Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

Some piano player, I’ll tell you that
(Ivy Smith, Alabama Strut)

Read Liner Notes

On December 4, 2009 Francis Wilford-Smith died and today we pay tribute to him. Smith was an avid collector of 78 records, a broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 (Aspects of the Blues) and the compiler of some excellent piano blues LP’s on the British label Magpie Records, drawing all the material from his own collection. Today’s selections all come from Smith’s groundbreaking 21 volume series he started in 1977 and issued on the Magpie label, a subsidiary o of the Flyright label. Subsequently his collection was used for a piano blues series on Yazoo issued on CD. He had one of the largest collections of piano blues 78′s in the world. Smith also field recorded Roosevelt Sykes and Little Brother Montgomery at his home in Sussex in 1960, yielding two 1980s LP’s of the latter: These Are What I Like: Unissued Recordings Vol. 1 and Those I Liked I Learned: Unissued Recordings Vol. 2. Smith made a good living from cartoons published under the pen name ‘Smilby’ in Playboy, which allowed him to outbid others for rare 78s. Wilford-Smith was 82, had suffered from Parkinson’s disease since 1994, and spent his last years in a nursing home. He died asleep in bed.

On a personal note, it was through the Magpie series that I became a life long fan of piano blues. I came to the series late, my first purchase was volume 20 and I must have been around 16. The album made a huge impression on me and I even remember exactly where I purchased it – Tower Records on West 4th St., NYC. I went back and picked up as many of the rest of the albums I could find and over the years completed the entire series. The series had everything you would want; each thematically well assembled, excellent liner notes (brief introductions by Smith) by Bob Hall, Paul Oliver and Richard Noblett and superb transfers.

Read Liner Notes

Before I give some background on the individual volumes, its worth quoting Wilford-Smith from his introduction to the series:  “The well-merited reissue of so many excellent blues guitar records over the past few years has had, perhaps, one unfortunate and unintentional – in that it caused the pianist to be unfairly overshadowed. This album marks the start of a series which, it is hoped, will put into perspective the role of the piano in blues history and do justice to the memory of the many fine pianists who have so enriched the music. We are only using 78 originals from my own collection, thus giving the listener the rare chance to hear records; at their best. No dubs, no tape-tracks that have wandered in and out of   half-a-dozen tape collections before being issued with that all too familiar dead and muffled cotton-wool-in-the-ears sounds. No ordinary filtering of any sort has been done in any misguided attempt t0 ‘improve’ the quality, and each listener is left free to filter to his own taste. Surface noise there may be, but freshness and vitality are not strained away. The selection of records both here and throughout the series will be essentially subjective and reflect my own taste, but l shall endeavor to include a wide-ranging variety of piano styles and treatments to give as broad as possible a picture of the whole blues piano scene.”

More or less, we work our way through the series volume by volume. The first volume and volume 17 are devoted to Paramount and as Smith writes: “…We start with Paramount, almost unchallenged as the greatest blues label, and its piano content lives up to its reputation. Here are joys indeed  -  and some of the greatest blues piano ever recorded.  Spand, Little Brother, Ezell,  Louise Johnson, Wesley Wallace, Garnett.  …I think the playing here must satisfy the most critical lover of the blues.” From those volumes we spin tracks by Little Montgomery, Charles Avery, Charlie Spand, Louise Johnson, Henry Brown and Jabo Williams.

“…The second volume”, Smith writes, “in our Piano Blues Series, will  be found very different in character to Volume One.  … Here on Brunswick a large  proportion of  the  piano blues bear a strong family resemblance and emotional  unity. This perhaps because several of the artists would seem to hail from the St. Louis area, and share that  hollow-chorded easy-rocking piano style.” The Piano Blues Vol. 3 is devoted to the Vocalion label which was founded in 1916 and acquired by Brunswick in 1925. These are particularly strong volumes and we included several tracks from these collections including Eddie Miller, Charles “Speck” Pertum, Lucille Bogan, Mozelle Alderson, Romeo Nelson and Joe Dean among others.

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Next to St. Louis, one of the most musically rich piano regions was Texas as Paul Oliver observed:  “Texas was as rich in piano blues as Mississippi was in guitar blues …A cursory glance through the discographies will emphasize the fact that a remarkable number of blues pianists came from Texas.” Four volumes in the series are devoted to the piano blues of Texas: The Piano Blues Vol. 4 – The Thomas Family 1925-1929, The Piano Blues Vol. 8 – Texas Seaport 1934-1937, The Piano Blues Vol. 11 – Texas Sante Fe 1934-1937 and The Piano Blues Vol. 15 – Dallas 1927-1929. The Texas pianists, Oliver notes, “…can be grouped into ‘schools’, characterized by certain similarities of style and approach, that were partly a reflection of the environments in which they worked, of their friendships and associations with other pianists, and by the isolation of Texas from other states.” One school was the so-called “Santa Fe group” who were based in the southwestern part of the state where the cities of Galveston, Houston and Richmond lie. Here was where the music thrived and pianists could be found like Pinetop Burks, Son Becky, Rob Cooper, Black Boy Shine, Andy Boy, Big Boy Knox, Robert Shaw, Buster Pickens and the singers who worked with them like Walter “Cowboy” Washington and Joe Pullum. The other important school was a cluster of pianists and singers based in Dallas such as Alex Moore, Texas Bill Day, Neal Roberts Willie Tyson, and singer Billiken Johnson. The earlier Texas piano tradition is documented on The Piano Blues Vol. 4 – The Thomas Family 1925-1929. As David Evans states: “It is likely that no family has contributed more personalities to blues history than the Thomas family of Houston, Texas, whose famous members included George W. Thomas, his sister Beulah “Sippie” Wallace, their brother Hersal Thomas, George’s daughter Hociel Thomas, and Moanin’ Bernice Edwards who was raised up in the family.”

Several volumes in the series are devoted to individual artists or a cluster of artists: The Piano Blues Vol. 6 – Walter Roland 1933-1935, The Piano Blues Vol. 7 – Leroy Carr 1930-1935, The Piano Blues Vol. 9 – Lofton-Noble 1935-1936 (Cripple Clarence Lofton and George Noble), The Piano Blues Vol. 12 – Big Four 1933-1941 (Little Brother Montgomery, Walter Davis, Roosevelt Sykes, Springback James) and The Piano Blues Vol. 18 – Roosevelt Sykes/Lee Green 1929-1930.

Read Liner Notes

Among the other volumes in the series we play tracks from The Piano Blues Vol. 5 – Postsript 1927-1935, The Piano Blues Vol. 13 – Central Highway 1933-1941, The Piano Blues Vol. 14 – The Accompanist and The Piano Blues Vol. 20 – Barrelhouse Years 1928-1933. Among the tracks we spin from these collections are Turner Parrish’s remarkable “The Trenches” who Bob Hall calls “an eccentric and probably unschooled pianist with nevertheless a considerable technique”, Georgia White accompanying herself on piano on the boisterous “The Blues Ain’t Nothin’ But…”, the obscure Pigmeat Terry who sings magnificently on the moving “Black Sheep Blues” accompanied by his own piano and the wonderful Pinetop and Lindberg’s “East Chicago Blues.”

The piano blues series officially concluded with The Piano Blues Vol. 21 – Unfinished Boogie 1938-1945 which collects unreleased recordings of Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis. As mentioned previously two collections of recordings by Little Brother Montgomery were made at Smith’s home in 1960 and were the final albums issued on the Magpie imprint. Yazoo Records launched their own piano blues series also using 78’s from Smith’s collection. As far as I can tell the series has stopped but they issued seven excellent collections.

Related Articles:

Notes to The Piano Blues Vol. 8 – Texas Seaport 1934-1937, The Piano Blues Vol. 11 – Texas Sante Fe 1934-1937 and The Piano Blues Vol. 15 – Dallas 1927-1929 (Word Doc)

Show Notes:

When a woman get the blues, she goes to her room and hides (2x)
When a man gets the blues, he catches a freight train and rides
(Trixie Smith, Freight Train Blues)

For southern Blacks the appeal of the railroads has always been both a real and a symbolic one. For them the train was a symbol of power, of freedom and escape.  As blues historian Paul Oliver wrote: “In the slavery periods when they were unable to travel between districts without written ‘bonds’ from their owners, the snorting engines, with brilliant furnaces traces their progress and clouds of black smoke that hung in the still air above the tracks long after the screaming whistles had died away, inspired them in awe which their descendants still retain.” This image carried on, in the hard times of the 1920′s and 1930s’, when the southern Blacks struggled to make a living and saw the northern cities as their saviors, where work was plentiful and a better life was to be had. As the blues developed, the railroad featured prominently in the songs. Numerous songs were sung about individual trains such as the Flying Crow, the Sunshine Special and the Panama Limited, many simply abbreviated like the C&O (Chesapeake and Ohio), T&P (Texas Pacific) or the L&N (Louisville and Nashville), many songs dealt with the hobos who rode the rails, others dealt with working for the railroad while other songs retold the famous railroad ballads of John Henry, Railroad Bill and Casey Jones. Today’s show will spotlight all of these types of railroad blues.

The title of today’s program comes from the song by Henry Thomas. Thomas, nicknamed “Ragtime Texas”, was born in 1874 in Big Sandy, Texas. The 1874 date marks him as one of the eldest-born blues performers on record. Thomas was the archetypal rambling musician who went wherever the railroads would take him. According to Mack McCormick, as told to him from a former railroad conductor, “Ragtime Texas was a big fellow that used to come aboard at Gladewater or Mineola or somewhere in there. I’d always carry him, except when he was too dirty. He was a regular hobo, but I’d carry him most of the time. That guitar was his ticket.” Speaking of his famous “Railroadin’ Some”, William Barlow calls it the most “vivid and intense recollection of railroading” in all the early blues recorded in the 1920’s.

Among the famous railroad songs featured today are two associated with Leadbelly, “Rock Island Line” and ‘Midnight Special”, and the folk ballads Casey Jones, John Henry and Railroad Bill. John Lomax recorded “Rock Island Line” at the Cummins State Prison farm, Gould, Arkansas, in 1934 from its convict composer, Kelly Pace. Leadbelly, who was with Lomax at the time, rearranged it in his own style, and made commercial recordings of it in the forties. The song refers to the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. Lyrics appearing in the “Midnight Special” were first recorded in print by Howard Odum in 1905. The song was first commercially recorded on the OKeh label in 1926 as “Pistol Pete’s Midnight Special” by Dave “Pistol Pete” Cutrell and the following year by bluesman Sam Collins. In 1934 Lead Belly recorded a version of the song at Angola Prison for John and Alan Lomax, who mistakenly attributed it to him as the author. Leadbelly recorded at least three versions of the song, including the one we feature with the Golden Gate Quartet.

John Luther “Casey” Jones was an American railroad engineer from Jackson, Tennessee who worked for the Illinois Central Railroad. On April 30, 1900, he alone was killed when his passenger train collided with a stalled freight train at Vaughan, Mississippi on a foggy and rainy night. His dramatic death trying to stop his train and save lives made him a folk hero who became immortalized in a popular song. We spin two versions on today’s program: “Kassie Jones Pt. 1″ by Furry Lewis and “Southern Casey Jones” by Jesse James.

John Henry is an American folk hero, notable for having raced against a steam powered hammer and won, only to die in victory with his hammer in his hand. He has been the subject of numerous songs, stories, plays, and novels. The truth about John Henry is obscured by time and myth, but one legend has it that he was a slave born in Missouri in the 1840s and fought his notable battle with the steam hammer along the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway in Talcott, West Virginia. On today’s show we play a version by the duo The Two Poor Boys.

The legend of Railroad Bill arose in the winter of 1895, along the Louisville and Nashville (L&N) Railroad line in southern Alabama. Based loosely on the exploits of an African American outlaw known as “Railroad Bill,” tales of his brief but action-filled career on the wrong side of the law have been preserved in song, fiction, and theater. He has been variously portrayed as a “Robin Hood” character, a murderous criminal and a nameless victim of the Jim Crow South. He was never conclusively identified, but L&N detectives claimed he was a man named Morris Slater. Today we spin  “Railroad Bill” by Will Bennett.

Featured today are several songs about specific trains or railroad lines. Our opening track “Sunshine Special” by Blind Lemon Jefferson refers the train of the same name which was inaugurated by the Missouri Pacific Railroad on December 5, 1915, providing service between St. Louis, Little Rock, and destinations in Texas. The Sunshine Special served as the flagship of Missouri Pacific Railroad’s passenger train service. Several songs make reference to the Flying Crow, a train line connecting Port Arthur, Texas to Kansas City with major stops in Shreveport and Texarkana. Black Ivory King, Carl Davis & the Dallas Jamboree Jug Band, Dusky Dailey, Washboard Sam and Oscar Woods all recorded songs about the train. Other songs dealing with specific trains featured today include Jack Ranger’s “T.P. Window Blues” ( Texas Pacific Railroad), Lucille Bogan’s “T& NO Blues” (Texas and New Orleans Railroad), Sparks Brothers‘ “I.C. Train Blues” (Illinois Central Railroad), Little Brother Montgomery’s “A. & V. Railroad Blues” (Alabama & Vicksburg Railroad), Willie Brown’s “M&O Blues” (Mobile and Ohio Railroad), Billiken Johnson’s “Sun Beam Blues” (Sunbeam was a named passenger train operated from 1925 to 1955 between Houston and Dallas by the Texas and New Orleans Railroad), Andrew and Jim Baxter’s “K C Railroad Blues” (Kansas City Southern Railway), George Noble’s “The Seminole Blues” (Seminole Gulf Railway), and Pink Anderson & Simmnie Dooley’s “C.C. and O. Blues” (Chesapeake and Ohio). Sam Collins’ “Yellow Dog Blues” seems to refer to two trains. In 1903 W.C. Handy related how he heard a lean, raggedy, black guitarist in Tutwiler’s railroad depot, singing of going to where the “Southern cross the Yellow Dog.” The “Southern” was the Southern Railway which began operations in 1894.“The Dog” was the Yellow Dog, a name for the Yazoo Delta Railroad which opened in 1897.

Several songs like Bukka White’s ” Special Streamline” and Cripple Clarence Lofton’s “Streamline Train” refer to streamliners. A streamliner is any vehicle that incorporates streamlining to produce a shape that provides less resistance to air. The term is most often applied to certain high-speed railway trainsets of the 1930′s to 1950′s. For a short time in the late 1930s, the ten fastest trains in the world were all American streamliners.

Other trains immortalized in blues songs will be featured in the sequel to today’s show; trains such as the Cannon Ball (an Illinois Central passenger train routing between Chicago and New Orleans, now known as the City of New Orleans), the Santa Fe (Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway), the Seaboard (The Seaboard Coast Line Railroad), the Katy (the Missouri, Texas, Kansas, Texas line), the Big four (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad ) and the New York Central among others.

Show Notes:

Blues writer Chris Smith wrote the following regarding Alabama blues: “Alabama attracted many folklorists, from John Lomax on down, seeking the oldest styles of black music in a state which long had a reputation for backwardness, poverty and racism. …Despite flourishing gospel quartet and piano traditions, the state’s blues are comparatively under-represented on ‘race’ records.”  As Paul Oliver noted: “For the recording men on their infrequent field trips, Memphis, Dallas and Atlanta were adequate (recording) centres. With talent scouts in each centre, and one placed in Jackson, they had the south ‘covered’ – for the commercial business of supplying enough talent for recording.  But the outcome of this was that Alabama was largely neglected by the location recording units and even by the talent scouts…” Nonetheless several Alabama artists cut records in the 20’s and 30’s including Ed Bell, Jaybird Coleman, George “Bullet” Williams, Ollis Martin, the Birmingham Jug Band, Lucille Bogan, Daddy Stovepipe and Pillie Bolling. There were also a number of excellent piano players based around Birmingham who got on record including Cow Cow Davenport, Jabbo Williams, Walter Roland and Robert McCoy. In addition there were some non-commercial recordings made including recordings made for the Library of Congress by John Lomax.

Ed Bell grew up in Greenville, Alabama, where he learned from an older cousin.  As well as sides under his own name, Bell also cut sides using the name Barefoot Bill and Sluefoot Joe. He cut sessions in 1927, 1929 and 1930 for Paramount, Columbia and the QRS label. He reportedly gave up the blues to become a Baptist minister in Montgomery, Alabama. Pillie Bolling was a Greenville associate of Ed Bell who cut two duets with Bell in 1930 and two solo sides.

There were several fine pianists based in Birmingham including Cow Cow Davenport,  Jabbo Smith, Robert McCoy and Walter Roland. Cow Cow Davenport is remembered most for his famous song “Cow Cow Blues” which is one of the earliest recorded examples of the Boogie-Woogie. Davenport learned to play piano and organ in his father’s church and was supposedly expelled from the Alabama Seminary in 1911 for playing Ragtime at a church function. Davenport’s early career revolved around carnivals and vaudeville. He toured TOBA with an act called Davenport and Company with Blues singer Dora Carr and they recorded together in 1925 and 1926. Davenport briefly teamed up with Blues singer Ivy Smith in 1928 and worked as a talent scout for Brunswick and Vocalion records in the late 1920s and played rent parties in Chicago. He moved to Cleveland, Ohio in 1930 and toured the TOBA vaudeville circuit and recorded with Sam Price. In 1938 he suffered a stroke that left his right hand somewhat paralyzed and affected his piano playing for the rest of his life, but he remained active as a vocalist until he regained enough strength in his hand to play again. In 1942 Freddie Slack’s Orchestra scored a huge hit with “Cow Cow Boogie” with vocals by Ella Mae Morse which sparked the Boogie-Woogie craze of the early 1940s. Davenport tried to make a comeback in the forties and fifties but his career was often interrupted by sickness. He died in 1955 of heart problems in Cleveland.

Jabbo Williams hailed from Birmingham Where he was likely discovered by Paramount in 1932. He also spent time in St. Louis. He cut eight sides during the depths of the depression all of which are exceedingly rare. Little is known about his background. “Polock Blues” takes its name form an area of East St. Louis while “Pratt City” refers to a suburb of Birmingham.

Robert McCoy spent virtually all his life in Birmingham and knew  the above pianists. At a Birmingham session in 1937 he backed artists Guitar Slim, Charlie Campbell and Peanut The Kidnapper. McCoy didn’t record under his own name until the late 50’s when a teenaged Birmingham blues fan recorded two albums by McCoy issued on his Vulcan label. Most of this material has be reissued on the Delmark CD Bye Bye Baby.

Likely born in or around Birmingham circa 1900, Walter Roland first emerged on the city’s blues circuit during the 1920s, presumably running in the same circles as Jabo Williams; a skilled, versatile pianist whose repertoire ran the gamut from slow blues to boogie-woogies, Roland was also a fine vocalist and even a talented guitarist. He went to New York City three times between 1933 and 1935 to record for ARC; during this same period he also accompanied Lucille Bogan, additionally recording with Josh White and Sonny Scott. Guitarist Sonny Scott cut fourteen sides for Vocalion in 1933 all backed by Walter Roland. After 1935 Roland activities remain unknown.

Lucille Bogan often focused on explicit sexual themes, like prostitution, adultery and lesbianism, and social ills such as alcoholism, drug addiction and abusive relationships. She was born in Mississippi but grew up in Birmingham. In 1923 she made her debut but the records apparently didn’t sell well because she didn’t record again until 1927 for the Paramount and Brunswick labels after moving to Chicago. Between 1933 and 1935 she performed and recorded under the pseudonym Bessie Jackson and worked with Walter Roland. Bogan’s recording career came to an end in 1935. In the late 1930s or early l940s, Bogan moved to the West Coast. She died in Los Angeles in 1948.

There were several fine harmonica blowers who hailed from Alabama including Jaybird Coleman, George “Bullet” Williams, Daddy Stovepipe and Ollis Martin. Jaybird Coleman was born in Gainsville, Al  and would perform at parties, both for his family and friends. Coleman served in the Army during World War I and after his discharge, he moved to the Birmingham, AL area. Coleman made recordings in 1927 and 1930 for Black Patti, Silvertone, Gennett and Columbia with all of the sessions recorded in Birmingham except his last which was cut in Atlanta. During the 30s and 40s, Coleman played on street corners throughout Alabama. He died in 1950.

Originally from Alabama, George “Bullet” Williams included superb train imitations and also an atmospheric “The Escaped Convict” at his only session in 1928. The latter title referred to the harsh convict-lease system in the South, which was still on the Alabama statute book in 1930.

Johnny Watson, alias Daddy Stovepipe, was born in Mobile, Alabama, on April 12th 1867 and died in Chicago, November 1st 1963. A veteran of the turn of the century medicine shows, he was in his late fifties when he became one of the first blues harp players to appear on record in 1924. He cut further sessions in 1927, 1931 and 1935. He later recorded with his wife, Mississippi Sarah, in the 1930s and spent his last years as a regular performer on Chicago’s famous Maxwell Street, where he made his last recordings in 1960.

Among the unknowns where harmonica artist Ollis Martin who cut one record in 1927 for Gennett. The Birmingham Jug Band recorded 9 sides at a single session in 1930 with a fine unknown harmonica player. It was once though Jaybird Coleman was a member of the group.  Bob Campbell cut four issued sides in 1934 including the fine “Starvation Farm Blues.”

There were a number of non-commercial recordings made in Alabama including sessions by John Lomax for the Libray of Congress.  Among those Lomax recorded were Tom Bell, Tom Bradford and Vera Hall. Lomax met Hall in the 1930s in Alabama and and recorded her for the Library of Congress. Lomax wrote that she “had the loveliest voice [he] had ever recorded.” She cut sides in 1937, 1939, 1940 and was recorded by Lomax’s son Alan in late 40′s and 50′s.

Show Notes:

Bo Carter

Well I was planning to do a themed show today but I’ve fallen hopelessly behind so I’ve slapped together a mix show instead. Anyway, a wide ranging mix for today’s program spanning the 1920′s through the 1950′s.

We kick things off with a trio of tracks revolving around the Mississippi Sheiks. The Mississippi Sheiks were one of the most popular string bands of the late ’20s and early ’30s with a repertoire that drew upon all facets of black and white rural music: blues, pop music, hokum, white country and traditional songs. Their rendition of “Sitting on Top of the World” has become an enduring standard. The group consisted of guitarist Walter Vinson and fiddler Lonnie Chatmon, with frequent appearances by guitarists Bo Carter and Sam Chatmon, who were also busy with their own solo careers. Bo Carter was one of the most popular bluesmen of the ’30′s, cutting over a hundred sides between 1928 and 1940. Vinson rarely worked as a solo act, seemingly much more at home in duets and trios; towards that end, during the 1920s he worked with Charlie McCoy, Rubin Lacy and Son Spand before forming the Mississippi Sheiks. While an active club performer during the early 1940s, by the middle of the decade he had begun a lengthy hiatus from music, which continued through 1960, at which point he returned to both recording and festival appearances. Hardening of the arteries forced Vinson into retirement during the early ’70s; he died in Chicago in 1975.

Our opening track by Walter Vinson features harmonica by Robert Lee McCoy better known as Robert Nighthawk. Nighthawk’s first instrument was harmonica and he played a good deal of it backing other artists on record during the 30s and 40s. As he noted: “When I left home I got right into it and I started blowing harmonica. I learnt that back in 24′. …boy named Johnny Jones, he’s from Louisiana, …say he learn me so I did.” Moving up to 1952 we hear Nighthawk on”You Missed A Good Man” a song Nighthawk likely picked up from Tampa Red who recorded the song in 1935. The basis of the song actually goes back much further being copyrighted by Clarence Williams in 1915 as “You Missed A Good Woman When You Picked All Over Me.” The song was first recorded by Trixie Smith in 1922 and again in 1923 by Eva Taylor the wife of Clarence Williams. Tampa reworked the lyrics but the the tune and chorus are identical.

There’s plenty of blues from the same era today including John Henry Barbee’s “You’ll Work Down to me Someday” from 1938 which is a reworking of a 1934 Mississippi Sheiks song of the same title. Barbee worked for a short time with John Lee Williamson (Sonny Boy Williamson I)  then began playing with Sunnyland Slim. They made appearances across the Mississippi Delta. Barbee later moved to Chicago, where he recorded for Vocalion in 1938. He played with Moody Jones’ group on Maxwell Street in the ’40s, but then left the music business for several years. Barbee recorded for Spivey and Storyville in the mid-’60s, and toured Europe as part of the American Folk Blues Festival. Back in the US Barbee was involved in an auto accident in 1964, and suffered a heart attack while in jail waiting for the case to come to court. It was a sad end to a fine artist who who still a superb performer as evidenced on the excellent Blues Masters Vol. 3 recorded in 1964 for Storyville.

Lucille Bogan

Form the same period we spotlight four fine blues ladies: Laura Smith, Lottie Kimbrough, Kansas City Kitty and Lucille Bogan. A fine forgotten blues singer of the 20′s, Laura Smith made her debut in 1924 and recorded through 1927. She died in 1932. Our selection “The Mississippi Blues” was the flip of  “Lonesome Refugee”, both songs written about the tragic 1927 flood, one of the greatest natural disasters in US history. Numerous blues and gospel songs were written about the flood. Lottie Kimbrough also made her debut in 1924 but as Tony Russell notes “If her half-dozen 1924 sides on Paramount had been all Lottie Kimbrough recorded, she would probably be considered a singer of the second or third rank…” Lucky for her she met promoter Winston Holmes who got her a contract with Gennett Records. In the past of I’ve played “Rolling Log Blues” and “Goin’ Away Blues”, performances of “haunting beauty” Russell writes. Our track, “Blue World Blues” is from that session, a powerful number featuring an excellent but unknown cornet player. Kansas City Kitty was a pseudonym for Mozelle Alderson who confused researchers for years by recording under other names such as Hannah Mae and Jane Lucas. “How Can You Have The Blues?” is a fine, playful duet with Georgia Tom. Lucille Bogan made her debut in 1923 with some less than memorable sides before coming into her own with her next sessions in 1927. Bogan was simply one of the toughest, roughest woman to record in the 20′s and 30′s and her “Whiskey Sellin’ Woman” is a good example as she opens the song  with the now familar “Ah, I’m gettin’ sloppy drunk today.”

From the 1946 we spotlight thee veteran artists of the 1930′s who were still at it, cutting some up-to-date material: Jimmie Gordon, Lee Brown and Johnnie Temple. These sides are from a rare 1946 session for King that were never released at the time and only issued decades later. Pianist Lee Brown cut 29 sides for Decca between 1937-40.  Jimmie Gordon made his first record in 1934 for Bluebird before moving to Decca where he cut 60 sides through 1941. Originally from Mississippi, Johnnie Temple moved to Jackson, MS where he worked parties and juke joints with Skip James and Charlie McCoy. He moved to Chicago in 1932, making his debut in 1935 for Vocalion and cut 70 sides through 1941. Although he never achieved stardom, Temple’s records, sold consistently throughout the late ’30s and ’40s and his records exerted an influence on numerous other artists. All these sides appear on the Proper Records collection Broke, Black & Blues.

We also spin a batch of great records from the 1950′s including a cut by blues shouter Tommy Brown. A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to see the 78 year old Brown in action and sounding great at the Pocono Blues Festival. “Remember Me” comes from a four song 1954 session where he was backed by Walter Horton. From 1952 we hear “Hoodoo Man” from Albert Williams on the Sun label (his only record) going under the name Memphis Al: “My name is Memphis Al and they call me the hoodoo man.” The song is particularly notable for some terrific guitar by the great Joe Willie Wilkins. From the same year we hear the guitarist Calvin Frazier rip it up on T.J. Fowler’s rocking “Back Biter.” Speaking of guitar it’s hard to beat T-Bone Walker who lays down some vicious licks on Roy Hawkins’ “Doin’ All Right” also from 1952.

Show Notes:

During his heyday in the 1920′s and 30′s, Tampa Red was billed as “The Guitar Wizard,” and his stunning slide work on steel National or electric guitar shows why he earned the title. His 25 year recording career produced hundreds of sides: hokum, pop, and jive, but mostly blues (including classic compositions “Anna Lou Blues,” “Black Angel Blues,” “Crying Won’t Help You,” “It Hurts Me Too,” and “Love Her with a Feeling”). Early in Red’s career, he teamed up with pianist, songwriter, and latter-day gospel composer Georgia Tom Dorsey, collaborating on double entendre classics like “Tight Like That.” Tampa’s slide playing was widely admired and influential on the likes of Robert Nighthawk, Elmore James and Earl Hooker. Jim O’Neal neatly summed up Tampa’s place in blues history when he wrote the following in 1975: “Few figures have been as important in blues history as Tampa Red; yet no bluesman of such stature has been so ignored by today’s blues audience. As a composer, recording artist, musical trendsetter and one of the premier urban blues guitarists of his day, Tampa Red remained popular with black record buyers for more than 20 years and exerted considerable influence on many post-World War II blues stars who earned greater acclaim for playing Tampa’s songs than Tampa himself often did.”

Tampa was born Hudson Woodbridge in Smithville, Georgia with various birth dates given between 1900 and 1908. His parents died when he was a child, and he moved to Tampa, Florida, where he was raised by his aunt and grandmother and adopted their surname, Whittaker. He emulated his older brother, Eddie, who played guitar, and he was especially inspired by an old street musician called Piccolo Pete, who first taught him to play blues licks on a guitar. In the 1920′s, having already perfected his slide technique, he moved to Chicago, Illinois, and began his career as a musician, adopting the name “Tampa Red” from his childhood home and red hair.

In the 1920′s, having already perfected his slide technique, he moved to Chicago, Illinois, and began his career as a musician. His big break was being hired to accompany Ma Rainey and he began recording in 1928. In 1928 Whittaker, through the intercession of J. Mayo “Ink” Williams, teamed up with pianist Thomas Dorsey a. k. a. Georgia Tom and recorded the Paramount label hit “Tight Like That”-a number based upon Blind Blake’s “Too Tight” and Papa Charlie Jackson’s “Shake That Thing.” With “It’s Tight Like That”, in a bawdy and humorous style that became known as “hokum.” The success of “Tight Like That” prompted several other record other versions for Paramount, and initiated the blues genre known as hokum Early recordings were mostly collaborations with Thomas A. Dorsey, known at the time as Georgia Tom. Tampa Red and Georgia Tom recorded almost 60 sides, sometimes as “The Hokum Boys” or, with Frankie Jaxon, as “Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band”. Tampa had actually met Georgia Tom around 1925 and Tom recalled those early years: “We played Memphis, I think Louisville, down to Nashville; we was down in Tennessee, or in Mississippi just across he line. We recorded in Memphis at the Peabody Hotel in 1929), and I left him down in Memphis and he got another week’s at the Palace Theater there. They liked him so well they hired him with just he and his guitar. …We played just anywhere. Party, theater, dance hall, juke joint. All black. See we wasn’t high-powered enough. Other fellows who were in the high music echelon got those jobs with the whites. The money was bigger up there.” Outside the studio Tom and Tampa worked together or separately joined sometime by their frequent studio partner, Frankie “Half Pint” Jaxon who primarily played the night clubs.

In 1928, Tampa Red became the one of the first bluesmen to play a National steel-bodied resonator guitar, the loudest and showiest guitar available before amplification; acquiring one in the first year they were available. This allowed him to develop his trademark bottleneck style, playing single string runs, not block chords, which was a precursor to later blues and rock guitar soloing. The National guitar he used was a gold-plated tricone, which was found in Illinois in the 1990s and later sold to the “Experience Music Project” in Seattle. Tampa Red was known as “The Man With The Gold Guitar”, and, into the 1930s, he was billed as “The Guitar Wizard”.

When Dorsey left the blues field in 1932 to take up a career as gospel songwriter and choir director, Tampa continued his path of fame as blues artist. In 1934 he launched his fruitful career with the Victor/Bluebird label. Following the repeal of prohibition in 1933, venues for blues music proliferated in Chicago, and Tampa Red became one of the city’s hottest live acts, often with the backing of his band, the Chicago Five. With his close friends Big Bill Broonzy and Lester Melrose, a producer for Bluebird Records, Tampa Red was a leader of the Chicago scene. In 1934 he signed for Victor Records. He formed the Chicago Five, a group of session musicians who created what became known as the Bluebird sound, a precursor of the small group style of later jump blues and rock and roll bands. He was a close friend and associate of Big Bill Broonzy and Big Maceo Merriweather. His wife, Frances, acted as his business manager, and Tampa’s house served as the blues community’s rehearsal hall and an informal booking agency. According to the testimony of Broonzy and Big Joe Williams, Red cared for other musicians by offering them a meal and a place to stay and generally easing their transition from country to city life. A frequent visitor to Whittaker’s apartment, Willie Dixon recalled, in I Am the Blues, how “Tampa Red’s house was a madhouse with old-time musicians. Lester Melrose would be drinking all the time and Tampa Red’s wife would be cooking chicken.” After the signing with Victor/bluebird Tampa stuck to Chicago and found steady work at a club across the street from his house called the H&T. Blind John Davis, who met Tampa in 1936, recalled: “Tampa’s the onliest one I know could could close his eyes and run across the street and run right into his job. And he worked there for about eight or nine years.”

Through the 1940′s Tampa remained a prime seller among black audiences with hits like “Let Me Play With Your Poodle” and “She Wants To Sell My Monkey.” During his Bluebird stint, between 1934 and 1953, he recorded over 200 sides. In addition to recordings he regularly played the clubs such as Club Georgia, the Flame Club, Sylvio’s, the Purple Cat , the 708 club, the Zanzibar, the Peacock and the C&T Lounge all of which were black clubs on Chicago’s South and West sides. Tampa’s music continued to evolve as Jim O’Neal notes: “…He was right there swinging with horns when big band jump blues were in fashion, and he had the boogie numbers down, too; even on his last Victor sessions he had adapted to the mainstream ’50′s Chicago blues sound with featured harmonica backing from Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) and Big Walter Horton. He was following trends, but setting them too with numbers that many other bluesmen were to re-record in later years. …Less frequently was Tamap a solo act; Big Maceo teamed up with him for for a while, and after Maceo suffered a stroke, Sunnyland Slim filled in until Maceo’s protege  Johnnie Jones took over on piano. By now Tampa also had added support from a drummer, Odie Payne Jr., and Johnnie would sing about half the numbers when he, Tampa, and Odie worked the Peacock and the C&T in 1949. Johnnie also sang on at least a dozen of Tampa’s later records.” His last hit was 1949′s “When Things Go Wrong With You (it Hurts Me Too)” which briefly hit the national R&B charts. By the early 1950′s Tampa rarely played the clubs anymore and he made his final commercial recording for Victor in 1953.

Left to right, standing: Jazz Gillum, Tampa Red and Little Bill Gaither. Sitting: Jack Dupree and Big Bill with Tampa’s dog which “drank whiskey just like we did and helped us sing.”

His wife’s death in 1953 was a blow from which Tampa Red never recovered. He had always been a heavy drinker, and his alcoholism became acute. Like many of his contemporaries, he was “rediscovered” by a new audience in the late 1950s. At this time, Samuel Charters also encountered the once-famed guitarist. In his work Country Blues, Charters recalled Whittaker’s life during this period of musical retirement: “He lives quietly, a dignified, gentle little man, usually wearing a buttoned sweater, his shoes carefully polished. He spends his afternoons visiting friends, walking along the rows of brownstone apartments that line the streets of his neighborhood, a scarf carefully folded around his neck and his overcoat collar turned up. He still owns a guitar, but hasn’t played much in recent years.” He went back into the studio in 1960 [two solo records for Prestige/Bluesville], but his final recordings were undistinguished.” He showed little interest in returning to music or talking to interviewers. Tampa passed away in Chicago in 1981.