Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

For this week’s show an eclectic, wide ranging mix of blues spanning 1927 to 1977. We dust off a bunch of vinyl including two cuts from the excellent “Blues South Side Chicago”, a terrific set of Chicago blues recorded by Willie Dixon in 1964. Someone really should issue this on CD. Speaking of Chicago we feature a cut by the under recorded Kansas City Red. “K.C. Red’s Back In Town” comes from the fine LP “Bring Me Another Half-A-Pint” on the Barrelhouse label. Owned by George Paulus, the label issued some really good records throughout the 1970’s including ones by Big John Wrencher, Joe Carter, Easy Baby and others. Some of these have been reissued on the Japanese P-Vine label while others, including “Bring Me Another Half-A-Pint”, remain vinyl only. As for Kansas City Red he was a superb drummer who’s recorded legacy is slim with only a handful of sessions for Barrelhouse, JSP and Earwig. Also from Chicago a cut by the great Otis Spann from the Spivey LP “The Everlasting Blues vs. Otis Spann” recorded at the Cafe Au Go Go in NYC. Admittedly this isn’t one of Spann’s best recordings but it’s an interesting one and also features the great Johnny Young and Luther Johnson. The other guitarist is 21 year old Peter Malick who had this to say about the session: “Half way through the session, Victoria [Spivey] tripped over Luther’s guitar cord, and broke it. There was no other cord in the studio and therefore Luther is playing guitar on only half the LP. ” Spann also cut another Spivey LP called “Up in the Queen’s Pad” (recorded at Spivey’s apratment) that I have yet to hear and seems to be pretty hard to track down.

Moving over to the West Coast we spotlight a track off “Oakland Blues” on the World Pacific label. This is another great out of print record featuring excellent tracks by L.C. Robinson, Lafayette Thomas and Dave Alexander. The Alexander track we play is “Love Is Just For Fools” featuring George “Harmonica” Smith and Houston Twister (Albert Collins). World Pacific (originally Pacific Jazz) was mainly a jazz label although they issued some good blues records notably by Big Joe Williams (”Hand Me Down My Old Walking Stick”), George Smith (”Blues With A Feeling: A Tribute To Little Walter”), Luke ‘Long Gone’ Miles (”Country Born”) and “Down South Summit Meeting” by Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Lightnin’ Hopkins and Big Joe Williams among others.

As always there’s a good dose of vintage blues including some fine piano players. I’m a huge piano blues fan but I seem to be in the minority as the guitar players get all the attention. Of the great boogie-woogie players Jimmy Yancey may be my favorite. He could could play the uptempo stuff as good as anybody but he also had a more thoughtful, introspective side and put so much feeling into his playing as he shows on “Yancey’s Bugle Call.” In addition we spotlight cuts by Leroy Carr, Blind John Davis and the marvelous Sparks Brothers. Aaron “Pinetop” Sparks mostly handled the piano chores while brother Milton sang. They cut 15 sides between 1933-35 including the first versions of “Everyday I Have The Blues” and “61 Highway.” They may have cut more sides but were obviously quite busy dodging the law; Milton was arrested some 50 times while Aaron only 18 times.

The guitar players get their due including Sylvester Weaver and Walter Beasley’s with their gorgeous instrumental version of “St. Louis Blues.” Weaver was a Louisville artist who made the first solo recordings of blues guitar playing way back in 1923. Nothing is known about Bobby Grant who cut one 78 in in 1927. “Nappy Head Blues” is a beautiful, haunting slide number with full bodied singing. We also hear the great bottleneck guitarist on Kokomo Arnold on his “Down And Out Blues” and prominently backing the fine St. Louis Singer Alice Moore on the risqué “Grass Cutter Blues.” Moore was a very good nasal voiced singer who cut some three dozen sides but is little remembered today.

Country blues never goes out of style as Joe Calicott and Houston Stackhouse prove on some superb 1967 sides. These are field recordings by George Mitchell who also recorded R.L. Burnside, Robert Nighthawk, Johnny Woods and Fred McDowell during the same period. Nighthawk’s is playing bass behind Stackhouse due to declining health and these would be his last sides. The music harks back to Nighthawk and Stackhouse’s early delta days. Tommy Johnson’s influence looms large with five of his songs being covered at this session. In a way Nighthawk’s life had come full circle; he was once again playing with Stackhouse who taught how to play guitar, Stackhouse in turn learned directly from Tommy Johnson and here were the two old friends performing the songs of Johnson together one final time. Nghthawk died less than two months after these recordings on Nov. 5 1967 of congestive heart failure at the Helena hospital