Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

Today’s show focuses on the Living Country Blues USA series, which has finally been issued on CD. These remarkable recordings were first issued across 12 LP’s plus one double set on the German L+R label between 1980 and 1981.In 1980 two young German blues enthusiasts, Axel Küstner and Siegfried Christmann, came to America with the idea to document the remaining country blues tradition. With their station wagon and portable recording equipment they hit the dusty road spending a couple of months documenting blues, gospel, field hollers and work songs throughout the South. As the notes proclaim: “Traveling 10,000 miles by car in 2 1/2 months, they used 180,000 feet of tape and took hundreds of photographs to document various aspects of Country Blues, as well as work songs, fife and drum band music, field hollers and rural Gospel music, performed by 35 artists, some of whom appear on record for the first time.” From October 1st through November 30th the duo rolled through Washington, DC, Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Virginia, New Orleans and of course Mississippi. Below is some brief background on today’s performers plus links to the two-part article I wrote about these recordings.

Guitar Slim hailed from Greensboro, North Carolina. He recorded the album Greensboro Rounder for Flyright in the 1970’s which is difficult to come by these days. He was accomplished on six and twelve string and a fine piano player as well.

These were Archie Edwards first recordings and he recorded a couple of other albums after this before passing in 1986. In 1959, he bought his barbershop on Bunker Hill Road in Northeast DC. The shop became a regular hangout for many local down-home musicians, including his musical hero and friend, Mississippi John Hurt.

Writer Bruce Bastin called Guitar Frank “one of the finest singers to have been recorded during the 1970’s…steeped in a tradition which is as much part of him as is the countryside about him.” Bastin and Dick Spotswood recorded Frank in 1975, issuing the album Lonesome Road Blues on the Flyright label (reissued in 2000 as Gone With The Wind with several additional tracks). Frank was still in fine form when he reluctantly agreed to perform on these recordings even though he was afraid of losing his social security checks.

Lottie Murrell and Girlfriend

Joe Savage and Walter Brown bring alive the era of the field and levee camp hollers. John Lomax interviewed and recorded Joe Savage in Parchman in the 1940’s and said of him “he was by far the youngest and most damaged.” Küstner noted “recording Walter Brown was one of the most incredible experiences I have ever had. …I had the feeling he was just waiting for somebody to come around so that he could express himself and let his music come out.” Brown led a tough life including spending time in the notorious Parchman Farm Prison.

Boogie Bill Webb was influenced first hand by Tommy Johnson. Moving from Mississippi, he settled in New Orleans in 1952, where longtime friend Dave Bartholomew helped Webb land a deal with Imperial Records. In 1968 he recorded several songs for folklorist David Evans later issued on the Arhoolie LP Roosevelt Holts and His Friends. In 1989 issued his first full-length LP, the Flying Fish release Drinkin’ and Stinkin’, passing the following year at age 66.

A member of the Chatmon family that included not only Lonnie of the famous Mississippi Sheiks but also the prolific Bo Carter and several other blues-playing brothers, Sam Chatmon survived to be hailed as a modern-day blues guru when he began performing and recording again in the 1960’s. Chatmon began playing music as a child, occasionally with his family’s string band, as well as the Mississippi Sheiks. Sam launched his own solo career in the early ’30s. While he performed and recorded as a solo act, he would still record with the Mississippi Sheiks and with his brother Lonnie. Throughout the ’30s, Sam traveled throughout the south, playing with a variety of minstrel and medicine shows. When the blues revival arrived in the late ’50s, he managed to capitalize on the music’s popularity. Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, he recorded for a variety of labels, as well as playing clubs and blues and folk festivals across America. Chatmon was an active performer and recording artist until his death in 1983.

These were Cedell Davis’ first recordings. He went on to cut a few fine albums in the 1990’s for Fat Possom. Back in the 1950’s he worked in Arkansas with Robert Nighthawk and Dr. Ross among others.

Boyd Rivers

Lonnie Pitchford was notable in that he was one of only a handful of young African American musicians from Mississippi who had learned and was continuing the Delta blues and country blues traditions of the older generations. In addition to the acoustic and electric guitar, Pitchford was also skilled at the one-string guitar and diddley bow, a one-string instrument of African origin, as well as the double bass, piano and harmonica. He was a protege of Robert Lockwood, Jr., from whom he learned the style of Robert Johnson. These were his first recordings and he appeared on several anthologies and cut his lone album All Around Man for Rooster in 1994. In November 1998, Pitchford died at his home in Lexington, from AIDS. A diddley bow is featured on his headstone which was paid for by John Fogerty and Rooster Blues Records through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund.

Among the finest bluesman they came across in Mississippi was James “Son” Thomas “discovered” in 1968 by William Ferris who wrote about him in his influential book Blues From The Delta. By 1980 Thomas was a regular on the festival circuit but had recorded little, just a handful of sides scattered on obscure anthologies. After 1980 he toured Europe, recorded prolifically, including several very strong albums but never did he sound better then the recordings he made here. He died in 1993.

Sam “Stretch” Shields’ harmonica style harks back to the pre-amplified era when harmonica soloists played now forgotten pieces like train imitations and set pieces like Lost John, Fox Chase, Mama Blues and other call-and-response pieces. Küstner recalled, “With Sam, it was like going back in time. When you went into his living room, he had pictures of Franklin D Roosevelt up there. It was like the 1930s.”

Although he never recorded commercially, Arzo Youngblood was recorded by field researchers David Evans with tracks on several now out-of-print LP’s. He was one of a number of musicians directly influenced by the legendary Tommy Johnson.

Living Country Blues USA Revisited - Part 1

Living Country Blues USA Revisited - Part 2