Big Road Blues

Teasing Brown Blues (MP3)

Gonna Ramble Blues (MP3)

In our continuing exploration of the blues advertisements that appeared in the Chicago Defender we turn our attention to versatile guitarist Sylvester Weaver, known as “the Man with the Talking Guitar”,  who has the distinction of making the first solo recordings of blues guitar playing. Weaver first recorded in New York in 1923, where in October 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 record that a popular female singer had been backed up solely by guitar, and were an immediate success. Weaver’s guitar was mentioned in Martin’s ads; one was advertised as “the first blue guitar record” while another made note of his “big, mean, blue guitar.” In a January 8, 1924 Chicago Defender ad the depiction shows a headshot of Martin alongside a drawing of a little black girl listening to an old black man with a guitar in front of a run down wooden shack. Elijah Wald conjectures that “a possible explanation is that they [Okeh] had been having some success  with white ‘hillbilly’ records and were testing the waters to see if there was a similar market for rural styles in the black community. …By 1924, the basic style of the blues queens was thoroughly established, and the record companies were hunting around for novelties that might set their products apart.” Weaver’s own records were advertised in the Chicago Defender three times in 1927 (one alongside Sara Martin) and twice in 1928.

Weaver was born in 1897 in Louisville, Kentucky, a resident of “Smoketown”, a neighborhood one mile southeast of downtown Louisville. “Smoketown” has been a historically black neighborhood since the Civil War. With its shotgun houses and narrow streets, the neighborhood was a densely populated area with a population of over 15,000 by 1880. African American property ownership was rare, with most living in properties rented from whites. Weaver immortalized the area in the 1924 recording “Smoketown Strut.” His 1923 recording of “Guitar Rag” was later re-invented by Bob Wills into “Steel Guitar Rag” and became a country standard. In fact Weaver’s work lies stylistically between blues and country music, having considerable impact on both musical genres. Through the end of 1927 Weaver recorded a total of 26 solo sides, and on some of the later ones he was joined by guitarist Walter Beasley in who’s company he recorded his greatest blues instrumentals, “St. Louis Blues” and “Bottleneck Blues.” Weaver cut over two dozen selections accompanying Sara Martin through 1927 and also backed singer Helen Humes on eight sides in 1927. In addition Weaver cut a record with E.L. Coleman and one with Virginia Liston. Weaver retired from music after 1927, working as a chauffeur in Louisville. He 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.

Penitentiary Blues (MP3)

Can’t Be Trusted Blues (MP3)

“Gonna Ramble Blues” b/w “Teasing Brown Blues” was recorded on April 7, 1927 under the name Sally Roberts, a pseudonym for Sara Martin while “Can’t Be Trusted Blues” b/w “Penitentiary Bound Blues” was cut on August 31 of the same year. The first pairing are exceptional mid-tempo blues sung with power and feeling by Martin. Martin came out of the stage show and vaudeville tradition and it took some time for her to get her bearings singing blues.  Of her first collaboration with Weaver, Tony Russell notes that what “is interesting about these records is not so much Weaver’s deliberate guitar (and banjo) playing as the power it has to draw Martin still further from her vaudeville background and towards the kind of singing recently introduced on records by Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith.” The latter pairing spotlights Weaver playing solo and show off his rich baritone and deliberate diction on two slow tempo blues, a tempo he stuck almost exclusively with his entire career. Weaver was an interesting, novel lyricist as he demonstrates on “Can’t Be Trusted Blues:”

I don’t love nobody, that’s my policy (2x)
I’ll tell the world that nobody can get along with me
I can’t be trusted, can’t be satisfied (2x)
The men all know it and pin their women to their side
I will sure back-bite you, gnaw you to the bone (2x)
I don’t mean maybe, I can’t let women alone

Pull down your windows and lock up all your doors (2x)
Got ways like the devil, papa’s skating on all fours

and “Penitentiary Bound Blues:”

Thought I was goin’ to the workhouse, my heart was filled with strife (2x)
But I’m goin’ to the penitentiary, judge sentenced me for life
There’ll be rock walls around me, burnin’ sand below (2x)
There forever, got no other place to go
Goodbye, here’s the jailer with the key (2x)
Farewell to freedom, tain’t no use to pity me
Gonna get my number, 4-11-44 (2x)
Soon be an inmate, steel upon my door
Killed my triflin’ woman, folks I done commit a crime (2x)
Nothin’ will release me but old Father Time

The number 4-11-44 was a popular combination for playing policy (laying bets on combinations of numbers) and it’s odd that Weaver uses it in such a context.  Several blues songs mention this combination including Papa Charlie Jackson’s “Four-Eleven-Forty-Four” recorded in 1926. A few months later Weaver would cut another fine prison number,”Rock Pile Blues.”