Big Road Blues

Whistlin’ Alex Moore certainly knew intimately about this area as he related to Oliver: “Oh they were tough joints…I’d play them all, from North Dallas to the East Side…Froggy Bottom…Central Tracks…well they had just about everything up and down there from beer joints to saloons.” Moore was a resident of Dallas all his eighty years and had spent most of his working life as a cart driver, and later, hotel porter. Moore had a long career, punctuated by large recording gaps, cutting ten sides in 1929, sessions in 1947, 1951, sessions for Arhoolie and cut an album for Rounder the year before he died in 1988. Oliver describes Moore as a “folk blues poet par excellence” and “one of the most poetic blues singers on record, Alex Moore had developed as a remarkable pianist in the purest boogie and blues tradition with an eccentric inventive flair both in his vocals and his playing.” Moore’s poetic flair is on display on “Heart Wrecked Blues” and particularly his “West Dallas Woman” [MP3]: “Met a woman in West Texas, she had been left out there all alone/Out by the “Hooking Cow” crossing, where I wasn’t even known/She fell for me, a raggedy stranger, standing in the drizzling rain/She said “Daddy I’ll follow you, tho’ I don’t know your name”/We snuggled closely together, muddy water round our feet/No place to call home, wet, hungry and no place to eat/The wolves howl till midnight, wild ox moan till day/The Man in the Moon looked down on us—but had nothing to say.” He displays a sly sense of humour on “They May Not Be My Toes” and “Blue Bloomer Blues” [MP3]: “While standing at the car line, reckon’ what that old girl done/I said she hugged and kissed me and bit me on my tongue/I asked her to give me what mama did, when I was three months old/She said I’ll make you a sugar tit daddy, I can’t stand that to save my soul/She pulled off them bloom bloomers, begin to whine and frown.” Even tough tales like “Ice Pick Mama” and “Bull Con Blues” are laced with plenty of amusing wit.

Moore was perhaps the last of the early Texas piano although a couple of others survived long enough to make some latter day recording. Edwin ‘Buster’ Pickens and Robert Shaw ran around with the pianists who worked the Santa Fe railroad townships. Both Robert Shaw and Buster Pickens didn’t record under their own name until the 1960’s. Pickens did some session work, most notably behind Lightnin’ Hopkins and cut one full-length record in the 1960’s for the Heritage label. Oliver describes him in the 60’s, as “virtually the last of the barrelhouse and saw-mill pianists, for his contemporaries are nearly all dead …Pickens, born in 1915, was younger then many of them though he shared the work, and small, compact and tough, he is still playing. His world has been one of railroad routes and this is reflected in many of his blues.” A prime example is his “Santa Fe Train [MP3].” As Pickens himself noted: “I travelled by freight trains. I rode freight trains practically all over the country. …These other piano players-son Becky, Consih Burks, Black Boy Shine, Andy Boy, and all these men-they went out different routes-hardly ever paired up. Each lookin’ for his own bread.” Robert Shaw cut one 1963 album for Almanac which was reissued on the Arhoolie label, plus some additional sides in the 1970’s. All these sides are collected on the CD “The Ma Grinder” issued by Arhoolie. Like Pickens, Shaw was a member of the Santa Fe pianists and on his 60’s recordings plays dazzling dance tunes, in a relaxed boogie style, with touches of ragtime mixed in, and tough lowdown blues. As Shaw said: “When you listen to what I’m playing you got to see in your mind all them gals out there swinging their butts and getting the mens excited. otherwise you ain’t got the music rightly understood. I could sit there and throw my hands down and make them gals do anything. I told them when to shake it, and when to hold back. That’s what this music is for.” His remarkable technique is in full display on the Texas piano staple, “The Ma Grinder[MP3].”

After World War II the early Texas piano tradition virtually evaporated. Oliver wrote that after “…the War, the juke boxes, and the law had combined to bring an end to both the barrelhouse circuit and the Texas piano player who, in Son Becky’s words had “spread some joy” on the Santa network. …The group dispersed: Andy Boy made his way to Kansas City where he was last heard of in the 1950’s, while Joe Pullum migrated to California. Rob Cooper disappeared after woman trouble, and Cowboy Washington was forgotten. Down on Houston’s McKinney Street they don’t stomp The Cows or The Ma Grinder any more.”

Sources:

-Dixon, Robert M.W., John Godrich, Howard W. Rye. Blues & Gospel Records 1890-1943. 4th edition. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997.

-McCormick, Mack. Notes accompanying The Ma Grinder, 1993, Arhoolie.

-Oliver, Paul and Smith, Francis. Notes accompanying The Piano Blues Vol. 15: Dallas 1927-1929, 1980, Magpie.

-Oliver, Paul. Conversation With The Blues. Horizon Press, New York, 1965.

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