Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

A while back we did our first installment of Forgotten Blues Ladies, which focused primarily on the 1920’s and 30’s. Today’s sequel covers some of the same territory but stretches up through the 1940’s and early 50’s. The Classic Female Blues era as it’s generally called spanned from 1920 to 1929 with its peak from 1923 to 1925. Although officially introduced by Mamie Smith with her hit Okeh recording of “Crazy Blues” in 1920, vaudeville entertainers such as “coon shouter” Sophie Tucker and comedienne Marie Cahill anticipated some aspects of the style on record prior to World War I. Mamie Smith, an educated city girl from the West End of Cincinnati, was something of an anomaly among the early singers; most of the women were from the South and toured on the TOBA booking circuit. A few of these artists, including Ethel Waters, the unrecorded Florence Mills, and the incomparable Bessie Smith, made the transition to ‘legitimate’ venues. Some singers led their own bands, and several key figures in jazz, such as Coleman Hawkins, made their way into the business playing in these groups. After 1930, with the advent of popular singers in a non-”Classic Blues” vein, the genre went into a slow decline. The most popular of these singers were Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Mamie Smith, Ida Cox, Victoria Spivey, Sippie Wallace, Alberta Hunter and Clara Smith. Hundreds of others recorded during this period and we will be focusing on many of these lesser knowns. In some cases they recorded dozens of sides or just a handful, some were quite popular in their day while, others were popular just regionally while others achieved little or no success yet they cut some exceptional blues records that, outside of collectors, remain all but forgotten today.

Bertha “Chippie” Hill

After the era of the classic blues woman, women were mostly confined to singing in cabarets, clubs and barrelhouses for the remainder of the pre-war period. Percentage wise there were far more women blues singers in the pre-war era, with men dominating the market in the post-war era. In the 40’s many woman fronted big bands, which gave way to smaller combos, eventually making the transition to the more hard edged R&B woman singers of the 50’s and 60′s.

From the early era of woman blues singers, Irene Scruggs,  Bertha “Chippie” Hill , Trixie Smith,  Lil Johnson and Edith Wilson achieved a modicum of success but remain largely forgotten today. The great jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams recalled that Irene Scruggs was already an established force on the St. Louis blues scene the first time Williams went there as a young member of a vaudeville revue. “In St. Louis, our show picked up a young blues singer named Irene Scruggs,” Williams said in an interview. “Irene had not long settled in St. Louis, and was starting out to become one of St. Louis’ finest singers.” Between 1924 and 1930 she cut twenty sides backed by big names such as Kid Ory, King Oliver, Lonnie Johnson, Blind Blake and Little Brother Montgomery. By the 40′s, Scruggs had joined the population of expatriate black performers living abroad, residing first in Paris wand later to Germany. In the 50′s, she did several radio broadcasts for the British BBC.

Bertha “Chippie” Hill recorded close to two-dozen sides between 1925 and 1928 and recorded the first version of “Trouble In Mind.” She gave up performing and recording in the 30’s but made a comeback in the 40’s cutting sides for the Circle label between 1946-48, sang in clubs in New York and Chicago and at the 1948 Paris Jazz Festival. She died in 1950 in a traffic accident.

Both Trixie Smith and Lil Johnson were well served on record. Smith moved to New York  and won a blues-singing contest in 1922. She cut close to 50 sides between 1922 and 1939 including the popular hit “Freight Train Blues.” After a 1926 she didn’t record again until 1938. After making a few records in 1929, Lil Johnson didn’t surface again on record until 1935, cutting some 60 sides through 1937.

Edith Wilson’s first professional experience came in 1919 in Louisville’s Park Theater. Lena Wilson and her brother, Danny, performed in Louisville; Edith married Danny and joined their act as a trio. Together they performed on the East Coast in 1920-21, and when they were in New York City Wilson was picked up by Okeh Records, who recorded her in 1921 with Johnny Dunn’s Jazz Hounds. She recorded 17 tunes with Dunn and Okeh in 1921-22. In 1924 she worked with Fletcher Henderson in New York. She remained a nightclub and theater singer, working for years on the New York entertainment scene. She retired from active performance in 1963 but made a comeback in 1973. Her last live show was given at the 1980 Newport Jazz Festival.

Little is known about most of today’s early blues ladies like Liza Brown who cut six sides in 1929, the tough St. Louis singer Lizzie Washington who cut the very first version of “Everyday I Have The Blues”, the sultry sounding fifteen year-old Annie Turner who’s accompanied by Little Brother Montgomery plus fine shadowy singers like Laura Smith, Priscilla Stewart, Cleo Gibson, Hattie Hudson and Gertrude Perkins, the latter three only cutting a solitary 78. Gibson’s  “I’ve Got Ford Engine Movements In My Hips” uses one of the more unique automobile metaphors:

I got Ford engine movements in my hips,
Ten thousand miles guarantee
A Ford is a car everybody wants to ride
Jump in, you will see
You can all have a Rolls Royce
A Packard and such
Take a Ford engine boys
To do your stuff
I’ve got Ford engine movements in my hips,
Ten thousand miles guarantee
I say ten thousand miles guarantee

Moving up to the late 1930′s and 1940′s we spin tracks by Blue Lu Barker, Betty Hall Jones, Paula Watson, Vivian Greene, Albinia Jones, Myra Taylor and  Pearl Traylor. Vivian Greene, Paula Watson and  Betty Hall Jones were part of a wave of piano pounding blues ladies, most based around the Los Angles area in the mid to late 40’s and early 50′s. Blues vocalist, stand-up pianist and occasional organist, Betty Hall Jones worked with Bus Moten’s band and Addie Williams in Kansas City. Returning to California, she performed as a single artist before joining drummer/vocalist Roy Milton’s band in L.A. in 1937. She worked with West Coast artists in the 40′s such as Alton Redd and Luke Jones and recorded under her own name in the late 40′s for Atomic, Capitol and under Luke Jones’ name for Modern. In the 1950′s she recorded for Dootone and Combo.

Little Miss Cornshucks

Singer Blue Lu Barker, Alberta Adams and Myra Taylor had the longest careers of the bunch, with Taylor and Adams still musically active. Barker was born, raised, and buried in New Orleans.  In both the ’30s and ’40s she was one of the more popular blues performers, often appearing alongside artists such as Cab Calloway and Jelly Roll Morton. Sometimes it was her husband, musician Danny Barker, who opened the. Barker’s most famous recordings were done in 1938 including “Don’t You Feel My Leg.” The early Barker material features her husband on banjo and guitar and the couple would continue performing together until his death.  The couple was contracted to Decca in the ’30s and the Apollo label the following decade. Her career continued after that, all the way up to a last recording taped live in 1998 at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

Myra Taylor cut ten sides for Mercury in 1946 and 1947. In 2002 she was voted Comeback Artist of the Year and also Female Blues Artist of the Year by Living Blues Magazine.

Wrapping up in the early 1950′s we play cuts by Christine Kittrell, Alberta Adams, Little Miss Cornshucks, Little Sylvia, Lil Greenwood, Fluffy Hunter, Marylin Scott, Dolly cooper, Ella Johnson, Violet Hall and Terry Timmons. Remarkably Adams remains musically active. Alberta Adams first made her mark on Detroit’s bustling Hastings Street club scene as a dancer, and a short time later she began singing. She got to know and got an education from her contemporaries on Hastings Street’s club scene, and they included John Lee Hooker, Big Maceo, Eddie Burns, and Eddie Kirkland. Adams also recorded for Savoy Records. As her reputation spread beyond Detroit, she had the chance to perform with other touring bands, including those of Duke Ellington, Louis Jordan, Wynonie Harris, James Moody, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, and T-Bone Walker. In the 90′s through the 2000′s Adams recorded several albums and is still active in her 90th year.

“In 1943, when I was 19 or so years old, I went to a nightclub in the northeast black ghetto section of Washington and heard a singer whose name was Little Miss Cornshucks and I thought, “My God!!!” She was better than anything I’d ever heard. She would come out like a country girl with a bandanna around her head, a basket in her hand, and so forth, which she’d set aside fairly early on into the show. She could sing the blues better than anybody I’ve ever heard to this day. I asked her that night if she would mind if I made a record of her for myself. We cut “Kansas City” along with some other blues and she also sang a song called “So Long”. She had such a wonderful sound and I remember just thinking, “My God! My God!” And I didn’t have a record company, I just made those records for myself.” So wrote Ahmet Ertegun in What’d I Say: The Atlantic Story. Little Miss Cornshucks became a major attraction at Chicago’s Club De Lisa by the time she was 18, and began appearing at the Rhumboogie Club from its opening in 1942. Between 1946 and 1951 she cut some two-dozen sides for labels like Sunbeam, Aladdin, Miltone and Coral. In 1960 she recorded an LP for Chess.

Christine Kittrell first recorded tracks in 1951 with Louis Brooks and his Band. In 1954 she recorded tracks for the Republic Label, two of which featured Little Richard on piano and a third with Richard as backing vocalist. During the 1940′s and early 50′s, Kittrell toured extensively, and recorded for Tennessee, Republic, Federal, King and Vee-Jay Records over her career. We spin her biggest hit, “Sittin’ Here Drinking.”

Ella & Buddy Johnson

Lil Greenwood is best known for her time as one the main singers for the Duke Ellington Orchestra in the late 50′s and early 60′s, Between 1950 and 1953 she cut some two dozen numbers under her own name for Modern, Specialty and Federal. Today’s selection, “Monday Morning Blues” is a duet with labelmate Little Willie Littlefield.

Terry Timmons began singing professionally while still in her mid-teens. She moved to Chicago in the late ’40′s and crossed paths with Memphis Slim, through whom she was signed to Premium Records, the label for which Slim was recording at the time. She was a featured performer at Slim’s shows at the end of the 1940s and the start of the 1950s, around the time of her first recording sessions. She cut more sides for Premium in 1951 plus sides for Victor and the United Records label.

Born in Darlington, South Carolina, Ella Johnson she joined her brother Buddy Johnson in New York as a teenager, where he was leading a popular band at the Savoy Ballroom. Johnson scored her first hit with “Please, Mr. Johnson” in 1940. Subsequent hits included “Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?” “When My Man Comes Home” and today’s featured track, “Hittin’ On Me”. Her popular 1945 recording of “Since I Fell For You”, became a jazz standard. She continued to perform with Buddy into the 1960s. She died in New York in 2004.

We wrap up with a trio of salacious blues ladies including Marylin Scott who’s selection gives today’s show its title. Mary DeLoatch, also known as Mary DeLoach, was a Norfolk, VA-based gospel singer who used the name Marylin Scott or Marylyn Scott the Carolina Blues Girl when performing blues. When performing gospel she sounded quite a bit  like Sister Rosetta Tharpe. She switched to exclusively religious material after 1950 and her final recording appears to have been made in 1967 when she was photographed playing an electric guitar while wearing evangelical robes.The raunchy “I Got What My Daddy Likes” is worth quoting:

I got what my daddy likes
Yes I got what my baby likes
An he’s just crazy about me, he  always let me have my fun

Now I’m five feet standing, I’m five feet laying down
I’m a big meat mama from my head on down
I got what my daddy like
Yes I got what my baby Likes
An he’s just crazy about me, he  always let me have my fun

Now he flips my flapjacks, clear across the table
He seats all the horses in my little stable
I got what my daddy like
Yes I got what my baby Likes
An he’s just crazy about me, he  always let me have my fun

Pearl Traylor was another fine, under recorded singer who cut nine sides in 1945 including the magnificent “Jive I Like” who’s tough minded frankness harks back to the earlier era of hard edged blues singers:

If there’s any addictive women in this house, get your hat and coat and walk (2x)
‘Cause I’m going to start my notorious song
You see my little brother smokes reefer, yes and my cousin too (2x)
Yes junk runs in my family, what the heck do you expect me to do

I’m going to drink bad whiskey, smoke Mister Charlie’s tea (2x)
And I don’t care about nobody if they can’t get high with me

Then there’s Fluffy Hunter’s rocking bawdy ‘The Walkin’ Blues” and sixteen year old Little Sylvia’s equally ribald “Drive, Daddy, Drive” (“‘Cause when I wanna ride you gotta, ride me daddy/I’d rather ride than eat”) which makes you wonder just how they got away with songs like this! Little Sylvia would go on to become one half of the duo Mickey & Sylvia and scored a Top 20 hit with “Love Is Strange” in 1957.