Big Road Blues

I received the following note from Rev. Gary Lucas: “I wish to inform you that one of the great Georgia Blues artists John Lee Ziegler recently passed (May 2008) in Kathleen, Georgia after declining health issues. I performed his Eulogy among family and friends. Truly he was unique with his God given musical talents.”

I suspect most have never heard of Ziegler who’s legacy rests on just a handful of recordings made by George Mitchell in the late 1970’s and some sides made in the 1990’s for the Music Maker organization. The recordings, those by Mitchell in particular, present a musician of singular and immense talent, a musician who fashioned the simple rural blues into something totally unique and utterly moving. Zielgler developed a gorgeous, fluid slide technique balanced by his delicate high falsetto, a style that is completely captivating. Ziegler’s recordings appear on the following collections: Georgia Blues Today (issued by Flyright in 1981 and reissued by Fat Possum), John Lee Ziegler: The George Mitchell Collection Vol. 6 (the same tracks appear on The George Mitchell Collection 7-CD box set) plus Expressin’ The Blues, Blues Sweet Blues, Georgia Blues Today and Cames So Far all on the Music Maker label.

There’s not much information available on Ziegler so I’ve extracted the following section from The George Mitchell Collection 7-CD box set with notes written by Sam Sweet and an addendum by George Mitchell:

Part of John Lee Ziegler’s unorthodox style comes from the fact that he was a left-handed guitarist who played a right-handed guitar upside-down, with the bass strings at the bottom. Born in 1929 in Houston County, Ziegler started playing guitar at age 15 as a fluke: when his parents couldn’t find him the bicycle he requested as a gift, they returned from Macon with a guitar instead. It didn’t take Ziegler long to get good enough to play local clubs and house parties; he even spent some time in New York playing with a band. He also told Mitchell he’d spent some time with John Lee Hooker in Hawkinsville, Georgia. When Mitchell came across him in the late 1970s, Ziegler was still residing in Houston County, working as a plumber and playing at his house for any neighbors interested in stopping by to hear. He had one of the most diverse repertories of any Chattahoochee performer Mitchell encountered, playing John Lee Hooker songs, Sam Cooke’s pop hits, and traditional Chattahoochee songs like “If I Lose Let Me Lose” all in his distinctive style. Ziegler could sing some gospel, but while a lot of the musicians Mitchell recorded had given up blues for the church, Ziegler was content in his choice to stick with secular music.

George Mitchell: John Lee had a spoons player named Rufus and people would gather out in the front yard and listen to them play as we’d be recording. And kids would be dancin’ all over the yard. We recorded a version of John Lee doing “John Henry” where he shouts in the middle, “Look at that little kid dancin’, there!” It was some scene. John Lee wanted his own record, which was fine by me, but I told him, “John Lee you got to come up with some more songs of your own. You can’t just come record all this Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker shit.” And be did eventually come up with a bunch of new songs. He was a nice, gentle guy, but he was hard to deal with - he thought I was ripping him off, and wanted to get lawyers involved and all this shit - and the record never happened. But he was something else.

There’s also an excellent piece on Ziegler written by Peter Watrous titled Time, Loss and the Blues.

Who’s Gonna Be Your Man (MP3)

If I Lose Let Me Lose (MP3)

Poor Boy (MP3)

Used to Be Mine, But Look Who Got Her Now (MP3)

Having A Party (MP3)

If You Ever Change Your Mind (MP3)

4 Women In My Life (MP3)

2 Trains Running (MP3)

A couple of interesting items from the New York Times in the past couple of days:

After Years of Neglect, Rebirth for a Blues Singer’s House

She danced the black bottom, doled out world-weary advice and claimed to be ready with a butcher knife if she caught her lover straying. She was a whiskey-slugging contralto with raunchy songs, a sound business sense and bisexual tastes. So a visitor to the newly opened home of Gertrude Rainey, who as Ma Rainey was the embodiment of the “big mama” blues singers of the 1920s, might be a tad disappointed to find nothing more titillating than painstakingly restored bedroom furniture and prim period wallpaper. “She had kind of calmed down by the time she moved back here,” said Fred C. Fussell, the curator of the Ma Rainey House, which opened four months ago as a small museum in this city on the Chattahoochee River. “She wasn’t living that kind of life.” Besides, said Mr. Fussell and Florene Dawkins, the chairwoman of the Friends of Ma Rainey, what is remarkable is not so much what the Ma Rainey House has on display (in fairness, there are also photos, minstrel show memorabilia, original recordings and theater invoices) but that the house is still standing.

The next item doesn’t have any blues content but it’s fascinating none the less.

Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison

For more than a century, since he captured the spoken words “Mary had a little lamb” on a sheet of tinfoil, Thomas Edison has been considered the father of recorded sound. But researchers say they have unearthed a recording of the human voice, made by a little-known Frenchman, that predates Edison’s invention of the phonograph by nearly two decades. The 10-second recording of a singer crooning the folk song “Au Clair de la Lune” was discovered earlier this month in an archive in Paris by a group of American audio historians. It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

This mini documentary was used as the introduction for Ernest Lane
when he played at the Soul Serenade, January 17th, 2008

Here’s a question: what does Robert Nighthawk, Earl Hooker, Canned Heat and the Monkees have in common? The answer is pianist Ernest Lane who’s played with them all in a long and varied music career. It would be some fifty years after playing on his first record that Lane cut 2004’s “The Blues Is Back!”, his first full length record.

Growing up in Clarksdale Lane had the right background for a bluesman; his father was a barrelhouse pianist, his boyhood friend was Ike Turner and Pinetop Perkins was a friend of the family who showed the youngster a thing or two. Ike fell in love with the piano when he peered in at The King Biscuit Boys, featuring boogie pianist Joe Willie “Pinetop” Perkins, rehearsing in the basement of his buddy Ernest Lane’s house. As he recalled: “Man, I never seen nobody’s fingers move that fast on a piano,” he said. “I didn’t even know what a piano was then, and I saw that dude, man. He was playing piano, and they was rehearsin’ at John Lane’s house. Ernest Lane and I was the same age, and we was comin’ home from school and we heard this noise. And we went over there, and boy, these guys-this guy was playing piano so fast, man, I couldn’t hardly see his fingers! And I said, ‘Damn, man! I wanna do that!’ Lane said, ‘Me too!’ Anyway, we started talkin’ to Pinetop, and he started teaching us different little boogie-woogie things.” When he was just a teenager Lane hooked up with legendary slide guitarist Robert Nighthawk. Nighthawk eventually took him to Chicago where his solid piano work graced a number of sides cut for the Chess label in 1948-49 including the blues classic “Sweet Black Angel.” After Nighthawk he played with Earl Hooker, Houston Stackhouse and others before heading to the California in 1956. There he worked with Jimmy Nolen, George “Harmonica” Smith and was recruited by old buddy Ike Turner to be a member of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. After leaving Ike he joined a group called the Goodtimers who eventually wound up backing the Monkees for about a year on tour. Through the late 60’s/early 70’s he played and recorded for Canned Heat before giving up music altogether. Recently Lane has been featured on a 2000 release by Eddie C. Campbell, played on Ike Turner’s comeback record and toured the US and Europe with Ike’s band.

I first spoke to Ernest several years before he issued his comeback record when I was doing some research into Robert Nighthawk. When he issued his record I interviewed him on my Bad Dog Blues radio show. Here’s a link to that interview that starts off with some music from the record:

Ernest Lane Interview 7/25/04 (mp3)

While doing research into Robert Nighthawk several years ago, I became friendly with Nighthawk’s daughter who I eventually met in Chicago. Her mother was still living in Chicago as well but didn’t want to talk about “that man” as she conveyed to me through her daughter. She finally did talk to me on the phone years later and I believe I was the only who she ever talked to about her years with Nighthawk. When I was in Chicago the daughter showed me a glossy photo of her mother, Ernest and Nighthawk which as far as I know has never been published before. In looking at the above documentary I see a similar (it may be the same - my memory’s a bit foggy) photo used which I thought I would reproduce.

Ernest Lane, Robert Nighthawk and Nighthawk’s wife Hazel McCollum circa late 1940’s

One of two missing Blind Blake 78’s (Paramount 13123) has been discovered. “Night And Day Blues” b/w “Sun To Sun” was discovered in 2007 when it was retrieved from an old steamer trunk in a trailer park in Raleigh, NC, and acquired by Old Hat Records. As Drew Kent wrote in the notes to Blind Blake: All The Published Sides: “In either May or October 1931, Paramount cut four Blake sides which have vanished: Dissatisfied Blues/Miss Emma Liza and Night And Day Blues/Sun To Sun. Any record collector sharp eyed enough to uncover these is guranteed fame, but probably not fortune.”

Some have commented that Blake’s considerable talents went in decline by 1930. There may be some truth to this although “Righteous Blues” cut circa December, 1930 finds Blake in peak form. Thankfully Old Hat has provided sound samples of the newly discovered sides and they find Blake in fine form. Both are straight ahead mid-tempo blues numbers with “Night And Day Blues” finding Blake in particularly good voice and laying down a fine solo. After this session Blake simply vanished without a trace. Several years ago I talked with blues researcher Gayle Dean Wardlow who hinted that he had solved the mystery of Blake’s disappearance - of course he didn’t tell me! Perhaps one day all will be revealed.

There have been some great blues discoveries in recent years including a lost Blind Willie McTell record issued this year plus records by Son House, Blind Joe Reynolds and King Solomon Hill. There are still records to be found, most famously a pair of lost Willie Brown 78’s.

The Blake records were acquired by Old Hat along with records by Charley Jordan, Buddy Moss, Tampa Red, Memphis Minnie, Bessie Jackson, Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell, Casey Bill, Georgia Tom, and the duo of Daddy Stovepipe & Mississippi Sarah, to name just a few. I’m happy to hear Old Hat now owns the records as the company has issued some terrific collections featuring great sound and incredibly researched booklets. Make sure to visit the Old Hat Website for more details.

An ad for the missing Blake record “Miss Emma Liza.”
Image from the 2006 Classic Blues Artwork Calendar.

I’ve had a long running interest in Robert Nighthawk and am always pleased when he gets some recognition. I recently received an email from somebody involved with the Mississippi Blues Commission. The commission are the folks behind the Mississippi Blues Trail which when completed will be composed of more than 100 historical markers and interpretive sites located throughout the state. From the press release: “On Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 2:00 PM, MDA Tourism Heritage Trails Program, the Mississippi Blues Commission and the Clarksdale/Coahoma Tourism Commission will honor blues legend, Robert Lee “Nighthawk” McCollum. The ceremony will take place at the Hirsberg Drug Store located at 649 2nd Street in Friars Point, MS.” Nighthawk spent his entire life rambling around the country but Helena and Friars Point were places close to his heart. He lived and married in Friars Point as well as cutting the magnificent “Friars Point Blues” for Decca in 1940.

Nighthawk stayed in Chicago periodically but he related the following to writer Don Kent: “He told me he frankly preferred the South. It was cheaper, apt to be less violent than the City, and he was better known.” When he was in Chicago he was a regular on Maxwell Street, Chicago’s bustling open-air market. The market was a magnet for musicians just arriving to Chicago as well as those already established on the local blues scene.

We are extremely fortunate that filmaker Mike Shea was on the scene back then. In 1964 Shea was filming a documentary about the Maxwell Street market. The filming took place every Sunday capturing the vibrant sounds of the market including sidewalk merchants, street preachers, gospel singers and blues musicians. Disappointed by the film’s reception, Shea let the tapes languish in a warehouse for years until they were finally thrown away in the 70’s. Fortunately the audio tapes had been stored separately so all the original music has been preserved. In 2000 Rooster issued the 3-CD set And This Is Free containing all the recordings, the bulk of which feature Robert Nighthawk. Apparently much of the video has been lost although at one point it was available on VHS but is now out of print and difficult to find. Studio IT is currently soliciting a distribution deal to put out the original video. Below is a clip from the documentary I stumbled upon on the web. The song was listed as Going Down to Eli which was the title given to the song on the Rounder album Live On Maxwel Street 1964 but is actually a cover of Doctor Clayton’s “Cheating And Lying Blues” and correctly titled on the Rooster release.

In the past week there’s been several interesting blues items that have popped up on the web. I was reading the Sunday New York Times when I came across an interesting piece on folklorist John Work III. Work is nowhere near as famous as fellow folklorist Alan Lomax who won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1993 for The Land Where the Blues Began. In blues circles, however, the book and Lomax in general has seen a fair bit of criticism regarding his methods and his rather selective memory. Two years ago Lost Delta Found was published which criticized Lomax for giving short shrift to the work of three black researchers, chiefly the contributions of Work, with whom he made some of his landmark field recordings in the 1940s. The big news in the article was the recent unearthing of some previously unknown acetates Work made in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Spring Fed Records has released these as John Work, III: Recording Black Culture.

I stumbled upon the Digital Library of Appalachia through a posting on a blues newsgroup I’m a member of. To quote the website the thousands of recordings in this online library “are derived from non-commercial sound recordings that document much of Appalachian music’s geographic, ethnic, vocal, and instrumental diversity.” This amazing repository of music including lots of blues (scroll down and click the “blues” link in the second paragraph). There’s many performers I’ve never heard of, which of course is part of the fun, plus many by artists who’ve made commercial recordings like Marvin and Turner Foddrell, Buddy Moss, Rabbit Muse, Archie Edwards, Drink Small, John Jackson, Etta Baker and several others. As the original poster noted, this is the kind of thing the web was made for.

From another newsgroup I occasionally peruse I came upon the following by Andrew Rose: “I am an award-winning music restoration and remastering engineer who normally specialises in historic classical music recordings. Earlier this year I developed a remarkable new process (”XR”) for improving the sound of older recordings and have employed this to great critical success on a number of classical recordings. For the first time I’ve used the process on a non-classical release, bringing out incredible sound quality from a number of recordings by Robert Johnson. You can hear for yourself what I mean by listening to “Ramblin’ On My Mind” which is streamed on our website. The initial release includes 19 of Johnson’s songs, with plans afoot to rework the rest and produce a second release very soon.” Naturally there’s been quite a bit of commenting on this and the entire thread is well worth reading. You can hear the results yourself on Mr. Rose’s website. I’m a natural skeptic but I have to say what I’ve heard sounds pretty remarkable. I plan on buying the CD and I’ll be better able to judge on my home stereo. I’ve never been particularly impressed with so called revolutionary remastering technologies like CEDAR No-Noise which to my ears sounds sterile and artificial. Personally I have no problem with a bit of noise which is why I’ve been partial to the releases on the Yazoo label.

Record collector John Tefteller has just issued what is apparently the only known copy of Blind Willie McTell & Mary Willis’ “Talkin To You Wimmen’ About The Blues.” The track and it’s flip side, “Merciful Blues”, was issued on the CD that accompanies Tefteller’s most recent blues artwork calendar. To quote Tefteller: “the record you see in the center of this page [Talkin’ To You Wimmen About The Blues] apparently has not been heard by anyone since its release back in the late fall of 1931. I have had this record in my collection for almost ten years. I had no idea that it was potentially a one-of-a-kind record! …Late last year, legendary Blues reissue producer Larry Cohn called me about his upcoming Blind Willie McTell box set. He told me he would like to borrow certain records from my collection …I sent him a list of what I had. To my amazement , he called immediately with the comment, “I’ve never heard the Mary Willis record!” Apparently, there is no master in the Columbia vaults. Cohn is aware of no other copy of the record anywhere. Finding this hard to believe, I started calling “all the usual suspects” and sure enough, none of them had the record or had ever heard it.”

Simply put this is a terrific performance with superb sound. McTell’s distinctive guitar work opens the tracks as he sings a few verses before giving it over to Willis as he makes some amusing spoken asides. Willis is a marvelous singer possessing a strong, clear voice and sings this one with plenty of conviction. Essentially the song is is a string of floating blues verses: “Whatta ya going to do when they send your man to war/You gonna drink muddy water, sleep in a hollow log” and “Gotta shine my light, like some headlight on some train/My mind is stealing, my heart leaks away in pain/It’s a hateful fireman and a mean old engineer/Took my good man away and left me standing here.” The flip, “Merciful Blues”, is also good with Willis singing solo but not quite as memorable as the other number. McTell lays down some fine bottleneck throughout this latter number.

“Talkin To You Wimmen’ About The Blues” (MP3)