Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

Paramount records recorded some of the greatest blues artists of the 20′s and early 30′s and today we kick off the second of a multi-part feature on the label. In addition we’ll also be airing and interview I did with Alex van der Tuuk the author of Paramount’s Rise And Fall. Paramount Records was founded in 1917 as a subsidiary of the Wisconsin Chair Company of Port Washington, Wisconsin. The chair company had made some wooden phonograph cabinets by contract for Edison Records. Wisconsin Chair decided to start making its own line of phonographs with a subsidiary called the “United Phonograph Corporation” at the end  of 1915. It made phonographs under the “Vista” brand name through the end of the decade; the line failed commercially. In 1917 a line of phonograph records was debuted with the “Paramount” label. They were recorded and pressed by Chair Company subsidiary “The New York Recording Laboratories, Incorporated.” In its initial years, the Paramount label offered recordings of standard pop-music fare, on records recorded with below-average audio fidelity pressed in below-average quality shellac. In the early 1920′s, Paramount was still racking up debts for the Chair Company while producing no net profit. Paramount began offering to press records for other companies at low prices. The Paramount Record pressing plant was contracted to press discs for Black Swan Records. When that later company floundered, Paramount bought out Black Swan and thus got into the business of making recordings by and for African-Americans. These so-called “race music” records became Paramount’s most famous and lucrative business. Paramount’s “race record” series was launched in 1922 with its 1200 “race” series exclusively devoted to black music. The early catalog was dominated by female blues singers such as Lucille Hegamin, Alberta Hunter and Monette Moore and a bit later with records by stars Ida Cox and Ma Rainey. A large mail-order operation and weekly advertisements in black owned newspapers like the Chicago Defender were keys to the label’s early success. The label’s successful recordings by Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake shifted the focus from women singers to male. The label went on to record some of the era’s most celebrated male blues artists such as delta legends Charlie Patton, skip James, Tommy Johnson, Son House, Willie Brown plus diverse artists such as Buddy Boy Hawkins, the Mississippi Sheiks, Charlie Spand, Papa Charlie Jackson among many others. The onset of the depression crippled the recording industry and Paramount was eventually discontinued in 1932.

We open part two of our Paramount feature as we did our first, with some of the women who dominated the label’s catalog in the early years before being eclipsed by the popularity of the solo male blues artists. Today we spin tracks by Edna Hicks, Ida Cox, Edna Taylor, Edmonia Henderson, Lena Wilson Ma Rainey, Ethel Waters and others.

Blues singer Edna Hicks was born in New Orleans and was the half-sister of Lizzie Miles and her brother was the trumpet player Herb Morand. Edna left New Orleans sometime around 1916 and worked in a variety of vaudeville and musical comedy shows. She began recording in 1923 with Victor and went on to make records with Brunswick, Gennett, Vocalion, Ajax, Columbia and Paramount. In 1925 she died due to burns that she suffered in an accident involving gasoline in her home in Chicago.

Ida Cox sang in church choirs as a child in Georgia. She ran away from home in 1910 when she was a teenager and performed in minstrel and tent shows as a comedienne and singer. She toured the country throughout the Teens and 1920s sometimes singing with Jazz greats like Jelly Roll Morton and with King Oliver at the Plantation Cafe in Chicago. In 1923 she began her recording contract with the Paramount label, who billed her as the Uncrowned Queen of the Blues. She cut around ninety sides for the label through 1929.

Alongside Bessie Smith, who recorded for Columbia, Ma Rainey is one of the most celebrated woman blues singers of the era. Rainey first appeared onstage in 1900, singing and dancing in minstrel and vaudeville stage revues. In 1902 she married the song and dance man William “Pa” Rainey and from then on became known as Ma Rainey. The couple formed a song and dance act that included blues and popular songs. They toured the country, but primarily the South and became a popular attraction as part of Tolliver’s Circus, The Musical Extravaganza and The Rabbit Foot Minstrels, where Rainey befriended a young Bessie Smith. It was not until 1923 that Ma Rainey signed a recording contract with Paramount. She was billed as the “Mother of the Blues”, recording 100 songs between 1923 and 1928 for the label.

Ethel Waters was one of the most popular African-American singers and actresses of the 1920s. She moved to New York in 1919 after touring in vaudeville shows as a singer and a dancer. She made her recording debut in 1921 on Cardinal records but switched over to the Black Swan label, and recorded “Down Home Blues” and “Oh Daddy” the first Blues numbers for that company. In 1924 she cut five sides for Paramount. She frequently sang with Fletcher Henderson during the early 1920s, but by the mid-1920s Waters had became more of a pop singer.

The heyday of woman blues singers started to fade toward the mid to late 20′s. Paramount’s earliest male blues star was Papa Charlie Jackson who made his debut in 1924 followed by in 1926 by big selling artists Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake. In addition to those artists, who we profiled in part one,  we spin tracks by Frank Stokes and several fine piano players including Charlie Span and Will Ezell. Frank Stokes and partner Dan Sane recorded as The Beale Street Shieks, a Memphis answer to the musical Chatmon family string band, the Mississippi Shieks. Stokes was already playing the streets of Memphis by the turn of the century, about the same time the blues began to flourish. A medicine show and house party favorite, Stokes was remembered as a consummate entertainer who drew on songs from the 19th and 20th centuries. Solo or with Sane and sometimes fiddler Will Batts, Stokes recorded 38 sides for Paramount and Victor.

Next to nothing is known about barrelhouse pianist Charlie Spand (PDF). He waxed 22 sides for Paramount between 1929 and 1931 and two final sessions for Okeh in 1940. Spand first made a name for himself on the Detroit scene of the 1920′s.

Ezell’s early career was spent as an itinerant musician playing dances, labor camps and logging mills in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas. Ezell had a recording career that lasted for four years beginning in 1927 and he produced total of 17 tracks (including alternative takes) for Paramount Records. It was in his role as “house pianist” for Paramount that he supported artists such as Blind Roosevelt Graves, Bertha Henderson and was rumored to have worked for Bessie Smith. His success disappeared during the Depression and nothing is known of him after his last recording session in 1931.

Show Notes:

1924 Paramount Catalog

Paramount Records recorded some of the greatest blues artists of the 20′s and early 30′s and today we kick off a multi-part feature on the label. In addition we’ll also be airing and interview I did with Alex van der Tuuk the author of Paramount’s Rise And Fall. Paramount Records was founded in 1917 as a subsidiary of the Wisconsin Chair Company of Port Washington, Wisconsin. The chair company had made some wooden phonograph cabinets by contract for Edison Records. Wisconsin Chair decided to start making its own line of phonographs with a subsidiary called the “United Phonograph Corporation” at the end  of 1915. It made phonographs under the “Vista” brand name through the end of the decade; the line failed commercially. In 1917 a line of phonograph records was debuted with the “Paramount” label. They were recorded and pressed by Chair Company subsidiary “The New York Recording Laboratories, Incorporated.” In its initial years, the Paramount label offered recordings of standard pop-music fare, on records recorded with below-average audio fidelity pressed in below-average quality shellac. In the early 1920′s, Paramount was still racking up debts for the Chair Company while producing no net profit. Paramount began offering to press records for other companies at low prices. The Paramount Record pressing plant was contracted to press discs for Black Swan Records. When that later company floundered, Paramount bought out Black Swan and thus got into the business of making recordings by and for African-Americans. These so-called “race music” records became Paramount’s most famous and lucrative business. Paramount’s “race record” series was launched in 1922 with its 1200 “race” series exclusively devoted to black music. The early catalog was dominated by female blues singers such as Lucille Hegamin, Alberta Hunter and Monette Moore and a bit later with records by stars Ida Cox and Ma Rainey. A large mail-order operation and weekly advertisements in black owned newspapers like the Chicago Defender were keys to the label’s early success. The label’s successful recordings by Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake shifted the focus from women singers to male. The label wnet on to record some of the era’s most celebrated male blues artists such as delta legends Charlie Patton, skip James, Tommy Johnson, Son House, Willie Brown plus diverse artists such as Buddy Boy Hawkins, the Mississippi Sheiks, Charlie Spand, Papa Charlie Jackson among many others. The onset of the depression crippled the recording industry and Paramount was eventually discontinued in 1932.

Like all the early race labels, Paramount’s fledgling catalog was dominated by women singers. As Tony Russell wrote: “Blinded by the aurora of Blind Lemon Jefferson and his fellow bluesman, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that for much of the ’20s blues was almost exclusively women’s business, whether on the vaudeville stage or amidst the smoking lights of the tent show.” We open the program with tracks by Alberta Hunter, Monette Moore, Lucille Hegamin, Trixie Smith and Ma Rainey. Hunter would become one of Paramount’s top sellers and her releases were given full-page ads in the Chicago Defender. According to Alex van der Tuuk, Hunter “had been working for a couple of years at the Dreamland Theater in Chicago and had started her recording career with Black Swan in New York, but had become disenchanted with them because they did so little to ptomote her records in contrast with the big buildup they were affording Ethel Waters.” She switched to Paramount in 1922 where her recordings launched Paramount’s 1200 race series. Hunter wrote a lot of her own material and her song “Down Hearted Blues”, became Bessie Smith’s first record in 1923. Hunter staid with the label through 1924, cutting around three-dozen sides.

Alongside Bessie Smith, who recorded for Columbia, Ma Rainey is one of the most celebrated woman blues singers of the era. Rainey first appeared onstage in 1900, singing and dancing in minstrel and vaudeville stage revues. In 1902 she married the song and dance man William “Pa” Rainey and from then on became known as Ma Rainey. The couple formed a song and dance act that included blues and popular songs. They toured the country, but primarily the South and became a popular attraction as part of Tolliver’s Circus, The Musical Extravaganza and The Rabbit Foot Minstrels, where Rainey befriended a young Bessie Smith. It was not until 1923 that Ma Rainey signed a recording contract with Paramount. She was billed as the “Mother of the Blues”, recording 100 songs between 1923 and 1928 for the label.

Less well remembered are Monette Moore, Lucille Hegamin and Trixie Smith. Monette Moore began her career accompanying silent films in Kansas City and then toured the vaudeville circuit as a pianist and singer. In the early 1920s she made her way to New York and became active in musical theater. Her recording career began in 1923. She cut over a dozen sides for Paramount. Lucille Hegamin was the second African-American Blues singer to release a record in 1920, just few months after Mamie Smith’s groundbreaking success with “Crazy Blues.” Hegamin’s first record was “The Jazz Me Blues” and “Everybody’s Blues” for Arto Records and it sold well enough, but her next record in 1921 “Arkansas Blues” and “I’ll Be Good But I’ll Be Lonesome” was one of the most popular records of 1921 and made her a star of the blossoming Blues scene. It was issued on several different labels including paramount. Trixie Smith was born in Atlanta and around 1915 moved north to New York to work in show business. At first she worked in minstrel shows and on the TOBA vaudeville circuit. In 1922 Smith made her first recordings for the Black Swan label and later that year she won a blues singing contest in New York beating out Lucille Hegamin and others with her song “Trixie’s Blues.” In 1924 Smith made her debut for Paramount, cutting twenty sides for the label through 1926.

The heyday of woman blues singers started to fade toward the mid to late 20′s. Paramount’s earliest male blues star was Papa Charlie Jackson who made his debut in 1924 followed by in 1926 by big selling artists Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake as well as the lesser known, but superb slide player, Bo Weavil Jackson who’s records made virtually no impact among the blues buying public.

“Papa” Charlie Jackson was a six-string banjo who was one of the earliest and most successful of the solo blues singer/instrumentalists. ackson settled in Chicago on the famed Maxwell Street around 1920 where he began earning a living by playing on street corners and at house parties. In 1924 he cut his first solo sides “Papa’s Lawdy Blues” and “Airy Man Blues” for the Paramount label. During this period Jackson also became a sideman with many of the hot groups in and around Chicago.He also recorded with Ma Rainey and Ida Cox before his subsequent death around 1938.

In 1925 Blind Lemon Jefferson was discovered by a Paramount recording scout and taken to Chicago to make his first records either in December 1925 or January 1926.  Jefferson was the first male blues artist to attain a national audience. His extremely successful recording career continued until 1929 when he died under mysterious circumstances. He recorded over 100 sides all for the Paramount label, except one 78 for OKeh. Forty-four ads for his records in the Chicago Defender between 1926 and 1930.

Blind Blake was one of the most popular bluesmen of the 1920’s with his  only rival in popularity was label mate Blind Lemon Jefferson. Blake’s records were advertised heavily in the Chicago Defender with twenty-four ads featured. And as Tony Russell sums up: “Blind Blake’s most remarkable achievement as a recording artist was that in a career lasting almost six years, in which he made about 80 sides, he was never reduced, whether by slipping skill, waning inspiration or the single-mindedness of record company executives, from a multifaceted musician to a formulaic blues player.”

Paramount is famous for its roster of delta blues artists which boasted Son House, Charlie Patton, Tommy Johnson, Ishman Bracey, Skip James, Willie Brown, Louise Johnson, Geeshie Wiley and Rube Lacy. Credit for much of this talent goes to Henry C. Spier, a music store owner from Jackson, Mississippi who scoured the south for talent and was responsible for getting Son House, Skip James and Charlie Patton on record. Paramount asked Gennett to record 14 tunes by Patton at their Richmond, Indiana studio in June 1929. “Pony Blues” b/w “Banty Rooster Blues” was the first issued and was a hit. In all, Patton recorded 38 numbers for Paramount in 1929. Patton cut one more session for Paramount in 1930 and three final sessions for Vocalion in 1934.

In 1930, Arthur Laibley who had produced Patton’s last session for Paramount, stopped in Lula to arrange another session with Patton. Patton was famous throughout the Delta and had already recorded close to forty sides for Paramount. Patton told Laibley about House and about two other musicians Willie Brown and Louise Johnson, setting the stage for one of the blues most legendary recording sessions. The group headed to the Paramount studios in Grafton, WI, where House recorded six songs at the session, Brown four (“Kicking In My Sleep Blues b/w Window Blues” has never been found – or has it?), Johnson four and four by Patton backed by Brown.

-Listen to the Alex van der Tuuk interview (edited, MP3, 1 hr.)

Show Notes:

Blind Willie McTell, Chicago Defender Ad, August 27, 1930

Today’s show is the fourth installment of an ongoing series of programs built around a particular year. The first year we spotlighted was 1927 which was the beginning of a blues boom that would last until 1930; there were just 500 blues and gospel records issued in 1927 and increase of fifty percent from 1926 a trend that would continue until the depression. To feed the demand other record companies conducted exhaustive searches for new talent, which included making trips down south with field recording units. Between 1927-1930 Atlanta was visited seventeen times, Memphis eleven times, Dallas eight times, New Orleans seven times and so on. The record companies advertised their records in black newspapers, mainly in the Chicago Defender, which was the nation’s most influential black weekly newspaper.

The Depression, with the massive unemployment it brought, had a shattering effect on the pockets of black record buyers. By 1931 race record sales accounted for only about 1% of total industry sales, as against 5% four years earlier. By the fall of 1929, the Depression closed down a lot of the large touring shows and theaters. Record companies went bankrupt and sales plummeted. However, by 1937, the industry recovered and by 1937 they were almost as many new blues records produced as the peak years of the 1920′s.  The depression hit the record business hard; Columbia for example was pressing 11, 000 blues and gospel records in 1927 and by May of 1930 they were pressing 2,000 records, with the number halving by year’s end. Blind Willie Johnson’s first records had sold no better than the average disc in the Columbia 1400D series – in early 1929 they would manage about 5,000 as against Barbecue Bob’s 6,000 and Bessie Smith’s 9,000 or 10,000. In mid-1930 the blind evangelist  became the star of the list – his records were still selling 5,000 copies, although Barbecue Bob was down to 2,000, Bessie Smith to 3,000 and the average release had initial sales of only just over 1,000. The other labels were hit equally hard: Paramount placed their last ad in the Chicago Defender in April, Victor placed its last ad in December, the Gennett imprint was discontinued in 1930 and Warner, who owned the Brunswick group of labels, discontinued field trips at the end of 1930. Despite the hard times, there was some superb records being produced and today we spotlight some of the big names of the blues along with several who remain utterly forgotten.

Bessie Smith, Chicago Defender Ad, July 2, 1930

With the gradual rundown of Paramount, Brunswick became the leader in the race market. Among their stable of artists was Leroy Carr and Tampa Red, among the era’s biggest blues stars. Brunswick continued to record in the field and in 1930 they made recordings in Memphis where they recorded Memphis Minnie, Robert Wilkins, Jim Jackson and Garfield Akers among others. Today we spin Jim Jackson performing a rousing version of  ”St. Louis Blues” and Garfield Akers’ “Dough Roller Blues.” Akers made his debut in 1929 backed by Joe Callicott and waxed the classic “Cottonfield Blues” Pts. 1 & 2 for Vocalion which was advertised in the February 2nd, 1930 Chicago Defender. In Knoxville they recorded Leola Manning and the Tennessee Chocolate Drops and in Dallas they recorded Gene Campbell.

In February 1930 the OKeh field unit called at Shreveport, Louisiana, to do some recording at  the request of a local radio station. while there, they recorded  a small black group who called themselves the Mississippi Sheiks. Their records went down so well that OKeh recorded 14 more numbers in San Antonio in August and a further 16 in Jackson, Mississippi, just before Christmas. The Mississippi Sheiks became the most popular string bands of the late ’20s and early ’30s. The band blended country and blues fiddle music and included guitarist Walter Vinson and fiddler Lonnie Chatmon, with frequent appearances by guitarists Bo Carter and Sam Chatmon, who were also busy with their own solo careers. The Sheiks had their first and biggest success with “Sitting on Top of the World,” which was a crossover hit and multi-million seller. The Mississippi Sheiks’ popularity peaked in the early ’30s, and their final recording session happened in 1935 for the Bluebird label.

In 1930, when most companies were considering cutting back on their race issues, the American Record Corporation entered the field. ARC had been formed in August 1929 by the merger of three small companies: the Cameo Record corporation, whose labels included Banner and Oriole, and the Pathe Phonograph and Radio Corporation, owners of Perfect. In April 1930 ARC decided to revive the Perfect race series, and this time they made sure that they used currently popular artists singing up-to -the-minute material. In April 1930 they recorded some solo blues by Georgia Tom, and some Tampa Red styled numbers by a group called The Famous Hokum Boys that included Georgia Tom and Tampa Red and Big Bill Broonzy. ARC also recorded five solo records by him and issued them under the name Sammy Sampson. In September ARC had another recording session involving once again Georgia Tom, Sammy Sampson and The Famous Hokum Boys. Hokum had been hot since Tampa Red & Georgia Tom’s “It’s Tight Like That” was a huge smash in 1928 and the labels continued to try and cash in on the craze. “Hokum” was a common vaudeville term for rowdy comedy or clever stage business.

In February 1930 Vocalion recorded sides by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe, with the duo hitting big with “Bumble Bee” issued in May. Columbia had recorded the duo the year before but didn’t issue all the titles. Once they saw how well “Bumble Bee” was selling they belatedly, in August 1930, issued the version they had recorded fourteen months previously.

Bukka White, Chicago Defender Ad, November 11, 1930

Among some of the other major blues artists who cut records in 1930, we spin tracks by Blind Willie McTell, Bessie Smith, Bukka White, Big Bill Broonzy and Blind Blake. White made his debut in 1930 for Victor, cutting two 78’s, one blues coupling and one gospel under the name Washington White. His “I Am In The Heavenly Way” was advertised on October 11, 1930 in the Chicago Defender. Blind Blake, one of the most popular bluesmen of the 1920’s. His only rival in popularity was Blind Lemon Jefferson, also a Paramount artist. Blake was advertised heavily in the Chicago Defender between 1926-30,with twenty-four ads appearing. He cut some 80 sides before mysteriously disappearing after a final session circa June 1932. In her heyday Bessie Smith was the highest paid black entertainer in America. She was advertised as The Empress of the Blues a title hard to argue with. She recorded prolifically between 1923-1931 with a final four-song session in 1933. Broonzy made his debut in 1928 and was an in demand session guitarist as well as waxing hundreds of sides under his own name. Today we spin Broonzy’s superb “I Can’t Be Satisfied” as well as “Pig Meat Strut” in the company of The Famous Hokum Boys.  The group was a studio outfit that consisted of Big Bill Broonzy, Georgia Tom, Frank Braswell who cut close to two-dozen sides in 1930 .

Show Notes:

Some piano player, I’ll tell you that
(Ivy Smith, Alabama Strut)

Read Liner Notes

On December 4, 2009 Francis Wilford-Smith died and today we pay tribute to him. Smith was an avid collector of 78 records, a broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 (Aspects of the Blues) and the compiler of some excellent piano blues LP’s on the British label Magpie Records, drawing all the material from his own collection. Today’s selections all come from Smith’s groundbreaking 21 volume series he started in 1977 and issued on the Magpie label, a subsidiary o of the Flyright label. Subsequently his collection was used for a piano blues series on Yazoo issued on CD. He had one of the largest collections of piano blues 78′s in the world. Smith also field recorded Roosevelt Sykes and Little Brother Montgomery at his home in Sussex in 1960, yielding two 1980s LP’s of the latter: These Are What I Like: Unissued Recordings Vol. 1 and Those I Liked I Learned: Unissued Recordings Vol. 2. Smith made a good living from cartoons published under the pen name ‘Smilby’ in Playboy, which allowed him to outbid others for rare 78s. Wilford-Smith was 82, had suffered from Parkinson’s disease since 1994, and spent his last years in a nursing home. He died asleep in bed.

On a personal note, it was through the Magpie series that I became a life long fan of piano blues. I came to the series late, my first purchase was volume 20 and I must have been around 16. The album made a huge impression on me and I even remember exactly where I purchased it – Tower Records on West 4th St., NYC. I went back and picked up as many of the rest of the albums I could find and over the years completed the entire series. The series had everything you would want; each thematically well assembled, excellent liner notes (brief introductions by Smith) by Bob Hall, Paul Oliver and Richard Noblett and superb transfers.

Read Liner Notes

Before I give some background on the individual volumes, its worth quoting Wilford-Smith from his introduction to the series:  “The well-merited reissue of so many excellent blues guitar records over the past few years has had, perhaps, one unfortunate and unintentional – in that it caused the pianist to be unfairly overshadowed. This album marks the start of a series which, it is hoped, will put into perspective the role of the piano in blues history and do justice to the memory of the many fine pianists who have so enriched the music. We are only using 78 originals from my own collection, thus giving the listener the rare chance to hear records; at their best. No dubs, no tape-tracks that have wandered in and out of   half-a-dozen tape collections before being issued with that all too familiar dead and muffled cotton-wool-in-the-ears sounds. No ordinary filtering of any sort has been done in any misguided attempt t0 ‘improve’ the quality, and each listener is left free to filter to his own taste. Surface noise there may be, but freshness and vitality are not strained away. The selection of records both here and throughout the series will be essentially subjective and reflect my own taste, but l shall endeavor to include a wide-ranging variety of piano styles and treatments to give as broad as possible a picture of the whole blues piano scene.”

More or less, we work our way through the series volume by volume. The first volume and volume 17 are devoted to Paramount and as Smith writes: “…We start with Paramount, almost unchallenged as the greatest blues label, and its piano content lives up to its reputation. Here are joys indeed  -  and some of the greatest blues piano ever recorded.  Spand, Little Brother, Ezell,  Louise Johnson, Wesley Wallace, Garnett.  …I think the playing here must satisfy the most critical lover of the blues.” From those volumes we spin tracks by Little Montgomery, Charles Avery, Charlie Spand, Louise Johnson, Henry Brown and Jabo Williams.

“…The second volume”, Smith writes, “in our Piano Blues Series, will  be found very different in character to Volume One.  … Here on Brunswick a large  proportion of  the  piano blues bear a strong family resemblance and emotional  unity. This perhaps because several of the artists would seem to hail from the St. Louis area, and share that  hollow-chorded easy-rocking piano style.” The Piano Blues Vol. 3 is devoted to the Vocalion label which was founded in 1916 and acquired by Brunswick in 1925. These are particularly strong volumes and we included several tracks from these collections including Eddie Miller, Charles “Speck” Pertum, Lucille Bogan, Mozelle Alderson, Romeo Nelson and Joe Dean among others.

Read Liner Notes

Next to St. Louis, one of the most musically rich piano regions was Texas as Paul Oliver observed:  “Texas was as rich in piano blues as Mississippi was in guitar blues …A cursory glance through the discographies will emphasize the fact that a remarkable number of blues pianists came from Texas.” Four volumes in the series are devoted to the piano blues of Texas: The Piano Blues Vol. 4 – The Thomas Family 1925-1929, The Piano Blues Vol. 8 – Texas Seaport 1934-1937, The Piano Blues Vol. 11 – Texas Sante Fe 1934-1937 and The Piano Blues Vol. 15 – Dallas 1927-1929. The Texas pianists, Oliver notes, “…can be grouped into ‘schools’, characterized by certain similarities of style and approach, that were partly a reflection of the environments in which they worked, of their friendships and associations with other pianists, and by the isolation of Texas from other states.” One school was the so-called “Santa Fe group” who were based in the southwestern part of the state where the cities of Galveston, Houston and Richmond lie. Here was where the music thrived and pianists could be found like Pinetop Burks, Son Becky, Rob Cooper, Black Boy Shine, Andy Boy, Big Boy Knox, Robert Shaw, Buster Pickens and the singers who worked with them like Walter “Cowboy” Washington and Joe Pullum. The other important school was a cluster of pianists and singers based in Dallas such as Alex Moore, Texas Bill Day, Neal Roberts Willie Tyson, and singer Billiken Johnson. The earlier Texas piano tradition is documented on The Piano Blues Vol. 4 – The Thomas Family 1925-1929. As David Evans states: “It is likely that no family has contributed more personalities to blues history than the Thomas family of Houston, Texas, whose famous members included George W. Thomas, his sister Beulah “Sippie” Wallace, their brother Hersal Thomas, George’s daughter Hociel Thomas, and Moanin’ Bernice Edwards who was raised up in the family.”

Several volumes in the series are devoted to individual artists or a cluster of artists: The Piano Blues Vol. 6 – Walter Roland 1933-1935, The Piano Blues Vol. 7 – Leroy Carr 1930-1935, The Piano Blues Vol. 9 – Lofton-Noble 1935-1936 (Cripple Clarence Lofton and George Noble), The Piano Blues Vol. 12 – Big Four 1933-1941 (Little Brother Montgomery, Walter Davis, Roosevelt Sykes, Springback James) and The Piano Blues Vol. 18 – Roosevelt Sykes/Lee Green 1929-1930.

Read Liner Notes

Among the other volumes in the series we play tracks from The Piano Blues Vol. 5 – Postsript 1927-1935, The Piano Blues Vol. 13 – Central Highway 1933-1941, The Piano Blues Vol. 14 – The Accompanist and The Piano Blues Vol. 20 – Barrelhouse Years 1928-1933. Among the tracks we spin from these collections are Turner Parrish’s remarkable “The Trenches” who Bob Hall calls “an eccentric and probably unschooled pianist with nevertheless a considerable technique”, Georgia White accompanying herself on piano on the boisterous “The Blues Ain’t Nothin’ But…”, the obscure Pigmeat Terry who sings magnificently on the moving “Black Sheep Blues” accompanied by his own piano and the wonderful Pinetop and Lindberg’s “East Chicago Blues.”

The piano blues series officially concluded with The Piano Blues Vol. 21 – Unfinished Boogie 1938-1945 which collects unreleased recordings of Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis. As mentioned previously two collections of recordings by Little Brother Montgomery were made at Smith’s home in 1960 and were the final albums issued on the Magpie imprint. Yazoo Records launched their own piano blues series also using 78’s from Smith’s collection. As far as I can tell the series has stopped but they issued seven excellent collections.

Related Articles:

Notes to The Piano Blues Vol. 8 – Texas Seaport 1934-1937, The Piano Blues Vol. 11 – Texas Sante Fe 1934-1937 and The Piano Blues Vol. 15 – Dallas 1927-1929 (Word Doc)

Show Notes:

In his memoir, Big Bill Blues, Broonzy called Sleepy John Estes’ way of singing the blues “crying the blues.” As Tony Russell noted: “The 25-year old man who sat down to record “The Girl I Love, She Got Long Curly Hair” for a traveling Victor unit in Memphis would prove to be one of the company’s most striking finds in a city full of distinctive blues artists. High, blurred, plaintive, his voice sounded like that of a man on the verge of tears; sometimes it would even break, momentarily as if overwhelmed by emotion.” While Estes would become for his finely wrought personal songs, these initial numbers were local standards or common themes like “Divin’ Duck Blues” (“If the river was whiskey and I was a divin’ duck”). His storytelling is evident on early numbers like “Street Car Blues” but it wasn’t until signing with Decca in 1937 that he cut his most enduring compositions. Today’s program spotlights  Estes recordings before his comeback, spotlighting the remarkable recordings he made between 1929 and 1941. In addition we feature some of the fine musicians from the Brownsville area who worked and recorded with Estes including Son Bonds, Yank Rachell, Hammie Nixon, Charlie Pickett, Noah Lewis and Lee Brown.

John Adam “Sleepy John” Estes, was born in Ripley, Tennessee, around 1900. Estes first learned to play guitar from his sharecropper father at age twelve. Soon thereafter, while working in the cotton fields with his family, he crafted his own cigar-box guitar and began to hone his skills at local house parties and fish fries. His nickname “Sleepy” stemmed from a chronic blood pressure disorder that gave him fits of narcolepsy. Around 1915, the Estes family moved to Brownsville, Tennessee, which served as Sleepy John’s base residence periodically for the rest of his life. Brownsville was also home to “Hambone” Willie Newbern, an important early influence, as well as Yank Rachell and Hammie Nixon–musicians with whom Estes partnered at local venues and on professional recordings. Other Brownsville musicians who Estes worked with were pianist Lee Brown and guitarists Son Bonds and Charlie Pickett, all who recorded in the 30’s and all who backed Estes on record. Estes teamed with Rachell to play house parties, picnics, and the streets in the Brownsville area from 1919 to 1927. He also partnered with local harmonica player Hammie Nixon, hoboing Arkansas and southern Missouri with him from 1924 to 1927. At this time jug band music was wildly popular, so Estes started the Three J’s Jug Band with Rachell and jug player Jab Jones. The Three J’s played Memphis, where they competed for exposure in a competitive scene dominated by the Memphis Jug Band.

When the Victor recording company sent a field recording unit to Memphis in September 1929, Estes recorded several sides backed by the Three J’s, with Jones playing piano instead of the jug. Other acts to record for Victor on this trip included the Memphis Jug Band, Frank Stokes, and Cannon’s Jug Stompers. He was invited to record again for Victor in May 1930. This session yielded the uptempo “Milk Cow Blues,” a tune Robert Johnson would later record as “Milkcow Calf Blues.” In all the group cut fifteen sides, three were unissued, over the course of eight session in 1929 and 1930. Estes gave the following account of his recording debut: “Well, it was the guy who recorded the ‘Kansas City Blues’, Jim Jackson. We were coming down the street , me and Yank Rachell. He said ‘Boys, that was a mighty good peice you sang on the street the other day.. You can really sings. I can tell you how to make some money.’ Yank said, ‘John we can go ’round ourselves. We don’t need him to carry us.’ I went around to the Ellis Auditorium and we talked to Mr. R.S. Peer of New York City. he told us., ‘Boy’, he was recording two or three other boys there, they’d hit two pieces in an hour. ‘We got some more boys here but I want to see you before you go. I want you to come back late in the afternoon so I can hear what you can do.’ We went back then and we recorded.”

Estes and Nixon moved to Chicago in 1931 where they played parties and the streets. The Depression hit the recording industry hard, and the Estes/Nixon team did not record until a July 1935 date with the Champion label where the duo cut six sides at two sessions. Among the sides recorded were “Drop Down Mama” and “Some Day Baby Blues,” tunes that became staples for a later generation of bluesmen. As Tony Russell remarks: “Nixon is the nightingale of blues harmonica and his parallel melodies echoing Estes singing on “Someday Baby Blues” and “Drop Down Mama”, to mention just the most famous of their duets, are beautiful in their understated melancholy.” They left Chicago in the late 1930′s to travel the country playing lumber camps, parties, and street corners for four years. The Decca label brought Estes to New York City to record in 1937 and again in 1938 where he cut eighteen songs, laying down some of his most enduring songs. He was backed by Charlie Pickett on guitar and Hammie Nixon on harmonica. Among the songs were vivid depictions of the Depression in songs like “Down South Blues”, riding the blinds in “Special Agent Blues (Railroad Police Blues)”  and “Hobo Jungle Blues.” On the latter he sings:

Now, when I left Chicago, I left on that G & M (2X)
Then if I reach my home, I have to change over on that L& N
Now, came in on in that Mae West, and I put it down at Chicago Heights
Now, when I came in on that Mae West, I put it down at Chicago Heights
Now, you know, over in hobo jungle, and that’s where I stayed the night
Now, if you hobo through Brownsville, you better not be peepin’ out (2X)

Now, Mr. Whitten will git you, and Mr. Guy Hare will wear you out
Now, out East of Brownsville, about four miles from town (2X)
Now, if you ain’t got your fare, that’s where they will let you down

He sang many celebrated songs about hometown life in Brownsville including “Lawyer Clark” (“He said if I just stay out of the grave, he’d see that I wouldn’t go to the pen”), he sings about Martha Hardin’s house burning down in “Fire Department Blues”, he describes race relations in the south in “Clean Up At Home” (“I played for the colored, I played for the white/All you got to do, act kinda nice, you got to”) and the personal narrative “Floating Bridge” where describes a near brush with death after falling off a car ferry crossing a river:

Now I never will forget that floating bridge (3X)
Tell me five minutes time under water I was hidW
hen I was going down I throwed up my hands
Now, when I was going down, I throwed up my hands (2X)
Please, take me on dry land
Now they carried me in the house and they laid me ‘cross the blank’t (3X)

“Bout a gallon-and-half muddy water I had drankThey dried me off and they laid me in the bed
Now, they dried me off and they laid me in the bed (2X)
Couldn’t hear nothin’ but muddy water runnnin’ through my head

Estes was paired with younger guitarist Robert Nighthawk, perhaps to modernize his sound, for his last six song Decca session in 1940 which lack the spark of his collaborations with Nixon. A year later he recorded for the Bluebird label backed by kazoos and a tub bass in a swinging session with the Delta Boys (Son Bonds and Raymond Thomas), who echoed Estes’s jug band sensibilities. All three men variously take the lead on exuberant numbers like “Don’t You Want To Know” , “You Shouldn’t Do That” both sporting a vigorous kazoo solo from Bonds who takes the lead on “Black Gal Swing.” On September 24, 1941 the trio made their final sides together, a three song session for Bluebird including the aforementioned “Lawyer Clark” and “Little Laura.” Little Laura, according to Don Kent’s notes to the Yazoo Sleepy John Estes CD, was a neighbor of Sleepy John’s and the Jimmy referred to in the lyrics is Sleepy John’s name for Yank Rachell. This song is essentially the one Sonny Boy Williamson I  recorded for Bluebird a couple of months earlier as “She Was A Dreamer.”

Estes returned to sharecropping in Brownsville in 1941. In 1948, he and Nixon recorded again for the Ora Nelle label (“Harlem Bound” and “Stone Blind Blues”) but the records went unreleased. Estes went completely blind in 1950 and elected to try his hand at recording again. In 1952 he cut four sides for the Sun label. Estes was rediscovered in 1962 during the blues revival. He cut several albums for Delmark and returned to touring with Hammie Nixon before health problems confined him to Brownsville. Sleepy John Estes died June 5, 1977.

After recording with Sleepy John Estes in  1929 and 1930 Yank Rachell decided to try his hand at farming and also worked for the L&N Railroad. During a stopover in New York Rachell teamed up with guitarist Dan Smith and laid down 25 titles for ARC in just three days, though only six of them were issued. Shortly before the ARC date, Rachell had discovered a kid harmonica player that he believed had real talent, John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson. They worked together at the Blue Flame Club in Jackson, Tennessee starting in 1933. In 1934 Williamson went north to Chicago. With the success of Williamson’s first Bluebird dates of 1937, Rachell decided to join Sonny Boy in Chicago for sessions in March and June of 1938. Yank Rachell also contributed four sides of his own to each session, and then 16 more in 1941 with Sonny Boy backing him up. After Sonny Boy Williamson’s murder in 1948, Rachell drifted away from music and relied solely on straight jobs to make his living, settling permanently in Indianapolis in 1958. His wife passed away in 1961, and afterward he began to resume performing. In 1962, Rachell was re-united with Nixon and Estes, and the three of them began playing college and coffeehouse circuit, recording for Delmark as Yank Rachell’s Tennessee Jug Busters. Estes died in 1977, and from that time Rachell worked mainly as a solo act. He recorded only sporadically in his last years and passed in 1997 at the age of 87.

Sleepy John Estes, American Folk Blues Festival, 1964

Noah Lewis was born in Henning, Tennessee, and raised in the vicinity of Ripley. He played in local string bands and brass bands, and began playing in the Ripley and Memphis areas with Gus Cannon. When jug bands became popular in the mid-1920s, he joined Cannon’s Jug Stompers. He cut seven sides under his own name at sessions in 1929 and 1930. Recording as Noah Lewis’ Jug Band, he was backed on two numbers by Sleepy John and Yank Rachell with just Estes backing him on two other numbers cut a couple of days apart. Lewis died in poverty of gangrene brought on by frostbite in Ripley, Tennessee, in 1961.

Harmonica player Hammie Nixon was born on January 22, 1908, in Brownsville, TN. He began his career as a professional harmonica player in the 1920s, but also played the kazoo, guitar, and jug. “I used to hear a lot about him, John Adam”, Nixon recalled, “and I was just a kid, living out on my parent’s home near Ripley.  …And he heard me playing and he asks me would I like to go and play my harp for him?So I told him yes, but I had o ask my mama first because I was just young, see. So he comes back to my mama’s house with me, but she didn’t want me to go you know. Anyhow he says like he would look after me and provide for me and so forth so she let me go. And we been together ever since.” He performed with Sleepy John Estes for more than 50 years. He also recorded with Lee Green, Charlie Pickett, and Son Bonds. He played with many jug bands. After Estes died, Nixon played with the Beale Street Jug Band (also called the Memphis Beale Street Jug Band) from 1979 onward. Shortly before his death he cut his lone album, the marvelous  Tappin’ That Thing for the High Water label. He died August 17, 1984.

Another associate of Sleepy John Estes and Hammie Nixon, Son Bonds played very much in the same rural Brownsville style that the Estes-Nixon team popularized in the ’20s and ’30s. The music to one of Bonds’s songs, “Back and Side Blues” cut in 1934, became a standard blues melody when John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson from nearby Jackson, TN, used it in his classic “Good Morning, (Little) School Girl” he cut in 1937.Bonds cut a total of fifteen sides over five sessions in 1934, 1938 and 1941. Hammie Nixon backs Bonds on the two 1934 sessions while Estes backs Bonds on his last two sessions in 1938 and 1941.On his Decca and Champion sides Bonds was called Brownsville Son Bonds and Brother Son Bonds at his second Decca session which was religious. Nixon gave the following account of Bonds’ death: “He got killed around the same time that Sonny Boy got killed. Sonny Boy got killed in Chicago, Son got killed in Dyersburg. A fellow shot him, he though he was shooting somebody else. Son was sitting on his porch. This guy wore them great thick glasses and he got into it with the guy who lived next door to Son. It was way about 12:00 at night and he though it was the boy who lived next door.” Estes had a different version involving a woman and a plot to get Bonds’ insurance money.

Little is known about Charlie Pickett, who was from Brownsville, TN. Sheldon Harris reported that he was Estes cousin. Hammie Nixon had him performing in a group with Estes, Nixon, and others on the streets of Chicago in the 1930′s and 1940′s. Nixon told Kip Lornell in 1975, “He started preaching in St. Louis, been living in St. Louis for a couple of years. I think he’s preaching in Los Angeles now.” Of the song “Let Me Squeeze Your Lemon”,Nixon said, “I will never forget the first time he started playing that song, how he sung a something like, ‘When I got home, another nigger kicking in my stall.’ The bossman told him ‘don’t say that no more!’” He cut four sides for Decca in 1937 backed by Hammie Nixon and Lee Brown.  Pickett also played guitar behind Estes on 19 numbers at sessions in 1937 and 1938. He or Estes may have played guitar behind pianist Lee Green at a 1937 session.

Pianist Lee Brown was another member of the Tennessee musicians who who worked in Estes orbit. As Tony Russell sums up: “…Brown was subsequently more prolific than his modest talent merited.” His lone hit was “Little Girl, Little Girl” from his second 1937 session, sessions at which he backed Estes and Charlie Pickett. Estes backs Brown on two songs from his first session. In all Brown was involved in six sessions that yielded twenty-nine sides with one unissued. He was backed by some top flight backing musicians including Charlie Shavers, Sammy Price, Buster Bailey, Henry Allen, Robert Lee McCoy and Lil Armstrong among others. Brown cut some post-war material including two songs in 1945 for the Chicago label and a session for King in 1946

In the few years they were popular on race records, over a dozen or so jugbands made scores of records in a variety of different lineups.  Paul Oliver noted that by “half-spitting, half-vocalizing into it a player could produce a fruity, resonant sound not dissimilar to that of a tuba.” Memphis boasted a number of important jugbands including Cannon’s Jug Stomper’s, the Memphis jug band and groups led by Jed Davenport, Jack Kelly and Noah Lewis. Louisville was another rich area that claimed bands such as the Dixieland Jug Blowers, Phillip’s Louisville Jug Band, the Kentucky Jug Band and groups fronted by Clifford Hayes, Earl McDonald and Whistler AKA Buford Threlkeld. The Louisville jug outfits were strongly jazz oriented. Other groups included the Birmingham Jug Band, the Cincinnati Jug Band, King David’s Jug Band, the duo of Daddy Stovepipe and Mississippi Sarah. The dominant repertoire of the groups was blues but they also performed common-stock tunes, rags, reels and jazz. There were also a few white groups that used jugs.

Dixieland Jug Blowers

The origins of jug bands can be traced to Louisville, Kentucky around the turn of the century. It was around the turn of the century when the Cy Anderson Jug Band first appeared on the streets of Louisville, becoming an immediate smash. Between 1900 and 1909 the band played riverboats, carnivals and parties using Louisville as their home base. It was Earl McDonald who took the reins from the Cy Anderson Jug Band and even took lessons from member B.D. Tite. McDonald formed his own band and proved himself a shrew promoter, headlining dates in New York and Chicago. Also based in Louisville was Clifford Hayes who took up the violin at an early age and joined Earl McDonald’s Louisville Jug Band in 1914. Both men backed singer Sara Martin on ten sides in 1924 listed as Sara Martin and Her Jug Band. The two men had a falling out and thereafter led separate bands. Among the bands Hayes worked with were the Dixieland Jug Blowers and the Old Southern Jug Band.  The Dixieland Jug Blowers were the most sophisticated of the jug bands even employing clarinetist Johnny Dodds on record. Hayes left jugband music for a spell, taking up alto sax in the 20’s but returned to the music and was still leading a jug band when he passed circa 1955.  Vocalist Ben Ferguson and John Harris both recorded with the Louisville Jug Band. Ferguson cut two sides for Victor in 1931 backed by the band while John Harris cut two sides for Victor in 1931 including one with the Louisville Jug Band. These performances featuring Hayes and McDonald were their final collaboration.

Whistler and His Jug Band was a long-lasting and popular group that recorded for several labels from the mid-’20s through the early ’30s, and influenced many of the jug bands that followed. The group was formed in 1915 in Louisville, KY by guitarist, vocalist and whistler Buford Threlkeld. The band first entered the recording studios in September 1924 when they traveled to Richmond, IN to cut several sides for the Gennett label. The second recording trip for Whistler & His Jug Band took them to St. Louis in April 1927. On this trip, the jug band recorded 10 songs for Okeh.  In June, 1931the band got to record in their hometown of Louisville

Memphis Jug Band 2-LP (Yazoo 1067)

The last of the Louisville bands to record was the Phillips Jug Band/Kentucky Jug Band a creation of saxophonist Hooks Tilford. He had previously played in brass bands and worked with Ma Rainey who he recorded with in 1925. The following year he formed his first jug band. He recorded three sessions in 1930 under the name the Phillips Jug Band and the Kentucky Jug Band.

Singer, guitarist and harmonica player Will Shade founded the Memphis Jug Band circa 1925/26 to play in the city’s parks, streets and taverns. The idea was to get together a band “something like the boys in Louisville.” When early in 1927 the Victor record company decided to send a field recording unit into the South to record blues, gospel and white country music, it struck gold in Memphis with the city’s pre-eminent jug band, led by Will Shade, also known as ‘Son Brimmer’. Highly respected A & R man Ralph Peer had visited Memphis some months earlier and had auditioned and been impressed by the Memphis Jug Band. His confidence was rewarded with very good sales of their first two records. They recorded more prolifically than any other jugband, cutting 80 odd sides between 1927-1934. They drew from a large pool of local talent with 19 musicians recorded under the band’s name. An early unrecorded incarnation supposedly included Frank Stokes and Furry Lewis. The bands popularity led them to also perform at political rallies, store openings and other civic affairs. They performed at  gigs at like the Chickasaw Country Club, the Hunt Polo Club and at conventions at the Peabody Hotel. They were also hired regularly by Edward H Crump, the local political boss, for private parties and by food stands and restaurants to attract people. They played on the back of trucks advertising Colonial Bread and Schlitz. By the late 30’s jugband music’s popularity ebbed but Shade was still working into the 1950’s and in the last decade of his life made a number of documentary recordings. Shade passed in 1966.

Two artists connected to the Memphis Jug Band were professional gambler Kaiser Clifton and vaudville veteran Minnie Wallace. Clifton cut four sides for Victor in 1930 backed by members of the Memphis Jug Band including Will Shade. Wallace also cut sides backed by members of the Memphis Jug Band including Will Shade in 1929 and 1935. She cut six sides in total plus several sides that were never issued.

Cannon’s Jug Stompers

With popularity of the Memphis Jug band a number of other jug bands had organized in Memphis, including Cannon’s Jug Stompers, Jed Davenport’s Beale Street Jug Band  and Jack Kelly’s Jug Band (later known as The South Memphis Jug Band). The city boasted at least eight jug bands by the end of the 20’s. Harmonica player and singer Jed Davenport is believed to be a medicine show entertainer who was active in Memphis in the 1920’s and 30’s.  He cut two solo sides in 1929 and six sides in 1930 with his Beale Street Jug Band. This was probably and principally a studio conceived recording group as it included; Joe McCoy, and musical (and for a time life) partner of Memphis Minnie and another singer/guitarist who had already recorded, Henry L. Castle, known as Too Tight Henry, Minnie herself was probably in there somewhere too, playing guitar.Also in 1930 Davenport cut two sides with a group called the Beale Street Rounders. Jack Kelly is believed to be from North Mississippi but spent most of his life in Memphis where he sang on the streets and worked with musicians like Frank Stokes, Dan Sane, Will Batts and later Little Buddy Doyle and Walter Horton. In 1933 he cut 14 sides by the South Memphis Jug Band which included Will Batts on violin, Dan Sane on guitar and D.M. Higgs on jug. He cut ten more sides in 1939 with Batts, and Little Son Joe. Kelly’s last known sides were made in 1952 with Walter Horton for the Sun label titled as by Jackie Boy & Little Walter.

Although they sold fewer records, in musical terms Cannon’s Jug Stompers rivaled the Memphis Jug Band. In the early years of the last century Gus Cannon traveled the South with medicine shows. In the late 1920’s, based in Memphis, he formed Cannon’s Jug Stompers. The band played in the streets and parks of Memphis or in outlying west Tennessee towns like Brownsville and Ripley. Cannon first recorded sides for Paramount with Blind Blake in 1927 before recording in 1928 with the Jug Stompers. The group made their final recordings in 1930. Cannon sang and played banjo and jug with the harmonica blower Noah Lewis playing a prime role and as well as singing on some numbers. In addition to recording with Cannon’s Jug Stomper’s, harmonica blower and singer Noah Lewis cut four solo sides in 1929, two in 1930 as Noah Lewis’s Jug Band and two more in 1930 with Sleepy John Estes. After his recording career, Cannon lived in obscurity for some 30 years until his composition “Walk Right In” was recorded in 1963 by the Rooftop Singers and was a hit. After that he did some further recording including the album Walk Right In in 1963 alongside Will Shade for the Stax label. Cannon passed in 1979.

Johnny Watson AKA Daddy Stovepipe was born in 1867 and was from Mobile, Alabama. He was a traveling musician who played harmonica, guitar and sang. He cut three solo sides in 1924, two in 1927, eight sides in 1931 including two with his wife Mississippi Sarah and a four song 1935 session again with his wife on two numbers. In later years he performed on Chicago’s Maxwell Street where he was last recorded in 1960. Those songs appeared on the album Blues From Maxwell Street that has not been issued on CD. He passed in 196

Stovepipe No. 1 was Sam Jones who played harmonica, guitar and stovepipe and likely was the common denominator in the Cincinnati Jug Band led by Walter Coleman and King David’s Jug Band. Possibly born in the 1880’s he spent his life in Cincinnati. He cut a dozen sides in 1924, with several unissued, plus a few sides in 1927. He recorded as a one-man band, with guitarist David Crockett and with King David’s Jug Band (also featuring Crockett) who cut six sides in 1930 and on the two instrumentals the Cincinnati Jug Band cut in 1929.

Of the lesser know artists on today’s program are the Birmingham Jug Band band who recorded 8 rough and ready sides on December 11, 1930. Jaybird Coleman was once though to be a member of the group but this has largely been discredited. Alabama bluesman Ollis Martin is another name hypothesized to have snad and played harmonica on the band’s records.

Today recordings come primarily from three excellent collections: Ruckus Juice & Chitlins, Vol. 1 &  2: The Great Jug Bands on Yazoo are hands down the best collections of jug band music available with an outstanding track selection, excellent sound and informative notes while JSP’s 4-CD set Memphis Jug Band with Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers is a superb box. JSP’s 4-CD sequel, Memphis Shakedown: More Jug Band Classics is almost equally worthwile.

Show Notes:

Today’s program spotlights five popular blues artists of the 1930’s and 40’s, some who represent something of the mainstream blues sound of the period while others are more indvidulistic; Bumble Bee Slim, Bill Gaither, Joe Pullum , Doctor Clayton and Johnnie Temple. The death of hugely popular Leroy Carr in 1935 was a profound shock to the blues world. Carr had a lasting influence on may blues artists including Amos Easton, who went by Bumble Bee Slim and Bill Gaither who called himself “Leroy’s Buddy.”  Both men recorded extensively throughout the 1930’s. Joe Pullum scored a massive hit with “Black Gal What Makes Your Head So Hard?” but despite strong material his subsequent sides didn’t sell well. Pullum was one of the most original vocalists of the 30’s and the same can be said of singer Doctor Clayton in the 1940’s. Clayton’s records sold well  and his recordings and style highly influential.  Johnnie Temple was a significant player in the “race” record business in the 1930’s and 40’s, scoring sizable hits with “Louise Louise Blues” and “Big Leg Woman.”

Bumble Bee Slim was a prolific singer who was one of the most-recorded and best-selling blues artists of the 1930s. His work exemplifies the beginnings of what came to be known as the Chicago style. Yet as Bill Barlow writes in  Looking Up At Down, that although he was the “most prolific” blues artist of the period he “had the least impact on Chicago’s blues culture, in part because, he never lived there for long.” He was born Amos Easton in Brunswick on May 7, 1905. When he was about fifteen, Easton joined the Ringling Brothers’ circus and traveled around the South and Midwest for two years. Returning to Georgia, he worked at a variety of jobs and was married briefly before heading north on a freight train. In 1928 he settled in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he most likely met pianist Leroy Carr, who with guitarist Scrapper Blackwell formed one of the most innovative blues duos of the period. Easton, now using the stage name Bumble Bee Slim, was impressed by Carr’s singing and by Blackwell’s guitar technique. A solid singer and excellent songwriter, Slim owed a large part of his success in his ability to emulate  Leroy Carr. He was, alas, derivative and as Paul Oliver noted his music seemed merely an “echo” of Carr’s “fatalism.” Slim issued a few tribute records dedicated to Carr: “The Death of Leroy Carr”, “Last Respects” and “My Old Pal Blues.” In the latter he sings:

I woke up this morning, couldn’t hardly get out of my bed (2x)
When I heard the news, that Leroy Carr was dead
I run to the window, and I fold back the blind (2x)
I stood there wondering, and just could not keep from crying

After refining his skills by playing halls and rent parties, Slim moved to Chicago, where he made his first record, “Chain Gang Bound,” for Paramount Records in 1931. The following year his song “B&O Blues” was a hit for Vocalion Records. “I made my audition… down at 666 [S.] Lake Shore Drive on the 11th floor” Slim recalled. The “contract “wasn’t much. It couldn’t be, ’cause in those days you could buy a record for 25 cents” The deal called for “forty tunes a year.” Between 1934 and 1937 Slim recorded more than 170 titles. His regular backing band included pianists Jimmie Gordon, Myrtle Jenkins, Black Bob, Honey Hill, or, on occasion, Peetie Wheatstraw. Willie Bee James was a regular on guitar but he also employed Casey Bill Weldon, Big Bill Broonzy, Bill Gaither and Scrapper Blackwell. In 1934 he did some sessions with Carl Martin and Ted Bogan. Howard Armstrong, who worked with Martin and Bogan,  refered to Slim as “one of those good old Georgia boys… well liked, nice looking… a prolific songwriter” who “overnight would write two songs sometimes. ” Several of Slim’s songs have been revived including “Sail On Little Girl, Sail On”, “Brick In My Pillow”, “Everybody’s Fishing” among others.

By 1937 Slim had become frustrated with the record business. He returned to Georgia, then relocated to Los Angeles, California, in the early 1940s, apparently hoping to break into motion pictures. He soon went back to blues music, however. Moving back to Los Angles he cut four sides for the Specialty label with two appearing on it’s sister imprint, Fidelity in 1951. An ad appeared in the September 1951 issue of Billboard: “Blues singer Amos Easton has come out of retirement and inked a five year term pact with Specialty Records. Diskery’s first sides on the warbler are Strange Angel and Lonesome Trail Blues and will be on the racks September 10.” Those were followed by two more before he made his final recording, the album Bumble Bee Slim: Back In Town, for Pacific Jazz in 1962. He died of Pneumonia on June 8, 1968.

Blues guitarist Bill Gaither cut well over a hundred sides for Decca and OKeh between 1931 and 1941. Gaither was close to the blues pianist Leroy Carr, and following Carr’s death in 1935, he recorded under the moniker Leroy’s Buddy for a time. A fine guitarist who possessed a warm, expressive voice, Gaither was also at times a gifted and inventive lyricist. He was often partnered with pianist George “Honey” Hill, and the duo patterned themselves after Carr and his guitarist, Scrapper Blackwell. Among Gaither’s many sides are three tributes to Carr: ” “Leroy Carr’s Blues,”  “Life of Leroy Carr” and “After the Sun’s Gone Down.” In The latter he sings:

It was in the evening, it was in the evening we used to talk face to face
When Leroy Carr told me, someday you’ll have to take my place

Gaither was a fine singer and as Tony Russell notes “made the bulk of his recordings before he was 30, and his voice never lost the freshness of youth, so that when he sings reflective numbers in the Carr idiom he often sounds like Carr’s sunnier younger brother.” Gaither was clearly attuned to the musical trends of the day with “Bad Luck Child” in the mold of Joe Pullum’s hit “Black Gal What Makes Your Head So Hard?” , alludes to Bumble Bee Slim’s hit “Bricks In My Pillow” in his “Gravel In My Bread”, updates Johnnie Temple’s “Big Leg Woman” with “Another Big Leg Woman” and faithfully covers Big Maceo’s “Worried Life Blues.” He was capable of transcending imitation as evidenced on worthy compositions like the jaunty “Pins And Needles” and “Bloody Eyed Woman” and more melancholy fare like  “Rocky Mountain Blues”, “Pains In My Heart”, “Old Coals Will Kindle”, “Stony Lonesome Graveyard” and the insightful topical blues of  “I’m Behind The 8 Ball Now.” In 1940 Gaither returned to Louisville where he ran a radio repair shop. Army service overseas in 1942-1945 left him with a nervous condition that prevented him from making music. He went back to Indianapolis where he worked in a cafe. He died in 1970.

Born and raised in Mississippi, Johnny Temple learned to play guitar and mandolin as a child. By the time he was a teenager, he was playing house parties and various other local events. He was part of a vibrant the 1920’s Jackson, MS scene, a city  teeming with artists such as Tommy Johnson, Walter Vincson, Ishmon Bracey, the Chatmon Brothers, Skip James and Rube Lacey. Often, he performed with Charlie and Joe McCoy and also worked with Skip James. Temple moved to Chicago in the early 30’s, where he quickly became part of the town’s blues scene.  In 1935, Temple began his recording career, releasing “Louise Louise Blues”, his biggest hit, the following year on Decca Records. He also recorded “Lead Pencil Blues” at his first session a song that was the first to employ the bottom-string boogie bass figure generally credited to Robert Johnson. Although he never achieved stardom, Temple’s records sold consistently throughout the late 30’s and 40’s. He had another sizable hit with 1938′s “Big Leg Woman.” While Temple’s recordings became somewhat formulaic, his delivery, as Tony Russell notes set him apart: “with its Southern accent, pronounced vibrato and momentary octave laps at word-endings, was set against urbane small-group settings giving his records a character that distinguished them from much contemporary blues.” He never fully shook off regional style of Jackson, singing numerous references to the city at his debut session and paid tribute to his roots in songs like Skip James’ “The Evil Devil Blues” (a version “Devil Got My Woman”) and “Cherry Ball Blues”, “Mississippi Woman’s Blues” with its similarities to Ishmon Bracey’s “Saturday Blues” and the nostalgic “Down In Mississippi.” As David Evans describes him in his liner notes as “someone who gave further life to a highly idiosyncratic and regional music and exposed elements of it to a larger audience that could never have been reached by its original creators.” Several of Temple’s songs have been oft-covered including “Lead Pencil Blues”, “Louise, Louise”,  “Big Leg Woman” and “Gonna Ride 74.”

In 1946 Temple cut some up-to-date sides for King with trumpet, tenor and piano, several of which were only issued decades later. In 1947 he cut an acetate of just himself on guitar for the Ora Nelle label, “Olds “98” Blues”, which Tony Russell notes “has some of the rockabilly drive of an early Sun recording.” In 1950 he cut a lone 78 for Miracle and cut some unissued songs for Chess. In the 1950’s, Temple’s recording career stopped, but he continued to perform, frequently with Big Walter Horton and Billy Boy Arnold. He moved back to Mississippi where he played clubs and juke joints around the Jackson area for a few years before he disappeared from the scene. He died in 1968.

“Black Gal What Makes Your Head So Hard?”  was a huge and influential hit in 1934. After Pullum recorded it in April 1934 it was covered by Vocalion by Leroy Carr, for Decca by Mary Johnson and Jimmie Gordon (under the pseudonym of Joe Bullum!), and by Josh White—all within ten months. Black gal is supposed to have been a traditional Texas theme, but Victoria Spivey calls Pullum’s “the original one.” That was ‘about 1925, yet neither Victoria nor Bernice Edwards, both members of  a clique that played West Texas from Galveston to Houston’ with Pullum and others, chose to record the song at their sessions in the ’20s. In a review of a record by Texas pianist Robert Shaw that appeared in her Blues Is My Business column in Record Research, Victoria Spivey reminisced about the early days.  “At first it made me very sad and blue as it brought back my carefree days in Texas in the early 20′s when we were all playing the whiskey joints, gay houses and picnics. We all loved each other then. Had no animosity in our hearts. These were the days of lazy, offbeat blues piano and singing. I was a member of a clique that played West Texas from Galveston to Houston to Richmond to Sugarland. There were Anthony (sic) Boy, Joe Pullum, Houston, Bernice Edwards, Pearl Dickson and myself. …On BLACK GAL, my buddy, Robert ‘Fud’ Shaw, must have really improvised the lyrics as it is very different from the original one by Joe Pullum. I first heard Joe sing this about 1925. In fact I was there in his house in the bloody 5th Ward in Houston, Texas when Joe was making up the words. It was at the time when I had a 6 month job with Miss Weaver in this same bloody 5th. Listen to Joe Pullum’s Bluebird recording and you will hear it right.” Robert Shaw had this to say about the song’s origins: “We was on a party and there were three or four girls there. An old black girl there, man she was, you talk about a handsome baby, she was a baby! Feet, eyes, legs, nose, mouth, everything fit! …So Joe Pullum says to this black girl;  ‘Say black girl!’ She didn’t say nothin’. Said ‘black girl!.’ She just kept on walkin’. He said: ‘What make your doggone head so hard’? All right! Now, there was a boy down there named Purdue (Robert Cooper) and Shine (Harold Holiday aka Black Boy Shine) and myself and Joe Pullum. Well, we went down to that party-house. Here Purdue come up playin’ the blues and this gal come in the door, the same black gal and Joe Pullum here he come (sings falsetto): ‘Black gal, black gal, woman, what makes your nappy head so hard, I would come to see you but your bad man has me barred.’ Joe Pullum brought that song up. …I bet he sold a million records and that song come out of two men and a half-a-pint of whiskey.”

“Why was it so successful?”, Tony Russell wrote. ” First, it introduced a new singing style; Pullum’s voice was pitched very high and clear, yet it always sounded relaxed, and his timing was impeccable. The effect—plaintive, appealing, penetrating—was like that of a muted trumpet solo, piercing its way through the blues, occasionally soaring in sudden leaps.” He was also a witty lyricist, writing several topical blues like “Joe Louis Is The Man”, “Bonus Blues”, “Mississippi Flood Blues” and “CWA Blues.” The piano accompaniment was first rate as Russell notes: “…The piano-playing behind Pullum is always satisfying stuff, whether the work of Andy Boy (who was on the third and longest session) or that of Robert Cooper (on the other three).”

Pullum went on to cut four sessions in less than two years which produced thirty songs including two sequels to “black gal” , yet few sold very well. Pullum performed on Houston radio station KTLC with his pianist, Preston Chase, known as Peachy. “Pullum and Peachy” became household names although for some reason Chase does not appear on Pullum’s records. Pullum headed to California probably in the 40’s where he cut a record for Swingtime in 1948. He supposedly cut a demo for Specialty in 1953. He died in 1964.

Doctor Clayton worked strictly as a vocalist (by some accounts he could play piano and ukulele), employing an impressive falsetto technique, later refined into a powerful, swooping style that was instantly recognizable. In addition he was an unparalleled songwriter, writing mostly original material with a rare wit, intelligence and social awareness. Clayton’s vocal style was widely emulated and a number of his songs became blues standards. Clayton moved to Chicago with partner Robert. Clayton was supposed to record for Decca but ended up hooking up with Lester Melrose of Bluebird. As Lockwood related later: “Doctor Clayton started singin’, and Melrose had a baby. …He had to have Doctor Clayton! Yeah! Lester Melrose heard Doctor Clayton sing, and he went crazy.” He first recorded for Bluebird in 1935 cutting six sides four of which went unissued, not recording again until 1941. Between 1941-1942 he recorded four sessions for Bluebird and Okeh. In 1941 he cut his most covered number, “Confessin’ The Blues” which has become a blues standard.  Many of Clayton’s songs deal with tough times that many still felt even after the depression. 1942′s “On The Killing Floor”no doubt spoke for many and also seems to echo  his own reckless lifestyle:

Please give me a match to light this short that I found
I know it looks bad for me, picking tobacco off the ground
I was in my prime not so very long ago
But high priced whiskey and woman done put me on the killin’ floor
Lord it’s zero weather and I ain’t got a lousy dime
I’m walking from door to door and I can’t find a friend of mine

From the same session was another down-and-out tale, “Ain’t No Business We Can Do”:

I went down to Eli, got my suit out of pawn
Took the last little change I had left, and put some new shoes on
I took a real slow stroll, right down the avenue
A high yeller asked me, could she go ‘long too
I said, “Hey good-lookin’ have you got any cash on you?
‘Cos if you broke like me, ain’t no business we can do”

Prices goin’ up every day, all kind of meat is too high
If you ain’t rich or got a good job, neckbones is all you could buy
The best friend you got, will even tell you a lie
And let me tell you buddy, you better keep some kinda cash on you
‘Cos when you broke, outdoors and hungry ain’t no business you can do

He cut a pair of topical  songs including  “Pearl Harbor Blues” and “41′ Blues.” In ”’41 Blues” Clayton offers his solution to end hostilities:

War is raging in Europe, up on the water, land and in the air
If Uncle Sam don’t be careful, we’ll all soon be right back over there
This whole war would soon be over if Uncle Sam would use my plan
Let me sneak in Hitler’s bedroom with my razor in my hand

In “Pearl Harbor Blues” he had this to say:

On December the seventh, nineteen hundred and forty one
The Japanese flew over Pearl Harbor, dropping bombs by the ton
This Japanese is so ungrateful, just like a stray dog on the street
Well he bite the hand that feeds em’, soon as he get enough to feed

Other numbers from the period were the oft covered “Cheating And Lying Blues”,  “Gotta Find My Baby”,  “Watch Out Mama”, “Moonshine Woman Blues” (covered by B.B. King in 1959 as “The Woman I Love” with an overdubbed version charting in 1968) and “Ain’t No Business We Can Do.”  Slide guitarist Robert Nighthawk was recorded playing “Cheating And Lying Blues” in 1964 live on Maxwell Street which also combined the lyrics form “Ain’t No Business We Can Do” and Pat Hare’s 1954 “I’m Gonna Murder My Baby” was a direct descendant of “Cheating And Lying Blues” (“I’m gonna murder my baby if she don’t stop cheating and lying/Well I’d rather be in the penitentiary than to be worried out of my mind”). Clayton’s final recordings were in February 1946 with a small group led by “Baby Doo” Caston with a final session in August 1946. These sessions included the original versions of oft-covered songs such as “Root Doctor”, “Angels in Harlem” (covered by Smokey Hogg, Peppermint Harris and by Larry Davis as “Angels In Houston”), “Hold That Train Conductor” (covered by B.B. King in 1961) and “I Need My Baby” (covered by B.B. King as “Walking Dr. Bill” and Smokey Hogg as “I Declare”) and perhaps ironically “Aint Gonna Drink No More.” Also cut during this period was “Copper Colored Mama” which King covered as “The Woman I Love” in 1954.

Clayton’s records were steady sellers and he regularly appeared at Chicago clubs such as Sylvios working with Robert Lockwood and Sunnyland Slim and toured in a bus with his likeness on the side. Attesting to this popularity was Sunnyland Slim who recorded as “Doctor Clayton’s Buddy” on his debut 1947 sessions and Willie Long Time Smith who in 1947 recorded the tribute, “My Buddy Doctor Clayton.” Clayton died on January 7th 1947 in Chicago, of pulmonary tuberculosis at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital. According to Big Bill only ten people attended Clayton’s funeral including himself and Tampa Red.

Show Notes:

Today’s show is a continuing series on forgotten blues heroes; those artists who perhaps don’t have enough sides for a full a feature and lesser-known figures that don’t fit into our other themed shows. Today we spotlight six superb little-recorded artists who cut sides in the 1920′s and 30′s: Willie Newbern, William Harris, Blind Joe Reynolds, King Solomon Hill, Luke Jordan and Geeshie Wiley. All of these artists are cut 78′s that are highly regarded among collectors and not coincidentally these records are exceedingly rare, in some cases only one known copy exists.

Little is known about blues songster Hambone Willie Newbern who waxed half-dozen sides at two sessions on consecutive days for Okeh, among those six is the first-ever rendition of the immortal Delta classic “Roll and Tumble Blues.” According to Sleepy John Estes, who knew him, he was born in 1899 and first began to make a name for himself in the Brownsville, TN area, where he played country dances and fish fries in the company of Yank Rachell and later  Sleepy John Estes . While in Atlanta in 1929, Newbern cut his lone session; in addition to “Roll and Tumble,” which became an oft-covered standard, he recorded songs like “She Could Toodle-Oo” and “Hambone Willie’s Dreamy-Eyed Woman’s Blues,” which suggest an old-fashioned rag influence. By all reports an extremely ill-tempered man, Newbern’s behavior eventually led him to prison, where a brutal beating is said to have brought his life to an end around 1947.

Little has been discovered about William Harris who cut fourteen issued sides at four sessions for Gannet in 1927 and 1928. Two sides were never issued, “No Black Woman Can Sleep In My Cowlot” and “T.B. Blues” while several have yet to be found: “Nothin’ Right Blues (Bearing In Mind)”, “Gonna Get Me A Woman That I Calls My Own”, “I’m A Roamin’ Gambler” and “I Was Born In The Country, Raised In Town.” Harris is thought to be from Glendora, Mississippi. He made his first recordings in Birmingham, Alabama, and may have worked around that city. Accounts suggest that Harris was a performer with F.S. Wolcott’s Rabbit Foot Minstrels and that he may have traveled the medicine show circuit. When gayle Dean Wardlow played some of his records to some older Mississippi musicians they commented that he must have been from Mississippi. “That’s pure Delta blues there”, commented bluesman Booker Miller. Guitarist Hayes McMullen recalls witnessing him at a house party at the Wildwood Plantation in Mississippi in 1927. Wardlow’s research on Harris can be found in the article “‘Big Foot’ William Harris” in 78 Quarterly No. 3, 1988.

Geeshie Wiley is another mysterious figure whose background remains a cipher. Don Kent wrote in the notes to Mississippi Masters: Early American Blues Classics 1927-35 that “If Geeshie Wiley did not exist, she could not be invented: her scope and creativity dwarfs most blues artists. She seems to represent the moment when black secular music was coalescing into blues.” Wiley recorded just two 78’s in 1930 and 1931, both highly sought after and worth a fortune to 78 record collectors. There are no known photographs and little is known about her. Ishman Bracey provides what little we know about her: “She lived ’round there on John Hart Street for a while. Charlie McCoy got her for his old lady. She could play on the guitar as good as on that record [Eagles On A Half, Pm 13074]. She said she was from Natchez; close by Natchez was her home. She didn’t stay here long, couple of months and she done left.” According to Bracey, she hailed from the vicinity of Natchez. In the 1920′s she spent three months in Jackson as a resident of John Hart Street; while there, she played in a medicine show. “She could play a guitar, but she had a guitar player with her,” Bracey recalled. “She’d play a guitar, and a ukulele too.” Wiley recorded “Last Kind Word Blues” and “Skinny Leg Blues” in Grafton, Wisconsin for Paramount Records in March of 1930, with Elvie Thomas backing her on second guitar. Thomas also recorded two songs for Paramount at the session, “Motherless Child Blues” and “Over to My House,” Wiley, providing second guitar and vocal harmonies. In 1931 Wiley and Thomas returned to Grafton to record two more sides for Paramount, “Pick Poor Robin Clean” and “Eagles on a Half.”

King Solomon Hill signed to the Paramount label in 1932, soon traveling to Grafton, Wisconsin to record six tracks – two of them alternate takes – which comprise his known discography; songs like the eerie “Gone Dead Train” and “Down On MY Bended Knee” are masterly performances featuring Hill’s eerie falsetto and raw, unorthodox guitar work. In 2002 collector John Tefteller went to Grafton and discovered the long lost Hill 78 “My Buddy Blind Papa Lemon”b/w “Times Has Done Got Hard” in mint condition. Not much is known of Hill – whose real name was Joe Holmes. He was closely connected to Sam Collins and traveled with Blind Lemon Jefferson and Rambling Thomas. He roamed through Louisiana and Texas playing and in 1932 was invited to record for Paramount along with Ben Curry and Marshall Owens. After this lone session, Hill returned to the juke joint circuit, eventually vanishing from sight; reputedly a heavy drinker, he died of a massive brain hemorrhage in Sibley, Louisiana in 1949. Blues detective Gayle Dean Wardlow uncovered probably everything we’re likely to know about him as published in King Solomon Hill (78 Quarterly no. 1 (1967): 5-9) and One Last Walk Up King Solomon Hill (Blues Unlimited no. 148 (Winter 1987): 8-12) both reprinted in the book Chasin’ That Devil Music.

In their grounbreaking article He’s A Devil Of A Joe (Blues Unlimited No. 146, 1984 and reissued in the book Chasin’ That Devil Music) Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow write : “Perhaps the brashest and bawdiest blues singer of the pre-war blues era was the mysterious guitarist known to posterity as Blind Joe Reynolds, composer of the minor rock hit ‘Outside Woman Blues.’ Blind Joe was the rare figure who not only lived up to his church stereotype as a sinner, but flaunted social taboos with positive relish.” In November 1929 at the Paramount Recording Studios in Grafton, Wisconsin, four songs were recorded by a Louisiana street musician named Joe Sheppard who, on the run from the law, used the name Blind Joe Reynolds. Within a year, the four songs were released on two records. Neither record sold well, but almost 40 years later, one of the two attracted the attention of Eric Clapton who heard the song “Outside Woman Blues” on a reissue album. In 1967, Clapton and his Cream bandmates Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce recorded a more modern day version of “Outside Woman Blues” on their classic LP Disraeli Gears. The second record recorded in Wisconsin on that day, “Ninety Nine Blues” b/w “Cold Woman Blues” had been lost since it was first released in October of 1930. No copies in any condition were ever located until just a few years ago. Bruce Smith, a school teacher from Ohio with an appreciation for old blues records, was attending a teachers’ conference in Nashville. With an hour to kill before catching a flight home from a school conference, he wandered into the Nashville Flea Market and found the record in a stack of old 78′s. The other song cut that day was “Nehi Blues.” He was back in the studio a year later cutting four more numbers: “Married Woman Blues”, “Third Street Woman Blues, “Short Dress Blues” and “Goose Hill Woman Blues”, the latter two were never issued.

The blues of Luke Jordan “had a beautiful sweetness and a kind of wry wistfulness that made them unforgettable,” according to Samuel Charters in Sweet as the Showers of Rain. Research by Bruce Bastin tells us that Luke Jordan was an important figure in and around Lynchburg, Virginia, highly regarded for his skillful, cleanly-picked guitar style. Although very few African American blues musicians from this region managed to record, Jordan was discovered by Victor Records around the age of 35. He traveled to Charlotte, North Carolina, in August 1927, to record several sides for that label. His records sold well enough that Victor decided to bring him to New York for two further sessions in November of 1929. Two sides were unissued: “Look Up, Look Down” and “That’s A Plenty.” Like the other artists profiled today Jordan’s records are very rare. His “Pick Poor Robin Clean” (Victor 20957) sold only 5,973 copies and there is only one known copy of  “If I Call You Mama” b/w “Tom Brown Sits In His Prison Cell” (Victor 23400) which first surfaced in the 1990′s. Most recently, the James River Blues Society has recognized Luke Jordan as a important figure in Virginia blues by erecting a historical marker in his honor in downtown Lynchburg.

Show Notes:

Newspaper photo of Son House, and a July 14 Rochester Times-Union article about his comeback.

“I’m talking about the blues now, I ain’t talkin’ about no monkey junk”

Today’s title come from a term Son House used often as his biographer Dan Beaumont explains: “House had an amusing phrase he would use when asked about the blues being played in the 1960′s. It was a phrase he used to dismiss much of the blues music of that period. ‘It’s not the blues,’ he would say. ‘It’s just a lot of monkey junk.’ The blues so dominated House’s life-we have now established the price that he had paid for it-that a period in which he all but ceased playing it may well have seemed to him simply so much ‘monkey junk.’” As anyone who’s listened to Son House knows, there was nothing frivolous or gimmicky about Son’s blues. In his hands the blues were a gripping, all consuming feeling:

You know, the blues ain’t nothin’ but a low-down shakin’, low-down shakin’, achin’ chill
I say the blues is a low-down, old, achin’ chill
Well, if you ain’t had ‘em, honey, I hope you never will

Well, the blues, the blues is a worried heart, is a worried heart, heart disease
Oh, the blues is a worried old heart disease

(The Jinx Blues Part 1, 1942)

Today’s show is our annual tribute to Son House who created some of the most visceral and gripping blues of the 1930′s and 40′s and who emerged after two decades to find himself bewilderingly hailed as a blues hero to young white audiences around the world. It’s with a matter of pride that Son’s comeback came in my adopted hometown of Rochester, NY. Over the years I met numerous people who fondly recalled Son House here in Rochester and when I started doing my yearly radio birthday tributes it brought even more people out of the woodwork who gladly shared their memories with me. So it’s puzzling that the city has never honored Son in anyway. For years myself and others thought someone should rectify this sorry state of affairs; a plaque, a statue or something to honor one of the pivotal figures in blues history. The sad fact is there is nothing tangible in this city that shows Son ever made this city his home for a good part of his life (1943-1976). It’s worth noting that Son does have a plaque in Tunica, MS as part of the Mississippi Commission’s Blues Trail.

2009 Hot Blues For The Homeless …A Tribute To Son House Poster

Next week marks the third Hot Blues For The Homeless concert I put on with several other dedicated folks.  Now billed as Hot Blues For The Homeless …A Tribute To Son House,  we had a fantastic turn out last year, raised a good deal of money for the Rochester homeless and hopefully raised some awareness about Son House. If you live in Rochester, live close by are just visiting on June 7th make sure to help us celebrate the memory of Son House.

On today’s program we start out by playing the bulk of Son’s legendary Paramount recordings. In 1930, Arthur Laibley who had produced Charlie Patton’s last session for Paramount, stopped in Lula to arrange another session with Patton. Patton was famous throughout the Delta and had already recorded close to forty sides for the label. Patton told Laibley about House and about two other musicians Willie Brown and Louise Johnson, setting the stage for one of the blues most legendary recording sessions. The group headed to the Paramount studios in Grafton, WI, where House recorded six songs at the session, three of which were long enough to fill both sides of a 78: “Dry Spell Blues,” “Preachin’ The Blues,” and “My Black Mama.” Two songs, “Clarksdale Moan” and “Mississippi County Farm Blues” were issued as a 78, with a lone copy surfacing just recently. In September 2005, a collector announced he had obtained the lost “Clarksdale Moan” 78 in reasonably decent condition. The details of this discovery are not known to the public as the collector has chosen to remain anonymous. On April 4, 2006, both “Clarksdale Moan” and “Mississippi County Farm Blues” were released on the collection The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of from Yazoo Records. While “Clarksdale Moan” is a previously unknown song, “Mississippi County Farm Blues” is an earlier (and faster) version of a song Son House later recorded at his Library of Congress recording session in 1941. The unissued test of “Walking Blues” we spin was not found until 1985.

Rochester Times-Union article about Son House from July 6, 1964. This is the first article written about Son’s rediscovery.

Despite the disappointing sales of his records, for House the Grafton experience marked the beginning of a long musical friendship with Willie Brown. For much of the 30’s House reverted to his former pattern of preaching and then going back to the blues, usually at the prompting of Brown. He and Brown played all over the Delta as well as Arkansas and Tennessee for the rest of the 1930’s. In August of 1941 the folklorist Alan Lomax found House working as a tractor driver on a plantation near Robinsonville. House took Lomax a few miles north to Lake Cormorant where Willie Brown lived. They rounded up two other musicians, Fiddlin’ Joe Martin and Leroy Williams. Behind Clack’s general store, House recorded five songs for Lomax. The next summer in July, House recorded, unaccompanied, ten more songs for Lomax.

A year after the Library of Congress sides House vanished, or did the next best thing which was to move to Rochester, NY. More than two decades would pass before he would resurface. On June 23rd of 1964, Dick Waterman, Phil Spiro and Nick Perls found House living on 61 Grieg Street in Rochester, NY. Waterman became Son’s manager and the following year he was signed to Columbia and played the Newport Folk Festival. Son had several good years on the comeback trail; he toured the US playing folk festivals and the coffeehouse circuit and he did tours of Europe as well. He also performed locally in Rochester. From these later years we spin several tracks for his superb comeback album Father Of The Delta Blues plus several live cuts.

Also on today’s program is my good friend Dan Beaumont. University of Rochester professor Dan Beaumont discusses  his forthcoming book, Preachin’ the Blues: The Life And Music Of Son House. This is the first full-length biography of Son House and will be published by Oxford University Press in 2010. Dan will also be reading excerpts from the book at the workshop component of the Hot Blues event. in addition we also play a couple of clips of Dick Waterman talking about Son from an interview I conducted with Dick several years ago and who was a guest at last year’s event.

Show Notes:

Charlie McCoy ranked among the great blues accompanists of his era and his deft mandolin/guitar work can be heard on numerous recordings from the late 1920′s through the early 1940′s. His younger brother Joe McCoy was another great sideman whose slide style was most notably preserved on the landmark recordings he cut with his wife Memphis Minnie between 1929 and 1934. Charlie McCoy was recording regularly by the late 1920′s, often alongside Walter Vincson and sat in with many other Delta bluesmen that passed through the Jackson area in the years to follow, appearing on guitar and mandolin. He made notable recordings on mandolin backing  Ishman Bracey, Tommy Johnson, his sister-in-law Memphis Minnie, Big Bill Broonzy, Curtis Jones, Monkey Joe, Mary Butler and others. Between 1936 and 1939 he also cut a number of sessions with the groups Papa Charlie’s Boys and the Harlem Hamfats, the latter featuring Joe McCoy as lead vocalist on most sides. Charlie McCoy also cut scattered sides under his own name between 1929 and 1935, some with his brother, but made no more recordings after 1942, passing in 1950, at the age of 44. Joe McCoy died of heart disease in Chicago, only a few months before his brother Charlie. They are both buried in Restvale Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois. Today’s program spans the years 1928 through 1942, finding the brothers playing in a wide variety of settings and styles.

Jackson, Mississippi in the 1920’s was a city with a vibrant blues scene, teeming with artists such as Tommy Johnson, Walter Vincson, Ishman Bracey, Johnnie Temple, the Chatmon Brothers (Bo, Lonnie and Sam were the most prominent) Skip James and Rube Lacey. Lacey recalled McCoy being among the best of this talented group: “But I really believe Charlie got to be a better musician than I was. He was young, but he got to be about the best musician there was in our band, Charlie McCoy. He was wonderful. He could play anything pretty well you sing. …He was good as I ever want to see.”

Memphis Minnie & Kansas Joe McCoy

The years 1927-31 saw the first commercial recordings of many of the Jackson musicians. Most extensively recorded were the Chatmons, Walter Vincson and Joe and Charlie McCoy. McCoy first recorded in 1928, strictly as an accompanist, backing singer Rosie Mae Moore, Tommy Johnson and Ishman Bracey, all of whom are featured in our opening set. Moore was a powerful, rough voiced singer who receives excellent guitar support from McCoy stretches out quite a bit on “School Girl Blues”, “Staggering Blues”and who’s playing owes a strong debt to Rube Lacey. Better yet were the four magnificent songs he backed Tommy Johnson on over a two day period: “Cool Drink of Water Blues” “Big Road Blues”, “Bye, Bye Blues” and “Maggie Campbell Blues.” McCoy’s second guitar is superb, not only duplicating Johnson’s guitar part but as, David Evans notes, uses “a flat pick and often strums the strings like a mandolin on his bass part, occasionally doing the same on the treble strings as a beautiful contrast.” McCoy also backed Bracey in very similar fashion on his two numbers, “Saturday Blues” and “Left Alone Blues.” Johnson, Bracey and McCoy returned on Friday, August 31, 1928 for another session for Victor. For whatever reason McCoy didn’t back Johnson but did play mandolin on Bracey’s “Trouble Hearted Blues” and “Brown Mama Blues.” McCoy’s playing is subdued on the beautiful, somber “Trouble Hearted Blues” but his bold, rippling mandolin is heard loud and clear on the equally fine “Brown Mama Blues.”

Between 1928-1931 Charlie played on a variety of sides, many string band related, in the company of Walter Vincson and Bo Carter. In November 1928 Carter, McCoy and an unknown pianist backed singer Alec Johnson on four of six sides. Johnson’s music harks back to an earlier pre-blues era. As Tony Russell notes they “form a lively and expressive pit orchestra to accompany a set of antique minstrel songs and a couple of blues.” McCoy’s playing is superb on the blues”Miss Meal Cramp Blues” and older sounding material like “Sister Maud Mule”, and he rather discomforting “Mysterious Coon.” Also in November of the same year Carter, Vincson and McCoy backed singer Mary Butler on four numbers. Butler may in fact be Rosie Mae Moore who McCoy backed in February of the same year. McCoy plays mandolin on three of the four tracks including the tough minded “Electrocuted Blues (Electric Chair Blues)”, “Bungalow Blues” and “Mary Blues.” The session isn’t quite as strong as the earlier session.

With Walter Vincson he cut sides as the Mississippi Mud Steppers, with the addition of guitarist Sam Hill (plus Bo Carter and Sam Chatmon on one track) as the Mississippi Blacksnakes and with Carter and Vincson as the Jackson Blue Boys. With the Mississippi Mud Steppers he cut the remarkable instrumental “Jackson Stomp”, based on the seminal “Cow Cow Blues”, (the song was modified as “The Lonesome Train That Took My Baby Away” at a Charlie McCoy session with Bo Carter on guitar). The song is a dazzling, virtuoso mandolin performance. McCoy further showcases his versatility on a trio of waltzes, playing mandolin on “Alma Waltz (Ruby Waltz)” and plays banjo on two numbers. With the Mississippi Blacksnakes his robust mandolin is heard on the bawdy “Grind So Fine” and the country tinged “Blue Sky Blues” both boasting terrific vocals from Vincson. Two days after the first Blacksnakes session the group recorded again with Bo Carter as the vocalist and either McCoy or Sam Hill on guitar. This is a bluesier session with McCoy again on mandolin/banjo with his mandolin heard in fine form on “It Still Ain’t No Good (New It Ain’t No Good)” and “Easy Going Woman Blues.” One more song by the group, “Bye Bye Baby Blues”, was cut the following day featuring fine slide from McCoy. The two tracks cut as the Jackson Blue Boys are interesting for featuring singing from Carter, Vincson and McCoy in unison and taking solo turns with McCoy playing mandolin.

Between 1929-1936 Charlie cut scattered sides under his own name or as lead in various bands. By the early 1930′s many of the Jackson musicians began to disperse, either heading to the delta or like Johnnie Temple and Charlie McCoy to Chicago. By 1932 all of McCoy’s recordings were waxed up North. He did cut several sessions between 1929-1930 in Memphis and Jackson. The bulk of the recordings again feature McCoy’s pals Walter Vincson and Bo Carter on material that ranges from hokum, blues and string band. Billed as Charlie McCoy with Chatman’s Mississippi Hot Footers they cut hokum sides in the vein of the immensely popular “It’s Tight Like That” such as “It Ain’t No Good – Part 1 & II” and “It Is So Good – Part 1 & II” the latter sporting prominent mandolin from McCoy. When not sharing the vocals with his partners, McCoy proves himself a fine reedy singer on straight blues numbers such as “You Gonna Need Me” and the superb “Last Time Blues” where he lays down some watery slide playing. With Carter on violin McCoy delivers “Your Valves Need Grinding”managing to sound wistful and racy at the same time, the string band blues of “Blue Heaven Blues” and takes it solo on the low down “Gland Hand Blues” framed by some imaginative guitar figures. The highlight from a December 15, 1930 session is “That Lonesome Train Took My Baby Away” a rippling mandolin showcase based on the theme of “Cow Cow Blues” and wonderfully sung by McCoy. Four days later, on a duet with Bo Carter, he cut a pair of interesting topical numbers: “The Northern Starvers Are Returning Home” and “Mississippi I’m Longing For You” both with a strong country feel.

By the early 1930′s Charlie was in Chicago where he settled in as a much in demand session musician although he managed a few sides under his own name. In February 1930, As Papa Charlie McCoy, he cut the excellent “Times Ain’t What They Used To Be” playing terrific banjo with guitar from either his brother Joe or Tampa Red. The following day, with Georgia Tom on piano, he cut “Too Long” an insinuating, bluesy pop song that proved to be a sizable hit. In 1934 under the pseudonym Mississippi Mudder he waxed the bouncy “Candy Man Blues”, the wonderful hard time blues of “Charity Blues” featuring some strong piano from Chuck Segar, “Baltimore Blues” a variation on the “Sweet Old Kokomo/Sweet Home Chicago” theme with brother Joe on guitar and the moody slide driven “Motherless & Fatherless Blues.” In 1936 he led a group listed as Papa Charlie’s Boys (Papa Charlie); McCoy is in superb form on vocal and jazzy mandolin on a sparkling remake of “Too Long”, “Let My Peaches Be” and “You Can’t Play Me Cheap” laying down some acrobatic mandolin solos, and the heartfelt “Gypsy Woman Blues.”

Joe McCoy was well known for his association with his wife Memphis Minnie where he played the part of Kansas Joe. During the late 1920′s Minnie began playing guitar with a variety of ad hoc jug bands during the jug band craze. Minnie also began a common law marriage with Kansas Joe McCoy. Their very first session yielded the hit song “Bumble Bee” (later recorded by Muddy Waters as “Honey Bee”), and McCoy would be her musical partner for the next six years. Between 1929 and 1934 (they divorced in early 1935) they cut around one hundred sides together. Joe McCoy never recorded under his own name, instead performing under various pseudonyms; Georgia Pine Boy, Hallelujah Joe, Big Joe McCoy and His Washboard Band, and The Mississippi Mudder. Other names he used from time to time included Hillbilly Plowboy, Mud Dauber Joe and Hamfoot Ham.

After Joe and Minnie separated Joe occupied himself in small bands, singing with the Harlem Hamfats, working as a songwriter and working with his brother Charlie. The Harlem Hamfats were based in Chicago, and were put together by record producer and entrepreneur J. Mayo Williams simply for the purpose of making studio recordings. The band usually consisted of: Joe McCoy (guitar, vocals), Charlie McCoy (guitar, mandolin), Herb Morand (trumpet, vocals), John Lindsay (bass), Odell Rand (clarinet), Horace Malcolm (piano), Freddie Flynn and Pearlis Williams (drums). The band’s sound blended blues, dixieland and swing jazz. Led by Morand and Joe McCoy, the main songwriters, the group initially provided instrumental backing to artists including Frankie “Half Pint” Jaxon, Rosetta Howard, and Johnny Temple. Their first major hits were “Oh! Red”, recorded in April 1936, and “Let’s Get Drunk And Truck” (originally recorded by Tampa Red), recorded in August of the same year. “Oh! Red” was popular enough to be covered by Count Basie, The Ink Spots, Blind Willie McTell and, later, Howlin’ Wolf.

Joe and Charlie recorded, with Joe as lead bill, for Decca in 1934 as The Mississippi Mudder (Mud Dauber Joe) on notable numbers like “Evil Devil Woman Blues” a smoother version of Skip James’ “Devil Got My Woman” with mandolin like guitar from Charlie and “Going Back Home Blues” strongly influenced by Tommy Johnson. Three sessions in 1941-1942 are listed as Big Joe And His Rhythm a group containing, at times, Robert Lee McCoy, Washboard Sam, Ransom Knowling, Alfred Elkins, Amanda Sortier and Harman Ray. The music is hard to define with Tony Russell dubbing it “skiffle Blues” and describing it this way: “the blend of perky harmonica, stolid rhythm guitar and washboard produces an unusual but shallow ensemble sound and, although it is somewhat freshened by the addition of Charlie McCoy’s mandolin…the half dozen examples…may for some listeners be all the late Joe McCoy they need.” Overall the music is entertaining particularity a follow-up to the Hamfat’s popular “Oh! Red” in “Oh Red’s Twin Brother”, the prominent mandolin of “I’ll Get You Off My Mind” and “It Ain’t No Lie” once again featuring the “Cow Cow Blues” motif and “Bessie Lee Blues.”