Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

Today’s show is a continuing series on forgotten blues heroes; those artists who perhaps don’t have enough sides for a full a feature and lesser-known figures that don’t fit into our other themed shows. Today we spotlight six great slide/bottleneck guitar players: Casey Bill Weldon, Kokomo Arnold, Oscar “Buddy” Woods, Black Ace, Bo Weavil Jackson and Sylvester Weaver. The Hawaiian guitar influence can be heard to good effect in the playing of Casey Bill Weldon, Oscar Woods and the Black Ace. It was a style performed flat across the player’s knees as he slides a steel bar along the strings, producing glissando or vibrato effects. Kip Lornell writes that “blues guitarists sometimes tune their instruments to an open chord (often a D Major), place their guitar in their lap and then use a bottleneck or slide to fret it. This style of playing was used as early as the late 19th and early 20th century, but became more popular during the craze for Hawaiian music that occurred  during the teens.” The style was used extensively by hillbilly artists as well. Also notable in is a strong country/Western Swing influence in the playing of artists like Casey Bill, Oscar Woods and particularly Sylvester Weaver, showing that there was a good deal of cross pollination among white and black musicians.

Despite several busy years in the recording studio and a couple of medium-sized hits (”Somebody Changed The Lock On My Door” and “We Gonna Move (To The Outskirts of Town)”), very little is known about Casey Bill Weldon. It was assumed he was the Will Weldon who played with the Memphis Jug Band but that remains in dispute. Between 1927 and 1935 he cut just over 60 sides for Victor, Bluebird and Vocalion. He was also an active session guitarist, appearing on records by Teddy Darby, Bumble Bee Slim, Memphis Minnie, Peetie Wheatsraw and others. His first recordings were with Peetie Wheatsraw which clearly inspired his vocal style. His guitar style owes a clear debt to the Hawaiian guitarists and was even billed as the Hawaiian Guitar Wizard but also got some inspiration from country and Western Swing. As Tony Russell wrote regarding the influential “Somebody Changed The Lock On My Door”, “the flurry in notes on bars 3 and 4 was the first indication of a blues slide guitarist who had listened to Hawaiian players and a session the following day by the Washboard Rhythm Kings elicited further passages of playing that was as close to Sol Hoopii as to Tampa Red.” As for the influence of country, Russell writes “‘Walkin’ In My Sleep’…is a country tune, and at this point the gap between the group and contemporary Western Swing bands narrows dramatically. Not for the last time: ‘I Believe You’re Cheatin’ On Me’ opens with a figure from ‘Steel Guitar Rag’ as recorded by Bob Willis.”

Kokomo Arnold was born in Georgia, and began his musical career in Buffalo, New York in the early 1920’s. During prohibition, Kokomo Arnold worked primarily as a bootlegger, and performing music was a only sideline to him. Nonetheless he worked out a distinctive style of bottleneck slide guitar and blues singing that set him apart from his contemporaries. In the late 1920’s, Arnold settled for a short time in Mississippi, making his first recordings in May 1930 for Victor in Memphis under the name of “Gitfiddle Jim.” Arnold moved to Chicago in order to be near to where the action was as a bootlegger, but the repeal of the Volstead Act put him out of business, so he turned instead to music as a full-time vocation. From his first Decca session of September 10, 1934 until he finally called it quits after his session of May 12, 1938, Kokomo Arnold made 88 sides. Some of Kokomo Arnold’s songs proved highly influential on other musicians. His first issued coupling on Decca 7026 paired “Old Original Kokomo Blues” with “Milk Cow Blues.” Delta Blues legend Robert Johnson must’ve known this record, as he re-invented both sides of it into songs for his own use — “Old Original Kokomo Blues” became “Sweet Home Chicago,” and “Milk Cow Blues” became “Milkcow’s Calf Blues.” Arnold also did session work backing Peetie Wheatstraw, Roosvelt Sykes, Alice Moore, Mary Johnson and others. Arnold quit the music business in disgust in 1938 but continued to play the clubs until the late 1940’s. By the time he was rediscovered in 1959 Marcel Chauvard and Jacques Demetre he had given up music altogether and didn’t even own a guitar. He showed no interest in returing to music whatsoever. Arnold died of a heart attack at the age of 67 on November 8, 1968.

Oscar “Buddy” Woods was a Louisiana street musician known as “The Lone Wolf” and a pioneer in the style of lap steel bottleneck blues slide guitar. It is said that Woods developed his bottleneck slide approach to playing blues guitar after seeing a touring Hawaiian troupe of musical entertainers in the early 1920s. Not long after arriving in Shreveport, Woods began a long association with guitarist Ed Schaffer, and together they performed as the Shreveport Home Wreckers. Woods and Schaffer made their first two recordings as the Shreveport Home Wreckers for Victor in Memphis on May 31, 1930. From this first session up until his last, a field recording for the Library of Congress made on October 8, 1940, Oscar “Buddy” Woods was involved in the making of no less than 35 sides. On May 27 and 28 1931, Ed Schaffer was in Charlotte, North Carolina recording six sides headed by white country artist (and future Governor of Louisiana) Jimmie Davis along with New Orleans-based jazz guitarist Ed “Snoozer” Quinn. Nearly a year later in Dallas, Texas (on February 8, 1932) Davis made four sides with the Shreveport Home Wreckers as accompanists, and then the Home Wreckers made another pair of sides on their own, issued this time on Victor as by “Eddie and Oscar”. Woods did not record again until made a trip to New Orleans to make some solo records for Decca on March 21, 1936. One of these recordings was of Woods’ signature tune, “Lone Wolf Blues”, and another his first recording of “Don’t Sell it- Don’t Give it Away”. These did so well in the race record market that Jimmie Davis took a renewed interest in the Shreveport Home Wreckers. By the time Woods returned to record making in a session set up by Davis in San Antonio on October 30-31, 1937, the Home Wreckers had expanded into a six or seven piece string band called The Wampus Cats. The Wampus Cats also included a female vocalist by the name of Kitty Gray, guitarist Joe Harris and mandolinist Kid West. The Wampus Cats made an additional session in Dallas on December 4, 1938, on which Kitty Gray does not appear, but unknown trumpet and saxophone players were added to the mix. Woods cut his last five selections for the Library of Congress in 1940 John Lomax wrote the following about the session: “Oscar (Buddy) Woods, Joe Harris and Kid West are all porfessional Negro guitarists and singers of Texas Avenue, Shreveport…The songs I have recorded are among those they use to cajole nickels and dimes from the pockets of listeners.” Woods died in 1956.

Babe Karo Lemon Turner AKA Black Ace grew up in a farm in Hughes Springs, Texas. He took up the guitar seriously when he moved to Shreveport in the mid-1930’s and met Oscar Woods from whom he learned the local slide guitar style, playing the guitar flat across the knees. Smokey Hogg’s brother, John Hogg, recalled that “back in Greenville, Texas, before he got into the recordin’ business, Smokey and a guy they called Black Ace…would play country dances. I’d carry Smokey on one side of town, he d play this dance over there and I’d take Black Ace on the other side of town to play. About the time the guys would be ready to wrap-up, I would run over and get Black Ace, double back and get Smokey. We would party together the rest of the night. I used to sing with Black Ace at them parties and dances. He played a guitar across his knees with a knife blade and he wanted me to sing.” By 1936 he moved to Fort Worth where he secured a gig broadcasting on local station KFJZ between 1936-1941. In 1941 he appeared in the film “The Blood of Jesus.” As his reputation grew he toured and cut six sides for Decca in 1937 (two sides recorded for ARC in 1936 were never released). War service disrupted his career and he worked a variety of jobs outside of music. Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records and Paul Oliver ventured to Fort Worth in 1960 and recorded an album by him that year. Those recordings were originally issued the following year on Black Ace’s only LP, subsequently issued on CD as I Am The Boss Card In Your Hand which included some of his 1937 sides. Turner passed in 1972 showing no interest to get back in the music business after his Arhoolie session.

Bo Weavil Jackson was a shadowy figure whose name may have been Sam Butler or James Butler or was it James Jackson?. He was a street singer from Birmingham, AL who was discovered by local talent scout Harry Charles. Jackson cut six sides for Paramount circa August 1926 and six sides for Vocalion in September 1926 where he recorded as Sam Butler. His material was a mix of blues and gospel and he was one of the first slide players to record.

Sylvester Weaver & Sara Martin

Sylvester Weaver was a versatile guitarist from Louisville who made the first solo recordings of blues guitar playing. Sylvester Weaver first recorded in New York in 1923, where on October 23 of that year he accompanied vaudeville blues singer Sara Martin on two numbers, “Longing for Daddy Blues” and “I’ve Got to Go and Leave My Daddy Behind,” for Okeh. Two weeks later, Weaver cut his first pair of solo recordings, “Guitar Blues” and “Guitar Rag” for the same label. The Sara Martin selections represented the first time on records that a popular female singer had been backed up solely by guitar, and were an immediate success. Weaver would cut 25 more selections accompanying Martin in the years through 1927. He also backed singer Helen Humes on sides in 1927. Weaver’s were well-received and would prove massively influential in the country market. “Guitar Rag” was later re-invented by Bob Wills into “Steel Guitar Rag” and became a country standard. Through the end of 1927, when Weaver decided to retire from music altogether, he recorded a total of 26 solo sides, and on some of the later ones Weaver was joined by another guitarist, Walter Beasley. Weaver’s work lies stylistically between blues and country music, and he had considerable impact on both musical fronts. Weaver was almost totally forgotten by the time he died in 1960. An interesting footnote is the discovery of a scrapbook Weaver kept of his musical activities. Some of the contents were published in Living Blues Magazine in 1982.