Sun 14 Jun 2009
Big Road Blues Show 6/14/09: All The Way From Texas - Down Home Texas Blues 1947-1953
Posted by Jeff under 1940's Blues, 1950's Blues, Texas Blues
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| ARTIST | SONG | ALBUM |
|---|---|---|
| Leroy Ervin | Rock Island Blues | Texas Down Home Blues 1948-1952 |
| Peter Warfield | Morning Train Blues | Texas Down Home Blues 1948-1952 |
| Any Thomas | My Baby Quit Me Blues | Down Home Blues Classics Texas 1946-52 |
| Perry Cain | All The Way From Texas | Down Home Blues Classics Texas 1946-52 |
| Lee Hunter | Back To Santa Fe | Texas Down Home Blues 1948-1952 |
| Jesse James | Please Ma'am Forgive Me | Down Home Blues Classics Texas |
| Charlie Braddix | Boogie Like You Wanna | Texas Down Home Blues 1948-1952 |
| Willie Lane | Howlin' Wolf Blues | Down Home Blues Classics Texas 1946-52 |
| Rattlesnake Cooper | Lost Woman | Down Home Blues Classics Texas 1946-52 |
| Mercy Dee Walton | Evil And Hanky | Down Home Blues Classics Texas 1946-52 |
| Johnny Beck | You Gotta Lay Down Mama | Down Home Blues Classics Texas 1946-52 |
| Manny Nichols | No One To Love Me | Down Home Blues Classics Texas 1946-52 |
| Lil Son Jackson | Cairo Blues | Down Home Blues Classics Texas 1946-52 |
| Sonny Boy Davis | I Don't Live Here No More | Down Home Blues Classics Texas 1946-52 |
| Buddy Chiles | Jet Black Woman | Down Home Blues Classics Texas 1946-52 |
| Dr. Hepcat | Hattie Green | Texas Down Home Blues 1948-1952 |
| James Tisdom | Winehead Swing | Texas Down Home Blues 1948-1952 |
| Stickhorse Hammond | Alberta | Down Home Blues Classics Texas 1946-52 |
| Lawyer Houston | Western Rider Blues | Lightnin' Special Vol. 2 |
| Smokey Hogg | Penitentiary Blues Pts. 1 & 2 | Texas Down Home Blues 1948-1952 |
| John Hogg | West Texas Blues | Texas Down Home Blues 1948-1952 |
| Luther Stoneham | January 11, 1949 Blues | Texas Down Home Blues 1948-1952 |
| The Sugarman | Which Woman Do I Love | Down Home Blues Classics Texas 1946-52 |
| Sam Suitcase Johnson | Sam's Coming Home | Texas Down Home Blues 1948-1952 |
| Alex Moore | Neglected Woman | Texas Down Home Blues 1948-1952 |
| Thunder Smith | Big Stars Are Falling | Lightnin' Special Vol. 2 |
| L.C. Williams | You Can't Take It With You Baby | Lightnin' Special Vol. 2 |
| Frankie Lee Sims | Married Woman | Lucy Mae |
| Ernest Lewis | No More Lovin' | Down Home Blues Classics Texas 1946-52 |
| Miss Country Slim | In My Girlish Days | Down Home Blues Classics Texas 1946-52 |
| Little Son Tillis | Skin And Bones | Down Home Blues Classics Texas 1946-52 |
| Sonny Boy Holmes | TNT Woman | Down Home Blues Classics Texas 1946-52 |
| Big Son & Lillian Tillis | Ten Long Years | Down Home Blues Classics Texas 1946-52 |
Show Notes:

The music on today’s program spans a fascinating period, roughly the first decade of post-war blues, when the blues was evolving into what would be called R&B and a short hop later to rock and roll. Today’s however is a throwback; this is rough and tumble down-home blues geared towards an audience that was still eager to hear earthy rural blues. Many of these listeners were still in the south while many other were transplanted southerners still eager to hear the older styles. These were exciting times with numerous small labels throwing their hat in the ring to try to cash in on the market. Our spotlight is on the Texas variety of down-home blues. Some of today’s artists achieved a measure of success such as Lightnin’ Hopkins, Lil Son Jackson and Smokey Hogg while those like Lawyer Houston, Ernest Lewis, Manny Nichols, Stickhorse Hammond, Sonny Boy Holmes, Johnny Beck and others cut fine sides but remain utterly obscure outside of hardcore collectors. Between 1944 and 1964, more than 600 record companies tried their hands at recording blues. Many failed or had limited success while others grew and became major players. This was “the last grand hurrah of local blues recorded for, and often by, local entrepreneurs.”
By the early 1950’s, competition among independent record labels in Texas was intense. Macy’s, Freedom, and Peacock (as well as Bob Shad’s New York-based Sittin-In-With) were all involved in recording local and regional blues musicians. In Houston there were fewer opportunities for recording than in Dallas until after World War II, when several independent labels were started. The earliest to record blues was Gold Star, founded by Bill Quinn in 1946 as a hillbilly label to record Harry Choates. In 1947 Quinn decided to enter the “race” market by recording Lightnin’ Hopkins. Today’s program features several Gold Star artists including Lil Son Jackson, Leroy Ervin, Andy Thomas, Lee Hunter and Perry Cain who gives us the title for today’s show. Among the Dallas labels we spin tracks form Blue Bonnet and (Star) Talent. Blue Bonnet Records was formed by Herb Rippa in 1947 in Dallas as a hillbilly label but near the end of Blue Bonnet’s three-year existence Rippa began recording a handful of blues artists, most notable being Frankie Lee Sims. Pianist Charlie Braddix cut two sides for the label in 1948. Both Willie Lane and Rattlesnake Cooper cut sides for (Star) Talent, a Dallas label owned by father and daughter Jesse and Louise Erickson. The label recorded blues, country and gospel and cut the sides first sides by Rufus Thomas and Professor Longhair.

The spirit of Lightnin’ Hopkins looms over many of these recordings and we play tracks by some who were in Hopkins orbit. Thunder Smith played 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. 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 final sides for Eddie’s and Freedom between 1948-1950. He died in Houston of TB in 1960. Frankie Lee Sims claimed to be a cousin of Lightnin’ Hopkins. Sims cut his first 78’s for Blue Bonnet Records in 1948 in Dallas, but didn’t taste anything resembling regional success until 1953, when his “Lucy Mae Blues” did well down south. Sims recorded fairly prolifically for Los Angeles-based Specialty into 1954, then switched to the Ace label in 1957 to cut great rockers like “Walking with Frankie” and “She Likes to Boogie Real Low.” He recorded for Bobby Robinson in late 1960 but these sides were unreleased and didn’t surface until decades later when they were released on the British Krazy Kat label. Robinson ran the NYC based labels Fire, Fury and Enjoy. Sims died at age 53 in Dallas of pneumonia.
Mercy Dee Walton was a Texas émigré, who had played piano around Waco from the age of 13 before hitting the West Coast in 1938. He debuted on record in 1949 with “Lonesome Cabin Blues” for the tiny Spire logo, which became a national R&B hit. Those sides were cut in Fresno, but Los Angeles hosted some of the pianist’s best sessions for Imperial in 1950 and Specialty in 1952-53. After a lengthy layoff, Walton returned to the studio in a big way in 1961, recording prolifically for Chris Strachwitz’s Arhoolie label. He died the following year in December 1962.
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. He gave up the blues during the mid-’50s after an auto wreck, resuming work as a mechanic. Arhoolie Records boss Chris Strachwitz convinced Jackson to cut an album in 1960. Jackson died May 30, 1976, in Dallas, TX, from cancer.
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.
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One of the last of the old-time Texas barrelhouse pianists, Alex Moore was an institution in Dallas, his lifelong home. Moore had one of the longest recording careers in blues history. Moore began performing in the early ’20s, playing clubs and parties around his hometown of Dallas; he usually performed under the name Whistlin’ Alex. In 1929, he recorded his first sessions, for Columbia Records. Moore didn’t record again until 1937, when he made a few records for Decca. Moore didn’t record again until 1951, when RPM/Kent had him cut several songs. Arhoolie Records signed the pianist in 1960, and those records helped make him a national name. For the rest of the ’60s, he played clubs and festivals in America, as well as a handful of festival dates in Europe. He continued to perform until his death in 1989. The year before his death, he recorded a final album titled Wiggle Tail.
Among the great unknowns are artists such as Manny Nichols, Son Tillis, Laywer Houston, Nathaniel “Stickhorse” Hammond, Wright Holmes, Lee Hunter, Sonny Boy Holmes, Luther Stoneham and Dr. Hepcat among others. Manny Nichols cut nine sides between 1949-1953 for several small labels, first in Texas and then in California. He also recorded as West Texas Slim. In addition he backed the mysterious Miss Country Slim on one record. J.R. Fullbright, owner of Elko Records, first brough Son Tillis in the studio in Longview, Texas but these were unreleased. He then brought him over to Gold Star where he cut several sides. Interviewed in 1968, Fullbright though Tillis was in the penitentiary for life for murder. Nathaniel “Stickhorse” Hammond is one of the oldest performers featured, having been born in Dallas in 1896. Laywer Houston cut an eight-song session for Atlantic in 1950 and another eight-song session circa 1953/54 that was never issued. Lavada Durst AKA Dr.Hepcat was the first black disc jockey in Texas on Austin‘s KVET. He published The Jives of Dr.Hepcat based on his outlandish radio patter. He cut early records on Peacock, Uptown and later recordings on Documentary Arts. Wright Holmes had only three sides issued in 1947, with several unissued. He was rediscovered and interviewed by Blues Unlimited magazine but had turned to relgion and was no longer playing blues. Lee hunter was the brother of the more famous Ivory Joe Hunter and cut a lone 78 for Gold Star in 1948.


In Houston, African Americans settled mostly in three segregated wards: the Third, Fourth, and Fifth. It was in the Third Ward where guitarist
By the time he was in his early twenties,
In 1947, Gatemouth Brown’s impromptu fill-in for an ailing T-Bone Walker at Houston entrepreneur Don Robey’s Bronze Peacock nightclub convinced Robey to assume control of Brown’s career. After two singles for Aladdin stiffed, Robey inaugurated his own Peacock label in 1949 to showcase Gatemouth on record. Gate stayed with Peacock through 1960. Assisted by business partner Evelyn Johnson, Peacock’s roster grew with both blues and gospel artists. By the end of 1952 they had released singles by over fifty different artists. It was this year that Robey acquired Duke Records.





Evidence suggests Henry Thomas was an itinerant street musician, a musical hobo who rode the rails across Texas and possibly to the World Fairs in St. Louis and Chicago just before and after the turn of the century. Most agree he was the oldest African-American folk artist to produce a significant body of recordings, supposedly born in 1874. Thomas’s repertoire bridged the 19th and 20th centuries, providing a compelling glimpse into the pre-blues era. The 23 songs he cut for Vocalion between 1927 and 1929 include a spiritual, ballads, reels, dance songs, and blues.On many of his pieces, he simultaneously played the quills or panpipes, a common but seldom-recorded African-American folk instrument indigenous to Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. His lead-in on “Bull Doze Blues” was reworked 40 years later by Canned Heat in their version of “Going Up the Country.”
sides. The impact of Oscar “Buddy” Woods on the development of bottleneck slide playing was crucial; one musician he took under his wing around 1930 was Texas native Babe Lemon Karo Turner, who later assumed the name Black Ace. The Black Ace honed his skills playing at community functions during the ’20s, then worked with Smokey Hogg at dances in Greenville, TX in the ’30s. Hogg and Buddy Woods were frequent partners for Turner. Turner had a show on Fort Worth radio station KFJZ from 1936 - 1941. He recorded for Decca in 1937. After a stint in the army during the early ’40s, Turner’s jobs were mostly non-musical. He did make a 1960 LP for Arhoolie. Turner took his nickname from the 1936 recording “Black Ace.”Rambling Thomas was the brother of Jesse Thomas. Thomas was discovered by recording scouts playing in Dallas, but prior to that had performed in San Antonio and Oklahoma. Thomas cut 16 sides for Paramount in 1928 and four sides for Victor in 1932.



dance numbers. Thomas was the archetypal rambling musician who went wherever the railroads would take him. According to Mack McCormick, as told to him from a former railroad conductor, “Ragtime Texas was a big fellow that used to come aboard at Gladewater or Mineola or somewhere in there. I’d always carry him, except when he was too dirty. He was a regular hobo, but I’d carry him most of the time. That guitar was his ticket.” Speaking of his famous “Railroadin’ Some”, William Barlow calls it the most “vivid and intense recollection of railroading” in all the early blues recorded in the 1920’s. As for his guitar, Stephen Calt ranked his work “with the finest dance blues ever recorded…its intricate simultaneous treble picking and drone bass would have posed a challenge to any blues guitarist of any era.” The pan pipes also linked him to an earlier era and are most evocative in perhaps his best-known composition, “Bull Doze Blues”, a song reworked by Canned Heat as “Going Up The Country”, some 40 years after the original. After making his final recordings in Chicago in 1929, Henry Thomas disappeared completely from sight. Befitting his near-mythic stature some reports claim to have seen him perform as late as the mid-1950’s on Texas street comers. It is believed that he most likely passed away sometime during this period. All of Thomas’ recordings can be found on Texas Worried Blues on Yazoo and Henry Thomas (’Ragtime Texas’) 1927-1929 on Document with little difference in sound quality although the Yazoo features detailed notes by Stephen Calt.





Alexander made his greatest records in the company of Lonnie Johnson at six sessions cut for Okeh between August 1927 and November 1928 at recording dates in San Antonio and New York City. Alexander’s erratic sense of timing made him a challenge to work with as Lonnie Johnson related to Paul Oliver: “He was a very difficult singer to accompany; he was liable to jump a bar, or five bars, or anything. You just had to be a fast thinker to play for Texas Alexander. When you been out there with him you done nine days work in one! Believe me, brother, he was hard to play for. He would jump–jump keys, anything. You just have to watch him, that’s all.” Johnson’s approach is a thing of beauty; he plays almost no chords, just melodic, single string lines achieving a gorgeous tone, answering and underscoring Alexander’s magnificent vocals, his moans and hums with a subtle delicacy and empathy. In the notes to the Matchbox series, which collect Alexander’s entire output, Oliver writes: “Johnson alone is completely at ease, anticipating and elaborating with astonishing fluency; this was the period of his most remarkable guitar solos and he seems to be at the peak of his abilities.” The very first song they recorded, “Range In My Kitchen Blues”, sets the template, a beautiful number with Johnson’s opening and closing the number in elegant fashion. Songs from these sessions find Alexander at his most primal; “Levee Camp Moan Blues”, ‘Section Gang Blues” and “Penitentiary Blues” show, as many have written, that Alexander likely had intimate knowledge of the Texas penal system. In “Levee Camp Moan Blues” he sings:
of his finest sides for the New York based Herald label. Hopkins’ dropped out of sight for a three year stint in the late 50’s. Fortunately, folklorist Mack McCormick rediscovered the guitarist, who he 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. 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.

