Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

Today’s mix show shines the light on several fine woman blues singers of the 20’s and 30’s as well as a batch of exceptional piano players. We open and close the program by spotlighting some famous singers and some utterly forgotten. Among the most famous are Victoria Spivey and the incomparable Bessie Smith. Smith made her debut in 1923 scoring a huge hit that year with “Down Hearted Blues.” Her sales were so impressive that record companies immediately sent talent scouts down south for similar blues ladies, opening the door for singers like Clara Smith, Ma Rainey, Ida Cox and Sippie Wallace. These woman singers dominated the market for the first half of the 20’s. Our selection, I’m Down In The Dumps”, comes from Bessie’s final four-song session in 1933. Victoria Spivey made her debut relatively late, in 1926 and recorded prolifically through 1937.

Among the other female singers we spotlight are Margaret Johnson, Lizzie Miles, Elizabeth Johnson, Lil Johnson, Lillie Mae Kirkman and Merline Johnson. Margaret Johnson cut 26 sides between 1923-1927 and worked with some top players including Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong. Little in known of her life outside of the fact she worked the vaudeville circuit throughout the 1920’s. Johnson was a powerful, expressive singer as she proves on 1924’s “Nobody Knows The Way I Feel Dis Mornin’” easily cutting through the limitations of the acoustic recording process to deliver a rousing performance. Lizzie Miles was another distinctive singer who worked in early jazz band, circuses and minstrel shows between 1909 and 1921 before launching her recording career. She recorded extensively between 1922 and 1929 and again in 1939. She came out of retirement in 1950. She’s in superb form on “The Man I Got Ain’t The Man I Want “ featuring some tasteful playing from guitarist Teddy Bunn. After making a few records in 1929, Lil Johnson didn’t surface again on record until 1935, cutting some 60 sides through 1937. Merline Johnson was one of the most prolific female artists of the 30’s, cutting almost 100 songs, yet little is known about her background.  Known as The Yas Yas Girl, she recorded with some of Chicago’s top musicians including Big Bill Broonzy, Black Bob, Casey Bill Weldon, Ransom Knowling, Blind John Davis and others. “Bad Whiskey Blues” comes form a final unissued 1947 session with Big Bill Broonzy and Blind John Davis.

We showcase several fine piano players including a couple apiece by the popular Walter Davis and Curtis Jones. Walter Davis was one of the most recorded artists of the era, cutting some 160 sides between 1930 and 1941. He came to St. Louis in 1925 and became a protégé of Roosevelt Sykes who played on his first six sessions. Davis continued to record steadily through the 1940’s until his final sessions in 1952. ‘Things Ain’t What They Used To Be” is a rare topical blues from Davis illustrating the problems of black soldiers returning from the war only to confront the same old prejudices:

I spent two years in the European country, way out across the deep blues sea (2x)
And since I been round here, don’t seem like home to me

Curtis Jones scored a huge hit in 1937 with “Lonesome Bedroom Blues.” The song remained in Columbia’s catalog until the demise of the 78 rpm record in the late fifties and eventually to become a blues standard. In 1929, Curtis Jones left Dallas working his way through the Mid and Southwest via Kansas City, then traveling to New Orleans where he finally made his way to Chicago. Arriving there in 1936, he formed his own group and began playing at rent parties and in Southside joints or bars and was soon spotted by Vocalion talent scout Lester Melrose. Over the next five years Curtis Jones was in the studio on no fewer than twenty occasions, recording some hundred titles, proving himself a very imaginative songwriter. His career picked up during the 60’s blues revival where he cut several records and eventually moved to Europe where he remained until his death in 1971. It’s easy to underestimate Jones with the seemingly sameness of his songs, yet he was an imaginative, often startling lyricist as he proves on our selections: “Down In The Slums” and particularly “Alley Bound”:

I have been singing sentimental, songs all over town (2x)
And I haven’t made no headway so you know I’m alley bound
I done made every beer tavern, I done stopped at every liquor store (2x)
So I try the alley, and stop by the bootleggers door
The bootlegger tells me, that the g-men have been around (2x)
And broke up all the moonshine, and poured the ice on the ground

In addition to two songs we play under Jones’ name, we also find him backing Lillie Mae Kirkman’s on her provocative “Hop Head Blues”:

I said daddy, daddy, daddy, you the meanest man I’ve ever seen (2x)
You use hop and reefer, and you even use morphine
Believe I smoke my reefer, but they don’t take no effect on me (2x)
I can smoke them every morning, be as happy as any woman can be
Reefer’s all right to smoke, but they treat you so low down (2x)
Doctor said if I didn’t quit I’d be six feet down in the ground

We spin a trio of great piano records from 1929 including Eddie Miller’s seductive “Good Jelly Blues.” The other side contains the marvelous “Freight Train Blues”, his two finest recordings. Nolan Welsh cut six sides between 1926 and 1929 including two featuring Louis Armstrong. Montana Taylor’s “Indiana Avenue Stomp b/w Detroit Rocks” has to rank as some of the finest barrelhouse numbers of the era. He was rediscovered in 1946, cutting some material for the Circle label.

We move up to the 50’s and 60’s to hear fine performances from Lightnin’ Hopkins  and Big Mama Thornton. As I was putting the program together I was watching the news about the wildfires outside of L.A. and immediately though of Lightnin’ Hopkins’ great “Burnin’ In L.A “ from 1961. From 1963 we play “Mercy” by Big Mama Thornton, and with all respects to “Hound Dog” and “Ball And Chain”, this is one of her finest, if unheralded numbers featuring a terrific uncredited guitarist.

Show Notes:

Today’s show is the first installment of an ongoing series of programs built around a particular year. The bulk of the information for today’s show notes comes from the books Recording The Blues (reprinted along with two other titles in Yonder Come The Blues) by Robert M.W. Dixon and John Godrich and Blues & Gospel Records, 1890-1943 by Robert M.W. Dixon, John Godrich and Howard Rye.

The year 1927 was the beginning of a blues boom that would last until 1930; there were just 500 blues and gospel records issued in 1927 and increase of fifty percent from 1926 a trend that would continue until the depression. Paramount, the market leader at the time, brought talent up to their northern studios. To feed the demand other record companies conducted exhaustive searches for new talent, which included making trips down south with field recording units. Between 1927-1930 Atlanta was visited seventeen times, Memphis eleven times, Dallas eight times, New Orleans seven times and so on. The record companies advertised their record in black newspapers, mainly in the Chicago Defender, which was the nation’s most influential black weekly newspaper.

After neglecting the race market, Victor decided to jump in the field in 1926 with negligible results. Victor’s fortunes turned around when they hired Ralph Peer who had been responsible for building up the race and hilliby catalogs for OKeh. In February 1927 Peer ventured out with the Victor filed unit to Atlanta, Memphis and finally New Orleans. Among the artists recorded in Memphis were the Memphis Jug Band, Furry Lewis and Frank Stokes. In Atlanta recordings were made by Julius Daniels, Blind Willie McTell and others. In New Orleans the major find was songster Richard “Rabbit” Brown who recorded six sides.

Early in 1927 Mayo Williams, who had built up the Paramount catalog, formed his Black Patti label. The recordings were made by Gennett, with half the material issued on Gennett’s own labels. Black Patti Records debuted with advertisements in May of 1927, with some two dozen discs said to already be available. The repertory included jazz, blues, sermons, spirituals, and vaudeville skits, most (but not quite all) by African American entertainers. A total of 55 different discs were manufactured. Williams found running his own label not as lucrative and easy as he had hoped, and closed up operations before the end of 1927. Among the notable blues artists recorded were Papa Harvey Hull, Sam Collins, Clara Smith, Jaybird Collins among others.

When Black Patti folded in August 1927, Vocalion quickly hired him as a talent scout. Williams hit pay dirt with Jim Jackson’s “Jim Jackson’s Kansas City Blues” which was released in December 1927 and was an immediate hit.

Gennett began recording blues in 1923 but was the only major label not to have a separate race series. Gennett recorded most of their recordings at their Richmond, Indiana and New York studios. They made one group of recordings in the South in Birmingham Alabama in 1927. Among those recorded during this trip were Jay Bird Coleman, Daddy Stovepipe,, William Harris and Joe Evans.Other artists to appear on the label included Sam Collins and Cow Cow Davenport.

Columbia’s race records  were primarily issued on the 1400-D series which ran from December 1923 through April 1933. The first country blues singer to appear on the series was Peg Leg Howell who was recorded in Atalanta in November 1926 and the following year in April.  Also recorded in April 1927 were Robert Hicks aka Barbecue Bob. According to Robert M.W. Dixon John Godrich in their book Recording The Blues, 10, 850 copies of “Barbecue Blues” b/w “Cloudy Sky Blues” were pressed. Initial sales were so good that Hicks was called to New York in the middle of June to record 8 more numbers, and when Columbia returned to Atlanta in November they not only recorded a further 8 selections by Barbecue Bob, but also 6 by his brother Charley Lincoln, who sang the same sort of songs in very much the same style. In December 1927 the Columbia field unti went to Dallas and Memphis.  Notable artists recorded in Dallas inluded Blind Willie Johnson, the Dallas String Band, Lillian Glinn while Memphis yielded important recordings by Reubin Lacy and Pearl Dickson.

In 1926 Columbia and OKeh merged but the labels were run by separate management for three years after the merger and did not compete for the same artists. Since 1927 OKeh had been issuing a new record every six weeks by Lonnie Johnson and issued some two-dozen sides by him in 1927. Johnson also backed other OKeh artists that year including Texas Alexander and Victoria Spivey. OKeh also recorded two sessions by Blind Lemon Jefferson, exclusively a Paramount artist, but these were never issued. Today’s show features tracks by all these artists as well as the duo of Butterbeans & Susie who cut close to 70 sides for the label between 1924 and 1930.

The only race company that made no field trips was Paramount. Despite this Paramount remained the market leader in records released and singers recorded. Paramount issued records by the many of the blues biggest stars. In 1927 the label issued records by Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake both of whom were extensivley advertised in the Chicago Defender. Other big names were Ma Rainey, Lucille Bogan Ida Cox, and Papa Charlie Jackson.