Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

This week we take a trawl through the Folkways catalog who issued many exceptional blues records, most released around the time of the blues revival. Blues historian Sam Charters had a hand in many of these sessions. Sam Charter’s claim to fame during this period was his re-discovery, after a lengthy search, of Sam Lightnin’ Hopkins. This led to the acoustic “Lightnin’ Hopkins” LP recorded for Folkways in 1959. Sam Charters recorded sessions that appeared on Bluesville and Folkways in the late 50’s and 60’s. Another key rediscovery was Furry Lewis. Lewis hadn’t recorded since 1929. Lewis returned to the studio and cut his self-titled comeback in 1959 plus two albums for the Prestige/Bluesville labels in 1961 under Charters’ direction. He also published the influential book “The Country Blues” in 1959 followed by several other books. In the early 60’s he took long trips through Memphis, St. Louis, Louisiana, South Carolina. One result was the film “The Blues” which premiered in 1963 (soundtrack on Folkways).

Charters also did significant fieldwork in St. Louis recording Daddy Hotcakes, Henry Brown, Edith Johnson and Barrelhouse Buck McFarland all who recorded for Folkways.
A St. Louis policeman Charles O’Brien was responsible fro tracking down may of the city’s older forgotten musicians in the 50’s. Subsequent recordings by some of these musicians came out on labels like Delmark, Folkways and Bluesville. It was O’Brien who put Sam Charters in touch with George Montgomery (Daddy Hotcakes). He had an opportunity to make some recordings in the late 30’s but things didn’t pan out. “The Blues in St. Louis, Vol. 1: Daddy Hotcakes” is his only recording.

Among my favorite Folkways records are ones by Cat-Iron, Daddy Hotcakes and Henry Brown. In 1958, folklorist Frederic Ramsey, Jr. recorded someone named Cat-Iron in Buckner’s Alley in Natchez, Mississippi. Ramsey wrote a detailed description of his discovery of Cat-Iron for The Saturday Review (which was used as the liner notes), which, alas, offered no background on the artist. Cat-Iron’s sole testament is “Cat-Iron Sings Blues and Hymns.”

George Montgomery (Daddy Hotcakes) apparently had an opportunity to make some recordings in the late 30’s with the help of Charley Jordan but things didn’t pan out. “The Blues in St. Louis, Vol. 1: Daddy Hotcakes” is his only recording and was originally slated to come out on Bluesville. Charters equated him with Lightnin’ Hopkins and Robert Pete Williams as one of the most spontaneous bluesmen he ever recorded.

Henry Brown left Tennessee for St. Louis at the age of 12 and took up the piano while still in school. Brown later worked with St. Louis Jimmy Oden and trombonist Ike Rogers; with Rogers and guitarist Lawrence Casey, he formed a trio called the Biddle Street Boys. He recorded sides (often in tandem with Rogers) with Mary Johnson, Alice Moore, plus some great piano solos in between playing in clubs around St. Louis, where he lived most of his life and worked regularly right up through the mid-’70s. Edith Johnson cut two sessions in 1929 including “Nickel’s Worth of Liver.”

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is the record label of the Smithsonian Institution. Founded in 1948 by Moses Asch and Marian Distler in New York City, Folkways Records & Service Co. sought to record and document sound from the entire world. They had preciously launched Disc & Asch. From 1948 until Asch’s death in 1986, Folkways Records released 2,168 albums. The Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in Washington, D.C. acquired Asch’s Folkways recordings and business files after his death in 1986. Since that time, the label, renamed Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, has expanded Asch’s collection by adding several other record labels as well as releasing over 300 new recordings.