Big Road Blues

Will The Coffin Be Your Santa Claus? (MP3)

As we creep closer to Christmas we turn our attention to a pair of uplifting Christmas sermons advertised in the December 17th, 1927 edition of the Chicago Defender: Rev. J.M. Gates’ “Will The Coffin Be Your Santa Claus?” and Rev. A.W. Nix’s “Death May Be Your Christmas Present.” The idea of Christmas themed blues and gospel numbers stretches back to the very dawn of the recorded genres. “Hooray for Christmas” exclaims Bessie Smith to kick off her soon to be classic “At The Christmas Ball”, which inaugurated the Christmas blues tradition when it was recorded in November 1925 for Columbia. A year later, circa December 1926, the gospel Christmas tradition was launched when the Elkins-Payne Jubilee Singers recorded “Silent Night, Holy Night” for Paramount Records. After these recordings it was off to the races with numerous Christmas blues numbers recorded by singers of all stripes, a pace that continued as blues evolved into R&B and then rock and roll. For some reason there’s far fewer gospel Christmas songs although there were plenty of Christmas sermons in the 1920′s and 1930′s when recorded sermons rivaled blues in popularity among black audiences. Going hand in hand with Christmas is quite a number of New Year’s songs, a good vehicle for juxtaposing the problems of the past year with the glimmer of hope that that the upcoming year will bring better fortune. In fact the other side of Rev. Nix’s selection is “Mind Your Own Business (A New year’s Sermon).” Whether these artists sung these numbers as part of their regular repertoire is unclear but it’s almost certainly the case that many of these songs were recorded at the prompting of the record companies. Like any business they were always looking for a new angle or gimmick to sell records and advertised these boldly, often with full-page ads, in black newspapers like the Chicago Defender. Just about every November and December the Chicago Defender had advertisements either for specific blues and gospel Christmas records or more general ads from record companies wishing buyers holiday greetings. For example Paramount placed large sized ads wishing Christmas greetings which featured pictures of the label’s stars like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Ma Rainey, Papa Charlie Jackson and Blind Blake among others. In Paramount’s 1928 late fall Dealers’ Supplement the label advertised scores of “CHRISTMAS, SPIRITUAL AND SERMON RECORDS THAT ARE DEPENDABLE SALES PRODUCERS” and warned that they “SHOULD BE IN YOUR STOCKS NOW.” As for Rev. Gates he was advertised in the Chicago Defender twenty-seven times between 1926 and 1930 while Rev. A.W. Nix was advertised on ten different occasions between 1927 and 1928.

The popularity of recorded sermons is explained in the book Recording The Blues: “The great gospel boom had been in late 1926; Rev. J.C. Burnett’s first record on Columbia – “Downfall Of Nebuchadnezzar” and “I’ve Even Heard Of Thee”, exactly the same titles as on his earlier Meritt release – sold 80,000 copies soon after its release in November 1926; this was four times as many as the normal sale of a Bessie Smith record, and Bessie was still outselling just about every other blues singer. …In 1927 one third of the 500 releases were gospel items; the figure dropped to about a quarter in 1928 and remained at this level for the next two years.”

Recorded sermons were among the most popular and best selling of the “race records” in the 1920’s and 1930’s. These records provided a fascinating look into the views and concerns of black America at a time when very few outlets existed for black expression. Rev. J.M. Gates was the most popular and prolific of them all, waxing some two hundred titles between 1926 and 1941, which accounted for a staggering quarter of all sermons recorded during this period. His sermons appeared on a variety of labels (Victor, Bluebird, Okeh, Gennett), though Gates often re-recorded his most popular sermons such as “Death’s Black Train Is Coming,” “Oh Death Where Is Thy Sting,” “Goin’ to Die with the Staff in My Hands” for multiple labels. Born in 1885, Gates ministered at Atlanta’s Calvary Church. A testament to his popularity was the fact that he was given the biggest African-American funeral Atlanta had seen until Martin Luther King’s. Gates was first recorded by a Columbia field unit that went to Atlanta in 1926. Four sermons were recorded including “Death’s Black Train Is Coming” and when the record was released it was an instant success. These were the first sermons recorded with singing. The advance pressing order for the record was 3,675 copies and when the remaining two sides from Gates’ Atlanta session were issued the advance order was 34,025. According to Recording The Blues: “As soon as he saw how well Gates’ first disc was selling, Polk Brockman – the Atlanta talent scout who had engineered the first OKeh field trip three year earlier – visited the preacher at his home and signed an exclusive contract with him (Columbia had neglected to do so). …Brockman took Gates and some members of his congregation up to New York about the beginning of September and had him record for no less than five different record companies – OKeh, Victor, BBC’s Vocalion, Pathe and Banner. Gates recorded forty-two sides within the space of two or three weeks… In a nine month period – from September 1926 to June 1927 – sixty records of sermons were put pout by the various companies, and no less than forty of them were by Rev. J.M. Gates!”

it’s not surprising that Gates cut more Christmas sermons than anyone including: “You May Be Alive Or You May Be Dead, Christmas Day” (1927), “Where Will you Be Christmas Day” (1927), “Did You Spend Christmas Day In Jail?” (1929), “Will Hell Be Your Santa Claus” (1939) and “Gettin’ Ready For Christmas Day” (1941) which was his last recorded sermon.

Death May Be Your Christmas Present (MP3)

Rev. A.W. Nix was one of the great singing preachers whose fiery, earthshaking sermons are enough to send any sinner running for salvation. Nix made his mark with his first coupling, the incredibly intense “Black Diamond Express to Hell Pts. I & II” in 1927. This was one of the best known and popular sermons with Parts 3 and 4 issued in 1929 and parts 5 and 6 in 1930. He cut fifty sermons for Vocalion through 1931, railing against sinners in sermons with provocative titles like “Goin’ To Hell And Who Cares”, “The Fat Life Will Bring You Down”, “Jack The Ripper” and “Hot Shot Mamas And Teasing Browns.” He had a special affinity for the holidays as evidenced in recordings like “Death Might Be Your Christmas Gift”, “That Little Thing May Kill You Yet (Christmas Sermon)”, “Begin A New Life On Christmas Day – Part 1 & 2″ and “How Will You Spend Christmas?”

Back-Water Blues (MP3)

The 1927 flood inundated 27,000 square miles along the lower reaches of the Mississippi River populated by more than 900,000 people. For a period of months in the spring and summer of 1927, water covered the whole vast flood plain of the lower Mississippi River and its tributaries. It swallowed up nearly all of cotton country, making a lake of the tens of thousands of square miles of the Mississippi Delta. Some 700,000 people were driven from the land, the great majority of them black sharecroppers and tenant farmers. The 1927 flood provoked an outpouring of songs by both whites and African-Americans. Many blues songs were written directly about the flood itself while others dealt with related matters like levee work, refugee camps and other natural disasters. The four record companies-Columbia, OKeh, Paramount and Victor engaged in a sweepstakes of sorts to see which one could come up with the biggest original “race record” song hit dealing with this 1927 flood. Columbia took the lead from the start. According to David Evans: “Their most popular blues artist, and probably the most popular of any label, Bessie Smith, had already recorded ‘Back-Water Blues’ and ‘Muddy Water,’ and Columbia had these two records on the market by the time the levees broke in the South in April.” In fact “Back-Water Blues” was recorded on February 17, 1927, some two months before the levees actually broke. Through some impressive detective work Evans determined that Bessie was actually singing about flooding in Nashville in December 1926, the effects of which she witnessed first hand. This flood contributed to the rising waters of the Mississippi River that reached flood stage four months later. Nonetheless “Back-Water Blues” was the biggest hit of the flood related songs and has become a blues standard. Again from Evans: “On June 18, 1927, the Baltimore Afro-American reported that ‘Back-Water Blues’ and ‘Muddy Water (a Mississippi moan)’ are probably in the fore of best sellers of the past week. Both are by Bessie Smith. Some owners of the record shops attribute the present popularity of these records to the publicity given to the Mississippi river floods which are laying waste to many former haunts of record buyers.” It also didn’t hurt that the record was advertised extensively in the black press including the above advertisement from the Chicago Defender. It’s not hard to see why Bessie’s account resonated with the public, providing a personal feel to the disaster:

When it rains five days and the skies turn dark as night (2x)
Then trouble’s takin’ place in the lowlands at night

I woke up this mornin’, can’t even get out of my door (2x)
There’s been enough trouble to make a poor girl wonder where she want to go

Then they rowed a little boat about five miles ‘cross the pond (2x)
I packed all my clothes, throwed them in and they rowed me along

When it thunders and lightnin’ and when the wind begins to blow (2x)
There’s thousands of people ain’t got no place to go

Then I went and stood upon some high old lonesome hill (2x)
Then looked down on the house were I used to live

Backwater1 blues done call me to pack my things and go (2x)
‘Cause my house fell down and I can’t live there no more

Mmm, I can’t move no more (2x)
There ain’t no place for a poor old girl to go

High Water Blues (MP3)

OKeh Records first entry in the flood sweepstakes was “South Bound Water” recorded on April 25 by their biggest blues star Lonnie Johnson only four days after the levee broke at Greenville. As Evans notes: “The bursting of the levee above Greenville, Mississippi, on April 21 was the defining event of the 1927 flood, and the great rush to record flood songs began only after this catastrophe.” On May 3 Johnson cut “Back-Water Blues” a cover of the Bessie Smith hit which was issued as the flip side of “South Bound Water”, another flood song. The record was advertised in the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender. Johnson returned to the flood theme several times including “Low Land Moan”, “The New Fallin’ Rain Blues” and “Broken Levee Blues”, one of the few flood songs with a streak of protest.  OKeh also recorded and advertised “High Water Blues” in  by Blue Belle featuring Lonnie Johnson on guitar and advertised in the Chicago Defender on August 13, 1927. Bessie Mae Smith recorded variously as St. Louis Bessie, Blue Belle and Streamline Mae. Her 18 sides recorded between 1927-1930 showcase a strong singer who used some striking imagery in her songs.

Several other flood songs were advertised in the Chicago Defender including Barbecue Bob’s “Mississippi Heavy Water Blues”, Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Rising High Water Blues” and Charlie Patton’s two-part “High Water Everywhere” of which Paramount devoted one of it’s last advertisements to this record which became a surprise hit at the dawn of the Great Depression. I’ll be reproducing these ads in a future installment of our ongoing exploration of the Chicago Defender blues ads.

Back Water Blues (MP3)