Big Road Blues

In the immediate post-war era the music was rapidly changing, R&B was on the rise and and older blues styles were falling out of fashion. Yet for awhile at least, there was still a market for rural down home blues as evidenced by the popularity of artists like Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker and Smokey Hogg. Between 1944 and 1964, more than 600 record companies tried their hands at recording blues. Many failed or had limited success while others grew and became major players. This was “the last grand hurrah of local blues recorded for, and often by, local entrepreneurs, neither folkloric nor college oriented, but music for the culture from which it grew.” This is the music the Boulevard Vintage label has been tapping into for the last few years with a series of well conceived multi-CD sets each based on a specific geographic region.

Down Home Blues Classics - New York & The East Coast 1948-1954, as the notes state, “emphasizes the contribution to post-war blues made by singers from the Southeast and the Mid Atlantic states where many gravitated to New York. These performers tended to prefer a lighter and more melodic style than those from the Mississippi Delta who subsequently brought the blues to Chicago and Detroit.” The bulk of these recordings, in fact, were recorded in New York.

Many of the names here will be familiar to collectors including pre-war heavyweights like Blind Willie McTell, Curley Weaver and Brownie McGhee. McTell is still magnificent on these 1949 sides for Regal and Atlantic revisiting one of his finest numbers,”Love Changing Blues”, plus the ragtime flavored “Kill It Kid” and “Talkin’ To You Mama.” McTell’s long time partner Curley Weaver also transitioned into the post-war era in fine form as he demonstrates on a remake of the lovely “Some Rainy Day” and displays some deft ragtime guitar on “Trixie.” We’re also treated to a half dozen well chosen sides by Brownie McGhee with partner Sonny Terry sounding more spontaneous and livley then some of their later recordings which were geared to the white folk crowd. Indeed it’s important again note that the music here was recorded before the folk blues boom; it was music created by and for African-Americans.

One of the pleasures of this series has been the spotlight on lesser known artists and this collection is chock full of fine long forgotten performers who are little known outside of the serious blues collector. We get generous helpings by artists such as Ralph Willis, Leroy Dallas, Carolina Slim, Gabriel Brown, Alex Seward, Dan Pickett among many others. Husky voiced Leroy Dallas cut only eight sides, four of which are included, and sounds exuberant in a jumping small band combo with Brownie McGhee and pianist Wilbert “Big Chief” Ellis on “Jump Little Children” and “I’m Goin Away.” Ellis is one of the few piano players included and sounds marvelous on “Dices Dices” sporting his pounding barrelhouse piano. Ellis waxed seven sides between 1945-1947 and it’s a shame none of his other numbers are included. He did cut a fine self titled record for Trix in 1977 that’s well worth tracking down.

As Paul Garon notes, the influence of the popular Blind Boy Fuller looms large on many of these recordings. There’s many raggy, Fuller influenced guitar players such as the wonderful Julius King who’s entire four song output is here including the jaunty “I Want A Slice Of Your Pudding” replete with kazoo. The mysterious Boy Green cut only two sides in 1944, both included, and bears a strong Fuller influence particularly on the infectious rag “Play My Juke Box.” Carolina Slim seems to draw influence from Fuller and Lightnin’ Hopkins while rough voiced singer Robert Lee Westmoreland plays a National Resonator like Fuller on his two recorded sides, covering Hopkins on a slide driven version of “Hello Central, Give Me 209.” Other fine guitar players include the shadowy Dennis McMillon who’s deft finger picking on “Paper Wooden Daddy” is a standout and the remarkable Dan Pickett, a long time favorite of collectors, who synthesized a number of early guitar styles to create his own, and had an exciting, rapid fire vocal delivery showcased on an update of Buddy Moss’ “Ride To A Funeral In A V-8.”

As usual with Boulevard Vintage sound is quite good and the notes very informative. It should also be noted that last year JSP issued the 4-CD box Shake That Thing!: East Coast Blues 1935-1953, which can be seen as a companion set, and has the complete recordings of Gabriel Brown, Dan Pickett and Ralph Willis. Boulevard Vintage also has 4-CD sets of Chicago and Texas blues and most recently 2-CD sets focusing on Memphis & The South and California & The West Coast that are equally good.

Julius King - I Want A Slice of Your Pudding (MP3)

Dennis McMillon - Paper Wooden Daddy (MP3)

Show Notes:

I recently finished Michael Gray’s excellent “Hand Me My Travelin’ Shoes - In Search of Blind Willie McTell” which is the inspiration for today’s show. In addition to focusing on Blind Willie we play the music of his fellow Atlanta bluesmen, just about all who were inspired by McTell and several who played with him. Like Memphis, Atlanta was a staging post for musicians on their way to all points. It’s not surprising then that the first country blues musician, Ed Andrews, was recorded there in 1924. The company that recorded him, Okeh, was one of many to send their engineers to Southern cities to record local talent. Companies like Victor, Columbia, Vocalion and Brunswick made at least yearly visits until the depression.

McTell was born in Thomson, Georgia, near Augusta, and raised near Statesboro. He played a standard six-string acoustic until the mid-’20s, and never entirely abandoned the instrument, but from the beginning of his recording career, he used a 12-string acoustic in the studio almost exclusively. He was A major figure with a local following in Atlanta from the 1920s onward, he recorded dozens of sides throughout the 1930s under a multitude of names — all the better to juggle “exclusive” relationships with many different record labels at once — including Blind Willie, Blind Sammie, Hot Shot Willie, and Georgia Bill, as a backup musician to Ruth Mary Willis. Willie’s recording career began in late 1927 with two sessions for Victor records, eight sides including “Statesboro Blues.”

He recorded prolifically through the 1930’s a did a session for the Library of Congress in 1940 under the supervision of John Lomax. The newly founded Atlantic Records — which was more noted for its recordings of jazz and R&B — took an interest in Willie and cut 15 songs with him in Atlanta during 1949. The one single released from these sessions, however, didn’t sell, and most of those recordings remained unheard for more than 20 years after they were made. McTell cut his final sides for record store owner Ed Rhodes in 1956, who had begun taping local bluesmen at his shop in Atlanta in the hope of releasing some of it. These turned out to be the only tapes he saved, out of all he’d recorded.

A younger contemporary of Blind Willie McTell and Curley Weaver, Eugene “Buddy” Moss was part of a near-legendary coterie of Atlanta bluesmen, and one of the few of his era lucky enough to work into the blues revival of the 1960s and ’70s. By the time he arrived in Atlanta, he was good enough to be noticed by Curley Weaver and Robert “Barbecue Bob” Hicks, who began working with the younger Moss. It was Weaver and Bob that got him his first recording date, at the age of 16, as a member of their group the Georgia Cotton Pickers, on December 7, 1930. In January of 1933, however, he made his debut as a recording artist in his own right for the American Record Company. He frequently played with Barbecue Bob, and after Bob died of pneumonia on October 21, 1931, he found a new partner and associate in Blind Willie McTell, performing with the Atlanta blues legend as local parties in the Atlanta area. A jail term curtailed his career from 1935-1941. Moss made some further recordings before WW II interfered. Moss continued performing in the area around Richmond, Virginia and Durham, North Carolina during the mid-’40s, and with Curley Weaver in Atlanta during the early 1950s, but music was no longer his profession or his living.

One of the first recorded products of the Atlanta blues community of the pre-war era, Peg Leg Howell bridged the gap between the early country-blues sound and the 12-bar stylings to follow. He signed to Columbia in 1926. Howell recorded prolifically up until 1929; he recorded solo and with his street group, the Gang (guitarist Henry Williams and fiddler Eddie Anthony). Williams was imprisoned not long after, and following Anthony’s 1934 death, Howell gradually disappeared from the area blues circuit. He spent the next several decades clouded in obscurity, with diabetes claiming his other leg in 1952. Howell was 75 when the Testament label sought him out in 1963 to record his first new material in over 40 years; he died in Atlanta on August 11, 1966.

Eddie Anthony and Henry Williams cut one 78 in 1930. In addition Anthony recorded as Macon Ed with the mysterious Tampa Joe. They cut eight sides in 1930.

Little is known about Fred McMullen. He cut 8 issued sides in 1933 for ARC label. Was part of the group called the Georgia Browns with Buddy Moss and Curley Weaver who cut 10 sides in 1933.

Barbecue Bob was the name given by Columbia Records talent scout Don Hornsby to Atlanta blues singer Robert Hicks. Hicks is widely credited as being the singer who more than any helped to popularize Atlanta blues in its formative period. Born to a family of sharecroppers in Walnut Grove, GA, Robert Hicks and his brother, Charley “Lincoln” Hicks relocated with them to Newton County. There the Hicks brothers came in contact with Savannah “Dip” Weaver and her son, Curley Weaver. With the Weavers, the Hicks boys learned to play guitar and sing. Robert Hicks was the first of this group to “break out”; Hicks’ first Columbia record, “Barbecue Blues,” recorded in Atlanta on March 25, 1927 and was a big hit. Over the next three years he made 62 sides for Columbia. Hicks died in 1931 of pneumonia. He was only 29.

It’s hard to keep up with glut of blues reissues mostly pumped out by European labels taking full advantage of the fifty year copyright law. One label that deserves attention is Boulevard Vintage who for the past few years have been putting out intelligent, well conceived multi CD sets of post-war down home blues. The label has zeroed in on a very specific, rich vein of blues history, roughly 1945-1955 when a whole slew of enterprising small labels were catering to an audience that still craved down home blues. As Paul Vernon writes: “The migratory patterns from south to north to west added an essential ingredient to the new market for blues recording. Urbanization created tastes for a music that fit the new times and locations , contributing to the birth of what we now recognize as Rhythm & Blues. In Chicago, the southern rural styles, as we now all surely know, were connected directly to 110-volt wall sockets and booted through fuzzy amplifiers to create the sound that would eventually go around the world. Yet there was still an audience for the rough, exciting music of southern juke joints and street corners, of local radio broadcasts and house parties. Who was going to service that market?” The answer can be found on the 110 songs spread across Boulevard Vintage’s two latest 2-CD sets.

Down Home Blues Classics - Memphis & The South 1949-1954 collects music recorded in locales like Jackson, MS, Memphis, TN, New Orleans, LA, Crowley, LA for labels dear to record collectors hearts such as Sun, Trumpet, Bullet, Excello, Imperial and several others. Many of the artists will be familiar to collectors and we get multiple cuts by artists like Joe Hill Louis, Arthur Crudup (moonlighting under Percy Crudup!) Lightning Slim, Papa Lightfoot, Big Joe Williams, Jerry McCain among others. What’s nice about this series is that compilers tend to pull out the less anthologized, obscurer sides by these artists. So while we get the well known, and simply amazing, “Wine, Whiskey & Women” by Papa Lightfoot we also get his pounding harmonica wailer “P. L. Blues”, likewise for Willie Nix’s celebrated “Truckin’ Little Woman”which is on board but so is the much less known flip side, the unbelievably raw, “Just One Mistake.”

It’s the rarer stuff, less anthologized that makes these sets so valuable. While Boogie Bill Webb is not exactly an unknown his sides are not readily available. His two cuts here are particularly welcome especially the throbbing John Lee Hooker boogie of “Bad Dog.” It’s too bad his two other Imperial sides weren’t included. We get a batch of fine down home sides by obscure artists like Country Jim Bledsoe, the marvelous Louis Campbell (these two never before issued numbers are not even listed in the blues discography), Tommy Lee (one of only 5 known copies of this rarity) and three of the four excellent tracks the by the mysterious Little Sam Davis cut for Rockin’ in 1953 featuring some of the earliest guitar by Earl Hooker.

Down Home Blues Classics - California & The West Coast 1948-1954 delves into the fascinating records made in the immediate post-war era, mainly in California, mostly by those migrating from Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas. As Mike Rowe writes: “Unlike New York and Chicago there had been no blues or any kind of recording industry pre-war …The music as well as the industry was starting from scratch. …It was very often of Do-It yourself triumphing over the most adverse conditions.”

While the above collection had it’s fair share of well known artists that’s not the case here. This collection, to quote the blurb, “presents probably the rarest recordings and the least-researched artists of the post-war era …there were many experiments to delight and intrigue us along the way; eschewing the bigger names we document those attempts rather than the final result.” In fact the only big name to speak of is K.C. Douglas who’s four sides include his first recordings notably his celebrated “Mercury Boogie.” Douglas’ harmonica player, Sidney Maiden, may also be somewhat known chiefly due to an album he cut for Bluesville. Maiden takes the vocals on the wonderfully doomy “Eclipse of the Sun” and pair of strong sides from 1955.

Only hardcore collectors are likely to know obscure artists such as Black Diamond, Slim Green, Willie B Huff, Sonny Boy Johnson, Little Son Willis, Jerry Perkins among others. The preponderance of lesser names has no bearing on the music which is uniformly strong. Take Willie B Huff, a magnificent down home singer who typified the emerging slow, doomy west coast sound. All four of Huff’s sides are here including superb renditions of Lightnin’ Hopkins’ “Hello Central” as “Operator 209″ and “Short Haired Woman” as “Beggar Man Blues.” Other highlights include Sonny Boy Holmes, a fine Hopkins imitator whose sole four sides are on board, Slim Green’s version of Curtis Jones’ Tin Pan Alley as “Alla Blues” (a song that would evolve into the West Coast blues standard “Tin Pan Alley”), all eight Swing Time sides by the wonderful pianist/vocalist Little Son Willis who sounds like Doctor Clayton - his “Harlem Blues” a cover of Clayton’s “Angels In Harlem” and the mysterious Black Diamond who’s two fine solo guitar numbers are his only sides.

Both of these sets come highly recommended boasting very good sound (a definite upgrade from prior reissues) and very informative notes. Boulevard Vintage also has 4-CD sets of Chicago and Texas blues that are equally good and I can’t wait to see what they put out next.

Boogie Bill Webb - Bad Dog (MP3)

Louis Campbell - Don’t Want Anyone Hangin’ Around (MP3)

Little Son Willis - Nothing But The Blues (MP3)

Willie B Huff - Operator 209 (MP3)

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)