Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

A typical mix show lined up for today, which means another wide ranging set of blues spanning the 1920′s on up. Today we spin some Piedmont styled blues by several fine bluesmen, spotlight some out-of-print LP’s plus play some twin spins of Mississippi Fred McDowell, Memphis Slim, Crying Sam Collins and a trio of tracks revolving around Baby Doo Caston.

Unlike blues artists like Big Bill or Memphis Minnie who recorded extensively over three or four decades, Blind Boy Fuller recorded his substantial body of work over a short, six-year span. Nevertheless, he was one of the most recorded artists of his time and by far the most popular and influential Piedmont blues player of all time.  In 1935 a new manager, J. B. Long, was brought in to run the United Dollar Store on Durham’s West Club Boulevard.  One day, hoping to attract farmers from the tobacco warehouses to his store, he heard a blind bluesman Fulton Allen (Blind Boy fuller), playing the guitar. During Long’s summer vacation an improbable sextet headed for New York to record: Long, his wife and daughter, Blind Boy Fuller, Gary Davis, and George Washington (Bull City Red). Davis recorded three sessions over three days for ARC; only the first session was blues and the other gospel. Today we spin tracks by several in Fuller’s orbit including Gary Davis, Sonny Terry and Baby Tate. Our opening number, “Evening Sun Goes Down”, comes from the excellent album Pure Religion & Bad Company cut for the Folkways label. Baby Tate met and played with Blind Boy Fuller’s in the 30’s. Tate’s track, ” f I Could Holler Like a Mountain Jack,” comes from the soundtrack album Blues – Music from the Documentary Film By Sam Charters shot by Charters in 1962 and featuring Baby Tate, J.D. Short, Pink Anderson, Sleepy John Estes, Gus Cannon and Memphis Willie B. From Sonny Terry we hear “Sonny’s Story” the title track from his wonderful 1960 Bluesville album. Terry is largely playing solo acoustic, with J.C. Burris joining in for harmonica duets every so often; Sticks McGhee and drummer Belton Evans also play on a few cuts.

We play a cut by an associate of Terry’s, Alec Seward who was born in  Charles City, VA. When he turned 18, he packed up and moved to New York with the intention of professionally playing music. Along the way, Seward struck up a friendship with Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry. He also came in contact with Louis Hayes. The two began performing as the Blues Servant Boys, Guitar Slim & Jelly Belly, and the Backporch Boys. Over the next two decades, Seward played and recorded with Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, and Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. He also released an album on Blueville, Creepin’ Blues in 1965 and today we spin the title track. The remainder of the ’60s found Seward playing live whenever possible and working the folk/blues festivals that had become popular in that decade. He passed in 1972.

Among the twin spins are a pair of Mississippi Fred McDowell’s debut recordings. McDowell was brought to wider public attention when he was discovered and recorded in 1959 by Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins. Many fine albums ensued by in many ways these initial recordings are his best. We also spin a couple by Memphis Slim including his majestic 1961 reading of Leroy Carr’s “In The Evenin’” as he opens by saying “The one an only Leroy Carr, one of the greatest tunes he ever made.” This comes from the superb album Bad Luck & Trouble waxed for Candid in 1961. From the previous year we hear the rollicking “I left That Town – Harlem Bound” from the out-of-print LP Memphis Slim and the Honky-Tonk Sound, one of several fine records Slim cut for the Folkways label.

Traveling back to the pre-war era we spotlight a pair of cuts by Crying Sam Collins. One of the earliest generation of blues performers, Collins developed his style in South Mississippi. His recording debut single (“The Jail House Blues,” 1927) predated those of legendary Mississippians such as Charley Patton and Tommy Johnson and was advertised by Black Patti as “Crying Sam Collins and his Git-Fiddle.” Collins did not become a major name in blues — in fact his later records appeared under several different pseudonyms — but his bottleneck guitar pieces were among the first to be compiled on LP when the country-blues reissue era was just beginning. Sam Charters wrote in The Bluesmen: “Although Collins was not one of the stylistic innovators within the Mississippi blues idiom, he was enough part of it that, in blues like ‘Signifying Blues’ and ‘Slow Mama Slow,’ he had some of the intensity of the Mississippi music at its most creative level.” In addition to playing the above mentioned “Slow Mama Slow” we also play “Lonesome Road Blues” (a version of “In The Pines”), a haunting number that ranks as one of Collins’ masterpieces. The only other track that even approaches this is Collins’ “My Road Is Rough And Rocky (How Long, How Long?)” (his version of “Long Gone”) which I’ve played on previous programs. I first heard these numbers on Yazoo’s Lonesome Road Blues and they remain among my favorite pre-war blues sides.

I’ve been listening lately to the music of Baby Doo Caston, who will probably always remain in the shadow of his more famous friend and collaborator, Willie Dixon. A few back a played a great tune by the Big Three Trio, which featured both men, and recently I dug out of my collection of couple of nice LP’s Caston cut just prior to his passing. Caston was born in Sumrall, Mississippi and raised in Meadville, Mississippi from age eight. He lived in Chicago from 1934 to 1936 but then moved back to Mississippi after his family relocated to Natchez. In 1938 he returned to Chicago, where he met with Mayo Williams, a producer for Decca Records. Williams recorded him in a trio with Gene Gilmore and Arthur Dixon; Dixon introduced him to his brother, Willie Dixon. Willie and Caston then formed the Five Breezes who cut eight sides for Bluebird in 1940.Among the better tracks the by group was “My Buddy Blues” a fine lowdown war themed number which we spin today:

I have signed my name
It won’t be long before I go
I woke up this morning
The mailman had my numbers at my door

If you’re twenty-one, buddy
I advise you not to hide
Because when that wagon roll ’round
I declare you’ve got to ride

Uncle Sam he’s callin’ fer you
And you know you got to go
He’s callin’ for all you jitterbugs
Like he never called before

The charity s been taken care of you
For a very long, long time
Now, Uncle Sam is calling you
And you know what’s on his mind

Also in 1940 Caston recorded his first solo record for Decca, the tough delta styled “I’m Gonna Walk Your Log” backed by the topical “The Death Of Walter Barnes”, both featuring Robert Nighthawk on harmonica. The latter number memorialized one of the deadliest fires in American history which took the lives of over 200 people, including bandleader Walter Barnes and nine members of his dance orchestra, at the Rhythm Club in Natchez, MS on April 23, 1940. News of the tragedy reverberated throughout the country, especially among the African American community, and blues performers have recorded memorial songs such as “The Natchez Fire”, “The Natchez Burning” and “The Mighty Fire” ever since. The Five Breezes disbanded in 1941, and Caston began playing in the Rhythm Rascals. After the war, he recorded under his own name as well as for Roosevelt Sykes and Walter Davis, and did myriad studio sessions. He also recorded again with Dixon as the Four Jumps of Jive and the Big Three Trio, playing in both groups. The Big Three Trio recorded for Columbia Records and Okeh Records. The group also backed singer Rosetta Howard at two 1947 sessions.  From the second session we play “Too Many Drivers.” The Big Three Trio’s last sides were recorded in 1952, but the group didn’t officially break up until 1956. Caston continued performing for decades afterwords, returning to perform with Dixon in 1984. He also released the albums, Baby Doo’s House Party and The Truth About The Blues, shortly before his death in 1987.  From the latter record we feature the title track.

We feature a set of songs about hard times, which seems as topical as ever; from the depression we hear Lane Hardin’s “Hard Time Blues” (1935) and Skip James, who sang for many on his  “Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues” (1931) :

Hard times is here
An everywhere you go
Times are harder
Than ever been before

You know that people
They are driftin’ from door to door
But they can’t find no heaven
I don’t care where they go

Lonnie Pitchford, Photo by Axel Kunster

As for Lane Hardin he cut one pre-war record,  “Hard Time Blues b/w California Desert Blues” in 1935. In around 1950 a group of artists sent in a batch of unlabeled acetates that were discovered at Modern in 1970. These recordings have remained a focal point for intense discussion ever since. When these sides were first issued on the Blues From The Deep South LP (reissued on the Ace CD Modern Downhome Blues Sessions Vol. 5), the name Arkansas Johnny Todd and Leroy Simpson were invented for two sides released, as the artists identities were unknown. After some detective work it turns out that Arkansas Johnny Todd is actually Lane Hardin. We move up to 1967 for our final hard times number as Do Boy Diamond sings “Hard Time Blues #2.” Diamond was living on his “boss man’s” farm, outside of Canton, Mississippi, north of Jackson, when George Mitchell recorded him in 1967.

We also play a set featuring Lonnie Pitchford and Robert Lockwood. Pitchford was an obscure Delta blues player until he was “discovered” by ethnomusicologist Worth Long. He began to attract crowds playing the music of Robert Johnson, on his one-stringed didley bow. Pitchford began playing Johnson’s tunes after meeting guitarist Robert Jr. Lockwood at the World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee. Lockwood showed Pitchford some basic Johnson chord changes and arrangements, and for several years after that, Pitchford was accompanied by the late Alabama bluesman Johnny Shines, as well as Lockwood. Pitchford was also an accomplished six-string guitarist and piano player. He cut one full-length album All Around Man, for Rooster Blues, as well as several compilations including some excellent tracks on the Living Country Blues series.. Pitchford was voted as one of Living Blues magazine’s “top 40 under 40″ new blues players to watch. Unfortunately, his life was cut short in 1998 at the age of 43.

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.