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:

An varied set of blues on today’s program including some notable female singers,  several fine piano players and some fascinating field recordings. We spin two today tracks by the great Sippie Wallace that were cut almost forty years apart. From 1929 we play Sippie’s magnificent, swaggering “I’m A Mighty Tight Woman” featuring Johnny Dodds on clarinet which outshines her original version cut three years prior.  We jump ahead to 1966 for “Woman Be Wise” from the album of the same name. These recordings are recorded on tour in Denmark with Little Brother Montgomery and if anything Sippie sounds stronger than she does on her earlier recordings. Wallace was born and raised in Houston and as a child  sang and played piano in church. Before she was in her teens, she began performing with her pianist brother Hersal Thomas. By the time she was in her mid-teens, she had left Houston to pursue a musical career. In 1923, Sippie, Hersal, and their older brother George moved to Chicago. By the end of the year, she had secured a contract with OKeh Records. Her first two songs for the label, “Shorty George” and “Up the Country Blues,” were hits and Sippie soon became a star. Sippie’s recordings featured jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Eddie Heywood, King Oliver, and Clarence Williams; both Hersal and George Thomas performed on Sippie’s records as well. Between 1923 and 1927, she recorded over 40 songs for OKeh. She stopped performing in the 30’s and outside of a couple of sides in 1945 didn’t return to performing until the 60’s. She continued to perform and record until shortly before her death in 1986.

Among the featured piano blues today is a terrific solo version of  “Up the Country Blues” by Little Brother Montgomery. This recording comes from the album The Piano Blues – Unissued Recordings Vol. 1 on Magpie, a collection of recordings made in 1960 in England. Other pianists spotlighted include Leroy Carr, Peetie Wheatstraw, Cripple Clarence Lofton, Detroit Count, Cleo Brown and Dan Burley. Carr’s “I Ain’t Got No Money Now” cut in 1934 is a beautifully sung depression era gem set to the template of “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out.” Peetie Wheatstraw is exuberant on the rocking “Shack Bully Stomp”  from 1938 backed by Lonnie Johnson. Sung by red Nelson, “Crying Mother Blues”, is a moving, poetic number underpinned by the rolling boogie piano of Cripple Clarence Lofton:

Dear mother’s dead and gone to glory, my old dad gone straight away (2x)
Only way to meet my mother, I will have to change my lowdown ways

Tombstones my pillow, graveyard gonna be my bed (2x)
Blue skies gonna be my blanket and the pale moon gonna be my spread

We jump ahead to the late 1940′s for tracks by the Detroit Count, Cleo Brown and Dan Burley. African-Americans began arriving in droves in Detroit by the 1920’s, most settling in an area called Black Bottom, later named Paradise Valley. Some of the earliest blues took place in the bars, brothels and house parties in Paradise Valley. One who played in those joints was the Detroit Count,the stage name of pianist Bob White who arrived in Detroit in 1938. He made his name with his 1948 song “Hastings Street Opera” a humorous description of the people and places of the famous street. He cut a total of six songs in 1948 plus a pair of unissued sides for King. our selection, “Detroit Boogie”, is a storming update of the classic “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie.” Dan Burley was a strong pianist who cut his teeth in the Chicago rent parties and barrelhouses, a sound reflected in 1946′s ” Fishtail Blues” back by Brownie and Sticks McGhee. Cleo Brown, made recordings in the ’30s and ’40s, then entered the studios once again in the late ’80s after being rediscovered living in Colorado. Following the family move to Chicago in 1919, she began formal studies music on piano. By the early ’20s, she was working professionally in clubs and tent shows as well as broadcasting live with her own regular radio show. By the early ’30s, she was well-established and for the next two decades she worked almost non-stop, performing in cities across the United States and holding forth regularly in clubs such as New York’s Three Deuces. She recorded prolifically in 1935-36 for Decca and made further sessions in 1949, 50 and 51.

Among the field recordings played on today’s program are a trio of marvelous recordings made by Lawrence Gellert of unnamed/documented singers. According to Gellert’s notes some of these recordings were recorded in Greenville, South Carolina in 1924. It seems likely that these recordings are actually from the 30′s although according to eyewitnesses Gellert was indeed recording in South Carolina in 1924. Other recordings hail from Atlanta, Georgia and date from 1928 through 1932. As one reviewer noted: “The most interesting thing about these two albums was the outspokenness of the songs against authority.” Gellert was accepted as an insider in the African American communities in which he worked and was able to record protest songs that eluded other collectors of the time.” “Boogie Lovin’” is the first of eight pieces apparently played by the same guitarist.  As Bruce Harrah-Conforth wrote in the notes to a collection of these recordings: “Through his collection we get a chance to examine blues as they were performed within the Black community, as influenced by, and as influence to the ‘race record’ industry. In all probability the people Gellert recorded never went on to become anything more than what they were, members of their community. As such, the music they made is really the folk blues: blues without the intervention of commercial urbanity.” There are many more recordings by Gellert that have yet to be issued. Some of these recordings appear on the Document collection Field Recordings, Vol. 9: Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky (1924-1939) (this includes all the recordings on the album Nobody Knows My Name issued on the Heritage label in 1984). Gellert’s initial release of these recordings was originally prepared for release on the Timely label titled Negro Songs of Protest but jackets were never printed and the only copies of the record which left Gellert’s apartment went to friends or to others who had heard about it by word of mouth; the total was about 40 discs. This material was issued on LP by Rounder in the 70′s with a follow-up album in the 80′s titled Cap’n You’re So Mean.

Other field recordings include some wonderful stringband music from Butch Cage and Willie B. Thomas recorded by Henry Oster in 1959, Blind Willie McTell performing “Delia” for Alan Lomax in 1940 in an Atlanta hotel room for John Lomax and Furry Lewis in fine form on “East St. Louis Blues” in 1968 from the album At Home In Memphis. We also hear the lone recording by Hayes McMullen who was interviewed and recorded by blues researcher Gayle Dean Wardlow. McMullen knew several of the early delta bluesman such as William Harris, Charlie Patton, Willie Brown and Ishman Bracey. We also hear from Lum Guffin who was first recorded in the 1970’s by Swedish researcher Bengt Olsson when he was 70 and again in 1980 by Axel Kunster for the Living Country Blues series. The LP Walking Victrola was his sole record, released on the Flyright label in 1973. Some of these recordings appear on the CD On The Road Again.

From the 1950′s we spin tracks by Larry Darnell and Wee Willie Wayne who both recorded in New Orleans. We spin Wayne’s wailing “Tend To Your Business”, his only hit which reached # 2 on the Billboard R&B charts in 1951.  In the mid-40′s Darnell settled in New Orleans, working in the Dew Drop Inn. One night in 1949 Darnell’s act was caught by Fred Mendelsohn, co-founder and A&R director for the Regal record label who was in town scouting for new talent. He later recalled: “Darnell was doing a song called ‘I’ll Get Along Somehow’ originally popularized by Andy Kirk. He added a recitation that sent the dames screaming and hollering.” Darnell was hired on the spot where three titles were cut in early September 1949. Presented in two parts, “I’ll Get Along Somehow” made it to number two on the Billboard R&B chart not long after “For You My Love” hit number one and scored a few other hits along the way. After Regal folded he bounced through labels like Okeh, Savoy, Deluxe Argo and others. He passed in 1984. Our selection, “Sundown”, is a great showcase for his powerful pipes featuring some excellent backing vocals. Also from the 1950′s are great tracks by Brownie McGhee, John Lee Hooker,  Helen Humes and B.B. King among others.

Also worth mention are recordings featuring Stovepipe No. 1.  Stovepipe No. 1 was Sam Jones who played harmonica, guitar and stovepipe. Possibly born in the 1880’s he  spent his life in Cincinnati. He cut a dozen sides in 1924, with several unissued, plus a few sides in 1927. He recorded as a one man band, with guitarist David Crockett and with the jug bands; King David’s Jug Band cut six sides in 1930 and most likely the Cincinnati Jug Band.