Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

We cover a wide swath of blues spanning from 1927 through 1976. Along the way we spotlight some fine piano blues, several superb blues ladies, lots of pre-war blues including twin spins of Charlie Patton and two by Memphis Slim. Among the featured piano players are a couple from St. Louis; Aaron “Pinteop” Sparks and Charlie McFadden. According to Henry Townsend McFadden could play a little piano but on his records deferred to others including Roosevelt Sykes, Eddie Miller and Aaron “Pinteop” Sparks. McFadden was a marvelous vocalist who possessed a plaintive, laid back delivery and was a good lyricist to boot. McFadden used the name “Speck” Pertum when he recorded for Brunswick, nicknamed for the glasses he always wore. Based in St. Louis, he toured extensively with Roosevelt Sykes, traveling as far south as Texas. McFadden cut two-dozen sides between 1929 and 1937 for a variety of different labels. According to Townsend he passed sometime in the early 1940’s.

The Sparks brothers were based in St. Louis and cut four sessions, the first for Victor and the other three for Bluebird, between 1932 and 1935. Milton cut two songs for Decca in 1934 under the name Flyin’ Lindberg. Aaron backed a number of St. Louis artists at their second session: Elisabeth Washington, Tecumseh McDowell, Dorotha Trowbridge, James “Stump” Johnson and Charlie McFadden.Townsend remembered the brothers well:   “He [Marion] just kept getting better and better and got to playing for illegal joints y’know. …Pinetop was doing a lot of house-party playing and uh ’cause this was a trend then. We would go from house-party to house-party and make some money to pay the rent. We’d go from place to place like that I mean it’d be announced at this party before it was over that there would be such and such a place to get their rent paid and Pinetop would play for those kind of parties where they had a piano–and I kinda went around him quite a bit.” Now at that time Milton wasn’t singing, Pinetop was the star when it come to singing. And so just out of nowhere Milton decided he was going to sing and he’d start. …Aaron got the name Pinetop because “He was very good at the number that Smith made [Pinetop Smith's "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie"]. Today’s selection, “Down On The Levee”, is a typically sensitive mid-tempo number featuring Milton’s fine, mellow delivery and some wonderful right hand flourishes from Aaron.

Mack Rhinehart and Brownie Stubblefield were a piano/guitar team that cut a dozen sides in 1936 and 1937. Rhinehart also recorded solo as Blind Mack in 1935 but only two of his ten  sides were ever released.  According to Blues & Gospel Records some twenty-two sides by the duo remain unissued. Nothing is known about the duo although noted researcher David Evans called Rhinehart “a major artist” with “an outstanding recorded legacy.”

Better known is Montana Taylor who was born Arthur Taylor in Butte, Montana, where his father owned a club. The family moved to Chicago and then Indianapolis, where Taylor learned piano around 1919. Later he moved to Cleveland, Ohio. By 1929 he was back in Chicago, where he recorded a few tracks for Vocalion Records, including “Indiana Avenue Stomp” and “Detroit Rocks”. He then disappeared for some years but was rediscovered by jazz fan Rudi Blesh, and was recorded both solo and as the accompanist to Bertha “Chippie” Hill who sings on today’s track, “Mistreatin’ Mr. Dupree.” His final recordings were from a 1948 radio broadcast. Taylor died in 1954. Taylor’s final recordings are collected on the CD Circle Recordings on the Southland label.

Bertha “Chippie” Hill

We showcase several fine blues ladies including stars Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith plus lesser known singers like Mary Johnson, Hattie Burleson and Hattie Hudson. From 1928 we hear Bessie in top form in “Slow And Easy Man.” The Columbia Records 1927 catalog gave prominence to Bessie as “The Empress of the Blues” and listed a full three pages of her recordings. The advertising read: “Wherever the blues are sung, there you will hear the name of Bessie Smith, best loved of all the Race’s blues singers. Bessie has the knack for picking the songs you like and the gift of singing them the way you want them sung. Every year this famous ‘Empress of the Blues’ tours the country appearing before packed houses.”  Like Bessie Ma Rainey made her debut in 1923. Born in 1886, she said that she added blues in her act in 1902 and by the 1920’s it certainly dominated her repertoire. Our selection, “Leaving This Morning”, is one of eight numbers she cut in 1928 backed by the team of Tampa Red and Georgia Tom Dorsey.

Of the lesser known ladies, Mary Johnson of St. Louis (sometimes billed as “Signifying Mary”) made her debut in 1929. She cut just shy of two-dozen songs, achieved modest success and never recorded again after 1936 despite living until 1970. Johnson was blessed with superb backing musicians throughout her brief career that elevated her recordings above many of her contemporaries. She was accompanied by either Henry Brown, Judson Brown, Roosevelt Sykes, or Peetie Wheetstraw on piano, many selections featuring trombonist Ike Rodgers, guitarists Tampa Red and Kokomo Arnold and violinist Artie Mosby. Hattie Burleson and Hattie Hudson both hail from Dallas. Hudson cut one 78 in Dallas in 1927.Texas blues singer Hattie Burleson recorded four tracks in Dallas, TX, for Brunswick Records in October 1928. Two years later she recorded three sides in Grafton, WI, for Paramount Records. Little else is known about her life, save that she lived in the famed Deep Ellum area of downtown Dallas, where she operated a dancehall for a time. Her “Sadie’s Servant Room Blues” is a rare protest song dealing with domestic service:

Missus Jarvis don’t pay me much
They give me just what they think I’m worth
I’m gonna change my mind, yes change my mind
Cause I keep the servant room blues all the time

I receive my company in the rear
Still these folks don’t want to see them here
Gonna change my mind, yes change my mind
Cause I keep the servant room blues all the time

We spin a pair of tracks apiece by Memphis Slim and Charlie Patton. From Slim we play tracks form two excellent 1960’s records: Sonet Blues Story cut for Verve in 1967 and  Bad Luck & Trouble cut for Candid in 1961 a session he shared with Jazz Gillum and Arbee Stidham. The former session is a nice date featuring excellent contributions from guitarist Billy Butler and tenor man Eddie Chamblee. Slim is in majestic form on today’s number, “I Am The Blues.” The latter date finds Slim running through some favorites and offering up some spoken commentary about the songs’ originators like Leroy Carr, Big Maceo and Curtis Jones.

We return again to Charlie Patton who we spotlighted at the end of November. I never get tired of listening to Patton and this time we spin a couple of tracks I didn’t get to last time: “Elder Greene” and “Hammer Blues.” “Elder Greene” was likely a song Patton picked up from his mentor Henry Sloan.  As David Evans noted the song is “related melodically to versions of “Alabama Bound,” a song that Patton’s niece identified in Sloan’s repertoire. Of the latter number Evans writes  “‘Hammer Blues’ there are brief mentions of serving a sentence on a road gang and being shackled in preparation for a train ride to Parchman Penitentiary in northern Sunflower County. It is not known whether these verses refer to an experience of Patton or of one or more of his friends.”

We play some more modern blues, relatively speaking, from the 1960’s. Among those are cuts by L.C. Robinson (House Cleanin’ Blues) and Homesick James (Ain’t Sick No More) cut for the Bluesway label. ABC-Paramount formed the BluesWay subsidiary in 1966 to record blues music. The label lasted into 1974, with the last new releases coming in February, 1974. The label issued over 70 albums, numerous 45’s plus several titles that remain unreleased. The label has been ill served reissue wise with only a handful of releases issued on CD, usually by labels other than the parent company MCA, and in many cases these CD’s themselves are out of print. MCA has largely left the catalogue languish. The BluesWay label has a decidedly mixed reputation, cutting many very good records and many downright bad ones. At some point I’ll be doing a feature on the Bluesway label.

Show Notes:

It was Lonnie Johnson who gave the title to today’s program when exclaimed, “Violin, sing the blues for me!” during a recording session for Okeh Records in 1928, released under the name the Johnson Boys. The title was also used for a collection of violin blues on the Old Hat label which we feature extensively on today’s show. We also feature a number of tracks from Old Hat’s companion CD, Folks, He Sure Do Pull Some Bow! The violin once played a significant role in the early history of recorded blues. As collector Marshall Wyatt points out, “the violin once held center stage in the rich pageant of vernacular music that evolved in the American South… and the fiddle held sway as the dominant folk instrument of both races until the dawn of the 20th century.” Today, outside of a few exceptions, African-American music has mostly abandoned the violin to white country fiddlers. Many black musicians active during the 1920s and ’30s came from a string-band tradition rooted in the 19th century, an era predating the blues when fiddles and banjos were the predominant instruments, and guitars a rarity. Black fiddlers and string bands were still common in the South throughout the 1920s, were not entirely ignored by the record industry, but were they were certainly under-represented. Some black string bands incorporated blues into their repertoires in order to keep abreast of trends. As the record business began to rebound in the mid-1930s, musical trends became rapidly modernized due to the spreading influence of mass media, and black fiddlers found even fewer recording opportunities. Below you will find some background on some of today’s featured artists.

Bo Carter, who played guitar and violin, was one of the most popular bluesmen of the ’30’s, cutting over a hundred sides between 1928 and 1940. He also worked with his brothers, Lonnie and Sam Chatmon, in the popular Mississippi Sheiks band. The Mississippi Sheiks were one of the most popular string bands of the late ’20s and early ’30s with a repertoire that drew upon all facets of black and white rural music: blues, pop music, hokum, white country and traditional songs. Their rendition of “Sitting on Top of the World” has become an enduring standard. The group consisted of guitarist Walter Vinson and fiddler Lonnie Chatmon, with frequent appearances by guitarists Bo Carter and Sam Chatmon, who were also busy with their own solo careers.In addition to featuring several tracks by Bo Carter and Mississippi Sheiks, we also hear the Sheiks backing Texas Alexander on the topical “Frost Texas Tornado Blues.” On April 9th 1934 the group backed Alexander on eight numbers.

Beginning in 1926, Peg Leg Howell performed a number of guitar blues for Columbia Records in Atlanta, but he also joined with his “Gang” to record rollicking stomps and rags, led by Eddie Anthony’s wailing fiddle. Our selection, both sides of a 78, “New Jelly Roll Blues” b/w “Beaver Slide Rag” were recorded on April 8, 1927 and advertised in the Chicago Defender. He arrived in the city in 1923 and was recorded by Columbia in November 1926. Howell’s first session featured him solo and are certainly appealing but it’s the rough, exciting stringband music he recorded with His Gang that really grabs attention. The gang consisted of Henry Williams on guitar and the infectious alley fiddle of Eddie Anthony. The duo backed Howell on two dozen sides. Williams apparently died in jail in January 1930 while serving time for vagrancy and Anthony passed in 1934, after which Howell gave up music. Henry Williams & Eddie Anthony cut one 78 together in 1928, the stupendous “Lonesome Blues” b/w/ “Georgia Crawl.” Singer Sloppy Henry cut sixteen sides between 1924 and 1929. At a 1928 session he was backed by Peg Leg Howell and Eddie Anthony, heard to good effect on the colorfully titled “Long Tall, Disconnected Mama” in which Anthony exclaims “I got good chicken and this vio-leen.” Eddie Anthony also recorded as Macon Ed with the mysterious Tampa Joe, cutting eight sides in 1930.

Will Batts was a fine fiddler based in Memphis who worked with Frank Stokes and Jack Kelly. Frank Stokes and partner Dan Sane recorded as The Beale Street Shieks, a Memphis answer to the musical Chatmon family string band, the Mississippi Shieks. Stokes was already playing the streets of Memphis by the turn of the century, about the same time the blues began to flourish. A medicine show and house party favorite, Stokes was remembered as a consummate entertainer who drew on songs from the 19th and 20th centuries. Solo or with Sane and sometimes fiddler Will Batts, Stokes recorded 38 sides for Paramount and Victor. Jack Kelly is believed to be from North Mississippi but spent most of his life in Memphis where he sang on the streets and worked with musicians like Frank Stokes, Dan Sane, Will Batts and later Little Buddy Doyle and Walter Horton. In 1933 he cut 14 sides by the South Memphis Jug Band which included Will Batts on violin, Dan Sane on guitar and D.M. Higgs on jug. He cut ten more sides in 1939 with Batts, and Little Son Joe. Kelly’s last known sides were made in 1952 with Walter Horton for the Sun.

Both Lonnie Johnson and Big Bill Broonzy are best remembered for their guitar playing but both also played violin and luckily recorded with the instrument. By the time Lonnie Johnson recorded his “Violin Blues”, he was already one of the most prolific and influential musicians in blues. Johnson himself led a long and illustrious career as a guitarist, and is primarily remembered for his dazzling guitar work. But it was the violin that first captured his imagination, and his early career in New Orleans was spent honing his skills as a fiddler, first in his father’s string band, then as a young professional performing on excursion boats along the Mississippi. Johnson signed with Okeh in 1925, and played violin on nearly two-dozen early recordings. The State Street Boys were a studio group who cut eight sides in 1935. The group consisted of Big Bill Broonzy (who plays violin on our selection “Rustlin’ Man” plus four others), Jazz Gillum, Carl Martin and others. Martin was also a member of the The Tennessee Chocolate Drops, a group consisting of Howard Armstrong, Ted Bogan and Carl Martin.

Charlie McCoy ranked among the great blues accompanists of his era and his accomplished mandolin and guitar work can be heard on numerous recordings in a wide variety of settings from the late 1920’s through the early 40’s. His brother Joe McCoy was well known for his association with his wife Memphis Minnie where he played the part of Kansas Joe. Between 1929 and 1934 (they divorced in early 1935) they cut around one hundred sides together. After Joe and Minnie separated Joe occupied himself in small bands, singing with the Harlem Hamfats, working as a songwriter and working with his brother Charlie. Charlie McCoy’s “Your Valves Need Grinding” features the violin of Bo Carter while Joe McCoy’s “Look Who’s Coming Down The Road”, a version of Tommy Johnson’s “Maggie Campbell”, features a rousing unknown violinist.

Andrew & Jim Baxter

We play several fine, little known, rural string bands on today’s program. The fiddle-guitar duo known as the Alabama Sheiks cut two records for Victor, which were released in 1931, a time when industry sales were crippled by the Great Depression. Another duo was the father and son team Andrew and Jim Baxter, of Calhoun, Georgia. The duo cut sides for Victor between 1927-29, and even waxed one tune with a white string band, The Georgia Yellow Hammers. Rural string band the Mobile Strugglers got started just as the major record companies began to lose interest in string bands. The group featured two fiddlers, Charles Jones and James Fields, and included guitarist Paul Johnson, banjo picker Lee Warren and Wesley Williams on double bass. The Mobile Strugglers recorded seven songs for the American Music label in 1949. Wilson Jones, who wnet by the moniker Stavin’ Chain, led a fine stingband judging by the group’s six recordings. The group was recorded in Louisiana by John Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1934.

You don’t expect to hear the violin in the context of Delta blues but there are some recorded example. At his second recording session on Oct. 31, 1935 Big Joe Williams was backed by fiddle player Chasey Collins. Collins in turn was backed by Williams on two numbers. Delta bluesman Henry “Son” Sims is best known as the fiddler who played with Charley Patton. Although he led a rural string band called the Mississippi Corn Shuckers for several years, the first recording that Sims did was with Patton, who asked him to come along to Wisconsin for a 1929 Paramount session. Sims also recorded under his own name on two separate occasions; during the Patton session when he cut four songs, including our selection “Tell Me Man Blues,” and several years later with guitarist and singer McKinley Morganfield, (who later became known as Muddy Waters).

Our survey of blues violin players end about mid-century when that kind of music on commercial records became virtually extinct. Eventually, a few black fiddle players returned to the studio, most often for small specialist labels. Among those include Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown who first recorded on fiddle in 1959 for the Peacock label in Houston, Butch Cage of Mississippi who worked with Willie Thomas and recorded extensively by folklorist Harry Oster, L.C. Robinson who made records for Bluesway and Arhoolie in the 1970’s and Howard Armstrong who renewed his career in the 1970s playing mandolin and fiddle with old pals Carl Martin and Ted Bogan on albums for Rounder and Flying Fish.

Show Notes:

“In the best-known photograph of Charley Patton a youngish man faces posterity with a straight but somewhat apprehensive gaze. Some of what lay ahead he might have predicted: a hard life, early death, obscurity. What was not on the cards was that some 30 years later he would begin to be described as one of the most singular musicians of the 20th century, a voice of the blues like no other, a teller of stories from a time and place that for his new listeners were as unimaginable  as the dark side of the moon. His sometimes strangled utterances, already half choked by the surface noise of old discs, gradually revealed themselves to be passages from an oral history of black Mississippi in the 1910s and ’20s: its dirt roads and rivers, drinking places and jails, the pest ravaged cottonfields of “Mississippi Bo Weavil Blues”, the drought of “Dry Well Blues”, the flooded bottomlands of “High Water Everywhere” and, turning from natural disasters to man-made ones, the layoff of railroad workers in “Mean Black Moan.” These reports, and the many other types of songs he recorded, from blue-ballads like “Frankie And Albert” and rags like “Shake It And Break It” to hymns and transformed popular songs, are delivered in a voice as tough as steel, to guitar melodies as densely springy as ryegrass. It is extraordinary music, not always easy to understand, but so full of incident that it quickly becomes totally absorbing.”

That above portrait of Patton was written by Tony Russell and I think serves as a superb  capsule of what makes Patton’s music so compelling. Today’s program spotlights Patton and those artists he worked with and influenced. The rest of the show notes are primarily drawn from David Evans’ essay in the 7-CD box set Screamin’ And Hollerin’ The Blues: The Worlds of Charlie Patton which is also where the bulk of the music comes from.

Born in 1891, Patton was older than the other Delta musicians who recorded during the golden age of the 1920s and 1930s, and he seems to have developed many of the themes that are now considered basic to the Delta blues repertoire. His trademark guitar arrangements were adopted by Tommy Johnson, Son House, and Willie Brown, as well as younger players like Howlin’ Wolf, Roebuck “Pop” Staples, all of whom hung around him in order to master the pieces he had turned into local hits. He apparently gave formal lessons to some of them, using teaching as a secondary source of income in the weekdays between juke joint performances.

Paramount promoted Charley Patton’s second release (12805) with a contest. The initial pressing run of 10,000 copies was issued under the pseudonym “The Masked Marvel,” and customers were encouraged to guess the actual artist’s identity on cards like the one above. Winners could pick a free record of their choice. The contest was formally announced in the Chicago Defender on September 7th.

Around the age of fourteen Patton obtained his first instrument given to him by his father. He first played with members of the Chatmon family and probably other local musicians around Bolton and Edwards, MS. The Chatmons were an important musical family, and a younger set of Chatmon brothers would later become the famous band and recording unit, the Mississippi Sheiks. Patton’s sister stated that he didn’t really learn to pick a guitar until he moved to Dockery’s Plantation. There he came under the influence of older,most importantly a man named Henry Sloan. Sloan was born in January 1870, in Mississippi, and  moved to Dockery’s about the same time as the Pattons, between 1901 and 1904. Charley received some direct instruction, observed and imitated the playing of the older men, and played behind Sloan’s field hollers. Evidently at some point he surpassed them in ability and reputation, probably by 1910, as he was influencing other musicians like Willie Brown at that time.

Paramount recorded some of the greatest blues performances of the era and full credit should go to talent scouts like Henry C. Spier, a music store owner from Jackson, Mississippi. Speir scoured the south for talent and was responsible for getting Son House, Skip James and Charlie Patton on record. Paramount asked Gennett to record 14 tunes by Patton at their Richmond, Indiana studio in June 1929. “Pony Blues” b/w “Banty Rooster Blues” was the first issued. The coupling was a hit and Paramount labeled his second release, “Screamin’ And Hollerin’ The Blues”, as by The Masked Marvel. The advert bore a drawing of a blindfolded singer and the clue that this was an exclusive paramount artists. Anyone guessing his identity would get a free Paramount record of their choice.  In all, Patton recorded 38 numbers for Paramount in 1929, some issued the following year, with two gospel songs issued under the pseudonym Elder J.J. Hadley.

Patton’s basic blues themes–the “Spanish tuning” arrangement he recorded first as “Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues,” and that Willie Brown recorded as “Future Blues,” Son House recorded as “Jinx Blues,” and Tommy Johnson recorded “Maggie Campbell” when recorded by Willie Brown, Son House, and Tommy Johnson respectively, or the basic blues in E he called “Pony Blues,” which was reshaped by Brown into “M&O Blues” and Johnson into “Bye and Bye Blues.”

One of Patton’s many admirers was Howlin’ Wolf who said:  “I didn’t start to fooling with guitar until about 1928, however, and I started on account of on the plantation—Young and Mara’s plantation, where our family was living—there was a guy at that time playing the guitar. He was called Charlie Patton. It was he who got me interested. … It was he who started me off to playing. He showed me things on the guitar, because after we got through picking cotton at night, we’d go and hang around him, listen to him play. He took a liking to me, and I asked him would he teach me, and at night, after I’d get off work, I’d go and hang around.”

Another Patton admirer was Bukka White who recorded the spoken “Remembrance of Charlie Patton” in 1963 in which he had this to say: “Always wanted to be like old Charlie Patton. Long ago when I was a kid, I hear him an play those numbers about:  ‘I’ll hitch up my buggy and saddle my black mare’ an I used to pick cotton an come around in Clarksdale after them cafes, eatin’ cheese an cracker. None of the other boys they didn’t have an idea what I was thinkin’.  I say, I wants to come to be a great man like Charlie Patton, but I didn’t want to get killed he did, the way he got killed, the way he had to go. …And so goes on down and got me old piece a-guitar. And I always wanted to play about ‘Hitch up my buggy, saddle up my black mare I wanna find my baby in this great big world, somewhere.’ …And so Charlie Patton used to sing that song about ‘Hitch up my buggy and saddle up my black mare and I hear, would just knock me off my feet. I was bare-feeted, little bare-feeted boy, too. And I like it so well after I growed up, the first record I put out when I was comin’ up about ‘Downtown women sickin’ them dogs on me’. ["Sic 'Em Dogs On", 1939] I was one that kind-a compare with it. Ah, I think I made a pretty good hit on that!”

In 1930, Arthur Laibley who had produced Charley Patton’s last session for Paramount, stopped in Lula to arrange another session with Patton. Patton told Laibley about Son House and about two other musicians Willie Brown and Louise Johnson, setting the stage for one of the blues most legendary recording sessions. The group headed to the Paramount studios in Grafton, WI, where House recorded six songs at the session: three of which were long enough to fill both sides of a 78: “Dry Spell Blues,” “Preachin’ The Blues,” and “My Black Mama.” On today’s program we spotlight several sides from this remarkable session.

Louise Johnson was barrelhouse pianist and girlfriend of Patton’s who went to Grafton to make records with Patton Brown and House. She cut four sides at that session, her sole recorded legacy. Born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, Willie Brown played with Charley Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson, mostly playing second guitar. Little is known for certain of the man whom Robert Johnson called “my friend-boy, Willie Brown” (“Cross Road Blues”). Brown is heard with Patton on the Paramount sessions of 1930 and cut”M & O Blues and” and “Future Blues” at that date.  In 1941 Alan Lomax recorded Brown with Son House, Fiddlin’ Joe Martin and Leroy Williams. Brown played second guitar on three performances by the whole band, and recorded one solo, “Make Me A Pallet On The Floor.” Brown died in Tunica, Mississippi in 1952 at the age of 52. Despite the disappointing sales of his Paramount records, for Son House the Grafton experience marked the beginning of a long musical friendship with Willie Brown. For much of the 30’s House reverted to his former pattern of preaching and then going back to the blues, usually at the prompting of Brown. In 1934 Charley Patton died and with his death, House became the biggest star in the Delta. He and Brown played all over the Delta as well as Arkansas and Tennessee for the rest of the 1930’s.

Remembered by history as a blues musician, Patton had grown up in the pre-blues era, and he played the full range of music required of a popular rural entertainer. Even though his recording career was sparked by the blues craze, only about half of his roughly fifty records can reasonably be considered part of that then-modern genre. The others are a mix of gospel and religious music like “Runnin’ Wild Blues” and “Prayer Of Death.” Charley not only performed and recorded religious songs but for most of his life wrestled with what he thought was a calling to be a preacher.

Patton had a gift for personal narrative, and seems to have enjoyed documenting events that touched his own experience, and which would have been particularly interesting to his local audience. For example, he wrung wry humor from two of his own run-ins with local lawmen, in “Tom Rushen Blues” and “High Sheriff Blues.” Recorded five years apart, these were essentially two variations on a single musical theme. “Tom Rushen Blues was actually a reworking of Ma Rainey’s “Booze and Blues” cut in 1924.

Patton’s death certificate indicates that the onset of his fatal heart trouble occurred on January 27, 1934. In early April he gave his last performance. It was a dance for whites, probably not too far from Holly Ridge. He had been suffering from bronchitis, perhaps from a winter or spring cold. Bertha Lee stated that he returned home hoarse and unable to talk or get his breath properly. He was visited by a doctor on Tuesday, April 17, and again on Friday, April 20. Many relatives and fellow blues singers and friends visited him during this final illness. His sister said that an attempt was made to take him to a hospital, but his car was bogged in mud from the spring rains. The end came on the morning of Saturday, April 28, 1934, and he was buried the following day at Longswitch Cemetery, less than a mile from his last home at Holly Ridge. He was 43.

Related Documents:

“Blues In The Round” (PDF)
Ed Komara’s account and analysis of the famous 1930 Grafton recording session of Charley Patton, Son House, Willie Brown and Louise Johnson.

“Howlin’ Wolf: “I Sing For The People” (PDF)
1967 interview with Pete Welding where Wolf talks about the influence of Charlie Patton.

Show Notes:

Today’s program is our fifth devoted to topical blues. Previous show have focused on hard times, presidents, war and prison. Today’s show is more of a grab bag, spotlighting songs about natural disasters, the depression, historical figures, social issues, civil rights and more. “The blues, contrary to popular conception, are not always concerned with love, razors, dice, and death,” Richard Wright wrote in 1941.  Wright, argued that the blues was by its nature a protest music, and many other writers concur. Mostly it was veiled in verses like “You don’t know my mind/ When you see me laughing, I’m laughing just to keep from crying.” A smaller percentage of blues deals directly with more overt protest and many more were commentaries about community events. There were numerous songs about natural disasters such as floods, drought, storms and fire; songs about cultural figures like Joe Louis, Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King and John Kennedy; songs about politics, war, urban renewal, prostitution and even racism; and of course countless songs about the depression, hard times and welfare. Taken together these songs form an oral history of black America at a time when black Americans had few outlets for self-expression. Although it’s outside of our scope, it should be noted that many of the same themes can be found in gospel records and sermons of the same period.

The 1927 Mississippi River flood was one of the greatest natural disasters in US history. Numerous blues and gospel songs were written about the event. The first record on he market, and the biggest seller, was Bessie Smith’s “Back Water Blues” issued on Columbia. Columbia also enlisted its most popular country blues artist, Barbecue Bob, to record the flood blues “Mississippi Heavy Water Blues” in June. The record was advertised in the Chicago Defender on August 13th and like Bessie’s record was a hit. Other flood songs performed by Columbia artists include Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie’s “When The Levee Breaks” cut at their first session in 1929. Also in 1929, Charley Patton recorded a two-part flood blues, “High Water Everywhere” Part 1 &d 2. Paramount devoted one of its last advertisements to this record, which became a surprise hit at the dawn of the Great Depression. This was the last original blues to be recorded about the 1927 flood:

Well, backwater done rose all around Sumner now,
drove me down the line
Backwater done rose at Sumner,
drove poor Charley down the line
Lord, I’ll tell the world the water,
done crept through this town

Five months after the Mississippi flood, on Sept. 29^th, a cyclone struck St. Louis killing dozens of people and causing millions of dollars in damage. Three blues and one sermon were recorded about this event.  “St. Louis Cyclone Blues” was first recorded by Lonnie Johnson and then covered by Elzadie Robinson.  In addition to being a gifted singer and guitarist he was also an imaginative songwriter as “St. Louis Cyclone Blues” amply demonstrates:

I was sitting in my kitchen, lookin’ ‘way out cross the sky (2x)
I thought the world was ending, I started in to cry.

The wind was howlin’, the buildings beginnin’ to fall (2x)
I seen that mean old twister comin’, just like a cannonball

The world was black as midnight, I never heard such a noise before (2x)
Sound like a million lions, when they turn loose their roar

Oh, people was screamin’, and runnin’ every which away (2x)
[spoken ] Lord have mercy on our poor people!

I fell down on my knees, I started in to pray

The shack where we were living, she reeled and rocked but never fell (2x)
[spoken ] Lord, Have mercy!
How the cyclone spared us, nobody but the Lord can tell

In a similar vein was St. Louis Jimmy’s “Florida Hurricane.” John Lee Hooker recorded the song “Tupelo” several times. While Hooker refers to the disaster as a flood,  the town of Tupelo was actually  struck by a tornado on April 5^th, 1936. This was an outbreak of seventeen tornadoes that struck the Southeastern United States from April 5 to 6th, 1936. Approximately 436 people were killed by these tornadoes. Although the outbreak was centered around Tupelo, Mississippi and Gainesville, Georgia, other destructive tornadoes associated with the outbreak struck Columbia, Tennessee, Anderson, South Carolina and Acworth, Georgia. Severe flash floods from the associated storms also produced millions of dollars in damage across the region.

The sinking of the Titanic in 1912 generated many songs among white and blacks. Soon after the event, songs began to circulate and some were put in print on broadside papers. For many singers, the disaster was a kind of modern “tower of Babel”, God punishing man’s arrogance, especially among black singers who saw in the disaster God’s punishment for the segregationist policies of the boat’s company (Black were not allowed on board) or for man’s hubris for calling the boat unsinkable. Among the most influential was “God Moves On The Water” by Blind Willie Johnson:

Year of nineteen hundred and twelve, April the fourteenth day
Great Titanic struck an iceberg, people had to run and pray
God moves, moves, God moves, ah, and the people had to run and pray

The guards who had been a-watching, asleep ’cause they were tired
When they heard the great excitement, then a gunshot was fired
God moves, moves, God moves, ah, and the people had to run and pray

The Titanic continued to be a popular theme well into the post-war era. Blues artists who sang about the Titanic include Ma Rainey, Hi Henry Brown, Richard “Rabbit” Brown, Leadbelly, Virginia Liston and in the post-war era Mance Lipscomb, Pink Anderson, Bill Jackson among others.

There have been several songs written about historical figures like presidents, particularly Roosevelt and Kennedy,  black leaders, sports figures and even blues singers. There were several blues written about the passing of well known blues artists including a few dealing with the death of the hugely popular Leroy Carr in 1935.  Among those were the poignant “My Old Pal Blues (Dedicated To The Memory Of Leroy Carr)” sung by Carr’s long time partner Scrapper Blackwell:

I woke up this morning, couldn’t hardly get out of my bed (2x)
When I got the news, that Leroy Carr was dead

I run to the window, and I throwed up the blinds (2x)
I stood there wondering, and just couldn’t keep from crying

The day of his funeral, I hated to see Leroy’s face (2x)
Because I know there’s no one, could ever take his place

Then off to the funeral, then to the burying ground (2x)
My heart was breaking, as they lowered him down

He’s done singing, he’s done playing, you’ll never hear his voice no more (2x)
He was a real good pal, and I’ll miss him everywhere I go.

Bumble Bee Slim and Bill Gaither also recorded tributes to Carr. There were other tributes on the passing of Ma Rainey, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Sonny Boy Williamson II. Other songs have dealt with the passing of Bessie Smith, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Doctor Clayton and Sonny Boy Williamson II. There have been dozens of blues, jazz, ballads and gospel songs written about heavyweight champion Joe Louis. During the era of segregation, Joe Louis was a hero among black Americans. Those who paid tribute to Louis include Memphis Minnie, Joe Pullum, Jack Kelly, Lil Johnson, Bill Gaither, Carl Martin among others. Pullum’s “Joe Louis Is the Man” seems to be the first Louis song, dated Aug. 13, 1935:

Joe Louis, is a battlin’ man
The people think his fame will always last
He’s the Brown Bomber of this land
He’s supposed to whup ‘most any man
He’s got a real left, and a real good right
But when he jabs with either one, that stops the fight
He’s not a bad dresser, and his hair is curled
He’s the champion now of the world
He’s bound to be the next champion of the world

Named after a popular 19th-century minstrel song that stereotyped African Americans, “Jim Crow” came to personify the system of government-sanctioned racial oppression and segregation in the United States. There were several artists who made reference to”Jim Crow” including Leadbelly, Josh White and Rosa Henderson (PDF). In 1924’s “Back Woods Blues” Rosa Henderson sings:

Got the blues so bad for the place that I came from
Wanna see my folks but its way to far, to ride in a dusty old Jim Crow Car
Got the back woods blues for a place way down in Bam
Got the blues but I’m gonna stay right where I am
Gonna lay ‘round here right where I’m at
Where there ain’t no grinnin’ and snatchin’ off my hat

Three years later Cow Cow Davenport cut the explicitly titled “Jim Crow Blues”:

I’m tired of being Jim Crowed, gonna leave this Jim Crow town
Doggone my black soul, I’m sweet Chicago bound
Yes, sir, I’m leaving here, from this old Jim Crow town

Fire was another theme that crops up in several blues songs. Leola Manning sings about a fire that burned down the Arcade building in Knoxville, TN in her “Arcade Building Moan” cut just 15 days after the event. One of the most tragic fires happened in Natchez, Mississippi. On April 23, 1940 the Rhythm Night Club fire killed 209 African-American partygoers, while severely injuring many others. It remains the second deadliest fire at a nightclub in the United States. The disaster has been acknowledged in songs by The Lewis Bronzeville Five, Gene Gilmore, “Baby Doo” Caston, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker and others. Other songs about fires include “Jailhouse Fire Blues” by Buddy Boy Hawkins, “Fire Department Blues” by Sleepy John Estes, “Call The Fire Wagon” by Memphis Minnie and “Stockyard Fire” by Tampa Red and “Fire Detective Blues” by Roosevelt Sykes are a few examples.

Urban renewal is the theme in “Third Street’s Going Down”, one of Peetie Wheatstraw’s finest compositions:

We used to have luck in the valley
But the little girl had to move way out of town
We used to have luck in the valley
But the girl had to move way out of town
Some moved in the alley
Ooo-well-well, because Third Street is going down

Third Street ran through the heart of the East St. Louis district known as the “valley”, a tough area full of brothels, gambling houses and saloons. Wheatstraw also lived in the district and not coincidentally was an area where the blues flourished. Some forty years later Gatemouth Moore returned to his old Memphis stomping grounds which was transformed by urban renewal and recorded the moving “Beale Street Ain’t Beale Street No More.”

When the Wall Street crash occurred at the end of October 1929 there were many stories of lost fortunes, of bankrupt financiers throwing themselves from skyscraper buildings. Those who bore the brunt were the poor, and of those the black population was the worst off. As steel mills ceased to operate and factories were closed down, thousands of workers, many of whom were seasonal employees, were laid off. Few were members of unions, and there was no protection against unemployment. Countless blues and gospel songs were written about the depression. “The Panic Was On” as Hezekiah Jenkins sang in 1931:

What this country is coming to
I sure would like to know
If they don’t do something bye and bye, the rich will live and the poor will die
Doggone, I mean the panic is on

Can’t get no work, can’t draw no pay
Unemployment getting worser every day
Nothing to eat no place to sleep
All night long folks walking the street
Doggone, I mean the panic is on

During the depression casual prostitution was a reality to many poor women. Whether it was a bartering to pay the “rent man”, helping their unemployed men or actually walking the streets, prostitution was a prevalent theme in the blues. Statistics show that a quarter of all prostitutes were black when blacks represented a tenth of the population.  “Tricks Ain’t Walking No More”was a popular song recorded by Lucille Bogan, Memphis Minnie, Bumble Bee Slim, Curley Weaver, Buddy Moss and others. During the depression even prostitution suffered from the economy as Lucille Bogan lamented in “They Ain’t Walkin’ No More”:

Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down, I can’t make my livin’ around this town
‘Cause tricks ain’t walkin’, tricks ain’t walkin’ no more
I said, tricks ain’t walkin’ no more, tricks ain’t walkin’ no more
And I got to make my livin’, don’t care where I go

I need shoes on my feet, clothes on my back,
get tired of walkin’ these streets, all dressed in black
But tricks ain’t walkin’, tricks ain’t walkin’ no more
I said, tricks ain’t walkin’ no more, tricks ain’t walkin’ no more
And I get four or five good tricks standin’ in front of my door

Homelessness was another reality as detailed in songs like Josh White’s “Homeless And Hungry”,  Bessie Smith’s “Homeless Blues”and Sleepy John Estes’ ” Hobo Jungle Blues.” Even after the depression the possibility still loomed as Willie “Long Time” Smith sang about eloquently in his 1947 composition “Homeless Blues”:

On one cold frosty morning, the ground was covered with snow (2x)
Well, I met a million people had no place to go
Well some have children, some just have their suitcase and clothes (2x)
You know those people was steady walkin’,  but they couldn’t find no place to go

Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated in March 1933 and took many measures in his first hundred days to combat the depression. In June he established the Public Works Administration (PWA) for which over $3 billion was appropriated. PWA projects were largely engaged in construction projects like sewage plants, flood control and bridge building. Under the PWA was an alphabet soup of agencies with acronyms like PWA, CCC, CWA, CCC and others. Later came the WPA which replaced direct relief and built over a half million miles of roads, a hundred thousand bridges and even more pubic buildings. Many blues songs deal with “working on the project”  such as Peetie Wheatstraw’s “Working On The Project” and his sequel “The Wrong Woman (Lost My Job On the Project)”, Black Ivory King’s “Working For The PWA”, Jimmy Gordon’s “Don’t Take Away My PWA”  and “Casey Bill Weldon’s “W.P.A. Blues” are a few examples. While the entry in WW II eased the pressure on many who were drafted or employed in the plants, it was largely the white population who benefited. Many were still “On The Killin’ Floor” as Doctor Clayton described in 1942:

Please give me a match to light this short that I found
I know it looks bad for me, picking tobacco off the ground
I was in my prime not so very long ago
But high priced whiskey and woman done put me on the killin’ floor

Truman became President in 1945. Inflation was a major reason Truman’s popularity dropped from 87% after his election to 32% by the time he was up for re-election. In addition, after the war prices began to rise and opportunities lessen. Prices rose 38% between 1946 and 1948. Many blues tackled the subject including Jack McVea’s “Inflation Blues”, Louis Jordan’s song of he same name, Smokey Hogg’s “High Priced Meat”, Ivory Joe Hunter’s “Ivory Joe Hunter “High Cost Low Pay Blue” and Roosevelt Sykes’ “Roosevelt Sykes “High Price Blues”  among others.

After the twin bombings in August 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a slew of songs in all genres took up the atomic theme. In blues songs the word “atomic” came to mean anything of great energy, often used as a sexual metaphor as in songs like “Atomic Love” by Little Caesar or in “Atomic Baby” by Amos Milburn. In “Atomic Bomb Blues” Homer Harris gives an almost eyewitness account of the bombing of Hiroshima. In the gospel world it was used as a metaphor for God’s power as expressed in songs like the Pilgrim Travelers much covered “Jesus Hits Like The Atom Bomb” and the Swan Silvertone’s “Jesus Is God’s Atom Bomb.”

Overt political commentary was rare in recorded blues and gospel prior to the 1960’s but became increasingly more common afterwords. Several blues and gospel numbers were recorded about Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in Alabama. In “Birmingham Blues” John Lee Hooker forcefully sings about the Birmingham campaign which was a strategic effort by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to promote civil rights for black Americans.

I ain’t goin’ down, Birmingham by myself (2x)
If I go, gonna take someone with me
Take an airplane, fly over Birmingham (2x)
Drop me a bomb, keep on flyin’ on
Feel so bad, when I read about Birmingham (2x)
Oh do I know one thing, a man is just a man

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. In 1962’s “Ride On Red, Ride On” Louisiana Red is a civil rights themed blues that is mainly about leaving the racist south and in its subject not far removed from Rosa Henderson’s concerns in her 1924 song quoted above. Red does make a brief mention of the events in Little Rock several years prior:

We rolled into old Little Rock, had made another state
Where it took the whole US army to make one school integrate

In “Alabama Bus” Pts. 1 &2 Brother Will Hairston sings bout the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott led by Dr. King and ignited by Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat to a white man. Several blues singers paid tribute to the death of Martin Luther King including Champion Jack Dupree, Big Joe Williams and Otis Spann.

Show Notes:

Georgia White & Bumble Bee Slim

Another mix show for today. I’ve finally caught up a bit so the next few weeks I’ll be doing some themed shows.  Today’s program sports two short tributes to Les Paul and Robert Johnson.  We open and close the show with tracks by Georgia White featuring a young Les Paul. White was a popular singer of the 30’s and 40’s who cut around a hundred sides for Decca between 1930 and 1941.  In 1936 she cut five sides backed by guitarist Les Paul who just passed away on August 13^th. These are among Paul’s first recordings and it’s clear he’s already an accomplished guitarist. Little is known of White’s post-recording years outside of the fact that she led an all girl band in the late 40’s and was lasted glimpsed appearing in a Chicago club in 1959.

We also pay tribute to Robert Johnson who died on this date seventy-one years ago, Aug 16, 1938 in Greenwood, MS. I have to admit that I haven’t played Johnson much on my show. At this point more ink has been spilled on Robert Johnson than any other blues artist and while there has been plenty of quality research on the elusive bluesman it’s been largely buried in layers of hyperbole, mythology, speculation, romanticism and sheer nonsense. My main problem is that this obsession on every minutiae of Johnson’s life has taken away the focus on his very real talents and perhaps more importantly this lopsided focus on Johnson has obscured the fact that he was very much part of a tradition; his music firmly built on the artists who came before like Lonnie Johnson and Tampa Red who don’t get a shred of the acclaim that Johnson does. Johnson remains one of the blues great artists, his brilliance was in how he borrowed, reshaped, synthesized and added his own voice to the music of those who came before to create a powerfully individual style. It would be nice if this intense spotlight on Johnson spilled over to raise the awareness of other equally worthy early blues artists who I play on a regular basis.

Charley Patton

One of the guys Johnson was inspired by was Charley Patton who was dead two years when Johnson made his debut in 1936.  From Patton’s last session in 1934 we spin his “High Sheriff Blues.” Collectors and serious listeners have long held Patton as he pinnacle of the Delta blues artists. Patton hasn’t accrued the mythological baggage of Johnson and isn’t as accessible as Johnson, with his often garbled singing paired with particularly noisy records.  Patton has always cast a spell over me although I’ve had a hard time articulating exactly why. I recently ran across the following by Tony Russell in the indispensable The Penguin Guide To The Blues that pretty much nails what makes Patton’s music so compelling and is worth quoting in full:

“In the best-known photograph of Charley Patton a youngish man faces posterity with a straight but somewhat apprehensive gaze. Some of what lay ahead he might have predicted: a hard life, early death, obscurity. What was not on the cards was that some 30 years later he would begin to be described as one of the most singular musicians of the 20th century, a voice of the blues like no other, a teller of stories from a time and place that for his new listeners were as unimaginable  as the dark side of the moon. His sometimes strangled utterances, already half choked by the surface noise of old discs, gradually revealed themselves to be passages from an oral history of black Mississippi in the 1910s and ’20s: its dirt roads and rivers, drinking places and jails, the pest ravaged cottonfields of “Mississippi Bo Weavil Blues”, the drought of “Dry Well Blues”, the flooded bottomlands of “High Water Everywhere” and, turning from natural disasters to man-made ones, the layoff of railroad workers in “Mean Black Moan.” These reports, and the many other types of songs he recorded, from blue-ballads like “Frankie And Albert” and rags like “Shake It And Break It” to hymns and transformed popular songs, are delivered in a voice as tough as steel, to guitar melodies as densely springy as ryegrass. It is extraordinary music, not always easy to understand, but so full of incident that it quickly becomes totally absorbing.”

Turning from the guitar we spotlight a number of fine pianists including Charlie Seger, Kid Stormy Weather Frank Tannehill and Champion Jack Dupree.  Pianist Segar cut ten sides at sessions in 1934, 35 and 40 and cut recorded the first version of “Key To The Highway” in February 1940. Big Bill Broonzy claims to have written the song, a song also claimed by Jazz Gillum. Gillum cut his version a few months later in May 1940 and Broonzy cut his version in May 1941. Kid Stormy Weather recorded two songs in 1935, and was a local legend around New Orleans. He was an influence on Professor Longhair. Frank Tannehill was a fine singer/pianist who cut ten sides in the late 30s and early 40s. “Warehouse Blues” is a poignant working man’s blues:

You know why my baby she looks so fine (2x)
I’m working at the warehouse giving her all my time
I don’t care, that the streets is covered with snow (2x)
I got to work at the warehouse, and bring my baby the roll
The old house burned down, got to wait till’ they build again (2x)
I’m cutting grass now but I’m still bringing money in

“Bad Whiskey And Wild Woman” feature superb guitar from Brownie McGhee and comes form the brand new 4-CD set Champion Jack Dupree Early Cuts on the JSP label which collects everything he cut from 1940 through 1953.

Jumping ahead to the 60s and 70s we spin some great records by Barrelhouse artists Blind Joe Hill and Easy Baby and music from Excello artists Jimmy Anderson and Whispering Smith. The Barrelhouse label was a fine Chicago label run by George Paulus during the 70s featuring a roster that included albums by Washboard Willie, Big John Wrencher, Charlie Feathers, Harmonica Frank Floyd, Blind Joe Hill, Joe Carter, Robert Richard, Easy Baby and others.  Easy Baby is an exceptional singer and harmonica blower who cut two superb records 25 years apart. Our selection comes from Sweet Home Chicago Blues a 1977 album featuring a great band that included guitarist Eddie Taylor and drummer Kansas City Red. In 2000 he cut the album If It Ain’t One Thing It’s Another for the Wolf label, which is nearly as good. Blind Joe Hill was a one-man-band who recorded two albums under his own name on the Barrelhouse and L+R labels and was part of the 1985 American Folk Blues Festival touring Europe. We spin a few songs form the excellent 2-CD set Blues Hangover a collection of Excello rarities including excellent tracks by Jimmy Anderson who sounds uncannily like Jimmy Reed, the fine Whispering Smith who found his way to the label as Excello was circling the drain and the mysterious Early Dranes. The cuts by Dranes come form an Excello audition tape that surfaced decades after the label folded.

Show Notes:

Newspaper photo of Son House, and a July 14 Rochester Times-Union article about his comeback.

“I’m talking about the blues now, I ain’t talkin’ about no monkey junk”

Today’s title come from a term Son House used often as his biographer Dan Beaumont explains: “House had an amusing phrase he would use when asked about the blues being played in the 1960’s. It was a phrase he used to dismiss much of the blues music of that period. ‘It’s not the blues,’ he would say. ‘It’s just a lot of monkey junk.’ The blues so dominated House’s life-we have now established the price that he had paid for it-that a period in which he all but ceased playing it may well have seemed to him simply so much ‘monkey junk.’” As anyone who’s listened to Son House knows, there was nothing frivolous or gimmicky about Son’s blues. In his hands the blues were a gripping, all consuming feeling:

You know, the blues ain’t nothin’ but a low-down shakin’, low-down shakin’, achin’ chill
I say the blues is a low-down, old, achin’ chill
Well, if you ain’t had ‘em, honey, I hope you never will

Well, the blues, the blues is a worried heart, is a worried heart, heart disease
Oh, the blues is a worried old heart disease

(The Jinx Blues Part 1, 1942)

Today’s show is our annual tribute to Son House who created some of the most visceral and gripping blues of the 1930’s and 40’s and who emerged after two decades to find himself bewilderingly hailed as a blues hero to young white audiences around the world. It’s with a matter of pride that Son’s comeback came in my adopted hometown of Rochester, NY. Over the years I met numerous people who fondly recalled Son House here in Rochester and when I started doing my yearly radio birthday tributes it brought even more people out of the woodwork who gladly shared their memories with me. So it’s puzzling that the city has never honored Son in anyway. For years myself and others thought someone should rectify this sorry state of affairs; a plaque, a statue or something to honor one of the pivotal figures in blues history. The sad fact is there is nothing tangible in this city that shows Son ever made this city his home for a good part of his life (1943-1976). It’s worth noting that Son does have a plaque in Tunica, MS as part of the Mississippi Commission’s Blues Trail.

2009 Hot Blues For The Homeless …A Tribute To Son House Poster

Next week marks the third Hot Blues For The Homeless concert I put on with several other dedicated folks.  Now billed as Hot Blues For The Homeless …A Tribute To Son House,  we had a fantastic turn out last year, raised a good deal of money for the Rochester homeless and hopefully raised some awareness about Son House. If you live in Rochester, live close by are just visiting on June 7th make sure to help us celebrate the memory of Son House.

On today’s program we start out by playing the bulk of Son’s legendary Paramount recordings. In 1930, Arthur Laibley who had produced Charlie Patton’s last session for Paramount, stopped in Lula to arrange another session with Patton. Patton was famous throughout the Delta and had already recorded close to forty sides for the label. Patton told Laibley about House and about two other musicians Willie Brown and Louise Johnson, setting the stage for one of the blues most legendary recording sessions. The group headed to the Paramount studios in Grafton, WI, where House recorded six songs at the session, three of which were long enough to fill both sides of a 78: “Dry Spell Blues,” “Preachin’ The Blues,” and “My Black Mama.” Two songs, “Clarksdale Moan” and “Mississippi County Farm Blues” were issued as a 78, with a lone copy surfacing just recently. In September 2005, a collector announced he had obtained the lost “Clarksdale Moan” 78 in reasonably decent condition. The details of this discovery are not known to the public as the collector has chosen to remain anonymous. On April 4, 2006, both “Clarksdale Moan” and “Mississippi County Farm Blues” were released on the collection The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of from Yazoo Records. While “Clarksdale Moan” is a previously unknown song, “Mississippi County Farm Blues” is an earlier (and faster) version of a song Son House later recorded at his Library of Congress recording session in 1941. The unissued test of “Walking Blues” we spin was not found until 1985.

Rochester Times-Union article about Son House from July 6, 1964. This is the first article written about Son’s rediscovery.

Despite the disappointing sales of his records, for House the Grafton experience marked the beginning of a long musical friendship with Willie Brown. For much of the 30’s House reverted to his former pattern of preaching and then going back to the blues, usually at the prompting of Brown. He and Brown played all over the Delta as well as Arkansas and Tennessee for the rest of the 1930’s. In August of 1941 the folklorist Alan Lomax found House working as a tractor driver on a plantation near Robinsonville. House took Lomax a few miles north to Lake Cormorant where Willie Brown lived. They rounded up two other musicians, Fiddlin’ Joe Martin and Leroy Williams. Behind Clack’s general store, House recorded five songs for Lomax. The next summer in July, House recorded, unaccompanied, ten more songs for Lomax.

A year after the Library of Congress sides House vanished, or did the next best thing which was to move to Rochester, NY. More than two decades would pass before he would resurface. On June 23rd of 1964, Dick Waterman, Phil Spiro and Nick Perls found House living on 61 Grieg Street in Rochester, NY. Waterman became Son’s manager and the following year he was signed to Columbia and played the Newport Folk Festival. Son had several good years on the comeback trail; he toured the US playing folk festivals and the coffeehouse circuit and he did tours of Europe as well. He also performed locally in Rochester. From these later years we spin several tracks for his superb comeback album Father Of The Delta Blues plus several live cuts.

Also on today’s program is my good friend Dan Beaumont. University of Rochester professor Dan Beaumont discusses  his forthcoming book, Preachin’ the Blues: The Life And Music Of Son House. This is the first full-length biography of Son House and will be published by Oxford University Press in 2010. Dan will also be reading excerpts from the book at the workshop component of the Hot Blues event. in addition we also play a couple of clips of Dick Waterman talking about Son from an interview I conducted with Dick several years ago and who was a guest at last year’s event.

Show Notes:

Original Spivey LP 1968	P-Vine Reissue 2009

We cut a wide swath on today’s program with selections spanning from 1926 through 1970 with several twin spins along the way. Among those double shots are a pair of terrific sides by the incomparable Otis Spann. These lesser know numbers, “Wonder Why” and “She’s My Baby”, come from the 1967/68 LP Muddy Waters Blues Band: They Done It Again! Vol. 2 on the Spivey label. The Spivey label is a fascinating label that was apparently the  brainchild of  Len Kunstadt. In the mid 1950’s, Len Kunstadt and Victoria Spivey became companions and together they created Spivey Records in 1961. After Spivey’s death in 1976, Kunstadt carried on the label, mixing newly discovered artists with classic bluesmen until his death in 1996. Due to Spivey’s fame and musical connections she attracted some great musicians to the label including old associates like Lonnie Johnson, Lucille Hegemin, Hannah Sylvester plus a wide spectrum of artists such as Sunnyland Slim, Willie Dixon, Big Joe Williams, Koko Taylor, Roosevelt Sykes and numerous others. The label was very much a homemade affair with record sleeves that have a charming slapped together look and recording quality that varies widely. All in all there were some marvelous recordings and unfortunately the catalog has until recently never made it to the digital era. several years ago a website went up promising the remastered releases of the catalog on CD but nothing has been released yet. However, I just found out through Stefan Wirz’s meticulous Spivey discography that the Japanese P-Vine label has issued both volumes of the Muddy Waters Blues Band records on CD with bonus tracks. As soon as I figure out where to buy these you can bet I will! I do have both of these on LP, both are good with the nod going to the first volume. Spann is in excellent form on the latter LP as he does a fine duet with his wife Lucille on “Wonder Why”, goes it alone on on the rippling “She’s My Baby” bolstered by some stinging guitar from Sammy Lawhorn and does a pair of charming duets with Spivey on “Mother And Son” and “Diving Mama.” Spann also cut an entire album for Spivey in 1969, The Everlasting Blues vs. Otis Spann, which suffers from poor fidelity. Stay tuned soon for a show devoted to the Spivey label!

Other twin spins include cuts by Otis Rush, Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers, Robert Wilkins and Sonny Boy Nelson AKA Eugene Powell. Otis Rush made his reputation with his incredible recordings for the small Cobra label between 1956 and 1958. After Cobra closed up shop, Rush’s recording fortunes mostly floundered. He followed Willie Dixon over to Chess before moving on to Duke where he cut the lone single, “Homework”, and then cut records for Vanguard, and Cotillion. For Vangaurd he was involved in the three record set, Chicago The Blues Today! produced by blues historian Samuel Charters in 1966. “It’s A Mean Old World” comes from that latter session as we contrast it with the very different sounding “Homework.”

In the mid 1930’s the Moore brothers, Johnny and Oscar, relocated to Los Angeles, where Oscar joined the King Cole Trio and Johnny hooked up with Eddie Williams and Charles Brown to form The Three Blazers. Eventually Oscar would join the Blazers. The group made their debut in 1945 for Atlas before jumping to Exclusive plus cutting some sides for Modern and Aladdin. The group charted regularly through 1949 with the biggest hit being “Drifting Blues” a #2 Billboard R&B hit in 1946. All these songs were sung and often written by Charles Brown who inevitably left the group in 1948. Today’s sides were cut after Brown left.

Of the blues artists who were rediscovered and recorded anew in the 1960’s, Robert Wilkins was probably the least prolific. Born in Mississippi, Wilkins moved to Memphis as a teenager. He cut 17 sides for the Victor, Brunswick, and Vocalion labels between 1928 and 1935 that rank among the greatest blues of the era.In 1964 Wilkins was contacted and was soon in the studio recordings the album Memphis Gospel Singer for Peidmont, a wonderful record yet to be issued on CD. Here’s a little background on how the Piedmont recording came about supplied to Blues Unlimited by Richard Spottswood and published in Blues Unlimited 13, July 1964 (p.5): “The process of locating Rev. Wilkins was so simple that one might wonder why it hadn’t been done before. Early in 1964 Bill Givens of the Origin Jazz Library mentioned that it was rumored that Wilkins was living in Memphis and corresponding with a British collector. Since Dick Spottswood was too ill to travel at the time, his wife Louisa stopped at the telephone company to check the Memphis listings. She found an address, a letter was sent, and it was quickly answered. Arrangements were made for Rev. Wilkins to come to Washington to make recordings for Piedmont Records; this was done on the 13th and 16th of February 1964. Wilkins told Spottswood that actually he had never corresponded with any collector, though he was aware that a number of the old Memphis bluesmen had been recorded again. How strange that one of the best of them had been overlooked! And were it not for Bill Givens’ “false” tip he would not have been found at all. For this valuable bit of misinformation folk music collectors will be eternally in Mr. Givens’ debt.”

In 1936, Eugene Powell, along with Mississippi Matilda, Willie Harris and  some of the Chatmon family traveled to New Orleans to record for the Bluebird label.  Setting up at the St. Charles Hotel, Powell cut six sides during these sessions under the moniker Sonny Boy Nelson. From that session we spin “Pony Blues” and Matilda’s “Hard Working Woman” with guitar from Powell. In the 1970’s Powell began playing festivals and recording again. He died in 1998.

Also on tap today are some other fine country blues both past and present. Jesse Thomas moved to Dallas in 1929, when Blind Lemon Jefferson was still active but it’s unclear if he actually met Lemon. He made his debut for Victor in 1929 with a four-song session but wouldn’t record again until 1948. He waxed his greatest sides between 1948 and 1958, cutting over two-dozen sides for nine different West Coast labels. On the song “Double Due Love You” Thomas references Blind Lemon’s “Long Lonesome Blues”, which we played previously, in the song’s title and lyrics. Moving up to the 1980’s we play  performances by Lonnie Pitchford and John Jackson who were part of the The National Downhome Blues Festival, a one- time event held in 1984 in Atlanta, GA. Stretching over five days, the festival featured traditional blues artists in a small venue setting, and the shows were recorded, eventually released on four LPs in 1984. Southland has reissued this material on CD. The festival was produced by George Mitchell, famous for the blues field recordings he made he made in the 1960’s and 70’s. Mitchell also recorded the set’s opening track by Alabama bluesman Jimmy Lee Harris.

Show Notes:

We kick today’s show off with the last commercial recordings by Memphis Minnie and husband Ernest Lawlars AKA Little Son Joe. The two first began recording together back in February 1939, cutting about 70 sides together, laying down their last recordings for the J.O.B. label on October 5, 1953.  From this final session we spin the romping “Kissing In The Dark” with Minnie taking the vocal and “A Little Too Late” released under Little Son Joe’s name which is the “B” side of his “Ethel Bea.” He cut only a handful of sides under his name and these later numbers showcase a very fine, plaintive voiced singer and a terrific electric guitarist. Little Son Joe took up with Memphis Minnie in the late 1930’s, replacing her previous husband and partner, Kansas Joe McCoy. He made a few records under his own name at sessions in 1939 and 1941, including the well-known “Black Rat Swing” but mostly appeared in a supporting role. He retired from music with Minnie in the 1950’s.

We play another twin spin, this time moving up to the 1950’s, with a pair of featured tracks by Johnny Fuller. Fuller was a West Coast bluesman who left behind a bunch of 1950’s recordings. He was equally at home with low down blues, gospel, R&B, and rock & roll. Making the Bay Area his home throughout his career, Fuller turned in classic sides for Heritage, Aladdin, Specialty, Flair, Checker, and Hollywood. By and large retiring from the music scene in the 1960’s (with the exception of one excellent album in 1974), Fuller worked as a garage mechanic until his passing in 1985. “Roughest Place In Town” is superb rendition of “Tin Pan Alley” while “Mean Old World”, from the same session, is a smoldering uptempo number with some lyrics that still resonate today:

Well you think you got trouble, oughta see what I’m going through (2x)
Well I’m going through starvation, man jobs are so doggone few
Well the banks foreclosed on my home, had no place to hang my head (2x)
Well my finance man came, took my brand new Cadillac

Another double spin, of sorts, is a spotlight on two excellent out of print Bluesway LP’s: Lee Jackson’s Lonely Girl (Bluesway, 1974) and Andrew “Voice” Odom’s Farther Up The Road (Bluesway, 1969). Guitarist/bass session man Lee Jackson played on records of Eddie Clearwater, Homesick James, J.B. Hutto, Little Walter, Shakey Jake, Johnny Shines, Sunnyland Slim, Roosevelt Sykes, Hound Dog Taylor among others. He cut a few singles of his own on small labels and one full-length LP. He was murdered in Chicago in 1979. Andrew Odom was was a great journeyman Chicago singer who recorded relatively sparingly. Odom fell in with Albert King and Johnny O’Neal on the St. Louis blues scene of the mid-’50s and  made his recording debut in 1961, singing “East St. Louis” with the band of one Little Aaron for the obscure Marlo imprint. He arrived in Chicago around 1960, hooking up with Earl Hooker and working and recording with him through the decade. A single for Nation Records in 1967 (as Andre Odom) preceded his debut album for BluesWay (cut in 1969, it remained in the can for quite a while before the label finally issued it). A guest spot on Jimmy Dawkins’s  All for Business, was a highlight of the ’70s for the singer. He cut his own album for the French Isabel label in 1982 in the company of Magic Slim & the Teardrops (reissued by Evidence in 1993) and finished his career with the superb 1992 set for Flying Fish, Goin’ to California which came out posthumously. Odom passed in December 1991.

There’s some excellent vocal performances on today’s program including a gorgeous reading of Percy Mayfield’s “Please Send Me Someone To Love” by Dinah Washington and Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers on the original 1949 version of  “How Blue Can You Get.” This number was covered in 1951 by Louis Jordan which is where B.B. King first heard the song. King began using it in his live act at recorded it on his classic Live At The Regal album from 1963. Speaking of Percy Mayfield we hear Percy at his world weary best on the mellow “Ha Ha In The Daytime” his last side for Ray Charles’ Tangerine label, a remake of a previously unreleased 1962 number. This one come from Rhino’s Tangerine and Atlantic Sides an indispensable collection of Mayfield’s 1960’s sides.

From the 1970’s we play some fine downhome blues form Guitar Gabriel plus excellent field recordings by James Davis and Albert Macon with Robert Thomas recorded by the tireless George Mitchell. Guitar Gabriel is familiar to some collectors as Nyles Jones, the name under which he recorded the superb LP, My South, My Blues, for the Gemini label in 1970.He dropped out of sight for about 20 years and his belated return to performing was due largely to folklorist and musician Timothy Duffy, who located Gabriel in 1991. With Duffy accompanying him as second guitarist on acoustic sets and as a member of his band, Brothers in the Kitchen, Gabriel performed frequently at clubs and festivals, and appeared overseas. He recorded several albums for Duffy’s Music Maker label before passing in 1996. Albert Macon began teaching Robert Thomas to play blues guitar when Thomas, who was nine years younger than Macon, was about 15 years old. For over 40 years the two men played music together at fish fries, parties and festivals around Georgia. The two men also received national and international attention, playing such venues as the Knoxville World’s Fair and the American Blues Festival in the Netherlands and the WDR Blues Festival in Bonn, Germany. Macon and Thomas recorded Blues and Boogie from Alabama on the Dutch Swingmaster label as well as captured by George Mitchell

As usual there’s plenty of vintage blues from the 1920’s and 1930’s. On tap today are classic performances by Henry Thomas, Tommy Johnson, Georgia White, Sleep John Estes, William Moore and all-time blues classics in Blind Willie McTell’s “Statesboro Blues” and Pinetop Smith’s “Pine Top’s Blues.” We also jump ahead to hear Son House on a 1964 performance of “Pony Blues” (34 years after his recording debut for Paramount) which comes from the excellent Blue Goose LP The Real Delta Blues, a great collection of early rediscovery sides that unfortunately has yet to make it to CD.

Show Notes:

We open the show on a somber note with two by Pete Mayes. Mayes, a staple of the Houston scene for the past 50 years, died December 16th at the age of 70. Mayes played guitar with greats like Junior Parker and Bill Doggett and 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. According to his own story, by the age of 14 he had already worked with Lester Williams, although he did not meet T-Bone Walker until 1954. 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;  Pete’s Sake (Antone’s, 1998), I’m Ready (Double Trouble, 1986) and Live! At Double Bayou Dance Hall (GoldRhyme Music, 2005). According to The Blues Discography 1943-1970 he cut the following singles: “The Things I Used To Do” (Home Cooking, 1965), “Crazy Woman” (Ovide, 1969) and “Movin’ Out” (Ovide, 1969). Our opening tracks, “Crazy Woman” and “Lowdown Feeling” come from the Krazy Kat LP  Houston Shuffle.

Lots of vinyl on today’s show as I’ve been trying to organize my LP’s and stumbled across some gems I haven’t played in a while. On tap today are several fine 1960’s and 70’s recordings by Guitar Gabriel, Babe Stovall, Willie Guy Rainey, Guitar Slim Green and Sam Chatmon. Guitar Gabriel is familiar to some collectors Nyles Jones, the name under which he recorded the superb LP, My South, My Blues, for the Gemini label in 1970.Mike Leadbitter, writing in Blues Unlimited in 1970, called the single, “Welfare Blues”, the most important 45 released that year. He dropped out of sight for about 20 years and his belated return to performing was due largely to folklorist and musician Timothy Duffy, who located Gabriel in 1991. With Duffy accompanying him as second guitarist on acoustic sets and as a member of his band, Brothers in the Kitchen, Gabriel performed frequently at clubs and festivals, and appeared overseas. He recorded several albums for Duffy’s Music Maker label before passing in 1996.

West Coast guitarist Slim Green cut “Alla Blues” in 1948, the precursor to Jimmy Wilson’s “Tin Pan Alley.”  He cut singles in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s for labels such as J & M Fullbright, Murray, Dig,Canton and Geenote. He 1970 he cut his only full length LP, Stone Down Blues, for Kent backed by Johnny Otis and his son Shuggie. From that album we play the fine protest blues “This War Ain’t Right.”

Sam Chatmon began playing music as a child, occasionally with his family’s string band, as well as the Mississippi Sheiks. Sam launched his own solo career in the early ’30s. While he performed and recorded as a solo act, he would still record with the Mississippi Sheiks and with his brother Lonnie. Throughout the ’30s, Sam traveled throughout the south, playing with a variety of minstrel and medicine shows. He stopped traveling in the early ’40s, making himself a home in Hollandale, Mississippi, where he worked on plantations. For the next two decades, Sam Chatmon was essentially retired from music and only worked on the plantations. When the blues revival arrived in the late ’50s, he managed to capitalize on the genre’s resurgent popularity and throughout the ’60s and ’70s, he recorded for a variety of labels, as well as playing clubs and blues and folk festivals across America. Chatmon was an active performer and recording artist until his death in 1983.

Born in 1907 in Tylertown, MS, Babe Stovall was the youngest of 11 children, most of them musicians. Stovall learned guitar when he was around eight years old, and was soon playing breakdowns, frolics, and parties in the area, even meeting and learning “Big Road Blues” from Tommy Johnson. In 1964 he moved to New Orleans, where he was “discovered” working as a street singer in the French Quarter. He recorded an LP for Verve in 1964, which is were today’s selection comes off, simply titled Babe Stovall, and did further sessions in 1966 and with Bob West in 1968 and became active on the folk and blues college circuit. He died in 1974.

Willie Guy Rainey was a blues musician from Georgia who became a popular performing artist in the Atlanta area in the 1970’s. Through the promotion of musician Ross Kapstein and the recording of a self-titled album in 1978 for Southland, Rainey (at 77 years old) went on tour, which eventually led to overseas tours. He died in 1983.

We also spotlight several fine vocalists including Helen Humes, Esther Phillips, Bobby Bland, Junior Parker and Jimmy Witherspoon. Helen Humes is in fine form on 1951’s “I Ain’t In The Mood” an answer song to John Lee Hooker’s recent chart-topper titled “I Ain’t in the Mood.” Esther Phillips has long been a favorite and she sizzles on a reading of “I’m Gettin’ ‘Long Alright” recorded live at Freddie Jett’s Pied Piper club from the terrific album Burnin’. In 1999 Collectables released Burnin ‘paired with Confessin’ the Blues, two of her finest records on one CD. From Jimmy Witherspoon we spin “Parcel Post Blues” from the Bluesway album Hunh! featuring an all-star lineup of Charles Brown (piano), Red Holloway (sax) and Earl Hooker and Mel Brown on guitars. Junior Parker is another favorite of mine and a great song interpreter as he proves on his cover of the chestnut “I’d Rather Drink Muddy Water.” This comes from the excellent album I Tell Stories Sad And True from 1972 which unfortunately is out of print.

Other interesting tracks today include numbers by Will Ezell, Victoria Spivey, and some fine field recordings made by George Mitchell. 1929’s “Playing The Dozen” is by great barrelhouse pianist Will Ezell who cut fourteen sides for Paramount between 1927 and 1929. He also backed artists such as Lucille Bogan, Blind Roosevelt Grave, Ethel Waters and others. Speaking of great pianists that’s Little Brother Montgomery backing Victoria Spivey along with Lonnie Johnson on “Every Dog Has Its Day” from 1964. George Mitchell recorded some incredible music in his over twenty years of field recording and considered Cecil Barfield among his greatest discoveries. Barfield’s repertoire was mostly covers but he truly sounded like no one else as he proves on his version of “Bottle Up And Go.” By the way, Mitchell also wrote the notes to the above mentioned Willie Guy Rainey LP.

We wrap up with a trio of 1960’s sides by great soul and blues artist Robert Ward who passed away on Christmas day after a long struggle with health issues. Like many, I first heard Robert Ward when his magnificent Fear No Evil debuted on Black Top in 1990 and was unaware of his earlier recordings. His subsequent Black Top follow-ups, Rhythm Of The People (1993) and Black Bottom (1995), were less inspired with the latter definitely the better of the two. After a five year absence he returned to form with his marvelous Delmark debut New Role Soul (2001). It wasn’t until the Black Top records that I became aware of Ward’s 1960’s recordings which were thankfully collected on the album Hot Stuff (1995) on Relic. These sides spotlighted the recordings Ward cut as leader of the Ohio Untouchables (who later morphed into the Ohio Players long after Ward’s departure) for tiny labels like LuPine, Thelma, and Groove City. These are fiery and soulful sides featuring Ward’s trademark watery guitar playing and passionate vocals on numbers like “I’m Tired”, “Your Love Is Real”, “Something For Nothing” and “Fear No Evil.” Also included are four classic cuts by the Falcons from 1962 sporting lead vocals by Wilson Pickett with the Untouchables in support on the soaring smash hit “I Found A Love” and “Let’s Kiss and Make Up” with some sizzling guitar from Ward.