Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

It ain’t but the one thing I done wrong
I stayed in Mississippi just a day too long
(Mississippi Prison Song)

Todays show deals with blues songs about prison, both commercial recordings and field recordings by actual prisoners. In the segregation era down south it wasn’t hard for African-Americans to find themselves going to prison over a host of offenses. They were often treated harshly and unfairly by the legal system. Unfortunately even today the prison system has a disproportionate number of African-Americans and tales of being unfairly targeted by the criminal system all too common.

As for blues singers, their very profession was a dangerous one. The criminal element in the south gravitated to the black sectors of cities like New Orleans, Memphis or Atlanta, sectors that were treated as “wide open” and virtually beyond the law. It was the rough and tumble world of gambling joints, saloon, brothels and juke joints that employed the blues singer and there was always the possibility of trouble with the law. Memphis in the 1920’s, for example, was known as the “Murder Capital of America”, with over hundred homicides a year, 90 percent of the victims were black. Many blues singers were victims and many were perpetrators; men like Bukka White, Texas Alexander, J.T. Smith, Son House, Pat Hare and Lightnin’ Hopkins all did stints in prison.

Folklorists like John and Alan Lomax, Harry Oster, Lawrence Gellert and Bruce Jackson went to southern prisons like Parchman Farm, Angola, Huntsville, Sugar Land, Ramsey Prison Farm and others to record blues and work songs. On the surface the songs described incidents and experiences of the singers but on the other hand I think they can be viewed as a subtle form of protest against an unjust system. African-Americans had little or no outlet to voice their opinions and concerns prior to the civil rights era outside of recorded music. In The Land Where The Blues Began, Lomax had this to say regarding prison songs: “They tell us the story of the slave gang, the sharecropper system, the lawless work camp, the chain gang, the pen.” Bruce Jackson, who recorded in southern prisons in the 1960’s and 70’s, explained: “Southern agricultural penitentiaries were in many respects replicas of nineteenth-century plantations, where groups of slaves did arduous work by hand, supervised by white men with guns and constant threat of awful physical punishment . . .. It is hardly surprising that the music of plantation culture — the work songs — went to the prisons as well.” A New York Post reporter wrote as late as 1957: “The state penitentiary system at Parchman is simply a cotton plantation using convicts as labor. The warden is not a penologist, but an experienced plantation manager.”

In 1932 John Lomax was retained by the Library of Congress to make recordings. Lomax and his son Alan hit the road with 500 pounds of recording equipment and covered sixteen thousand miles over six months. As Lomax explained: “Our best field was the southern penitentiaries…we went to all eleven of them…”
It was on that trip that they ran across Leadbelly and secured his early parole. “We agreed to make a record of his petition on the other side of one of his favorite ballads, ‘Goodnight Irene’. I took the record to Governor Allen on July 1. On August 1 Leadbelly got his pardon. On September 1 I was sitting in a hotel in Texas when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up and there was Leadbelly with his guitar, his knife, and a sugar bag packed with all his earthly belongings. He said, ‘Boss, you got me out of jail and now I’ve come to be your man’” This tale by Lomax, while colorful, has been in dispute as are many of his other recollections. On today’s program we play “Midnight Special” a song that’s become closely associated with Leadbelly. This version with the Golden Quartet is probably my favorite of this oft recorded song.

Bukka White

The Lomax’s continued to visit and record in prisons in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Alan Lomax returned to Parchman Farm in 1947-48 and made some remarkable recordings, armed with state-of-the-art technology, a cassette machine. These sides were originally issued as the LP Negro Prison Songs and reissued on CD as Prison Songs Vol. 1: Murderous Home by Rounder. Lomax gathered the prisons best lead signers for these recordings, all simply known by their nicknames: men like Bama, 22, Alex, Bull, Dobie Red, and Tangle Eye. During this period Lomax interviewed and recorded Joe Savage and said of him “he was by far the youngest and most damaged.” Jumping to 1980 we hear Savage recount his prison experience and sing on his harrowing “Joe’s Prison Camp Holler.”

Bukka White was recorded by Lomax in Parchman Farm in 1939. He was Convicted of murder and sentenced to life in 1937. He was still under contract for Vocalion (”Shake ‘em On Down” was a big hit from the session). Lomax recorded him doing two numbers: “Sic ‘Em Dogs On” and ” Po’ Boy.” He was released two years later probably through the actions of his music agent Lester Melrose. His recordings from 1940 show the prison experience was still on his mind on songs like “Where Can I Change My Clothes” (prison clothes), “District Attorney Blues” and his famous “Parchman Farm Blues:”

Judge give me life this mornin’ down on Parchman Farm (2x)
I wouldn’t hate it so bad, but I left my wife in mourn

Oh listen you men, I don’t mean no harm (2x)
If you wanna do good, you better stay off old Parchman Farm

We got to work in the mornin’, just at dawn of day (2x)
Just at the settin’ of the sun, that’s when the work is done

Recorded just a few days apart were a group of fine female singers. Woman in Mississippi were rarely sent to the state penitentiary but Parchman did open a woman’s camp in 1915. They canned vegetables, ran the prison laundry and worked dawn-to-dusk shifts in a sewing room making clothes, bedding and mattresses for the entire farm. Lomax recorded some of these woman in the Woman’s Sewing Room in 1939, including the remarkable Mattie May Thomas. We feature her singing unaccompanied on “No Mo’ Freedom” and “Dangerous Blues” where she describes a violent life:

You keep talking about the dangerous blues
If I had my pistol I’d be dangerous too
You may be a bully, but I don’t know
But I’ll fix you so you won’t gimmie no trouble, in the world I know

Less well known than the Lomax’s was Bruce Jackson who recorded extensively in the 1960’s and 70’s: “I started recording in Texas prisons in July 1964. I think Texas had about 12,000 prisoners in 14 prisons back then (they’ve got more than 150,000 prisoners in 105 state-run and private prisons now). My primary interest in Texas was the black convict worksongs…” Pete Seeger and Toshi Seeger, their son Daniel, and folklorist Bruce Jackson visited a Texas prison in Huntsville in March of 1966 which resulted in the film and book, Wake Up Dead Man. Another remarkable recording Jackson made was an LP by J.B. Smith titled Ever Since I Have Been A Man Full Grown issued on Takoma, of which we play “I Got Too Much Time For The Crime I Done.” The centerpiece is the title track, a 24-minute opus drawing on imagery and lyrics from a wide variety of traditional sources.

One of the most well known images of the old justice system is the chain gang. The chain gangs originated as a way to create extensive quality roads. Convict labor in road work was more economically efficient than using compulsory free labor as they could be worked harder, for longer hours, and over a more sustained period of time. Georgia was the first state to begin to use the chain gang system to work male felony convicts outside of the prison walls. The chains were wrapped around the prisoners’ ankles, shackling five prisoners together while they worked, ate, and slept. Chain gangs became very economically and politically popular among most southern politicians as they witnessed convicts working from sunup to sundown in Georgia. We spin chain gang tales today by Kokomo Arnold, Ma Rainey and Fred McMullen’s harrowing “De Kalb Chain Gang” (De Kalb County, Georgia):

Ahh liquor and a gun, cause me ache and pain (2x)
And they give me six to twenty years, on the De Kalb county gang
And I tell all you people that ain’t no place to go (2x)
Well they treat you cruel, dog you from morning til’ night

There were also female chain gangs and Ma Rainey tells their tale on her “Chain Gang Blues” from 1925:

The judge found me guilty, the clerk he wrote it down (2x)
Just a poor gal in trouble, I know I’m county road bound

Many days of sorrow, many nights of woe (2x)
And a ball and chain everywhere I go

Chains on my feet, padlock on my hand (2x)
It’s all on account of stealing a woman’s man

Several of the blues artists featured today knew first hand about the prison experience. Among them were Texas Alexander who served at least two prison terms including a stint in Paris, Texas, for allegedly killing his wife. Alexander’s songs reflected prison life in songs like “Levee Camp Moan Blues” and “Penitentiary Blues.” Alexander’s one time running partner, Lightnin’ Hopkins, did a mid-1930’s stint in Houston’s County Prison Farm. Son House’s career was interrupted when he shot a man dead at a house party in Lyons, MS in 1928 and was quickly sentenced to imprisonment at Parchman Farm. He ended up only serving two years of his sentence and was released in 1929 or early 1930. His “County Farm Blues” is a vivid description of southern justice:

Down South, when you do anything, that’s wrong (3x)
They’ll sure put you down on the county farm

Put you down under a man call “Captain Jack” (2x)
He sure write his name up and down your back

Put you down in a ditch with a great long spade (3x)
Wish to God that you hadn’t never been made

On a Sunday the boys be lookin’ sad (3x)
Just wonderin’ about how much time they had

J.T. “Funny Papa” Smith ’s career purportedly came to an abrupt end during the mid-’30s, when he was arrested for murdering a man over a gambling dispute; Smith was found guilty and imprisoned, and is believed to have died in his cell circa 1940. He describes the prison life in our selection “County Jail Blues” plus “Hard Luck Man Blues” and the unissued “Life In Prison Blues.” Pat Hare, who wrote and recorded “I’m Gonna Murder My Baby” in May 1954, then took the song’s message a step further and killed his girlfriend and a police officer in mysterious circumstances eight years later. He received a life sentence in 1964 for this double murder and spent the last sixteen years of his life in a Minneapolis jail, dying of cancer in 1980.

Discovered in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Robert Pete Williams became one of the great blues discoveries during the folk boom of the early ’60s. In 1956, he shot and killed a man in a local club. Williams claimed the act was in self-defense, but he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. He was sent to Angola prison, where he served for two years before being discovered by folklorist Dr. Harry Oster and Richard Allen. The pair recorded Williams performing several of his own songs, which were all about life in prison. Our selection today, “Prisoner’s Talking Blues”, is one of his more memorable prison songs. Impressed with the guitarist’s talents, Oster and Allen pleaded for a pardon for Williams. The pardon was granted in 1959, after he had served a total of three and a half years. For the first five years after he left prison, Williams could only perform in Louisiana, but his recordings,which appeared on Folklyric, Arhoolie, and Prestige, among other labels , were popular and he received positive word of mouth reviews. In 1964 he played the Newport Folk Festival. Williams made many other recordings circa 1959-160 in Louisiana’s notorious Angola Prison. In addition to several Williams CD’s available, Oster’s prison recordings can be found on collection like Angola Prisoner’s Blues, Prison Worksongs and Angola Prison Spirituals all reissued on Arhoolie.

One of our final numbers is Calvin Leavy’s “Cummins Prison.” Leavy is currently serving life plus 20 years in Cummins Prison for drug dealing. Ironically Leavy made this record twenty years before he was busted. He cut a follow-up called “Free from Cummins Prison.” He even wore a fake prison uniform in one of his publicity photos long before he was arrested. I heard Leavy was up for parole but haven’t heard anything since.

Robert Nighthawk, Houston Stackhouse, Peck Curtis, Powell, MS, April, 1967

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”

Houston Stackhouse & Carey Mason Crystal Springs, MS, August, 1967

The recordings have been justly celebrated and long available, with 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. These are beautiful recordings with Stackhouse singing magnificently as he delivers a perfect falsetto in the manner of Tommy Johnson coupled with some his fairly modern guitar playing while Nighthawk seconds on guitar and Peck Curtis provides ramshackle, clattering drums. Nighthawk took the lead on three numbers; “Nighthawk Boogie” was an inventive instrumental not far removed from the recordings he made on Maxwell Street three years earlier, “Blues Before Midnight” was a gorgeous mellow blues with a “Blues After Hours” feel while Carey Mason takes the vocal on “You Call Yourself A Cadillac.” Carey Mason was a guitarist/vocalist from Crystal Springs who was the main local partner of Stackhouse. The duo were recorded a few days later in Crystal Springs by David Evans and those recordings can be found on Wolf’s Big Road Blues.

It appears that some unknown sides have surfaced via Fat Possum’s reissue of the George Mitchell recordings. These are not listed in Blues Discography 1943-70. The Stackhouse sides are “Fare You Well Blues” and “See Here Woman” while the unlisted Nighthawk sides are “Down By The Wayside”, “Travelin’ Man Blues” and “Down By The Woodshed” (this track appears on Vol. 44 of Fat Possum’s 7″ record series). Furthermore it sounds like “Fare You Well Blues” and “Down By The Wayside” are the same song although different lengths and that the titles might be switched on the two Nighthawk sides (”Down By The Wayside” has lyrics that suggest the title should be “Travelin’ Man Blues”)!? The vocalist on the two Stackhouse sides and Nighthawk’s “Travelin’ Man Blues” is uncredited but I believe it’s Carey Mason who was obviously present at the recordings. I’ve been unable to contact George Mitchell regarding this session. Furthermore Blues Discography 1943-70 lists three unissued titles: “Country Shack”, “Stuttering Blues” and and untitled instrumental which could be one of the two newly issued Nighthawk instrumentals. One further bit of strangeness is the listing in Blues Discography 1943-70 of bassist Houston Goff on several sides who, as far as I know, has never been listed anywhere else as part of this session. This whole session is a bit confusing, which I guess is the nature of field recordings. A minor discographical puzzle to be sure, but as one who’s been researching Robert Nighthawk for some time it’s all a bit maddening!

Travelin’ Man Blues (MP3)

Down By The Wayside (MP3)

Nighthawk Boogie (MP3)

See Here Woman (MP3)

Canned Heat (MP3)

For the last few weeks I’ve been captivated by the recordings of George Mitchell who made some remarkable field recordings throughout the South over a twenty year period beginning in the early 1960’s. Many of these recordings have appeared on specialist labels like Southland, Revival, Flyright, Arhoolie and Rounder but are long out of print now. Several years ago the Fat Possum label acquired the Mitchell archive and has been reissuing the recordings through a variety of formats including CD, 7-inch record and digital download. While I admire Fat Possum for issuing these recordings, which will be of interest to a very narrow audience, their reissue of the material has been frustrating. They started the reissue program with single CD’s of artists like Fred McDowell, J.W. Warren, Joe Callicott but eventually settled on putting the records out as series of 7″ records (45 volumes in total) which seems a sure fire way of limiting their impact. Furthermore they have issued some more single artists CD’s of folks like Cecil Barfield, Leon Pinson and Buddy Moss but these now seem impossible to locate. It seems a good chunk of the Mitchell collection (including many sides not on the box set) is available through eMusic and Amazon as digital downloads. I finally decided to pick up the The George Mitchell Collection box set which contains all 150 songs on each of the 45 7-inches spread out over six CD’s plus a 24-track bonus CD by artists Fat Possum didn’t know enough about to include in the original set. Also included is a well written booklet. I have to admit I’ve been a bit obsessed with these remarkable recordings and also picked up a couple of the individual CD’s plus downloaded a number of songs that don’t appear on the box set. Here, then, is the first of a two part trawl through these recordings as we look through the first three CD’s.

Mitchell wasn’t the only one roaming the south in the 1960’s in search of blues; there was folklorists and researchers such as David Evans, Sam Charters, Gayle Dean Wardlow, Art Rosenbaum and others. 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, like Mitchell, who were seeking to record whoever they could find. Mitchell did record some of the famous artists of the past like Buddy Moss, Furry Lewis, Will Shade, Sleepy Johns Estes and was the first to record artists who would achieve later fame such as R.L. Burnside, Jesse Mae Hemphill, Othar Turner and Precious Bryant. While the blues revival was picking up steam with newly discovered artists like Son House, Bukka White and Mississippi John Hurt hitting the circuit, Mitchell’s recordings were a sort of a parallel undercurrent to the more famous artists. What Mitchell recorded in the rural communities of Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi in the 1960’s was a still thriving, if largely undocumented, blues culture. Mitchell had the passion and drive to seek out these folks, and unlike some folklorists didn’t use the music to reinforce his own theories, he simply let the musicians speak for themselves and judging by the recordings they clearly responded to Mitchell’s sincerity (being a southerner probably didn’t hurt as well). Mitchell came along at the right time as he relates in the notes to the LP South Georgia Blues by William Robertson aka Cecil Barfield: “As late as 1969 a country bluesman who at least occasionally played could be located in most small towns of Georgia. In 1976, there are very few active blues musicians left in the state! In the short span of seven years, one of the world’s most vital and influential forms of music as it was originally performed has all but died out in Georgia, and probably in the rest of the South as well. …Most bluesmen have either died or fallen into ill health accompanying old age, and the younger generation of rural blacks long ago turned their backs on the blues.” It was also, he noted, the Church who claimed many bluesmen as well as the lack of financial incentive to play the blues that was the music’s death knell.

The most striking musician on the first disc is Cecil Barfield, and I agree with Mitchell’s assessment that he was some kind of genius. Mitchell called him “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). I imagine Barfield is an acquired taste but to me he is simply mesmerizing; his music, with his droning, lightly distorted electric guitar coupled with his powerful mushed mouth, nasal singing, is hypnotic. Barfield has some originals but his genius is in the way he transforms well known songs by Frankie Lee Sims (”Lucy Mae Blues”), Lightnin’ Hopkins (”Mojo Hand”), J.B. Lenoir (”Talk To Your Daughter”) and others into something startlingly original. Only four songs by Barfield are on the box set although I was so taken with his music I downloaded all his songs on Amazon (George Mitchell Collection Vol. 2, Disc 3 & 4), 43 songs in all!

The sheer depth of singular talent is consistently surprising. Take John Lee Zielgler recorded in Georgia in 1978 and Lonzie Thomas recorded in Alabama in the early 1980’s. Zielgler achieves a a gorgeous, fluid slide technique from his unorthodox style (he was a left-handed guitarist who played a right-handed guitar upside-down). His three numbers not only feature his slide work but also his beautiful high pitched voice backed by the wonderful spoon player Rufus Jones. In true field recording tradition you can hear little children playing in the background. More of his sides can be found on George Mitchell Collection Vol. 5. Thomas plays some fine finger picking reminiscent of John Hurt but not as refined, and possesses a deep, rich voice as he delivers old time numbers like “Rabbit On A Log”, “Raise A Ruckus Tonight” and showcases some slide on the fine “My Three Woman.”

Teddy Williams and William “Do Boy” Diamond were both recorded in Canton, Mississippi in 1967 on subsequent days. Diamond was a basic guitar player but possessed a great, relaxed voice. “Hard Time Blues” is a magnificent number, sharing the same haunting quality of some of Skip James’ numbers. More of his sides can be found on George Mitchell Collection Vol. 5. It’s suggested the older Williams may have taught Diamond, and he too is a powerful singer in a similar style. Mitchell’s trip to Mississippi in 1967 was an extremely fruitful one and in addition to the above artists he recorded stunning sides by Houston Stackhouse (in a trio with Robert Nighthawk and Peck Curtis plus Carey “Ditty” Mason on some sides). It was a fortuitous recordings as Nighthawk died a few months later followed by Mason in 1969 and Curtis in 1970. These highly regarded sides have been issued before on Arhoolie and Testament. In addition there is some unissued material by Nighthawk and Stackhouse that should be of major interest to collectors. Also recorded during this trip were some powerhouse sides by Fred McDowell and harpist Johnny Woods and the wonderful Joe Callicott who’s long been a favorite of mine. Only three songs apiece are included by each artist but each has full length CD’s available on Fat Possum, both of which come highly recommended.

Other older, established players Mitchell recorded were Buddy Moss in 1963 and Dewey Corley in 1967. Mitchell found Moss through Peg Leg Howell (who he also recorded although his sides have not been reissued). Moss was part of the the great Atlanta blue scene of the 1930’s working with Barbecue Bob, Curley Weaver, Blind Willie McTell as well as recording prolifically between 1933 and 1941. He was a forgotten man when Mitchell recorded him but the six sides included here find him in superb form. A moody and difficult character (a 1976 interview with Robert Springer was titled So I Said ‘The Hell with It: A Difficult Interview with Eugene ‘Buddy’ Moss) his comeback never took off like it should, although Atlanta Blues Legend recorded in 1966 and issued on Biograph is quite good. Jug band veteran Dewey Corley is also in good form playing vigorous kazoo and one-stringed bass backed by Walter Miller on guitar on three loose, fun numbers.

Disc three features a trio of fine players from Georgia recorded in 1969: Bud White, Jim Bunkley and George Henry Bussey. Like many of the artists Mitchell found, none were professional musicians but all are quite good. White was a percussive guitar player with a high, rich voice, Bussey had a light, gently propulsive style and good voice while Mitchell describes Bunkley’s style as a”frolicking” sound in contrast to the harder Mississippi style. Both Bussey and Bunkley were paired on the 1971 album George Henry Bussey and Jim Bunkley issued on Revival.

Mitchell also recorded a fair number of religious material including gospel singers and marvelous slide players, Leon Pinson and Green Paschal, both who play stirring gospel inflected blues. Pinson worked with the great singer/harmonica player Elder Roma Wilson early in his career and reunited with him when Wilson was rediscovered in the 80’s, with the duo having a fair bit of success on the festival circuit. Pinson is a major artist with fine understated baritone and a ringing slide style. The stunner is “What God Can Do” sung in a beautiful crooning style, dipping occasionally into falsetto. It only lasts a minute-and-a-half but the depth of feeling resonates long after the song concludes. Paschal was a rough expressive singer and exciting, percussive slide player who comes across as a less intense version of Son House.

Cecil Barfield - Lucy Mae Blues (MP3)

John Lee Ziegler - Who’s Gonna Be Your Man (MP3)

Lonzie Thomas - My Three Woman (MP3)

William ‘Do Boy’ Diamond - Hard Time Blues (MP3)

Leon Pinson - What God Can Do (MP3)