his wife Memphis Minnie where he played the part of Kansas Joe. Between 1929 and 1934 (they divorced in early 1935) they cut around one hundred sides together. After Joe and Minnie separated Joe occupied himself in small bands, singing with the Harlem Hamfats, working as a songwriter and working with his brother Charlie. Charlie McCoy’s “Your Valves Need Grinding” features the violin of Bo Carter while Joe McCoy’s “Look Who’s Coming Down The Road”, a version of Tommy Johnson’s “Maggie Campbell”, features a rousing unknown violinist.

Andrew & Jim Baxter

We play several fine, little known, rural string bands on today’s program. The fiddle-guitar duo known as the Alabama Sheiks cut two records for Victor, which were released in 1931, a time when industry sales were crippled by the Great Depression. Another duo was the father and son team Andrew and Jim Baxter, of Calhoun, Georgia. The duo cut sides for Victor between 1927-29, and even waxed one tune with a white string band, The Georgia Yellow Hammers. Rural string band the Mobile Strugglers got started just as the major record companies began to lose interest in string bands. The group featured two fiddlers, Charles Jones and James Fields, and included guitarist Paul Johnson, banjo picker Lee Warren and Wesley Williams on double bass. The Mobile Strugglers recorded seven songs for the American Music label in 1949. Wilson Jones, who wnet by the moniker Stavin’ Chain, led a fine stingband judging by the group’s six recordings. The group was recorded in Louisiana by John Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1934.

You don’t expect to hear the violin in the context of Delta blues but there are some recorded example. At his second recording session on Oct. 31, 1935 Big Joe Williams was backed by fiddle player Chasey Collins. Collins in turn was backed by Williams on two numbers. Delta bluesman Henry “Son” Sims is best known as the fiddler who played with Charley Patton. Although he led a rural string band called the Mississippi Corn Shuckers for several years, the first recording that Sims did was with Patton, who asked him to come along to Wisconsin for a 1929 Paramount session. Sims also recorded under his own name on two separate occasions; during the Patton session when he cut four songs, including our selection “Tell Me Man Blues,” and several years later with guitarist and singer McKinley Morganfield, (who later became known as Muddy Waters).

Our survey of blues violin players end about mid-century when that kind of music on commercial records became virtually extinct. Eventually, a few black fiddle players returned to the studio, most often for small specialist labels. Among those include Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown who first recorded on fiddle in 1959 for the Peacock label in Houston, Butch Cage of Mississippi who worked with Willie Thomas and recorded extensively by folklorist Harry Oster, L.C. Robinson who made records for Bluesway and Arhoolie in the 1970′s and Howard Armstrong who renewed his career in the 1970s playing mandolin and fiddle with old pals Carl Martin and Ted Bogan on albums for Rounder and Flying Fish.