Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

In his memoir, Big Bill Blues, Broonzy called Sleepy John Estes’ way of singing the blues “crying the blues.” As Tony Russell noted: “The 25-year old man who sat down to record “The Girl I Love, She Got Long Curly Hair” for a traveling Victor unit in Memphis would prove to be one of the company’s most striking finds in a city full of distinctive blues artists. High, blurred, plaintive, his voice sounded like that of a man on the verge of tears; sometimes it would even break, momentarily as if overwhelmed by emotion.” While Estes would become for his finely wrought personal songs, these initial numbers were local standards or common themes like “Divin’ Duck Blues” (“If the river was whiskey and I was a divin’ duck”). His storytelling is evident on early numbers like “Street Car Blues” but it wasn’t until signing with Decca in 1937 that he cut his most enduring compositions. Today’s program spotlights  Estes recordings before his comeback, spotlighting the remarkable recordings he made between 1929 and 1941. In addition we feature some of the fine musicians from the Brownsville area who worked and recorded with Estes including Son Bonds, Yank Rachell, Hammie Nixon, Charlie Pickett, Noah Lewis and Lee Brown.

John Adam “Sleepy John” Estes, was born in Ripley, Tennessee, around 1900. Estes first learned to play guitar from his sharecropper father at age twelve. Soon thereafter, while working in the cotton fields with his family, he crafted his own cigar-box guitar and began to hone his skills at local house parties and fish fries. His nickname “Sleepy” stemmed from a chronic blood pressure disorder that gave him fits of narcolepsy. Around 1915, the Estes family moved to Brownsville, Tennessee, which served as Sleepy John’s base residence periodically for the rest of his life. Brownsville was also home to “Hambone” Willie Newbern, an important early influence, as well as Yank Rachell and Hammie Nixon–musicians with whom Estes partnered at local venues and on professional recordings. Other Brownsville musicians who Estes worked with were pianist Lee Brown and guitarists Son Bonds and Charlie Pickett, all who recorded in the 30’s and all who backed Estes on record. Estes teamed with Rachell to play house parties, picnics, and the streets in the Brownsville area from 1919 to 1927. He also partnered with local harmonica player Hammie Nixon, hoboing Arkansas and southern Missouri with him from 1924 to 1927. At this time jug band music was wildly popular, so Estes started the Three J’s Jug Band with Rachell and jug player Jab Jones. The Three J’s played Memphis, where they competed for exposure in a competitive scene dominated by the Memphis Jug Band.

When the Victor recording company sent a field recording unit to Memphis in September 1929, Estes recorded several sides backed by the Three J’s, with Jones playing piano instead of the jug. Other acts to record for Victor on this trip included the Memphis Jug Band, Frank Stokes, and Cannon’s Jug Stompers. He was invited to record again for Victor in May 1930. This session yielded the uptempo “Milk Cow Blues,” a tune Robert Johnson would later record as “Milkcow Calf Blues.” In all the group cut fifteen sides, three were unissued, over the course of eight session in 1929 and 1930. Estes gave the following account of his recording debut: “Well, it was the guy who recorded the ‘Kansas City Blues’, Jim Jackson. We were coming down the street , me and Yank Rachell. He said ‘Boys, that was a mighty good peice you sang on the street the other day.. You can really sings. I can tell you how to make some money.’ Yank said, ‘John we can go ’round ourselves. We don’t need him to carry us.’ I went around to the Ellis Auditorium and we talked to Mr. R.S. Peer of New York City. he told us., ‘Boy’, he was recording two or three other boys there, they’d hit two pieces in an hour. ‘We got some more boys here but I want to see you before you go. I want you to come back late in the afternoon so I can hear what you can do.’ We went back then and we recorded.”

Estes and Nixon moved to Chicago in 1931 where they played parties and the streets. The Depression hit the recording industry hard, and the Estes/Nixon team did not record until a July 1935 date with the Champion label where the duo cut six sides at two sessions. Among the sides recorded were “Drop Down Mama” and “Some Day Baby Blues,” tunes that became staples for a later generation of bluesmen. As Tony Russell remarks: “Nixon is the nightingale of blues harmonica and his parallel melodies echoing Estes singing on “Someday Baby Blues” and “Drop Down Mama”, to mention just the most famous of their duets, are beautiful in their understated melancholy.” They left Chicago in the late 1930′s to travel the country playing lumber camps, parties, and street corners for four years. The Decca label brought Estes to New York City to record in 1937 and again in 1938 where he cut eighteen songs, laying down some of his most enduring songs. He was backed by Charlie Pickett on guitar and Hammie Nixon on harmonica. Among the songs were vivid depictions of the Depression in songs like “Down South Blues”, riding the blinds in “Special Agent Blues (Railroad Police Blues)”  and “Hobo Jungle Blues.” On the latter he sings:

Now, when I left Chicago, I left on that G & M (2X)
Then if I reach my home, I have to change over on that L& N
Now, came in on in that Mae West, and I put it down at Chicago Heights
Now, when I came in on that Mae West, I put it down at Chicago Heights
Now, you know, over in hobo jungle, and that’s where I stayed the night
Now, if you hobo through Brownsville, you better not be peepin’ out (2X)

Now, Mr. Whitten will git you, and Mr. Guy Hare will wear you out
Now, out East of Brownsville, about four miles from town (2X)
Now, if you ain’t got your fare, that’s where they will let you down

He sang many celebrated songs about hometown life in Brownsville including “Lawyer Clark” (“He said if I just stay out of the grave, he’d see that I wouldn’t go to the pen”), he sings about Martha Hardin’s house burning down in “Fire Department Blues”, he describes race relations in the south in “Clean Up At Home” (“I played for the colored, I played for the white/All you got to do, act kinda nice, you got to”) and the personal narrative “Floating Bridge” where describes a near brush with death after falling off a car ferry crossing a river:

Now I never will forget that floating bridge (3X)
Tell me five minutes time under water I was hidW
hen I was going down I throwed up my hands
Now, when I was going down, I throwed up my hands (2X)
Please, take me on dry land
Now they carried me in the house and they laid me ‘cross the blank’t (3X)

“Bout a gallon-and-half muddy water I had drankThey dried me off and they laid me in the bed
Now, they dried me off and they laid me in the bed (2X)
Couldn’t hear nothin’ but muddy water runnnin’ through my head

Estes was paired with younger guitarist Robert Nighthawk, perhaps to modernize his sound, for his last six song Decca session in 1940 which lack the spark of his collaborations with Nixon. A year later he recorded for the Bluebird label backed by kazoos and a tub bass in a swinging session with the Delta Boys (Son Bonds and Raymond Thomas), who echoed Estes’s jug band sensibilities. All three men variously take the lead on exuberant numbers like “Don’t You Want To Know” , “You Shouldn’t Do That” both sporting a vigorous kazoo solo from Bonds who takes the lead on “Black Gal Swing.” On September 24, 1941 the trio made their final sides together, a three song session for Bluebird including the aforementioned “Lawyer Clark” and “Little Laura.” Little Laura, according to Don Kent’s notes to the Yazoo Sleepy John Estes CD, was a neighbor of Sleepy John’s and the Jimmy referred to in the lyrics is Sleepy John’s name for Yank Rachell. This song is essentially the one Sonny Boy Williamson I  recorded for Bluebird a couple of months earlier as “She Was A Dreamer.”

Estes returned to sharecropping in Brownsville in 1941. In 1948, he and Nixon recorded again for the Ora Nelle label (“Harlem Bound” and “Stone Blind Blues”) but the records went unreleased. Estes went completely blind in 1950 and elected to try his hand at recording again. In 1952 he cut four sides for the Sun label. Estes was rediscovered in 1962 during the blues revival. He cut several albums for Delmark and returned to touring with Hammie Nixon before health problems confined him to Brownsville. Sleepy John Estes died June 5, 1977.

After recording with Sleepy John Estes in  1929 and 1930 Yank Rachell decided to try his hand at farming and also worked for the L&N Railroad. During a stopover in New York Rachell teamed up with guitarist Dan Smith and laid down 25 titles for ARC in just three days, though only six of them were issued. Shortly before the ARC date, Rachell had discovered a kid harmonica player that he believed had real talent, John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson. They worked together at the Blue Flame Club in Jackson, Tennessee starting in 1933. In 1934 Williamson went north to Chicago. With the success of Williamson’s first Bluebird dates of 1937, Rachell decided to join Sonny Boy in Chicago for sessions in March and June of 1938. Yank Rachell also contributed four sides of his own to each session, and then 16 more in 1941 with Sonny Boy backing him up. After Sonny Boy Williamson’s murder in 1948, Rachell drifted away from music and relied solely on straight jobs to make his living, settling permanently in Indianapolis in 1958. His wife passed away in 1961, and afterward he began to resume performing. In 1962, Rachell was re-united with Nixon and Estes, and the three of them began playing college and coffeehouse circuit, recording for Delmark as Yank Rachell’s Tennessee Jug Busters. Estes died in 1977, and from that time Rachell worked mainly as a solo act. He recorded only sporadically in his last years and passed in 1997 at the age of 87.

Sleepy John Estes, American Folk Blues Festival, 1964

Noah Lewis was born in Henning, Tennessee, and raised in the vicinity of Ripley. He played in local string bands and brass bands, and began playing in the Ripley and Memphis areas with Gus Cannon. When jug bands became popular in the mid-1920s, he joined Cannon’s Jug Stompers. He cut seven sides under his own name at sessions in 1929 and 1930. Recording as Noah Lewis’ Jug Band, he was backed on two numbers by Sleepy John and Yank Rachell with just Estes backing him on two other numbers cut a couple of days apart. Lewis died in poverty of gangrene brought on by frostbite in Ripley, Tennessee, in 1961.

Harmonica player Hammie Nixon was born on January 22, 1908, in Brownsville, TN. He began his career as a professional harmonica player in the 1920s, but also played the kazoo, guitar, and jug. “I used to hear a lot about him, John Adam”, Nixon recalled, “and I was just a kid, living out on my parent’s home near Ripley.  …And he heard me playing and he asks me would I like to go and play my harp for him?So I told him yes, but I had o ask my mama first because I was just young, see. So he comes back to my mama’s house with me, but she didn’t want me to go you know. Anyhow he says like he would look after me and provide for me and so forth so she let me go. And we been together ever since.” He performed with Sleepy John Estes for more than 50 years. He also recorded with Lee Green, Charlie Pickett, and Son Bonds. He played with many jug bands. After Estes died, Nixon played with the Beale Street Jug Band (also called the Memphis Beale Street Jug Band) from 1979 onward. Shortly before his death he cut his lone album, the marvelous  Tappin’ That Thing for the High Water label. He died August 17, 1984.

Another associate of Sleepy John Estes and Hammie Nixon, Son Bonds played very much in the same rural Brownsville style that the Estes-Nixon team popularized in the ’20s and ’30s. The music to one of Bonds’s songs, “Back and Side Blues” cut in 1934, became a standard blues melody when John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson from nearby Jackson, TN, used it in his classic “Good Morning, (Little) School Girl” he cut in 1937.Bonds cut a total of fifteen sides over five sessions in 1934, 1938 and 1941. Hammie Nixon backs Bonds on the two 1934 sessions while Estes backs Bonds on his last two sessions in 1938 and 1941.On his Decca and Champion sides Bonds was called Brownsville Son Bonds and Brother Son Bonds at his second Decca session which was religious. Nixon gave the following account of Bonds’ death: “He got killed around the same time that Sonny Boy got killed. Sonny Boy got killed in Chicago, Son got killed in Dyersburg. A fellow shot him, he though he was shooting somebody else. Son was sitting on his porch. This guy wore them great thick glasses and he got into it with the guy who lived next door to Son. It was way about 12:00 at night and he though it was the boy who lived next door.” Estes had a different version involving a woman and a plot to get Bonds’ insurance money.

Little is known about Charlie Pickett, who was from Brownsville, TN. Sheldon Harris reported that he was Estes cousin. Hammie Nixon had him performing in a group with Estes, Nixon, and others on the streets of Chicago in the 1930′s and 1940′s. Nixon told Kip Lornell in 1975, “He started preaching in St. Louis, been living in St. Louis for a couple of years. I think he’s preaching in Los Angeles now.” Of the song “Let Me Squeeze Your Lemon”,Nixon said, “I will never forget the first time he started playing that song, how he sung a something like, ‘When I got home, another nigger kicking in my stall.’ The bossman told him ‘don’t say that no more!’” He cut four sides for Decca in 1937 backed by Hammie Nixon and Lee Brown.  Pickett also played guitar behind Estes on 19 numbers at sessions in 1937 and 1938. He or Estes may have played guitar behind pianist Lee Green at a 1937 session.

Pianist Lee Brown was another member of the Tennessee musicians who who worked in Estes orbit. As Tony Russell sums up: “…Brown was subsequently more prolific than his modest talent merited.” His lone hit was “Little Girl, Little Girl” from his second 1937 session, sessions at which he backed Estes and Charlie Pickett. Estes backs Brown on two songs from his first session. In all Brown was involved in six sessions that yielded twenty-nine sides with one unissued. He was backed by some top flight backing musicians including Charlie Shavers, Sammy Price, Buster Bailey, Henry Allen, Robert Lee McCoy and Lil Armstrong among others. Brown cut some post-war material including two songs in 1945 for the Chicago label and a session for King in 1946

In part one we discussed the some of the superb East Coast musicians Axel Küstner and Siegfried Christmann recorded while this time out we travel with the duo down to Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi. It was Mississippi that occupied most of their time and form a good chunk of the recordings. Mississippi, particularly the Delta has been subjected to immense scrutiny among researchers and with good reason; in the 1920′s and 30′s men like Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson, Tommy Johnson, Skip James and Son House recorded some of the greatest blues records ever made and it was the breeding ground for those who became famous up North like Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Elmore James and countless others. Yet some have said that the region has attracted too much attention among researchers, leaving other areas like the East Coast too sparsely documented. While this is certainly true there’s no denying that Mississippi was an immensely fertile region for the blues and remained so when Küstner and Christmann set up shop in 1980 over the course of eleven days.

Son Thomas

Among the finest bluesman they came across in Mississippi was James “Son” Thomas “discovered” in 1968 by William Ferris who wrote about him in his influential book Blues From The Delta. By 1980 Thomas was a regular on the festival circuit but had recorded little, just a handful of sides scattered on obscure anthologies. After 1980 he toured Europe, recorded prolifically, including several very strong albums but never did he sound better then the recordings he made for Küstner and Christmann. Thomas plays brooding, darkly hued delta blues with a tightly wound, controlled intensity. Thomas’ fourteen tracks, scattered over several volumes, are all traditional but he gives them a thoroughly invigorating, individual reading; thus he shakes the dust off material like “Bull Cow Blues”, “Rock Me Mama”, “Big Fat Mama”, “61 Highway Blues” laying these numbers down with a throbbing intensity, underpinned by his steady guitar rhythm and dramatic vocal delivery that often dips into a riveting falsetto. By far his most memorable performance is the six minute plus “Catfish Blues”, a hypnotic and downright dirty version of this delta standard. Also fascinating are several numbers Thomas performs with his running buddy Cleveland “Brooman” Jones who would pull a few handfuls of dirt out of his pocket, flip over the broom handle and scrape the floor to produce a bass sound that somehow perfectly meshed with Thomas’ music.

A true anomaly was 25 year old Lonnie Pitchford, the youngest musician recorded who played the most ancient of instruments, the one string diddley bow which he amplified and picked like a guitar. These were Pitchford’s first recordings and he truly sounds like no one else; the music is mesmerizing and hypnotic as he transforms chestnuts like “Boogie Chillen”, “My Babe” and a slashing “Shake Your Money Maker.” Pitchford was still evolving as an artist when AIDS claimed him at the age of 43. Thankfully due to the exposure from this series he was recorded extensively on anthologies and issued a lone album, the terrific All Around Man, for Rooster in 1994.

Lonnie Pitchford

The fact is that the bulk of these artists were older, the remaining holdouts of a fading tradition and the music often sounds like it was trapped in amber, virtually unchanged from the blues of fifty years ago. Certainly that’s the case with musicians such as Walter Brown, Joe Savage and Boyd Rivers. Brown and Savage bring alive the era of the field and levee camp hollers that could once be heard ringing all over the south and in later years primarily survived in prisons as documented by the Lomax’s, Harry Oster and Bruce Jackson. Both Brown and Savage lived hard lives and both men spent time in the notorious Parchman Farm. In fact John Lomax interviewed and recorded Joe Savage in Parchman in the 1940′s and said of him “he was by far the youngest and most damaged.” Jumping to 1980 we hear Savage recount his prison experience and sing on the harrowing “Joe’s Prison Camp Holler.” Küstner noted that “recording Walter Brown was one of the most incredible experiences I have ever had. …I had the feeling he was just waiting for somebody to come around so that he could express himself and let his music come out.” His “Mississippi Moan” is a bone chilling account of what it’s like to be black in Mississippi where “The place, the town where time done come to civilization and they still call you a nigger.” His “Levee Camp Holler”, sung from experience, is equally arresting as is Savage’s unique spin on “Mean Ol’ Frisco.” The blues is so often romanticized but there’s nothing romantic about the lives of men like Brown, Savage and many of the others on this collection who have led unbearably tough lives under crushing poverty and persistent racism. “I actually thought he was the best and gave the most powerful performances of any that were recorded” Küstner said of Boyd Rivers. A one time bluesman, Rivers plays with unbridled passion, singing in a powerful, raspy voice coupled with hard edged Mississippi guitar attack. His nine selections are startling in there intensity which were his first and unfortunately only recordings.

Among the other notable musicians recorded in Mississippi the most famous was Sam Chatmon who was 81 at the time of these recordings and still in fine form. There are several fine performers one wishes had been recorded more including the excellent Stonewall Mays who’s two song are his sole legacy and Joe Cooper who was Son Thomas’ Uncle and very fine performer in his own right.

Sam “Stretch” Shields

The recordings made in Tennessee and Arkansas are less consistent although there are some very rewarding performances, chiefly from CeDell Davis and Sam “Stretch” Shields. “CeDell “Big G” Davis”,  Küstner wrote, “is probably the most amazing musician I have ever met. At the age of 10 he contracted polio and the disease left him without the full use of his hands. His fingers are crippled, but however, he manages to strum the guitar with his left hand, and chords and slides across the strings with an ordinary table knife that he put in his right hand. The resulting sound, coupled with his roaring voice, makes him a highly individual Blues artist.” Davis’ rough juke joint blues is perfectly encapsulated on numbers like “I Don’t Know Why” and a cover of Tampa Red’s “Let Me Play With Your Poodle.” Sam “Stretch” Shields’ harmonica style harks back to the pre-amplified era when harmonica soloists played now forgotten pieces like train imitations and set pieces like Lost John, Fox Chase, Mama Blues and other call-and-response pieces. Küstner recalled “With Sam, it was like going back in time. When you went into his living room, he had pictures of Franklin D Roosevelt up there. It was like the 1930s.” His unaccompanied renditions of “Bluebird Blues”, “Mellow Peaches” and the “The Hounds” are enthralling. Of the other performers from the region it sounds like Hammie Nixon has seen better days, pianist Memphis Piano Red is in good form although his piano is badly out of tune while Lottie Murrell delivers some powerful slashing slide guitar but is fairly well inebriated.  I would have liked to hear more from the superb Charlie Sangster who’s two numbers reveal a bluesman of very high order, very much in the classic Brownsville, Tennessee tradition of Sleepy John Estes and Hammie Nixon.

Fans and collectors of early country and traditional blues will find hours of rewarding listening within the fourteen volumes that comprise Living Country Blues USA. Through the 1970′s country blues was still going strong in rural southern communities even if interest was low commercially. Thankfully a handful intrepid researchers stepped into the breach to record a music and culture that was virtually vanishing before their eyes.  As for complaints, well I do wish that some unreleased material was included which seems to me like a real missed opportunity. In addition while the original liner notes are included it would be nice to have some follow-up information regarding what became of these the artists after these recordings.

Son Thomas – Catfish Blues (MP3)

Boyd Rivers – You Got To Move (MP3)

Lonnie Pitchford – My Babe (MP3)

Walter Brown – Levee Camp Holler (MP3)

Joe Savage – Mean Ol’ Frisco (MP3)

Stonewall Mays – Jazz Boogie Woogie (MP3)

CeDell Davis – I Don’t Know Why (MP3)

Lottie Murrell – Spoonful (MP3)

Joe Cooper – She Run Me Out On The Road (MP3)

Charlie Sangster & Hammie Nixon – Moanin The Blues (MP3)

I’ve written quite a bit about blues field recordings and play them often on my radio program so it’s an understatement to say that I was excited to hear that the Living Country Blues USA series was being issued on CD in its entirety (unfortunately there are no additional tracks). These remarkable recordings were issued across 12 LP’s (one double set) on the German L+R label between 1980 and 1981. Considering the title it’s ironic that these recordings weren’t issued domestically until 1999 when the Evidence Records distilled the project down to a 3-CD “greatest hits” package, simply titled Living Country Blues – An Anthology. At the time of this release I have to admit I was only vaguely aware of the original series – in my defense I was only 12 at the time the L+R albums came out, a precocious 12 year old but certainly not listening to country blues! – but what I heard on the Evidence set floored me. In classic collector mentality I set out to track down the original L+R records which wasn’t that easy and turned out to be an expensive proposition. I never did get all the albums but thankfully now that they have been reissued on CD I was finally able  to complete the set. On November 9th I’ll be devoting the entire show to these recordings with a sequel undoubtedly in the future.

In 1980 two young German blues enthusiasts, Axel Küstner and Siegfried Christmann, came to America with the idea to document the remaining country blues tradition. With their station wagon and portable recording equipment they hit the dusty road spending a couple of months documenting blues, gospel, field hollers and work songs throughout the South. As the notes proclaim: “Traveling 10,000 miles by car in 2 1/2 months, they used 180,000 feet of tape and took hundreds of photographs to document various aspects of Country Blues, as well as work songs, fife and drum band music, field hollers and rural Gospel music, performed by 35 artists, some of whom appear on record for the first time.” The prep work for the project was done in 1978 when Küstner came over alone for a six month survey of the blues scene and made some final arrangements in June 1980 before hooking up with Christmann three months later. If this project reminds you of the recording trips of John and Alan Lomax, that’s exactly what the duo had in mind. Where the Lomax’s had the Library of Congress to back them, Küstner and Christmann had the backing of Horst Lippman who had just started the L+R label with Fritz Rau (the same duo who were responsible for the American Folk Blues Festivals). The project was called Living Country Blues as Alligator had just issued their acclaimed Living Chicago Blues series. As for the sound quality, don’t let the field recording aspect scare you, the sound is exceptional, recorded with a ten-channel mixer and reel-to reel tape.

If you think about it,  it was a bold undertaking to embark on a trip like this in 1980 when one would imagine the country blues had largely died out as a vibrant part of rural black communities. After all George Mitchell and Pete Lowry, two of the most active field recorders, had called it quits by 1980, while others like David Evans, Kip Lornell, Gianni Marcucci and Enzo Castello, Bengt Olsson and Bruce Bastin had largely stopped going in the field after the 1970′s. To be sure there were plenty of fine unheralded country blues players who were still active. Among the great finds of the late 1960′s and 70′s, and subsequently recorded, were men like Mance Lipscomb, Robert Pete Williams, Fred McDowell, Roosevelt Holts, Jack Owens, R.L. Burnside, James “Son” Thomas, Lum Guffin, Frank Hovington, Cecil Barfield, Marvin and Turner Foddrell, Peg Leg Sam, Henry Johnson, not to mention those still active who had recorded in the 1920′s and 30′s like Sam Chatmon, Buddy Moss, Joe Callicott, Furry Lewis, Bukka White, Hammie Nixon and others. George Mitchell wrote that “As late as 1969 a country bluesman who at least occasionally played could be located in most small towns of Georgia. In 1976, there are very few active blues musicians left in the state! In the short span of seven years, one of the worlds most vital and influential forms of music as it was originally performed has all but died out in Georgia, and probably in the rest of the South as well. Most bluesmen have either died or fallen into ill health accompanying old age, and the younger generation of rural blacks long ago turned their backs on the blues.”  It was also, he noted, the Church who claimed many bluesmen as well as the lack of financial incentive to play the blues that was the musics’ death knell. Still Mitchell, Lowry and Lornell were recording many talented artists through the end of the 1970′s and into the early 1980′s. Seen from an historical perspective, Küstner and Christman’s trip was one of the last great large-scale recording trips to survey southern blues and gospel, and the sad fact is that most of these performers have since passed on. Recordings of this type have been spotty and uneven since the 1980′s; some mostly lackluster recordings issued on the the three volume Wolf series Giants of Country Blues (spanning 1967 through 1991), some good records on Fat Possum by R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, Robert Belfour, Asie Payton and Cedell Davis in the 1990′s, the surprisingly prolific, if uneven, Music Maker label and most recently some strong records on the Broke and Hungry label. As for another large-scale survey of southern blues, I’m afraid those days have long passed which makes Living Country Blues all the more valuable.

Guitar Slim

From October 1st through November 30th the duo rolled through Washington, DC, Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Virginia, New Orleans and of course Mississippi. While they recorded some extraordinary music in Mississippi a good chunk of the performances spotlight the rich East Coast tradition or Piedmont style, explored in-depth in the 70′s by Lowry, Bastin and Lornell. Among the most striking in this vein are Guitar Frank (Frank Hovington), Guitar Slim (James Stephens) and Archie Edwards. Bastin called Guitar Frank “one of the finest singers to have been recorded during the 1970′s…steeped in a tradition which is as much part of him as is the countryside about him.” Bastin and Dick Spotswood recorded Frank in 1975, issuing the album Lonesome Road Blues on the Flyright label (reissued in 2000 as Gone With The Wind with several additional tracks). Frank was still in fine form when he reluctantly agreed to perform (he was afraid of losing his social security checks), putting his stamp on traditional material like “Railroad Bill”, “Key To The Highway”, fine instrumentals like the gently rolling “90 Goin’ North”, “Chimney Hill Breakdown” and a magnificent version of “Lonesome Road Blues” feature a gorgeous vocal. Guitar Slim hailed from Greensboro, North Carolina but his music falls stylistically between the East Coast style and and the more intense Mississippi approach. He recorded Greensboro Rounder for Flyright in the 1970′s but good luck finding a copy. He was accomplished on six and twelve string and a fine piano player to boot. His loose barrelhouse piano is heard to fine effect on “Lovin’ Blues” and “Lula’s Back In Town” while his lovely singing is heard best on introspective numbers like “Won’t You Spread Some Flowers On My Grave” and an achingly seductive cover of Robert Johnson’s “Come On In My Kitchen.” Sadly he never recorded again. More strongly rooted in the East Coast tradition is Archie Edwards who made his debut with these recordings. Volume six in the series, The Road Is Rough and Rocky, is entirely devoted to this this talented guitarist with a wide repertoire. “Bear Cat Mama Blues”, one of his best numbers, is on the 2-CD introduction, a cover of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Balky Mule Blues.” His original, the raggy, fast paced “The Road Is Rough And Rocky”, is in classic Piedmont style as is the beautiful “Do Lord Remember Me”, apparently the last song Edwards listened to before he passed in 1998.

Archie Edwards

Edwards was based in Washington, D.C. which boasted a number of exceptional players including John Cephas, Phil Wiggins and Flora Molton. The first volume of the series is devoted to the music of Cephas and Wiggins and were the first commercial recordings of the duo (Cephas had appeared on records by Henry Johnson and Big Chief Ellis and both men were recorded extensively by Pete Lowry but those recordings were never issued). The duo has made dozens of records and currently signed to Alligator records but they rarely sounded better then they do here rolling through classic East Coast material like “Goin Down The Road Feelin Bad”, “Chicken Don’t Roost Too High For Me” and “Richmond Blues.” The seamlessly meshed playing of Cephas’ complex, ragtime guitar and Wiggins’ harp are strongly in the tradition of Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry. Flora Molton has played her “Spiritual and Truth Music”, as she called it, on the streets of Washington since the 1940′s eventually benefiting from the blues revival with a steady stream of festival and coffeehouse gigs. Molton gave up the blues after she got sanctified but there’s strong blues component to her music which follows in the tradition of guitar evangelists such as Edward Clayborn, Blind Willie Johnson and Blind Gary Davis. Molton plays serviceable slide as she delivers her declamatory vocals backed by a variety of musicians called The Truth Band.  Volume three focuses entirely on her talents with two numbers on the introductory set including the magnificent “The Titanic”, variations of which have long been a gospel staple as a testimony to man’s hubris. The music is utterly captivating as Molten sings with with the unflagging devotion of a true believer. Outside of a self-produced 45 these are her first recordings.

Guitar Frank – Lonesome Road Blues (MP3)

Guitar Frank – Railroad Bill (MP3)

Guitar Slim – Come On In My Kitchen (MP3)

Guitar Slim – Lulu’s Back In Town (MP3)

Archie Edwards – Bear Cat Mama Blues (MP3)

Archie Edwards – My Road Is Rough And Rocky (MP3)

Cephas & Wiggins – I Ain’t Got No Lovin Baby Now (MP3)

Cephas & Wiggins – Goin’ Down The Road Feelin’ Bad (MP3)

Flora Molton – The Titanic (MP3)

Flora Molton – Vacation In Heaven (MP3)