Sun 31 Aug 2008
Big Road Blues Show 8/31/08: Mix Show
Posted by Jeff under Playlists
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| ARTIST | SONG | ALBUM |
|---|---|---|
| Blind Willie McTell | Love Changin' Blues | McTell & Weaver - The Post-War Years |
| Curley Weaver | Trixie | McTell & Weaver - The Post-War Years |
| Sidney Maiden | Chicago Blues | I Have to Paint My Face |
| Eddie Hope | A Fool No More | Jook Joint Blues |
| Gatemouth Brown | Boogie Uproar | Boogie Uproar |
| Johnny Temple | Good Suzie (Rusty Knees) | Johnnie Temple Vol. 2 1938 -1940 |
| Oscar "Buddy' Woods | Low Life Blues | Oscar Woods & Black Ace 1930-1938 |
| Frank Edwards | Gotta Get Together | Jook Joint Blues |
| James Tisdom | Winehead Swing | Jook Joint Blues |
| Houston Stackhouse | That's Alright | Big Road Blues |
| Houston Stackhouse | Bricks In My Pillow | Big Road Blues |
| Gene Phillips | My Baby's Mistreatin' Me | Swinging The Blues |
| Wee Willie Wayne | Let's Have A Ball | Travelin' Mood |
| Johnson Boys | Violin Blues | Violin, Sing The Blues For Me |
| William "Do Boy" Diamond | Just Want To Talk To You | George Mitchell Box Set |
| Robert Pete Williams | Miss. Heavy Water Blues | Country Negro Jam Session |
| Barrel House Welch | Larceny Woman Blues | The Paramount Masters |
| Jabo Williams | Pollock Blues | Boogie Woogie & Barrelhouse Vol. 1 |
| Alex Moore | If I Lose You Woman | Jook Joint Blues |
| Little Johnny Jones | Up The Line | Messing With The Blues |
| Jimmy Reed | I'm Gonna Get My Baby | The Vee-Jay Years |
| Earl Hooker | Alley Corn | Jook Joint |
| Rube Lacey | Ham Hound Crave | The Paramount Masters |
| Lane Hardin | California Blues | Backwoods Blues 1926-1935 |
| Tommy Johnson | Maggie Campbell Blues | Screamin' & Hollerin' The Blues |
| Floyd Jones | Dark Road Blues | Down Home Blues Classics Chicago |
| Soldier Boy Houston | Western Rider Blues | Lightnin' Special, Vol. 2 |
| Bukka White | Black Bottom | Living Legends |
| Muddy Waters | I Got a Rich Man's Woman | Complete Chess Recordings |
| Jimmy Rogers | Look-A- Here | Complete Chess Recordings |
| John Lee Hooker | Birmingham Blues | The Vee-Jay Years |
Show Notes:
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| Houston Stackhouse |
We cut a wide swath on today’s mix show with recordings spanning1928 to 1979. We have a pair of twin spins including a pair of cuts by Houston Stackhouse. I recently wrote a piece on Stackhouse for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas and have been listening to his music quite a bit lately. Stackhouse never achieved much in the way of success yet he was a pivotal figure on the southern blues scene from the 1930’s through the 1960’s who worked with, or knew, just about every significant blues musician during that period. He was greatly influenced by Tommy Johnson who he met in the 1920’s. In the 1930’s he met Robert Nighthawk, whom he taught how to play guitar. In 1946 Nighthawk asked Stackhouse to join him in Helena where he would stay for almost twenty-five years. For a year he was a member of Nighthawk’s band. After splitting with Nighthawk in 1947 he joined with drummer James “Peck” Curtis who was working on KFFA’s King Biscuit Time. In 1948 Sonny Boy Williamson (the program started with him in 1941) rejoined the show and the group performed all over the delta. Stackhouse played with all the important musicians who passed through Helena including Jimmy Rogers and Sammy Lawhorn, both whom he tutored on guitar, as well as Elmore James, Earl Hooker, Willie Love, Ernest Lane and Roosevelt Sykes. Unlike many of his fellow bluesmen, Stackhouse remained in the south continuing to perform locally as well as working regular jobs through the 1950’s. In 1967 field researcher George Mitchell recorded Stackhouse in Dundee, Mississippi. The group, calling themselves the Blues Rhythm Boys, consisted of “Peck” Curtis and Robert Nighthawk and marked the final recordings of Nighthawk who died a few months later. A week later field researcher David Evans recorded Stackhouse in Crystal Springs with long time partner Carey “Ditty” Mason. In the 1970’s Stackhouse began taking part in the blues revival, touring with Wilkins throughout the decade as The King Biscuit Boys, traveling with the Memphis Blues Caravan, playing various festivals and making a lone trip overseas to Vienna in 1976. He recorded for Adelphi in 1972 with various live tracks appearing on compilations. He died in 1980.
The other twin spin today is a pair of cuts by Blind Willie McTell and his longtime partner Curley Weaver. Both tracks come from Document’s Blind Willie McTell & Curley Weaver: The Post-War Years 1949 - 1950. All tracks on this CD have been remastered in 2008 with three additional tracks and excellent booklet notes by David Evans. It’s McTell’s early sides that are most revered by collectors but these later sides find the versatile McTell in excellent shape playing a broad repertoire of blues, gospel and pop tunes. The under recorded Weaver is no slouch either as he proves on the bouncy, ragtime flavored “Trixie” a version of the oft covered “Trix Ain’t Walking No More.”
As usual there’s a good chunk of sides from the 1920’s and 30’s including sides by Lonnie Johnson, Johnnie Temple, Tommy Johnson, Oscar “Buddy” Woods, Rube Lacey and Lane Hardin. “Violin Blues” was issued as The Johnson Boys which consisted of Lonnie Johnson on violin and vocals, Nap Hayes on guitar and Mathew Prater on mandolin. This is a wonderful low-down number with a great vocal by Johnson and superb mandolin by Prater. Also from the same session is the wailing “Memphis Stomp” which I’ll have to play at a later date. Johnson is also listed as playing guitar on “Good Suzie (Rusty Knees)” by Johnnie Temple although his playing is submerged. Temple delivers a great vocal on this number although I have no idea what the title means. Born and raised in Mississippi, Temple learned to play guitar and mandolin as a child. By the time he was a teenager, he was playing house parties and various other local events. Temple moved to Chicago in the early 30’s, where he quickly became part of the town’s blues scene. Often, he performed with Charlie and Joe McCoy. In 1935, Temple began his recording, releasing “Louise Louise Blues” the following year on Decca Records. Although he never achieved stardom, Temple’s records, issued
on a variety of record labels, sold consistently throughout the late 30’s and 40’s. In the 1950’s, his recording career stopped, but he continued to perform, frequently with Big Walter Horton and Billy Boy Arnold. He moved back to Mississippi where he played clubs and juke joints around the Jackson area for a few years before he disappeared from the scene. He died in 1968.
We also play some latter day country blues By Bukka White, K.C. Douglas with Sidney Maiden, Soldier Boy Houston and Robert Pete Williams. White’s “Black Bottom” comes from the fine out of print LP Living Legends featuring live performances by Skip James and Big Joe Williams recorded at the Cafe Au Go Go in New York City in 1966. I first heard Soldier Boy Houston (Lawyer Houston was his real name) on an Atlantic LP years ago and he’s a very appealing singer with a light tenor voice backing himself with some springy guitar work. His songs are captivating tales packed with loads of descriptive detail, much seemingly based on his real life experiences. His eight issued sides can be found on Lightning Special: Volume 2 of the Collected Works.
I always slip in a few prime barrelhouse number, this time out we spin excellent tracks by Jabo Williams and Barrel House Welsh. I’ve been featuring Williams quite a bit on my mix show. He was a terrific player who cut only eight sides that appear to be extremely rare, with few in absolutely terrible shape. “Polock Blues”, which takes its name from a section of East St. Louis, is a marvelous mid-tempo blues. Nolan Welsh recorded as Barrel House Welch on three sides for Paramount in 1928-29 and as Nolan Welsh on sides in 1926, two with Louis Armstrong. He really gives those “Chicago women” the business on his forceful “Larceny Woman Blues.” From the wonderful album Country Negro Jam Session we hear Robert Pete Williams & Robert “Guitar” J. Welch reviving Barbecue Bob’s 1927 classic, “Mississippi Heavy Water Blues.”
Moving up to the 1950’s and 1960’s we play classic Chicago blues from Jimmy Rogers, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Floyd Jones, Little Johnnie Jones plus excellent sides from Gatemouth Brown, Professor Longhair, Gene Phillips and John Lee Hooker. Jimmy Rogers’ shuffling “Look-A-Here” sports superb piano from Otis Spann as does Muddy’s 1965 gem “I Got a Rich Man’s Woman” a great lesser known tune featuring James Cotton and Sammy Lawhorn and Pee Wee Madison on guitars. Over in Texas we play Gatemouth’s torrid instrumental “Boogie Uproar”, Earl Hooker’s vicious instrumental “Alley Corn”, from New Orleans the tough “Longhair Stomp” by Professor Longhair and from the West Coast it’s Gene Phillips & His Rhythm Aces on the low-down “My Baby’s Mistreatin’ Me”featuring some great guitar from Phillip who’s guitar skills were not spotlighted nearly enough. If you’re a fan of West Coast blues I highly recommend the two Phillips collections on Ace, Swinging The Blues and Drinkin’ And Stinkin’. We close out with terrific topical number by John Lee Hooker, “Birmingham Blues” cut for Vee-Jay in 1963. The Birmingham campaign was a strategic effort by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to promote civil rights for black Americans. Based in Birmingham, Alabama, and aimed at ending the city’s segregated civil and discriminatory economic policies, the campaign lasted for more than two months in the spring of 1963. To provoke the police into filling the city’s jails to overflowing, Martin Luther King, Jr. and black citizens of Birmingham employed nonviolent tactics to flout laws they considered unfair.


There is an unknown string bass on these recordings who accents the first and third beats and plucks and slaps mainly in a four to the bar rhythm. All these recordings are credited to ‘Jordan’ so we may safely assume that Charley Jordan was present. The accompanists are not very audible. The guitar is probably played with a flat-pick. The melody of the piano is followed with single string runs on the highest strings, frequent choking of the blue notes and an occasional lower bass string run. Sometimes there is a chordal intermezzo on the highest strings. The guitarist must have known Peetie’s playing very well as the two form a real team. I think Charley Jordan is the guitarist on the 1937 Alice Moore dates. …On 26 March 1937 Alice recorded “Don’t Deny Me Baby” on which Peetie’s name is mentioned again. On the tenth session of 26 October 1937 the piano is certainly not by Peetie Wheatstraw. In the solos the right hand switches from higher to lower octaves, uses tremolos and sliding notes. There is a simple octave bass in the left hand and now and then the melody is retarded. This session is clasped in between two Roosevelt Sykes sessions. I have no doubt about the presence of Roosevelt Sykes here. The bass player is far more interesting than his colleague of the eighth and ninth sessions. He has more rhythmic variations and a far greater propulsive power thanks to the use of dotted eighth notes. The guitarist plays hardly audible chords and boogie runs on the lower strings in the first position.”


whenever she died, it was one of the times that I was away for some reason. A lot of the stuff Alice recorded Henry Brown worked with her, but Jimmy Gordon played piano on one of her sessions.” In 1960 Henry Brown recalled those days: “Henry Townsend played guitar and Little Alice sang. We’d play joints on Franklin … Delmar …Easton … spots in East St. Louis - like the Blue Flame Club.”
returned to music after a long absence. We open today with a trio of great sides by Carbo and the Spiders and conclude the show with a track by Carbo fronting The Clowns and a 45 he cut under his own name.
Classic Blues Artwork Calendar since 2004 and the 2009 version has just been printed. The accompanying CD is a collection of songs that match the artwork. For pre-war blues fans these CD’s are eagerly anticipated as that always include some newly discovered sides. This year is no exception with newly discovered titles by
The most recent song on today’s show is Junior Wells’ “Trouble Don’t Last Always” cut circa 1969/1970. The song comes from Southside Blues Jam which is easily one of Wells’ best records from this era featuring longtime partner Buddy Guy along with Otis Spann. Spann’s rumbling, two-fisted piano adds much to this date and is his last studio recording before his untimely death in April 1970. Fittingly the album is dedicated to Spann.
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.” Where the earlier reproductions of these ads were taken from adverts in the Chicago Defender newspaper, Tefteller’s are copied from distribution posters. They are large reproductions and they have been beautifully reproduced with stunning clarity with each month featuring a large sized ad. The ads are lurid, sensational, politically incorrect and often bear a striking disconnect to the actual subject of the record. This year we are treated to the following full page reproductions: Blind Blake (”Night & Day Blues”), Kokomo Arnold (”Milk Cow Blues”), Charley Patton (”Shake It And Break It”) [Patton's named is spelled Charley, the way he would have spelled it. According to Tefteller: "Final proof of this occurred in 2008 when Bernard MacMahon found Patton's original handwritten military draft papers for World War I where Mr. Patton clearly signs his name 'Charley'."], Skip James (”Jesus Is A Mighty Good Leader”), Paramount All Stars (”Home Town Skiffle”), Buddy Boy Hawkins (”Jailhouse Fire Blues”), Blind Lemon Jefferson (”Worried Blues”) [this is listed in the discographies as "Lemon's Worried Blues"], Kansas Joe & Memphis Minnie (”Cherry Ball Blues”), Ida Cox (”Graveyard Dream Blues”), Elgar’s Creole Orchestra (”Nightmare”) [the cover illustration and Robert Crumb's favorite record related graphic], Rev. Emmett Dickenson (”The Death Of Blind Lemon”) and Rev. A.W. Nix (”Death May Be Your Christmas Present”). Many of the illustrations include an actual photo of the artist. In addition we get some smaller ads included on each calendar page that, despite the small size, are just as crisp and readable as the larger images. The usual anniversary dates for Christmas, Easter are listed plus anniversaries for blues singers like Son House and other luminaries such as Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass. Brief artist biographies are included and there is an informative introduction from Tefteller where he gives the providence of the newly discovered records.
the Blake). “Hot Dog” b/w “The Laffing Rag” was uncovered in February 2008 in a small stack of beat-up 78’s in Missouri. I’ve never been a huge fan of Curry who’s music seems to harks back to the minstrel era, except for the hilarious “Adam And Eve In The Garden.” Proving that not every lost record is a classic, Curry’s pairing are raucous and primitive as he flails away on banjo and toots away on harmonica. If anything they did bring a smile to my face - or was that a grimace!? Also previously unreleased are two test pressings of “Home Town Skiffle” a super group of Paramount’s biggest selling artists including Charley Spand, Will Ezell, The Hokum Boys, Papa Charlie Jackson and Blind Blake. According to Tefteller: “Paramount, however, told a lie on this one - claiming on both the record label and the ad that Blind Lemon Jefferson appears on this record. Not true! Collectors long suspected that Blind Blake simply imitates Jefferson’s guitar licks and they are correct! Newly discovered test pressings of other takes of the song reveal this. We include one of those complete tests on this year’s CD so you can clearly hear for yourself that Jefferson was not in the room for these sessions.” Considering the rarity of these recordings, Richard Nevis of Yazoo fame has done and an excellent job remastering these ancient sides.
Horton was born in Horn Lake, Mississippi, in 1918. Horton got his first harmonica from his father when he five, and won a local talent contest with it. Shortly thereafter his mother moved to Memphis, then a hotbed of blues, and according to blues researcher Samuel Charters, Horton was playing with the Memphis Jug Band by the time he was nine or ten. He also may have recorded with them in 1927 as he himself claimed but many researchers doubt this assertion. During the thirties he played with Robert Johnson, Honeyboy Edwards, and others, and later gave pointers to both Little Walter and Rice Miller. His first verifiable sides were done in 1939 backing guitarist Charlie “Little Buddy” Doyle on sessions for Columbia. Around the same time (according to Horton himself), he began to experiment with amplifying his harmonica, which if accurate may have made him the first to do so. In the late forties he went to Chicago, but later returned to Memphis to record for Modern/RPM and Sun. Of these sessions, the 1953 instrumental “Easy”, based on Ivory Joe Hunter’s “I Almost Lost My Mind”, became a hit. He also backed artists such as Joe Hill Louis, Willie Nix and others.
s a sideman, though it didn’t completely capture Horton at his best. Two years later, Horton contributed several cuts to Vanguard’s classic compilation Chicago/The Blues/Today! Vol. 3, which did much to establish his name on a blues circuit that was thriving anew thanks to an interest from white audiences.
In 1947 Little Walter arrived in Chicago with Honeyboy Edwards, and became a part of the fabled Maxwell Street scene that at one time or another included almost every postwar Chicago blues luminary. He first recorded that year behind singer Othum Brown on the Ora Nelle label, and also began playing in a trio with Jimmy Rogers and Muddy Waters, whom he had met on Maxwell Street. He debuted on wax that same year for the tiny Ora-Nelle logo (”I Just Keep Loving Her”) in the company of Jimmy Rogers and guitarist Othum Brown. Along with Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers and Baby Face Leroy Foster, they became informally known as the Headhunters. They would stroll into South side clubs, mount the stage, and proceed to calmly “cut the heads” of whomever was booked there that evening. Little Walter began recording in 1950 with Muddy, first on the Parkway label, and then for Chess, the label he was to stay with for the rest of his short life. With Waters’s “Long Distance Call,” Walter became the first to record amplified harmonica.



Becky Thatcher riverboat in 1965. In addition to his pre-war recordings, he was recorded by Paul Oliver in 1960, by Sam Charters with Edith Johnson in 1961 and by Adelphi in 1969.
Aaron and Marion
Joe Dean was one of the few artists actually born in St. Louis, born in the city April 25, 1908. He recorded one 78 for Vocalion, “I’m So Glad I’m Twenty-One Years Old Today” b/w “Mexico Bound Blues”, in 1930. He remained musically active on a part-time basis into the 1960’s. He eventually became the Rev. Joe Dean and died on June 24 1981. He was interviewed by Mike Rowe for Blues Unlimited magazine.

