Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

A varied show on tap for today including some twin spins and featured anthologies. We open the show with two tracks featuring Johnny “Guitar” Watson,  plus double spins by Leroy Carr and Little Brother Montgomery plus sets featuring a great down home blues anthology, a fine collection of post-war St. Louis R&B and blues and a set revolving around a couple of related songs.

Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell

I’ve been listening to a great recent reissue on the Ace label called Blues Belles With Attitude!!. All the tracks were cut for the Modern label with 18 of these sides previously unissued and a further eight that have not seen prior CD release. As the notes state: “The inspiration for this compilation was Cordella Di Milo sides, whose recordings we have released previously on a Johnny Guitar Watson CD as result of his stunning guitar backing. It dawned on us that this virtually unknown singer deserved to be featured on a collection of similarly aggressive female performances. This led to a trawl of the tracks held in the Modern files, which had not been previously issued or had not seen the light of day for over half a century.” Cordella De Milo’s “Ain’t Gonna Hush is a sassy answer song to the Big Joe Turner hit with some killer guitar from Watson and smoking sax from Maxwell Davis. In addition to that number, we spin Watson’s sizzling “Don’t Touch Me (I’m Gonna Hit the Highway)” from the Ace collection of his early sides, Hot Just Like TNT.

Leroy Carr was one of the most popular bluesmen of the 20′s 30′s and today we spin two of his great numbers, the evocatively titled “Shinin’ Pistol” and “Big Four Blues.” We also spin one by Carr’s partner, guitarist Scrapper Blackwell who’s “Penal Farm Blues” which comes from his first session under his own name. Blackwell began working with  Carr, whom he met in Indianapolis in the mid-1920’s. Carr convinced Blackwell to record with him for the Vocalion label in 1928; the result was “How Long, How Long Blues”, the biggest blues hit of that year. Blackwell and Carr toured throughout the American Midwest and South between 1928 and 1935 as stars of the blues scene, recording over 100 sides. Blackwell’s last recording session with Carr was in February 1935 for the Bluebird label. The recording session ended bitterly, as both musicians left the studio mid-session and on bad terms, stemming from payment disputes. Two months later Blackwell received a phone call informing him of Carr’s death due to heavy. Blackwell soon retired from the music industry. Blackwell returned to music in the late 1950’s where he was recorded first in 958 and was next recorded by Duncan P. Schiedt  in 1959 and 1960.  Art Rosenbaum recorded him in 1962 for the Prestige/Bluesville label resulting in his finest latter day recording, the album Mr. Scrapper’s Blues. In 1963 Rosenbaum recorded him again for Bluesville, this time with singer Brooks Berry resulting in the album My Heart Struck Sorrow which has yet to be issued on CD. Sadly Blackwell was shot and killed during a mugging in an Indianapolis alley in 1962. He was 59 years old.

I’ve played Little Brother Montgomery often on the show and today we spin two from his 1961 Folkways album Blues. He cut two others for the label including the fine Farro Street Jive and Church Songs: Sung and Played on the Piano by Little Brother Montgomery. We play his “Pleading Blues” which was originally cut at his third session back in 1935 and the wonderful instrumental “L&N Boogie.” I’ve always been a fan of Montgomery’s raspy, burred voice but he really had a knack for knocking out memorable instrumentals like early gems such as “Crescent City Blues”, “Farish Street Jive” and “Shreveport Farewell.”

We spotlight two great anthologies today: the 4-CD set Down Home Blues Classics Vol.1 1943-1953 and Mo Betta: St Louis R&B 56-66. The former set comes from the label Boulevard Vintage who for the past few years have been putting out intelligent, well conceived multi CD sets of post-war down home blues. The label has zeroed in on a very specific, rich vein of blues history, roughly 1945-1955 when a whole slew of enterprising small labels were catering to an audience that still craved down home blues. As Paul Vernon writes: “The migratory patterns from south to north to west added an essential ingredient to the new market for blues recording. Urbanization created tastes for a music that fit the new times and locations , contributing to the birth of what we now recognize as Rhythm & Blues. In Chicago, the southern rural styles, as we now all surely know, were connected directly to 110-volt wall sockets and booted through fuzzy amplifiers to create the sound that would eventually go around the world. Yet there was still an audience for the rough, exciting music of southern juke joints and street corners, of local radio broadcasts and house parties. Who was going to service that market?” The answer can be found on the 100 tracks found on this collection and the label’s subsequent sets: Down Home Blues Classics: Texas 1946-1954 (4-CD), Down Home Blues Classics: California & The West Coast 1948-1954 (2-CD), Down Home Blues Classics: Memphis & The South 1949-1954 (2-CD). The first box, which features music from all regions with no overlap with the other sets, has been  impossible to find but it seems to be back in print so I finally got a copy.  Two years ago I devoted a whole show to these sets.

Mo Betta St Louis R&B 56-66 is a terrific set of obscure St. Louis blues and R&B featuring electrifying recordings by Little Aaron, Johnny “The Twist” Williams, Little Miss Jesse, Screamin’ Joe Neal and Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm. I had these tracks originally on the long treasured Red Lightnin’ LP’s Down On Broadway And Main and Condition Your Heart.

In the early 1940′s Ivory Joe Hunter had his own radio show in Beaumont, Texas, on KFDM, where he eventually became program manager, and in 1942 he moved to Los Angeles, joining Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers in the mid 1940′s. He wrote and recorded his first song, “Blues at Sunrise”, with the Three Blazers for his own label, Ivory Records, it became a regional hit. Fast forward seven years to 1952′s ”The Moon is Rising” which was recorded  by Nighthawk for the States label and was a staple of his King Biscuit shows. The song was an almost identical remake of Ivory Joe Hunter’s 1945 hit “Blues At Sunrise” (covered prior to Nighthawk’s version by Charley Booker who cut it as “Moonrise Blues” for Modern’s Blues & Rhythm subsidiary in 1952). Nighthawk’s drummer Kansas City Red often sang the song. Several other artists cut the song under Nighthawk’s title including John Lee Hooker and Earl Hooker.

Also worth mentioning are several featured guitarists including Lafayette Thomas, T-Bone Walker, Buddy Guy and Mickey Baker. We hear Thomas’ dynamic guitar playing behind Roy Hawkins on the tough “Baby Please Don’t”, one of four songs he backs Hawkins’ on from a 1958 session for the Rhythm imprint. He was nicknamed “The Thing” due to his acrobatic style of playing. The bulk of his recordings were with Jimmy McCracklin’s combo in the 50’s and 60’s. During his lifetime only a scant fifteen sides were issued under his own name (a number were left unissued). His own records were made for small labels such as Jumping, Hollywood and Trilyte, but more often he cut odd titles at McCracklin’s 50’s sessions for Modern, Peacock (unissued) and Chess and three songs for King which were never issued. In his 1977 obituary Tom Mazzolini wrote: “Unquestionably the finest guitarist to emerge from the San Francisco-Oakland blues scene, there is hardly a guitarist around here today who doesn’t owe a little something to Lafayette Thomas…”

Speaking of Jimmy McCracklin, we feature a great 1965 number, “Steppin’ Up In Class”, one of a number of superb sides he cut for the Imperial label and the associated Minit label throughout the 60′s. The track comes from the the anthology I Had To Get With It: Imperial & Minit Years. I don’t think Thomas is playing on this track but McCracklin’s backing from this period is a bit murky so who knows? Lonesome Sundown did a cover of this number and local blues legend Joe Beard has been known to play this at his live shows. I’ve long been a fan of McCracklin and got the opportunity to interview him several years ago and meet him at the 2008 Pocono Blues Festival.

Thomas, like most guitarists of his generation, was influenced by T-Bone Walker. From Walker we spin “Mean Old World” from his classic 1959 album, T-Bone Blues. These recordings were cut in Chicago 1955 with Jimmy Rogers and Junior Wells plus another session cut in L.A. in 1956-1957, which included great jazz guitarist Barney Kessel.

Last week we spotlighted several cuts by Mickey Baker. Today we spin his T-Bone Walker inspired “Spinnin’ Rock Boogie.” In the early and mid-’50s, Baker did countless sessions for Atlantic, King, RCA, Decca, and OKeh, playing on such classics as the Drifters’ “Money Honey” and “Such a Night,” Joe Turner’s “Shake Rattle & Roll,” Ruth Brown’s “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean,” and Big Maybelle’s “Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On.” He also released a few singles under his own name. Baker was also recorded as half of the duo Mickey & Sylvia.