Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

Today’s show spotlights a decade in the vibrant, swinging  Los Angeles blues scene between 1942 and 1952. The West Coast had a thriving blues and jazz scene in the 1940’s and 50’s with most of the activity centering around the Los Angeles, Richmond, Oakland and San Francisco Bay areas. The Black population swelled in the 1940′s, due to large manpower needs to work in the U.S. defense industry during World War II. These new arrivals needed entertainment, of course, and the local jazz and blues club scene heated up quickly. From approximately 1920 to 1955, Central Avenue was the heart of the African-American community in Los Angeles. Like New York City’s 125th Street or Memphis’s Beale Street or Chicago’s South Side, Central Avenue was one of the world capitols of nightlife, of jazz, rhythm & blues, of black culture and society.

I’ve devoted several shows to the West Coast blues scene of this period but many of today’s artists I haven’t played before. The bulk of today’s recordings come from three excellent recent reissues: the 4-CD collection on JSP, Jump ‘n’ Jive: Rare West Coast R&B 1945-1954 which collects several obscure and rarely anthologized sides, Cake Walkin’ : The Modern Recordings 1947-1948 on the Ace label which collects terrific sides drummer Al Wichard and his swinging sextet and Blues Belles With Attitude!!, also on the Ace label, which gathers together some gritty blues ladies who recorded for the Modern label, many of the sides previously unreleased.

Jump ‘n’ Jive: Rare West Coast R&B 1945-1954 draws together sides from West Coast artists Charlie “Boogie Woogie” Davis, Dick Lewis, King Porter, Roy Milton, Lloyd Glenn, Calvin Boze, Jimmy Liggins, Gene Phillips and Poison Gardner. From the notes: “Several  musicians  -  Jake  Porter, Gene Phillips and Marshal  Royal  - are common to many of these cuts, but the collection’s jewels are recordings by Charlie ‘Boogie Woogie’ Davis, Richard ‘Dick’ Lewis and Leon ‘Poison’ Gardner. Little is known of them but collectors have long treasured their records. Few of these 78s were ever reissued on LP let alone on CD until now: of  the 101 tracks over half are by this trio of artists. With the eight titles by Lloyd  Glenn they represent the first batch of releases on Imperial  Records’ 5000 ‘race records’ series which began in 1947.”

Virtually nothing is known about vocalist/pianist Charlie “Boogie Woogie” Davis who cut two dozen sides in L.A. at three sessions in 1947. Davis is a fine big voiced singer who could pound the 88′s and was blessed with a  swinging combo featuring the outstanding trumpeter Jake Porter. Porter moved to L.A. in 1949 where he performed in the clubs with Lionel Hampton, Benny Goodman, Flether Henderson and others. He was an in-demand session artist working with Saunders King, Lloyd Glenn, Gene Phillips and others. He also cut a handful of sides under his own name in 1948 and 1949. Richar “Dick” Lewis  cut some two-dozen sides for Imperial and Aladdin between 1947 and 1954. From the notes:  ”Once again biographical information is  sparse with only brief mentions in Billboard and the  knowledge of other sessions he worked on.” Pianist Poison Gardner is another shadowy figure who seems to have been a major attraction in L.A. He cut two-dozen sides for Imperial between 1945 and 1947.

The Wichard tracks come from the terrific recent reissue on Ace, Cake Walkin’: The Modern Recordings 1947-1948. Al Wichard was born in Welbourne, Arkansas, on August 15th, 1919 but the steps by which he arrived in Los Angeles as a drummer in 1944 remain shadowy. He managed to record with Jimmy Witherspoon and Jay McShann within weeks of his arrival, and in April 1945 was the drummer on Modern’s first session, accompanying Hadda Brooks. This CD consists entirely of sessions made under his own name. Thirteen tracks have vocals by Jimmy Witherspoon while others feature vocalist Duke Henderson and guitarist Pee Wee Crayton. All these sides were cut between 1945 and 1949. Witherspoon is in magnificent form throughout, including our selections,  “Geneva Blues”,  “Good Lover Blues” and “T.B. Blues.” Henderson wasn’t quite in Spoon’s league, few were, but he turns in the high octane “His Majesty’s Boogie” and the superb low-down performance on  “Gravels In My Pillow” as he boasts:

They call me the devil’s stepchild, they say I’m just no good (2x)
They say I’m rotten from the start, wouldn’t be no other way if I could

We also spin a pair of Wichard’s instrumentals including the gentle swing of “Junction Drive” featuring superb piano from McShann and an impressive, but unknown guitar player, and the blistering “Boogie Woogie Basement” featuring some incredibly wild guitar by Pee Wee Crayton with Wichard pounding away mightily in the background. If anything, the other Crayton spotlight, “Boogie Woogie Basement”,  is even wilder and one I promise to play on an upcoming show.

All the sides on the Ace CD Blues Belles With Attitude!! were cut for the Modern label. 18 of these sides are previously unissued and a further eight that have not seen prior CD release. This is a terrific collection spotlighting fine, obscure singers like Edna Broughton who we hear on Percy Mayfield’s “Two Years Of Torture” featuring a superb T-Bone Walker inspired guitarist, Effie Smith’s jumping “It’s Great To Be Rich” sporting another smoking, uncredited guitar player, and the tough Pearl Traylor on “Play Boy Blues” with great trumpet from Howard McGhee. We also spin Del Graham with Johnny Ingram’s band on ” Mr T 99″ an answer song to the Jimmy Nelson hit. There were a number of these kind of answer songs including Donna Hightower’s “I Ain’t In The Mood” in answer to John Lee Hooker and Cordella De Milo’s “Ain’t Gonna Hush” in answer to Big Joe Turner. All these singers were criminally under recorded, making these previously unissued sides all the more valuable.

We feature two tracks spotlighting guitarist Chuck Norris. Norris worked in Chicago until the mid-’40s, when he moved out to the West Coast. He soon became one of the in-demand musicians in Hollywood backing artists such as Ray Agee, Charles Brown, Floyd Dixon, Roy Hawkins, Duke Henderson, Helen Humes, Etta James, Pete Johnson, Litle Willie Littlefield, Percy Mayfield, Johnny Otis, Johnny Watson, Jimmy Witherspoon and many others. From time to time he did sessions on his own for labels like Atlantic, Mercury, Imperial, Aladdin and others between 1947 and 1953. Today’s tracks find him backing Big Jim Wynn on “West Coast Lover” and Pete Johnson’s “Rockin’ After Hours. “

Saxophonist and bandleader Jim Wynn was born Texas, but grew up in Los Angeles. Playing tenor saxophone, he began his professional career with Charlie Echols and was a sideman on hundreds of West Coast recordings, including a long association with Johnny Otis. As a bandleader (often billed as Big Jim Wynn), he recorded sporadically from 1945 to 1959 with a dozen different labels, including 4 Star/Gilt Edge, Modern, Specialty, Supreme, and Mercury. Wynn switched to baritone sax later in his career, and continued working as a sideman into the 1970′s.

Pete Johnson was one of the three great boogie-woogie pianists (along with Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis) whose sudden prominence in the late ’30s helped make the style very popular. He was part of the Kansas City scene in the 1920s and ’30s, often accompanying singer Big Joe Turner. Producer John Hammond discovered him in 1936 and got him to play at the Famous Door in New York. After taking part at Hammond’s 1938 Spirituals to Swing Carnegie Hall concert in 1938, Johnson started recording regularly and appeared on an occasional basis with Ammons and Lewis as the Boogie Woogie Trio. He also backed Turner on some classic records. Johnson recorded often in the 1940s and spent much of 1947-49 based in Los Angeles. He moved to Buffalo in 1950 and, other than an appearance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, he was in obscurity for much of the decade. A stroke later in 1958 left him partly paralyzed. Johnson made one final appearance at John Hammond’s January 1967 Spirituals to Swing concert, playing the right hand on a version of “Roll ‘Em Pete” two months before his death.

Born in Philadelphia, Jimmy “T-99″Nelson started his career in Oakland, where he met and was influenced by Big Joe Turner. Blessed with a booming voice and a hip delivery, Nelson cut a swath of fine sides for Modern’s RPM and Kent imprints in the early 50′s and 60′s but only scored big with his signature “T-99 Blues.” After getting dropped from Modern Nelson bounced through a number of small labels before giving up music in the 60?s. It wasn’t until the 80?s that he decided to refocus his energies on music, playing locally and making some guest appearances on record and appearing at festivals. After many trials and tribulations Nelson finally made his long awaited comeback record with 1999?s Rockin’ And Shoutin’ The Blues on Rounder, followed by two more on his own Nettie Marie label. I never got the chance to see him live but did manage to interview him twice, and of the numerous interviews I’ve done, they remains among my favorite.  Jimmy passed in 2007.

Charles “Crown Prince” Waterford was from Jonesboro, Arkansas. He sang with Leslie Sheffield’s Rhythmaires and Andy Kirk’s Twelve Clouds of Joy before beginning his career as “The Crown Prince of the Blues” in Chicago in the 1940s. Waterford shouted the blues for labels like Hy-Tone, Aladdin and Capitol. In 1949, he joined the King stable. In the 1950’s he recorded for small companies and later dedicated his life to the Church and became known as Reverend Charles Waterford. Waterford also passed in 2007.

Red Mack was a west coast vocalist who also played piano, organ, trumpet, cornet and drums. He fronted bands that cut sides for Gold Seal, Atlas and Mercury at sessions recorded in 1945, 1946 and 1951. Mack is heard to fine effect on the humorous “Mr. Big Head:”

You said your wife was fine, when you lived down on the farm (2x)
Now you got the big head, and a glamor girl on your arm
Well you making more money, and that’s a fact
You won’t drive nothing baby, but those big fine Cadillacs
Well your head is big and you think you own the moon
Well I’m tellin’ you fool, your head will go down sore

Mack’s sides have been collected, along with those of his contemporary Luke Jones, on the Krazy Kat LP Luke Jones & Red Mack – West Coast R&B 1947-1952. Luke Jones was a bandleader, alto and baritone sax player and clarinettist who was born in Louisiana but as an infant moved to Los Angeles. From the late 1930′s he was involved in the LA scene, playing for Lionel Hampton and Roy Milton before forming his own jump trio with pianist Betty Hall Jones and drummer/blues shouter George Vann. Between 1946 and 1949 he cut some two-dozen sides for the Atlas and Modern labels

Also on the Krazy Kat label is The Great Gates  – West Coast R’ n B 1949-1955.  Edward Gates White aka “The Great Gates” enjoyed a recording career as an R&B vocalist from 1949 to 1955, before changing to recording jazz organ instrumentals. He continually shifted between various small West Coast labels such as Selective, Kappa and Miltone. Gates was a smooth big voiced singer heard today on the moody “Late After Hours” backed by a killer little combo featuring the cooking tenor of Marvin Phillips and the smoldering “Teardrops Are Falling” featuring an excellent uncredited band with a superb guitarist.

Read Liner Notes

Tenor sax blower Buddy Banks began his career in California and played with all the best West Coast Orchestras. In 1945 he formed his own sextet. The band began recording by backing singer Marion Abernathy for the Juke Box label and in its own right for the tiny Sterling label. The band went on to record for Excelsior, United, Modern and Specialty through 1949.The band employed some fine vocalists including Fluffy Hunter, Baby Davis, Marion Abernathy and Bixie Crawford. The obscure Davis belts it out “Happy Home Blues” while Hunter storms through the rocking “Fluffy’s Debut.” It’s a shame both singers recorded so little. All these tracks come from the excellent LP Happy Home Blues issued on the Official label.

After wartime service Calvin Boze settled in Los Angeles and, as singer and trumpet player, heavily influenced by Louis Jordan. Boze first recorded in 1945, but his biggest successes came with Aladdin Records after 1949. In May 1950 he released “Safronia B”, which made it to made #9 on the Billboard R&B chart in June 1950.

Pioneering R&B guitarist Saunders King had his first hit in 1942 with “S.K. Blues.” It also features one of the earliest examples of electric blues guitar, the style for which T-Bone Walker would soon be famous. King recorded for the Aladdin, Modern, and Rhythm labels. He may have made a greater impact in the burgeoning West Coast blues scene of the ’40s but was saddled with numerous personal problems including the suicide of his wife in 1942, a serious wound from a .45-caliber pistol fired by his landlord in 1946, and his serving time at San Quentin prison for heroin possession. King retired from music in 1961 and dedicated time to the church. In 1979, he briefly came out of retirement to play on his son-in-law Carlos Santana’s Oneness album. He passed away on August 31, 2000 at his Oakland home. He was 91.

-Al ‘Cake’ Wichard Sextette: Cake Walkin‘ (PDF review from Blues & Rhythm Magazine website)

-Blues Belles With Attitude!! (PDF review from Blues & Rhythm Magazine website)

Show Notes:

Today’s program spotlights the New York based Sittin’ In With label which, despite its short life, issued some terrific blues recordings. The label was founded by Morty and Bob Shad in New York City in 1948. The label specialized in Southern blues and R&B, which was a departure from most Eastern labels up to that time. In fact a quite a number of the label’s artists were based out of Houston. Competition among independent record labels in Houston was intense with local labels like  Macy’s, Freedom, and Peacock all vying for talent. As for Shad’s connection to Houston, author Roger Wood related the following to me: “As for Bob Shad, all I know (mainly from the late Teddy Reynolds) is that he came to Houston and recorded a bunch of folks over the course of about a year or so, then disappeared.  Teddy said that he rented an old house in one of the wards and used it to audition (and sometimes recorded there) the talent he discovered.”

More information on Shad’s activities can be gleaned in an interview he did with author Arnold Shaw in his seminal Honkers And Shouters: “Started my own label after I left National; it was called Sittin’ In With. And I did all the early Charlie Venturas, Stan Getz, Wardell Gray. It was strictly jazz at the beginning-Gerry Mulligan, Buddy Stewart, Benny Green. But ther was no money in jazz. Used to sell seven to eight thousand. That’s when the blues thing hit me and I bought a Magnecord, which was probably the first portable tape recorder. Went down South and did a lot of recording with Peppermint Harris, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Smokey Hogg. Recorded in Texas, mostly Houston. But I did some up in Tyler; also Shreveport, Louisiana. The big problem with on-location recording was finding a piano that was in tune. I would go to the black quarter of town and ask the disk jockeys. I would tie up one musician and find a blue singer. One bluesman would tell you about another-it’s a whole family-everybody sings blues. I did Curley Weaver, Big bill Broonzy, Memphis Slim, Mel Walker with the Johnny Otis Band, Little Esther.”

Bob Shad was an outstanding jazz producer, but also supervised several major blues, pop, rock and R&B dates. Shad started his production career with Savoy in the ’40s, producing jazz sessions for Charlie Parker and blues and R&B albums for National. The labels earliest recordings were primarily jazz, featuring artists such as Chu Berry, Charlie Ventura and Stan Getz before cutting a blues recording by Brownie McGhee. After that release the label’s catalog mixed blues, vocal group  and jazz before blues became the label’s dominant sound. Soon Shad was issuing records by Lightnin’ Hopkins, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Smokey Hogg, Peppermint Harris, Bob Gaddy,  Curley Weaver, Elmore Nixon, Teddy Reynolds, James Wayne and Arbee Stidham among others. In 1951 Shad sold the label to Mercury although it appears releases on Sittin’ In With were released through 1953. Jade and Jax were subsidiary labels operated by Shad during the course of  Sittin’ In With. After Sittin’ In folded, Morty Shad continued the Jax label and later formed the Harlem label in 1953. Bob Shad went to Mercury Records in 1951 and in the spring of 1953 joined Decca. When Shad left Mercury in the 1960’s he founded Mainstream Records which, in addition to new material, recycled some of the Sittin’ In With recordings. Today’s program runs roughly chronologically and below you’ll find some background on today’s featured artists.

Leroy Dallas was born in Mobile, Alabama in 1920 and moved to Memphis in 1924. Along his travels he played washboard behind Brownie McGhee and formed a band with James McMillan playing the streets and juke joints of Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana and Tennessee. McMillan taught Dallas guitar and the two went on to tour the southern states working with  Frank Edwards who made recordings in1949 and Georgia Slim  who made records in 1937. By 1943 Dallas settled in Brooklyn New York. He made his first records for Sittin’ In With in 1949 consisting of six songs. He was accompanied by Brownie McGhee who was instrumental in setting up the session. Dallas was rediscovered by blues researcher Pete Welding and made a few recordings in the 60’s. Dallas gives a moving performance on “I’m Down Now But I Won’t Be Down Always” an picks up the pace on the rocking boogie “I’m Going Away.”

The two songs by Lil’ Son Jackson, “Gambling Blues b/w Homeless Blues”,  were issued on Sittin’ In With but originally came out on Houston’s Gold Star label. In 1948 Jackson became one of many blues singers to record for Gold Star. In 1946, Jackson shipped off a demo to Bill Quinn, who owned Houston based Gold Star Records. Jackson scored a national R&B hit, “Freedom Train Blues,” in 1948. It would prove Jackson’s only national hit, although his 1950-1954 output for Imperial Records must have sold consistently, judging from how many sides the L.A. firm issued.

Smokey Hogg was a down-home bluesman who scored a pair of major R&B hits in 1948 and 1950 (“Long Tall Mama” and “Little School Girl”) and cut prolifically for a slew of labels including Exclusive, Modern, Bullet, Macy’s, Sittin’ in With, Imperial, Mercury, Specialty, Fidelity, Combo, Federal, and Showtime). Smokey’s cousin John Hogg also played the blues, waxing six sides in 1951.

According to David Evans: “Around the end of 1949, or more likely early in 1950, Curley Weaver recorded four songs for the Sittin’ In With label. It’s not certain whether there were one or two sessions and whether the recordings were made in Atlanta or New York. Two tracks were not released until 1952 and may actually have been recorded that year.”  Weaver and McTell also cut a batch of records made in Atlanta for Regal Records in May 1950.

After first moving to Houston in 1943, Peppermint Harris started to play blues professionally in 1947, at such venues as the Eldorado Ballroom. It was his friend Lightnin’ Hopkins who go him the opportunity to record for Gold Star circa 1947/48. A subsequent session in 1949 or 1950 for the Sittin’ In With label produced his, and the label’s, first hit record, the song “Rainin’ in My Heart” which is one of two numbers featured today. He cut some two-dozen sides for the label. He went on to record for over a dozen labels through the 60′s including Aladdin, Money, Dart, Duke, and Jewel.

Teddy Reynolds, blues pianist, songwriter, and singer, was born in Houston on July 12, 1931. Reynolds recorded numerous tracks but is most famous among blues aficionados for his studio work and touring with some of the top Texas-based artists of his generation, including Bobby Bland, Texas Johnny Brown, Johnny Copeland, Grady Gaines, Clarence Green, Peppermint Harris, Joe “Guitar” Hughes, B. B. King, and Phillip Walker. In 1950 he cut ten tracks for the Sittin’ In With label including our selection, the moody “Right Will Always Win.”

Among T-Bone’s legion of disciples was Houston’s Goree Carter, whose big break came when he signed to Houston’s Freedom Records circa 1949. For his first couple of side he was billed as “Little T-Bone.” Freedom issued plenty of Carter records over the next few years, and he later recorded for Imperial/Bayou, Sittin’ in With, Coral, Jade, and Modern without denting the national charts. From his handful of cuts for Sittin’ in With we spin the atmospheric instrumental  “Bull Corn Blues.”

Sittin’ recorded several Houston based artists but in one way or the other they all revolved around Lightnin’ Hopkins who cut a staggering number of sides for numerous labels as well as encouraging many artists, including several featured today. Hopkins cut some tw0-dozen sides for Sittin’ In With, and related labels Harlem and Jax, in 1951 with about half the sessions cut in New York and the others in Houston. Today’s featured Hopkins tracks include the poignant “You Caused My Heart To Weep” and one of Hopkins’ patented boogies, “New York Boogie” which gives our show its title. Shad had this say about Hopkins: “When we picked him up and talked a recording date, he wouldn’t sign a contract. He wouldn’t accept a royalty deal. He had to be paid in cash. Not only that, he had to be paid after each cut. …He didn’t know the lyrics from one song to another, but made them up as he went along …Whatever hit his mind, he sang and recorded.”

L.C. Williams was a singer/tap dancer who also occasionally drummed behind Hopkins. He arrived in Houston in 1945 and was one of the many characters who hung around in Lightning’s orbit, sitting on stoops drinking beer and wine, shooting the breeze with passers-by. He made his first record in 1947 with Hopkins on piano and guitar. Hopkins plays guitar on a four-song session for Gold Star in 1948 with Williams making some sides for Eddie’s and Freedom between 1948-1950 and four songs for Sittin’ In in 1951 featuring Hopkins on guitar. He died in Houston of TB in 1960. Williams and Hopkins deliver gripping, intense performances on “The Lazy J” and “Fannie Mae.”

James Waynes was credited with that name on his earliest recordings. Later it became James Wayne and from 1955 onwards, Wee Willie Wayne. He was discovered in Texas by Sittin’ In With boss Bob Shad. It was for this label that Wayne made his first recording (in Houston) and his only hit: “Tend To Your Business”, which reached # 2 on the Billboard R&B charts in 1951. Shad next recorded Waynes at the WGST studio in Atlanta, Georgia. Among the five songs recorded there was the all-time classic “Junco Partner”, which became a local hit and one of the two numbers we spotlight today. He was then signed by Imperial, who recorded him in New Orleans and the cut sides for Aladdin and Old Town and returned to Imperial in 1955 and recorded “Travelin’ Mood” and others in 1955. Both “Junco Partner” and “Travelin’ Mood” became standards in the repertoire of many New Orleans musicians, like Dr. John, Professor Longhair, James Booker and Snooks Eaglin. Further records appeared on the Peacock and Angletone labels, before he was signed by Imperial for a third time in 1961.

Elmore Nixon was a Houston pianist who was a sideman on labels such as Gold Star, Peacock, Mercury, Savoy and Imperial between 1949 and 1955. In the 1960’s he backed Lightnin’ Hopkins and Clifton Chenier on sessions. He also cut over two-dozen sides under his own name between 1949 and 1952 for labels like Sittin’ In With, Peacock, Mercury Savoy and Imperial.

Brownie McGhee & His Jook Block Busters featured Sonny Terry and Bob Gaddy, with the group cutting a dozen sides for the Jax label in 1952. As the Jook House Rockers (sans Sonny Terry) the group cut for Morty Shad’s Harlem label in 1954. Sonny Terry and His Buckshot 5, featuring Bob Gaddy and Brownie McGee, cut one 78 for the Harlem label in 1954. Brownie McGhee’s combo cut some potent R&B and we spin two sets worth of tunes including the good natured “A Letter To Lightnin’ Hopkins”, tough blues like “Pawnshop Blues”, a majestic “Key To The Highway” and the romping “Meet You In The Morning.” Sonny Terry’s “Dangerous Woman (with a .45 in her hand)” is every bit as tough as the title suggests.

There were quite a number of artists who cut just one or a handful of sides for the label. The most famous is Ray Charles who cut a couple of sides for Sittin’ In With in 1951 and would go on to much greater success a few years later with Atlantic. Then there was James “Widemouth” Brown, Gatemouth Brown’s brother, who cut one 78 for the Jax label 1952. Our cut, “Boogie Woogie Nighthawk”, is a swinging big band blues showing  Gate’s brother to be a fine singer and impressive guitarist. He died in 1971. Clarence Jolly was a fine blues shouter in the vain of Roy Brown who cut four sides for Sittin’ In With in 1951 and two for Cobra in 1957. Several artists cut just a lone 78 for the label including several superb down home bluesmen like Johnny Beck who cut one 78 in 1949 in Houston, Jesse James who cut one 78 for the label in1950 and one for Down Town in 1948, The Sugarman who cut one 78 for the label in 1951 and Sam “Suitcase” Johnson cut a lone 78 for the label, the bouncy “Sam’s Boogie” , in 1951.

Show Notes:

The Mississippi Sheiks were the most commercially successful black string band of the pre-war era and made close to one hundred records between 1930 and 1935. Their repertoire drew upon all facets of black and white rural music: hard-edged blues, pop music, hokum, white country and traditional songs. At the group’s core was fiddler Lonnie Chatmon and singer/guitarist Walter Vinson and often joined on their recording dates by Lonnie’s brothers Bo Chatmon (who recorded solo as Bo Carter) and Sam Chatmon. Along with Charlie McCoy, this group of musicians also recorded in a few different instrumental combinations and under several different names including the Mississippi Blacksnakes, the Mississippi Mud Steppers, Chatmon’s Mississippi Hot Footers, the Jackson Blues Boys among others names. They also backed other artists like Texas Alexander, Alec Johnson  and backed Bo Carter on a few of his recording dates.

The Mississippi Sheiks grew out of a string band formed by members of the highly musical Chatmon family, who resided on the Gaddis and McLaurin plantation just outside the small town of Bolton, Mississippi. The father of the family was Henderson Chatmon, a sharecropper of mixed racial origins who had been a fiddler since the days of slavery. With his wife Eliza, he reportedly had thirteen children, eleven of which were sons who all played musical instruments. From around 1910 until 1928, seven of them formed a string band known as the Chatmon Brothers, and they performed at country dances, parties and picnics. As Sam Chatmon related to Paul Oliver in 1960: “We started out from our parents-it’s just a gift that we had in the family.  …I played bass violin for them, and Lonnie, he played lead violin and Harry he played second violin. And my brother Larry, he beat the drums. And my brother Harry, he played the piano you see. And my brother Bo he played the guitar too and he even used to play tenor banjo. And I played guitar. We just pick up and play any instrument and play one to another. We came from Bolton, Mississippi, we were raised up there; and so, many of us played some numbers and some played others, so we named ourselves the Mississippi Sheiks.”

It’s been stated that the Chatmon clan also included two half-brothers; one named Ferdinand and the other Charlie Patton. It’s claimed in an interview with Sam Chatmon that he claimed Ferdinand recorded under the name Alec Johnson. Johnson recorded six sides for Columbia in 1928 backed by Bo Carter, Charlie McCoy and Joe McCoy. As for Patton the source is again Sam Chatmon and this is discussed at length in the biography King of the Delta Blues: The Life and Music of Charlie Patton. There’s no question that Patton knew the family well; Sam claimed that his father, Henderson, had had an affair with Annie Patton and so was also Charlie’s father. The Patton family members interviewed said no, and the book advances the theory that one of Patton’s brothers was more likely an illegitimate Chatmon than Charlie was. The authors  seem to think that Sam Chatmon was just trying to boost himself with the Patton story. Sam Chatmon also mention a brother named Edgar who he said recorded under the name Leroy Carter. A Leroy Carter did cut two sides in 1935 (six sides went unissued) and its always been assumed that this was a pseudonym for Walter Vinson.

The central figure of the group was Lonnie, an accomplished fiddler who played a variety of musical styles. By the time of World War I, he had learned to read music and was purchasing sheet music in nearby Jackson and teaching popular tunes to his brothers. The Chatmon Brothers gained wide popularity among both black and white audiences. Around 1921, Lonnie recruited the Chatmon’s neighbor, Walter Vinson, to play with the group. By 1928 the seven-piece Chatmon Brothers had dissolved and Lonnie and Walter began performing regularly as a duo.

In February 1930 the OKeh field unit called at Shreveport, Louisiana, to do some recording at  the request of a local radio station. While there, they recorded  a small black group (Bo Carter was with the duo at the time ) who called themselves the Mississippi Sheiks. The group cut their two biggest hits at this session: “Sitting On Top Of The World” which spawned many cover versions and “Stop And Listen” derived from Tommy Johnson’s “Big Road Blues.” Showing their versatility, two numbers, “The Sheik Waltz” and “The Jazz Fiddler” were listed in Okeh’s hillbilly catalog and marketed to white listeners. Their records went down so well that OKeh recorded 14 more numbers in San Antonio in August. In December 1930, they were in Jackson ,Mississippi, near to home, when the Okeh field unit came by and recorded a further 16 selections. The Sheiks remade their two hits, “Sitting On Top Of The World” and “Stop And Listen” and the depression themed  ”Times Done Got Hard.” Chris Smith suggests that “Honey Babe Let The Deal Go Down” may have been prompted by a record company request for a version of  “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blues”, the Charlie Poole song widely known in the Southeastern states by both blacks and whites from Poole’s 1925 recording.

In October 1931, the Sheiks and Bo Carter were on the road again, traveling to Atlanta for a session which Bo remembered as one of the rare occasions on which he got drunk along with the others. In October 1931, over the course of two days in Atlanta, the Sheiks waxed 14 sides including several we feature today: the bleak “The World Is Going Wrong”,  the bouncy hokum of  “She’s A Bad Girl” plus other notable songs including the dark and powerful  “Livin’ In A Strain” which was unissued at the time and the gorgeous popular styled “Lazy Lazy River” sporting some tremendous fiddle from Lonnie.

The Mississippi Sheiks wrapped up their two days in Atlanta with four titles which show off Walter Vinson’s guitar playing to particular advantage, as well as including some clever lyrics like “Bed Spring Poker” and “I’ve Got Blood In My Eyes For You” which was one of four titles from these sessions issued on Columbia, the parent company of Okeh, which by 1932 was releasing material by popular Okeh artists like the Sheiks and Lonnie Johnson in an attempt to stave off the catastrophic fall in sales induced by the Depression. The gambit failed and Columbia’s race series ended in October 1932. As Chris Smith notes: “Around the time Columbia 14660-D was released, in June 1932, the Sheiks were recording for Paramount, which was in turn to terminate its 12/13000 race series towards the end of that year. The last two discs issued were both by the Missjssippi Sheiks; all through the Depression they had been favourites with black record buyers, and it’s not surprising that they were Paramount’s last throw of the dice.” Most of the material the group cut for Paramount were remakes and rewrites. There were some notable exceptions including the piano/guitar duet “I’ll Be Gone, Long Gone”, some flat out  terrific playing by Walter and Lonnie on “She’s Crazy About Her Lovin’” and “He Calls That Religion”, a stinging attack on the clergy:

Well, the preacher used to preach
To try to stay atoned
But now he’s preachin’ just to buy jellyroll

Well, he calls that religion
Yes, he calls that religion
Well, he calls that religion
But I know he’s goin’ to hell when he dies

Even in the depths of the depression in 1933 the popular Sheiks cut an 8 song session for Columbia but only two numbers were issued including the excellent “Show Me What You Got.” The Sheiks wrapped up their recording career with two sessions in San Antonio in March of 1934 that yielded 14 sides and a final 8 sides in New Orleans in January 1935 with all of these tracks seeing release.  While the Sheiks sales were declining they were still cutting superb music including “It’s Done Got Wet” a joyful celebration noting the end of prohibition, Walter Vinson singing convincingly on the dark  “I Am The Devil”, and  the topical numbers “Sales Tax” and “I Can’t Go Wrong.”

On April 9th 1934 Texas Alexander was backed by the Mississippi Sheiks on eight numbers. The lineup featured Bo on violin, Sam Chatman and Walter Vinson on guitars. Lonnie seems to be absent from this session. Highlights include “Seen Better Days”, “Texas Troublesome Blues”, “Last Stage Blues” and “Frost Texas Tornado Blues”, a topical blues dealing with a  tornado which destroyed the tiny town of Frost, Texas on May 6, 1930 leaving 41 dead.

Bo Carter made his recording debut in 1928, backing Alec Johnson. Carter soon was recording as a solo artist and became one of the dominant blues recording acts of the 1930′s, recording over 100 sides. He also played with and managed the family group, the Mississippi Sheiks, and several other acts in the area. Bo Carter specialized in double entendre songs, recording dozens of risqué songs like “Banana in Your Fruit Basket,” “Pin in Your Cushion”, “Your Biscuits Are Big Enough for Me”, “The Ins And Outs Of My Girl” and “Ram Rod Daddy” among many others.

As John Miller made clear, Carter was a also a superb guitarist: “He played with absolute facility in a variety of tunings and keys and his harmonic sense was unique in the Country Blues. …Whatever you may think of the “single entendre” aspect of some of his lyrics, when you really listen to what Bo Carter was doing, it become perfectly obvious that he was one of the great masters of Country Blues, and a player of unusual versatility, subtlety and imagination. As with other players of his generation, the origins of Bo’s music are shrouded in mystery, and it is very unlikely we’ll ever find an explanation for the harmonic richness of his music, so different from other musicians of his region. Bo’s right hand approach was different, too, picking with all fingers and moving fluidly between alternation, thumping and runs with his thumb.” Miller teaches the songs of Carter on the DVD’s the Guitar of Bo Carter and wrote some of the liner notes to the three  Bo Carter anthologies issued on Yazoo in the late 60′s and early 7o’s.  These albums, I imagine, played a major role in enhancing Carter’s reputation.

While several of Bo’s double entendre songs are featured today, we also spin a number of his other songs including “Corinne Corrina”, the first recording of this standard, and “East Jackson Blues” both featuring Bo on violin backed by Charlie McCoy and Walter Vinson. Bo had a knack for penning incredibly catchy, melodic numbers including featured tracks like “I Want You To Know”,  “Twist It, Baby”, “The Law Gonna Step On You”, “Who’s Been Here”  and “Tellin’ You ’bout It” backed by Lonnie’s wailing fiddle.

On his landmark trip to the United States in 1960, Paul Oliver came across Bo Carter and recounted the following in Conversation With The Blues: “Sharing a corner in the bare, shot-gun building on South 4th Street where Will Shade lived, was an ailing, blind, light-skinned man whom the occupants knew only as Old Man. By a lucky hunch I guessed he might be Bo Carter and the sick man brightened to hear his name. At first he could hardly hold down the strings of his heavy steel guitar with its worn fingerboard. But he slowly mastered it and in a broken voice, that mocked the clear and lively singing on his scores of recordings under his own name and with the Mississippi Sheiks, he recalled incidents from his varied life and some of the songs that had made him one of the most famous of blues singers. Baby When You Marry he had recorded nearly thirty years before (OK 8888) in 1931 and in the years since he had worked on medicine shows, farmed and begged.”

As Carter related: “Well, we called us the Mississippi Sheiks, all of us Chatmons, cause my name’s Bo Chatman only they called me Bo Carter. We toured with the band right through the country; through the Delta, through Louisiana down to New Orleans… …Tell ya, we was the Mississippi sheiks and when we went to make the records in Jackson, Mississippi, the feller wanted to show us how to stop and start the records. Try to tell us when we got to begin and how we got to end. And you know, I started not to make ‘em! I started not to make ‘em ’cause he wasn’t no muscianer, so how could he tell me to stop and start the song? We was the Sheiks, Mississippi Sheiks and you know we was famous.”

Bo Carter, 1960, Photo By Paul Oliver

Sam Chatmon survived to begin performing and recording again in the1960′s. Chatmon began playing music as a child, occasionally with his family’s string band, as well as the Mississippi Sheiks. Sam launched his own solo career in the early ’30s. While he performed and recorded  on his own, he would still record with the Mississippi Sheiks and with his brother Lonnie. Throughout the ’30s, Sam traveled throughout the south, playing with a variety of minstrel and medicine shows. He stopped traveling in the early ’40s, making himself a home in Hollandale, Mississippi, where he worked on plantations. For the next two decades, Chatmon was essentially retired from music and only worked on the plantations. When the blues revival arrived in the late ’50s, he managed to capitalize on the genre’s resurgent popularity. In 1960, he signed a contract with Arhoolie and he recorded a number of songs for the label. The earliest of these were recorded in 1960 and issued on the album I Have To Paint My Face. As Mack McCormick wrote in the liner notes: “With Bo (who is credited with composing Corrine Corrina) ailing and feeble in Memphis, and the other brothers dead or scattered, Sam Chatman lives in a shotgun house across the tracks in Hollendale, Mississippi, working variously as a yard man, day laborer and truck driver. Adding the scarce but vital element of the near-forgotten minstrel songs to this collection, these are Chatman’s only recordings in the past 25 years.”

Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, he recorded for a variety of labels, as well as playing clubs and blues and folk festivals across America.In 1972 he cut the album The New Mississippi Sheiks, reuniting with Walter Vinson, cut the excellent The Mississippi Sheik for Blue Goose in the early 70′s as well as albums for Rounder, Albatros and Flying Fish among others. Chatmon passed in 1983.

Walter Vinson rarely worked as a solo act, seemingly much more at home in duets and trios; towards that end, during the 1920′s he worked with Charlie McCoy, Rubin Lacy and Son Spand before forming the Mississippi Sheiks. While Vinson, by his own testimony this is the correct spelling, variations on his records include Walter Jacobs, Walter Vincent and Walter Vincson. In 1929 he recorded with Bo Carter and Charlie McCoy as Chatman’s Mississippi Hot Footers with the most interesting number being the solo “Overtime Blues” displaying his prodigious guitar talents. A 1930 session was listed under Walter Jacobs And The Carter Brothers backed by Bo and Lonnie while a two 1936 sessions found him in the company of pianist Harry Chatman on a four song session and possibly backed by Little Brother Montgomery on two sides including “Rats Been On My Cheese”, certainly a novel metaphor for adultery. Vinson concluded his pre-war work with a four-song 1941 session for Bluebird backed by Robert Lee McCoy (Nighthawk) on harmonica which is notable for the lovely, beautifully sung  “Gulf Coast Bay.”

While an active club performer during the early 1940′s, by the middle of the decade he had begun a lengthy hiatus from music, which continued through 1960, at which point he returned to both recording and festival appearances. He made some recordings for the Riverside label in 1961 and a decade later teamed up with Sam Chatman plus Carl Martin and Ted Bogan to record an album called The New Mississippi Sheiks issued on Rounder in 1972. Hardening of the arteries forced Vinson into retirement during the early ’70s; he died in Chicago in 1975.

Sam Chatmon, The Mississippi Sheik, Blue Goose Records

As mentioned earlier, members of the Sheiks recorded under several different names between 1928 and 1931 including the Mississippi Blacksnakes, the Mississippi Mud Steppers, the Jackson Blues Boys and backed artists Sam Hill and Alec Johnson. The bulk of these sides can be found on the Document collection Mississippi String Bands & Associates. Between 1928-1931 Charlie McCoy played on a variety of sides, many string band related, in the company of Walter Vinson and Bo Carter. In November 1928 Carter, McCoy and an unknown pianist backed singer Alec Johnson on four of six sides. In November of the same year Carter, Vinson and McCoy backed singer Mary Butler on four numbers. Butler may in fact be Rosie Mae Moore who McCoy backed in February of the same year. With Walter Vinson they cut sides as the Mississippi Mud Steppers, with the addition of guitarist Sam Hill (plus Bo Carter and Sam Chatmon on one track) as the Mississippi Blacksnakes and with Carter and Vinson as the Jackson Blue Boys. With the Mississippi Blacksnakes McCoy’s robust mandolin is heard on the bawdy “Grind So Fine” and the country tinged “Blue Sky Blues” both boasting terrific vocals from Vinson. Two days after the first Blacksnakes session the group recorded again with Bo Carter as the vocalist and either McCoy or Sam Hill on guitar. This is a bluesier session with McCoy again on mandolin/banjo with his mandolin heard in fine form on “It Still Ain’t No Good (New It Ain’t No Good)” and “Easy Going Woman Blues.” One more song by the group, “Bye Bye Baby Blues”, was cut the following day featuring fine slide from McCoy. The two tracks cut as the Jackson Blue Boys are interesting for featuring singing from Carter, Vinson and McCoy in unison and taking solo turns with McCoy playing mandolin.

In 1935 Pianist Harry Chatman cut ten songs across three sessions, two in New Orleans and a final one in Jackson, Mississippi. Bo Carter appears on the two song first session while Walter Vinson backs Harry on the four song second session. The final session was done solo. His second session was his strongest, turning in solid numbers like “Hoo Doo Blues” and “Deep Blue Ocean Blues “, a fine rendition of  “Nobody’s Business.” Harry also backed Leroy Carter on two sides in 1935 (six sides went unissued), a likely  a pseudonym for Walter Vinson.

Show Notes:

A varied show on tap for today including some twin spins and featured anthologies. We open the show with two tracks featuring Johnny “Guitar” Watson,  plus double spins by Leroy Carr and Little Brother Montgomery plus sets featuring a great down home blues anthology, a fine collection of post-war St. Louis R&B and blues and a set revolving around a couple of related songs.

Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell

I’ve been listening to a great recent reissue on the Ace label called Blues Belles With Attitude!!. All the tracks were cut for the Modern label with 18 of these sides previously unissued and a further eight that have not seen prior CD release. As the notes state: “The inspiration for this compilation was Cordella Di Milo sides, whose recordings we have released previously on a Johnny Guitar Watson CD as result of his stunning guitar backing. It dawned on us that this virtually unknown singer deserved to be featured on a collection of similarly aggressive female performances. This led to a trawl of the tracks held in the Modern files, which had not been previously issued or had not seen the light of day for over half a century.” Cordella De Milo’s “Ain’t Gonna Hush is a sassy answer song to the Big Joe Turner hit with some killer guitar from Watson and smoking sax from Maxwell Davis. In addition to that number, we spin Watson’s sizzling “Don’t Touch Me (I’m Gonna Hit the Highway)” from the Ace collection of his early sides, Hot Just Like TNT.

Leroy Carr was one of the most popular bluesmen of the 20′s 30′s and today we spin two of his great numbers, the evocatively titled “Shinin’ Pistol” and “Big Four Blues.” We also spin one by Carr’s partner, guitarist Scrapper Blackwell who’s “Penal Farm Blues” which comes from his first session under his own name. Blackwell began working with  Carr, whom he met in Indianapolis in the mid-1920’s. Carr convinced Blackwell to record with him for the Vocalion label in 1928; the result was “How Long, How Long Blues”, the biggest blues hit of that year. Blackwell and Carr toured throughout the American Midwest and South between 1928 and 1935 as stars of the blues scene, recording over 100 sides. Blackwell’s last recording session with Carr was in February 1935 for the Bluebird label. The recording session ended bitterly, as both musicians left the studio mid-session and on bad terms, stemming from payment disputes. Two months later Blackwell received a phone call informing him of Carr’s death due to heavy. Blackwell soon retired from the music industry. Blackwell returned to music in the late 1950’s where he was recorded first in 958 and was next recorded by Duncan P. Schiedt  in 1959 and 1960.  Art Rosenbaum recorded him in 1962 for the Prestige/Bluesville label resulting in his finest latter day recording, the album Mr. Scrapper’s Blues. In 1963 Rosenbaum recorded him again for Bluesville, this time with singer Brooks Berry resulting in the album My Heart Struck Sorrow which has yet to be issued on CD. Sadly Blackwell was shot and killed during a mugging in an Indianapolis alley in 1962. He was 59 years old.

I’ve played Little Brother Montgomery often on the show and today we spin two from his 1961 Folkways album Blues. He cut two others for the label including the fine Farro Street Jive and Church Songs: Sung and Played on the Piano by Little Brother Montgomery. We play his “Pleading Blues” which was originally cut at his third session back in 1935 and the wonderful instrumental “L&N Boogie.” I’ve always been a fan of Montgomery’s raspy, burred voice but he really had a knack for knocking out memorable instrumentals like early gems such as “Crescent City Blues”, “Farish Street Jive” and “Shreveport Farewell.”

We spotlight two great anthologies today: the 4-CD set Down Home Blues Classics Vol.1 1943-1953 and Mo Betta: St Louis R&B 56-66. The former set comes from the label Boulevard Vintage who for the past few years have been putting out intelligent, well conceived multi CD sets of post-war down home blues. The label has zeroed in on a very specific, rich vein of blues history, roughly 1945-1955 when a whole slew of enterprising small labels were catering to an audience that still craved down home blues. As Paul Vernon writes: “The migratory patterns from south to north to west added an essential ingredient to the new market for blues recording. Urbanization created tastes for a music that fit the new times and locations , contributing to the birth of what we now recognize as Rhythm & Blues. In Chicago, the southern rural styles, as we now all surely know, were connected directly to 110-volt wall sockets and booted through fuzzy amplifiers to create the sound that would eventually go around the world. Yet there was still an audience for the rough, exciting music of southern juke joints and street corners, of local radio broadcasts and house parties. Who was going to service that market?” The answer can be found on the 100 tracks found on this collection and the label’s subsequent sets: Down Home Blues Classics: Texas 1946-1954 (4-CD), Down Home Blues Classics: California & The West Coast 1948-1954 (2-CD), Down Home Blues Classics: Memphis & The South 1949-1954 (2-CD). The first box, which features music from all regions with no overlap with the other sets, has been  impossible to find but it seems to be back in print so I finally got a copy.  Two years ago I devoted a whole show to these sets.

Mo Betta St Louis R&B 56-66 is a terrific set of obscure St. Louis blues and R&B featuring electrifying recordings by Little Aaron, Johnny “The Twist” Williams, Little Miss Jesse, Screamin’ Joe Neal and Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm. I had these tracks originally on the long treasured Red Lightnin’ LP’s Down On Broadway And Main and Condition Your Heart.

In the early 1940′s Ivory Joe Hunter had his own radio show in Beaumont, Texas, on KFDM, where he eventually became program manager, and in 1942 he moved to Los Angeles, joining Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers in the mid 1940′s. He wrote and recorded his first song, “Blues at Sunrise”, with the Three Blazers for his own label, Ivory Records, it became a regional hit. Fast forward seven years to 1952′s ”The Moon is Rising” which was recorded  by Nighthawk for the States label and was a staple of his King Biscuit shows. The song was an almost identical remake of Ivory Joe Hunter’s 1945 hit “Blues At Sunrise” (covered prior to Nighthawk’s version by Charley Booker who cut it as “Moonrise Blues” for Modern’s Blues & Rhythm subsidiary in 1952). Nighthawk’s drummer Kansas City Red often sang the song. Several other artists cut the song under Nighthawk’s title including John Lee Hooker and Earl Hooker.

Also worth mentioning are several featured guitarists including Lafayette Thomas, T-Bone Walker, Buddy Guy and Mickey Baker. We hear Thomas’ dynamic guitar playing behind Roy Hawkins on the tough “Baby Please Don’t”, one of four songs he backs Hawkins’ on from a 1958 session for the Rhythm imprint. He was nicknamed “The Thing” due to his acrobatic style of playing. The bulk of his recordings were with Jimmy McCracklin’s combo in the 50’s and 60’s. During his lifetime only a scant fifteen sides were issued under his own name (a number were left unissued). His own records were made for small labels such as Jumping, Hollywood and Trilyte, but more often he cut odd titles at McCracklin’s 50’s sessions for Modern, Peacock (unissued) and Chess and three songs for King which were never issued. In his 1977 obituary Tom Mazzolini wrote: “Unquestionably the finest guitarist to emerge from the San Francisco-Oakland blues scene, there is hardly a guitarist around here today who doesn’t owe a little something to Lafayette Thomas…”

Speaking of Jimmy McCracklin, we feature a great 1965 number, “Steppin’ Up In Class”, one of a number of superb sides he cut for the Imperial label and the associated Minit label throughout the 60′s. The track comes from the the anthology I Had To Get With It: Imperial & Minit Years. I don’t think Thomas is playing on this track but McCracklin’s backing from this period is a bit murky so who knows? Lonesome Sundown did a cover of this number and local blues legend Joe Beard has been known to play this at his live shows. I’ve long been a fan of McCracklin and got the opportunity to interview him several years ago and meet him at the 2008 Pocono Blues Festival.

Thomas, like most guitarists of his generation, was influenced by T-Bone Walker. From Walker we spin “Mean Old World” from his classic 1959 album, T-Bone Blues. These recordings were cut in Chicago 1955 with Jimmy Rogers and Junior Wells plus another session cut in L.A. in 1956-1957, which included great jazz guitarist Barney Kessel.

Last week we spotlighted several cuts by Mickey Baker. Today we spin his T-Bone Walker inspired “Spinnin’ Rock Boogie.” In the early and mid-’50s, Baker did countless sessions for Atlantic, King, RCA, Decca, and OKeh, playing on such classics as the Drifters’ “Money Honey” and “Such a Night,” Joe Turner’s “Shake Rattle & Roll,” Ruth Brown’s “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean,” and Big Maybelle’s “Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On.” He also released a few singles under his own name. Baker was also recorded as half of the duo Mickey & Sylvia.

Show Notes:

Gold Star/SugarHill Studios is a Houston-based sound engineering and recording facility that started in 1941 and is still operating today. Over the years its founder and subsequent engineers have produced a multitude of influential hit records and classic tracks for numerous labels in a diverse range of popular genres. The inspiration for today’s program is the book House of Hits: The Story of Houston’s Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios written by Andy Bradley and Roger Wood. In addition to the music we also hear an interview that I conducted with Wood a few weeks ago.

Among the hundreds of Gold Star/SugarHill-affiliated artists, a brief sampling includes blues giants (ranging from Lightnin’ Hopkins to Albert Collins to Bobby Bland), country legends (from George Jones to Willie Nelson to Roger Miller), early rockers (from the Big Bopper to Roy Head to Sir Douglas Quintet), seminal figures in Cajun and zydeco (from Harry Choates to Clifton Chenier), architects of R&B (from O. V. Wright to Junior Parker), pioneers of psychedelia (from 13th Floor Elevators to Bubble Puppy), the phenomenal Freddy Fender, song-crafters (from Guy Clark to Lucinda Williams), gospel greats (such as the Mighty Clouds of Joy) up to contemporary pop icons. Today’s program will of course focus on the studio’s blues recordings.

From humble origins as Quinn’s Radio Repair shop around 1940, studio founder Quinn built a recording studio and a record pressing plant, during the latter part of the WWII years. After a year or two of experiments and failures, he succeeded in getting the Gulf label off the ground in 1945, to be followed by the much greater success of the Gold Star label the following year. In 1948 “Lil’ Son” Jackson, became one of many blues singers to record for Gold Star. In 1946, Lil’ Son Jackson shipped off a demo to Bill Quinn, who owned Houston based Gold Star Records. Jackson scored a national R&B hit, “Freedom Train Blues,” in 1948. It would prove Jackson’s only national hit, although his 1950-1954 output for Imperial Records must have sold consistently, judging from how many sides the L.A. firm issued.

Quinn recorded several fine  blues artists who’s records are largely forgotten including Conrad Johnson, Henry Hayes, L.C. Williams, Wilson “Thunder” Smith, Leroy Ervin, Perry Cain, and the most famous of the Gold Star blues artists, Lightnin’ Hopkins. While most of these artists are in a down home vein, notable exceptions include by Conrad Johnson’s “Fisherman’s Blues” and Henry Hayes’ “Bowlegged Angeline” performed in an upbeat, fully orchestrated style. I want to thank Roger for send me these tracks which are taken from the original Gold Star 78′s.

Hopkins’ first decade of recording (1946-1956), was a prolific period which found him cutting close to 200 sides geared for the black market on a variety of different labels. Between 1946 and 1950 Hopkins recorded primarily for the L.A. based Aladdin label and the Houston based Gold Star label.  Hopkins scored some hits for Gold Star including “Tim Moore’s Farm” which was an R&B hit in 1949, hitting #4 on the charts and the year before he hit with “T-Model Blues” which peaked at #8. Hopkins recorded some 50 sides for the Gold Star label between 1947 and 1950. Even after the Gold Star label went under, Hopkins continued to record at the studio, the results issued on a a number of other labels. Throughout the ’20s and ’30s Hopkins traveled around Texas, usually in the company of recording star Texas Alexander. The pair was playing in Houston’s Third Ward in 1946 when talent scout Lola Anne Cullum came across them. She cut Alexander out of the deal and paired Hopkins with pianist Wilson “Thunder” Smith, getting the duo a recording contract for the Los Angles based Aladdin label. They recorded as “Thunder and Lightnin’”, a nickname Sam was to use for the rest of his life. Thunder Smith plays piano behind Hopkins on his first two sessions for Aladdin in 1946 and 1947, never achieving the success that Hopkins did. Hopkins backed Smith on a four-song session for Aladdin in 1946 with Smith cutting one session apiece in 1947 for Gold Star and in 1948 for Down Town. He reportedly died in Houston in 1965.

Bill Quinn at Gold Star Studios, 1960 (Photo by Chris Strachwitz)

The Gold Star label went under in 1951 when the IRS sued for back taxes. Quinn soldiered on, engineering for other labels that rented his studio, most notably Starday, Duke/Peacock, and D, and an endless number of smaller ones. Quinn sold the studio around 1963, and it eventually wound up being purchased by the infamous International Artists label. The label issued a number of notable psychedelic and rock recordings before going under in 1971

Of the Houston-based independent labels, Peacock emerged as the most prominent. Houston businessman Don Robey  founded Peacock Records in 1949. Robey expanded his recording interests by acquiring the Memphis label Duke Records. Through this acquisition Robey secured the rights to the stable of musicians who were then under contract to Duke. During the 1950′s, Robey’s Duke-Peacock sound rose to national prominence, but by the mid-1960s, his business started to wane. The authors of House of Hits note that “few if any writers have noted that Robey conducted numerous recording sessions at Gold Star studios.” Among the Duke artists who recorded at Gold Star were Bobby Bland, Junior Parker, Buddy Ace and  Ernie K-Doe among others. Duke’s subsidiary label, Back Beat, also saw sessions recorded at Gold Star by artists such as Joe Hinton, O.V. Wright and Roy Head among others.

Bobby Bland cut singles for Chess in 1951 and Modern the next year bombed and in 1952 for Duke. Bland entered the Army in late 1952 and his progress upon his 1955 return was remarkable. By now, Duke was headed by Don Robey, who provided top-flight bands for his artists. Most of Bland’s blues sides during the mid- to late ’50s featured the slashing guitar of Clarence Hollimon. Bland’s first national hit was 1957′s “Farther Up the Road.” Later, Wayne Bennett took over on guitar, his fretwork prominent on Bland’s Duke waxings throughout much of the ’60s. Bland hit the charts often during this period with numbers like “Little Boy Blue”, “Cry Cry Cry”, “I Pity The Fool”and “Turn On Your Love Light” to name a few.

Junior Parker was an extraordinary blues singer and harmonica player who laid down some superb material over the course of a twenty-year career (1952-1971) before his life was cut short just prior to his fortieth birthday. Before 1953 was through, Junior Parker had moved on to Don Robey’s Duke label in Houston. It took a while for the harpist to regain his hitmaking momentum, but he scored big in 1957 with the “Next Time You See Me.” Parker developed a horn driven sound (usually the work of trumpeter/Duke-house-bandleader Joe Scott) that added power to his vocals and harp solos. Parker’s updated remake of Roosevelt Sykes’s “Driving Wheel” was a huge R&B hit in 1961, as was “In the Dark.” Parker continued to hit the charts through the 60’s with a mix of blues and R&B scoring with songs like “Sweet Home Chicago”, “Annie Get Your Yo-Yo”, “Man Or Mouse”, “Someone Somewhere.”

As the authors note, “a few of the hit records made at Gold Star studios by artists linked to Robey ended up being released on labels that he did not control. A prime example of that seemingly unlikely scenario is the song “Think”, written and performed by Jimmy McCracklin. Released in 1965 on the California based Imperial Records, it went to number seven on the R&B charts and number ninety-five in the pop category. …”Think” was actually recorded independently by McCracklin in Houston, where he made use of both Robey’s in-house studio on Erastus Street and the Gold Star facility across town.”

Lightnin’ Hopkins inside Gold Star Studios, 1961

Concurrent with the growth of Peacock Records, a new generation of Houston-bred rhythm-and-blues musicians began their careers, but were not recorded by Don Robey. Houston was homebase to a remarkable cadre of blues guitarists during the 1950’. These musicians included Albert Collins, Johnny Copeland, Joe Hughes, Clarence Green and Pete Mayes. Playing at the Club Matinee, Shady’s Playhouse, the Eldorado Ballroom, and other nightspots around Houston, these musicians emulated the music of T-Bone Walker and eventually developed their own distinctive performance styles.

Joe Hughes crossed paths with Johnny Copeland’s circa 1953 when the two shared vocal and guitar duties in a combo called the Dukes of Rhythm. Hughes served as bandleader at a local blues joint known as Shady’s Playhouse from 1958 through 1963, cutting a few scattered singles of his own in his spare time. In 1963, Hughes hit the road with the Upsetters, switching to the employ of Bobby “Blue” Bland in 1965. He also recorded behind the Bland for Duke and Al “TNT” Braggs from 1967 to 1969. Hughes cut the numbers “I Can’t Go On This Way” b/w “Make Me Dance Little Ant” at Gold Star for the tiny Kangaroo label. The label was formed in the late 50′s by the above mentioned Henry Hayes with label doing their recording at Gold Star.

In addition to Hughes, Albert Collins also made his debut for Kangaroo. Collins started out taking keyboard lessons but by the time he was 18 years old, he switched to guitar, and hung out and heard his heroes, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, T-Bone Walker and Lightnin’ Hopkins in Houston-area nightclubs. Collins  soon began performing in these same clubs. He led a ten-piece band, the Rhythm Rockers, and cut his first single in 1958 , “The Freeze” b/w “Collins Shuffle.” “The Freeze” became a regional hit and went on to serve as Collins’ signature song throughout his career. Collins  returned to Gold Star in April 1965 for at least two sessions. The same year Collins’ first album was released, The Cool Sounds of Albert Collins, a collection of singles (the album was reissued later as Truckin’ With Albert Collins). To fill out the album at least three new numbers were recorded at Gold Star including our selection “Snow-Cone II.”

Clarence Green was a versatile guitarist and a stalwart of the Houston scene who fronted a number of popular bands, the most famous being the Rhythmaires, between the early 1950′s and his death. He started out around 1951 or 1952 in a group that called itself Blues For Two. Throughout the next decade the band’s personnel changed often; some of the more well-known members, at various times, included fellow guitarists Johnny Copeland and Joe Hughes. Green also did regular session work as a guitarist at various studios, the most notable being Duke Records, where he backed artists such as Bobby Bland, Joe Hinton, and Junior Parker. Green cut two singles for Duke at Gold Star in 1965 and 1966.

In 1964 Lightnin’ Hopkins took Chris Strachwitz to see his cousin, Clifton Chenier perform. Strachwitz agreed to record Chenier and they went to Gold Star in February to record. The session resulted in the first 45 for Strachwitz’s new label, Arhoolie and the following year he recorded a whole album of material. The session yielded the album Louisiana Blues and Zydeco with many of the songs also issued as 45’s.

Record hustler Huey P. Meaux, who had recorded the Sir Douglas Quintet’s “She’s About a Mover” at Gold Star in ’65, bought and refurbishing the studio in 1972, naming the studio SugarHill. SugarHill became Meaux’s home base for his Crazy Cajun Music label where careers of Texas legends Freddy Fender, Doug Sahm and many more were launched.

-Listen to the Roger Wood interview (edited, MP3, 45 min)

Show Notes:

Today’s show spotlights  recordings by Johny Otis  and the many  talented performers that passed through his band or that he was involved with. This is the second show revolving around Johnny Otis and this time we celebrate the release of Midnight at the Barrelhouse, the first biography of this musical legend. Johnny has written his own books, and from a musical standpoint, most memorably, Upside Your Head!: Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue. In addition I’ve interviewed the author, George Lipsitz, for today’s program. We take our introduction from the book:

“From the moment Johnny Otis first arrived in Los Angeles in 1943, everyday seemed to offer a marvelous new experience. He led the house band at the club Alabam and later opened his own nightclub, the Barrelhouse, in Watts. As a recording artist, he succeeded in placing fifteen songs on the best-seller charts from 1950 to 1952. Otis had one of the biggest pop music hist of all time with “Willie and the Hand Jive” in 1958. He composed top-selling songs that became successes for other artists as well including “Every Beat of My Heart” for Gladys Knight and then Pips, “So Fine” for the Fiestas, “Roll With Me Henry”, which became the “Wallflower” for Etta James, and “Dance With Me Henry” for Georgia Gibbs.” As a promoter, producer, and talent scout for Savoy, King , Duke. and other independent record labels, Otis discovered and launched the careers of Etta James, Hank Ballard, Esther Phillips, Jackie Wilson, Big Mama Thornton, Sugar Pie DeSanto, Linda Hopkins, and Little Willie John, among others. He produced big hits for Little Esther, Etta James, and Johnny Ace, as well as less commercially successful but even more artistically triumphant recordings by Charles Williams, Barbara Morrrison, and Don “Sugarcane” Harris.

As a musician, Otis played the drums on Big Mama Thornton’s recording of “Hound Dog”, on Illinois Jacquet’s “Flying Home”, and Lester Young’s “Jammin’ With Lester.” Otis provided the hauntingly beautiful vibraphone accompaniment to Johnny Ace’s “Pledging My Love”, played vibes on his own recording of “Stardust”, featuring Ben Webster on tenor saxophone, and he played piano and tambourine on Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats album. When the occasion demanded it, Otis could also play harpsichord, celesta, and timpani. As an artist, promoter, disc jockey, and television host, he brought Black music to new audiences, in the process inspiring some of his listeners to become performers themselves.

Billboard Magazine Ad March, 11, 1950

…For all his immersion in African American life and culture, Johnny Otis was not actually Black. He was a white man born as John Alexander Veliotes into an immigrant Greek family. He had grown up among Blacks and had lived much of his life as if he were Black. …At an early age Johnny felt captivated by Black culture, by the spiritual, moral, and intellectual richness he encountered in the sanctified churches that he attended with his Black playmates, by the music of gospel choirs, jazz bands, blues singers, by the way Black people dressed, danced, and talked.”

Considered by many to be the godfather of R&B, Johnny Otis – musician, producer, artist, entrepreneur, pastor, disc jockey, writer, and tireless fighter for racial equality – has had a remarkable life by any measure. Born to Greek immigrant parents in Vallejo, California, in 1921, Otis grew up in an integrated neighborhood and identified deeply with black music and culture from an early age. He moved to Los Angeles as a young man and submerged himself in the city’s vibrant African American cultural life, centered on Central Avenue and its thriving music scene. Otis began his six-decade career in music playing drums in territory swing bands in the 1930′s. He went on to lead his own band in the 1940′s and open the Barrelhouse nightclub in Watts.

Below is some background on some of today’s featured artists:

The Robins were formed when Ty Terrell Leonard and the Richard brothers Billy and Roy met at Alameda High School in San Francisco in 1945, and formed the “A-Sharp Trio” (no recordings). The trio came to Hollywood a year later, and in 1949 they were joined by Bobby Nunn, who worked at Johnny Otis’ club The Barrelhouse in Watts. The group began recording in 1949 and through 1950 cut sides for Aladdin and Savoy backed by Johnny Otis’ band.

In 1949 singer Mel Walker was discovered by Johnny Otis and joined his band, singing with Otis until around 1953. On many recordings he featured in duets with Little Esther (Phillips), and also recorded with The Robins.

In 1948 Little Esther Jones won an amateur contest in Los Angeles, singing Dinah Washington’s “Baby Get Lost” at a nightclub belonging to bluesman Johnny Otis. Otis recalls her debut at his club The Barrelhouse was hosted by popular disc jockey Hunter Hancock, and as Johnny recalls in his memoir, Upside Your Head !,  “As the talent show began, Hunter called me to the microphone. Johnny he said, All week long you’ve been raving to me about a new young girl singer you’ve discovered. Yeah, Hunter, I found her singing down on 103rd. Street at the Largo Theatre. I want you all to hear her tonight, here she is, Little Esther Jones. Esther sang the blues, the crowd went nuts, and that night, thirteen-year-old Little Esther began her historic, bittersweet career. …She instantly became the teenage favorite among Black music lovers. Everywhere we went, from coast to coast, thousands of adoring fans lined up to see and hear Little Esther.” Otis brought the 13-year-old into the studio for a recording session with Modern Records and added her to his live revue. Billed as “Little Esther,” and sounding mature beyond her years, she recorded “Double Crossing Blues” with Johnny Otis, selling 400,000 copies before her 14th birthday. The record hit number one on the charts making Little Esther the youngest female singer to have a #1 hit on the R&B charts. More successful singles followed including “Mistrustin’ Blues” (#1 R&B), “Misery,” “Cupid Boogie” (#1 R&B), and “Deceivin’ Blues” (#4 R&B). A traveling review called the Savoy Records Barrelhouse Caravan of Stars hit the road for a series of one nighters across the South in early 1950 drawing huge crowds. The show included The Johnny Otis band, The Robins, Little Esther, Mel Walker, and Redd Lyte. Proving the sudden star power of Little Esther, she came in number one in a poll of the national juke box operators for best jazz and blues performer for the year of 1950.

It’s a tribute to Johnny that, just as he was there at the beginning of Esther’s career, he was there at the end. In 1984 she was admitted into a hospital for liver and kidney failure. Johnny recalls visiting her in the hospital during this period: “As I leaned towards her, my mind raced back in time. I remembered the bright-eyed, brash, talented little girl I had found in Watts years ago, and a big sob welled up in me. ‘Don’t cry, baby’, she said softly, but I cried all the way home.” She died soon after on August 7, 1984 at the age of 48. “I conducted her funeral service just as she instructed me”, Otis recalled: “No crying and bullshit eulogies”, she said. “Just my friends singing and playing and having a party.”

Pete “Guitar” Lewis joined the Johnny Otis band in 1948 and stayed until 1957. He was discovered by Johnny Otis in 1948 who signed him on the spot after he won a talent contest at his Barrelhouse Club at the Thursday Night Talent Hour. Lewis also cut a batch of fine solo sides for Federal and Peacock which also showcased his considerable singing and harmonica abilities. For Peacock he backed Johnny Ace (most notably “Pledging My Love”), Big Mama Thornton (most notably “Hound Dog”) plus others. Lewis stuck with Otis throughout the 50’s cutting some sides for Otis’ Dig label during this period. He was eventually replaced by Jimmy Nolen in 1957. Lewis went on to play with George “Harmonica” Smith with whom he recorded for Sotoplay. He died of alcohol related problems in the early 60’s.

Billboard Magazine Ad May, 27, 1950

Jimmy Nolen replaced the ailing Pete “Guitar” Lewis in the Johnny Otis Band around 1956 and played on Johnny’s big hit, “Willie And The Hand Jive” and other Capitol successes such as “Ma, He’s Making Eyes At Me” and “In The Dark.” Nolen’s guitar work is spotlighted prominently on a series of recordings Johnny and the band cut on Dig in 1956 of which we spin “Number 69/Number 21.” Striking out on his own in 1960, he formed his own band and was sought after by many of the major blues stars that came into L.A. for backing when they were without their own bands. B.B. King and T-Bone Walker would always use Jimmy and his band when they were in town without their sidemen. Jimmy played throughout California and Arizona working steadily until he decided to accept James Brown’s offer to join his band in 1965. His patented funky chicken scratch style can be heard on hits like “Papa’ Got A Brand New Bag” and many more hits between 1965 to 1983, except for the two years he left the band to go with Brown sidemen, Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley as “All the Kings Men”. He was with the band in Atlanta, GA when he suffered a fatal heart attack on December 16, 1983 at the age of 48.

We play some selections from Dig Records (originally called Ultra Records). Ultra Records was formed in 1955 by Frank Gallo, Eddie Mesner, Leo Mesner and Johnny Otis in Los Angeles California. In February 1956, the name of the label was changed to Dig Records. In 1957, Johnny Otis acquired sole ownership of the Dig Records Label. Dig Records officially issued 41 singles and 4 Long Play albums. These recordings have been issued on CD by the Ace label spread across five volumes.

We conclude the show with  sides  from the albums Cold Shot! and The Johnny Otis Show Live at Monterey. Though Johnny’s 1969 album Cold Shot! wasn’t much different from the straightforward R&B he’d been doing for years, it did have some updated rock, soul, and funk influences, due in large part to the presence of his teenage guitarist son, Shuggie Otis. Otis cut another album that year credited to Snatch and the Poontangs. Both albums were combined onto one CD on an Ace reissue in 2002, with the addition of two previously tracks. Monterey was an R&B oldies show in 1970 that featured artists Johnny  had worked with back in the early days and they were still in fine form. The disc stars Otis, Esther Phillips, Eddie Vinson, Joe Turner, Ivory Joe Hunter, Roy Milton, Roy Brown, Pee Wee Crayton, and Johnny’s guitar wielding son, Shuggie.

-Listen to the George Lipsitz interview (edited, MP3, 30 min)

Show Notes:

A shortened show today due to the station’s Rochester Jazz Festival coverage. Still, we have a wide and diverse mix today including several sets of artists like Blind Blake, the group of Carl Martin, Ted Bogan and Henry Armstrong, Calvin Leavy and a set of songs revolving around Lightnin’ Hopkins. We also spotlight  great new releases on Smithsonian Folkways and Southland.

We launch the program on a sad note with a trio of  sides by Calvin Leavy who passed on June 8th, a year before his release date from his Arkansas state prison sentence. He was 70. Leavy was a fine singer and songwriter who’s music intersected at the crossroads of blues and southern soul. Between the mid-1960′s and the early 1980′s he cut a string of strong singles for Acqurian, Soul Beat and Downtown including 1968′s “Cummins Prison Farm” which became a  big hit down south. That song was the result of serving time in Arkansas’ Cummins Penitentiary for a minor crime. Issued first on the small Soul beat label, the song was picked up by producer Shelby Singleton for his SSS International label and issued on the Blue Fox imprint. Leavy cut some terrific songs including “Going to the Dogs, Part 1 and 2,” “Born Unlucky, “Is It Worth All I’m Going Through,” plus excellent covers like “Nine Pound Steel”, “You Can’t Lose What You Ain’t Never Had”, and “It Hurts Me Too.” Leavy had been locked up since 1992, when he was convicted of multiple drug-related counts in Little Rock. His life plus 25 years sentence was commuted to 75 years by then-Gov. Mike Huckabee. As far as I can tell, there’s only a couple of collections of Leavy’s material available: The Best of Calvin Leavy on Red Clay and the harder to find Cummins Prison Farm on the Japanese P-Vine label. Despite his talents, Leavy remained mostly known in the south where he had a devoted following and his records were staples of the local jukeboxes. He remained outside the view of the blues revival scene, strictly cut singles and never toured widely.

We spin  a pair by Blind Blake,  one of the most popular bluesmen of the 1920’s. His only rival in popularity was fellow Paramount artist Blind Lemon Jefferson. Despite his popularity and much investigation, Blake remains a shadowy figure; What was his real name? Where was he from? And perhaps most mysteriously, how did he simply disappear after a final session circa June 1932? As for biographical details there is the following from his first Defender advertisement: “Early Morning Blues” is the first record of this new exclusive Paramount artist, Blind Blake. Blake, who hails from Jacksonville, Florida, is known up and down the coast as a wizard at picking his piano-sounding guitar. His ‘talking guitar’ they call it, and when you hear him sing and play you’ll know why Blind Blake is going to be one of the most talked about Blues artist in music.” Whatever his background there’s no doubt regarding his guitar skills. As Tony Russell elaborates: “Blind Blake’s most remarkable achievement as a recording artist was that in a career lasting almost six years, in which he made about 80 sides, he was never reduced, whether by slipping skill, waning inspiration or the single-mindedness of record company executives, from a multifaceted musician to a formulaic blues player.”

Martin,  Bogan & Armstrong were one of  the last of the old time black string bands, who surprisingly reunited after some three decades. Carl Martin played guitar and mandolin; Ted Bogan, rhythm guitar, Howard Armstrong, fiddle and mandolin (Howard’s son Tom on “doghouse bass”). They group recorded three albums, drawing from their enormous repertoire of blues, sentimental and popular songs (mostly from the 20′s, 30′s and 40′s). Our selection, “In The Bottom”, comes from the CD, That Old Gang of Mine which collects all 19 tracks from their second (Martin, Bogan & Armstrong) and third (That Old Gang of Mine) albums.

Classic Appalachian Blues From Smithsonian Folkways is an excellent new collection  spanning the late 50′s through the early 80′s. There’s great early cuts by Sticks McGhee and Sonny Terry, Pink Anderson, Gary Davis and Brownie McGhee but what’s particularly interesting  is the tracks recorded between 1971-1982. These cuts have been recently digitized thanks to a preservation grant from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and were made at Smithsonian’s Festival of American Folklife. From that festival we spotlight songs by Virginian blues artists John Tinsley and Archie Edwards. Tinsley played local house parties before waxing a single for the Mutual label in 1951 or 1952. He quit playing until coming out of retirement in the 70’s playing several festival and making a few recording including an album for Swingmaster in 1981. Edwards  made some fine recordings late in life for the L+R label and Mapleshade plus songs scattered on several anthologies.

As usual we hear some great piano players including a set featuring Henry Brown, Memphis Slim and Roosevelt Sykes. Brown’s “Papa Slick Head” comes from the newly reissued Henry Brown Blues. This session was recorded by Paul Oliver in August 1960 in St. Louis and issued originally on the 77 label and now reissued on CD for the first time on Southland. The last track, “Henry Brown’s Talking Blues”, was not on the LP, and is nearly nine minutes of Brown’s off-the-cuff reminiscing on the St. Louis scene of his youth underpinned by some superb playing. Notes are identical to the LP with an additional photo of Brown playing at Pinkey Boxx’s Beauty Parlor in St. Louis. I’ve always been a big fan of Brown’s recordings, not only his superb 30′s recordings, but also his later recordings, including the one we spotlighted last week, The Blues in St. Louis, Vol. 2: Henry Brown and Edith Johnson: Barrelhouse Piano and Classic Blues.

We turn our attention to Folkways again with fine piano records from Memphis Slim and Roosevelt Sykes. Slim cut several albums for the label including Memphis Slim and the Real Boogie-Woogie from 1959 of which we play the lively ”Down The Big Road Blues.” Slim was also on hand to produce Sykes’ lone album for the label, Blues by Roosevelt “The Honeydripper” Sykes from 1961. Our selection, “Ran the Blues Out of My Window” a variation on “The Cannon Ball”, a song he cut back in 1936 which seems related to Cow Cow Davenport’s seminal “Cow Cow Blues.”

Other sets include one revolving around Lightnin’ Hopkins and another twin spin of sorts. We play a couple of tributes to Hopkins including “Look Out Lightning” by Juke Boy Bonner and Brownie McGhee’s “A Letter To Lightnin’ Hopkins.” On the former Bonner addresses Hopkins:

You know I heard you were the last of the blues singers
But you know you go to make some room for me
You know it may take a long time now Lightnin’
But I’m catching up to you by degrees

On “A Letter To Lightnin’ Hopkins” McGhee boasts:

I’m going to Houston Texas, Lightnin’ Hopkins is the man I want to see (2x)
Well if you can’t stand my jivin’, Sam I’m going to give you the third degree
They say you know you’re business, but I’ve got some news for you
I’m the captain of the ship, you just a member of the crew
I’ll be in Texas in the morning, you better buy a lock and key
You’ll be lookin’ for you’re woman Sam, yes and she will be with me

Show Notes:

At Izzy young’s Folklore Center, MacDougal Street, NYC, l-r Sam charters, Izzy Young, Memphis Willie B., Furry Lewis, and Gus cannon, 1964 (Photo by Ann Charters)

Samuel Charters played a central role in the folk revival of the 1950′s and 1960′s. His fieldwork, extensive liner notes, production efforts, and books served as an introduction to many who had never heard of artists like Lightnin’ Hopkins and Robert Johnson. Charters was born in 1929 and graduated from Sacramento City College in 1949. In 1951, at the age of 21, he moved to New Orleans. After a two-year stint in the Army, he began to study jazz, but soon felt himself drawn to rural blues. Encouraged by fellow jazz researcher Frederic Ramsey, Charters began recording jazz and blues artists in 1955. The following year Folkways Records began issuing his recordings. Charters  work as a field recorder and researcher  would be poured into his first book in 1959, The Country Blues. “…The Country Blues was the first full-length treatment of the topic,” wrote Benjamin Filene in Romancing the Folk, “and its evocative style inspired thousands of whites to explore the music.” Unlike the more formal music histories written by Paul Oliver, Charters’ book was a popular history designed to pass on his enthusiasm for the blues to others. A companion album, also titled The Country Blues, would simultaneously be released on Folkways’ RBF reissue series for which Charters produced about twenty albums. His other claim to fame during this period was his re-discovery, after a lengthy search, of Sam Lightnin’ Hopkins who he recorded for Folkways in 1959.

In the 60′s Charters wrote several books including The Poetry of the Blues and The Bluesmen. A 1961 trip for Prestige Records yielded records by Furry Lewis, Memphis Willie B., Baby Tate and Pink Anderson. Charters visited St. Louis to do recording sessions in 1961 and 1962 resulting in several albums by Henry Townsend, Henry Brown and Edith Johnson, Dady Hotcakes, J.D. Short, Speckled Red and Barrelhouse Buck. In 1963 he was hired by Prestige as an A&R representative, and oversaw the Bluesville and Folklore series.

Sam charters recording Sleepy John Estes, Brownsville, TN, 1962 (Photo by Ann Charters)

Charters’ Prestige recordings of Homesick James, Billy Boy Arnold, and Otis Spann were some of the first electric blues releases aimed at the revival market. He continued in this vein as an independent producer for Vanguard with the influential three-volume anthology Chicago: The Blues Today as well as solo albums by Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, James Cotton and Charlie Musselwhite.

In the early 70′s Charters moved to Sweden where he worked as a producer for Sonet. The twelve-volume series Legacy of the Blues resulted in a similarly titled book. He also recorded zydeco albums during this period by Clifton Chenier and Rockin’ Dopsie.

On today’s program we track recordings charters made from the late 1950′s through the early 70′s’. Much of the background on today’s artists come from Charters’ own writings, either taken from the original liner notes or Walking A Blues Road: A Blues Reader 1956-2004 a collection of his writings issued in 2004. The First half of the show is devoted primarily to acoustic blues artists. As Charters wrote: ”In the first years of the blues rediscoveries there was a heady level of excitement just at finding that the blues was more than names on old phonograph records. For any of us who had come to the blues through our interest in classic jazz or through our involvement in the folk movement, the modern electric blues was considered with some wariness as an intrusion on the ‘folk’ spirit of the blues. For myself, there was also a sense of urgency. The younger blues artists in places like Chicago or Detroit could wait – whatever we thought of their style of the blues. The older blues artists who were still living in rented rooms or tenement apartments in cities like Memphis or Atlanta didn’t have so many years ahead of them, and if we didn’t save their stories and their music their rich legacy would slip away from us.”

“My life as a record producer began with a duet session that I set up and recorded with Billie and Dee Dee [Pierce] in the spring of 1954. …The material from the session was released by Folkways as part of the series I recorded and complied with some tracks done by other field collectors in the city titled The Music of New Orleans. Billie and Dee Dee were included in Volume Three of the series, Music of the Dance Halls… …If you’re interested in the old New Orleans jazz styles there are still a dozen places to hear bands, even if most of them don’t have music every weekend, and you never know who’s going to play unless one of the musicians calls you. What we knew about Luthjen’s was that every night on the weekends Billie Pierce would be sitting on the bench of the place’s much battered piano and singing the blues, and her husband Dee Dee Pierce would be sitting on an old kitchen chair beside her,  adding the lyric trumpet fills that are an indispensable musical complement to the classic blues style.” From the above mentioned album we play ”Married Man Blues.”

Read Liner Notes (PDF)

We spin  a pair of cuts by Lightnin’ Hopkins who Charters located after a lengthy period of not recordings. ”On a windy winter morning in January 1959 I was driving along Dowling Street, in Houston, Texas. I stopped at a red light and a car pulled up beside mine. The window was rolled down, and a thin, nervous man, wearing dark glasses, leaned toward me.

‘You lookin’ for me?’
‘Are you Lightnin’?’
‘Lightnin”, I said, ‘I sure am.’

“I had been looking for lightnin’ Hopkins, off and on, for the five years that had passed since I first heard him on record. …I was in and out of Houston for the next five years, recording, interviewing musicians, and asking about Lightnin’ Hopkins. …When I finally found him he was anxious to begin recording again, and after I’d rented an acoustic guitar for him  I carried the tape recorder I had in the trunk of my car into his shabby room on Hadley Street. He sang all afternoon, becoming more emotional and even more musically exciting as the hours passed.” The results were issued on a self-titled album on Folkways.  The results helped introduced his music to an entirely new audience. Soon after Hopkins went from gigging at back-alley gin joints to starring at collegiate coffeehouses, appearing on TV programs, and touring Europe. He was recording more prolifically then ever, laying down albums for World Pacific, Vee-Jay,Bluesville, Bobby Robinson’s Fire label, Candid, Arhoolie, Verve and, in 1965, the first of several LP’s for Stan Lewis’ Shreveport-based Jewel logo. During the 70′s his recording activity slowed, cutting just a handful of sessions for verve and Sonet with several live collections issued. He was still touring widely and made trips to Mexico, Japan and Germany.  After a final gig at Tramps in New York in November 1981 he returned to Houston where his health declined rapidly. He passed January 30, 1982.

Read Liner Notes (PDF)

Charters visited St. Louis to do recording sessions in 1961 and 1962 resulting in several fine albums of material. As Charters wrote: “I first visited St. Louis on the long research trip for The Country Blues in January 1959 …We were in the city again for two recordings trips, the first in May of 1961, and the second, to film J.D. Short for the documentary film The Blues, in the summer of 1962. Two of the albums, by Henry Townsend and Barrelhouse Buck, were released at the time of recording. One album, with J.D. Short, was released as part of the Legacy of the Blues series in 1973, and the other albums were released by Folkways in 1984.

George “Daddy Hotcakes” Montgomery was born in Georgia and came moved to St. Louis in 1918. He began singing the blues as a youngster and worked as an entertainer during the 1920’s. Sometime in the late 30’s he had an opportunity to record through blues artist and talent scout Charlie Jordan but the recording session fell through. He was still occasionally playing parties when Charters recorded him in 1961. These are his only recordings. As Charters wrote: ”I am still also as surprised -when I listen to what we recorded in his room over the next two or threes days – at the complete, natural spontaneity of his blues. …Using his imagination and a store of familiar blues phrase to help him through occasional hesitations he simply made up the songs as he went along. I had some of the same experience when I recorded Lightnin’ Hopkins and Robert Pete Williams but even as loose and free as they were with their blues I still could anticipate most of what they were going to do. With George, however, I never could be sure what might come next if I asked him to repeat anything.” …The songs George recorded in his room – as far as I know these were his only recordings -made me conscious again of the haphazard circumstances that left their mark on what we knew of the blues. How many singers were there like George, who missed a recording trip because they didn’t get the times right? How many were there who never were heard by anyone who knew where to send them to get their songs on record?” these recordings were issued on Folkways under the title The Blues in St. Louis, Vol. 1: Daddy Hotcakes (originally planned to be issued on Bluesville).

Read Liner Notes (PDF)

While in St. Louis Charters cut an excellent album by veteran bluesman Henry Townsend backed his friend Tommy Bankhead. The results were issued on Bluesville as Tired of Being Mistreated and on Folkways as The Blues in St. Louis, Vol. 3: Henry Townsend.  Townsend was one of the only artists to have recorded in every decade for the last 80 years.  He first recorded in 1929 and remained active up to 2006. ”One of the things that was most intriguing for me about working with Henry was that this was the first time I’d ever recorded anyone playing an electric guitar. …The first blues they ran down together wiped out an lingering prejudices I had against electric instruments. It wasn’t electric guitars that had changed the blues. It was the life in the African American ghettos, the new society, experiences of the people who created the blues that had changed, and it was the new instrument and their changes sound that expressed the new conditions of  their lives.”

Charters also recorded  a fine session by Edith Johnson and Henry Brown. The results were issued on the album The Blues in St. Louis, Vol. 2: Henry Brown and Edith Johnson – Barrelhouse Piano and Classic Blues. Edith Johnson recorded eighteen sides in 1928/29 as “Edith North Johnson”, “Hattie North” and “Maybelle Allen.” Henry Brown worked clubs such as the Blue Flame Club, the 9-0-5 Club, Jim’s Place and Katy Red’s, from the twenties into the 30’s. Recorded for Brunswisck with Ike Rogers and Mary Johnson in 1929, for Paramount in Richmond and Grafton in ‘29 and ‘30. He served in the army in the early ’40s, then formed his own quartet to work occasional local gigs in St. Louis area from the ’50s, and worked the Becky Thatcher riverboat, St. Louis in 1965. In addition to his pre-war recordings, he was recorded by Paul Oliver in 1960 and by Adelphi in 1969.

J.D. Short recorded two sessions in the early ’30s for Paramount and Vocalion, then quickly faded into obscurity. Charters recorded Short at his transplanted home base of St. Louis in 1961. As Charters writes in the notes: “The recording that we did in his house that summer – mostly in the kitchen to get away from the noises in the street – was his last, but we didn’t have any idea of it. I was filming him for a sequence in The Blues and trying to get his ideas about the backgrounds and the aesthetics of the blues for The Poetry Of The Blues so we recorded a lot of music – new versions of songs he’d done before – new songs – and his own comments about the styles and the music.” Short unexpectedly passed away shortly after this session at the age of 60. Charters’ recordings of Short can be found on the albums J.D. Short and Son House: Blues from the Mississippi Delta and album as part of  The Legacy of the Blues series released in the 70′s.

St. Louis was always a good piano blues town, and in addition to recording Henry Brown, Charters also captured Barrelhouse Buck and Speckled Red. Barrelhouse Buck McFarland cut his final session for Folkways and an unissued session in 1961 that was belatedly released a few years back on Delmark. The recordings Charters made were released on Folkways as Backcountry Barrelhouse. He died shortly afterward. McFarland was born in Alton, Illinois in 1903 in the same area as two other exceptional piano players, Wesley Wallace and Jabbo Williams, all three of which made names for themselves on the bustling St. Louis blues scene. McFarland got his shot in the recording studio waxing ten sides; two for Paramount in 1929, two for Decca in 1934 and four more for Decca in 1935, which were not issued. Speckled Red (born Rufus Perryman) was born in Monroe, LA, but he made his reputation as part of the St. Louis and Memphis blues scenes of the ’20s and ’30s. In 1929, he cut his first recording sessions. One song from these sessions, “The Dirty Dozens,” was released on Brunswick and became a hit in late 1929. In 1938, he cut a few sides for Bluebird. In the early ’40s, Red moved to St. Louis, where he played local clubs and bars for the next decade and a half. Charlie O’Brien, a St. Louis policeman and something of a blues aficionado “rediscovered” Speckled Red on December 14, 1954, who subsequently was signed to Delmark Records as their first blues artist. Several recordings were made in 1956 and 1957 for Tone, Delmark, Folkways, and Storyville record labels. The recordings Charters made were issued on Folkway under the title The Barrel-House Blues of Speckled Red.

Charters also spent time in Memphis getting to know and record some of the city’s pre-war blues recording artists. ”Will Shade, the guitar and harmonica player who had organized the Memphis Jug Band for victor Records in 1927, had remembered Furry in a conversation in February 1959. …I looked out the window,  over the roofs toward Beale Street, and said to him, thinking out loud as much as anything else, ‘I certainly would like to have heard some of those old blues singers, Jim Jackson, Furry Lewis, John Estes, Frank Stokes…’ Will leaned out of his chair and called to his wife, Jennie Mae, who was working in the kitchen. ‘Jennie Mae, when was the last time you saw that fellow they call ‘Furry’?’ ‘…Furry Lewis you mean? I saw him just last week.’” Charters eventually found Furry: ”He no longer had a guitar and he hadn’t played much in twenty years, but when I asked him if he could sing and play he straightened and said, ‘I’m better now than I ever was.’”  Lewis returned to the studio under Charters’ direction, first cutting a self-titled album for Folkways in 1959 and then two albums for the Prestige/Bluesville label in 1961.

“Usually I stop by Will’s whenever I’m in Memphis, and over the years he’s led me to other singers like Gus Cannon, Charlie Burse and Furry Lewis. …I stopped by in April 1961 …he mentioned that one of the blues singers he’s known in the 1930s has stopped by his place a few weeks before. ‘His name’s Willie B. I don’t know what all his name is, but that’s what we call him. Willie B. He’s one of those real hard blues singers like you’re always asking about. …He”ll sing the real old hard blues for you.’” Charters recorded Borum at a  session at the Sun studios for Prestige’s Bluesville label, with one more session to follow. The albums were issued as Introducing Memphis Willie B. and Hard Working Man Blues. Borum, was a mainstay of the Memphis blues and jug band circuit. He took to the guitar early in his childhood, being principally taught by his father and Memphis medicine show star Jim Jackson. By his late teens, he was working with Jack Kelly’s Jug Busters. This didn’t last long, as Borum joined up with the Memphis Jug Band. Sometime in the ’30s he learned to play harmonica, being taught by Noah Lewis, the best harp blower in Memphis and mainstay of Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers. Willie B. began working on and off with various traveling Delta bluesmen, performing at various functions with Rice Miller, Willie Brown, Garfield Akers, and Robert Johnson. He finally got to make some records in 1934 for Vocalion backing Hattie Hart and Allen Shaw, but quickly moved back into playing juke joints and gambling houses with Son Joe, Joe Hill Louis and Will Shade until around 1943, when he became a member of the U.S. Army. Memphis Willie B. passed in 1993.

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In South Carolina Charters made important recordings by Pink Anderson and Baby Tate. Anderson was born in South Carolina and early on sang in the streets for pennies. He was self-taught as a guitarist and toured throughout the Southeast with a variety of medicine shows during 1915-1945, picking up work wherever he could. He was employed not only as a musician and a singer but as a dancer and comedian. Anderson recorded four titles in 1928 with his partner Simmie Dooley but did not make another record until 1950 for Riverside, sharing an album with Rev. Gary Davis. Anderson continued to work at parties, street fairs, and medicine shows during the first half of the 1950s before retiring for a time due to ill health. But in 1961 the Bluesville label sent Charters to record him. He recorded three albums of unaccompanied performances by Anderson, documenting him in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Carters also recorded one album by Anderson that was issued on Folkways as Carolina Medicine Show Hokum And Blues. Anderson stayed active on a part-time basis up until the time of his death in 1974.

Guitarist Baby Tate recorded only a handful of sessions, spending the bulk of his life as a sideman, playing with musicians like Blind Boy Fuller, Pink Anderson, and Peg Leg Sam. When he was 14 years old, Tate taught himself how to play guitar. Shortly afterward, he began playing with Blind Boy Fuller, who taught Tate the fundamentals of blues guitar. For most of the ’30s, Baby played music as a hobby, performing at local parties, celebrations, and medicine shows. Tate picked up music again in 1946, setting out on the local blues club circuit. In the early ’50s, Baby moved to Spartanburg, South Carolina, where he performed both as a solo act and as a duo with Pink Anderson. In 1962, Charters recorded Tate for the album, See What You Done Done for Bluesville. The following year, he was featured in Charters’ documentary film, The Blues. For the rest of the decade, Baby Tate played various gigs, concerts, and festivals across America. With the assistance of harmonica player Peg Leg Sam, Baby Tate recorded another set of sessions in 1972. Pete Lowry recorded him extensively in 1970 but theses sides remain unreleased. He died on August 17, 1972.

Charters first foray into recording Chicago electric blues were a batch of albums for Prestige/Bluesville including sessions by Otis Spann, Homesick James and Billy Boy Arnold. Born in Chicago, Billy Boy was gravitated who was a big influence. Still in his teens, Arnold cut his debut 78 for the obscure Cool logo in 1952. “Arnold made an auspicious connection when he joined forces with Bo Diddley and played on the his two-sided 1955 debut smash “Bo Diddley”/”I’m a Man” for Checker. That led, in a roundabout way, to Billy Boy’s signing with rival Vee-Jay Records. Arnold’s “I Wish You Would,” utilizing that familiar Bo Diddley beat, sold well and inspired a later famous cover by the Yardbirds. Thhe group also took a liking to another Arnold classic on Vee-Jay, “I Ain’t Got You.” Other Vee-Jay standouts by Arnold included “Prisoner’s Plea” and “Rockinitis,” but by 1958, his tenure at the label was over. Other than an excellent Samuel Charters-produced 1963 album for Prestige, More Blues on the South Side, Arnold retained a low profile until signing with Alligator in the 90′s.

Homesick James 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. Williamson made some fine sides in 1952-53 for Chance Records. James also worked extensively as a sideman, backing harp great Sonny Boy Williamson in 1945 at a Chicago gin joint called the Purple Cat and during the 1950s with his cousin, Elmore James. He also recorded with James during the 1950s. Homesick’s own output included 45′s for Colt and USA in 1962, and the album for Blues On The South Side produced by Charters.

“I came to Chicago for the first time in the winter of 1959, as part of the long research trip for the book The Country Blues. …For the next few years I was in and out of Chicago – and after so many nights down on the south side listening to the  bands, I was becoming more and more impatient to go into a recording studio to document some of the unforgettable music I was hearing. But the companies I was involved with – Folkways and Prestige – either didn’t have the money for the sessions, or they weren’t ready to record the electric blues.” Fortunately Charters  hooked up with Vanguard Records who were more receptive to the idea.

In early 1966, Vanguard issued three-volume set, Chicago/The Blues/Today!. Every artist on the three volumes had recorded before (some, like Otis Rush and Junior Wells, had actually seen small hits on the R&B charts), but these recordings were largely their introduction to a newer — and predominately white — album-oriented audience. This series accurately portrayed a vast cross section of the Chicago blues scene as one could hear it on any given night in the mid-’60s. Rather than record full albums (which Charters had neither the budget nor the legal resources to pull off), each artist simply came in for a union-approved session of four to six songs, with each volume featuring three different groupings. Other notable records Charters cut for Vanguard include Buddy Guy’s A Man And The Blues,the guitarist’s first album away from Chess and Junior Wells’ It’s My Life Baby, a mix of studio recordings and live tracks recorded at Pepper’s Lounge in Chicago.

Charters and his family moved to Sweden in1971 and began working with a local record company called Sonet. He was eventually asked to do a blues series for the label. The series, Legacy of the Blues, ran to twelve albums with Charters producing the series as well as writing extensive liner notes for each. The notes were expanded for a book of the same name which was published in 1975. The entire series has been reissued on CD by Verve in 2006. As was often the case, Charters was able to coax some exceptional performances resulting in some  excellent albums by Memphis Slim, Robert Pete Williams and Snooks Eaglin.

Show Notes:

Lightnin’ Hopkins, Berkley, CA, mid-1960′s. Photo by Chris Strachwitz

Today’s program is our second devoted to Lightnin’ Hopkins. The first, Lightnin’ Hopkins & Pals, featured mainly singles Hopkins waxed for black audiences between 1946 and 1954 plus cuts by many of his musical buddies. Today the spotlight is on Hopkins alone as we spin records by him from the 40′s up through the 60′s, when he was cutting a staggering number of albums, mostly geared to the folk and blues revival audience. We also celebrate the release of the first Hopkins’ biography, Lightnin’ Hopkins: His Life and Blues, by noted writer Alan Govenar who I’ve interviewed for today’s show. Govenar’s book is a superb portrait of a true blues giant, from his early years running with Blind Lemon Jefferson and Texas Alexander to his brilliant singles in the 40′s and 50′s for a slew of small labels to worldwide acclaim in the 60′s and 70′s. Hopkins was one of the most recorded bluesmen of all time so assembling a show devoted to him is always a daunting task. On today’s program I’ve pulled together a wide range of well known and lesser known gems from the 40′s through the 60′s that will hopefully give a good portrait of Hopkins’ talent and his tremendous appeal with both white and black audiences. Today’s notes are primarily drawn from the new book including the following from the introduction.

“Sam Lightnin Hopkins, at the time of his death in 1982,may have been the most frequently recorded blues artist in history. He was a singular voice in the history of Texas blues, exemplifying its country roots but at the same time reflecting its urban directions in the years after world War II. His music epitomized the hardships and aspirations of his own generation of African Americans, but it was also emblematic of the folk revival and its profound impact on a white audience.

Lightnin’ Hopkins, Gold Star Publicity Photo

What distinguished Lightnin Hopkins was his virtuosity as a performer. He soaked up what was around him and put it all into his blues. He rambled on about anything that came to his mind: chuckholes in the road, gossip on the street, his rheumatism, his women, and the good times and bad men he met along the way. In his songs he could be irascible, but in the next verse he might be self-effacing. He prided himself on his individuality, even if it meant he was full of inconsistencies. He often poured out his feeling in his songs with a heart wrenching pathos, but it could be hard to tell if he was truly sincere. He peppered his lyrics with few actual details of his own life, but he was at once raw, mocking, extroverted, sarcastic and deadly serious. Most of the time, Lightnin’ appeared to trust no one, yet he knew how to endear himself to the audience. While he voiced the hardships, yearnings, and foibles of African Americans in the gritty bump and grind of the juke joints of Third Ward Houston, he could be cocky and brash in his performances for white crowds at the Matrix in San Francisco, or at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, or at a concert hall in Europe, where he was in complete control and adored. …At its best, his blues were a seamless dialogue  between words and guitar, a largely improvised conversation not only between him  and his instrument, but also between him and those who were listening.”

Hopkins career began in the 1920’s and stretched all the way into the 1980’s. His earliest blues influence was the legendary Blind Lemon Jefferson who he met around 1920, of whom Hopkins recalled “When I was just a little boy I went to hanging around Buffalo, Texas Blind Lemon he’d come and I’d just get alongside and start playing .” Throughout the ’20s and ’30s he traveled around Texas, usually in the company of recording star Texas Alexander. The pair was playing in Houston’s Third Ward in 1946 when talent scout Lola Anne Cullum came across them. She cut Alexander out of the deal and paired Hopkins with pianist Wilson “Thunder” Smith, getting the duo a recording contract for the Los Angles based Aladdin label. They recorded as “Thunder and Lightnin’”, a nickname Sam was to use for the rest of his life. A load of other labels recorded Hopkins after Aladdin, both in a solo context and with a small rhythm section: Modern/RPM (his “Tim Moore’s Farm” was an R&B hit in 1949); Gold Star (where he hit with “T-Model Blues” that same year); Sittin’ in With (“Give Me Central 209″ and “Coffee Blues” were national chart hits in 1952) and its Jax subsidiary; the major labels Mercury and Decca; and, in 1954, some of his finest sides for the New York based Herald label. During this period Hopkins cut close to 200. Hopkins’ stopped recording for a five year stint in the late 50’s although singles by him were still being released. Fortunately, folklorist Sam Charters and Mack McCormick rediscovered the guitarist, who they presented as a folk-blues artist. Pioneering musicologist Sam Charters produced Hopkins in a solo context for Folkways Records in 1959, cutting an entire LP in Hopkins’ tiny apartment (on a borrowed guitar). The results helped introduced his music to an entirely new audience.

Lightnin’ Hopkins at Sierra Sound,  Berkley, CA, 1961. Photo by William Carter

By the early 1960’s Hopkins went from gigging at back-alley gin joints to starring at collegiate coffeehouses, appearing on TV programs, and touring Europe. He was recording more prolifically then ever, laying down albums for World Pacific, Vee-Jay, Bluesville, Bobby Robinson’s Fire label, Candid, Arhoolie, Verve and, in 1965, the first of several LP’s for Stan Lewis’ Shreveport-based Jewel logo. During the 70′s his recording activity slowed, cutting just a handful of sessions for verve and Sonet with several live collections issued. He was still touring widely and made trips to Mexico, Japan and Germany.  After a final gig at Tramps in New York in November 1981 he returned to Houston where his health declined rapidly. He passed January 30, 1982.

As Govenar sums up: “In the end, regardless of the myths, and the inevitable mix of fact and fiction, Lightnin’ was happy that his music had reached such a wide audience.” And as Lightnin’ close friend David Benson related: “I don’t think that in his younger days he even imagined that there would be so many young people, so many white people,  who would have such a genuine appreciation of his sound.  He thought it was naive, but it was genuine. …he knew that the people who bought his records and came to hear him play genuinely cared.” And as Govenar concludes: “When asked once about what made him different than anyone else, Lightnin’ replied, ‘A bluesman is just different from any other man that walks the earth. The blues is something that is hard to get acquainted with. Just like death. The blues dwell with you everyday and everywhere.’”

-Listen to the Alan Govenar interview (edited, MP3, 29 min.)

-Read an excerpt from the Lightnin’ Hopkins biography

-Lightnin’ Hopkins Obituary (New Musical Express, Alan Balfour, 1982)

Show Notes:

A varied mix show today stretching from the 1920′s up through the 1970′s with the emphasis more on the post-war blues then usual. On deck today are a pair of extended sets focusing on some terrific blues ladies, a batch of prime Chicago blues from the 1950′s and 60′s, a pair of cuts by Tampa Red plus a pair featuring Johnny Heartsman. Amid the obscure players we feature quite a number of well known artists although, perhaps, performing lesser known tracks.

Alberta Hunter

Among the better known blues ladies featured today are Lavern Baker, Memphis Minnie and Alberta Hunter. From 1953, her second session and first for Atlantic, we spin Lavern Baker’s torrid “How Can You Leave A Man Like This” backed by a rocking combo featuring Jimmy Lewis on guitar and Freddie Mitchell on tenor sax. During her time at Atlantic Records (1953-62), Baker cut half a dozen singles that rose to high positions on both the pop and R&B charts, including “Tweedle Dee” and “Jim Dandy.” The niece of blues singer Memphis Minnie, Baker was blessed with a powerful voice, which she put to use as a teenager singing in nightclubs under the stage name Little Miss Sharecropper. She recorded under that and other pseudonyms (including Bea Baker), finally adopting the name LaVern Baker while singing for Todd Rhodes and His Orchestra.

A couple of decades before Baker made her debut, Memphis Minnie made hers. Starting in 1929, her remarkable career ran through 1953,  following three basic phases : the duet years with Kansas Joe, the “Melrose” band sound of the late thirties and early forties, and her later electric playing with Ernest “Little Son Joe” Lawlars. From 1936 we hear the powerfully sung “Out In The Cold.”

Then there’s Alberta Hunter, one of the original woman who ushered in the blues craze, making her debut for the legendary Black Swan label way back in 1921. Hunter recorded in six decades of the twentieth century, outlasting just about all her peers. Hunter first cut “Chirpin’ The Blues” for Paramount in 1923 and again in 1939 which is the version featured today. Backed by a stellar band featuring Charlie Shaver on trumpet, Buster Bailey on clarinet and Lil Armstrong on piano, Hunter delivers a magnificent performance.

No less talented are the lesser known blues ladies including Madonna Martin, who only cut four sides in 1949, and delivers the storming “Madonna’s Boogie”, Hattie Green, who cut six sides for Atlas in the 50′s, lays down the tough “Pawn Shop Blues” and Annisteen Allen shouts the blues on the raucous “Hard to Get Along.” From the pre-war there’s the superb, but utterly obscure, Madelyn James who cut a lone 78 for Brunswick in 1930, “Long Time Blues b/w Stinging Snake Blues”,  featuring the excellent session pianist Judson Brown.

Today’s program is also sprinkled with some top notch Chicago blues from the 50′s and 60′s including cuts by Eddie Taylor, Robert Nighthawk, Big John Wrencher, Johnny Littlejohn and J.B. Lenoir. Eddie Taylor hit Chicago in 1949, falling in with harpist Snooky Pryor, guitarist Floyd Jones, and Jimmy Reed who was a childhood friend. From Jimmy Reed’s second Vee-Jay date in 1953, Taylor was on the great majority of 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. He also recorded behind John Lee Hooker, John Brim, Elmore James, Snooky Pryor, and many more during the ’50s. He cut his debut album, I Feel So Bad, in 1972 for Advent. From that album we spin his fine cover of Robert Nighthawk’s “Jackson Town Gal”, here title “Jackson Town.”

Delta born John Funchess left home in 1946, pausing in Jackson, MS; Arkansas, and Rochester, NY, before winding up in Gary, IN. Littlejohn waited a long time to wax his debut singles for Margaret, T-D-S, and Weis in 1968. But before the year was out, Littlejohn had also cut his debut album, Chicago Blues Stars, for the Arhoolie logo. Unfortunately, a four-song 1969 Chess date remained in the can. After that, another long dry spell preceded Littlejohn’s 1985 album So-Called Friends for Rooster Blues. Littlejohn had been in poor health for some time prior to his 1994 passing. Today’s cut, “I Got My Nose Open” was recorded for the Mississippi Ace label but inexplicably was unissued.

One-Armed harmonica player Big John Wrencher was a 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. By the early 1960’s he had moved North to Chicago and quickly became a regular fixture on Maxwell Street. His first recordings surfaced on a pair of Testament albums from the 1960’s, featuring Big John in a sideman role behind Robert Nighthawk. We hear him today backing Nighthawk on a fine rendition of “Blues Before Sunrise.” Wrencher cut the excellent Maxwell Street Alley Blues for the Barrelhouse label and cut Big John’s Boogie for the British Big Bear label in 1975. Wrencher passed in 1977.

We have a couple of twin spins, of sorts on today’s program. Two from the incomparable  Tampa Red, including 1940′s solo “Noonday Hour Blues” and 1941′s gorgeous “Georgia, Georgia Blues” backed by pianist Big Maceo and Ransom Knowling. We also spin two versions of the blues standard ‘Eyesight To The Blind” by The Larks and B.B. King. The song was originally cut by Sonny Boy Williamson and has has been covered many times. The most successful early version was that by The Larks. The group’s recording of “Eyesight to the Blind”, with vocals and guitar by Allen Bunn, who later worked solo as Tarheel Slim, reached #5 on the Billboard R&B charts in July 1951. King first cut the song in 1965 and played the song often live.

Through one of his main influences, guitarist Lafayette “Thing” Thomas, a teenage Johnny Heartsman hooked up with Bay Area producer Bob Geddins. Heartsman played bass on Jimmy Wilson’s 1953 rendition of “Tin Pan Alley,” handling guitar or piano at other Geddins recordings.  Other artists he backed included Ray Agee, Little Willie Littlefield and Jimmy McCracklin . He cut his own two-part instrumental, the “Honky Tonk”-inspired “Johnny’s House Party,” for Music City, which become a national R&B hit in 1957. The early ’60s brought a lot more session work — Heartsman played on Tiny Powell’s “My Time After Awhile” (soon covered by Buddy Guy) which we also spin, and Al King’s remake of Lowell Fulson’s “Reconsider Baby.” Stints in show bands, jazzy cocktail lounge gigs, and a stand as soul singer Joe Simon’s organist came prior to his return to the blues in the 90′s. In 1991 he cut his best album, The Touch for Alligator. He passed in 1996.

Also worth mentioning are some fine down-home blues by Guitar Slim Green and Jim Bunkley. West Coast guitarist Slim Green cut a handful of sides in the late 40’s and late 50’s for a bunch of small California labels and in 1970 cut the album Stone Down Blues for Kent backed by Johnny and Shuggie Otis. From that album we spin “Fifth Street Alley” a reworking of his 1948 gem, “Alla Blues.”

George Mitchell recorded a handful of sides by Bunkley in Geneva, Georgia in 1968. From Mitchell’s notes:  ”Jim Bunkley lived in a small tar-papered house he bragged was his own, in Geneva, Georgia, his birthplace. He was ‘eight years old when they took the census in 1920. It was about that time he made friends with the guitar.” ‘When I was about eight, my brother had one, and me and my nine year-old sister used to play it. Us couldn’t hold it. Had it hanging up ‘side of the wall and we’d get up on a chair and play it. Everyone in my family could play – we had five boys and four girls.’ ”When he ‘got up in age, Bunkley was about the best known musician around Talbot County. He recalled the many times he walked away with prizes offered at a theater in nearby Junction City. ‘I was rough then,’ he said. ‘I had on a great big ole cowboy hat and I got up there on the stage and cracked a whole lot of jokes and then played. I win all that money, too.’” Our track, the topical “Segregation Blues”, comes from the recent collection, President Johnson’s Blues and was originally released in 1971 on the Revival label as George Henry Bussey and Jim Bunkley. The CD is a companion to Guido van Rijn’s book of the same name, the fourth in a series of superbly researched books dealing with topical blues and gospel. I’ve read Rijn’s previous books and look forward to reading this one as well. There’s an additional CD companion to his latest book, Martin Luther King’s Blues which is another fascinating collection of topical rarities.