Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

As protégé David “Honeyboy” Edwards described him, Big Joe Williams in his early Delta days was a walking musician who played work camps, jukes, store porches, streets, and alleys from New Orleans to Chicago. He recorded through five decades for Vocalion, Okeh, Paramount, Bluebird, Prestige, Delmark, and many others. Big Joe was born in Crawford, MS and settled in St. Louis by 1925 where he married blues singer Bessie Mae Smith and worked with Walter Davis, Robert Lee McCoy and Henry Townsend. Little is known of his early years although by he apparently began traveling young, supposedly running away from home to join the Rabbit Foot Minstrels.  Along the way he worked the lumber mills, levee camps, plantations, gambling dens and brothels. By the late 20’s he earned a considerable reputation in Mississippi. Honeyboy recalls his first sight of Big Joe: “…Big Joe Williams was playing at Black Rosie’s dance. Joe wasn’t wasn’t nothing but a hobo then, running down the streets. I went over to Rosie’s and there he was playing. He was in his thirties, had a red handkerchief around his neck, and he was playing a little pearl-necked Stella guitar; he was playing the blues. He played “Highway 49″, and I just stood and looked at him. I hadn’t heard a man play the blues like that! …Nine strings, he always had those nine strings on his guitar. That’s something he invented himself. He bored holes at the top of the neck of the guitar and made himself a nine-string guitar. That’s what he played all the time.” …He was playing “Brother James”, all of them old numbers like that. “Brother James”, “Highway 49″, Stack O’ Dollars.”  …’Baby Please Don’t Go”, Milkcow Blues.”

In St. Louis it was Walter Davis who got Big Joe signed to Bluebird as well as Robert Lee McCoy. Bg Joe’s first session for Bluebird, on February 25, 1935, yielded 6 tunes. This initial session finds Joe playing solo except for  “Somebody’s Been Borrowing That Stuff” with Henry Townsend on second guitar. Joe wouldn’t be heard solo on record again for some time. As John Miller noted: “Big Joe’s playing on these two sessions is quite amazing.  Everything is in Open G tuning, so a certain sameness of tonality and very pared back harmonic content results, but Joe’s rhythmic imagination and ability to execute his ideas in the moment has never been equaled in this genre.  His right hand approach combines powerful thumb popping of bass notes and lines with vigorous runs in the treble and an array of strumming and brushing techniques that has to be heard to be believed.” The second session, on October 31, 1935, resulted in four more tunes, and was done with a line-up of Joe joined by Dad Tracy on one-string fiddle and Chasey Collins on washboard. That second session included the first recorded version of “Baby Please Don’t Go.” Big Joe backed Chasey Collins on two numbers at the same date; “Atlanta Town” and “Walking Blues” are superbly sung blues with excellent playing by Joe and makes one wish Collins had recorded more.

Sonny Boy I and Big Joe first recorded together May 5, 1937. This was a marathon recording session. Robert Lee McCoy cut six sides at this session with backing by Sonny Boy Williamson and Big Joe Williams. The May 5th sessions were also Sonny Boy Williamson’s first and Nighthawk and Joe Williams backed him on this legendary session that produced such enduring classics as “Good Morning Little School Girl”, “Blue Bird Blues” and “Sugar Mama”. In addition Big Joe Williams recorded eight sides under his own name with Nighthawk and Sonny Boy backing him and Nighthawk also backed Walter Davis on an eight-song session. Big Joe backed Sonny Boy again for two sessions in March and June 1939 which yielded 18 sides.

In the 1940’s Sonny Boy backed Big Joe on sessions on March and June 1941. Big Joe and Sonny Boy reunited for a four-song session together on July 12, 1945 with Jump Jackson on drums and a twelve-song session on July 22 1947 with Ransom Knowling on bass and Judge Riley on drums. As Tony Russell noted about these sessions: “The half-dozen tracks they cut at a session in 12/41, including definitive interpretations of ‘[Baby] Please Don’t Go’, ”Highway 49′ and ‘Someday Baby’,  confirm them as one of the great blues partnerships. They continued recording together until 1947, the delicate architecture of their duets solidly buttressed by bass and drums. It isn’t off said, but it seems likely that driving trio and quartet sides like ‘Drop Down Blues’ (1945) or ‘King Biscuit Stomp’ (1947) were listened to attentively by some of the younger musicians then finding their voice in Chicago’s clubs or on Maxwell Street.”

As Big Joe sailed into the 50′s, recording opportunities weren’t as plentiful probably due to the fact he did nothing to update his sound to the changing musical times. Among the most notable recordings was an eight-song session in 1951 cut for the Jackson, MS based Trumpet label. Joe is in terrific form on numbers like “Delta Blues”, the evocative “Whistling Pines” and “Over Hauling Blues.” In the 50’s he also recorded for Specialty and Vee-Jay. Just prior to the folk-blues boom, Big Joe recorded extensively for Delmark at sessions in 1958 and 1961. Piney Woods Blues and Stavin’ Chain are among his best from this period, both recorded at the beginning of 1958 and feature the excellent J.D. Short who was a cousin of Big Joe.

By the 1960′s Joe was became much in demand as the blues revival picked up steam. He performed at festivals, clubs and coffeehouses through the country as well as playing overseas as part of the American Folk Blues Festival. He recorded prolifically during this period for labels such as Bluesville, Spivey, Storyville, Folkways, Testament, Takoma, Arhoolie, Adelphi among others.  Among his best albums from the 1960′s  are Tough Times on Arhoolie which has been reissued on CD as Shake Your Boogie which adds some tracks from a 1969 session. He recorded songs like “Mean Stepfather” and “Brother James” before but rarely as powerful as these versions. We play several interesting sides from the 1960′s including a pair from Blues Roots: The Mississippi Blues Vol. 1 on Storyville recorded circa 1964/65. These sides were recorded in St. Louis and Chicago by Pete Welding. Most of these men like Coot Venson and Arthur Weston were musical associates of Big Joe while Bert and Russ Logan were uncles of his.

Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Lightnin’ Hopkins and Big Joe Williams were involved in a jam session for World Pacific cut in Los Angles in 1960. This material has been reissued under many titles including Down South Summit Meetin’, First Meetin’, Southern Meetin’ among others. They also recorded together live at the Ash Grove in Hollywood in 1961 which was issued as Blues Hoot. From these sessions we spin “Ain’t Nothin’ Like Whiskey” and “Blues For Gamblers.”

Also from this period we spotlight Big Joe’s pal Shortstuff Macon. The liner notes to his Folkways album had this to say: “Short Stuff has now begun traveling the sparse and fickle concert circuit with Big Joe Wiilliams, who, in a trip back to Mississippi, ‘discovered’ him, liked his ‘deep down’ music, remembered his father and mother, and decided to take him with him. Since then, the two bluesmen have been making do with whatever work they could get—living from day to day, hour to hour, on the whims and generosity (sometimes curiosity) of friends interested in blues, college student aficionados, and the small, folk record companies.” That comes from  the notes to Hell Bound And Heaven Sent in 1964 with backing from Big Joe. From that album we spin the excellent “Short Stuff’s Corrina.” The same year they cut sides for the Spivey label which were issued on a album called Mr. Shortstuff. He appears again on the album Goin’ Back to Crawford from 1971. Goin’ Back to Crawford was produced by Big Joe in his hometown of Crawford, MS in 1971 by gathering talented relatives, neighbors, and acquaintances to hopefully present their songs to the wider world. Big Joe performs on seven of his own tracks and backs several of the artists including Shortstuff Macon who died two years after these recordings.

In the 1970′s Big Joe continued to record for labels like Storyville, Sonet, Bluesway, L+R and others. By 1982 he was back in Mississippi where he passed in December of that year. Joe was buried in a private cemetery outside Crawford near the Lowndes County line. His headstone was primarily paid for by friends and partially funded by a collection taken up among musicians at Clifford Antone’s nightclub in Austin, Texas, organized by California music writer Dan Forte, and erected through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund on October 9, 1994. Joe’s old pal Charlie Musselwhite, delivered the eulogy at the unveiling. Williams’ headstone epitaph proclaims him “King of the 9 String Guitar.”

Show Notes:

Elmore James was undoubtedly the most influential slide guitarist of the postwar period. Although his early death from heart failure kept him from enjoying the fruits of the ’60s blues revival like his contemporaries Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf did, Elmore was hugely influential on a generation of guitar players. James always gave it everything he had, everything he could emotionally invest in a number. The fact is that over his twelve-year recording career it can be argued that he never really cut a bad performance. Between 1951 and 1963 James cut about 100 sides for labels like Trumpet, Modern, Chess, Chief, Meteor and Fire. Backing him was one of the greatest Chicago blues bands,the Broomdusters, named after James’ big hit, and featuring Little Johnny Jones on piano, J.T. Brown on tenor sax and Elmore’s cousin, Homesick James on rhythm guitar. This talented combo was often augmented by a second saxophone on occasion while the drumming stool changed frequently. On later recordings his band would include pianist Johnny “Big Moose” Walker, guitarist Eddie Taylor and Sam Myers on harp. In addition James backed a few artists, particularly in the early years, including Sonny Boy Williamson II, Willie Love and later bandmate Little Johnnie Jones. Today’s show spotlights not only great sides James cut under his own name but several sides by his talented bandmates and associates.

With a few months left on his Trumpet contract, Elmore was recorded by the Bihari Brothers for their Modern label subsidiaries, Flair and Meteor, but the results were left in the can until James’ contract ran out. In the meantime, Elmore had moved to Chicago and cut a quick session for Chess, which resulted in one single being issued and just as quickly yanked off the market as the Bihari Brothers swooped in to protect their investment. This period of activity found Elmore assembling the nucleus of his great band the Broomdusters and several fine recordings were issued over the next few years on a slew of the Bihari Brothers’owned labels with several of them charting.

James was born in Canton, MS on January 27, 1918. He came to music at an early age, learning to play bottleneck on a homemade instrument. By the age of 14, he was already a weekend musician, working the various country suppers and juke joints in the area. He would join up and work with traveling players coming through like Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson. By the late ’30s he had formed his first band and was working with Sonny Boy until WW II broke out, spending three years stationed with the Navy in Guam. When he was discharged, he picked off where he left off, moving for a while to Memphis, working in clubs with Eddie Taylor and his cousin Homesick James. James was first recorded by Lillian McMurray of Trumpet Records in 1951 at the tail end of a Sonny Boy session doing his classic “Dust My Broom.” Legend has it that James didn’t even stay around long enough to hear the playback, much less record a second side. McMurray stuck a local singer (BoBo “Slim” Thomas) on the flip side and the record became the surprise R&B hit of 1951, making the Top Ten. James also backed Trumpet artists Willie Love and Tiny Kennedy the same year.

By the late 1950′s James had established a beach-head in the clubs of Chicago as one of the most popular live acts and regularly broadcasting over WPOA under the aegis of disc jockey Big Bill Hill. In 1957, with his contract with the Bihari Brothers at an end, he recorded several successful sides for Mel London’s Chief label, all of them later being issued on the larger Vee-Jay label.

In May of 1963, Elmore returned to Chicago, ready to resume his on-again off-again playing career — his records were still being regularly issued and reissued on a variety of labels — when he suffered his final heart attack. His wake was attended by over 400 blues luminaries before his body was shipped back to Mississippi.

Mississippi-born John T. Brown was a member of the Rabbit Foot Minstrels down south before arriving in Chicago. By 1945, Brown was recording behind pianist Roosevelt Sykes and singer St. Louis Jimmy Oden, later backing Eddie Boyd and Washboard Sam for RCA Victor. He debuted on wax as a bandleader in 1950 on the Harlem label, subsequently cutting sessions in 1951 and 1952 for Chicago’s United logo as well as JOB. Brown backed Elmore James and pianist Little Johnny Jones on the Meteor and Flair lbels in 1952 and 1953. Meteor issued a couple of singles under Brown’s own name. After a final 1956 date for United that laid unissued at the time, Brown’s studio activities were limited to sideman roles. In January of 1969, he was part of Fleetwood Mac’s Blues Jam at Chess album, even singing a tune for the project, but he died before the close of that year.

Johnny Jones arrived in Chicago from Mississippi in 1946 and was influenced greatly by pianist Big Maceo.Jones followed Maceo into Tampa Red’s band in 1947 after Maceo suffered a stroke. In addition to playing behind Tampa Red from 1949 to 1953, he backed Muddy Waters on his 1949 classic “Screamin’ and Cryin’” and later appeared on sides by Howlin’ Wolf. It’s Elmore James that he’ll forever be associated with; the pianist played on James’ classic 1952-56 Chicago sessions for the Bihari brothers’ Meteor, Flair, and Modern labels, as well as dates for Checker, Chief, and Fire. James only had a few opportunities to record under his own name; Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, and Leroy Foster backed Jones on his 1949 Aristocrat label classic “Big Town Playboy”, while Elmore James and saxist J.T. Brown were on hand for Jones’s 1953 Flair coupling “I May Be Wrong”/”Sweet Little Woman.” The rocking “Hoy Hoy,” his last commercial single, was done in 1953 for Atlantic and also featured James and his group in support. Jones continued to work in the clubs (with Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Syl Johnson, Billy Boy Arnold, and Magic Sam, among others) prior to his 1964 death of lung cancer at the age of 40.

James “Homesick” 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 1930s, Williamson played local clubs and cut his first sides in 1952-53 for Chance Records. Homesick also worked extensively as a sideman, backing harp great Sonny Boy Williamson and during the 1950s with his cousin, Elmore James. Homesick backs Elmore on sessions for Chief in 1957, Fire in 1959, Chess in 1960 and again for Fire in 1960 and 1961. Homesick’s own recordings included 45s for Colt and USA in 1962, a fine 1964 album for Prestige, and four tracks on a Vanguard anthology in 1965. Homesick was recording and touring up until shortly before his death in 2006.

Eddie Taylor is best know for his guitar work on the great majority of Jimmy Reed’s Vee-Jay sides during the 1950s and early ’60s, and he even found time to wax a few classic sides of his own for Vee-Jay during the mid-’50s. But Taylor’s records didn’t sell in the quantities that Reed’s did, so he was largely relegated to the role of sideman (he recorded behind John Lee Hooker, John Brim, Elmore James, Snooky Pryor, and many more during the ’50s) not cutting his first full-length record until the early 1970′s. Taylor backed Elmore on sessions in 1956 for Modern and for Chief in 1957.

During the ‘50s Johnny “Big Moose” Walker played with many local Greenville, MS bluesmen, joined Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm in Clarksdale and sat in with the King Biscuit Boys in Helena, Arkansas and worked the Mississippi juke joints with Elmore James and Sonny Boy Williamson. He traveled extensively with Earl Hooker. Walker’s first studio date was with Elmore James and Sonny Boy Williamson, for Trumpet Records in Jackson, Mississippi that went unissued. In 1955 Ike Turner taped Moose in a Greenville club; two of those sides, credited to J.W Walker, appeared years later on the Kent Label. He cut his first 45, as Moose John, for Johnny Otis’ Ultra label, also in 1955. Moose recorded even more after Sunnyland Slim brought him to Chicago. He backed Earl Hooker, Ricky Allen, Lorenzo Smith and others on local sessions. Willie Dixon took Moose to New York in 1960 to do some studio work for Prestige/Bluesville. Moose rejoined Elmore James at Silvio’s on the West Side and went to New Orleans with Elmore to record for Bobby Robinson’s Fire label. At another session for Robinson, Moose sang a few himself. He cut some singles during the ‘60s and waxed his first album in 1969 when he and Earl Hooker went to Los Angeles to record for ABC Bluesway. He remained active until the 1980′s before suffering a stroke.

Sam Myers cut his first sides for Ace in 1957 and played both drums and harp behind slide guitar great Elmore James at a 1961 session for Bobby Robinson’s Fire label in New Orleans. In 1960 he cut a single for Robinson’s Fury label and another in 1961 backed by Elmore James and Big Moose Walker. Most listeners know Myers as the frontman for Anson Funderburgh & the Rockets, which lasted for some 20 years before Myers passed in 2006.

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 is called Maxwell Street Blues in tribute to Mike Shea’s legendary film on Chicago’s Maxwell Street Market, And This Is Free, which at long last has been re-released by Shanachie Records. And This Is Free was filmed over the course of sixteen Sundays on Chicago’s Maxwell Street in 1964. The Maxwell Street open air market was a seven- to ten-block area in Chicago that from the 1920s to the middle 1960′s played host to various blues musicians — both professional and amateur — who performed right on the street for tips from passerbys. Maxwell Street is an east-west street that intersects with Halsted Street just south of Roosevelt Road. Although there were many fine stationary department stores located in it, the area’s most notable feature was its open air market, precursor to the flea market scene in Chicago. One could almost buy anything there, legal and illegal. In need of jobs and quick cash, fledgling entrepreneurs came to Maxwell Street – many say it was the largest open-air market in the country – to earn their livelihood. In 1994, the Maxwell Street Market was moved by the City of Chicago to accommodate expansion of the University of Illinois at Chicago. It was relocated a few blocks east to Canal Street and renamed the New Maxwell Street Market.

Among those who got their start on Maxwell Street were Little Walter, Earl Hooker and Hound Dog Taylor among many others. Those that appear in the film include Robert Nighthawk, Johnny Young, Jim Brewer and Arvella Gray, all of whom were recorded performing live on the street. All the music recorded during the filming was issued domestically in 2000 on the Rooster label on the 3-CD set And This Is Maxwell Street and we will be hearing several of these cuts on today’s program. We will also be playing a number of cuts from the Ora Nelle label which was run by Bernard Abrams from his Maxwell Street Radio and Record shop located at 831 Maxwell Street, tracks by Big John Wrencher, Maxwell Street Jimmy, John Lee Granderson and James Brewer (all long time fixtures on the Street) plus some pre-war sides that reference Maxwell Street. In addition we will be playing excerpts from an interview with Gordon Quinn who was the sound engineer on And This Is Free.

Blind James Brewer and Gospel Group, Maxwell Street, 1964, Photo by Paul Oliver

Ira Berkow, who wrote the book Maxwell Street: Survival In A Bazaar, and contributes to the booklet, described Maxwell Street this way: “It was a carnival, it was a bazaar, it was, as some believed and perhaps with some credibility, a thieves’ den; it was also home to snake charmers, a horse that could count with a clop of his hoof, an ‘Indian chief’ in war bonnet and penny loafers, honest businessmen, the ladies of the night (and morning and afternoon), Gypsies, Jews, Italians, Irish, Bohemians, Poles, Russians, Greeks, Latinos, blacks. As well as the birthplace of a number of prominent Americans. And this, more or less, just for starters.” Hound Dog Taylor, a veteran of Maxwell Street, had this to say: “You used to get out on Maxwell Street on a Sunday Morning and pick you out a good spot, babe. Dammit, we’d make more money than I ever looked at. Put you out a tub, you know, and put a pasteboard in there, like a newspaper. I’m telling you, Jewtown was Jumpin’ like a champ, jumpin’ like mad on Sunday morning.” Jewtown as the area was also known, was so named because, as Lori Grove writes in her excellent essay Historic Maxwell Street, the “Jewish immigrants were the largest and longest-standing ethnic group in the Maxwell Street neighborhood” who “established the old world marketplace and its reputation as a place where bargains could be found.”

Back in 1960 Bjorn Englund and Donad R. Hill documented the blues on Maxwell street by recording some of the street’s stalwarts including Arvella Gray, Daddy Stovepipe, king Davis and James Brewer. The recordings were issued in 1962 on the Heritage album Blues From Maxwell Street. The album is long out of print (i don’t own this record so if anyone knows where I can get a copy let me know!) but the notes by Paul Oliver are worth quoting as they paint an evocative portrait of an era that has long passed. “At 1330 on South Halsted there is a minor intersection. The corners are crowded with people and temporary halls at anytime, but especially on Sunday, for the narrow road that cuts across Halsted is Maxwell and on Sunday morning the Maxwell Street Market is at its busiest. Maxwell Street is at once a sad an exciting place. The walls are blackened and the paint has peeled off the ill-fitting doors; garbage lies thick in the gutters and the narrow side alleys are littered with the refuse of years. To the West, the street loses its identity in the depressing anonymity of the bleak, poverty-struck roads that cross it; to the East it is an almost impassable market of stalls that suddenly give way to a vast, horizonless plain of mud and rubble and debris where an Expressway will sweep Southwards in the undated future. Amongst the rough-clad women who grope through the piles of discarded clothes and the tough, unsmiling men who pick their way through the wires, cables and electrical parts laid out haphazardly on the trestles – amongst the loiterers, the occasional sightseers and the pickpockets – are the beggars, as many as there are to be found in the shadows of the churches in a Southern Italian town, or along the shrouded streets of an “Arab Quarter.” Beggars – but with one striking, exhilarating difference. These are not wheedling seekers after alms with cries of “baksheesh” or “Gawd Bless yer, guv” but proud men, creative artists, singers of the blues who accept the dimes and quarters as tokens of esteem for their paying and singing. If the blues in general has tended to become more sophisticated in recent years Maxwell Street exists as a living storehouse of the folk blues, the blues of the rambling man. And in its few hundred yards is pictured the life story of the blues singer of the streets, from the children who stand wide-eyed to the singers of  their to choice to the young men who are trying their luck and their talent on the critical audience of the market; from the tough music and manner of the street singer of many years to the fading abilities to the old men who have played in the street in all weathers for more years then they can count.”

Today’s program opens with a pair pf pre-war cuts. Papa Charlie Jackson is known to have busked around Chicago in the early 1920′s, playing for tips on Maxwell Street, as well as the city’s Westside clubs beginning in 1924. He cut some 70 sides between 1924-1934, most for the Paramount label. His “Mawell Street Blues” shows he was well aquintated with the seedier side of the street:

Because Maxwell Street’s so crowded on a Sunday, you can hardly passed through
There’s Maxwell Street Market, got Water Street Market too
If you ain’t got no money, the women got nothing for you to do
I got the Maxwell Street blues, mama and it just won’t pay
Because the Maxwell Street women, going to carry me to my grave
I live six twenty-four Maxwell, mama and I’m taking about you

Little is known about his background. Blind Percy was likely Joe Taggart who recorded mainly gospel but sound more worldly as he too sings about those Maxwell Street women on “Fourteenth Street Blues:”

Fourteenth Street women, don’t mean a man no good
Go out and get full of liquor, wake up the whole neighborhood

Today’s show features several tracks from the Ora Nelle label which was founded in 1947 by Bernard Abrams who operated Maxwell Street Radio and Record shop located at 831 Maxwell Street. Two 78′s were released; “I Just Keep Loving Her” (Ora Nelle 711) and “Money Taking Woman” (Ora Nelle 712). The label’s name supposedly came from Walter’s girlfriend. These were Walter’s first recordings. Additional recordings were made by Jimmy Rogers (also his first), Boll Weavil, Sleepy John Estes, Johnnie Temple which were not released at the time. All of the Ora Nelle recordings can be found on the CD Chicago Boogie 1947 on the P-Vine label, a reissue of an album originally issued on George Paulus’ Barrelhouse label in the 1970′s. Boll Weevil (Willie McNeal) cut a pair of acetates for the label circa 1947-48, including “Christmas Time Blues” b/w “Thinkin’ Blues”, and recorded once more in 1956 for another mom and pop label called Club 51.

One-Armed harmonica player Big John Wrencher was a recognizable fixture of Maxwell Street. Wrencher was a traveling musician, playing throughout Tennessee and neighboring Arkansas from the late 1940′s to the early 1950′s. In 1958 Wrencher lost his left arm in a car crash in Memphis. By the early 1960′s he had moved North to Chicago and quickly became a regular fixture on Maxwell Street, always working on Sundays from 10:00 a.m. to nearly 3:00 in the afternoon. His first recordings surfaced on a pair of Testament albums from the 1960′s, featuring Big John in a sideman role behind Robert Nighthawk. He cut the excellent Maxwell Street Alley Blues (recorded in 1969 and issued in 1978) for the Barrelhouse label (reissued on CD on the P-Vine label) and cut Big John’s Boogie for the British Big Bear label in 1975. He also cut a 45 and we play “Memphis To Maxwell Street” from that record. Big John Wrencher passed in 1977.

Nighthawk’s performances form the centerpiece of the recordings made on An This Is Maxwell Street. Nighthawk is present on 22 of the 30 selections. Nighthawk really stretches out on some of his old classics including the stunning medley of his two biggest hits “Anna Lee/Sweet Black Angel” as well as a storming reprise of his “Take it Easy Baby” which he first cut in 1937 for Bluebird. Nighthawk shows off his wide repertoire playing Big Joe Turner’s “Honey Hush”, Dr. Clayton’s “Cheating and Lying Blues” and Percy Mayfield’s “I Need Love So Bad.” In an interview done by Mike Bloomfield, Nighthawk, reflected on what brought him back to Maxwell Street: “Lately I went back to Maxwell St.- I been playing off and on for 24 years now. Most all music more or less starts right off from Maxwell St. and so you wind up going back there. …See it’s more hard to play out in the street than it is in a place of business, but you have more fun in the street, looks like. Well, so many things you can see, so many different things going on, I get a kick out of it, I guess.”

We also play tracks by Maxwell Street stalwarts Arvella Gray, James Brewer, John Lee Granderson and Maxwell Street Jimmy. Arvella Gray made his first recordings in 1960 (released on the Decca and Heritage labels) and in early 1964 he made sides for his own Gray label, selling the 45′s on the street. He was also recorded by a team from Swedish Radio the same year. He was regular performer on Maxwell Street on Sundays. Gray’s only album, 1972′s The Singing Drifter was reissued on the Conjuroo label in 2005. James Brewer aka Blind James Brewer (“My mother didn’t name me ‘Blind’, she named me ‘Jim’”) was born in Brookhaven, Mississippi, moved to Chicago in the 1940s spending 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. He too was recorded by Swedish Radio, cut sides for the Heritage label, Testament plus cut the full-length albums Jim Brewer for Philo and Tough Luck for Earwig. In addition to the full length Hard Luck John (issued posthumously in 1998), Tennessee bluesman John Lee Granderson cut sides on other Testament compilations with further sides appearing on various anthologies. Among those Granderson played with were Robert Nighthawk, Big Joe Williams and Daddy Stovepipe. Charles Thomas aka Maxwell Street Jimmy, wrote Pete Welding was “one of the finest and most expressive of blues performers who regularly work the street…In his dark, urgent, powerful singing and rhythmically incisive guitar playing are strong, pungent echoes of his youth in the Mississippi delta, that spawning ground of so many great bluesmen.” Jimmy recorded little, his best being his lone album, his long out of print self-titled release for Elektra in 1965. Welding’s liner notes to the album paint a vivid portrait of Maxwell Street in the 1960′s:”Every Sunday morning from late spring to early autumn–whenever, in fact, the weather is warm and clement–the pungent, earthy sound of the traditional blues rings loudly through the streets of Chicago. In the city’s bustling open-air Maxwell Street flea market area, where one can haggle for anything form high-button shoes to a winnowing machine, the cries of the hawkers and vendors mingle sharply with the acrid, pain-filled shouts of the blues singer and the fervent moans of the sidewalk evangelist. Through most of contemporary America, street singing is a fast disappearing folk art. Municipal legislation and the compulsory licensing of peddlers have seen to that in most large US cities, and the days of the itinerant sidewalk minstel seem sadly though inevitably numbered. Except, that is, in Chicago. If anything, the art appears to be thriving here. It’s tied directly, or course, to the continued flourishing of the Maxwell Street market as a vigorous facet of Chicago culture that has refused to give up the ghost in the face of urban renewal, increasing cultural homogeneity and other aspects of modern ‘progress’.”

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 emphasizes in his liner notes: “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.” None of this happened of course and Holts toiled in relative obscurity while those who did make records in the early days were rediscovered and achieved adulation among those “young whites.” These were men like Son House, Bukka White, Skip James and Mississippi John Hurt to name the bigger stars. There were several artists from the same era who, like Holts, never got that early break but were swept up in the blues revival net and went on to achieve a measure of success such as Mississippi Fred McDowell and Robert Pete Williams.

Why Holts never achieved equitable recognition is unclear but we owe a debt to his patron, folklorist David Evans, who is responsible for just about all of Holts’ recordings. It was Evans’ investigation into Tommy Johnson in the late 1960’s that brought Holts to light. Evans uncovered and recorded a slew of still active musicians who learned directly from Johnson including Boogie Bill Webb, Arzo Youngblood, Isaac Youngblood, Bubba Brown, Babe Stovall, Houston Stackhouse, Tommy’s brother Mager Johnson and Roosevelt Holts.  K.C. Douglas, Shirley Griffith and Jim Brewer were others who learned directly from Johnson but were recorded by others. As Evans recalled in an interview to Rob Hutten “I followed a trail of musicians connected with Tommy Johnson. Babe had known Tommy slightly and Roosevelt knew him a lot better, and that led to two of Tommy’s brothers and any number of other singers that had been associated with Tommy Johnson.”

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. Johnson had married Holts’ cousin Rosa Youngblood and moved to Tylertown with her. Around 1937 both men moved to Jackson playing all around town and surrounding towns. During this period he also played with Ishmon Bracey, Johnnie Temple, Bubba Brown, and One Legged Sam Norwood. Holts eventually settled in Bogalusa, Louisiana where Evans recorded him.

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.

I’ve heard most of these recordings and I think Presenting The Country Blues is among his best although I know a couple of folks who prefer Roosevelt Holts and Friends which features him on electric guitar. Holts is a fine singer, possessing a strong burnished voice and a rhythmic, delicate guitar style as Evans describes: “Roosevelt’s guitar style is one of the most subtle to be found on records, with its delicate touch and rhythmic shifts. He often extends his guitar lines beyond the expected standard patterns to produce greater variety.” Lyrically Holts draws on songs he learned as a younger man as well as the vast storehouse of floating blues verses. Among the covers are Leroy Carr’s 1928 classic “Prison Bound Blues” and Memphis Minnie’s 1930 number “She Put Me Outdoors” although Holts takes it at a much slower tempo. “Prison Bound Blues” was likely picked up from Tommy Johnson who was known to play the number. As for the latter number he may have picked it up through Minnie’s husband Joe McCoy who was active on the Jackson scene before he moved to Memphis. Johnnie Temple was also part of the rich Jackson scene and Holts covers his celebrated “Lead Pencil Blues” which Temple cut at his first session in 1935. Of this song Evans writes “this style of guitar playing with its subtle rhythm shifts between duple and triple patterns, is a splendid example  of the type of music then current in Jackson.” Holts picked up a number of songs from Tommy Johnson and on this album turns in superb readings of “Big Road Blues” and “Maggie Campbell Blues.” Holts also recorded Johnson’s “Big Fat Mamma Blues” on a compilation. A couple of Holts’ friend appear on this record including Babe Stovall from Tylertown who was the one who introduced Evans to Holts. His second guitar on “Feelin’ Sad And Blue” adds some extra rhythmic push to the song with the two complementing each other superbly. Harmonica blower L.H. Lane plays on “The Good Book Teach You” as Holts lays down some fine bottleneck. Apparently the two had known each other for some time and he just popped into the studio for this one song before leaving minutes later. Holts is a good bottleneck player as he also demonstrates on the moving gospel number “I’m Going To Build Right On That Shore” and “Another Mule Kickin’ In My Stall.”

Unfortunately, outside of one collection, all of Roosevelt Holts’ recordings are out of print which I suppose is fitting for an artist that was largely neglected during his lifetime. Hopefully the Blue Horizon label, who are in the midst of an extensive reissue of their catalog, will see fit to re-release Presenting The Country Blues.

Maggie Campbell Blues (MP3)

Feelin’ Sad And Blue (MP3)

I’m Going To Build Right On That Shore (MP3)

Another Mule Kickin’ In My Stall (MP3)

The Good Book Teach You (MP3)

Big Road Blues (MP3)

We concluded part one with the recording of “Bottle It Up And Go”, one of McClennan’s most enduring numbers. McClennan’s first session was probably his strongest and as Neil Slaven notes “there’s a subtle diminution of commitment as the five sessions progress, as though alcohol had begun to erode his skills.” His first session is littered with references to Mississippi and Chicago and he’s clearly aware of the importance of recording in Chicago as the spoken aside in his first number, “You Can Mistreat Me Here”, attest: “Take your time and play it right, f’ you’re in Chicago.” His most evocative number in this regard is “Cotton Patch Blues” as he sings about the woman he left behind in Mississippi:

I left my baby in Mississippi, pickin’ cotton down on her knees (2x)
She says, If you get to Chicago all right, please right me a letter if you please

I said “baby, that’s all right, baby that’s all right for you (2x)
You’ll just keep pickin’ cotton right there, oh babe, until I get through

Baby, when I get to Chicago, I do swear I’m sure gonna take a change (2x)
If I don’t never get back to Mississippi, I’m sure gonna change your name

“Brown Skin Girl” is another number filled with striking imagery delivered with plenty of conviction:

Now I got a brownskin girl, with her front tooth crowned with gold (2x)
Spoken: take your and make this one right because it’s the best one you got
She got a lien on my body and a mortgage on my soul
Now friend don’t ever let your good girl fix you like this woman got me (2x)
Spoken: how she got you then?
Got me stone crazy about her, as a doggone fool can be
Now I ain’t going to tell nobody, baby about the way you do (2x)
Say you always keep some fat mouth following you

McClennan also turns in several songs associated with other singers including his take on “Sweet Home Chicago”, titled “Baby, Don’t You Want to Go”, an updated version of Bukka White’s  1937 hit titled “New Shake ‘em on Down” and rips through a ferocious reading of of Sonny Boy I’s “Whiskey Headed Blues” titled “Whiskey Headed Woman.” Given the erratic nature of McCLennan’s style the session may well have been a difficult one as perhaps the spoken introduction to the session’s final song, “Baby, Please Don’t Tell On Me”, indicates: “Now get out this here. This is the last one you got now. When you play these blues, you ain’t got to play no more. Let’s get on like you like it. These your own blues you makin’ now. Y’know this is what your wife likes, yeah …You don’t need to hurry now, just take your time and play it right cos you ain’t got to play ‘nother’n after this.”

The following year McCLennan was brought back for two session, one on May 10, 1940 and the following on December 12th. The earlier session features a bassist, probably Ransom Knowling or Alfred Elkins, who seems to have flummoxed McClennan as he exhorts him twice on “My Baby’s Gone” to “take your time and play it right man.” The ideas seem less fresh on these sessions, particularly the second, with a series of remakes such as Curtis Jones’ “New Highway No. 51″, “Whiskey Headed Man”, Sonny Boy I’s “New Sugar Mama”and Sleepy John Estes’ “Drop Down Mama.” To be fair McClennan’s “New Highway No. 51″ is a nice reworking, featuring the evocative line: “Now yon come that Greyhound, with it’s tongue sticking out on the side.” One of the better songs from these sessions is the humorous “She’s Just Good Huggin’ Size”:

Lord, I try to give that little woman, everything that she tells me she need (2x)
But she would hold her a conversation with every lowdown dirty man she meet

That little woman she won’t wash now now she won’t even iron my clothes (2x)
Spoken: Lord have mercy now!
She won’t do nothing I tell her but keep them big feets in the road

 McCLennan was brought back for two more eight-song sessions; one on September 15, 1940 and his last on February 20, 1942. The 1941 session produced one of McCLennan’s most enduring recordings, “Cross Cut Saw Blues”, although according to Honeyboy Edwards he got the song from Hacksaw Harney. “Deep Blue Sea Blues” was a version of his buddy Robert Petway’s “Catfish Blues” which he had cut just a few months prior while “Travelin’ Highway Man” is a thinly veiled reworking of his earlier “New Highway No. 51.” On his final session he shares studio time with Petway who recorded immediately after McClennan. The two can be heard together on the rousing juke joint blues of “Boogie Woogie Woman” with Alfred Elkins plunking away on bass for an exhilarating performance. For McCLennan’s final session he found some more melodic material such as “Roll Me, Baby” and the catchy “I Love My Baby.” “Shake It Up and Go” harks back to “Bottle It Up And Go” but with less fire while “Bluebird Blues” is a nice reading of Sonny Boy I’s famous number.

L to R: Elmore James, Sonny Boy, Tommy McClennan, Little Walter

 McClennan remained in Chicago and seemed to follow the path of Tommy Johnson, a slave to alcohol who lived long after he recorded but never stepped into a studio again. Honeyboy remembers seeing McClennan singing at Turner’s on 40th and Indiana during the late 40′s: “He played a little bit and he sang, but he didn’t play too long ‘fore he just …Tommy just dranked so much he just, he couldn’t…” Honeyboy encountered his old friend one more time: “One day in 1962 I was down around Twenty-Second street and Clark at a big junkyard. …I went with some boys to sell some scrap iron and who do I see there but Tommy McClennan! Tommy was living out there in a truck trailer made into kind of a house. ” Honeyboy tried to look after him but “he studied drinking all the time. …He asked me to take him back to that [hobo] Jungle. I carried him back down there. …Later on I heard he had taken sick, that he was in the hospital. …Tommy died in that hospital in 1962. …That alcohol was what Tommy was living for, but it ate him plumb up.” Big Joe Williams took Mike Bloomfield to see McClennan and he recalled “he was just like a skeleton but his eyes were like hot coals burning at you. And his music was like that, too – it had a savage, searing sound. He was a fierce man.”

 McClennan has been well served on record with all his recordings appearing on RCA’s excellent 2-CD set Bluebird Recordings 1939-1942, which may be out of print, and also available on two individual Document CD’s, Tommy McClennan, Vol. 1: Whiskey Head Woman and Tommy McClennan, Vol. 2: Cross Cut Saw. Single disc collections appear on EPM and Acrobat.

Cotton Patch Blues (MP3)

Whiskey Head Woman (MP3)

Cross Cut Saw Blues (MP3)

I Love My Baby (MP3)

Boogie Woogie Woman (MP3)

 I first stumbled upon the music of Tommy McClennan by accident. In my early record buying days one of my favorite haunts was Tower Records at Broadway and West 4th Street in NYC which had a terrific blues section. I think I was looking for a Tommy Johnson record and somehow got him and Tommy McClennan confused. I wound up taking home the LP Cotton Patch Blues 1939 – 1942 on the British Travelin’ Man label which sported an evocative sepia toned cover of cottonfields complete with cotton pickers and and overseer riding a horse. I soon realized my mistake but my disappointment was dispelled when the raw, direct sounds of the first track, “You Can Mistreat Me Here”, hit me and was truly floored when I heard the third number, “Bottle It Up and Go.” I’ve been a fan ever since.

 McClennan is a contradiction; at once wholly individualistic with his powerhouse gravel-throated voice, sprinkled with frequent entertaining spoken asides propelled by an exciting, rudimentary guitar style while on the other hand derivative, with a repertoire mostly drawn from other artists. Despite his limited bag of songs, his limited guitar prowess (despite the boastfully titled “I’m a Guitar King”), McClennan made it work through the sheer force of his outsized personality and his intense commitment to his material. His record label, Bluebird, and the record buying public obviously saw something in McClennan as he cut forty sides (at five eight-song sessions), everyone issued at the time, between 1939 and 1942.

At the time Cotton Patch Blues was released in 1984 writer Alan Balfour noted that “what little is known of Tommy McClennan’s life is based, as is so often the case, on the recollections of others.” McClennan is remembered by bluesmen like Big Joe Williams, Big Bill Broonzy, Jimmy Rogers and most importantly Honeyboy Edwards. Our knowledge of McClennan has been expanded since then with the release of Honeyboy Edwards’ 1997 autobiography, The World Don’t Owe Me Nothing, where he put pen to ink,  recollecting at length about his old friend and partner.

The following is taken from Honeyboy’s memoir which paints a vivid portrait of his old pal: “It was out in Wildwood plantation when I first met Tommy McClennan. Tommy would come out there and play the guitar a while and bump on the piano. He could play the guitar pretty good, but he sure wasn’t no piano player. He threw the people; he had them dancing and hollering. …He could play that guitar, and he could holler; Tommy had a big mouth.  …Tommy played the guitar and gambled, shot dice, played cards. …Tommy was dark and had big eyes like a frog. He was real little, about four and ten, just touched me right along there about the shoulder. Tommy didn’t weigh a bit over 115 pounds. …I and Tommy, we be together all the time. And when he wasn’t with me he was with Robert Petway. …Tommy and Robert was about the same size. They’d come down the street with two guitars, looking like midgets. Now Robert could beat Tommy playing but Tommy could holler more than Robert. …I learned a few licks from Tommy, a few numbers he made. He mad the ‘Bullfrog Blues’ and Petway made ‘The Catfish Blues.’ …Robert and Tommy McClennan and me, we’d be together all the time. On days we wasn’t out playing at the whiskey houses or on the streets; we’d be at Tommy’s house drinking and playing cards, and one of us sitting in the corner practicing some song. …Tommy, he wasn’t really a guitar picker; he was mostly a frailer, and played a few chords in the key of C, running chords with that big loud voice. …Tommy McClennan and me played both sides of town [Greenwood, MS]. We used to serenade in the white neighborhoods. We’d walk down the street amongst all those old houses, strumming our guitars, and we’d see them curtains fly back and they’d chuck nickels and dimes out in the street for us. We’d play ‘Tight Like That’, little jump-up songs for them. Then we’d go back across the river where we come from, raise hell and drink, holler our asses off all night long, singing the ‘Cotton Patch Blues’ in them shotgun houses in our part of town.”

 McClennan arrived in Chicago in 1939 supposedly through the intervention of Big Bill Broonzy who told Bluebird talent scout Lester Melrose he ought to look him up. Again, Honeyboy picks up the tale: “I missed Lester Melrose when he came through Greenwood looking for musicians to record. …He picked up Tommy McClennan then and Tommy recorded ‘Bottle It Up And Go’ for him. He recorded Tommy, Robert Petway, a gang of musicians through the South.” “Bottle It Up And Go” is one of the songs most associated with McClennan although according to Honeyboy he learned the song from Memphis Jug Band member Dewey Corley and in turn taught it to McClennan.  McClennan insisted on playing the song as he learned it in the South, ignoring Northern sensibilities when he sang the controversial lines:

Now the nigger and the white man playin’ seven-up
Nigger beat the white man was scared to pick it up 

Broonzy tells a story of McClennan singing these lines at a house party and being forcibly ejected, forced to leave via the window with parts of his guitar around his neck. McClennan is obviously pleased with this act of defiance, barley able to contain himself as he chuckles throughout the rest of the song. It’s a bravo performance with McClennan hollering out the blues with gusto, using his guitar to finish his verses, offering a running commentary with his spoken asides and finishing up with an energetic bit of trademark scatting. Jimmy Rogers, who met McClennan in Vance, MS commented on his scatting perhaps half-seriously: “Little Richard sneaked around there and stole ‘be-bop-a-lu-bop’ and ‘be-bam-boom’. That was Tommy.”

Bottle It Up And Go (MP3)

In the 1920′s and 1930′s all the major labels were deeply invested in the blues, sending mobile recording units all over the south in search of talent. In the late 1950′s and early 1960′s the major labels were no longer recording blues, although that would change as the blues revival kicked into gear. Instead of mobile recordings units there was a committed group of collectors roaming the south in search of the old time bluesmen that appeared on their cherished 78′s; men like Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, Bukka White, Furry Lewis and Son House. They most certainly weren’t looking for a minor figure like Joe Callicott, who waxed a lone 78 in Memphis in 1930, the year before played second guitar on Garfield Akers’ “Cottonfield Blues Parts 1 & 2.” It was the indefatigable field recorder George Mitchell who found him in Nesbit, Mississippi off Highway 51 not far from Hernando and short distance from Brights were Akers was supposedly born. It appears Mitchell was looking for Callicott although it’s unclear if he was tipped off about his whereabouts or if it was his own initiative: “On that Saturday in Hernando, we pulled up in front of a cluster of Black men shooting the bull in front of the courthouse and spitting tobacco juice on the sidewalk. …I asked if anyone had ever heard of Joe Callicott.” He was directed to Nesbit, seven miles south where he was greeted by a smiling, friendly man: “How y’all doing? Have a seat. I’m Joe.”

Callicott’s “comeback” was about as short as his first recording career, lasting from the summer of 1967 through the summer of 1968; he recorded nineteen sides for Mitchell either late August or early September (split between Revival’s Deal Gone Down and Arhoolie’s Mississippi Delta Blues – “Blow My Blues Away” Vol. 2) four sides at the 1968 Memphis Country Blues Festival (split between The 1968 Memphis Country Blues Festival and Stars Of The 1969-1970 Memphis Country Blues Festival) and seventeen sides for Blue Horizon in 1968 which have all been issued in 2007 as Furry Lewis & Mississippi Joe Callicott: The Complete Blue Horizon Sessions. For a complete listing of his recordings visit the Joe Callicott discography.

I first encountered the Callicott’s music on Mississippi Delta Blues – “Blow My Blues Away” Vol. 2 and found myself going back to those recordings often. He was a good, if unspectacular guitarist, picking out simple, gently surging melodies in a manner that brings to mind Mississippi John Hurt, but as a singer he was magnificent. There’s a timbre and warmth to his vocals that immediately draw the listener into his world and even in his old age he was still capable of delivering a beautiful falsetto in the manner popularized by Tommy Johnson. Callicott’s music is often compared to medicine show artists from the area as Paul oliver noted in the liners to the original Blue Horizon LP: “Nesbit is only a score of miles south of Memphis in the red earth country of De Soto county. From here and the adjacent Tate and Marshall counties a number of the old-style songsters lived …Among them were the medicine show and jug band musicians like Jim Jackson from Hernando four miles from Nesbit, Frank Stokes, a blacksmith who lived some fifteen miles further south in Senatobia, and Gus Cannon from Red Banks, about the same distance to the east.” David Evans noted that Callicott: “…shows a close musical affinity to his old friend Frank Stokes. Both have a kind of quavering vocal delivery, which combined with clear diction and a good feeling for lyrics can be very effective in putting across the meaning of a song.” Callicott’s recordings for Mitchell are superior to those on Blue Horizon, captured in beautiful form on mostly traditional material like “Laughing To Keep From Crying”, the title drawn from a line drawn from Virginia Liston’s “You Don’ Know my Mind” from 1923, an unusually detailed version of “Frankie And Albert”, “Roll And Tumble” and others. Callicott seems distracted and less focused on the Blue Horizon session possibly due to the presence of Bill Barth (second guitar) and Bukka White (whistling). He does turn in some fine performances including “Hoist Your Window And Let Your Curtain Down”, “Joe’s Troubled Blues”, the ancient “War Time Blues” which probably dates back to World War I (Yack Taylor’s “Those Draftin’ Blues” is lyrically and melodically similar) and a fine version of Akers’ “Dough Roller Blues” which sports the arresting lyric: “I’ll cut your throat woman/Drink your blood like wine.”

Of those early recordings, “Cottonfield Blues Parts 1 & 2″ is a classic Mississippi blues hollered over a the throbbing groove of the amazingly tight twin guitars of Akers and Callicott. Callicott explained the set up: “I kept him chorded up good, trackin’ him…You hear them bases? Well, that’s me. Hear them little strings? Well, that’s him…And when that guy would get to playin’, I’m tellin’ you the truth-we’d sit face to face. And we changed up [i.e., swapped guitar lead]…and you wouldn’t know it.” The duo were swept up by one of those mobile recording unit as Gayle Wardlow explained in his groundbreaking article, Garfield Akers and Mississippi Joe Callicott: From the Hernando Cotton Fields: “In the fall of 1929 Brunswick/Vocalion Records made its initial field trip to Memphis to record talent for its Vocalion 1000 and Brunswick 7000 Race series. The session at the Peabody Hotel was highlighted by the first recorded appearances of Garfield Akers, Mattie Delaney, and Kid Bailey, concomitantly with veterans Memphis Minnie and Tampa Red. Callicott recorded his lone 78, “Fare Thee Well Blues/Traveling Mama Blues”, for Brunswick in 1930 at a second session in Memphis where Akers also recorded again (“Dough Roller Blues/Jumpin’ and Shoutin’”).

It’s worth quoting Oliver again from the concluding paragraph of his liner notes: “A wider recognition came almost too late but Joe appeared at the 1968 Memphis Blues Festival and was looking forward to a European trip. Back at his home, with the birds whistling and witnessed by his wife and their bellcow, he recorded his last testament; he died early in 1969 and with him went the last echoes of Mississippi country music of the earliest phase of the blues.”

Fare Thee Well Blues [1930](MP3)

Traveling Mama Blues [1930] (MP3)

Garfield Akers – Cottonfield Blues (Pt. 1) [1929] (MP3)

Garfield Akers – Cottonfield Blues (Pt. 2) [1929] (MP3)

Laughing To Keep From Crying [1967] (MP3)

Goodbye Baby Blues [1967] (MP3)

Dough Roller Blues [1968] (MP3)

Joe’s Troubled Blues [1968] (MP3)

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)

Show Notes:

JSP Records is a record label founded in 1978 by John Stedman (John Stedman Productions). These days they mostly issue box sets of public domain jazz and blues records. Among the box sets issued include single artist sets on Blind Willie McTell, Blind Blake, Memphis Minnie, Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Sonny Boy Williamson and regional compilations like Atlanta Blues, Memphis Masters, East Coast Blues, Texas Blues and many others. These 4 and 5 CD sets are very cheap and you do get lots of great music for your buck pus they’re nicely packaged with usually good, if sometimes brief, notes. The remastering, particularly on the pre-war collections, vary greatly from set to set but are often a sonic upgrade to Document but usually can’t compare to labels like Yazoo and Revenant. Also one thing that bothers me is that are consistent errors such as mislabled tracks or artists which probably means JSP is throwing these on the market too quickly.

I’ve been thinking about remastering quite a bit lately. Overall Yazoo does an excellent job bringing the music to the surface but you still get a fair amount of hiss and crackle. To be honest I have no problem with this as some of the technologies major labels have used like No-Noise, while removing all surface noise, leave the records sounding sterile, lifeless and artificial. Also Yazoo used the original 78′s as the source where JSP does not. I wish JSP would be more transparent regarding remastering and told us a bit about their remastering actually entails.

Anyway on to today’s show which spotlights the following recent JSP box sets: The Road To Robert Johnson & Beyond, Lightnin’ Special Vol. 2, Ma Rainey: Mother of the Blues, Crescent City Bounce: From Blues to R&B In New Orleans, When The Levee Breaks: Mississippi Blues – Rare Cuts 1926-1941.

I’ve reviewed some of the sets so just follow the links for more about each one. You’ll notice that this part one and I’ll be certainly doing a follow-up. The JSP sets keep rolling in and a couple of interesting new ones include A Richer Tradition – Country Blues and String Band Music 1923-1942 and That’s What They Want: Juke Joint Blues – Good Time Rhythm & Blues 1943 – 1956.