Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

African-Americans began arriving in drove in Detroit by the 1920′s, most settling in an area called Black Bottom, later named Paradise Valley. Some of the earliest blues took place in the bars, brothels and house parties in Paradise Valley. Among the early bluesman who worked in Detroit included several fine pianists like Speckled Red, Charlie Spand, Big Maceo, Will Ezell plus guitarists like Calvin Frazier and Blind Blake who cut who celebrated the city in songs like “Hastings Street” with Charlie Spand and “Detroit Bound.”

From the turn of the century until its demise by urban renewal in the early 1960′s, Hastings Street remained the center of business for Detroit’s east side community, made up largely of Jewish entrepreneurs and small black business owners.  Lined with two-story family-owned shops and corner taverns, Hastings teemed by day with shoppers; at night it became transformed, into, what John Lee Hooker later described, as a “rough wide-open street.” Though the city had a number of corner taverns during the 1940s and 1950s, which featured down home blues, numerous Detroit bluesmen found their first jobs in the house party scene. Among the early clubs were places like Henry’s Swing club celebrated in a song by John Lee Hooker, the Harlem Inn, The Palms, The Flame, Club Three Sixes and the Paradise Theater. While many artists, like Big Maceo, went to Chicago to record, there were a number of small local labels that documented the scene like Sensation, JVB, DeLuxe, Holiday, Staff and Fortune. With the demolition of Hasting Street in the 1950′s and early 60′s and the rise of Motown, blues in Detroit became overshadowed.

Today’s show focuses on recordings made from the late 1940′s on up spotlighting great Detroit artists like John Lee Hooker, Baby Boy Warren, Eddie Burns, Eddie Kirkland, Big Maceo, Boogie Woogie Red, Bobo Jenkins Calvin Frazier and more.

John Lee Hooker was the biggest star to emerge from the Detroit scene. Hooker headed to Memphis while he was still in his teens, but he couldn’t gain much of a foothold there. He then relocated to Cincinnati for a seven-year stretch before making the move to the Motor City in 1943. Hooker began playing in burgeoning club scene along Hastings Street and at house parties. In 1948 he hooked up with entrepreneur Bernie Besman (who ran Sensation label) , who helped him hammer out his solo debut sides, “Sally Mae” and its seminal flip, “Boogie Chillen.” The Los Angeles-based Modern Records issued the sides and “Boogie Chillen” made it to the peak of the R&B charts. Besman felt that Hooker would sound best if he was recorded as a soloist, and did a lot to give his guitar and voice distinctive sound. He put a mike on Hooker’s guitar, and put a speaker in a toilet bowl for echo. He also put a board under Hooker’s feet to pick up his tapping feet. One of his innovative ideas was to double-track the voice and guitar for “I’m in the Mood,” a technique that was very advanced for 1951; the result was another huge hit. Besman did plenty of sides with Hooker in the late 1940′s and early 1950s, often solo, but sometimes with accompanying musicians. When he moved to California in the early ’50s, Besman ended his association with Hooker and left the record business Along with Modern, Hooker recorded for King (as Texas Slim), Regent (as Delta John), Savoy (as Birmingham Sam & His Magic Guitar), Danceland (as Little Pork Chops), Staff (as Johnny Williams), Sensation, Gotham, Regal, Swing Time, Federal, Gone (as John Lee Booker), Chess, Acorn (as the Boogie Man), Chance, DeLuxe (as Johnny Lee), JVB, Chart, and Specialty; before finally settling down at Vee-Jay in 1955 under his own name.

Two artists closely linked to Hooker are Eddie Burns and Eddie Kirkland. “Papa’s Boogie,” Eddie Burns’ 1948 debut, is a harmonica/guitar duet recorded by Bernie Bessman and leased to the Holiday label, which issued it under the pseudonym Slim Pickens. Burns enjoyed a modestly successful musical career with a dozen records to his credit and a decade of weekend club gigs often with John Lee Hooker who waxed some of his best performances with Burn’s harmonica in support. Kirkland was brought up around Dothan, AL, before heading north to Detroit in 1943. There he hooked up with Hooker five years later, recording with him for several firms as well as under his own name for RPM in 1952, King in 1953, and Fortune in 1959. Exiting the Motor City for Macon, GA, in 1962, Kirkland signed on with Otis Redding as a sideman and show opener not long thereafter. By the dawn of the 1970s’, Kirkland was recording for Pete Lowry’s Trix labe and waxed several CD’s for Deluge in the ’90s.

Many artists got their start through Detroit record man Joe Von Battle. Recording his sessions from within a cluttered record shop on Detroit’s Hastings Street that he opened in 1948, Von Battle was a magnet for most of the Motor City’s blues and R&B talent, including such notables as John Lee Hooker, Eddie Kirkland, Eddie Burns plus a slew of lesser knowns. His efforts were issued on his JVB and Von labels. From its Cincinnati base, King Records would sometimes acquire masters from Detroit-based producers like Battle. Battle’s approach to ‘producing’ may have amounted to little more than turning the tape machine on and off but, in his ramshackle way, he preserved some great Detroit blues performances. “Pet Milk Blues” was the first release on first release by Joe Von Battle. Featuring Walter Mitchell’s own vocal and harp, second harp by Robert Richard, Boogie Woogie Red on piano, and an unknown bass. Mitchell cut six sides for JVB in 1948, with some leased to King, and cut two more sides in for Strate-8 in 1959. Guitarist L.C. Green came to Detroit in the late forties according to his one time partner, Woodrow Adams, who grew up with L.C. in Minter City, Mississippi. Green waxed seven songs in Detroit for Joe Von Battle, but six were leased out and only one appeared on the Von label. Nothing is know of fine bluesman James Walton who cut about a dozen-and-a-half sides for Detroit labels like JVB, Fortune and Big Star between 1954 and 1964.

Fortune Records was another notable Detroit label.Fortune specialized in R&B, blues, soul and doo-wop music, although the label also released pop, big band, hillbilly, gospel, rock ‘n’ roll, and even polka records. In spite of the spartan facilities, the company would produce some of the best preMotown R&B to come out of the city. Among the blues artists who recorded for the label were John Lee Hooker, Eddie Kirkland, Big Maceo, Bobo Jenkins, Doctor Ross, Grace Brim and Joe Weaver among others. It is estimated that Fortune Records and its subsidiaries, Hi-Q Records and Strate-8, released approximately 400 45-RPM vinyl records, as well as long-playing albums, during its existence. In the 1950′s Joe Weaver formed the Blue Notes typically practiced at producer/JVB label owner Joe Von Battle’s Hastings Street record store. Soon after Fortune hired the Blue Notes as its house band, and in addition to backing acts like Andre Williams and Nolan Strong, they also headlined records of their own. The Blue Note Orchestra’s stature as Detroit’s premier session band was firmly in place by the time Berry Gordy, Jr. hired their services for his fledgling Tamla label.

Big Maceo was already a seasoned pianist when he arrived in Detroit in 1924. After working around the Motor City scene, he headed to Chicago in 1941 to make his recording debut for Bluebird. He cut a series of terrific sessions as a leader for Bluebird in 1941-42, 1945 and in the company of Tampa Red before a stroke paralyzed his right side. He tried to overcome it, cutting for Victor in 1947 with Eddie Boyd assuming piano duties and again for Specialty in 1949 with Johnny Jones, this time at the stool. He cut his final sessions for Fortune in 1950 before passing in 1953.

Robert “Baby Boy” Warren cut some great records from 1949 to 1954 for a variety of Detroit labels without ever managing to transcend his local status along Hastings Street. After honing his blues guitar approach in Memphis (where he was raised), Warren came to Detroit in 1942 to work for General Motors and gig on the side. The fruits of his first recording session in 1949 with pianist Charley Mills supporting him came out on several different logos: Prize, Staff, Gotham, even King’s Federal subsidiary. A second date in 1950 that found him backed by pianist Boogie Woogie Red was split between Staff and Sampson while another sessions came out on Swing Time, Blue Lake and Excello. One of his most memorable sessions took place in 1954, when harpist Sonny Boy Williamson came to Detroit and backed Warren. The 1970s brought  Warren a some European touring  before he passed away in 1977.

Calvin Frazier began his career performing alongside his brothers, and in the company of Johnny Shines. He traveled to Helena, Arkansas in 1930 where they met Robert Johnson, and together the three men  journeyed north to Detroit, where they sang hymns on area gospel broadcasts. Upon returning south, Frazier and Johnson also joined with drummer Peck Curtis in a string-band combo. However, in 1935 Frazier was wounded in a Memphis shootout, which left another man dead; he fled back to Detroit, marrying Shines’ cousin. Apart from gigs supporting the likes of Big Maceo, Rice Miller and Baby Boy Warren, he resurfaced in 1938 long enough to cut a session for folklorist Alan Lomax. He did not record again until a 1951 date with T.J. Fowler’s jump band, and entered the studio one last time in 1954 with Baby Boy Warren. Frazier continued performing in the Detroit until his death on September 23, 1972.

It wasn’t until Washboard Willie AKA William Hensley was 31 years old that he decided to buy a washboard and begin to make music on it. He bought a wood and metal washboard, fastened a four-inch frying pan to one corner, put eight metal thimbles on his fingers, tied the board around his neck with a dog leash, and started beating away. In 1948 he moved north to Detroit and wasn’t until 1952, that he and a friend were out one night looking for John Lee Hooker, when they came upon Eddie Burns and his little group, playing at the Harlem Inn. After hearing the drummer playing out of time, Willie got his washboard from the car, and began playing along with the band. By the second song, the bar owner offered Hensley a job playing the washboard for the weekend. The band played there for three years. In 1956, he and Calvin Frazier recorded for Joe Von Battle. He continued to record for Von Battle from 1957 to 1962. In 1973, he toured with the American Blues Legends ’73 Tour, traveling all over Europe. He died on August 24, 1991, at the age of 82, in Detroit.

Playboy and Rocky Fuller are both early pseudonyms for New Orleans born Iverson Minter, who later had minor success using the name Louisiana Red. The sides included here are his first and typically were recorded in Von Battle’s basement.

Adams was raised in Detroit, Michigan by a relative, and got her break in the 1940s performing in a club on Hastings Street. Soon after she landed a recording contract with Chess Records and recorded alongside Red Saunders for the label. Her solo career did not lift off until the 1990′s, when she landed a contract with the now defunct Cannonball Records and recorded two albums for them. Adams recently returned to the studio at 91 years of age and recorded Detroit Is My Home for the same label,

T.J. Fowler assembled his own band and in 1947 accompanied saxophonist Paul “Hucklebuck” Williams on that artist’s first recordings for the Savoy label. Fowler began making records as a leader in 1948, beginning with small Detroit labels like Paradise and Sensation and landing his own contract with Savoy in 1952, sometimes featuring singer Alberta Adams. Fowler’s ensemble also used guitarist Calvin Frazier. In Detroit, Fowler and his men served as the backing band for T-Bone Walker and spent the next few years gigging around the Motor City and southeastern Michigan. Hired in 1959 by Berry Gordy, Fowler applied his music industry know-how to help Gordy create and establish the Motown record label. Fowler died in 1982.

Dr. Ross decided to fire his sidemen and carry on as a one-man band. A strong vocalist and excellent songwriter, Ross gained early experience playing Delta jukes and eventually landed radio shows in Clarksdale and Memphis, where he also recorded for Sam Phillips’s Sun label. At the peak of Ross’s career, he quit Sun, concerned that his royalties were being used to promote Elvis Presley’s recordings. Relocating in Michigan, he recorded for his own label and for several Detroit labels, while working for General Motors. Returning to music as a recording artist, he worked the festival circuit. Ross died May 28, 1993, and was buried in Flint, MI.

Though a Louisiana native, Vernon Harrison aka Boogie Woogie Red has been associated with the Detroit blues sound as long as anyone. A Motor City resident since 1927, he began performing in the local clubs as a teenager. As a sideman he worked locally with Sonny Boy Williamson, Baby Boy Warren, and John Lee Hooker. Despite Red’s renown for the blues and boogie-woogie style that earned him his nickname, he has recorded only a few times as a featured artist, and aside from a bit of European touring in the ’70s, he remained a local Detroit treasure, rarely appearing outside the area. He died in 1985.

Little Sonny moved to the Motor City in 1953 after growing up on his dad’s farm in Alabama.  Little Sonny worked the local haunts with John Lee Hooker, Eddie Burns, Eddie Kirkland, Baby Boy Warren, and Washboard Willie. In 1958, Sonny made his blues-recording debut, cutting for both Duke and local entrepreneur Joe Von Battle, who leased Little Sonny’s “Love Shock” to Nashville’s Excello label. During the early ’60s, he ran his tiny Speedway label. He leased “The Creeper” and “Latin Soul” to Detroit’s Revilot Records in 1966. That set the stage for his joining Stax’s Enterprise label in 1970; his first album was the largely instrumental New King of the Blues Harmonica. Two more Enterprise sets soon followed: Black & Blue and 1973′s Hard Goin’ Up. Not much was heard of the harpist in recent years until the British Sequel imprint released Sonny Side Up in 1995.

After his discharge from the army in 1944, Bobo Jenkins moved to Detroit. He soon got a job at the Packard Motor Company and on the side, managed a garage, before landing a job at Chrysler, where he worked for 27 years. He also got a job taking pictures at the Harlem Inn where John Lee Hooker was playing. Jenkins soon bought a guitar and began writing songs. In 1954, with the help of John Lee Hooker, “Democrat Blues” was recorded in Chicago for Chess Records. He recorded two more singles for the Boxer label in Chicago and Fortune Records in Detroit. he eventually formed his own label.The first record released on Jenkins’ Big Star label was his own: “You”ll Never Understand” and “Tell Me Where You Stayed Last Night.” Soon he was recording and promoting local Detroit musicians. In 1972 he put out his first album on his Big Star label called The Life of Bobo Jenkins. The 1973 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival featured a special Detroit Blues Review and Jenkins was one of the stars. The next album by Jenkins came out in 1974, called Here I Am a Fool in Love Again on Big Star. In 1977 Detroit All Purpose Blues, was issued. In 1982, he went to Europe for his first tour, but due to poor health he returned home after the first concert. A long illness ultimately led to his death on August 14, 1984.

Show Notes:

Today’s show revolves around the recordings made by Peter B. Lowry. In his voluminous research, writing and recording Lowry has become perhaps the most renowned expert on the blues of the Southeast and is credited with coining the term Piedmont Blues. Between 1969 and 1980 he amassed hundreds of photographs, thousands of selections of recordings, music and interviews in his travels through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. He formed the Trix label as an outlet to release his recordings. Lowry set up the Trix Records label in 1972 starting with a series of 45′s with LP’s being released by 1973. It lasted about a decade as an active label dealing mainly with Piedmont blues artists from the Southeastern states with seventeen albums in its catalog at the time of their sale to Joe Fields of Muse Records. Trix issued albums by the following artists: Eddie Kirkland, Peg Leg Sam, Frank Edwards, Henry Johnson, Willie Trice, Guitar Shorty (John Henry Fortescue), Robert Jr. Lockwood, Pernell Charity, Tarheel Slim, Roy Dunn, Homesick James, Big Chief Ellis, Honeyboy Edwards and the anthology Detroit After Hours, a collection of Detroit piano players. “I spent an interesting decade”, Lowry wrote, “burned myself out, and haven’t really been back since 1980. Sales of TRIX LPs were disappointing, but, master of timing, I started up when the second-to-last blues boom was drying up and quit before the most recent one took off! I am proud of each and every release…” In addition to the seventeen issued Trix albums there is sufficient material for another 40 to 50 CD’s. “I engineered all issued LPs save the second Lockwood and the second Kirkland (and Reedus unreleased jazz LP); ED’d, mixed, and balanced all myself ‘at home’. There was NO COMPRESSION. Therefor, and fortuitously/serendipitously, they turned out to be great for CD mastering!!! That’s why such ‘full’ sound.” Many of the artists who had albums released were recorded extensively by Lowry and in most cases there is enough material in the can for follow-up records. In fact Lowry’s unreleased recordings far exceed the released recordings. Today’s program draws mainly from the Trix catalog plus I’ll be playing some unreleased tracks that Lowry was kind of enough to send me. These tracks have not been heard anywhere else. What follows is some background on today’s featured artists with some commentary from Lowry.

Baby Tate spent the bulk of his life as a sideman, playing with musicians like Blind Boy Fuller, Pink Anderson, and Peg Leg Sam. As a teenager he began playing with Blind Boy Fuller. In the early 1950′s, Tate moved to Spartanburg, SC, where he performed both as a solo act and as a duo with Pink Anderson. Tate and Anderson performed as duo into the 1970′s. In 1962, Tate recorded his first album, See What You Done, for Bluesville. Tate was one of Lowry’s closest musician friends. Lowry said, “My plan…was to really record him in depth. He was just an incredible person and a wonderful person to deal with. I can’t say I’m satisfied with what I’ve got on tape because I know he could do three times more and a lot better. But just having been around him and dealt with him and lived with him, there’s a degree of satisfaction. …The first person to be recorded by me in 1970, a wonderful informant, and a very good friend – he came up to New Paltz to perform at a Spring festival in ’72, partly w. Larry Johnson. He also played a coffee house near Albany, NY that same weekend thanks to Kip Lornell. He had a great time – then he died that summer. That made me a man possessed; ‘do as much as you can before they all die off’ took a hold of me! The rest is history.” Lowry recorded him extensively but only issued one 45 which we play to open our show. Tate also appears on the Peg Leg Sam album, Medicine Show Man.

“Recording is an accident, isn’t it?! Had it not been for me, Henry Johnson and Peg Leg Sam would have been unheard…” Lowry notes. Peg Leg Sam was a member of what may have been the last authentic traveling medicine show, a harmonica virtuoso, and an extraordinary entertainer. Born Arthur Jackson, he acquired his nickname after a hoboing accident in 1930. His medicine show career began in 1938, giving his last medicine show performance in 1972 in North Carolina, and was still in fine form when he started making the rounds of folk and blues festivals in his last years. Lowry captured Sam and Chief Thundercloud (the last traveling medicine show) on the Flyright album The Last Medicine Show. There’s also some footage of the medicine show act in the film Born For Hard Luck. Sam delivered comedy routines, bawdy toasts, monologues, performed tricks with his harps (often playing two at once) and served up some great blues (sometimes with a guitar accompanist, but most often by himself). Lowry released one album by Sam, Medicine Show Man, and he recorded only once  more for Blue Labor in 1975 which was originally issued under the title  Joshua and subsequently reissued as Early In The Morning and Peg Leg Sam with Louisiana Red.

The sessions by Henry Johnson, his first recording, was a result of Peg Leg Sam pushing his good friend to record. “I feel Henry Johnson is the finest finger-picking blues artist to come along in a hell of a long time, and this album should demonstrate that with ease” Lowry wrote in the notes to The Union County Flash!, his lone album. “It was Sam who introduced us (Bastin and I) to Henry…His musicianship was surpassed only by his magnificent voice – I have UNC concert tapes where he plays piano, Hawaiian guitar, and harp w. his guitar… he stuck it in his mouth and worked without a rack (like Harmonica Frank)!” Johnson died 19 1974, shortly after the record was released and there is enough material in the can for another release. Lowry wrote” his ‘compleat’ talent will never be heard by those who never saw him in person.”

Roy Dunn was one of the last links to the rich Atlanta pre-war blues scene; he had played with Curley Weaver., Buddy Moss and Blind Willie McTell. Know’d Them All is his only album. “This, his only album”, Lowry wrote, is as complete a representation of the talents of Roy S. Dunn (a/k/a James Clavin Speed) as could be compiled, and his talents deserve another listening.” Dunn passed in 1988.

Willie Trice and his brother Richard became close friends with Blind Boy Fuller and Fuller took them up to New York where they cut six sides together (two unissued) for Decca in 1937. Richard Trice recorded after the war for Savoy in 1946 as Little Boy Fuller as well as a couple of sides in 1948 and 1952/53. Lowry recorded him but those recordings remain unreleased. Unlike many of his fellow musician friends, Willie always had a day job and it wasn’t until the 1970′s that he recorded again. Blue And Rag’d , his sole album,  was released on Trix in 1973. “Willie Trice”, Lowry wrote” was one of those special people – not just in my life, but in the lives of most everyone who chanced to meet him. We had some sort of special, almost mystical connection… I would irregualry just appear unannounced at the door of his mother’s house and he’d be sitting there waiting for me. He would tell me that he had dreamed of me that night and therefore knew that I was going to be there to see him the next day.”

Prior to his Trix album, Done Some Travelin’, Frank Edwards cut one session in 1941 for Okeh resulting in four issued sides and one in 1949 for Regal backed by Curley Weaver. He cut another album for Music Maker before passing in 2002.  “Frank Edwards sounds like nobody else- he may play the harp and guitar together, but he sure as hell doesn’t sound like Jimmy Reed. He is as recognizable today as when he first recorded. …he sounds just lie Frank Edwards; and that’s it!  As for our selection, “Chicken Raid”, he called it “one of the great anti-clerical songs of all time (right up there with “Stealin’ in the Name of the Lord”), by one of the most original ‘blues’ musicians, and one of the nicest people I’ve ever met! He never sounded like anyone but himself, which is not always a good career move.”

“Homesick” James Williamson was playing guitar at age ten and soon ran away from his Tennessee home to play at fish fries and dances. His travels took the guitarist through Mississippi and North Carolina during the 1920s, where he crossed paths with Yank Rachell, Sleepy John Estes, Blind Boy Fuller, and Big Joe Williams.Settling in Chicago during the 1930′s. Homesick made some of his finest sides in 1952-53 for Art Sheridan’s Chance Records (including the classic “Homesick” that gave him his enduring stage name). He also worked extensively as a sideman, backing harp great Sonny Boy Williamson in 1945 at a Chicago joint called the Purple Cat and during the 1950′s with his cousin Elmore James who he also recorded with. Homesick’s own output included 45′s for Colt and USA in 1962, a fine 1964 album for Prestige plus albums for Bluesway, Big Bear, Earwig and Fedora among others. He cut the solo Goin’ Back Home for Trix of which Lowry said “I think that ‘my’ solo album is the best thing he ever did.” I agree!

Born in Alabama, Eddie Kirkland headed to Detroit in 1943. There he hooked up with John Lee Hooker five years later, recording with him for several firms as well as under his own name for RPM in 1952, King in 1953, and Fortune in 1959. In 1961-62 he cut his first album for Tru-Sound Records. Leaving Detroit for Macon, GA, in 1962, Kirkland signed on with Otis Redding as a sideman and show opener not long thereafter. By the dawn of the 1970′s, Kirkland cut two albums for Trix label; Front And Center and The Devil And Other Blues Demons (issued together as The Complete Trix Recordings on the 32 Blues label).

A self-taught player, Big Chief Ellis performed at house parties and dances during the 1920′s. He traveled extensively for several years, working mostly in non-musical jobs. After a three-year army stint from 1939 – 1942, Ellis settled in New York. He started recording for Lenox in 1945, and also did sessions for Sittin’ In and Capitol in the 1940′s and 50′s, playing with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee for Capitol. Though Ellis reduced his performance schedule after moving from New York to Washington D.C., his career got a final boost in the early 1970′s. He recorded for Trix and appeared at several folk and blues festivals until his death in 1977. His self-titled Trix album features John Cephas, Tarheel Slim, and Brownie McGhee. He also backed Tarheel Slim on his Trix album.

While still in North Carolina during the early 1940′s, Tarheel Slim worked with several gospel groups. He broke away with Thurman Ruth and in 1949 formed their own group, the Jubilators. During a single day in New York in 1950, they recorded for four labels under four different names, One of those labels was Apollo, who convinced them to go secular. That’s basically how the Larks, one of the seminal early R&B vocal groups, came to be. He cut two sessions of his own for the firm in 1952 under the name of Allen Bunn. As Alden Bunn, he encored on Bobby Robinson’s Red Robin logo the next year. He also sang with another R&B vocal group, the Wheels and the Lovers. As Tarheel Slim he made his debut in 1958 with his wife, Little Ann, in a duet format for Robinson’s Fire imprint. He cut a pair of rockabilly raveups of his own, “Wilcat Tamer” and “No. 9 Train.” After a few years off the scene, Tarheel Slim made a bit of a comeback during the early 1970′s, with an album for Trix, his last recording. He died in 1977. Lowry wrote that “Tarheel Slim was one of the finest voices to appear appear in the blues and R&B world, as this collection will solidly demonstrate. …Slim was a consummate artist and a great gentleman: this recording gives the world at-large at least a partial glimpse of his talent.”

Boogie Woogie Red was born in Louisiana in 1924, and his family moved to Detroit when he was very young. Under the influence of local musicians Big Maceo and Dr. Clayton, Red taught himself piano. At age 18, he was drawn to the blues scene in Chicago, where he jammed with Lonnie Johnson, Tampa Red, and Memphis Slim. In 1946, he returned to Detroit and for the next fourteen years played with John Lee Hooker. In 1971 he did a well-received European tour and began performing regularly in the Detroit area, with occasional tours overseas. He recorded two albums for Blind Pig, both of which are now out of print. He was recorded for Trix as part of after-hours piano session and appeared on the album Detroit After Hours.

Lockwood cut two albums for Trix,  Does 12 and Contrasts, (issued together as The Complete Trix Recordings on the 32 Blues label) which rank among his best recordings. The crack band features the great sax player Maurice Reedus who played with Lockwood for 35 years and passed away just recently. Lowry was planning to issue an album by Reedus but it was never released. As Lowry told me: “Words fail me… I was truly a ‘Fortunate Son’ to have known and worked with this man, a true gentleman and a noble/regal being. All of ‘Contrasts’ was recorded in his living room in Cleveland (band sides) or Roger Brown’s place!”

Pernell Charity spent his whole life around Waverly, VA and was inspired by the records of Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake. The Virginian is his only album. “Pernell is a Kip Lornell discovery, done during his Federal Youth Grant year – I was his mentor and supervisor for that! I did the first tapes for him, then got them back – then did a few sessions on my own later, when I got my NEA Folkarts grant.” Lornell wrote the liner notes and noted that “the phonograph record has had an important effect in shaping the song repertoire of many blues musicians…such is the case with Pernell Charity… It was the records of Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Blake, and Blind Lemon Jefferson that inspired Pernell to take up guitar.”

Lowry called Guitar Shorty (John Henry Fortescue) “One of the most spontaneous musicians around; right up there with Lightnin’ Hopkins, maybe more so.” He cut a pair of unissued sides for Savoy in 1952, the album Carolina Slide Guitar (Flyright, 1971) and his final album for Trix, Alone In His Field,  before passing in 1975.

Seven of today’s performances have never been released. Below is background on these recordings:

Elester Anderson was a South Carolina musician who Lowry recorded fairly extensively in 1972, 1973 and 1979, none of which was issued. Anderson was born in Conetoe, NC in 1925 to a musical family. Anderson’s brother was greatly influenced by Blind Boy Fuller and passed this along to Elester. Bruce Bastin noted that tro recordings of Anderson reflected what “Fuller might himself have sounded had he survived into the postwar period.”

James Putmon was recorded by Lowry in 1979 in North Carolina.

George Higgs was born in 1930 in North Carolina. His father Jesse Higgs taught his young son the harp by playing spirituals and folk songs. During tobacco market Higgs witnessed medicine showman and harpist Peg Leg Sam perform in nearby Rocky Mount and this made a lasting impression on the young musician. As a teenager he picked up guitar. Lowry recorded him extensively in 1973 and 1979 but none of this was issued. He has since cut records for Music Maker.

Mitchell called Cecil Barfield “probably the greatest previously unrecorded bluesman I have had the pleasure of recording during my 15 years of field research.” Using the name William Robertson, in fear of endangering his welfare checks, he cut the LP South Georgia Blues for Southland in the mid-70′s with several other tracks appearing on Flyright’s Georgia Blues Today (reissued by Fat Possum with the same title and liner notes). Mitchell made some recordings of Barfield using Lowry’s equipment and Lowry himself recorded a few unreleased sides by him.

Marvin and Turner  Foddrell were born into a musical family near Stuart in the Virginia Piedmont and for the major parts of their lives played regularly only at community gatherings, never professionally. Discovered in the 1970s’, the Foddrells became a regular fixture at the annual Blue Ridge Folklife Festival at nearby Ferrum College and were also featured at many other festivals including some in Europe. The Foddrell Brothers recorded two albums on Swingmaster, and also appeared alongside more famous traditional musicians on a number of recorded anthologies. Both brothers have since passed away. Lowry recorded them extensively in 1979 but none of these recordings were ever issued.

Lowry was the first to record John Cephas and Phil Wiggins although the results were not released. He recorded the duo extensively in 1980 (his last field recordings) and recorded Cephas in-depth in 1976. Of today’s selection he called “When I Grow Too Old to Dream” “a monster example of taking a tune and ‘ragging’ it.”

Pete Lowry & Tarheel Slim 1970′s, photos by Valerie Wilmer

I suppose it sounds rather romantic spending your time roaming around the south with a tape recorder recording blues but for all the rewards and exciting discoveries it’s a stressful enterprise, not to mention a precarious way to make a living. These days hardly anyone one does it anymore and the sad fact is that blues has largely disappeared as integral part of African-American rural communities; most of the old timers have passed on and few of the younger generation are interested in blues, particularly traditional blues. Much has been written about John and Alan Lomax who scoured the south and beyond making landmark recordings for the Library of Congress from the 1930′s through the 1960′s. Less well known are those that followed in the Lomax’s footsteps; there was folklorists and researchers such as David Evans, Sam Charters, Gayle Dean Wardlow, Art Rosenbaum, Bruce Bastin, Bengt Olsson, Dick Spottswood, Kip Lornell, Glenn Hinson, Tim Duffy, Siegfried A. Christmann and Axel Küstner. Some were hunting for the famous names who made records in the 1920’s and 1930’s, others were seeking to fill in biographical blanks regarding some of the older musicians coveted by collectors and then there were those who were seeking to document the blues tradition as it still existed in rural communities, men like George Mitchell and Peter B. Lowry. This was a very different undertaking than 1960′s blues revival which sought out and put back on the circuit such legendary artists of the past as Son House, Skip James, Bukka White and Mississippi John Hurt. As Lowry told me “the ‘collector’s mentality’ is behind so much of the research done on various forms of ‘roots’ music, even jazz to an extent. …It was those who made the rarest recordings who got the attention.” And as Mitchell lamented, “Too many people went to Mississippi.”

Belying the fact that he was born on April Fool’s Day and signs off his e-mails with “may the farce be with you”, Peter B. Lowry is an extremely fastidious, dedicated blues scholar. Lowry did not go to Mississippi, did not discover long lost bluesmen from the 1920′s but in his voluminous research, writing and recording has charted his own path, becoming perhaps the most renowned expert on the blues of the Southeast and is credited with coining the term Piedmont Blues. Between 1969 and 1980 he amassed hundreds of photographs, thousands of selections of recordings, music and interviews in his travels through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. It would take more time and space than I have to relate all of Lowry’s research and writing – the man’s Curriculum Vita is twenty-six pages! – instead focusing on the primary outlet for his recordings, his Trix label.

As for the nature of field recording itself it’s worthwhile to quote Bruce Bastin, author of the classic Red River Blues and running mate of Lowry’s,  on some of his experiences: “Armchair research can never replace the infectious pleasure of personal contact, or indeed the streetwise experiences of fieldwork at the very edges of existence. …Talk to Bengt Olsson about his times in Tennessee and Alabama. Talk to Pete Lowry about his (sadly unsuccessful) endeavors to record Buddy Moss… Talk also to us about our meeting with rednecks in Edgecomb County, North Carolina…or with Newton County, Georgia, police for ‘consorting with blacks’… ” On the other hand were plenty of positive experiences: “How do you replace memories of hearing Guitar Shorty perform at Chapel Hill’s Endangered Species bar, packed with professors and ‘kitty money’… Or watching a genuinely excited Buddy Moss play a stunning ‘Chesterfield’ on his battered guitar one hot August afternoon at his home? Or seeing Henry Johnson play slide guitar flat across his lap, Hawaiian style, at home and some time later stroll into Chapel Hill’s TV station with a petrified Elester Anderson, casually watch a quartet finish playing Mozart and pack up, then settle down to back Elester (whom he’d never met before) on ‘Red River Blues’… Or of tracing Floyd Council via the local cab company’s switchboard? Or meeting the truly larger-than-life character Peg Leg Sam?”

Peg Leg Sam, from the film Born For Hard Luck

It’s useful to provide some background on Lowry’s activities just prior to setting up Trix. Most of what follows is extracted from my correspondence with Lowry in response to questions I posed and by its nature is highly condensed. “I had not attempted field recording prior to 1970… Bastin and I hooked up in 1969 to look for 78′s using my car as our transport in the SE (successfully)…and went back the next year. I figured that I should do more than just drive the car, so I purchased a tape recorder (Uher 4200, 1/2 track stereo, 5″ reels). A series of pieces for Blues Unlimited came out of the ’69 trip. …Bruce and I were focused in 1970 on collecting material for a book, as he had been asked to do one in the Studio Vista series off of our BU series of articles, resulting in Crying for the Carolines [the basis for Red River Blues]. We WORKED for a solid month, doing library research (city directories were helpful, especially when there were back issues – in the old days, there was (c) after a name for ‘colored’, so that helped eliminate similar names. Then, vital statistics also were not so closed to non-family members – folks who helped us in the early years had to stop [legally] later on). Next-of-kin were often still findable. Those research tools were suggested by Gayle Dean Wardlow. We started with a copy of Godrich & Dixon and known names, likely ‘home’ locations of those who had made recordings pre-war, and worked from there. …There was NOBODY ‘working’ the SE when we attacked it, for Mitchell had wandered off to the sainted MS stuff, where the little work being done was being done. We broke ‘new’ ground, if you will, in part encouraged by BU editor Simon Napier. …Most of the info Bruce used for his books came from my/our work…”

Lowry set up the Trix Records label in 1972 starting with a series of 45′s with LP’s being released by 1973. It lasted about a decade as an active label dealing mainly with Piedmont blues artists from the Southeastern states with seventeen albums in its catalog at the time of their sale to Joe Fields of Muse Records. Trix issued albums by the following artists: Eddie Kirkland, Peg Leg Sam, Frank Edwards, Henry Johnson, Willie Trice, Guitar Shorty (John Henry Fortescue), Robert Jr. Lockwood, Pernell Charity, Tarheel Slim, Roy Dunn, Homesick James, Big Chief Ellis, Honeyboy Edwards and the anthology Detroit After Hours, a collection of Detroit piano players. “I spent an interesting decade”, Lowry wrote, “burned myself out, and haven’t really been back since 1980. Sales of TRIX LPs were disappointing, but, master of timing, I started up when the second-to-last blues boom was drying up and quit before the most recent one took off! I am proud of each and every release…” 1978 was the last year Trix releases were assembled; Lowry didn’t go out in the field in 1978 although he did capture quite a number of recordings in 1979 and one lengthy session in 1980. Lowry wrote that “there have been no more recording sessions since this date. This single session was done during my final southeastern trip during the summer of 1980.”

Baby Tate, photo by Pete Lowry

I’ve written extensively (as well as devoting a show with interview) to the recordings of George Mitchell who started recording several years prior to Lowry and ending roughly around the same time. On Oct. 12th I will be devoting an entire show to the Trix catalog and, like Mitchell, there will certainly be a sequel as two hours is not enough time to do justice to Lowry’s recordings. Mitchell has written, and related to me, that by around 1976 he noted a sharp decline in blues in rural communities. This is somewhat at odds with the fact that Lowry recorded fairly extensively during this period. Also in 1980 two Germans, Siegfried A. Christmann and Axel Küstner, came to the States to embark on a recording trip through the south which resulted in fourteen LP’s under the title Living Country Blues (just issued on CD and distilled into a domestic 3-CD set back in 1999 on the Evidence label). While it may be impossible to quantify, the fact is there was quite a bit of quality blues players to be found and quite a number of them in the Southeast region as Lowry optimistically stated in a 1973 article written by Valerie Wilmer: “‘I never really believed all that stuff about the blues being dead,’” he said, ‘As with other celebrities who said ‘my death has been greatly exaggerated’, so the blues. I think it’s been submerged beneath the overlay of modern black pop music, but hell-you go down through Georgia and the Carolinas and there’s still country-suppers. Peg Leg Sam still goes around busking in the streets, blowing his harp and collecting quarters and dollars.’” In addition to the seventeen issued Trix albums there is sufficient material for another 40 to 50 CD’s. Some of Lowry’s recordings have appeared on the Flyright label including tracks on Another Man Done Gone and The Last Medicine Show which includes spoken monologue and musical performances of Peg Leg Sam working the last active medicine show with Chief Thundercloud. There’s also a wonderful film called Born For Hard Luck which features some fine performances of Sam including some footage working the same medicine show.  In March 1973 Lowry recorded the entire three day Fine Arts Festival, University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill which resulted in the Flyright albums Carolina Country Blues and Blues Come To Chapel Hill (the concert featured Guitar Shorty, Willy Trice, Henry Johnson, Elester Anderson, Eddie Kirkland, Tarheel Slim amongst others).

The same Valerie Wilmer article also goes on to explain how Lowry operated in the field: “Lowry will be back from his third field trip in 12 months at the end of the year. He does all his traveling by Volkswagen bus, accompanied by a faithful hound and no less than eight guitars. One such trip lasted five months and netted enough material for 20 albums, all of which he will be processing himself. ‘I said, ‘Christ, I’ve got an awful lot of stuff here-there’s no sense in farting around with other people, I’ll do it myself.’ The guitars are needed because often the people he encounters have not played for a while or else their existing instrument may be in bad shape, rattling or buzzing. ‘I’ve always tried to keep a clean sound on my recordings unlike most of the so-called field work’… I’m not just an out-and-out field recorder, nor do I use a studio as such. I usually say that the best sound-quality stuff I do is sort of in a Holiday Inn recording studio in whatever town I happen to be staying. You know, if it’s not too cool where they’re living or something, we go back to the hotel room.’”

Tarheel Slim, photo by Pete Lowry

A portion of the Trix catalog are recordings in the Piedmont style as Lowry explains in the same article: “This slightly ragtime-based kind of guitar is what a lot of white people are playing and listening to,” he explained. “I’m trying to hook on to that because it is the essence of the Piedmont style.” Still, there’s a fair bit of diversity to be found including some piano blues (Lowry didn’t find many piano players or female performers for that matter) including a self titled Big Chief Ellis album and Detroit After Hours – Vol. 1 (the result of extensive taping he did at an after-hours piano joint in Detroit), the Mississippi-by-way-of-Chicago blues of Honeyboy Edwards, the sophisticated jazzy blues of Robert Jr. Lockwood (Does 12 and Contrasts remain probably his best recordings) and a pair of fine records by Eddie Kirkland with his mix of John Lee Hooker styled blues and a more contemporary approach. The other Trix albums are a mix of great discoveries like Roy Dunn, Guitar Shorty (the album Carolina Slide Guitar came out in 1971, two years before he recorded for Trix), Henry Johnson, Peg Leg Sam, Pernell Charity all whom had never recorded before and those that had made commercial records like Tarheel Slim, Frank Edwards, Willie Trice and Homesick James. Many of the artists who had albums released were recorded extensively by Lowry and in most cases there is enough material in the can for follow-up records. In fact Lowry’s unreleased recordings far exceed the released recordings. Lowry was gracious enough to send me his master recording list, a year by year breakdown of his recording activities. Among those whose recordings went unreleased are artists who should be familiar to collectors such as Richard Trice, Pink Anderson, John Cephas, Phil Wiggins, Cecil Barfield, Marvin and Turner Foddrell, John Snipes, Dink Roberts. Other names include Elester Anderson, Charlie Rambo, Earnest Scott, Clifford Lee “Sam” Swanson and George Higgs (who has since made recordings for Music Maker) among many others. Among Lowry’s regrets “is that I never got my one jazz album out before Maurice Reedus died…” Reedus was Robert Jr. Lockwood’s great, long time sax player heard to good effect on Lockwood’s two Trix records. Reedus’ record was mixed and mastered and titled Get Outta Town, Man (Trix 3318). Baby Tate was another artist close to Lowry’s heart who he recorded extensively but only issued one 45. Again from the Valerie Wilmer article: “Baby Tate was one of his closest musician friends and his untimely death last year grieved Lowry considerably. ‘My plan last Summer was to really record him in depth,’ he explained. ‘ He was just an incredible person and a wonderful person to deal with. I can’t say I’m satisfied with what I’ve got on tape because I know he could do three times more and a lot better. But just having been around him and dealt with him and lived with him, there’s a degree of satisfaction.’”

As Lowry stated in the same article: “…I know I’m not going to get rich. I’ll be lucky if I break even, but I’ve met an awful lot of good people, a lot of good musicians, and dammit-they should be heard. It’s that simple.” The Trix label is a testament to these amazing musicians and to one man’s passion and dedication to get this music out to the wider world. Fortunately the entire Trix catalog has been issued on CD which include the original liner notes plus some follow-up information about the artists. Sadly the majority of the artists have since passed on. As for the vast amount of unreleased recordings, Lowry says that “to date, nobody has evidenced any interest in my stuff – I’m not surprised.” On our Trix program on October 12th, in addition to the released material, I’ll also be featuring some of these unreleased recordings which Lowry was gracious enough to send me.

Peg Leg Sam – Who’s That Left Here ‘ While Ago (MP3)

Big Chief Ellis – Prison Bound (MP3)

Tarheel Slim – Some Cold Rainy Day (MP3)

Frank Edwards – Chicken Raid (MP3)

Pernell Charity – War Blues (MP3)

Robert Jr. Lockwood – Selfish Ways (MP3)

Roy Dunn – Move To Kansas City (MP3)

Willie Trice – My Baby’s Ways (MP3)

Guitar Shorty – Working Hard (MP3)