Sun 28 Mar 2010
Big Road Blues Show 3/28/10: Some Piano Player, I’ll Tell You That – A Tribute To Francis Smith & The Piano Blues
Posted by Jeff under 1920's Blues, 1930's Blues, Piano Blues, Playlists
[4] Comments
| ARTIST | SONG | ALBUM |
|---|---|---|
| Little Brother Montgomery | Vicksburg Blues | The Piano Blues Vol. 1 Paramount |
| Charles Avery | Chain 'Em Down | The Piano Blues Vol. 1 Paramount |
| Blind Blake & Charlie Spand | Hastings St. | The Piano Blues Vol. 1 Paramount |
| Lucille Bogan | Ally Boogie | The Piano Blues Vol. 2 Brunswick |
| Mozelle Alderson | Tight In Chicago | The Piano Blues Vol. 2 Brunswick |
| Louise Johnson | By The Moon And The Stars | The Piano Blues Vol. 1 Paramount |
| Charles 'Speck' Petrum | Harvest Moon Blues | The Piano Blues Vol. 2 Brunswick |
| Eddie Miller | Freight Train Blues | The Piano Blues Vol. 2 Brunswick |
| Bert Mays | You Ca'’t Come In | The Piano Blues Vol. 3 Vocalion |
| Dan Stewart | New Orleans Blues | The Piano Blues Vol. 3 Vocalion |
| Cow Cow Davenport | Back In The Alley | The Piano Blues Vol. 3 Vocalion |
| Joe Dean | I'm So Glad I'm 21 Years Old Today | The Piano Blues Vol. 3 Vocalion |
| Lee Green | Memphis Fives | The Piano Blues Vol. 3 Vocalion |
| Pinetop Smith | Pine Top's Boogie Woogie | The Piano Blues Vol. 3 Vocalion |
| Romeo Nelson | Head Rag Hop | The Piano Blues Vol. 3 Vocalion |
| Leroy Carr | Alabama Woman Blues | The Piano Blues Vol. 7: Leroy Carr |
| Walter Roland | Early This Morning | The Piano Blues Vol. 6 - Walter Roland |
| Turner Parrish | Trenches | The Piano Blues Vol. 5: Postscript |
| Joe Pullum | Cows, See That Train Comin' | The Piano Blues Vol. 8: Texas Seaport |
| Andy Boy | House Raid Blues | The Piano Blues Vol. 8: Texas Seaport |
| Cripple Clarence Lofton | Strut That Thing | The Piano Blues Vol. 9 Lofton/Noble |
| Alfoncy Harris | Absent Freight Train Blues | The Piano Blues Vol. 11 Texas Santa Fe |
| Black Boy Shine | Brown House Blues | The Piano Blues Vol. 11 Texas Santa Fe |
| Pinetop Burks | Jack Of All Trades | The Piano Blues Vol. 11 Texas Santa Fe |
| Pigmeat Terry | Black Sheep Blues | The Piano Blues Vol. 13: Central Highway |
| Peetie Wheatstraw | Shack Bully Stomp | The Piano Blues Vol. 13: Central Highway |
| Georgia White | The Blues Ain't Nothin' But... | The Piano Blues Vol. 13: Central Highway |
| Whistlin' Alex Moore | Blue Bloomer Blues | The Piano Blues Vol. 15: Dallas |
| Charlie Spand | Soon This Morning Blues | The Piano Blues Vol. 16 - Charlie Spand |
| Jabo Williams | Pratt City Blues | The Piano Blues Vol. 17 - Paramount Vol. 2 |
| Pinetop and Lindberg | East Chicago Blues | The Piano Blues Vol. 20 - Barrelhouse Years |
| Stump Johnson & Dorothy Trowbridge | Steady Grindin' | Piano Blues Vol. 17 - Paramount Vol. 2 |
| Bumble Slim w/ Myrtle Jenkins | Somebody Loses | Piano Blues Vol. 17 - Paramount Vol. 2 |
| Speckled Red | The Dirty Dozen No. 2 | The Piano Blues Vol. 20 - Barrelhouse Years |
| Henry Brown | Henry Brown Blues | The Piano Blues Vol. 1 Paramount |
Show Notes:
Some piano player, I’ll tell you that
(Ivy Smith, Alabama Strut)
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| Read Liner Notes |
On December 4, 2009 Francis Wilford-Smith died and today we pay tribute to him. Smith was an avid collector of 78 records, a broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 (Aspects of the Blues) and the compiler of some excellent piano blues LP’s on the British label Magpie Records, drawing all the material from his own collection. Today’s selections all come from Smith’s groundbreaking 21 volume series he started in 1977 and issued on the Magpie label, a subsidiary o of the Flyright label. Subsequently his collection was used for a piano blues series on Yazoo issued on CD. He had one of the largest collections of piano blues 78′s in the world. Smith also field recorded Roosevelt Sykes and Little Brother Montgomery at his home in Sussex in 1960, yielding two 1980s LP’s of the latter: These Are What I Like: Unissued Recordings Vol. 1 and Those I Liked I Learned: Unissued Recordings Vol. 2. Smith made a good living from cartoons published under the pen name ‘Smilby’ in Playboy, which allowed him to outbid others for rare 78s. Wilford-Smith was 82, had suffered from Parkinson’s disease since 1994, and spent his last years in a nursing home. He died asleep in bed.
On a personal note, it was through the Magpie series that I became a life long fan of piano blues. I came to the series late, my first purchase was volume 20 and I must have been around 16. The album made a huge impression on me and I even remember exactly where I purchased it – Tower Records on West 4th St., NYC. I went back and picked up as many of the rest of the albums I could find and over the years completed the entire series. The series had everything you would want; each thematically well assembled, excellent liner notes (brief introductions by Smith) by Bob Hall, Paul Oliver and Richard Noblett and superb transfers.
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| Read Liner Notes |
Before I give some background on the individual volumes, its worth quoting Wilford-Smith from his introduction to the series: “The well-merited reissue of so many excellent blues guitar records over the past few years has had, perhaps, one unfortunate and unintentional – in that it caused the pianist to be unfairly overshadowed. This album marks the start of a series which, it is hoped, will put into perspective the role of the piano in blues history and do justice to the memory of the many fine pianists who have so enriched the music. We are only using 78 originals from my own collection, thus giving the listener the rare chance to hear records; at their best. No dubs, no tape-tracks that have wandered in and out of half-a-dozen tape collections before being issued with that all too familiar dead and muffled cotton-wool-in-the-ears sounds. No ordinary filtering of any sort has been done in any misguided attempt t0 ‘improve’ the quality, and each listener is left free to filter to his own taste. Surface noise there may be, but freshness and vitality are not strained away. The selection of records both here and throughout the series will be essentially subjective and reflect my own taste, but l shall endeavor to include a wide-ranging variety of piano styles and treatments to give as broad as possible a picture of the whole blues piano scene.”
More or less, we work our way through the series volume by volume. The first volume and volume 17 are devoted to Paramount and as Smith writes: “…We start with Paramount, almost unchallenged as the greatest blues label, and its piano content lives up to its reputation. Here are joys indeed - and some of the greatest blues piano ever recorded. Spand, Little Brother, Ezell, Louise Johnson, Wesley Wallace, Garnett. …I think the playing here must satisfy the most critical lover of the blues.” From those volumes we spin tracks by Little Montgomery, Charles Avery, Charlie Spand, Louise Johnson, Henry Brown and Jabo Williams.
“…The second volume”, Smith writes, “in our Piano Blues Series, will be found very different in character to Volume One. … Here on Brunswick a large proportion of the piano blues bear a strong family resemblance and emotional unity. This perhaps because several of the artists would seem to hail from the St. Louis area, and share that hollow-chorded easy-rocking piano style.” The Piano Blues Vol. 3 is devoted to the Vocalion label which was founded in 1916 and acquired by Brunswick in 1925. These are particularly strong volumes and we included several tracks from these collections including Eddie Miller, Charles “Speck” Pertum, Lucille Bogan, Mozelle Alderson, Romeo Nelson and Joe Dean among others.
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| Read Liner Notes |
Next to St. Louis, one of the most musically rich piano regions was Texas as Paul Oliver observed: “Texas was as rich in piano blues as Mississippi was in guitar blues …A cursory glance through the discographies will emphasize the fact that a remarkable number of blues pianists came from Texas.” Four volumes in the series are devoted to the piano blues of Texas: The Piano Blues Vol. 4 – The Thomas Family 1925-1929, The Piano Blues Vol. 8 – Texas Seaport 1934-1937, The Piano Blues Vol. 11 – Texas Sante Fe 1934-1937 and The Piano Blues Vol. 15 – Dallas 1927-1929. The Texas pianists, Oliver notes, “…can be grouped into ‘schools’, characterized by certain similarities of style and approach, that were partly a reflection of the environments in which they worked, of their friendships and associations with other pianists, and by the isolation of Texas from other states.” One school was the so-called “Santa Fe group” who were based in the southwestern part of the state where the cities of Galveston, Houston and Richmond lie. Here was where the music thrived and pianists could be found like Pinetop Burks, Son Becky, Rob Cooper, Black Boy Shine, Andy Boy, Big Boy Knox, Robert Shaw, Buster Pickens and the singers who worked with them like Walter “Cowboy” Washington and Joe Pullum. The other important school was a cluster of pianists and singers based in Dallas such as Alex Moore, Texas Bill Day, Neal Roberts Willie Tyson, and singer Billiken Johnson. The earlier Texas piano tradition is documented on The Piano Blues Vol. 4 – The Thomas Family 1925-1929. As David Evans states: “It is likely that no family has contributed more personalities to blues history than the Thomas family of Houston, Texas, whose famous members included George W. Thomas, his sister Beulah “Sippie” Wallace, their brother Hersal Thomas, George’s daughter Hociel Thomas, and Moanin’ Bernice Edwards who was raised up in the family.”
Several volumes in the series are devoted to individual artists or a cluster of artists: The Piano Blues Vol. 6 – Walter Roland 1933-1935, The Piano Blues Vol. 7 – Leroy Carr 1930-1935, The Piano Blues Vol. 9 – Lofton-Noble 1935-1936 (Cripple Clarence Lofton and George Noble), The Piano Blues Vol. 12 – Big Four 1933-1941 (Little Brother Montgomery, Walter Davis, Roosevelt Sykes, Springback James) and The Piano Blues Vol. 18 – Roosevelt Sykes/Lee Green 1929-1930.
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| Read Liner Notes |
Among the other volumes in the series we play tracks from The Piano Blues Vol. 5 – Postsript 1927-1935, The Piano Blues Vol. 13 – Central Highway 1933-1941, The Piano Blues Vol. 14 – The Accompanist and The Piano Blues Vol. 20 – Barrelhouse Years 1928-1933. Among the tracks we spin from these collections are Turner Parrish’s remarkable “The Trenches” who Bob Hall calls “an eccentric and probably unschooled pianist with nevertheless a considerable technique”, Georgia White accompanying herself on piano on the boisterous “The Blues Ain’t Nothin’ But…”, the obscure Pigmeat Terry who sings magnificently on the moving “Black Sheep Blues” accompanied by his own piano and the wonderful Pinetop and Lindberg’s “East Chicago Blues.”
The piano blues series officially concluded with The Piano Blues Vol. 21 – Unfinished Boogie 1938-1945 which collects unreleased recordings of Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis. As mentioned previously two collections of recordings by Little Brother Montgomery were made at Smith’s home in 1960 and were the final albums issued on the Magpie imprint. Yazoo Records launched their own piano blues series also using 78’s from Smith’s collection. As far as I can tell the series has stopped but they issued seven excellent collections.
Related Articles:
Notes to The Piano Blues Vol. 8 – Texas Seaport 1934-1937, The Piano Blues Vol. 11 – Texas Sante Fe 1934-1937 and The Piano Blues Vol. 15 – Dallas 1927-1929 (Word Doc)






Sunnyland backed Robert Lockwood on several sessions; one for J.O.B. in March 1951, a second session for Mercury in November and again for J.O.B. in 1955. Lockwood in turn backed Sunnyland on sessions for J.O.B. and Mercury in 1951 and again for J.O.B. in 1954 plus some sessions in 1960. Lockwood and Sunnyland made a potent team and among their collaborations we hear “Down Home Child”, “Low Down Sunnyland Train”, “Glory For Man”, “I’m Gonna Dig Myself a Hole” and “Pearly B.”
Becky Thatcher riverboat in 1965. In addition to his pre-war recordings, he was recorded by Paul Oliver in 1960, by Sam Charters with Edith Johnson in 1961 and by Adelphi in 1969.
Aaron and Marion
Joe Dean was one of the few artists actually born in St. Louis, born in the city April 25, 1908. He recorded one 78 for Vocalion, “I’m So Glad I’m Twenty-One Years Old Today” b/w “Mexico Bound Blues”, in 1930. He remained musically active on a part-time basis into the 1960′s. He eventually became the Rev. Joe Dean and died on June 24 1981. He was interviewed by Mike Rowe for Blues Unlimited magazine.


Listening to The Complete Blue Horizon Sessions prompted me to reacquaint myself with In London which I hadn’t listened to in ages. I’ve been informed that this has made it on to CD on the Deram label which may itself be out of print although copies look to be still available. Despite extremely lean times, Jones sailed into his 1960′s comeback as an artist at the height of his powers as he ably demonstrates on In London backed by sympathetic band featuring bassist Jack Fallon, drummer Eddie Taylor and Alexis Korner on guitar on a few numbers. The program is a mix of old classics like “Lonesome Bedroom Blues”, Alleybound Blues”, “You Got Good Business” plus items he had been playing for his European audiences, numbers like Percy Mayfield’s “Please Send Me Someone To Love”, the rollicking instrumental, “Young Generation Boogie”, based on the Ray Charles instrumental “Rockhouse” and the charming “Syl-Vous Play Blues.” Jones revives classic piano pieces including an elegant version of “The Honeydripper”, “Curtis Jones Boogie”, his version of the timeless “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie” and the rocking “Shake It Baby.” Of the guitar pieces, “Skid Row” is the standout, the kind of seedy life blues tale Jones so excelled at conjuring up. Paul Oliver provides a fine set of notes for the original LP which have been reprinted in Blues Off The Record.
I remember exactly when I became enthralled with the early piano blues. I was was in Tower Records in NYC (still in in high school) browsing through blues records when I stumbled across the LP The Piano Blues Volume Twenty: Barrelhouse Years 1928-1933. I soon realized that this was the tail end of a groundbreaking piano series on
More piano-based and jazz-influenced than anything else, West Coast Blues is really California blues even if most of the main practitioners actually hailed from Texas. There was no pre-war blues activity in California but the the post-war blues era was booming. With the shipyards and aircraft factories desperate for labor during the war years, blacks flocked to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland and small towns like Richmond, Fresno, Stockton and Modesto. The non-white population exploded from 80, 000 in 1930 to 462,000 by 1950. Numerous small independent labels popped up in the 40′s to cater to this new market including Aladdin, Swingtime, Modern, Speciality and many smaller outfits who specialized in R&B and blues and would take more chances than the more established labels.
Amos Milburn signed with Aladdin in 1946 and had the first of19 Top Ten R&B smashes with 1948′ storming “Chicken Shack Boogie.” In addition to rocking boogies he he could croon in the best Charles Brown manner. In the same mold was Little Willie Littlefield who made his debut in 1948 racking up major R&B hits with “It’s Midnight” and “Farewell.” Floyd Dixon also debuted in 1948 earning many comparisons to his mentor Charles Brown although eventually developing a grittier, more soulful sound than Brown. Dixon hit locally with 1949′s “Dallas Blues.” Aladdin Records acquired Dixon’s contract with Modern in late 1950, immediately pairing him with Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers for “Telephone Blues,” his first nationwide hit. Roy Hawkins too made his debut in 1948 although less well remembered than his contemporaries. Hawkins had two major R&B hits: 1950′s “Why Do Things Happen to Me” and “The Thrill Is Gone” the following year.
Whistlin’ Alex Moore certainly knew intimately about this area as he related to Oliver: “Oh they were tough joints…I’d play them all, from North Dallas to the East Side…Froggy Bottom…Central Tracks…well they had just about everything up and down there from beer joints to saloons.” Moore was a resident of Dallas all his eighty years and had spent most of his working life as a cart driver, and later, hotel porter. Moore had a long career, punctuated by large recording gaps, cutting ten sides in 1929, sessions in 1947, 1951, sessions for Arhoolie and cut an album for Rounder the year before he died in 1988. Oliver describes Moore as a “folk blues poet par excellence” and “one of the most poetic blues singers on record, Alex Moore had developed as a remarkable pianist in the purest boogie and blues tradition with an eccentric inventive flair both in his vocals and his playing.” Moore’s poetic flair is on display on “Heart Wrecked Blues” and particularly his
Moore was perhaps the last of the early Texas piano although a couple of others survived long enough to make some latter day recording. Edwin ‘Buster’ Pickens and Robert Shaw ran around with the pianists who worked the Santa Fe railroad townships. Both Robert Shaw and Buster Pickens didn’t record under their own name until the 1960′s. Pickens did some session work, most notably behind Lightnin’ Hopkins and cut one full-length record in the 1960’s for the Heritage label. Oliver describes him in the 60’s, as “virtually the last of the barrelhouse and saw-mill pianists, for his contemporaries are nearly all dead …Pickens, born in 1915, was younger then many of them though he shared the work, and small, compact and tough, he is still playing. His world has been one of railroad routes and this is reflected in many of his blues.” A prime example is his
Piano blues seems to have gotten overshadowed by the emphasis on the guitar. Today the piano blues tradition is in steep decline. This week’s show harks back to the glory days of barrelhouse piano, in particular a remarkable group of piano men who where based in Texas during the 1920′s and 30′s. As Paul Oliver observed: “Texas was as rich in piano blues as Mississippi was in guitar blues …A cursory glance through the discographies will emphasize the fact that a remarkable number of blues pianists came from Texas.”
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