Big Road Blues

In the past few weeks I’ve been listening quite a bit to the field recordings by George Michell that Fat Possum has been reissuing and it prompted me to investigate some of the other field recordings in my collection. Today’s program spotlights several amazing prison songs recorded by the tireless Alan Lomax. “Levee Camp Holler” by Bama is a stunning acapella blues from the collection Prison Songs, Vol. 1: Murderous Home (originally issued as Negro Prison Songs in 1957). This is an incredible collection recorded at Parchman Farm in 1947-1948. As Lomax wrote, these songs “…tell us the story of the slave gang, the sharecropper system, the lawless work camp, the chain gang, the pen.” We also play a couple of remarkable selections Lomax recorded at the women’s wing of of Parchman Farm back in 1939 which come from Document’s Field Recordings, Vol. 8: Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi (1934-1947). Beatrice Perry’s “I Got a Man on the Wheeler (Levee Camp Blues)” is a haunting number about the men in her life sung acapella while Lucille Walker sings an acapella version of “Shake ‘em On Down.” A week prior to these recordings Lomax recorded two numbers by Bukka White at Parchman and from that session we play Bukka’s tour-de-force version of “Po’ Boy.” We jump ahead to hear some field recordings made in 1980 by music researcher Axel Kuestner and recording engineer Siegfried A. Christmann. With their station wagon and portable recording equipment they hit the road spending 2-1/2 months documenting blues, gospel, field hollers and work songs throughout the South. Hundreds of hours of tape was used and the resulting project came out as 14 LP’s on the German L&R label. The tracks by Son Thomas, Guitar Frank and Archie Edwards come from the 3-CD Living Country Blues on Evidence, culled from the original LP’s. The entire series has just been issued on CD.

As usual there’s a fair bit of blues from the 1920’s and 30’s including the opening set featuring music from Scrapper Blackwell and Leroy Carr. The pair were perhaps the greatest and most popular of the piano/guitar duos and cut many sides together between 1928 up until Carr died in 1935. Scrapper’s “My Old Pal Blues (Dedicated to the Memory of Leroy Carr)” was cut just a few months after Carr passed and is a heartfelt tribute to his long-time partner:

I woke up this morning, couldn’t hardly get out of my bed (2x)
When I got the news, that Leroy Carr was dead

I run to the window, and I throwed up the blinds (2x)
I stood there wondering, and just couldn’t keep from crying

The day of his funeral, I hated to see Leroy’s face (2x)
Because I know there’s no one, could ever take his place

Then off to the funeral, then to the burying ground (2x)
My heart was breaking, as they lowered him down

He’s done singing, he’s done playing, you’ll never hear his voice no more (2x)
He was a real good pal, and I’ll miss him everywhere I go.

Scrapper’s “Bad Liquor Blues” is from the same session while the duet with Carr on “Memphis Town” is atypical of their sound which has something of a vaudeville sound.

Lots more country blues including a cut by King Solomon Hill and his occasional partner Sam Collins. Collins cut some dozen-and-a-half issued sides between 1927-1931 and many others that were never issued. He was a good bottleneck guitarist with a marvelous voice. I first heard “My Road Is Rough And Rocky” (unissued at the time) on the Yazoo LP Lonesome Road Blues where Stephen Calt wrote: “His magnificent singing, however, offsets his musical ineptitude” which I think is a bit harsh! Another fascinating cut is “Voice Throwin’ Blues” by the mysterious Walter “Buddy Boy” Hawkins. Little is known about Hawkins who cut a dozen sides for Paramount between 1927-1929. This cut feature his voice throwing abilities as he sings the “Hesitation Blues” between his two voices, marking this as one of the strangest songs in the annals of blues. Luke Jordan’s “If I Call You Mama” is an exceedingly rare record that only surfaced in the 1990’s. Jordan recorded 12 tracks for Victor Records at two sessions in 1927 and 1929, ten of which have survived on 78’s, including his classic versions of “Church Bell Blues,” “Pick Poor Robin Clean,” and “Cocaine Blues.

I always like to play some piano blues and today’s show features a set of rare piano numbers by the obscure Blind Leroy Garnett with the wonderful James “Boodle It” Wiggins on vocal, Rudy Foster who cut only one 78 and a track by one of my favorites, Jimmy Yancey. We also play two later piano masters from New Orleans, Professor Longhair and James Booker. Longhair’s rollicking “Between Midnight And Day”is from his second session in 1949 while “Classified” is the title track from one of Booker’s best studio records.

Lil Green

We spotlight a bunch of great female singers today including Esther Phillips, Big Maybelle, Lil Green and Ella Johnson. I’ve been playing Esther Phillips for years and think she ranks as one of the great woman blues singers although I’m not sure I’ve convinced many people. The problem may be that she was too versatile for her own
good, tackling not only blues but pop, soul, country and yes, even disco. The gospel tinged “Scarred Knees” is one of my favorites off her From A Whisper To A Scream album which is probably best known for her harrowing version of “Home Is Where the Hatred Is.” Lil Green is from an earlier era yet vocally she reminds me of Esther. Green first learned her craft in the church and country jukes down in Mississippi. After moving to Chicago in the 1930s, she teamed up with Big Bill Broonzy and they worked the club circuit together. Her composition “Romance in the Dark” was a 1940 Bluebird hit and in 1941 she followed it with the best selling “Why Don’t You Do Right?” She moved east and for the next ten years she enjoyed a successful career touring theaters and clubs and recording for RCA, Aladdin and Atlantic. She died in Chicago in 1954 at the age of thirty-five. Most blues fans of have heard of Big Maybelle and we play one of her earliest numbers from 1947, “Dirty Deal Blues”, featuring veteran Lonnie Johnson on guitar.