Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

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, Frederic Ramsey, Art Rosenbaum, Pete Welding, Chris Strachwitz , 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. The field recordings made during this era were a sort of a parallel undercurrent to the more famous artists. What they recorded in the rural communities of Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi in the 1960’s was a still thriving, if largely undocumented, blues culture. The bulk of theses recordings were issued on small specialist labels and many have yet to be reissued on CD. Today’s program is the first of a multi-part series on some of these remarkable recordings.

The earliest tracks come from 1960 and were made by Paul Oliver and Chris Strachwitz and come from the albums Conversations With The Blues, a companion to Oliver’s landmark book, and I Have To Paint My Face which was issued on Strachwitz’s Arhoolie label. The recordings on I Have To Paint My Face were made by Chris Strachwitz in the Summer of 1960, the same year he formed his now legendary Arhoolie record label. That summer Strachwitz and blues scholar Paul Oliver and his wife made a trip through Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas to interview and record older blues artists for a series of programs sponsored by the BBC. Among those recorded were Sam Chatmon, K.C. Douglas, Big Joe Williams, Butch Cage & Willie Thomas, Robert Curtis Smith and others. Conversations With The Blues is a series of interviews, in the artists own words, compiled from interviews with over sixty blues singers. The interviews stem from a trip Oliver made to the United States between June and September 1960.

Today’s program features a number of recordings made by David Evans. It was Evans’ investigation into Tommy Johnson in the late 1960’s that we owe a good deal of what we know about Johnson and it was through Evans’ field recordings that Johnson’s influence comes into sharper focus. Evans recorded many men who learned directly from Johnson including Roosevelt Holts, Boogie Bill Webb, Arzo Youngblood, Isaac Youngblood, Bubba Brown, Babe Stovall, Houston Stackhouse and Tommy’s brother Mager Johnson. Long out of print are several important collections of Evans’ field recordings that gather artists influenced by Johnson. Most importantly is The Legacy of Tommy Johnson (1972), the companion LP to Evans’ Tommy Johnson biography featuring all songs that were in Johnson’s repertoire and all of which were learned by the artists from Johnson himself. Today’s show spotlights selections from South Mississippi Blues and Goin’ Up The Country. David Evans began making field recordings in 1965 when he spent about five weeks taping blues artists in Mississippi and Louisiana. The collection Goin’ Up The Country released on Decca in 1968 collects some of the best performances he recorded. The album was reissued in 1976 on Rounder and Rounder also released South Mississippi Blues in 1973, another collection of field recordings from the same period. in addition we play a cut by Houston Stackhouse with his partner Carey Mason that stem from recordings Evans made in Crystal Springs, MS in 1967.

Bengt Olsson first came to the United States in 1964, first to Chicago and then to Memphis were he made some recordings. Olsson was back in 1971, where he made recordings in Memphis and Alabama. Olsson recorded several talented artists including Lum Guffin (his album Walking Victrola was issued on Flyright), Lattie Murrell and Perry Tillis among others. Some of Olsson’s recordings appear on the CD On The Road – Country Blues 1969-1974.

Pete Welding was one of the premiere documentarians of the 1960’s blues revival. Welding began recording and interviewing artists in the late 50’s and he began writing a column in Downbeat Magazine in 1959 called “Blues And Folk.” He moved to Chicago in 1962 where he formed his Testament Records label as an outlet for his fieldwork . Other of his recordings appeared on Storyville, Prestige, Blue Note and Milestone. We spotlight some of Weldings’ recordings from the album Blues Roots: The Mississippi Blues Vol. 1 recorded by circa 1964/1965.

Between 1969 and 1980 Pete Lowery 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. In addition to the seventeen issued Trix albums there is sufficient material for another 40 to 50 CD’s. 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 features some unreleased tracks that Lowry was kind of enough to send me.

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.” 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. These remarkable recordings were first issued across 12 LP’s titled Living Country Blues USA plus one double set on the German L+R label between 1980 and 1981. They have since been reissued on CD.

From the early 1960’s to the early 1980’s George Mitchell roamed all over the south recording blues in small rural communities where the music still thrived. Many of these recordings have appeared on specialist labels like Southland, Revival, Flyright, Arhoolie and Rounder but are long out of print now. Several years ago the Fat Possum label acquired the Mitchell archive and has been reissuing the recordings.

Art Rosenbaum is a painter, muralist, and illustrator, as well as a collector and performer of traditional American folk music. His field recordings have been collected on two 4-CD box sets on the Dust-To-Digital label called the Art Of Field Recording. Rosenbaum was also involved in producing several albums for Bluesville in the early 60’s including records by Indianapolis artists Scrapper Blackwell, Pete Franklin, Shirley Griffith, J.T.Adams and Brooks Berry. I’ll be spotlighting Rosenbaum’s blues recordings as well as interviewing him at the end of January.

The Blue Ridge Institute for Appalachian Studies at Ferrum College in Ferrum, Virginia, released a series of eight LPs in the late 1970s and early 1980s under the group title Virginia Traditions. Each album featured an aspect of traditional Virginia folk music, setting old 78s and field recordings alongside more recent field material. From that series we spotlight three tracks for the album Western Peidmont Blues.

We close the show with Johnny Johnson & Group perfroming “I’m In The Bottom” from the album Wake Up Dead Man. “Making it in hell”,  Bruce Jackson says, is the spirit behind the songs that comprise the album and book  Wake Up Dead Man is a collection of prison worksongs taped by Bruce Jackson in 1965 and 1966 in Texas prisons. Research was done at three primary institutions; the Ramsey unit (Camps 1 and 2), Ellis, and Wynne. Allowed complete freedom in these facilities, Bruce Jackson talked with, interviewed, and recorded inmates over time to collect information for this book.

Show Notes:

Today’s show focuses on the Living Country Blues USA series, which has finally been issued on CD. These remarkable recordings were first issued across 12 LP’s plus one double set on the German L+R label between 1980 and 1981.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.” 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. Below is some brief background on today’s performers plus links to the two-part article I wrote about these recordings.

Guitar Slim hailed from Greensboro, North Carolina. He recorded the album Greensboro Rounder for Flyright in the 1970′s which is difficult to come by these days. He was accomplished on six and twelve string and a fine piano player as well.

These were Archie Edwards first recordings and he recorded a couple of other albums after this before passing in 1986. In 1959, he bought his barbershop on Bunker Hill Road in Northeast DC. The shop became a regular hangout for many local down-home musicians, including his musical hero and friend, Mississippi John Hurt.

Writer Bruce 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 on these recordings even though he was afraid of losing his social security checks.

Lottie Murrell and Girlfriend

Joe Savage and Walter Brown bring alive the era of the field and levee camp hollers. 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.” Küstner noted “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.” Brown led a tough life including spending time in the notorious Parchman Farm Prison.

Boogie Bill Webb was influenced first hand by Tommy Johnson. Moving from Mississippi, he settled in New Orleans in 1952, where longtime friend Dave Bartholomew helped Webb land a deal with Imperial Records. In 1968 he recorded several songs for folklorist David Evans later issued on the Arhoolie LP Roosevelt Holts and His Friends. In 1989 issued his first full-length LP, the Flying Fish release Drinkin’ and Stinkin’, passing the following year at age 66.

A member of the Chatmon family that included not only Lonnie of the famous Mississippi Sheiks but also the prolific Bo Carter and several other blues-playing brothers, Sam Chatmon survived to be hailed as a modern-day blues guru when he began performing and recording again in the 1960′s. Chatmon began playing music as a child, occasionally with his family’s string band, as well as the Mississippi Sheiks. Sam launched his own solo career in the early ’30s. While he performed and recorded as a solo act, he would still record with the Mississippi Sheiks and with his brother Lonnie. Throughout the ’30s, Sam traveled throughout the south, playing with a variety of minstrel and medicine shows. When the blues revival arrived in the late ’50s, he managed to capitalize on the music’s popularity. Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, he recorded for a variety of labels, as well as playing clubs and blues and folk festivals across America. Chatmon was an active performer and recording artist until his death in 1983.

These were Cedell Davis’ first recordings. He went on to cut a few fine albums in the 1990′s for Fat Possom. Back in the 1950′s he worked in Arkansas with Robert Nighthawk and Dr. Ross among others.

Boyd Rivers

Lonnie Pitchford was notable in that he was one of only a handful of young African American musicians from Mississippi who had learned and was continuing the Delta blues and country blues traditions of the older generations. In addition to the acoustic and electric guitar, Pitchford was also skilled at the one-string guitar and diddley bow, a one-string instrument of African origin, as well as the double bass, piano and harmonica. He was a protege of Robert Lockwood, Jr., from whom he learned the style of Robert Johnson. These were his first recordings and he appeared on several anthologies and cut his lone album All Around Man for Rooster in 1994. In November 1998, Pitchford died at his home in Lexington, from AIDS. A diddley bow is featured on his headstone which was paid for by John Fogerty and Rooster Blues Records through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund.

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 here. He died in 1993.

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.”

Although he never recorded commercially, Arzo Youngblood was recorded by field researchers David Evans with tracks on several now out-of-print LP’s. He was one of a number of musicians directly influenced by the legendary Tommy Johnson.

Living Country Blues USA Revisited – Part 1

Living Country Blues USA Revisited – Part 2

Show Notes:

We cut a wide swath today, tackling blues spanning from 1925 through 1980. The half-dozen tracks from 1980 come from the series Living Country Blues USA. In 1980 two young German blues enthusiasts, Axel Kuestner and Siegfried A. 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 road spending 2-1/2 months documenting blues, gospel, field hollers and work songs throughout the South. Hundreds of hours of tape was used and the resulting project came out as 14 LP’s on the German L&R label. In 1999 Evidence Records reissued some of these sides domestically as a 3-CD set. These recordings represent one of the last large scale field recording trips to canvas the south.There’s was still plenty of music to be found although it’s interesting to note that two of the great field researchers, Peter B. Lowry and George Mitchell, had both called it it quits in 1980 and after Kuestner and Christmann recordings made in the field has almost become a thing of the past. For many of the artists these were their first recordings and many never recorded again. The set also contains the debut of such artists as Cephas and Wiggins (Lowry recorded them but never issued the sides )and Lonnie Pitchford who went on to greater fame. Some like Hammie Nixon and Sam Chatmon had been pre-war recording stars. Others had learned directly from the blues masters such as Cedell Davis who played with Robert Nighthawk and Arzo Youngblood and Boogie Bill Webb who learned from the legendary Tommy Johnson. The series has finally been issued on CD although the CD’s don’t seem to be available in the US. I was able to get copies of the few CD’s I needed to complete the series and will being doing a whole show devoted to these recordings on November 9th.

Speaking of field recordings we spin some tracks recorded by John and Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. Among those are Kelly Pace & Convicts of Cummins Farm, Gould, Arkansas singing a wonderful version of  “Rock Island Line.” This was the same prison where Lomax recorded Leadbelly and supposedly Leadbelly picked up the song after hearing this group perform it. The song would become one of his most famous numbers although he didn’t record it until 1937. Willie Ford & Lucious Curtis deliver a terrific slide driven version of “Payday.” John and Ruby Lomax were in Natchez, MS when they made recordings by Lucious Curtis and Willie Ford in October 1940. The town was still in mourning for the victims of a terrible dance-hall fire that April in which over 200 hundred people had died, including most of the Walter Barnes Band. Lucious Curtis and Willie Ford cut fourteen sides that day. From the infamous Angola Penitentiary John Lomax recorded the accomplished Ernest Rogers on the tough “Oh Oh Low Down Dirty Dog” which unfortunately is his sole recording. Moving up to the 1970′s we play a wonderful track by the obscure Rabbit Muse. Muse played ukelele and kazoo and has two 1970′s LPs on the Outlet label which have yet to be released on CD. Our selection, “Jailhouse Blues”, comes from the excellent compilation Western Piedmont Blues. This collection comes from a series of albums issued by the Blue Ridge Institute of Ferrum College, Virginia. I believe there was something like eight volumes in this series (not all blues) which have been issued on CD through the Global Village label. The bulk of the recordings are from the 1970′s and early 1980′s.

We play a a couple of twin spins by guitarists Sylvester Weaver and Guitar Nubbit. Weaver cut over two dozen selections accompanying Sara Martin through 1927.  Sara Martin began her career as a vaudeville singer around 1915 in Illinois. In 1922 she was signed to a recording contract with Okeh Records. Martin was said to have excelled as a live performer and was a star on the TOBA circuit in the early 1920′s. While primarily a popular singer Martin could get low down on the blues and was billed as the “famous moanin’ mama” as well as “the colored Sophie Tucker” reflecting her dual roles as a blues and vaudeville performer. She toured the country until the early 1930′s and recorded with Okeh until 1928. In the early 1930′s Marin retired from show business. She died in 1955. The solo “Penitentiary Bound Blues” features one of Weaver’s best vocals.

Regarding Guitar Nubbit, it was Peter Lowry who brought the obscure bluesman to the attention of collectors. I asked him about this and he offered the following recollection: “Ah, Guitar Nubbit! The year was 1964 and I was a graduate student at Rutgers in Biology. While driving around New Brunswick, NJ, I happened upon a combination shoe shine parlor/record store – it was downstairs half a flight from the front of the four-story house, on the road-side. You essentially went under the porch from the side! I found 45s of often interesting stuff, and not always stuff that I heard on WNJR out of Newark.. They had Nubbit’s single on the Bluestown label (“GA Chain Gang”)… I ended up buying all that they had after hearing the first copy I purchased. Then, I sent a copy to Mike Leadbitter, editor of Blues Unlimited, for whom I was just beginning to write. They were a mystery. Someone traced the label to Chicago (!), and others tried to track down the publishing company. No luck. I don’t remember who finally got onto Skippy White, a Boston DJ, and found out that it was his label (there were a couple more Nubbit discs [Alvin Hankerson], and a couple of singles by Hibbard “Alabama” Watson). They were quite anachronistic for the day! Right up there with Atlantic recording McTell in 1949 – hardly great commercial potential, no matter how good was the music!” I’ve attached below a couple of articles I found on Nubbit.

In addition to the aforementioned Sara Martin, today’s program also spotlights a several excellent blues ladies including Victoria Spivey, Mae Glover, Big Mama Thornton, Olive Brown, Laurie Tate and Lucille Spann. “Dirty T.B. Blues” backed by a crack band is Spivey’s follow-up to her popular “T-B Blues” from 1927 and she also cut “TB’s Got Me” in 1936.  Mae Glover’s sassy, bouncy “I Ain’t Givin’ Nobody None” features the excellent guitar work and spoken accompaniment of John Byrd as Glover tells her man:

I’ll Wash you your clothes in the morning, cook jellyroll at night
When you come, home try to be so doggone nice

She cut two-dozen sides but only one short session with Byrd, a shame as those are her best sides. Moving on up we spin a pair by Big Mama Thornton; “Rockabye” finds Big Mama backed by Johnny Otis’ band with Johnny himself on vibes and some vicious fret work from Pete “Guitar” Lewis while 1967′s “Don’t Do Me This Way” finds her in more soulful vein. I know nothing about big voiced Olive Brown outside the fact that she cut a handful of sides in the the late 1940′s, 50′s and 60′s. “Roll Like A Big Wheel” is a tough rocker sporting a ripping tenor player that comes from the fine LP Don’t Freeze On Me: Independent Womens Blues on the Rosetta Label. Lucille Spann was a fine gospel-inflected singer, although she occasionally indulges in histrionics, who spent most of her in the giant shadow cast by her husband Otis, “Cry Before I Go” is the title track off her very good, and only, album cut for Bluesway in the early 1970′s. Like most of the Bluesway catalog this one remains out of print.

Also worth mention are cuts by two obscure pre-war blues artists, Oliver Cobb and Ollie Shepard. Cobb was a St. Louis trumpet player and singer who patterned himself after Louis Armstrong. He cut one 78 in 1929 for Brunswick and one 78 in 1930 for Paramount. Henry Townsend remembered him many years later: “Oliver Cobb worked around St. Louis quite a bit-he was a pretty famous guy around here. …Oliver Cobb was more jazz than blues. He could play blues, but seemingly his desire was to be in the jazz field. But even at the time he got more call for blues styles. That’s why he got a chance to go up on the session, because he kinf iof put himself into the category of playing the blues, and that’s what was in demand. …He was a great imitation of Louis Armstrong…the closest I’ve heard…” According to Townsend, Cobb drowned shortly after his June 1930 recording session with Paramount. “The Duck’s Yas Yas Yas” is a wonderful risque blues firmly in the Armstrong mold. Despite recording close to four-dozen sides between 1937 and 1941, little is known about singer/pianist Ollie Shepard.Shepard rarely rose above the ordinary by “Drunk Again”, backed by his Kentucky Boys and Lonnoe Johnson, finds him in good voice on this number which is one of best efforts.

Guitar Nubbit – Boston’s Own (Word Doc)

Guitar Nubbit – Re-Living The legend (Word Doc)

Guitar Nubbit – From Blues Unlimited 17 (Word Doc)