Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

At Izzy young’s Folklore Center, MacDougal Street, NYC, l-r Sam charters, Izzy Young, Memphis Willie B., Furry Lewis, and Gus cannon, 1964 (Photo by Ann Charters)

Samuel Charters played a central role in the folk revival of the 1950′s and 1960′s. His fieldwork, extensive liner notes, production efforts, and books served as an introduction to many who had never heard of artists like Lightnin’ Hopkins and Robert Johnson. Charters was born in 1929 and graduated from Sacramento City College in 1949. In 1951, at the age of 21, he moved to New Orleans. After a two-year stint in the Army, he began to study jazz, but soon felt himself drawn to rural blues. Encouraged by fellow jazz researcher Frederic Ramsey, Charters began recording jazz and blues artists in 1955. The following year Folkways Records began issuing his recordings. Charters  work as a field recorder and researcher  would be poured into his first book in 1959, The Country Blues. “…The Country Blues was the first full-length treatment of the topic,” wrote Benjamin Filene in Romancing the Folk, “and its evocative style inspired thousands of whites to explore the music.” Unlike the more formal music histories written by Paul Oliver, Charters’ book was a popular history designed to pass on his enthusiasm for the blues to others. A companion album, also titled The Country Blues, would simultaneously be released on Folkways’ RBF reissue series for which Charters produced about twenty albums. His other claim to fame during this period was his re-discovery, after a lengthy search, of Sam Lightnin’ Hopkins who he recorded for Folkways in 1959.

In the 60′s Charters wrote several books including The Poetry of the Blues and The Bluesmen. A 1961 trip for Prestige Records yielded records by Furry Lewis, Memphis Willie B., Baby Tate and Pink Anderson. Charters visited St. Louis to do recording sessions in 1961 and 1962 resulting in several albums by Henry Townsend, Henry Brown and Edith Johnson, Dady Hotcakes, J.D. Short, Speckled Red and Barrelhouse Buck. In 1963 he was hired by Prestige as an A&R representative, and oversaw the Bluesville and Folklore series.

Sam charters recording Sleepy John Estes, Brownsville, TN, 1962 (Photo by Ann Charters)

Charters’ Prestige recordings of Homesick James, Billy Boy Arnold, and Otis Spann were some of the first electric blues releases aimed at the revival market. He continued in this vein as an independent producer for Vanguard with the influential three-volume anthology Chicago: The Blues Today as well as solo albums by Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, James Cotton and Charlie Musselwhite.

In the early 70′s Charters moved to Sweden where he worked as a producer for Sonet. The twelve-volume series Legacy of the Blues resulted in a similarly titled book. He also recorded zydeco albums during this period by Clifton Chenier and Rockin’ Dopsie.

On today’s program we track recordings charters made from the late 1950′s through the early 70′s’. Much of the background on today’s artists come from Charters’ own writings, either taken from the original liner notes or Walking A Blues Road: A Blues Reader 1956-2004 a collection of his writings issued in 2004. The First half of the show is devoted primarily to acoustic blues artists. As Charters wrote: ”In the first years of the blues rediscoveries there was a heady level of excitement just at finding that the blues was more than names on old phonograph records. For any of us who had come to the blues through our interest in classic jazz or through our involvement in the folk movement, the modern electric blues was considered with some wariness as an intrusion on the ‘folk’ spirit of the blues. For myself, there was also a sense of urgency. The younger blues artists in places like Chicago or Detroit could wait – whatever we thought of their style of the blues. The older blues artists who were still living in rented rooms or tenement apartments in cities like Memphis or Atlanta didn’t have so many years ahead of them, and if we didn’t save their stories and their music their rich legacy would slip away from us.”

“My life as a record producer began with a duet session that I set up and recorded with Billie and Dee Dee [Pierce] in the spring of 1954. …The material from the session was released by Folkways as part of the series I recorded and complied with some tracks done by other field collectors in the city titled The Music of New Orleans. Billie and Dee Dee were included in Volume Three of the series, Music of the Dance Halls… …If you’re interested in the old New Orleans jazz styles there are still a dozen places to hear bands, even if most of them don’t have music every weekend, and you never know who’s going to play unless one of the musicians calls you. What we knew about Luthjen’s was that every night on the weekends Billie Pierce would be sitting on the bench of the place’s much battered piano and singing the blues, and her husband Dee Dee Pierce would be sitting on an old kitchen chair beside her,  adding the lyric trumpet fills that are an indispensable musical complement to the classic blues style.” From the above mentioned album we play ”Married Man Blues.”

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We spin  a pair of cuts by Lightnin’ Hopkins who Charters located after a lengthy period of not recordings. ”On a windy winter morning in January 1959 I was driving along Dowling Street, in Houston, Texas. I stopped at a red light and a car pulled up beside mine. The window was rolled down, and a thin, nervous man, wearing dark glasses, leaned toward me.

‘You lookin’ for me?’
‘Are you Lightnin’?’
‘Lightnin”, I said, ‘I sure am.’

“I had been looking for lightnin’ Hopkins, off and on, for the five years that had passed since I first heard him on record. …I was in and out of Houston for the next five years, recording, interviewing musicians, and asking about Lightnin’ Hopkins. …When I finally found him he was anxious to begin recording again, and after I’d rented an acoustic guitar for him  I carried the tape recorder I had in the trunk of my car into his shabby room on Hadley Street. He sang all afternoon, becoming more emotional and even more musically exciting as the hours passed.” The results were issued on a self-titled album on Folkways.  The results helped introduced his music to an entirely new audience. Soon after Hopkins went from gigging at back-alley gin joints to starring at collegiate coffeehouses, appearing on TV programs, and touring Europe. He was recording more prolifically then ever, laying down albums for World Pacific, Vee-Jay,Bluesville, Bobby Robinson’s Fire label, Candid, Arhoolie, Verve and, in 1965, the first of several LP’s for Stan Lewis’ Shreveport-based Jewel logo. During the 70′s his recording activity slowed, cutting just a handful of sessions for verve and Sonet with several live collections issued. He was still touring widely and made trips to Mexico, Japan and Germany.  After a final gig at Tramps in New York in November 1981 he returned to Houston where his health declined rapidly. He passed January 30, 1982.

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Charters visited St. Louis to do recording sessions in 1961 and 1962 resulting in several fine albums of material. As Charters wrote: “I first visited St. Louis on the long research trip for The Country Blues in January 1959 …We were in the city again for two recordings trips, the first in May of 1961, and the second, to film J.D. Short for the documentary film The Blues, in the summer of 1962. Two of the albums, by Henry Townsend and Barrelhouse Buck, were released at the time of recording. One album, with J.D. Short, was released as part of the Legacy of the Blues series in 1973, and the other albums were released by Folkways in 1984.

George “Daddy Hotcakes” Montgomery was born in Georgia and came moved to St. Louis in 1918. He began singing the blues as a youngster and worked as an entertainer during the 1920’s. Sometime in the late 30’s he had an opportunity to record through blues artist and talent scout Charlie Jordan but the recording session fell through. He was still occasionally playing parties when Charters recorded him in 1961. These are his only recordings. As Charters wrote: ”I am still also as surprised -when I listen to what we recorded in his room over the next two or threes days – at the complete, natural spontaneity of his blues. …Using his imagination and a store of familiar blues phrase to help him through occasional hesitations he simply made up the songs as he went along. I had some of the same experience when I recorded Lightnin’ Hopkins and Robert Pete Williams but even as loose and free as they were with their blues I still could anticipate most of what they were going to do. With George, however, I never could be sure what might come next if I asked him to repeat anything.” …The songs George recorded in his room – as far as I know these were his only recordings -made me conscious again of the haphazard circumstances that left their mark on what we knew of the blues. How many singers were there like George, who missed a recording trip because they didn’t get the times right? How many were there who never were heard by anyone who knew where to send them to get their songs on record?” these recordings were issued on Folkways under the title The Blues in St. Louis, Vol. 1: Daddy Hotcakes (originally planned to be issued on Bluesville).

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While in St. Louis Charters cut an excellent album by veteran bluesman Henry Townsend backed his friend Tommy Bankhead. The results were issued on Bluesville as Tired of Being Mistreated and on Folkways as The Blues in St. Louis, Vol. 3: Henry Townsend.  Townsend was one of the only artists to have recorded in every decade for the last 80 years.  He first recorded in 1929 and remained active up to 2006. ”One of the things that was most intriguing for me about working with Henry was that this was the first time I’d ever recorded anyone playing an electric guitar. …The first blues they ran down together wiped out an lingering prejudices I had against electric instruments. It wasn’t electric guitars that had changed the blues. It was the life in the African American ghettos, the new society, experiences of the people who created the blues that had changed, and it was the new instrument and their changes sound that expressed the new conditions of  their lives.”

Charters also recorded  a fine session by Edith Johnson and Henry Brown. The results were issued on the album The Blues in St. Louis, Vol. 2: Henry Brown and Edith Johnson – Barrelhouse Piano and Classic Blues. Edith Johnson recorded eighteen sides in 1928/29 as “Edith North Johnson”, “Hattie North” and “Maybelle Allen.” Henry Brown worked clubs such as the Blue Flame Club, the 9-0-5 Club, Jim’s Place and Katy Red’s, from the twenties into the 30’s. Recorded for Brunswisck with Ike Rogers and Mary Johnson in 1929, for Paramount in Richmond and Grafton in ‘29 and ‘30. He served in the army in the early ’40s, then formed his own quartet to work occasional local gigs in St. Louis area from the ’50s, and worked the Becky Thatcher riverboat, St. Louis in 1965. In addition to his pre-war recordings, he was recorded by Paul Oliver in 1960 and by Adelphi in 1969.

J.D. Short recorded two sessions in the early ’30s for Paramount and Vocalion, then quickly faded into obscurity. Charters recorded Short at his transplanted home base of St. Louis in 1961. As Charters writes in the notes: “The recording that we did in his house that summer – mostly in the kitchen to get away from the noises in the street – was his last, but we didn’t have any idea of it. I was filming him for a sequence in The Blues and trying to get his ideas about the backgrounds and the aesthetics of the blues for The Poetry Of The Blues so we recorded a lot of music – new versions of songs he’d done before – new songs – and his own comments about the styles and the music.” Short unexpectedly passed away shortly after this session at the age of 60. Charters’ recordings of Short can be found on the albums J.D. Short and Son House: Blues from the Mississippi Delta and album as part of  The Legacy of the Blues series released in the 70′s.

St. Louis was always a good piano blues town, and in addition to recording Henry Brown, Charters also captured Barrelhouse Buck and Speckled Red. Barrelhouse Buck McFarland cut his final session for Folkways and an unissued session in 1961 that was belatedly released a few years back on Delmark. The recordings Charters made were released on Folkways as Backcountry Barrelhouse. He died shortly afterward. McFarland was born in Alton, Illinois in 1903 in the same area as two other exceptional piano players, Wesley Wallace and Jabbo Williams, all three of which made names for themselves on the bustling St. Louis blues scene. McFarland got his shot in the recording studio waxing ten sides; two for Paramount in 1929, two for Decca in 1934 and four more for Decca in 1935, which were not issued. Speckled Red (born Rufus Perryman) was born in Monroe, LA, but he made his reputation as part of the St. Louis and Memphis blues scenes of the ’20s and ’30s. In 1929, he cut his first recording sessions. One song from these sessions, “The Dirty Dozens,” was released on Brunswick and became a hit in late 1929. In 1938, he cut a few sides for Bluebird. In the early ’40s, Red moved to St. Louis, where he played local clubs and bars for the next decade and a half. Charlie O’Brien, a St. Louis policeman and something of a blues aficionado “rediscovered” Speckled Red on December 14, 1954, who subsequently was signed to Delmark Records as their first blues artist. Several recordings were made in 1956 and 1957 for Tone, Delmark, Folkways, and Storyville record labels. The recordings Charters made were issued on Folkway under the title The Barrel-House Blues of Speckled Red.

Charters also spent time in Memphis getting to know and record some of the city’s pre-war blues recording artists. ”Will Shade, the guitar and harmonica player who had organized the Memphis Jug Band for victor Records in 1927, had remembered Furry in a conversation in February 1959. …I looked out the window,  over the roofs toward Beale Street, and said to him, thinking out loud as much as anything else, ‘I certainly would like to have heard some of those old blues singers, Jim Jackson, Furry Lewis, John Estes, Frank Stokes…’ Will leaned out of his chair and called to his wife, Jennie Mae, who was working in the kitchen. ‘Jennie Mae, when was the last time you saw that fellow they call ‘Furry’?’ ‘…Furry Lewis you mean? I saw him just last week.’” Charters eventually found Furry: ”He no longer had a guitar and he hadn’t played much in twenty years, but when I asked him if he could sing and play he straightened and said, ‘I’m better now than I ever was.’”  Lewis returned to the studio under Charters’ direction, first cutting a self-titled album for Folkways in 1959 and then two albums for the Prestige/Bluesville label in 1961.

“Usually I stop by Will’s whenever I’m in Memphis, and over the years he’s led me to other singers like Gus Cannon, Charlie Burse and Furry Lewis. …I stopped by in April 1961 …he mentioned that one of the blues singers he’s known in the 1930s has stopped by his place a few weeks before. ‘His name’s Willie B. I don’t know what all his name is, but that’s what we call him. Willie B. He’s one of those real hard blues singers like you’re always asking about. …He”ll sing the real old hard blues for you.’” Charters recorded Borum at a  session at the Sun studios for Prestige’s Bluesville label, with one more session to follow. The albums were issued as Introducing Memphis Willie B. and Hard Working Man Blues. Borum, was a mainstay of the Memphis blues and jug band circuit. He took to the guitar early in his childhood, being principally taught by his father and Memphis medicine show star Jim Jackson. By his late teens, he was working with Jack Kelly’s Jug Busters. This didn’t last long, as Borum joined up with the Memphis Jug Band. Sometime in the ’30s he learned to play harmonica, being taught by Noah Lewis, the best harp blower in Memphis and mainstay of Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers. Willie B. began working on and off with various traveling Delta bluesmen, performing at various functions with Rice Miller, Willie Brown, Garfield Akers, and Robert Johnson. He finally got to make some records in 1934 for Vocalion backing Hattie Hart and Allen Shaw, but quickly moved back into playing juke joints and gambling houses with Son Joe, Joe Hill Louis and Will Shade until around 1943, when he became a member of the U.S. Army. Memphis Willie B. passed in 1993.

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In South Carolina Charters made important recordings by Pink Anderson and Baby Tate. Anderson was born in South Carolina and early on sang in the streets for pennies. He was self-taught as a guitarist and toured throughout the Southeast with a variety of medicine shows during 1915-1945, picking up work wherever he could. He was employed not only as a musician and a singer but as a dancer and comedian. Anderson recorded four titles in 1928 with his partner Simmie Dooley but did not make another record until 1950 for Riverside, sharing an album with Rev. Gary Davis. Anderson continued to work at parties, street fairs, and medicine shows during the first half of the 1950s before retiring for a time due to ill health. But in 1961 the Bluesville label sent Charters to record him. He recorded three albums of unaccompanied performances by Anderson, documenting him in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Carters also recorded one album by Anderson that was issued on Folkways as Carolina Medicine Show Hokum And Blues. Anderson stayed active on a part-time basis up until the time of his death in 1974.

Guitarist Baby Tate recorded only a handful of sessions, spending the bulk of his life as a sideman, playing with musicians like Blind Boy Fuller, Pink Anderson, and Peg Leg Sam. When he was 14 years old, Tate taught himself how to play guitar. Shortly afterward, he began playing with Blind Boy Fuller, who taught Tate the fundamentals of blues guitar. For most of the ’30s, Baby played music as a hobby, performing at local parties, celebrations, and medicine shows. Tate picked up music again in 1946, setting out on the local blues club circuit. In the early ’50s, Baby moved to Spartanburg, South Carolina, where he performed both as a solo act and as a duo with Pink Anderson. In 1962, Charters recorded Tate for the album, See What You Done Done for Bluesville. The following year, he was featured in Charters’ documentary film, The Blues. For the rest of the decade, Baby Tate played various gigs, concerts, and festivals across America. With the assistance of harmonica player Peg Leg Sam, Baby Tate recorded another set of sessions in 1972. Pete Lowry recorded him extensively in 1970 but theses sides remain unreleased. He died on August 17, 1972.

Charters first foray into recording Chicago electric blues were a batch of albums for Prestige/Bluesville including sessions by Otis Spann, Homesick James and Billy Boy Arnold. Born in Chicago, Billy Boy was gravitated who was a big influence. Still in his teens, Arnold cut his debut 78 for the obscure Cool logo in 1952. “Arnold made an auspicious connection when he joined forces with Bo Diddley and played on the his two-sided 1955 debut smash “Bo Diddley”/”I’m a Man” for Checker. That led, in a roundabout way, to Billy Boy’s signing with rival Vee-Jay Records. Arnold’s “I Wish You Would,” utilizing that familiar Bo Diddley beat, sold well and inspired a later famous cover by the Yardbirds. Thhe group also took a liking to another Arnold classic on Vee-Jay, “I Ain’t Got You.” Other Vee-Jay standouts by Arnold included “Prisoner’s Plea” and “Rockinitis,” but by 1958, his tenure at the label was over. Other than an excellent Samuel Charters-produced 1963 album for Prestige, More Blues on the South Side, Arnold retained a low profile until signing with Alligator in the 90′s.

Homesick James was playing guitar at age ten and soon ran away from his Tennessee home to play at fish fries and dances. His travels took the guitarist through Mississippi and North Carolina during the 1920s, where he crossed paths with Yank Rachell, Sleepy John Estes, Blind Boy Fuller, and Big Joe Williams.Settling in Chicago during the 1930s, Williamson played local clubs. Williamson made some fine sides in 1952-53 for Chance Records. James also worked extensively as a sideman, backing harp great Sonny Boy Williamson in 1945 at a Chicago gin joint called the Purple Cat and during the 1950s with his cousin, Elmore James. He also recorded with James during the 1950s. Homesick’s own output included 45′s for Colt and USA in 1962, and the album for Blues On The South Side produced by Charters.

“I came to Chicago for the first time in the winter of 1959, as part of the long research trip for the book The Country Blues. …For the next few years I was in and out of Chicago – and after so many nights down on the south side listening to the  bands, I was becoming more and more impatient to go into a recording studio to document some of the unforgettable music I was hearing. But the companies I was involved with – Folkways and Prestige – either didn’t have the money for the sessions, or they weren’t ready to record the electric blues.” Fortunately Charters  hooked up with Vanguard Records who were more receptive to the idea.

In early 1966, Vanguard issued three-volume set, Chicago/The Blues/Today!. Every artist on the three volumes had recorded before (some, like Otis Rush and Junior Wells, had actually seen small hits on the R&B charts), but these recordings were largely their introduction to a newer — and predominately white — album-oriented audience. This series accurately portrayed a vast cross section of the Chicago blues scene as one could hear it on any given night in the mid-’60s. Rather than record full albums (which Charters had neither the budget nor the legal resources to pull off), each artist simply came in for a union-approved session of four to six songs, with each volume featuring three different groupings. Other notable records Charters cut for Vanguard include Buddy Guy’s A Man And The Blues,the guitarist’s first album away from Chess and Junior Wells’ It’s My Life Baby, a mix of studio recordings and live tracks recorded at Pepper’s Lounge in Chicago.

Charters and his family moved to Sweden in1971 and began working with a local record company called Sonet. He was eventually asked to do a blues series for the label. The series, Legacy of the Blues, ran to twelve albums with Charters producing the series as well as writing extensive liner notes for each. The notes were expanded for a book of the same name which was published in 1975. The entire series has been reissued on CD by Verve in 2006. As was often the case, Charters was able to coax some exceptional performances resulting in some  excellent albums by Memphis Slim, Robert Pete Williams and Snooks Eaglin.

Show Notes:

Stan Lewis is the owner of the seminal blues/R&B/gospel/rock label Jewel-Paula-Ronn-Records. In 1948, Lewis opened a record store, Stan’s Record Shop, on Texas Street in Shreveport, LA. Lewis became a one-stop operator (other record stores would buy from him) and distributor of independent record labels: Atlantic, Chess, Modern, Specialty, and Imperial. Lewis began a mail-order operation, advertising on John R’s (and others) nightly blues/R&B show on Nashville’s WLAC-AM, whose powerful clear channel nighttime signal was heard in most parts of the country. The record entrepreneur began to write and produce R&B and rock & roll acts. Fellow Louisianan Dale Hawkins’ 1957 number 27 pop hit on Chess, “Susie Q,” was written about Lewis’ daughter Susan.  Lewis founded Jewel Records in 1963 in Shreveport, LA. He started off his new Jewel label with #728, which was his store’s address (728 Texas Street in Shreveport, Louisiana), with a single by Louisiana singer/songwriter Bobby Charles. In all, Stan Lewis issued 13 singles on Jewel in 1964, were fairly forgettable. The next year, after moving some artists to the pop/country oriented Paula subsidiary, Lewis issued 14 more singles on Jewel, mostly blues-oriented material. He signed Ted Taylor, Peppermint Harris, Cookie and His Cupcakes, and Jerry McCain, among others. His first national chart record, though, was by the Carter Brothers, with “Little Country Boy” [Jewel 745], which reached #21 on the R&B charts in the summer. At the start of 1966, Stan Lewis moved into a new field with gospel.  Although Jewel’s new gospel series only issued 6 singles in 1966, it would eventually include almost 300 singles. Jewel issued 21 singles in 1966 on the including blues by Frank Frost and “Wild Child” Butler. The year 1967 brought fifteen more singles and the start of an LP series. New artists included Ray Agee, Bobby Powell, Big Mac and blues Lightnin’ Hopkins. Hopkins recorded the first album on Jewel, Blue Lightnin’, and the next two as well. The Jewel Blues series only issued five singles in 1968, and nine in 1969. New artist signings for 1968- 69 included the Roman Carter (of the Carter Brothers), Little Joe Blue, and veteran Lowell Fulson. Over the next few years, Lewis would also sign blues veterans Charles Brown, Roosevelt Sykes, John Lee Hooker, Memphis Slim, and others. The series lasted until Jewel 852 in 1977. The Jewel label had three subsidiary labels; Paula, Ronn and Sue. In later years he aquired and reissued 1950′s blues recordings of defunct labels like JOB, Cobra and Chief.

Lightnin’ Hopkins who was given the first album on Jewel, Blue Lightnin’, and in fact the next two albums. Hopkins and Stan Lewis got along well (an instrumental on the second Jewel album was called “Mr. Stan, the Hip Hit Record Man”), and Lewis remarked that he probably recorded more songs by Hopkins than any other artist. In all Hopkins cut over 40 sides for the label between 1965 and 1969. All these sides were issued by Westside as the 2-CD set Fishing Clothes: The Jewel Recordings 1965-1969.

Texas R&B singer Peppermint Harris is best known for two early-’50s hits, the classic “Rainin’ in My Heart” and “I Get Loaded.” Harris arguably did his best work with Jewel Records. While he didn’t have any huge hits between 1965 and 1971, the length of his stay at Jewel, Harris nonetheless produced some excellent sides. All of these are collected on Westside’s Lonesome as I Can Be: The Jewel Recordings.

Wild Child Butler was gigging professionally as a bandleader by the late ’50s, but his recording career didn’t blossom until he moved to Chicago in 1966 and signed with Jewel Records (his sidemen on these sessions included bassist Willie Dixon and guitarist Jimmy Dawkins). He cut eight singles for the label in 1966 and 1967.

Buster Benton was a member of Dixon’s Blues All-Stars for a while, and Dixon is credited as songwriter of Benton’s best-known song, “Spider in My Stew.” Its release on the Jewel label gave Benton a taste of fame; its follow-up, “Money Is the Name of the Game,” solidified his reputation. He cut A 1979 LP for Jewel’s Ronn subsidiary titled Spider in My Stew.

Little Joe Blues recorded for various labels, including Kent and Chess’s Checker Records division during the early to mid-’60s. In 1966 when he racked up a modest hit in 1966 with the song “Dirty Work Is Going On,” which has since become a blues standard. He had extended stints with Jewel Records and Chess from the late ’60s into the early ’70s, and recorded until the end of the 1980s. He died in 1990.

Jerry McCain cut a series singles between 1965-1968 for Jewel Records, including a tailor-made tribute to the company, “728 Texas (Where the Action Is)” (Jewel’s address). These sides have been collected on Absolutely The Best – The Complete Jewel Singles 1965 – 1972.

Frank Frost moved to St. Louis in 1951, learning how to blow harp first from Little Willie Foster and then from the legendary Sonny Boy Williamson, who took him on the road — as a guitar player — from 1956 to 1959. Drummer Sam Carr, a longtime Frost friend, enticed Frost to front his combo in 1954 before hooking up with Sonny Boy. Frost and Carr settled in Lula, MS. Guitarist Jack Johnson came aboard in 1962. The three cut Hey Boss Man!, issued on Sun’s Phillips International subsidiary as by Frank Frost and the Nighthawks. Elvis Presley’s ex-guitarist Scotty Moore produced Frost’s next sessions in Nashville in 1966 for Jewel Records.

The Carter Brothers recorded for Jewel Records, among other labels. Roman Carter (lead vocals, bass), Albert Carter (guitar), and Jerry Carter (vocals, piano) came from Garland, AL, and began recording in 1964 for producer/songwriter Duke Coleman’s local label. Stan Lewis’ Jewel Records licensed a pair of their singles, of which “Southern Country Boy” got to number 21 on the R&B charts nationally. They never cut an album, but before splitting up in 1967 the trio recorded more than a dozen single sides. Lead singer Roman Carter some cut solo singles for Jewel as well. All of the Jewel sides can be found on Westside’s Blues on Tour: The Jewel Recordings 1965-1969.

Lowell Fulson cut sides for Jewel in 1969 and issued the LP In a Heavy Bag in 1969. Hooker released the LP I Feel Good in 1971, which featured Lowell Fulson on taking lead on most tracks.

Lewis was still active in the music business in the ’90s, working with Southern soul singers Carl Sims and Vickie Baker. A Jewel Records boxed set was issued by Capricorn Records in 1993. Tiring of the rigors of trying to run a competitive independent record label in a major-label dominated industry, Lewis decided to offer Jewel for sale while still retaining control of his music publishing companies.

Show Notes:

During the 1960′s Nick Perls amassed a vast collection of blues records from the 1920′s and 1930′s. In 1968 he began transferring some of these onto LP, initially naming his label Belzoni (after a town in Mississippi) but after five releases changed the name to Yazoo, also a town in Mississippi. Perls set up the Blue Goose Records label in the early 1970′s. While on Blue Goose’ sister label Yazoo Records Perls compiled rare 78 rpm recordings made in the 1920′s by such singers and guitarists as Charlie Patton, Blind Willie McTell, the Memphis Jug Band, Blind Blake and Blind Lemon Jefferson, on Blue Goose Records he recorded only living artists. He cut albums by blues artists like Sam Chatmon, Son House, Yank Rachell, Shirley Griffith, Thomas Shaw and Bill Williams and Larry Johnson plus younger white blues performers like Jo Ann Kelly, Woody Mann, Graham Hine, John Lewis, Roger Hubbard, Roy Book Binder, R. Crumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders and Rory Block. Unfortunately most of the Blue Goose catalog remains out of print. Since Big Road Blues focuses on traditional black blues performers I have omited the fine white blues singers the label recorded. I’m sure some folks may have a problem with this but hey it’s my show so I can be as finicky as I want!

Among the postwar generation of country blues artists, Larry Johnson ranks as one of the best. He was born on May 5, 1938, in Fulton County, GA. His father was a preacher and his son would often travel with him from town to town. In this environment, Johnson was exposed to early blues records and he especially loved those of Blind Boy Fuller. It was Fuller’s records that made Johnson pick up a guitar. After a stint in the Navy from 1955 to 1959, Johnson moved to New York and befriended Brownie and Sticks McGhee and began playing on records by Big Joe Williams, Harry Atkins, and Alec Seward (aka Guitar Slim). It was Seward who introduced Johnson to his future mentor, Rev. Gary Davis. He released his first single, “Catfish Blues”/”So Sweet,” in 1962 and appeared on numerous live dates with Davis. By 1970, Johnson began releasing albums on small labels, including Fast & Funky on Blue Goose. After years of living from gig to gig, Johnson retreated from the grind of the road. He did, however, manage to release two albums, Johnson! Where Did You Get That Sound? in 1983 and Basin Free with Nat Riddles in 1984. By the ’90s, Johnson began receiving better offers for live performances, especially in Europe. While abroad, he recorded Railroad Man released in 1990 on JSP and Blues for Harlem in 1999 on the Armadillo label. Two years later, Johnson collaborated with National slide guitar extraordinaire Brian Kramer and his band the Couch Lizards, resulting in Two Gun Green on Armadillo.

Bill Williams was a 72-year old bluesman from Greenup, Kentucky, when he made his debut for Blue Goose in the early 1970′s. Stephen Calt wrote that “The previously unrecorded Williams ranks among the most polished and proficient living traditional bluesmen, and has a large repertoire embracing ragtime, hillbilly, and even pop material. He is also the only known living associate of Blind Blake, his own favorite guitarist. …While living in Bristol, Tennessee in the early 1920′s Bill met the peerless Blind Blake who was then living with an elderly woman (perhaps a relative) in a desolate nearby country area. For four months Bill worked as Blake’s regular second guitarist…” Williams cut just two LP’s, both for Blue Goose: Low And Lonesome and The Late Bill Williams ‘Blues, Rags and Ballads plus had one song on the anthology These Blues Is Meant To Be Barrelhoused. From the notes to The Late Bill Williams ‘Blues, Rags and Ballads, Stephen Calt wrote: “For a guitarist of such uncommon ability Bill Williams enjoyed an all-too brief period of public recognition. Within fifteen minutes of the time he first picked up an instrument in 1908 he was accomplished enough to play a song, but he was still completely unknown beyond his home town of Greenup, Kentucky before Blue Goose recorded him in the fall of 1970 and issued an album (Low and Lonesome) that brought him unqualified acclaim as a 73-year old folk find. A brief series of concert engagements (notably at the Smithsonian Institution and the Mariposa Folk Festival) followed, along with an extended recording session in New York, before a heart ailment brought about his musical retirement. In October of 1973, nearly three years to the day of his recording debut, he was fatally stricken in his sleep.”

A product of the Chatmon family that included not only Lonnie of the famous Mississippi Sheiks but also the prolific Bo Carter and several other blues-playing brothers, Sam Chatmon survived to began performing and recording again in the ’60s. Chatmon began playing music as a child, occasionally with his family’s string band, as well as the Mississippi Sheiks. Sam launched his own solo career in the early ’30s. While he performed and recorded as a solo act, he would still record with the Mississippi Sheiks and with his brother Lonnie. Throughout the ’30s, Sam traveled throughout the south, playing with a variety of minstrel and medicine shows. He stopped traveling in the early ’40s, making himself a home in Hollandale, Mississippi, where he worked on plantations. For the next two decades, Sam Chatmon was essentially retired from music and only worked on the plantations. When the blues revival arrived in the late ’50s, he managed to capitalize on the genre’s resurgent popularity. In 1960, he signed a contract with Arhoolie and he recorded a number of songs for the label. Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, he recorded for a variety of labels, as well as playing clubs and blues and folk festivals across America. Chatmon was an active performer and recording artist until his death in 1983.

Tom Shaw spent about five years on the Texas house party circuit in the 1920′s and early 1930′s before moving to San Diego in 1934. Shaw met many great Texas bluesmen including Smokey Hogg, T-Bone Walker, Mance Lipscomb, Blind Willie Johnson, Ramblin’ Thoms, JT “Funny Papa” Smith and Blind Lemon Jefferson who he was clearly a disciple of.  He met Jefferson in Waco, Texas in 1926 or 27. JT “Funny Papa” Smith offered to let Shaw play on one of his records in 1931 but Smith was sent to jail on a murder charge. In the 1960′s and 70s he recorded for the Advent, Blue Goose and Blues Beacon labels before passing in 1977.

James “Yank” Rachell was the primary exponent of blues mandolin, although he also played guitar, violin, harp and sang as well. Born on a farm outside Brownsville, Tennessee, Yank Rachell picked up the mandolin at the age of eight. Rachell began to work dances with singer and guitarist Sleepy John Estes in the early ’20s. In early 1929, he co-formed the Three J’s Jug Band with Estes and pianist Jab Jones. The group recorded 14 sides credited jointly to Estes and Rachell for Victor for 1929 and 1930. After the record business was flattened by the depression, the Three J’s broke up. Estes and harmonica player Hammie Nixon went on to Chicago to seek their fortune in the nightclubs, but Yank Rachell decided to try his hand at farming and also worked for the L&N Railroad. Ironically, it was Rachell who was next to record — 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, Yank 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. Rachell kept his day job and did not lead “the life,” at least not the same one that claimed his friend Sonny Boy Williamson on June 1, 1948. After Williamson’s murder, 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 tearing up the 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. Yank Rachell was a long-time regular at the Slippery Noodle in Indianapolis, and recorded only sporadically in his last years. Nonetheless, he was working on a new album when he died at age 87.

Born in 1907 near Brandon, Mississippi Shirley Griffith was certainly old enough to have made records in the 1920′s and 30′s and in fact had at least two opportunities to do so. In 1928 his friend and mentor, Tommy Johnson, offered to help him get started but, by his own account, he was too “wild and reckless” in those days. In 1928 he moved to Indianapolis where he became friendly with Scrapper Blackwell and Leroy Carr. In 1935 Carr offered to take Griffith to New York for a recording session but Carr died suddenly and the trip was never made. It was Art Rosenbaum who was responsible for getting Griffith on record and who also precipitated the comeback of Scrapper Blackwell. Rosenbaum produced Griffith’s Bluesville albums. Griffith missed his opportunity to record as a young man but recorded three superb albums: Indiana Ave. Blues (Bluesville, 1964, with partner J.T. Adams), Saturday Blues (Bluesville, 1965) and Mississippi Blues (Blue Goose, 1973). In addition some field recordings from the early 1960′s were issued on the Flyright album Indianapolis Jumps. The fact that all these albums are out of print goes a ways in understanding why Griffith remains so little known. He also didn’t benefit all that much from the renewed blues interest of the 1960′s; he never achieving the acclaim of late discovered artists like Mississippi Fred McDowell, the critical appreciation of a Robert Pete Williams or the excitement surrounding rediscovered legends like Son House, Skip James or Mississippi John Hurt. He did achieve modest notice touring clubs with Yank Rachell in 1968, performed at the first Ann Arbor Blues Festival in 1969 and appeared at the Notre Dame Blues Festival in South Bend, Indiana in 1971. Griffith passed away in 1974

Son House: The Real Delta Blues was issued in 1974 on Blues Goose. This album was a collection of early sixties private tapes released to provide Son House some additional revenue in his later years. Reviewer Chris Smith wrote that “all the greatness of Son House is here – the total involvement, the powerful, yet fundamentally introspective vocals, the lyrical creativeness, the rich dialogue between voice and guitar. …No country blues fan can be without this collection.”

Show Notes:

For today’s show we continue with our ongoing series I call Forgotten Blues Heroes. For this installment we spotlight four great bluesmen who didn’t get the opportunity to record until the 1960′s and 1970′s: Scott Dunbar, Bill Williams, Babe Stovall and Frank Hovington. As the blues historian Paul Oliver wrote: “Throughout the Sixties, it seemed there was one ‘discovery’ or ‘rediscovery’ of a blues singer after another; a succession of methodical searches, happy accidents and dramatic events which brought not only a number of legendary figures to life, but also revealed that the wealth of talent in the black traditions had been even greater than might have been supposed.”

All of today’s featured artists were old enough to have been recorded earlier but opportunity passed them by until the blues revival of the 1960′s. In addition to the resurrection of the legendary artists of the past like Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White and Skip James there were a slew of older artists uncovered who got a chance to make some recordings such as Mississippi Fred McDowell, Robert Pete Williams and Mance Lipscomb to name a few. Unlike those who recorded back in the 1920′s and 30′s for the commercial record companies and black consumers, those who recorded in the 1960′s and 70′s were being recorded primarily for a new found white audience, with the records issued usually on tiny specialist labels. The benefit wasn’t in sales of records so much as it was the fact that these recordings would be an entry way into the festival and coffeehouse circuit. Unfortunately many of these small labels never lasted into the CD era and hence many great albums remain long out of print. The bulk of today’s recordings fall into that category.

Scott Dunbar

In the notes to his sole album, From Lake Mary issued on the Ahura Mazda label in 1970, Karl Micheal Wolfe wrote that “Today Scott Dunbar is a fisherman and guide on Lake Mary, father of six, and resident blues singer of Woodville and rural Wilkinson County, Mississippi. There everyone knows old Scott. We hope this record will make him known to a wider audience.” Prior to the recordings in 1970 Dunbar was recorded by Frederic Ramsey, Jr. in 1954 as part of field recordings done under a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Ramsey’s recordings appeared on the ten volume series Music from the South on Folkways with four of Dunbar’s recordings on Music From The South Vol. 5: Song, Play And Dance and one side on Music From The South Vol. 10: Been Here And Gone. Three more issued sides were recorded in 1968, which appeared on the album Blues From The Delta, the companion album to William Ferris’ influential book of the same name.

Dunbar gave up the juke joints because they were too dangerous and in later years played primarily for whites. William Ferris wrote in Blues From The Delta that “I recorded thirty-seven songs during my visits with Dunbar and of these, two thirds were sung white style in the key of C. ” The thirteen songs on From Lake Mary are mostly blues, likely selected to appeal to the blues revival market while the vast majority of recordings from this session have not been issued, forty-eight unissued sides in total.  At lengthy recording sessions n February, April and August of 1970 Dunbar proves to be a true songster, laying down songs like “Wabash Cannonball”, “Sally Good’n”, “Blue Heaven”, “Tennessee Waltz” and  “You Are My Sunshine.” In 1994 Fat Possum reissued From Lake Mary on CD with no additional tracks.Dunbar passed away at the age of 90 in 1994 with his death largely unnoticed outside of a couple of obituaries in blues magazines and a recorded legacy of  nineteen issued sides.

Bill Williams, was a 72-year old bluesman from Greenup, Kentucky, when he made his debut for Blue Goose in the early 1970′s. Stephen Calt wrote that “The previously unrecorded Williams ranks among the most polished and proficient living traditional bluesmen, and has a large repertoire embracing ragtime, hillbilly, and even pop material. He is also the only known living associate of Blind Blake, his own favorite guitarist. …Disbelief is the inevitable reaction to incredible Bill Williams, a former partner of Blind Blake who is without doubt the most technically accomplished living country blues guitarist. …While living in Bristol, Tennessee in the early 1920′s Bill met the peerless Blind Blake who was then living with an elderly woman (perhaps a relative) in a desolate nearby country area. For four months Bill worked as Blake’s regular second guitarist…” Williams cut just two LP’s, both for Blue Goose: Low And Lonesome and The Late Bill Williams ‘Blues, Rags and Ballads plus had one song on the anthology These Blues Is Meant To Be Barrelhoused.

From the notes to The Late Bill Williams ‘Blues, Rags and Ballads, Stephen Calt wrote: “For a guitarist of such uncommon ability Bill Williams enjoyed an all-too brief period of public recognition. Within fifteen minutes of the time he first picked up an instrument in 1908 he was accomplished enough to play a song, but he was still completely unknown beyond his home town of Greenup, Kentucky before Blue Goose recorded him in the fall of 1970 and issued an album (Low and Lonesome) that brought him unqualified acclaim as a 73-year old folk find. A brief series of concert engagements (notably at the Smithsonian Institution and the Mariposa Folk Festival) followed, along with an extended recording session in New York, before a heart ailment brought about his musical retirement. In October of 1973, nearly three years to the day of his recording debut, he was fatally stricken in his sleep. This memorial album and its soon to be released sequel will constitute the remainder of Bill’s musical legacy.”

Jewell “Babe” Stovall was a Mississippi-born songster who was born in 1907 in Tylertown, MS, Babe was the youngest of 11 children, most of them musicians. Stovall learned guitar when he was around eight years old, and was soon playing breakdowns, frolics, and parties in the area, even meeting and learning “Big Road Blues” from Tommy Johnson. He moved to Franklinton, LA, in the 1930s, and split his time between there and Tylertown for several years, picking up whatever work he could as a farmhand. In 1964 he moved to New Orleans, where he was “discovered” working as a street singer in the French Quarter, his act featuring crowd-pleasing antics like playing his National Steel guitar behind his head and shouting out his song lyrics in a voice so loud that it carried well down the street. He recorded an LP for Verve in 1964, simply titled Babe Stovall (re-released on CD by Flyright in 1990), and did further sessions in 1966 released on Southern Sound as The Babe Stovall Story and with Bob West in 1968 (which form the basis of The Old Ace: Mississippi Blues & Religious Songs, released on Arcola in 2003), and became active on the folk and blues college circuit, as well as holding down a house gig at the Dream Castle Bar in New Orleans. Stovall died in 1974 in New Orleans.

Bruce Bastin called Frank Hovington or Guitar Frank as he was also known, “one of the finest singers to have been recorded during the 1970′s…steeped in a tradition which is as much part of him as is the countryside about him.” Bastin and Dick Spotswood recorded Frank in 1975, issuing the album Lonesome Road Blues on the Flyright label (reissued in 2000 as Gone With The Wind with several additional tracks). Frank was still in fine form when he reluctantly agreed to perform for Axel Küstner and Siegfried Christmann in 1980. The results were issued as part of their remarkable Living Country Blues series. Hovington started on ukulele and banjo as a child and teamed with Willliam Walker in the late ’30s and ’40s playing at house parties and dances in Frederica, Pennsylvania. Hovington moved to Washington D.C. in the late ’40s, and backed such groups as Stewart Dixon’s Golden Stars and Ernest Ewin’s Jubilee Four. Hovington moved to Delaware in 1967 where he passed in 1982.

I’ll Fly Away (MP3)

Libert Bill (MP3)

She Wants To Boogie (MP3)

Good Morning Blues (MP3)

Rocky Mountain (MP3)

St. Louis Blues (MP3)

Corrina (MP3)

Don’t You Lie To Me (MP3)

Black, Brown And White (MP3)

It Hurts Me Too (MP3)

Shak-a-You-Boogie (MP3)

Crawlin’ King Snake (MP3)

Key To The Highway (MP3)

Jim Brewer died twenty years, on June 3rd 1988, and unless you were a blues collector in the 1960′s and 70′s it’s a safe bet that you may never have heard of this superb bluesman who was under recorded during his lifetime, and these days has just a handful of songs currently scattered on a few CD anthologies. Although he moved from Mississippi to Chicago in 1940, where he resided until his death, his guitar playing was still rooted in the Mississippi style he picked up as a youth. His repertoire as well was formed by the singers he heard, mostly on record or radio, in the 1940′s and 50′s; singers like Big Bill Broonzy, Tampa Red, Big Maceo and Peetie Wheatstraw who Brewer ran with in St. Louis for a spell. As he told Paul Oliver: “I went down to St. Louis, spent four or five years down there, woofin’ and beefin’ aroun’ and blowin’ my top as usually. An’ I met a feller there down on Market and Main and places in East St. Louis, name of Peetie Wheatstraw. …I use to run aroun’ with him quite a bit.” Gospel music played a large part in Brewer’s music and like many musicians of his generation he was torn for awhile between playing blues and playing gospel. Sometime in the late 1950′s through the early 1960′s he devoted himself almost entirely to gospel. It was in this context that Oliver first encountered him: “We first heard Blind James Brewer playing with a Gospel group which was holding service under the guidance of a fiercely exhorting ‘jack-leg’ preacher on the broken sidewalk of South Sangamon Street, Chicago, a short step from Brewer’s home.” Like many bluesman his allegiance to gospel wasn’t steadfast as Oliver makes clear: “On another day we heard him with Blind Gray and recorded him playing I’m So Glad Good Whiskey’s Back (Heritage HLP 1004).” Brewer was anything if not pragmatic: “”Well lots of people say, ‘What profit you in the world if you gain the world and lose your soul?’-Well I realize that’s true too. But you got to live down here just like you got to make preparations to go up there. …You got to live this life, and you got to obey God. And God give me this talent and he knew before I came into this world what I was goin’ to make out of this talent.” While playing on the streets of his hometown of Brookhaven, MS in the 1930’s he learned most of the religious songs that he continued to perform throughout his life. His father told him he could make more money playing blues and as he grew older he started performing at parties having learned his repertoire from records.

James Brewer, Photo by Paul Chen

By the mid-1950’s, after roaming around for a bit, he was back in Chicago where he married his wife Fannie. Brewer’s new mother-in-law bought him an electric guitar and amplifier. Returning to Maxwell Street, where he began performing in the early 1940′s,  he devoted himself exclusively to religious music. In 1962, however, he was offered an opportunity to play blues at a concert at Northwestern University and also began a regular gig at the No Exit Cafe which lasted for two decades. He went on to play major festivals and clubs in the United States, Canada and Europe. He was recorded by Swedish Radio in 1964, cut sides for the Heritage label, was recoded by Pete Welding who issued the sides on his Testament label was well as Milestone and Storyville, plus cut the full-length albums Jim Brewer (Philo, 1974) and Tough Luck (Earwig, 1983). Brewer was also captured on film performing with his wife on Maxwell Street in 1964 for the documentary And This Is Free.

Kansas City Blues (MP3)

Come Back Baby (MP3)

Rock Me Mama (MP3)

Goin’ Away Baby (MP3)

Big Road (MP3)

Long Ways From Home (MP3)

Goin’ Down The Road Feelin’ Bad (MP3)

Hair Like A Horse’s Mane (MP3)

Poor Kelly (MP3)

Mean Old ‘Frisco (MP3)

Tough Luck Blues (MP3)

Oak Top Boogie (MP3)

Pea Vine Whistle (MP3)

Recorded less than a decade apart, Brewer’s two full-length albums are marvelous examples of his artistry showcasing him playing solo acoustic on a program of mostly standards. Jim Brewer was recorded live at Kirkland College to an appreciative audience and Brewer seems at his best when working a crowd. Four cuts on Tough Luck were recorded live at the 9th annual Gambier Folk Festival in 1980 while the other numbers were cut in the studio in 1978 and 1982. I think the first album is the stronger of the two and really benefits from the fact that it captures a complete live performance complete with plenty of charming asides to the audience who seem captivated by Brewer’s lively singing and guitar playing. Clas Ahlstrand summed up Brewer’s guitar style succinctly in a 1967 Blues Unlimited article: “As a blues guitarist Jim Brewer must be considered one of the best in Chicago. His style is complex and filled with an easy, fluent rhythm. It is is definitely not ‘Chicago styled, but softer and more ‘Country.’” Indeed like his repertoire, which seems frozen in the 1940′s and in the traditional songs he heard as a youngster, his guitar playing too seems firmly rooted in a Mississippi country style he learned as a youth. But as Ahlstrand points out, its appeal lies in Brewer’s deep sense of rhythm which effortlessly rolls from his fingertips belying the complexity of his playing. This driving complexity is heard to fine effect in the good time numbers “She Wants To Boogie” and “Shak-a-You-Boogie” as well as a gorgeous version of the chestnut “St. Louis Blues” delivered with a seductive drive and sense of humor that invests this well worn tune with brand new sheen. The same can be said on a warmly sung version of “Corrina” and a powerful cover of “Crawlin’ King Snake.” Brewer plays only one gospel number on these albums, opening up his self titled album with a rousing, sanctified version of “I’ll Fly Away” that lasts just over a minute before segueing into “Liberty Bill” which he announces by saying “Now I’m going to play some, some old, you know them way back down home blues.” In addition to his guitar skills, Brewer possesses a  powerful yet easygoing voice, often drawing out his lines for dramatic effect.

Brewer’s four live cuts from Tough Luck, are every bit as good as the previous album; Brewer is in commanding form on the stark, powerfully sung “Goin’ Away Baby”, a driving version of Tommy Johnson’s timeless “Big Road” and employs a gentle voice and deft fingerpicking to “Goin’ Down The Road Feelin’ Bad.” There’s a reason certain songs have become standards and even though you may have heard “kansas City Blues” umpteen times, artists like Brewer are able to find the very essence of what makes this song so timeless, giving this classic a vivacious reading a feat he also performs on Arthur Crudup’s “Mean Old ‘Frisco.” Brewer is a fine interpreter as he shows on terrific versions of Big Maceo’s “Poor Kelley” and “Tough Luck Blues” and Walter Davis’ “Come Back Baby”, ably translated from piano to guitar. “Oak Top Boogie”, a mostly instrumental with spoken asides, is a fine guitar boogie while “Hair Like A Horse’s Mane” is a beautiful version of this standard and a song he clearly had an affection for, cutting it originally back in 1964.

Unfortunately Brewer’s two LP’s are long out of print and only a few of his songs appear on CD; a pair of songs on a couple of Earwig anthologies, his songs for Swedish Radio can be found on the CD I Blueskvarter Chicago 1964, Volume One and a few gospel numbers appear on And This Is Maxwell Street. Brewer remained an in demand musician until the end, and as long time supporter Andy Cohen wrote: “He died with gigs on his calendar.”

Show Notes:

For today’s show we continue with our ongoing series I call Forgotten Blues Heroes. For this installment we spotlight four great Mississippi bluesmen who didn’t get the opportunity to record until the 1960′s: James Brewer, Shirley Griffith, Roosevelt Holts and Houston Stackhouse. All these gentlemen were old enough to have been recorded earlier but opportunity passed them by until the blues revival of the 1960′s. In addition to the resurrection of the legendary artists of the past like Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White and Skip James there were a slew of older artists uncovered who got a chance to make some recordings. Unlike those who recorded back in the 1920′s and 30′s for the commercial record companies and black consumers, those who recorded in the 1960′s were being recorded primarily for a a new found white audience with the records issued usually on tiny specialist labels. The benefit wasn’t in sales of records so much as it was the fact that these recordings would be an entry way into the festival and coffeehouse circuit. Unfortunately many of these small labels never lasted into the CD era and hence many great albums remain long out of print. The bulk of today’s recordings fall into that category and it seems only Houston Stackhouse is lucky enough to have just about all of his recordings available on CD. In upcoming installments of this series I plan on spotlighting other who made their debuts in the 1960′s and 70′s such as James “Son” Thomas, Sam Chatmon, Scott Dunbar, Joe Callicott, Bill Williams, Babe Stovall and Frank Hovington to name a few.

James Brewer was born in Brookhaven, Mississippi on October 3rd 1920 and moved to Chicago in the 1940′s where he spent the latter part of his life busking and performing both blues and religious songs at blues and folk festivals, on Chicago’s Maxwell Street and other venues. While playing on the streets of Brookhaven in the 1930′s he learned most of the religious songs that he continued to perform throughout his life. His father told him he could make more money playing blues and as he grew older he started performing at parties having learned his repertoire from records.  Following the death of his mother the family moved to Chicago where he eventually found his way to Maxwell Street. in the early 1950′s he settled in St. Louis playing streetcars and taverns and also joined a washboard band for a spell. By the mid-50′s he was back in Chicago where he married his wife Fannie. Brewer’s new mother-in-law bought him an electric guitar and amplfier. Returning to Maxwell Street he devoted himself exclusively to religious music. In 1962, however, he was offered an opportunity to play blues at a concert at Northwestern University and also began a regular gig at the No Exit Cafe which lasted for two decades. He went on to play major festivals and clubs in the United States, Canada and Europe. He was recorded by Swedish Radio in 1964, cut sides for the Heritage label and Testament plus cut the full-length albums Jim Brewer (Philo, 1974) and Tough Luck (Earwig, 1983).

Born in 1907 near Brandon, Mississippi Shirley Griffith was certainly old enough to have made records in the 1920’s and 30’s and in fact had at least two opportunities to do so. In 1928 his friend and mentor, Tommy Johnson, offered to help him get started but, by his own account, he was too “wild and reckless” in those days. In 1928 he moved to Indianapolis where he became friendly with Scrapper Blackwell and Leroy Carr. In 1935 Carr offered to take Griffith to New York for a recording session but Carr died suddenly and the trip was never made. It was Art Rosenbaum who was responsible for getting Griffith on record and who also precipitated the comeback of Scrapper Blackwell. Rosenbaum produced Griffith’s Bluesville albums. “I recall one August afternoon”, he wrote in the notes to Saturday Blues, “shortly after these recordings were made; Shirley sat in Scrapper Blackwell’s furnished room singing the ‘Bye Bye Blues’ with such intensity that everyone present was deeply moved, though they had all heard him sing it many times before. Scrapper was playing , too, and the little room swelled with sound. When they finished there was a moment of awkward silence. Finally Shirley smiled and said: ‘The blues’ll kill you. And make you live, too.’”

Writing about another older musician who only recorded late in life, Tony Russell had this to say: “Through this streaked glass one can discern the outlines of a younger, quicker musician who unfortunately never recorded.” It would have been interesting to hear how Griffith sounded when he was younger but it’s hard to imagine him sounding much better than on these late recordings. His singing is superb on these recordings; warm, controlled and expressive, often drawing out his phrases in a relaxed, easy manner. His guitar playing is subtle, melodic and gently propulsive and contains hidden depths upon repeated listening.

Shirley Griffith missed his opportunity to record as a young man but recorded three superb albums: Indiana Ave. Blues (Bluesville, 1964, with partner J.T. Adams), Saturday Blues (Bluesville, 1965) and Mississippi Blues (Blue Goose, 1973). In addition some field recordings from the early 1960′s were issued on the Flyright album Indianapolis Jumps. The fact that all these albums are out of print goes a ways in understanding why Griffith remains so little known. He also didn’t benefit all that much from the renewed blues interest of the 1960′s; he never achieving the acclaim of late discovered artists like Mississippi Fred McDowell, the critical appreciation of a Robert Pete Williams or the excitement surrounding rediscovered legends like Son House, Skip James or Mississippi John Hurt. He did achieve modest notice touring clubs with Yank Rachell in 1968, performed at the first Ann Arbor Blues Festival in 1969 and appeared at the Notre Dame Blues Festival in South Bend, Indiana in 1971. Griffith passed away in 1974

Roosevelt Holts was a country bluesman of considerable skill who in a small way was caught up in the blues boom of the 1960′s, finally getting the opportunity to record scattered sides and a couple of LP’s in the 1960′s and 1970′s. Holts, who was born in 1905, likely would have achieved greater recognition if he had gotten the chance to make records in the 1920′s and 1930′s as David Evans emphasized: “If he had been able to get to a record studio in the 1930′s, his records would now be highly prized collector’s items, reissued on albums and talked about by blues fans everywhere. He might have even been “rediscovered” and brought north to the cities for concerts and coffee house engagements before an audience of young whites who were not even born when he recorded his famous numbers.” Holts was born in 1905 near Tylertown, Mississippi, and he took up the guitar when he was in his mid-twenties. He started to get serious about music in the late 1930′s when he encountered Tommy Johnson. Folklorist David Evans began recording Holts in 1965 resulting in two LP’s (both out of print): Presenting The Country Blues (Blue Horizon,1966) and Roosevelt Holts and Friends (Arhoolie, 1969-1970) plus the collection The Franklinton Muscatel Society featuring his earliest sides through 1969 which is available on CD.  In addition selections recorded by Evans appeared on the following anthologies (all out of print): Goin’ Up The Country (Decca, 1968), The Legacy of Tommy Johnson (Matchbox, 1972), South Mississippi Blues (Rounder, 1974 ?), Way Back Yonder …Original Country Blues Volume 3 (Albatros, 1979 ?), Giants Of Country Blues Vol. 3 (Wolf, 199?) and a very scarce 45 (“Down The Big Road” b/w “Blues On Mind”) cut for the Bluesman label in 1969.

Houston Stackhouse

Stackhouse’s family moved to Crystal Springs, Mississippi in the mid-1920′s, where he learned songs from Tommy Johnson and his brothers and took up guitar. In the early 1930′s, he moved to Hollandale, Mississippi where his cousin, Robert Lee McCullum (later known as Robert Nighthawk) lived. It was Houston who taught Robert Nighthawk how to play the bottleneck guitar. In 1946, Houston moved to Helena, Arkansas where he played with Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) on The King Biscuit Time show, on KFFA Radio. His association with the King Biscuit show and his living in Helena brought him in contact with many of the great blues players. He played with Elmore James, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Jimmy Rogers, Roosevelt Sykes and Earl Hooker. From the late 1940′s and up until 1954, Houston worked for the Chrysler Corporation in Helena. He continued to play, but less frequently after he married in the late 1950′s. Periodically, he returned to the King Biscuit show. In 1967 he made his first recordings cutting field recordings for George Mitchell and shortly after for David Evans. At the tail end of August 1967 George Mitchell recorded an impromptu combo who called themselves the Blues Rhythm Boys in Dundee, MS, a small town on route 61 roughly halfway between Tunica and Friars Point and just across the river from Helena, AR. The group consisted of Houston Stackhouse, Robert Nighthawk and James “Peck” Curtis. As I wrote in my notes to Prowling With The Nighthawk: “The music harks back to Nighthawk and Stackhouse’s early delta days. Tommy Johnson’s influence looms large with five of his songs being covered. In a way Nighthawk’s life had come full circle; he was once again playing with Stackhouse who taught how to play guitar, Stackhouse in turn learned directly from Tommy Johnson and here were the two old friends performing the songs of Johnson together one final time. Nghthawk died less than two months after these recordings on Nov. 5 1967 of congestive heart failure at the Helena hospital. These 1967 recordings have been justly celebrated and long available, with the Mitchell sides appearing on Arhoolie’s Mississippi Delta Blues- Blow My Blues Away Vol. 1 & 2 and Robert Nighthawk & Houston Stackhouse – Masters of Modern Blues Volume 4 while the Evans recordings are available on  Big Road Blues on the Wolf label. In 1972 Stackhouse recorded Crying Won’t Help You for the Adelphi label. He was part of The Memphis Blues Caravan, traveled around the Eastern states, toured Europe in 1970 and played the 1973 Ann Arbor Blues Festival with Joe Willie Wilkins under the name The King Biscuit Boys. He died in 1980

Related Articles: (Word Docs)

-Shirley Griffith/Yank Rachell Concert Review by Leo Kunstadt (Record Research 9, 1968)

Living far from prevailing blues currents near Woodville, Mississippi some fifteen miles from Lake Mary, Scott Dunbar was a musician of extraordinary and utterly singular ability who’s small recorded output caused barley a ripple of interest upon release. There are certain musicians who’s repertoire resides in the blues tradition yet who have developed a highly individual, singular style that sets them totally apart from their peers. Into that rarefied group are several men who recorded well after the heyday of commercial blues; men such as Cecil Barfield, CeDell Davis, Junior Kimbrough and Scott Dunbar. Dunbar passed away at the age of 90 in 1994 with his death largely unnoticed outside of a couple of obituaries in blues magazines and a recorded legacy of  nineteen issued sides.

Not that fame and fortune are what Dunbar sought. On the contrary, from all accounts he was supremely proud of his musical abilities and didn’t need coffeehouse or festival audiences to tell him so. He lived a quit contented existence as a fisherman and river guide. In the notes to his sole album, From Lake Mary issued on the Ahura Mazda label in 1970, Karl Micheal Wolfe wrote that “Today Scott Dunbar is a fisherman and guide on Lake Mary, father of six, and resident blues singer of Woodville and rural Wilkinson County, Mississippi. There everyone knows old Scott. We hope this record will make him known to a wider audience.” Dunbar never became a well known name although he has been highly regarded in collector circles. However he made no subsequent recordings, no festival appearances as far as I can tell and no overseas tour. As is often the case, his main recognition came from overseas blues aficionados with several articles appearing in Blues World and Blues Unlimited in 1971 and 1972. Prior to the recordings in 1970 Dunbar was recorded by Frederic Ramsey, Jr. in 1954 as part of field recordings done under a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Ramsey’s recordings appeared on the ten volume series Music from the South on Folkways with four of Dunbar’s recordings on Music From The South Vol. 5: Song, Play And Dance and one side on Music From The South Vol. 10: Been Here And Gone. Three more issued sides were recorded in 1968 which appeared on the album Blues From The Delta, the companion album to William Ferris’ influential book of the same name.

Ramsey wrote eloquently about Scott both in his memoir Been Here And Gone and in the notes to the Folkways albums.  From the notes to Music From The South Vol. 5: Song, Play And Dance he takes us into Dunbar’s insular world: “In Southwestern Mississippi, and at the the very end of a trail that fords creeks and winds through high bluffs and under tall groves of cypress and swamp oak, Scott Dunbar lives in a cabin anchored by wires to nearby trees. The cabin is in a clearing, and at the edge of the clearing, the ground drops down sharp to the edge of Old River Lake. The lake used to be part of the Mississippi River; but a cut-out changed the course, and now the lake is a fisherman’s paradise. Dunbar presides over it with all the knowing that years of experience  can bring. He makes his living by taking parties on the lake when the catfish are biting. If they’re not biting, he simply won’t go out; his word is rule. He is prognosticator and weather bureau all in one. At night, when the small fleet of outboard motors is tied up at lake’s edge, Scott pulls out his guitar and ‘touches it up.’ His wife, Celeste, stands by, and his two daughters take their places on a bench pulled up alongside a table under a big swamp oak. In the tall, moss-textured cypresses overhead, cicadas are already singing, and from across the lake, a hollering of alligators booms a response. Working his way into a tune, Scot hums it along with the strings that begin to move under his fingers. His foot, pounding the caked mud, keeps time; the dry dirt comes up in clouds of dust, and soon the cake is patted smooth.” And in Been Here And Gone he notes: “Perhaps because many older songs are too rough for visitors, he never sings about Sweet Mama Rollin’ Stone unless asked by someone who knows him and his songs…..When the white folks have gone, the guitar takes up the older and franker strains of music. These have been passed on to Scott by outlaws roaming the levee backwaters, by escaped convicts (Old River Lake is just around the bend from Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary), by singers and players and wanderers now long dead.”

Living off the beaten path caused Dunbar to develop a highly individual style, while traditional, still far removed form other blues currents. His highly rhythmic guitar style, played in a variety of different tunings, emphasized by his stomping foot, creates a beautiful sound. Dunbar sings, hums, and chants along with the melody, at times singing the lyrics in straightforward fashion, other times wordlessly. It sounds at times if Dunbar may not know the actual lyrics, or perhaps only snatches, yet his wordless vocalizations are very much part of his overall sound. The music comes across as familiar yet wholly spontaneous, a full flowering of individual creativity.  Thus familiar songs like “Little Liza Jane”, “Vicksburg Blues” and “That’s Alright, Mama” retain their shape yet sound stunningly fresh as Dunbar interprets them in such an individual way as to utterly transform them, the mark of an artist of the highest caliber. Karl Micheal Wolfe describes Dunbar’s style this way: “He does not know the names of any of the chords he uses because he cannot read music; he tunes the guitar differently for different songs. His playing is strong and loud, and he keeps time with a stomping boot-heel; this is an adaptation to a lifetime of playing not so much to or for as with among riotous, noisy audiences with unamplified instruments and voice. In addition to the vast repertoire of traditional songs Scott grew up with, he has ‘made up’ a score or so, and learned many more ‘off the graftafome’ during the twenties, thirties and forties. Since he cannot read, he has to keep his songs entirely in his head; often the words come out garbled or forgotten entirely. But to his native audiences this does not matter.” It’s this spontaneous, intimate feeling that comes across so wonderfully on From Lake Mary. It’s a feeling and intimacy rarely caught on tape, almost impossible to capture in the studio, that comes across as Dunbar effortlessly reels out numbers like “Easy Rider”, “Who Been Foolin’ You”, the gorgeous, driving “Memphis Mail” with Dunbar’s wordless vocalizing, “Sweet Mama Rollin’ Stone” (Say roll me with your belly/Feed me with your tongue”) that collapses with Dunbar’s infectious laughter as he calls it a “dirty song” and shows off a broader repertoire with versions of “Blue Yodel” and “Goodnight Irene.” Four of the five numbers that appear on this album were recorded by Fredric Ramsey and remain virtually unchanged sixteen years later.

If songs like Blue Yodel” and “Goodnight Irene” hint at a broader repertoire that is true as Dunbar himself said: “I play anything you want, any kind of song, hymns on up.” In his early years he played the juke joints with a band who’s set would not only include blues but also numbers like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “Tennessee Waltz.” He gave up the juke joints because they were too dangerous and in later years played primarily for whites. William Ferris wrote in Blues From The Delta that “I recorded thirty-seven songs during my visits with Dunbar and of these, two thirds were sung white style in the key of C. ” The thirteen songs on From Lake Mary are mostly blues, likely selected to appeal to the blues revival market while the vast majority of recordings from this session have not been issued, forty-eight unissued sides in total.  At lengthy recording sessions n February, April and August of 1970 Dunbar proves to be a true songster, laying down songs like “Wabash Cannonball”, “Sally Good’n”, “Blue Heaven”, “Tennessee Waltz” and  “You Are My Sunshine.” In 1994 Fat Possum reissued From Lake Mary on CD with no additional tracks.

Nestled in his secluded Mississippi retreat the blues revival largely bypassed Dunbar which seemed to suit him just fine. As Karl Micheal Wolfe concludes in his notes: “Scott Dunbar is not an unknown artist struggling for recognition; being one of the most well-known men around Lake Mary has been enough for him. When you listen to this album you will hear a man who has lived a good life and is satisfied with it; his songs are neither a bid for money or fame, nor mournful cries from a suffering heart. I asked Scott once what his music meant to him, and he said: Well I’ll tell you…if it feels good to the people it feels twice as good to me.”

Memphis Mail [1954] (MP3)

Forty-Four Blues [1954] (MP3)

Easy Rider [1954] (MP3)

Little Liza Jane [1970] (MP3)

Vicksburg Blues [1970] (MP3)

Sweet Mama Rollin’ Stone [1970] (MP3)

Memphis Mail [1970] (MP3)

Who Been Foolin’ You [1970] (MP3)

Unissued Scott Dunbar Sides:

Lake Mary, Ms., Feb. 27, 1970

- You Are My Sunshine
- Wabash Cannonball
- When The Saints Go Marching In
- Done Laid Down (Do Remember Me)
- Filipena
- Home Sweet Home
- Just Because
- Never Been So Blue
- Goodnight Irene
- Goodbye My Lady Cindy
- My Old Shoe
- Sally Good’n
- Buffalo Gal
- Nobody’s Darlin’ But Mine
- Memphis Mail
- Vicksburg Blues
- Say That’s Alright With You
- Filipena
- Baby Please Don’t Go
- That’s Alright Mama
- Have Mercy On My Soul
- Tennessee Waltz
- Careless Love
- Blue Heaven
- Lay That Pistol Down (Pistol Packin’ Mama)
- Untitled Instrumental

Lake Mary, Ms., April 19, 1970

- Wabash Cannonball
- Who’s Been Foolin You
- Sally Good’n
- You Are My Sunshine
- Want To See My Darlin’
- Little Liza Jane
- Hand
- Jaybird
- Baby Please Don’t Go
- Lay That Pistol Down
- Just Because
- Filipena
- Have Mercy On My Soul
- Done Laid Around

Lake Mary, Ms., Aug. 6, 1970

- You Don’t Know My Mind
- Want To See My Darlin’
- 44 Blues
- Richard Daley Blues
- Hymn
- Who Been Foolin’ You
- Beautiful Brown Eyes
- Memphis Mail

Show Notes:

Today’s show revolves around the recordings made by Peter B. Lowry. In his voluminous research, writing and recording Lowry has become perhaps the most renowned expert on the blues of the Southeast and is credited with coining the term Piedmont Blues. Between 1969 and 1980 he amassed hundreds of photographs, thousands of selections of recordings, music and interviews in his travels through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. He formed the Trix label as an outlet to release his recordings. Lowry set up the Trix Records label in 1972 starting with a series of 45′s with LP’s being released by 1973. It lasted about a decade as an active label dealing mainly with Piedmont blues artists from the Southeastern states with seventeen albums in its catalog at the time of their sale to Joe Fields of Muse Records. Trix issued albums by the following artists: Eddie Kirkland, Peg Leg Sam, Frank Edwards, Henry Johnson, Willie Trice, Guitar Shorty (John Henry Fortescue), Robert Jr. Lockwood, Pernell Charity, Tarheel Slim, Roy Dunn, Homesick James, Big Chief Ellis, Honeyboy Edwards and the anthology Detroit After Hours, a collection of Detroit piano players. “I spent an interesting decade”, Lowry wrote, “burned myself out, and haven’t really been back since 1980. Sales of TRIX LPs were disappointing, but, master of timing, I started up when the second-to-last blues boom was drying up and quit before the most recent one took off! I am proud of each and every release…” In addition to the seventeen issued Trix albums there is sufficient material for another 40 to 50 CD’s. “I engineered all issued LPs save the second Lockwood and the second Kirkland (and Reedus unreleased jazz LP); ED’d, mixed, and balanced all myself ‘at home’. There was NO COMPRESSION. Therefor, and fortuitously/serendipitously, they turned out to be great for CD mastering!!! That’s why such ‘full’ sound.” Many of the artists who had albums released were recorded extensively by Lowry and in most cases there is enough material in the can for follow-up records. In fact Lowry’s unreleased recordings far exceed the released recordings. Today’s program draws mainly from the Trix catalog plus I’ll be playing some unreleased tracks that Lowry was kind of enough to send me. These tracks have not been heard anywhere else. What follows is some background on today’s featured artists with some commentary from Lowry.

Baby Tate spent the bulk of his life as a sideman, playing with musicians like Blind Boy Fuller, Pink Anderson, and Peg Leg Sam. As a teenager he began playing with Blind Boy Fuller. In the early 1950′s, Tate moved to Spartanburg, SC, where he performed both as a solo act and as a duo with Pink Anderson. Tate and Anderson performed as duo into the 1970′s. In 1962, Tate recorded his first album, See What You Done, for Bluesville. Tate was one of Lowry’s closest musician friends. Lowry said, “My plan…was to really record him in depth. He was just an incredible person and a wonderful person to deal with. I can’t say I’m satisfied with what I’ve got on tape because I know he could do three times more and a lot better. But just having been around him and dealt with him and lived with him, there’s a degree of satisfaction. …The first person to be recorded by me in 1970, a wonderful informant, and a very good friend – he came up to New Paltz to perform at a Spring festival in ’72, partly w. Larry Johnson. He also played a coffee house near Albany, NY that same weekend thanks to Kip Lornell. He had a great time – then he died that summer. That made me a man possessed; ‘do as much as you can before they all die off’ took a hold of me! The rest is history.” Lowry recorded him extensively but only issued one 45 which we play to open our show. Tate also appears on the Peg Leg Sam album, Medicine Show Man.

“Recording is an accident, isn’t it?! Had it not been for me, Henry Johnson and Peg Leg Sam would have been unheard…” Lowry notes. Peg Leg Sam was a member of what may have been the last authentic traveling medicine show, a harmonica virtuoso, and an extraordinary entertainer. Born Arthur Jackson, he acquired his nickname after a hoboing accident in 1930. His medicine show career began in 1938, giving his last medicine show performance in 1972 in North Carolina, and was still in fine form when he started making the rounds of folk and blues festivals in his last years. Lowry captured Sam and Chief Thundercloud (the last traveling medicine show) on the Flyright album The Last Medicine Show. There’s also some footage of the medicine show act in the film Born For Hard Luck. Sam delivered comedy routines, bawdy toasts, monologues, performed tricks with his harps (often playing two at once) and served up some great blues (sometimes with a guitar accompanist, but most often by himself). Lowry released one album by Sam, Medicine Show Man, and he recorded only once  more for Blue Labor in 1975 which was originally issued under the title  Joshua and subsequently reissued as Early In The Morning and Peg Leg Sam with Louisiana Red.

The sessions by Henry Johnson, his first recording, was a result of Peg Leg Sam pushing his good friend to record. “I feel Henry Johnson is the finest finger-picking blues artist to come along in a hell of a long time, and this album should demonstrate that with ease” Lowry wrote in the notes to The Union County Flash!, his lone album. “It was Sam who introduced us (Bastin and I) to Henry…His musicianship was surpassed only by his magnificent voice – I have UNC concert tapes where he plays piano, Hawaiian guitar, and harp w. his guitar… he stuck it in his mouth and worked without a rack (like Harmonica Frank)!” Johnson died 19 1974, shortly after the record was released and there is enough material in the can for another release. Lowry wrote” his ‘compleat’ talent will never be heard by those who never saw him in person.”

Roy Dunn was one of the last links to the rich Atlanta pre-war blues scene; he had played with Curley Weaver., Buddy Moss and Blind Willie McTell. Know’d Them All is his only album. “This, his only album”, Lowry wrote, is as complete a representation of the talents of Roy S. Dunn (a/k/a James Clavin Speed) as could be compiled, and his talents deserve another listening.” Dunn passed in 1988.

Willie Trice and his brother Richard became close friends with Blind Boy Fuller and Fuller took them up to New York where they cut six sides together (two unissued) for Decca in 1937. Richard Trice recorded after the war for Savoy in 1946 as Little Boy Fuller as well as a couple of sides in 1948 and 1952/53. Lowry recorded him but those recordings remain unreleased. Unlike many of his fellow musician friends, Willie always had a day job and it wasn’t until the 1970′s that he recorded again. Blue And Rag’d , his sole album,  was released on Trix in 1973. “Willie Trice”, Lowry wrote” was one of those special people – not just in my life, but in the lives of most everyone who chanced to meet him. We had some sort of special, almost mystical connection… I would irregualry just appear unannounced at the door of his mother’s house and he’d be sitting there waiting for me. He would tell me that he had dreamed of me that night and therefore knew that I was going to be there to see him the next day.”

Prior to his Trix album, Done Some Travelin’, Frank Edwards cut one session in 1941 for Okeh resulting in four issued sides and one in 1949 for Regal backed by Curley Weaver. He cut another album for Music Maker before passing in 2002.  “Frank Edwards sounds like nobody else- he may play the harp and guitar together, but he sure as hell doesn’t sound like Jimmy Reed. He is as recognizable today as when he first recorded. …he sounds just lie Frank Edwards; and that’s it!  As for our selection, “Chicken Raid”, he called it “one of the great anti-clerical songs of all time (right up there with “Stealin’ in the Name of the Lord”), by one of the most original ‘blues’ musicians, and one of the nicest people I’ve ever met! He never sounded like anyone but himself, which is not always a good career move.”

“Homesick” James Williamson was playing guitar at age ten and soon ran away from his Tennessee home to play at fish fries and dances. His travels took the guitarist through Mississippi and North Carolina during the 1920s, where he crossed paths with Yank Rachell, Sleepy John Estes, Blind Boy Fuller, and Big Joe Williams.Settling in Chicago during the 1930′s. Homesick made some of his finest sides in 1952-53 for Art Sheridan’s Chance Records (including the classic “Homesick” that gave him his enduring stage name). He also worked extensively as a sideman, backing harp great Sonny Boy Williamson in 1945 at a Chicago joint called the Purple Cat and during the 1950′s with his cousin Elmore James who he also recorded with. Homesick’s own output included 45′s for Colt and USA in 1962, a fine 1964 album for Prestige plus albums for Bluesway, Big Bear, Earwig and Fedora among others. He cut the solo Goin’ Back Home for Trix of which Lowry said “I think that ‘my’ solo album is the best thing he ever did.” I agree!

Born in Alabama, Eddie Kirkland headed to Detroit in 1943. There he hooked up with John Lee Hooker five years later, recording with him for several firms as well as under his own name for RPM in 1952, King in 1953, and Fortune in 1959. In 1961-62 he cut his first album for Tru-Sound Records. Leaving Detroit for Macon, GA, in 1962, Kirkland signed on with Otis Redding as a sideman and show opener not long thereafter. By the dawn of the 1970′s, Kirkland cut two albums for Trix label; Front And Center and The Devil And Other Blues Demons (issued together as The Complete Trix Recordings on the 32 Blues label).

A self-taught player, Big Chief Ellis performed at house parties and dances during the 1920′s. He traveled extensively for several years, working mostly in non-musical jobs. After a three-year army stint from 1939 – 1942, Ellis settled in New York. He started recording for Lenox in 1945, and also did sessions for Sittin’ In and Capitol in the 1940′s and 50′s, playing with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee for Capitol. Though Ellis reduced his performance schedule after moving from New York to Washington D.C., his career got a final boost in the early 1970′s. He recorded for Trix and appeared at several folk and blues festivals until his death in 1977. His self-titled Trix album features John Cephas, Tarheel Slim, and Brownie McGhee. He also backed Tarheel Slim on his Trix album.

While still in North Carolina during the early 1940′s, Tarheel Slim worked with several gospel groups. He broke away with Thurman Ruth and in 1949 formed their own group, the Jubilators. During a single day in New York in 1950, they recorded for four labels under four different names, One of those labels was Apollo, who convinced them to go secular. That’s basically how the Larks, one of the seminal early R&B vocal groups, came to be. He cut two sessions of his own for the firm in 1952 under the name of Allen Bunn. As Alden Bunn, he encored on Bobby Robinson’s Red Robin logo the next year. He also sang with another R&B vocal group, the Wheels and the Lovers. As Tarheel Slim he made his debut in 1958 with his wife, Little Ann, in a duet format for Robinson’s Fire imprint. He cut a pair of rockabilly raveups of his own, “Wilcat Tamer” and “No. 9 Train.” After a few years off the scene, Tarheel Slim made a bit of a comeback during the early 1970′s, with an album for Trix, his last recording. He died in 1977. Lowry wrote that “Tarheel Slim was one of the finest voices to appear appear in the blues and R&B world, as this collection will solidly demonstrate. …Slim was a consummate artist and a great gentleman: this recording gives the world at-large at least a partial glimpse of his talent.”

Boogie Woogie Red was born in Louisiana in 1924, and his family moved to Detroit when he was very young. Under the influence of local musicians Big Maceo and Dr. Clayton, Red taught himself piano. At age 18, he was drawn to the blues scene in Chicago, where he jammed with Lonnie Johnson, Tampa Red, and Memphis Slim. In 1946, he returned to Detroit and for the next fourteen years played with John Lee Hooker. In 1971 he did a well-received European tour and began performing regularly in the Detroit area, with occasional tours overseas. He recorded two albums for Blind Pig, both of which are now out of print. He was recorded for Trix as part of after-hours piano session and appeared on the album Detroit After Hours.

Lockwood cut two albums for Trix,  Does 12 and Contrasts, (issued together as The Complete Trix Recordings on the 32 Blues label) which rank among his best recordings. The crack band features the great sax player Maurice Reedus who played with Lockwood for 35 years and passed away just recently. Lowry was planning to issue an album by Reedus but it was never released. As Lowry told me: “Words fail me… I was truly a ‘Fortunate Son’ to have known and worked with this man, a true gentleman and a noble/regal being. All of ‘Contrasts’ was recorded in his living room in Cleveland (band sides) or Roger Brown’s place!”

Pernell Charity spent his whole life around Waverly, VA and was inspired by the records of Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake. The Virginian is his only album. “Pernell is a Kip Lornell discovery, done during his Federal Youth Grant year – I was his mentor and supervisor for that! I did the first tapes for him, then got them back – then did a few sessions on my own later, when I got my NEA Folkarts grant.” Lornell wrote the liner notes and noted that “the phonograph record has had an important effect in shaping the song repertoire of many blues musicians…such is the case with Pernell Charity… It was the records of Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Blake, and Blind Lemon Jefferson that inspired Pernell to take up guitar.”

Lowry called Guitar Shorty (John Henry Fortescue) “One of the most spontaneous musicians around; right up there with Lightnin’ Hopkins, maybe more so.” He cut a pair of unissued sides for Savoy in 1952, the album Carolina Slide Guitar (Flyright, 1971) and his final album for Trix, Alone In His Field,  before passing in 1975.

Seven of today’s performances have never been released. Below is background on these recordings:

Elester Anderson was a South Carolina musician who Lowry recorded fairly extensively in 1972, 1973 and 1979, none of which was issued. Anderson was born in Conetoe, NC in 1925 to a musical family. Anderson’s brother was greatly influenced by Blind Boy Fuller and passed this along to Elester. Bruce Bastin noted that tro recordings of Anderson reflected what “Fuller might himself have sounded had he survived into the postwar period.”

James Putmon was recorded by Lowry in 1979 in North Carolina.

George Higgs was born in 1930 in North Carolina. His father Jesse Higgs taught his young son the harp by playing spirituals and folk songs. During tobacco market Higgs witnessed medicine showman and harpist Peg Leg Sam perform in nearby Rocky Mount and this made a lasting impression on the young musician. As a teenager he picked up guitar. Lowry recorded him extensively in 1973 and 1979 but none of this was issued. He has since cut records for Music Maker.

Mitchell called Cecil Barfield “probably the greatest previously unrecorded bluesman I have had the pleasure of recording during my 15 years of field research.” Using the name William Robertson, in fear of endangering his welfare checks, he cut the LP South Georgia Blues for Southland in the mid-70′s with several other tracks appearing on Flyright’s Georgia Blues Today (reissued by Fat Possum with the same title and liner notes). Mitchell made some recordings of Barfield using Lowry’s equipment and Lowry himself recorded a few unreleased sides by him.

Marvin and Turner  Foddrell were born into a musical family near Stuart in the Virginia Piedmont and for the major parts of their lives played regularly only at community gatherings, never professionally. Discovered in the 1970s’, the Foddrells became a regular fixture at the annual Blue Ridge Folklife Festival at nearby Ferrum College and were also featured at many other festivals including some in Europe. The Foddrell Brothers recorded two albums on Swingmaster, and also appeared alongside more famous traditional musicians on a number of recorded anthologies. Both brothers have since passed away. Lowry recorded them extensively in 1979 but none of these recordings were ever issued.

Lowry was the first to record John Cephas and Phil Wiggins although the results were not released. He recorded the duo extensively in 1980 (his last field recordings) and recorded Cephas in-depth in 1976. Of today’s selection he called “When I Grow Too Old to Dream” “a monster example of taking a tune and ‘ragging’ it.”

Pete Lowry & Tarheel Slim 1970′s, photos by Valerie Wilmer

I suppose it sounds rather romantic spending your time roaming around the south with a tape recorder recording blues but for all the rewards and exciting discoveries it’s a stressful enterprise, not to mention a precarious way to make a living. These days hardly anyone one does it anymore and the sad fact is that blues has largely disappeared as integral part of African-American rural communities; most of the old timers have passed on and few of the younger generation are interested in blues, particularly traditional blues. Much has been written about John and Alan Lomax who scoured the south and beyond making landmark recordings for the Library of Congress from the 1930′s through the 1960′s. Less well known are those that followed in the Lomax’s footsteps; there was folklorists and researchers such as David Evans, Sam Charters, Gayle Dean Wardlow, Art Rosenbaum, Bruce Bastin, Bengt Olsson, Dick Spottswood, Kip Lornell, Glenn Hinson, Tim Duffy, Siegfried A. Christmann and Axel Küstner. Some were hunting for the famous names who made records in the 1920’s and 1930’s, others were seeking to fill in biographical blanks regarding some of the older musicians coveted by collectors and then there were those who were seeking to document the blues tradition as it still existed in rural communities, men like George Mitchell and Peter B. Lowry. This was a very different undertaking than 1960′s blues revival which sought out and put back on the circuit such legendary artists of the past as Son House, Skip James, Bukka White and Mississippi John Hurt. As Lowry told me “the ‘collector’s mentality’ is behind so much of the research done on various forms of ‘roots’ music, even jazz to an extent. …It was those who made the rarest recordings who got the attention.” And as Mitchell lamented, “Too many people went to Mississippi.”

Belying the fact that he was born on April Fool’s Day and signs off his e-mails with “may the farce be with you”, Peter B. Lowry is an extremely fastidious, dedicated blues scholar. Lowry did not go to Mississippi, did not discover long lost bluesmen from the 1920′s but in his voluminous research, writing and recording has charted his own path, becoming perhaps the most renowned expert on the blues of the Southeast and is credited with coining the term Piedmont Blues. Between 1969 and 1980 he amassed hundreds of photographs, thousands of selections of recordings, music and interviews in his travels through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. It would take more time and space than I have to relate all of Lowry’s research and writing – the man’s Curriculum Vita is twenty-six pages! – instead focusing on the primary outlet for his recordings, his Trix label.

As for the nature of field recording itself it’s worthwhile to quote Bruce Bastin, author of the classic Red River Blues and running mate of Lowry’s,  on some of his experiences: “Armchair research can never replace the infectious pleasure of personal contact, or indeed the streetwise experiences of fieldwork at the very edges of existence. …Talk to Bengt Olsson about his times in Tennessee and Alabama. Talk to Pete Lowry about his (sadly unsuccessful) endeavors to record Buddy Moss… Talk also to us about our meeting with rednecks in Edgecomb County, North Carolina…or with Newton County, Georgia, police for ‘consorting with blacks’… ” On the other hand were plenty of positive experiences: “How do you replace memories of hearing Guitar Shorty perform at Chapel Hill’s Endangered Species bar, packed with professors and ‘kitty money’… Or watching a genuinely excited Buddy Moss play a stunning ‘Chesterfield’ on his battered guitar one hot August afternoon at his home? Or seeing Henry Johnson play slide guitar flat across his lap, Hawaiian style, at home and some time later stroll into Chapel Hill’s TV station with a petrified Elester Anderson, casually watch a quartet finish playing Mozart and pack up, then settle down to back Elester (whom he’d never met before) on ‘Red River Blues’… Or of tracing Floyd Council via the local cab company’s switchboard? Or meeting the truly larger-than-life character Peg Leg Sam?”

Peg Leg Sam, from the film Born For Hard Luck

It’s useful to provide some background on Lowry’s activities just prior to setting up Trix. Most of what follows is extracted from my correspondence with Lowry in response to questions I posed and by its nature is highly condensed. “I had not attempted field recording prior to 1970… Bastin and I hooked up in 1969 to look for 78′s using my car as our transport in the SE (successfully)…and went back the next year. I figured that I should do more than just drive the car, so I purchased a tape recorder (Uher 4200, 1/2 track stereo, 5″ reels). A series of pieces for Blues Unlimited came out of the ’69 trip. …Bruce and I were focused in 1970 on collecting material for a book, as he had been asked to do one in the Studio Vista series off of our BU series of articles, resulting in Crying for the Carolines [the basis for Red River Blues]. We WORKED for a solid month, doing library research (city directories were helpful, especially when there were back issues – in the old days, there was (c) after a name for ‘colored’, so that helped eliminate similar names. Then, vital statistics also were not so closed to non-family members – folks who helped us in the early years had to stop [legally] later on). Next-of-kin were often still findable. Those research tools were suggested by Gayle Dean Wardlow. We started with a copy of Godrich & Dixon and known names, likely ‘home’ locations of those who had made recordings pre-war, and worked from there. …There was NOBODY ‘working’ the SE when we attacked it, for Mitchell had wandered off to the sainted MS stuff, where the little work being done was being done. We broke ‘new’ ground, if you will, in part encouraged by BU editor Simon Napier. …Most of the info Bruce used for his books came from my/our work…”

Lowry set up the Trix Records label in 1972 starting with a series of 45′s with LP’s being released by 1973. It lasted about a decade as an active label dealing mainly with Piedmont blues artists from the Southeastern states with seventeen albums in its catalog at the time of their sale to Joe Fields of Muse Records. Trix issued albums by the following artists: Eddie Kirkland, Peg Leg Sam, Frank Edwards, Henry Johnson, Willie Trice, Guitar Shorty (John Henry Fortescue), Robert Jr. Lockwood, Pernell Charity, Tarheel Slim, Roy Dunn, Homesick James, Big Chief Ellis, Honeyboy Edwards and the anthology Detroit After Hours, a collection of Detroit piano players. “I spent an interesting decade”, Lowry wrote, “burned myself out, and haven’t really been back since 1980. Sales of TRIX LPs were disappointing, but, master of timing, I started up when the second-to-last blues boom was drying up and quit before the most recent one took off! I am proud of each and every release…” 1978 was the last year Trix releases were assembled; Lowry didn’t go out in the field in 1978 although he did capture quite a number of recordings in 1979 and one lengthy session in 1980. Lowry wrote that “there have been no more recording sessions since this date. This single session was done during my final southeastern trip during the summer of 1980.”

Baby Tate, photo by Pete Lowry

I’ve written extensively (as well as devoting a show with interview) to the recordings of George Mitchell who started recording several years prior to Lowry and ending roughly around the same time. On Oct. 12th I will be devoting an entire show to the Trix catalog and, like Mitchell, there will certainly be a sequel as two hours is not enough time to do justice to Lowry’s recordings. Mitchell has written, and related to me, that by around 1976 he noted a sharp decline in blues in rural communities. This is somewhat at odds with the fact that Lowry recorded fairly extensively during this period. Also in 1980 two Germans, Siegfried A. Christmann and Axel Küstner, came to the States to embark on a recording trip through the south which resulted in fourteen LP’s under the title Living Country Blues (just issued on CD and distilled into a domestic 3-CD set back in 1999 on the Evidence label). While it may be impossible to quantify, the fact is there was quite a bit of quality blues players to be found and quite a number of them in the Southeast region as Lowry optimistically stated in a 1973 article written by Valerie Wilmer: “‘I never really believed all that stuff about the blues being dead,’” he said, ‘As with other celebrities who said ‘my death has been greatly exaggerated’, so the blues. I think it’s been submerged beneath the overlay of modern black pop music, but hell-you go down through Georgia and the Carolinas and there’s still country-suppers. Peg Leg Sam still goes around busking in the streets, blowing his harp and collecting quarters and dollars.’” In addition to the seventeen issued Trix albums there is sufficient material for another 40 to 50 CD’s. Some of Lowry’s recordings have appeared on the Flyright label including tracks on Another Man Done Gone and The Last Medicine Show which includes spoken monologue and musical performances of Peg Leg Sam working the last active medicine show with Chief Thundercloud. There’s also a wonderful film called Born For Hard Luck which features some fine performances of Sam including some footage working the same medicine show.  In March 1973 Lowry recorded the entire three day Fine Arts Festival, University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill which resulted in the Flyright albums Carolina Country Blues and Blues Come To Chapel Hill (the concert featured Guitar Shorty, Willy Trice, Henry Johnson, Elester Anderson, Eddie Kirkland, Tarheel Slim amongst others).

The same Valerie Wilmer article also goes on to explain how Lowry operated in the field: “Lowry will be back from his third field trip in 12 months at the end of the year. He does all his traveling by Volkswagen bus, accompanied by a faithful hound and no less than eight guitars. One such trip lasted five months and netted enough material for 20 albums, all of which he will be processing himself. ‘I said, ‘Christ, I’ve got an awful lot of stuff here-there’s no sense in farting around with other people, I’ll do it myself.’ The guitars are needed because often the people he encounters have not played for a while or else their existing instrument may be in bad shape, rattling or buzzing. ‘I’ve always tried to keep a clean sound on my recordings unlike most of the so-called field work’… I’m not just an out-and-out field recorder, nor do I use a studio as such. I usually say that the best sound-quality stuff I do is sort of in a Holiday Inn recording studio in whatever town I happen to be staying. You know, if it’s not too cool where they’re living or something, we go back to the hotel room.’”

Tarheel Slim, photo by Pete Lowry

A portion of the Trix catalog are recordings in the Piedmont style as Lowry explains in the same article: “This slightly ragtime-based kind of guitar is what a lot of white people are playing and listening to,” he explained. “I’m trying to hook on to that because it is the essence of the Piedmont style.” Still, there’s a fair bit of diversity to be found including some piano blues (Lowry didn’t find many piano players or female performers for that matter) including a self titled Big Chief Ellis album and Detroit After Hours – Vol. 1 (the result of extensive taping he did at an after-hours piano joint in Detroit), the Mississippi-by-way-of-Chicago blues of Honeyboy Edwards, the sophisticated jazzy blues of Robert Jr. Lockwood (Does 12 and Contrasts remain probably his best recordings) and a pair of fine records by Eddie Kirkland with his mix of John Lee Hooker styled blues and a more contemporary approach. The other Trix albums are a mix of great discoveries like Roy Dunn, Guitar Shorty (the album Carolina Slide Guitar came out in 1971, two years before he recorded for Trix), Henry Johnson, Peg Leg Sam, Pernell Charity all whom had never recorded before and those that had made commercial records like Tarheel Slim, Frank Edwards, Willie Trice and Homesick James. Many of the artists who had albums released were recorded extensively by Lowry and in most cases there is enough material in the can for follow-up records. In fact Lowry’s unreleased recordings far exceed the released recordings. Lowry was gracious enough to send me his master recording list, a year by year breakdown of his recording activities. Among those whose recordings went unreleased are artists who should be familiar to collectors such as Richard Trice, Pink Anderson, John Cephas, Phil Wiggins, Cecil Barfield, Marvin and Turner Foddrell, John Snipes, Dink Roberts. Other names include Elester Anderson, Charlie Rambo, Earnest Scott, Clifford Lee “Sam” Swanson and George Higgs (who has since made recordings for Music Maker) among many others. Among Lowry’s regrets “is that I never got my one jazz album out before Maurice Reedus died…” Reedus was Robert Jr. Lockwood’s great, long time sax player heard to good effect on Lockwood’s two Trix records. Reedus’ record was mixed and mastered and titled Get Outta Town, Man (Trix 3318). Baby Tate was another artist close to Lowry’s heart who he recorded extensively but only issued one 45. Again from the Valerie Wilmer article: “Baby Tate was one of his closest musician friends and his untimely death last year grieved Lowry considerably. ‘My plan last Summer was to really record him in depth,’ he explained. ‘ He was just an incredible person and a wonderful person to deal with. I can’t say I’m satisfied with what I’ve got on tape because I know he could do three times more and a lot better. But just having been around him and dealt with him and lived with him, there’s a degree of satisfaction.’”

As Lowry stated in the same article: “…I know I’m not going to get rich. I’ll be lucky if I break even, but I’ve met an awful lot of good people, a lot of good musicians, and dammit-they should be heard. It’s that simple.” The Trix label is a testament to these amazing musicians and to one man’s passion and dedication to get this music out to the wider world. Fortunately the entire Trix catalog has been issued on CD which include the original liner notes plus some follow-up information about the artists. Sadly the majority of the artists have since passed on. As for the vast amount of unreleased recordings, Lowry says that “to date, nobody has evidenced any interest in my stuff – I’m not surprised.” On our Trix program on October 12th, in addition to the released material, I’ll also be featuring some of these unreleased recordings which Lowry was gracious enough to send me.

Peg Leg Sam – Who’s That Left Here ‘ While Ago (MP3)

Big Chief Ellis – Prison Bound (MP3)

Tarheel Slim – Some Cold Rainy Day (MP3)

Frank Edwards – Chicken Raid (MP3)

Pernell Charity – War Blues (MP3)

Robert Jr. Lockwood – Selfish Ways (MP3)

Roy Dunn – Move To Kansas City (MP3)

Willie Trice – My Baby’s Ways (MP3)

Guitar Shorty – Working Hard (MP3)

It’s not hard to see why Percy Mayfield has been so frequently covered and so often mentioned with admiration among his fellow blues singers; he was a master of the moody blues ballad, he had flawless timing and phrasing and as a writer his songs had a frank, penetrating insight into the dark, complex side of the human condition. Songs like “River’s Invitation”, “Please Send Me Someone To Love”, “Life Is Suicide”, “My Jug And I” and “Stranger In My Own Home Town’, to name just a few, were adult songs for adult listeners, filled with a darkly hued, poetic sensibility, devilish wit and hipster coolness.

Mayfield’s main hit making period was from 1950-1952 when he scored seven top ten hits for the Specialty label including “Please Send Me Someone To Love”, the biggest hit ever for the label. He stuck with the label through the decade, cutting a few singles for Chess, Cash and Imperial along the way, but never matched his early success. In the 1960′s Mayfield’s song “Hit The Road, Jack”came to the attention of Ray Charles who was also starting his own record label called Tangerine. Charles hired on Mayfield as a writer and also gave him a chance to record for the label. Mayfield was at the height of his abilities penning songs for Charles like “Hide Nor Hair”, “At The Club”, “Danger Zone” and “On The Other Hand, Baby.” Mayfield’s own sides for Tangerine were every bit as good and have been collected on Rhino’s limited addition His Tangerine And Atlantic Sides. After leaving Tangerine Mayfield moved to Brunswick, cutting the exceptional Walking On A Tightrope album.

Much less well known are the trio of superb records he cut for RCA in the 1970′s, all unfortunately out of print: Percy Mayfield Sings Percy Mayfield (1970), Weakness Is A Thing Called Man (1970) and Blues…And Then Some (1971). While I won’t go so far as to say these are better than his earlier records, they’re not, they are quite good and deserve to be better remembered. Mayfield’s writing and voice were in great shape, and he was surrounded by sympathetic studio bands including Eric Gale, Billy Butler, Chuck Rainey, Pretty Purdie, Seldon Powell, Snooky Young, and Richard Tee to name a few as well as full horn sections and female backing vocalists. The music is filled with blues ballads, funky shuffles and a touch of soul. Like similar era recordings from Bobby Bland and Junior Parker, the music has a bit of a period feel but finds a veteran artist still at his peak, making a few changes to still sound fresh and relevant.

The albums are filled with songs dealing with relationships, a preoccupation with the past and meditations on the human condition. Percy Mayfield Sings includes the bouncy “Live Today Like The Day Before” and the moody mumble of “To Live The Past”, two songs that find Mayfield ruminating on the past. In the former song he sings:

Well my past is like a whirlwind, on a summer day
It whirls around inside, and I get carried away
So when I’m reminiscing, it’s no fault of mine
It’s just my past that won’t let go but I’m sure it will in time

On Blues…And Then Some the memories of a past love at times soothe his mind on the lovely ballad “Memories That’s All” and are harsher on the funky “Minden Is A Dry Town” from Weakness Is A Thing Called Man. Minden, Louisiana was Mayfield’s hometown and where he returned for solace after he was involved in a terrible auto accident in 1952 which left his matinee-idol good looks disfigured. Mayfield explored this theme in 1964′s masterful “Stranger in My Own Hometown” a devastating portrait of isolation and alienation and his struggle with alcoholism afterward in “My Jug And I” and “The Bottle Is My Companion.” He likely has Minden on his mind on the smoldering “California Blues” also from Weakness Is A Thing Called Man:

I’m gonna leave here, I’m going back where I’m better known (2x)
Where smart people mind there own business, and the fool will leave your business alone
I was born to be a wise man, look how long I’ve been a fool (2x)
I don’t mind being used by people, but I sure do hate to be misused

California, California, make room ’cause here I come (2x)
‘Cause you see, you’re more like a mother to me [spoken: in more ways than one]
Because that’s where I started from

 Travel is also the theme of one of his best blues from this period, the slinky “The Highway Is Like A Woman”, from Percy Mayfield Sings:

The time has come, and I’ve got to hit the road again (2x)
‘Cause I travel with a passion, and the highway is my lady friend
You see the highway is like a woman, soft shoulders and dangerous curves (2x)

If  “Please Send Me Someone To Love” was a universal prayer for peace, Mayfield is still delivering a message on the troubled state of man on the super funky “Stand Tall”, “Right On Young Americans”, the shuffling “Brotherhood Week” and the brooding “Weakness Is A Thing Called Man.”

Above all Mayfield sings masterly about the complicated state of love on the throbbing blues of “This Time You Suffer Too” punctuated by Eric Gale’s economical, stinging licks and a batch of gorgeous blues ballads like “Lonely For My Baby”, “Hand In Hand With Another Man”, “Getting You Off My Mind”, “Contact Me (When You Find Her)”, “You Lied To Me For The Last Time”, “Don’t Want To Lose My Baby” and the evocative “Black Coffee” as Mayfield expertly charts the state of troubled love:

Well my nerves has gone to pieces, now my hair is turning gray
Well I’m a talking to the shadows from one o’clock to four
Lord how slow the moments go, and all I do is pour, black coffee
Love is a sorry affair, a sorry affair

It’s not all gloom and dark shadows. In fact Mayfield has a wicked sense of humor as he displays most notably on “A Lying Woman” and “The Devil Made Me Do It.” On the former he sings:

You’re not a trustworthy woman, ’cause you just lie all the time (2x)
You and I never will never be successful, just as long as you keep on lying
I remember when I met you, you said your name was Mary Jane (2x)
But when I seen you in the line-up, the heat was calling you by another name

In the latter he sings:

Now a broad in a mini-skirt sitting at the bar, her big legs crossed
And just as I asked her, darling, how much do your mini-skirt cost?
Before she could answer my question, and she seemed so very nice
My old lady wanted to know, just what do you wanna to know the price?
I said the devil made me do it, I’m not guilty baby
Well now you might as well get used to it because the devil got most of me

A couple of years back the Raven label did issue Blues Laureate: The RCA Years which collects twenty-five tracks from Mayfield’s RCA period. Still, I wish these records would be reissued in their entirety. After these albums Mayfield slipped back in obscurity but made a comeback in the early 1980′s resulting in a pair of strong live recordings. He passed in 1984.

The Highway Is Like A Woman (MP3)

A Lying Woman (MP3)

Minden Is A Dry Town (MP3)

Weakness Is A Thing Called Man (MP3)

California Blues (MP3)

The Devil Made Me Do It (MP3)