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:

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:

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:

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.

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.

Show Notes:

In Houston, African Americans settled mostly in three segregated wards: the Third, Fourth, and Fifth. It was in the Third Ward where guitarist Sam “Lightnin’” Hopkins accompanied his cousin Texas Alexander in the late 1920′s, and where Hopkins returned by himself in the 1940′s to play on Dowling Street. 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. By the early 1950′s, competition among independent record labels in Houston was intense. Macy’s, Freedom, and Peacock (as well as Bob Shad’s New York-based Sittin-In-With label) were all involved in recording local and regional blues musicians such as Lightnin’ Hopkins, Gatemouth Brown, Goree Carter, Lester Williams, Peppermint Harris and Big Walter Price. 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 1950s, Robey’s Duke-Peacock sound rose to national prominence, but by the mid-1960s, his business started to wane. 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. 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.

Today’s show covers much ground and naturally two hours isn’t long enough to devote to the vibrant Houston blues scene of the 40′s, 50′s and 60′s. Future shows will take a more in-depth look at Houston labels like Duke-Peacock, Freedom, Macy’s, Sittin’ In With and Gold Star.

Hopkins cut some 50 sides for the Gold Star label between 1947 and 1950. Producer Bill Quinn opened Gold Star Studios in October 1941 in Houston. Originally, Quinn had called it Quinn Recording and focused primarily on country music artists, but, by 1950, he had rechristened it Gold Star Studios. In 1948, Melvin Jackson, better known as “Lil’ Son” Jackson, became one of many blues singers to record for Gold Star. In addition to L.C. Williams, Wilson “Thunder” Smith, Leroy Ervin, and Perry Cain, the most famous of which was Lightnin’ Hopkins. Hopkisn also cut around two dozen sides for the Sittin’ In With label and its Jax subsidary in 1951.

By the time he was in his early twenties, Peppermint Harris then known as Harrison Nelson, Jr. was lucky enough to have found a mentor and friend on the Houston blues front in the form of Lightnin’ Hopkins. When Harris was deemed ready, Lightnin’ accompanied him to Houston’s Gold Star Records. Nothing came of that trip, but Harris eventually recorded his debut 78 for the company in 1948 (as Peppermint Nelson).B ob Shad’s Sittin’ in With label was the vehicle that supplied Harris’ early work to the masses, including his first major hit, “Raining in My Heart,” in 1950. Sittin’ in With was founded in 1948 by Bob Shad and was operated in NYC. The label recorded a number of Houston bluesmen in addition to Harris including Lightnin’ Hopkins, Goree Carter and Elmore Nixon. Jade and Jax were subsidiaries of the label and also issued blues and R&B.

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 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. Eventually, he left music behind altogether. Eddie’s and Freedom were two intertwined labels; Eddie’s was founded in 1947 in Houston while Freedom was founded the next year and distributed Eddie’s releases. Artists on the labels included Little Willie Littlefield, L.C. Williams, Goree Carter, Big Joe Turner, Joe Houston among others.

Texas Johnny Brown began his professional career as an original member of the great Amos Milburn band known as the Aladdin Chickenshackers. Brown’s picking is killer on early Aladdin recordings by both Milburn as well as Ruth Brown’s first Atlantic sides. Atlantic allowed Brown to make a few recordings of his own in 1949. He didn’t cut his first full-length record until 1998.

Lester Williams grew up infatuated with the sound of T-Bone Walker, whose style he emulated; after serving in World War II, he formed his own combo, and in 1949 signed on with the Houston-based Macy’s Records. Macy’s was founded by Macy and Charles Henry and was active from 1949 through 195, releasing records by Lester Williams, Smokey Hogg, Hubert Robinson, Clarence Garlow and others. Williams’ debut single “Winter Time Blues” became a regional hit, although subsequent efforts were less successful. Williams moved to Specialty records and scored his biggest hit in 1952 with “I Can’t Lose with the Stuff I Use.” Williams’ follow-ups failed to catch on, however, and by 1954 he was regularly performing on Houston station KLVL and touring throughout the South. He later recorded on Duke before one final date for Imperial in 1956. In the years to follow he remained a staple of the Houston club circuit, touring Europe prior to his death on November 13, 1990.

Clarence Garlow is best known for his 1950 hit “Bon Ton Roula” (French for “Let the Good Times Roll”), a rhythm & blues-laced zydeco song that helped introduce the Lousiana music form to a national audience. Garlow was born in Louisiana but raised in nearby Beaumont, Texas. In 1949 he put together a band, began playing jukes and dances in the Houston area, and signed a recording contract with Macy’s Records. After Macy’s demise, Garlow moved from one label to the next but never could repeat his former success.

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

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.

James ‘Wide Mouth’ Brown was Gatemouth Brown older brother. He cut his only record, “A Weary Silent Night” b/w “Boogie Woogie Nighthawk”, in 1952 issued on the Jax label.

Big Walter Price was born in Gonzales, Texas in 1914, pianist Big Walter started he music career in 1954, recording for labels like T-N-T, Peacock, Goldband and others.

Slide guitar blues with an Elmore James flavor played on an eight-string table (non-pedal) steel guitar was the trademarked sound of Houston blues legend Hop Wilson. Strictly a local phenomenon, Wilson recorded fitfully and hated touring. After his discharge from the Army, he decided to pursue a serious career as a blues musician, performing with Ivory Semien’s group in the late ’50s. Wilson and Semien recorded a number of sides for Goldband Records in 1957. Hop Wilson didn’t lead his own sessions until 1960, when he signed with the Ivory record label. Wilson only recorded for the label for two years — his final sessions were in 1961. After 1961, Wilson concentrated on playing local Houston clubs and bars. He continued to perform in Houston until his death in 1975.

Teddy Reynolds, blues pianist, songwriter, and singer, was born in Houston on July 12, 1931. He debuted in 1950 for the Sittin’ In With label and cut sides for Mercury in 1958. Reynolds’s did his most prolific and enduring studio work as a regular session player at Duke and Peacock Records. Starting in 1958 and lasting into the mid-1960s, he played piano or organ on classic sides by Bobby Bland and Junior Parker, with whom he toured constantly in a popular twin-bill revue for almost three years.

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 1950s 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. he cut his own sides for labels such as C & P, All Boy, Aquarius, Bright Star, Lynn, Pope, and Golden Eagle.

Houston was homebase to a remarkable cadre of blues guitarists during the 1950′s among whom was Joe Hughes. He 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.

Albert 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 began soon began performing in these same clubs. He led a ten-piece band, the Rhythm Rockers, and cut his first single in 1958 for the Houston-based Kangaroo label, “The Freeze.” The single was followed by a slew of other instrumental singles. All of these singles brought Collins a regional following. After recording “De-Frost” b/w “Albert’s Alley” for Hall-Way Records of Beaumont, TX, he hit it big in 1962 with “Frosty,” a million-selling single. He recorded for other small Texas labels in the 1960′s, including Great Scott, Brylen and TFC.

Johnny Copeland’s first gig was with his friend Joe “Guitar” Hughes. Soon after, Hughes “took sick” for a week and the young Copeland discovered he could be a front man and deliver vocals as well as anyone else around Houston at that time. Copeland and Hughes fell under the spell of T-Bone Walker, whom Copeland first saw perform when he was 13 years old. As a teenager he played at locales such as Shady’s Playhouse — Houston’s leading blues club, host to most of the city’s best bluesmen during the 1950s — and the Eldorado Ballroom. Copeland and Hughes subsequently formed The Dukes of Rhythm, which became the house band at the Shady’s Playhouse. After that, he spent time playing on tour with Albert Collins during the 1950′s. He began recording in 1958 for Mercury, and moved between various labels during the 1960s, including All Boy and Golden Eagle in Houston, where he had regional successes with “Please Let Me Know” and “Down on Bending Knees,” and later for Wand and Atlantic in New York.

Pete Mayes played guitar with greats like Junior Parker and Bill Doggett.  He has fronted his own band, the Houserockers, for 40 years. Mayes owned and maintained the historic Double Bayou Dancehall, which once served as a regular venue for Amos Milburn, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Big Joe Turner, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown and scores of others.  It was there that Mayes, then just 16 years old, first heard T-Bone Walker who became a major influence. During the next 20 years, he often worked with Walker and made the acquaintance of many other bluesmen who would later come to fame, most prominently Joe Hughes.  Mayes’ discography is slim with just three full-length albums and cut just a handful of singles in the 1960′s.

Juke Boy Bonner caught a break in 1947 in Houston, winning a talent contest that led to a spot on a local radio outlet. He journeyed to Oakland in 1956, cutting his debut single for Bob Geddins’s Irma imprint before jumping to Goldband Recordsin 1960. He cut his best work during the late ’60s for Arhoolie Records, accompanying himself on both guitar and racked harmonica as he weaved extremely personal tales of his rough life in Houston. A few European tours ensued, but they didn’t really lead to much. Toward the end of his life, he toiled in a chicken processing plant to make ends meet. Bonner died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1978.

Rambler Blues (MP3)

As we continue to reprint the blues ads that appeared in the Chicago Defender we turn to Blind Lemon Jefferson, one of the biggest male blues artists of the 1920′s. He was also the most heavily advertised blues artist, just behind Lonnie Johnson and Bessie Smith, with forty-four ads appearing in the Chicago Defender between 1926 and 1930. Today we spotlight “Rambler Blues” recorded September 1927 and “Hot Dogs” from June 1927.

In 1925 Jefferson was discovered by a Paramount recording scout and taken to Chicago to make his first records either in December 1925 or January 1926. Though he was not the first country blues singer/guitarist, or the first to make commercial recordings, Jefferson was the first to attain a national audience. His extremely successful recording career continued until 1929 when he died under mysterious circumstances. He recorded 110 sides including alternate takes. Jefferson’s first session produced “I Want To Be Like Jesus In My Heart” b/w “All I Want Is That Pure Religion” using the name Deacon L.J. Bates. It was the second session, however, that made Jefferson a star. “Got The Blues” b/w “Long Lonesome Blues” hadn’t been on sale long in the spring of 1926 when Paramount asked him to record it again because of the huge demand for the record. This was unheard of for a male blues artist. Prior to Jefferson the blues had been recorded primarily by women backed by piano or bands. This was reflected in the ads in the Chicago Defender which featured women almost exclusively, women such as Ethel Waters, Alberta Hunter, Lucille Hegamin, Clara Smith and Bessie Smith among others. Tony Russell describes Jefferson’s impact: “Jefferson offered instead blues sung by a man playing guitar – playing it, moreover, with a busyness and variety that showed up many of those pianists and bands as turgid and ordinary. The discovery that there was an audience for Jefferson’s type of blues revolutionized the music business: within a few years female singers were out of favor and virtually all the trading in the ‘race’ market (jazz aside) was in men with guitars.”

Hot Dogs (MP3)

By all accounts a good portion of Jefferson’s large repertoire consisted of reels or dance songs. “Hot Dogs” is a buck-dance tune as Jefferson plays some formidable ragtime flavored guitar over mostly spoken patter with a few snatches of singing. And yes, that’s Jefferson tap dancing during the song a fact that’s prominently mentioned in the accompanying ad. The style is strongly similar to the style of his fellow Paramount star Blind Blake. “Rambler Blues” is a straight blues and one of my favorites by Jefferson with its seamless marriage between vocal and guitar:

Well, it’s train time now, and the track’s all out of line (2x)
And I come here soon, I wanna catch that Number Nine

I am worried and bothered, don’t know what to do (2x)
Reason I’m worried and bothered, it’s all on the ‘count of you

When I left my home, I left my baby cryin’ (2x)
She keeps me worried and bothered in the mind

Now, don’t your house look lonesome, when your baby pack up and leave (2x)
You may drink your moonshine, but, baby, your heart ain’t free

If you take my rider, I can’t get mad with you (2x)
Just like you’re takin’ mine, I’ll take someone else’s too

I got a girl in Texas, I’ve got a brown in Tennessee (2x)
Lord, but that brown in Chicago have put that jinx bug on me

New Two Sixteen Blues (MP3)

Two String Blues (MP3)

In our ongoing series of Chicago Defender blues ads we feature a pair by Texas guitarist George “Little Hat Jones.” Okeh placed four ads in the newspaper on the following dates: September 7th 1929, June 21st 1930, June 28th 1930 and October 18th 1930. Jones was brought in for three sessions in San Antonio between 1929 and 1930 resulting in ten songs. At his first session he also backed Texas Alexander on eight sides. Jones was a fine guitarist who’s playing is distinguished by fast rhythms and boogie runs. He was also an expressive, confident singer with a declamatory style that bears more than a passing likeness to Blind Lemon Jefferson.

What we know about Jones stems from the 1960′s when Thomas Craig  interviewed Jones in 1962 and subsequently wrote a short article about him for the Texas Monitor for whom he worked as a reporter. Craig interviewed Jones later that year with the tape eventually ending up in the possession of Roy Book Binder. The contents of which were never transcribed or published. Knowledge of its existence came to light during a conversation between Robert Tilling and Book Binder in the 1970′s. In 1998 Tilling wrote an article about Jones titled Long Gone And Got Away Lucky in the British Blues & Rhythm magazine.

The following is gleaned from Tilling’s article. Little Hat was born in Bowie County, Texas in 1899. He earned his nickname while working construction in Garland, Texas. He states that he had a hat that he wore to work that had about half the brim cut off and the boss man started calling him “Little Hat”, even making out his pay checks to “Little Hat” Jones. In addition to his documented sessions Jones also claims Okeh Records called him to New York, but there is no record of further recordings. During the interview, he states that he played with T. Texas Tyler and with Jimmie Rodgers. On the interview tape Jones plays a version of Rodgers’ “Waiting for a Train.” He also stated that he played in New Orleans, Galveston, Austin, and on one occasion went down to Mexico to play. By 1937 Jones was settled in Naples, married to Janie Traylor, his second wife. Of his work, he stated “I farmed a little bit, worked in the State Department some, railroads, sawmills, big chicken ranch, from that to janitor, working at old folks homes.” His obituary states that he worked for many years at Red River Army Depot. Jones died in March 1981 at the Linden Municipal Hospital, and is buried in the Morning Star cemetery in Naples.

Show Notes:

Today’s show is a sequel to a show I did about a year ago on the early Texas piano players. Today’s program is wider ranging look at the early Texas blues scene.  The title  comes from Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Got The Blues” recorded in 1926. To quote Tony Russell from the Penguin Guide To Blues: “All the companies involved in the blues business in the ’20s and ’30s made frequent recording trips to Dallas and San Antonio, and the music they collected and issued is a rich, colorful mixture of theatre and club artists, street singers and pianists circuit-riding the logging camps.”

In the 1920′s Dallas became a recording center primarily because it is a geographical hub. The major race labels, those catering to a black audience, held regular sessions in Dallas. Okeh, Vocalion, Brunswick Columbia, RCA, and Paramount sent scouts and engineers to record local artists once or twice a year. Quite a number of sessions were also recorded in San Antonio with a few others cut in Fort Worth. Engineers came into the city, set up their equipment in a hotel room, and put the word out. As a result of Jefferson’s commercial success, blues singers from around the south flocked to Dallas with the hope of being recorded. In addition to Blind Lemon Jefferson, there were other important blues musicians, who recorded in Dallas during the heyday of Deep Ellum and Central Tracks. These included Lillian Glinn, Little Hat Jones, Texas Alexander, Jesse Thomas, Ramblin Thomas, Sammy Hill, Otis Harris, Willie Reed, Oscar “Buddy” Woods, Black Ace and the young T-Bone Walker.

Blind Lemon Jefferson’s records sold thousands of copies to blacks in the urban ghettos of the North, but in Dallas Jefferson was recognized primarily as street singer who performed daily with a tin cup at the corner of Elm Street and Central Avenue. Despite his limited commercial success in Dallas, he had a great influence on the development of Texas blues. Leadbelly credited him as an inspiration, as did T-Bone Walker. What distinguishes Jefferson from the other blues performers of his generation was his singular approach to the guitar, which established the basis of what is today known as the Texas style. Little is known about Jefferson’s early life. He must have heard songsters and bluesmen, like Henry “Ragtime Texas” Thomas and “Texas” Alexander. Both Thomas and Alexander traveled around East Texas and performed a variety of blues and dance tunes. Legends of his prowess as a bluesman abound among the musicians who heard him, and sightings of Jefferson in different places around the country are plentiful. By his teens, he began spending time in Dallas. About 1912 he started performing in the Deep Ellum and Central Track areas of Dallas, where he met Leadbelly. The two became musical partners in Dallas and the outlying areas of East Texas. Jefferson was known to perform almost daily at the corner of Elm Street and Central Avenue in Dallas. In 1925 Jefferson was discovered by a Paramount recording scout and taken to Chicago to make records. Though he was not the first blues singer-guitarist, or the first to make commercial recordings, Jefferson was the first to attain a national audience. His extremely successful recording career began in 1926 and continued until 1929. He recorded 110 sides. Jefferson is widely recognized as a profound influence upon the development of the Texas blues tradition and the growth of American popular music. His significance has been acknowledged by blues, jazz, and rock musicians, from Sam “Lightnin’” Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, and T-Bone Walker to Bessie Smith. Jefferson died in Chicago on December 22, 1929.

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.”

Texas Alexander was well known in the Texas Brazos River bottomlands when he started recording in 1927. Unable to play himself, Alexander used a variety of accompanists including Little Hat Jones, Lonnie Johnson and Eddie Lang to the string band blues of the Mississipi Sheiks and the full on jazz of King Oliver’s New Orleans band. Alexander’s performing and recording career continued into the ’30s with sessions for Vocalion. In 1940, he was sent to the state pen at Paris, TX, for killing his wife. After his release in 1945 he spent time in Houston, joining his cousin Lightnin’ Hopkins for live shows and recording for the Freedom label with pianist Buster Pickens. By 1954 he was back in the bottomlands where he died of syphilis.

Oscar “Buddy” Woods was a Louisiana street musician known as “The Lone Wolf” and a pioneer in the style of lap steel bottleneck blues slide guitar. Not long after arriving in Shreveport, Woods began a long association with guitarist Ed Schaffer, and together they performed as the Shreveport Home Wreckers. Woods and Schaffer made their first two recordings as the Shreveport Home Wreckers for Victor in Memphis on May 31, 1930. From this first session up until his last, a field recording for the Library of Congress made on October 8, 1940, Oscar “Buddy” Woods was involved in the making of no less than 35 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.

J.T. “Funny Paper” Smith was a pioneering Texas blues guitarist who was also a gifted composer and singer. A contemporary of such legends as Blind Lemon Jefferson and Dennis “Little Hat” Jones, next to nothing concrete is known of his life; assumed to have been born in East Texas during the latter half of the 1880s, he was a minstrel who wandered about the panhandle region, performing at fairs, fish fries, dances and other community events (often in the company of figures including Tom Shaw, Texas Alexander and Bernice Edwards). Smith settled down long enough to record some 22 songs between 1930 and 1931, among them his trademark number “Howling Wolf Blues, Parts One and Two”; indeed, he claimed the alternate nickname “Howling Wolf” some two decades before it was appropriated by his more famous successor, Chester Burnett. His career supposedly came to an abrupt end during the mid-’30s, when he was arrested for murdering a man over a gambling dispute; Smith was found guilty and imprisoned, and is believed to have died in his cell circa 1940.

Little Hat Jones

George “Little Hat” Jones was born October 5, 1899, in Bowie County, TX. He was a well-known street singer in San Antonio in the mid-’20s, and made his first recordings there on June 15, 1929. At the same session he sat in on guitar for an additional nine tracks by Texas Alexander. OKeh brought Jones back six days later to record four more tunes and again a year later, on June 14, 1930, when he four more. For whatever reason, Jones never recorded again, leaving behind a legacy of ten songs, plus nine more as a sideman for Texas Alexander. He died in Naples, TX, in 1981.

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.

Among the other performers heard today are fine woman singers like Lillian Glinn, Hattie Burleson, Bobbie Cadilliac, Hattie Hudson, jug and string bands like the Dallas String Band and Frenchy’s Stringband. Hattie Burleson was from Dallas and waxed only seven sides. She was discovered by fellow Dallas singer Lillian Glinn while she was singing spirituals in church. Glinn was born in 1900 in Dallas, Texas where she made her first recordings in 1927, recording 22 sides until December 1929.

John Henry (MP3)

Cottonfield Blues (MP3)

I’ve always been intrigued by the old blues advertisements and have been collecting them for some time. The bulk of these appeared in the Chicago Defender and I’m fortunate to have access to all the old back issues through a university library.  Other ads stem from promotional material sent by the record companies to record stores and distributors. Outside of scanning ads from the Chicago Defender I’ve grabbed additional ads from books, periodicals and the web. It should also be mention that record collector John Tefteller uncovered a huge cache of Paramount promotional material a few years back. Tefteller bought a huge cache of this artwork from a pair of journalists who rescued them from the rubbish heap some twenty years previously. The depression essentially killed off Paramount’s advertising budget so many of these images were never sent out and hence have not been seen by anyone since they were first produced. Tefteller has been making these evocative ads available in his Classic Blues Artwork Calendars since 2004 with a book of these advertisements planned for the future.

As writer Elijah Wald summarizes: “For roughly ten years, from the dawn of the blues recording boom in 1920 until the Depression temporarily destroyed the ‘race record’ industry, blues was the most popular music in black America, and the Chicago Defender was the principle venue for record advertisements aimed at African American consumers.” Wald has compiled a handy index of Chicago Defender ads on his website.

Mamie Smith Ad, 1922

The following background is taken from the Chicago Defender website: “On May 5, 1905, Robert Sengstacke Abbott founded the Chicago Defender in a small kitchen in his landlord’s apartment, with an initial investment of 25 cents and a press run of 300 copies. The Chicago Defender’s first issues were in the form of four-page, six-column handbills, filled with local news items gathered by Abbott and clippings from other newspapers. Five years later, the Chicago Defender began to attract a national audience. By the start of World War I, the Chicago Defender was the nation’s most influential Black weekly newspaper, with more than two thirds of its readership base located outside of Chicago.” The paper began publishing on a daily basis in 1956.

Once a week I will be presenting an ad or two with some background as well as audio clips. I don’t plan on putting these up in any particular order and will omit the large number of early ads mainly devoted to the classic female singers like Ethel Waters, Ida Cox, Sara Marin, Alberta Hunter, Lucille Hegamin and the like.  Since I’m doing a show on early Texas blues today I thought I’d reproduce the ads for Henry Thomas’ magnificent two-part 78 debut, “John Henry” b/w “Cottonfield Blues” cut on July 1, 1927. Vocalion seem to have had faith in this new artist issuing separate ads for both sides. In 1928 Thomas issued six sides with Vocalion placing four ads in the Chicago Defender.

Henry Thomas, nicknamed “Ragtime Texas”, was born in 1874 in Big Sandy, Texas by most accounts, a town which lies roughly between Dallas and Shreveport. The 1874 date marks him as one of the eldest-born blues performers on record. The honor for oldest goes to Johnny “Daddy Stovepipe” Watson born in Alabama in 1867 and who first recorded in 1924. “Flailing his guitar”, Tony Russell writes, “in now forgotten country dance rhythms, whistling delicate melodies on his panpies, gruffly chanting rag songs and blues, Thomas is a figure of almost legend.” The portrait Thomas presents on his twenty-three recordings cut for Vocalion between 1927 to 1929 provides, Russell notes, “a wholly absorbing picture of black-country music before it was submerged beneath the tidal wave of the blues.” Thomas embodied the term songster, cutting blues, rags, country stomps, refashioned coon songs and square 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.

We wrap up our look at the recordings of Texas Alexander with sessions he cut in 1934 in the company of the Mississippi Sheiks, the jazz band His Sax Black Tams, the guitar duo of Willie Reed and Carl Davis and a lone 78 in cut in the post-war era. In part two we ended with Alexander’s recordings with Carl Davis. Davis is likely the second guitarist with Willie Reed on eight sides on September 29 and 30th 1934. Reed cut two sides under his own name in 1928 and 1935 in Dallas along with several sides that were unissued. Despite not having recorded in five years, Alexander is in typically fine voice with the team of Reed and Davis provide excellent support, Davis likely taking the flat-picked leads with Reed providing the chording. It’s clear through Alexander’s songs that he was a man with a total disregard for religion which is perfectly summed up in “Justice Blues”:

When you see a woman with a cigarette in her hand (2x)
She’ll misuse her husband for her little kid man

Take me out of this bottom, before the high water rise (2X)
You know I ain’t no Christian, and I don’t want to be baptized

I’ve cried, “Lord, my Father, Lord, our kingdom come.” (2X)
“Send me back my woman, then my will be done.”

I never been to Heaven, people, but I’ve been told (2X)
Oh Lord, it’s womens up there got their mouths chock full of gold

I’m gonna build me a Heaven, have a kingdom of my own (2X)
So these brownskin women can cluster around my throne

As Paul Oliver writes, the song is “sardonically humorous, his words are those of a man who claimed no religious convictions; they manifestly proclaim his disregard for the belief, prayers, the symbol and the ritual of the Church. His work was consistent and he did not record any gospel songs to confound the impression of a man totally uninvolved in Church doctrine. …The final verse…echoed one that was in general currency. A form of it had appeared in the recording entitled “Preachin’ The Blues” made by Son House some four year before.” The send-up of the Lord’s Prayer also shows up in Frank Stokes’ “You Shall” (“Now Our Father who art in heaven/The preacher owes me ten dollars he gave me seven”) and is related to a large body of songs that poke fun at the preacher. The Lord’s Prayer send-up, and his ambivalence to religion in general, show up six months prior in “Prairie Dog Hole Blues” at a session in San Antonio on April 9, 1934 where he was backed by “His Sax Black Tams”:

I’m going out in West Texas, jump in a prairie dog’s hole (2X)
If I don’t find my baby, I ain’t comin’ here no more

I cried, “Lord, my Father, Lord, thy kingdom come” (2X)
“Send me back my baby, and my will be done”

Uhhh, uhh, eee, uhhh,
Send me back my baby, then my will be done
I said, “Lord, our Father, Lord, our kingdom come”

Says, I went to church and the people all called on me to pray (2X)
I set down on my knees and forgot just what to say

In “Bottoms Blues”, recorded in 195o, he incorporates lines from both of the above songs. The rest of the Davis/Reed are quite strong particularly the frank sexuality of “Easy Rider Blues” and the lovely “One Morning Blues.”

On April 9th 1934 Alexander was backed by the Mississippi Sheiks on eight numbers. The lineup featured Bo Chatman on violin, Sam Chatman and Walter Vinson on guitars. Lonnie Chatman who also played violin seems to be absent from this session. Alexander and the Sheiks seem very much in sync and the pairing is very effective with Alexander tackling a strong batch of songs. Bo’s fiddle playing adds a nice contrast to Alexander’s vocals and among the session’s highlights are “Seen Better Days”, “Texas Troublesome Blues” and “Last Stage Blues.” Also from this session is “Frost Texas Tornado Blues”, a rare topical blues from Alexander. Most sources rate this as an F4 tornado which destroyed the tiny town of Frost, Texas on May 6, 1930 leaving 41 dead. The Houston Chronicle wrote: “Bright sunshine today brought out in bold relief such a picture of death and ruin in the little town of Frost as has never been seen in this part of the state. There was no room in the little cemetery for the dead. The cemetery was covered with debris from the houses of the living. In three minutes Tuesday afternoon a black swirling monster swept out of the southwest and completely demolished a town which has been 43 years in the building, took the lives of 23 and injured a hundred more.” In “Frost Texas Tornado Blues” Alexander gave the following account:

I was settin’ and lookin’, way out across the world (2x)
Says, the wind had sands twistin’ almost in a swirl

Says, I’ve been a good fella just as good as I can be (2x)
Says, it’s Lord, have mercy, Lord have mercy on me

Some lost their babies, were thrown for two, three miles around (2x)
When they come to thei’ right mind, they come on back to town

The roosters was crowin’, cows was lowin’, never heard such a noise before
Oh, oh, Lordy Lord
Said, it seemed like Hell was broke out in this place below

On April 9th 1934 Alexander cut six sides with the jazz band His Sax Black Tams with unknown personnel which included a clarinetist/alto sax player, piano and guitar. Alexander sounds surprisingly at ease in this setting and the songs are generally quite good outside of the poppy sounding “Blues In My Mind”, the first song of the session, where it sounds like Alexander and the band are still getting their bearings. Lyrically the most interesting number is the above quoted “Prairie Dog Hole Blues” although “Polo Blues”has a couple of tough concluding stanzas:

You can hand me my pistol, shotgun and some shells (2x)
I’m gonna kill my woman, send the poor gal to Hell

Get your milk from a polo, cream from a Jersey cow (2x)
Your pigmeat from your pig, your bacon from a no-good sow

The clarinetist on this number switches to alto sax to fine effect. The “polo” of the title is not the game, but, according to Paul Oliver was “a “polled animal whose horns had been removed so that its strength would go into beef and milk”. The session’s best number is perhaps the enigmatic “Normangee Blues” featuring a wonderful reading from Alexander and sympathetic backing from the band. Normangee is notable for being the town where Lightnin’ Hopkins first ran across Alexander at a baseball game as he related to Samuel Charters: “I seen a man standing up on a truck with his hand up to his mouth and that man was singing. People was paying so much attention to him instead of the ball game. I accompanied him for quite a bit there in Crockett, Grapeland, Palestine, Oakwood and Buffalo and Centerville, Normangee, Flynn and Marquez and back in them places. I never followed Texas no further than Houston for a long way, ’cause he was a man to get up and go.”

Alexander’s final record, “Bottoms Blues” b/w “Cross Roads”, was cut in Houston in 1950 for the Freedom label backed by Benton’s Busy Bees which consisted of Buster Pickens on piano and Leon Benton on guitar. Oliver notes that Pickens was not happy with the session and Tony Russell calls it “an encounter rather than a meeting.” Indeed it’s a rather jarring collision of styles while Alexander has lost a fair bit of his former glory in the sixteen years since he had been in the studio. Lyrically “Cross Roads” is interesting for opening with lines generally associated with Robert Johnson:

Lord, I was standin’ at the crossroad, I was tryin’ my best to get a ride (2x)
Nobody seemed to know me, everybody was passin’ by

“Bottoms Blues” on the other hand is a finely composed song with echoes of some of Alexander’s earlier lyrics:

Take me out of this bottom, ‘fore the high water rise (2x)
You know I ain’t no Christian man and I don’t want to be baptized

I went to church this morning, and they called on me to pray (2x)
I fell down on my knees and forgot just what to say

I cried, “Lord, my Father, Lord, our kingdom come” (2x)
“If you got any womens in Heaven, will you please, sir, save me one?”

Dear God, I never been to Heaven, but a black man sure been told (2x)
They got women up there, they got their mouths crammed full of gold

I want to build me a Heaven, Lord, a kingdom of my own (2x)
So all these brownskin women can cluster around my throne

You know a married woman, married woman, is the best woman ever been born
I say a married woman is the best woman ever born
Only trouble I have, tryin’ to keep my woman at home

All of Texas Alexander’s recordings have been reissued on three volumes on the Matchbox label with good notes from Paul Oliver but rather uneven mastering. Unfortunately there is no single CD collection of Alexander’s since Catfish’s “98° Blues” has been deleted. Also worth noting, although I have yet to track down a copy, is the LP “Texas Troublesome Blues” on Agram which contains a very detailed booklet on Alexander’s life and music. The Agram booklet written by Guido Van Rijn incorporated most of Lawrence Brown’s 1981 research conducted with friends and relatives in Richards, Texas (Alexander’s last residence 1951-54) which may be the only source where that information can found.

Seen Better Days (MP3)

Normangee Blues (MP3)

Easy Rider Blues (MP3)

Bottoms Blues (MP3)

Lightnin’ Hopkins – I Meet Texas Alexander (MP3)