Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

We cover lots of territory today with recordings spanning from 1926 to 1978. Today’s show features five tracks by John Lee Ziegler, a fine Georgia bluesman who just passed after battling a long illness. I received the following note from Rev. Gary Lucas: “I wish to inform you that one of the great Georgia Blues artists John Lee Ziegler recently passed (May 2008) in Kathleen, Georgia after declining health issues. I performed his Eulogy among family and friends. Truly he was unique with his God given musical talents.” Most have never heard of Ziegler who’s legacy rests on just a handful of recordings made by George Mitchell in the late 1970’s (several other recordings remain unreleased) and some sides made in the 1990’s for the Music Maker organization. Part of John Lee Ziegler’s unorthodox style comes from the fact that he was a left-handed guitarist who played a right-handed guitar upside-down, with the bass strings at the bottom. George Mitchell said: “He was a nice, gentle guy, but he was hard to deal with - he thought I was ripping him off, and wanted to get lawyers involved and all this shit - and the record never happened. But he was something else.”

Well before Mitchell was recording blues in the field, there was John and Alan Lomax who recorded extensively throughout the south and beyond from the 1930’s through the 1950’s. I featured several of their prison recordings on the last program. Today we play tracks from Deep River of Song: Big Brazos -Texas Prison Recordings 1933 & 1934 and Document’s Texas Field Recordings (1934/1939). The latter CD presents recordings made by John Lomax on two collecting trips he made, the first with his son Alan in 1934, and the second with his wife, Ruby, in 1939. The music was being collected for the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress. Tricky Sam cut 3 sides at Huntsville State Penitentiary, Texas. We also play two cuts from Southern Journey, Vol. 3: 61 Highway Mississippi which collects 24 tracks Alan Lomax recorded in Mississippi in 1959. The big star was Fred McDowell, these were his first recordings, but the two cuts by John Dudley show him to be an exceptional talent. All three of his numbers were recorded at Parchman Farm where the Lomax’s had been recording since the 1930’s. We also play a track by the excellent singer Roosevelt Charles who was recorded extensively by folklorist Henry Oster in 1959-1960 in Angola Penitentiary. This cut is from the marvelous Angola Prisoners’ Blues which also features fine cuts from Robert Pete Williams. Charles has sides on various anthologies plus one out-of-print LP on Vanguard, Blues, Prayer, Work & Trouble Songs.

Today’s show features quite a number of down-home post-war blues including a fine batch from the 1950’s; artists like Lightnin’ Slim, Doctor Ross, Papa Lightfoot, Boyd Gilmore and the raucous one-man-band sound of Joe Hill Louis show that there was obviously still a market for down-home blues, a market ably filled by labels like Sun, Modern, Excello and others. Speaking of one-man-bands we jump to to 1968 to hear the great Juke Boy Bonner on the uncompromising “Struggle Here In Houston:”

Struggle in Houston, man just to stay alive (2x)
I don’t mean you die of starvation
I mean you got to watch out for bullets, bottles and knives
There’s some streets in Houston, I stay clear of after dark (2x)
‘Cause there’s some cats that’ll bump you off, just to hear his pistol bark

Weldon Bonner took up the guitar in his teens and caught a break in 1947 in Houston, winning a talent contest that led to a spot on a local radio outlet. He journeyed to Oakland in 1956, cutting his debut single for Bob Geddins’s Irma imprint and then Goldband. He cut his best work during the late ’60s for Arhoolie Records singing tales of his rough life in Houston. A few European tours ensued, but they didn’t really lead too much. Toward the end of his life, he toiled in a chicken processing plant to make ends meet. Bonner died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1978.

As always, plenty of old time blues today including heavyweights like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi John Hurt, Little Brother Montgomery and Leroy Carr. I never get tired of listening to Blind Lemon Jefferson and his “Sunshine Special” is one of my favorites. The Sunshine Special was a locomotive engine pulling the Texas & Pacific “Red Eye” passenger train. These business friendly trains were scheduled to arrive in the Dallas/Ft Worth area at about 9AM from both East and West. Leroy Carr’s “Hustler’s Blues” is one of his best featuring great guitar from longtime partner Scrapper Blackwell as well as Josh White:

Whiskey is my habit, good women is all I crave (2x)
Now I don’t believe them two things will carry me to my grave

When I was a hustler, and in my prime (2x)
I would drink good whiskey and gamble all the time

Unfortunately all that whiskey put him in an early grave, dying of an alcohol-related illness shortly after his 30th birthday. Less well remembered is the once popular Papa Charlie Jackson. Jackson was one of the first male blues artists to record, beginning in 1924 with the Paramount label, playing a hybrid banjo-guitar and ukulele. Jackson spent his teen years as a singer/performer in minstrel and medicine shows. He is known to have busked around Chicago in the early ’20s, playing for tips on Maxwell Street, as well as the city’s Westside clubs beginning in 1924. Little is known about his life. Between 1924-1934 he cut around 70 sides. Alice Moore was another once popular artists little remembered today. She was a very fine St. Louis singer who collaborated with the likes of Kokomo Arnold, Peetie Wheatstraw and Lonnie Johnson. She had two main periods of recording activity: the first in the late ’20s, followed by resurgence in 1934 that lasted through 1937. “Doggin’ Man Blues” is a fine vehicle for her clear, nasal tinged vocals featuring steady rolling piano from Wheatstraw.