Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

Today’s show is a mix show, which includes a sort of sequel to last week’s program. Last week we featured classic albums with Big Bill Broonzy and Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee which featured music and spoken commentary. For the first hour we play more interesting tracks from Big Bill Broonzy and Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. Among those are Amsterdam Live Concerts 1953 a remarkable 2-CD set of Broonzy recordings that just surfaced a couple of years ago, selections from Blues In The Mississippi Night which feature music and candid commentary with Big Bill, Memphis Slim and Sonny Boy Williamson I plus live recordings of Sonny & Brownie playing with Lightnin’ Hopkins. The second hour of the show is a our standard mix show that we do on a regular basis.

There’s no shortage of live and studio recordings from Big Bill Broonzy’s European appearances during the 1950′s. The Amsterdam Live Concerts 1953 set is a dazzling addition to Broonzy’s discography, on technical as well as musical grounds. It not only captures him on two excellent nights of performance, but also, thanks to the technical expertise of Louis Van Gasteren, the sound engineer (and later a movie producer) who made the tapes, in amazing fidelity, equal to the best work of any record label. Broonzy toured Europe in 19521, 1955 and 1957. Broonzy had led the way to Europe for a generation of elder statesmen of the blues, and his performances were so well received that they paved the way for American bluesmen to follow his path across the Atlantic, to bigger, more enthusiastic audiences and better paying gigs than they’d ever known in their native United States. In what had to be his first taste of respect as a musician from a white audience, by most accounts Broonzy seemed to revel in the reception that he got, and the relatively free and open societies (compared with what existed in the United States at the time) that he encountered in Europe. He never lived long enough to play in any of the big folk festivals of the early 1960′s, so what we have to go on comes from these European performances. This concert was recorded across two nights and includes over 110 minutes of music and stories.

We also hear Broonzy in a very different setting six years earlier. Blues In The Mississippi Night is the story of the blues from the mouths of three legendary bluesmen – Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Slim, and Sonny Boy Williamson I. Alan Lomax had visited the three bluesmen in Chicago and asked them to come perform in New York at Town Hall as part of his Midnight Special concert series. The day following that concert, March 2, 1947, he took them to Decca Studios, asked them to play a few songs and to discuss the blues. Lomax encouraged them to speak frankly about the racial climate. The result was so candid that Big Bill, Sonny Boy, and Memphis were given assumed names in the original liner notes to protect themselves and their families. The album was so controversial that its release was delayed 13 years, finally released by United Artists in 1959.

During the summer of 1960 Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee Big Joe Williams and Lightnin’ Hopkins all happened to be in L.A. World Pacific Records took advantage of this rare convergence and recorded them together, both in the studio and in performance at the Ash Grove. An album was duly issued; other tracks, reportedly from the same sessions, appeared on other labels. This material has been issued confusingly on several albums with different names. The best reissue of this material is the album Lightnin’ Hopkins & The Blues Summit that has been reissued on the Fuel 2000 label and we feature three tracks from that album.

In the second hour we play a wide mix of blues spanning 1928 to 1976.  We spin some fine Chicago blues from Little Johnny Jones, Muddy Waters and Joe Carter. Jones was a terrific piano player who worked extensively with Tampa Red, Elmore James and just about everyone else on the Chicago scene including Muddy Waters. Unfortunately he recorded little under his own name, never making it past his 40th birthday. Luckily Jones was caught on tape in 1963 working with Billy Boy Arnold in a Chicago folk club called the Fickle Pickle run by Michael Bloomfield. Norman Dayron recorded Johnny on portable equipment which has been released on the Alligator record titled Johnny Jones with Billy Boy Arnold. A couple of additional tracks from this recording appear on Chicago Blues – Live At The Fickle Pickle, a long out of print LP on the Flyright label. From that records we hear “Johnny’s Boogie.” Our Muddy Waters selection, “Little Brown Bird”, is one of four songs (“Black Angel” was not issued) from two 1962 sessions that features the great Earl Hooker.  Apparently the tracks were laid down and Waters vocal was dubbed later. We also play Hooker’s “Guitar Rag.”

We also spotlight some fine country blues including Texas artists Henry Thomas and the two from the obscure Gene Campbell. Not much is known about Texas songster Henry Thomas. Evidence suggests he was a musical hobo who rode the rails across Texas. Most agree he was the oldest African-American folk artist to produce a significant body of recordings having been born in 1874 .His music gives us a window into what the black music sounded like before it was actually labeled blues. The 23 songs he cut for Vocalion between 1927 and 1929 include a spiritual, ballads, reels, dance songs, and eight selections titled blues. He played on guitar and also played the quills or panpipes, a common but seldom-recorded African-American instrument. Campbell was an obscure artist, probably from Texas, who cut 24 sides for Brunswick at sessions in 1929, 1930 and 1931. Nothing else is know about him.

Other country blues on tap include fine field recordings of Willie Brown and  Cat Iron. Willie Brown was recorded by John and Alan Lomax at Sadie Beck’s Plantation in Arkansas. Lomax wrote the following in his book The Land Where The Blues Began: “Well, I ain’t got no voice, but I’ll give you the words of an old Memphis song.” William Brown began to sing in his sweet true country voice, poking in delicate passages at every pause, like the guitar was a second voice commenting with feeling on the ironic words of the blues….This was the real blues…. The blues in print give you the skeleton only. If you’ve never heard the blues, get yourself a record and listen and then come back and join us…. William Brown’s song can last until the morning….” In 1958, folklorist Frederic Ramsey, Jr. recorded someone named Cat-Iron in Buckner’s Alley in Natchez, Mississippi. Ramsey wrote a detailed poetic description of his discovery of Cat-Iron for The Saturday Review which offered no background on the artist. Cat-Iron’s sole testament is the album Cat-Iron Sings Blues and Hymns for the Folkways label.