Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

The Mississippi Sheiks were the most commercially successful black string band of the pre-war era and made close to one hundred records between 1930 and 1935. Their repertoire drew upon all facets of black and white rural music: hard-edged blues, pop music, hokum, white country and traditional songs. At the group’s core was fiddler Lonnie Chatmon and singer/guitarist Walter Vinson and often joined on their recording dates by Lonnie’s brothers Bo Chatmon (who recorded solo as Bo Carter) and Sam Chatmon. Along with Charlie McCoy, this group of musicians also recorded in a few different instrumental combinations and under several different names including the Mississippi Blacksnakes, the Mississippi Mud Steppers, Chatmon’s Mississippi Hot Footers, the Jackson Blues Boys among others names. They also backed other artists like Texas Alexander, Alec Johnson  and backed Bo Carter on a few of his recording dates.

The Mississippi Sheiks grew out of a string band formed by members of the highly musical Chatmon family, who resided on the Gaddis and McLaurin plantation just outside the small town of Bolton, Mississippi. The father of the family was Henderson Chatmon, a sharecropper of mixed racial origins who had been a fiddler since the days of slavery. With his wife Eliza, he reportedly had thirteen children, eleven of which were sons who all played musical instruments. From around 1910 until 1928, seven of them formed a string band known as the Chatmon Brothers, and they performed at country dances, parties and picnics. As Sam Chatmon related to Paul Oliver in 1960: “We started out from our parents-it’s just a gift that we had in the family.  …I played bass violin for them, and Lonnie, he played lead violin and Harry he played second violin. And my brother Larry, he beat the drums. And my brother Harry, he played the piano you see. And my brother Bo he played the guitar too and he even used to play tenor banjo. And I played guitar. We just pick up and play any instrument and play one to another. We came from Bolton, Mississippi, we were raised up there; and so, many of us played some numbers and some played others, so we named ourselves the Mississippi Sheiks.”

It’s been stated that the Chatmon clan also included two half-brothers; one named Ferdinand and the other Charlie Patton. It’s claimed in an interview with Sam Chatmon that he claimed Ferdinand recorded under the name Alec Johnson. Johnson recorded six sides for Columbia in 1928 backed by Bo Carter, Charlie McCoy and Joe McCoy. As for Patton the source is again Sam Chatmon and this is discussed at length in the biography King of the Delta Blues: The Life and Music of Charlie Patton. There’s no question that Patton knew the family well; Sam claimed that his father, Henderson, had had an affair with Annie Patton and so was also Charlie’s father. The Patton family members interviewed said no, and the book advances the theory that one of Patton’s brothers was more likely an illegitimate Chatmon than Charlie was. The authors  seem to think that Sam Chatmon was just trying to boost himself with the Patton story. Sam Chatmon also mention a brother named Edgar who he said recorded under the name Leroy Carter. A Leroy Carter did cut two sides in 1935 (six sides went unissued) and its always been assumed that this was a pseudonym for Walter Vinson.

The central figure of the group was Lonnie, an accomplished fiddler who played a variety of musical styles. By the time of World War I, he had learned to read music and was purchasing sheet music in nearby Jackson and teaching popular tunes to his brothers. The Chatmon Brothers gained wide popularity among both black and white audiences. Around 1921, Lonnie recruited the Chatmon’s neighbor, Walter Vinson, to play with the group. By 1928 the seven-piece Chatmon Brothers had dissolved and Lonnie and Walter began performing regularly as a duo.

In February 1930 the OKeh field unit called at Shreveport, Louisiana, to do some recording at  the request of a local radio station. While there, they recorded  a small black group (Bo Carter was with the duo at the time ) who called themselves the Mississippi Sheiks. The group cut their two biggest hits at this session: “Sitting On Top Of The World” which spawned many cover versions and “Stop And Listen” derived from Tommy Johnson’s “Big Road Blues.” Showing their versatility, two numbers, “The Sheik Waltz” and “The Jazz Fiddler” were listed in Okeh’s hillbilly catalog and marketed to white listeners. Their records went down so well that OKeh recorded 14 more numbers in San Antonio in August. In December 1930, they were in Jackson ,Mississippi, near to home, when the Okeh field unit came by and recorded a further 16 selections. The Sheiks remade their two hits, “Sitting On Top Of The World” and “Stop And Listen” and the depression themed  ”Times Done Got Hard.” Chris Smith suggests that “Honey Babe Let The Deal Go Down” may have been prompted by a record company request for a version of  “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blues”, the Charlie Poole song widely known in the Southeastern states by both blacks and whites from Poole’s 1925 recording.

In October 1931, the Sheiks and Bo Carter were on the road again, traveling to Atlanta for a session which Bo remembered as one of the rare occasions on which he got drunk along with the others. In October 1931, over the course of two days in Atlanta, the Sheiks waxed 14 sides including several we feature today: the bleak “The World Is Going Wrong”,  the bouncy hokum of  “She’s A Bad Girl” plus other notable songs including the dark and powerful  “Livin’ In A Strain” which was unissued at the time and the gorgeous popular styled “Lazy Lazy River” sporting some tremendous fiddle from Lonnie.

The Mississippi Sheiks wrapped up their two days in Atlanta with four titles which show off Walter Vinson’s guitar playing to particular advantage, as well as including some clever lyrics like “Bed Spring Poker” and “I’ve Got Blood In My Eyes For You” which was one of four titles from these sessions issued on Columbia, the parent company of Okeh, which by 1932 was releasing material by popular Okeh artists like the Sheiks and Lonnie Johnson in an attempt to stave off the catastrophic fall in sales induced by the Depression. The gambit failed and Columbia’s race series ended in October 1932. As Chris Smith notes: “Around the time Columbia 14660-D was released, in June 1932, the Sheiks were recording for Paramount, which was in turn to terminate its 12/13000 race series towards the end of that year. The last two discs issued were both by the Missjssippi Sheiks; all through the Depression they had been favourites with black record buyers, and it’s not surprising that they were Paramount’s last throw of the dice.” Most of the material the group cut for Paramount were remakes and rewrites. There were some notable exceptions including the piano/guitar duet “I’ll Be Gone, Long Gone”, some flat out  terrific playing by Walter and Lonnie on “She’s Crazy About Her Lovin’” and “He Calls That Religion”, a stinging attack on the clergy:

Well, the preacher used to preach
To try to stay atoned
But now he’s preachin’ just to buy jellyroll

Well, he calls that religion
Yes, he calls that religion
Well, he calls that religion
But I know he’s goin’ to hell when he dies

Even in the depths of the depression in 1933 the popular Sheiks cut an 8 song session for Columbia but only two numbers were issued including the excellent “Show Me What You Got.” The Sheiks wrapped up their recording career with two sessions in San Antonio in March of 1934 that yielded 14 sides and a final 8 sides in New Orleans in January 1935 with all of these tracks seeing release.  While the Sheiks sales were declining they were still cutting superb music including “It’s Done Got Wet” a joyful celebration noting the end of prohibition, Walter Vinson singing convincingly on the dark  “I Am The Devil”, and  the topical numbers “Sales Tax” and “I Can’t Go Wrong.”

On April 9th 1934 Texas Alexander was backed by the Mississippi Sheiks on eight numbers. The lineup featured Bo on violin, Sam Chatman and Walter Vinson on guitars. Lonnie seems to be absent from this session. Highlights include “Seen Better Days”, “Texas Troublesome Blues”, “Last Stage Blues” and “Frost Texas Tornado Blues”, a topical blues dealing with a  tornado which destroyed the tiny town of Frost, Texas on May 6, 1930 leaving 41 dead.

Bo Carter made his recording debut in 1928, backing Alec Johnson. Carter soon was recording as a solo artist and became one of the dominant blues recording acts of the 1930′s, recording over 100 sides. He also played with and managed the family group, the Mississippi Sheiks, and several other acts in the area. Bo Carter specialized in double entendre songs, recording dozens of risqué songs like “Banana in Your Fruit Basket,” “Pin in Your Cushion”, “Your Biscuits Are Big Enough for Me”, “The Ins And Outs Of My Girl” and “Ram Rod Daddy” among many others.

As John Miller made clear, Carter was a also a superb guitarist: “He played with absolute facility in a variety of tunings and keys and his harmonic sense was unique in the Country Blues. …Whatever you may think of the “single entendre” aspect of some of his lyrics, when you really listen to what Bo Carter was doing, it become perfectly obvious that he was one of the great masters of Country Blues, and a player of unusual versatility, subtlety and imagination. As with other players of his generation, the origins of Bo’s music are shrouded in mystery, and it is very unlikely we’ll ever find an explanation for the harmonic richness of his music, so different from other musicians of his region. Bo’s right hand approach was different, too, picking with all fingers and moving fluidly between alternation, thumping and runs with his thumb.” Miller teaches the songs of Carter on the DVD’s the Guitar of Bo Carter and wrote some of the liner notes to the three  Bo Carter anthologies issued on Yazoo in the late 60′s and early 7o’s.  These albums, I imagine, played a major role in enhancing Carter’s reputation.

While several of Bo’s double entendre songs are featured today, we also spin a number of his other songs including “Corinne Corrina”, the first recording of this standard, and “East Jackson Blues” both featuring Bo on violin backed by Charlie McCoy and Walter Vinson. Bo had a knack for penning incredibly catchy, melodic numbers including featured tracks like “I Want You To Know”,  “Twist It, Baby”, “The Law Gonna Step On You”, “Who’s Been Here”  and “Tellin’ You ’bout It” backed by Lonnie’s wailing fiddle.

On his landmark trip to the United States in 1960, Paul Oliver came across Bo Carter and recounted the following in Conversation With The Blues: “Sharing a corner in the bare, shot-gun building on South 4th Street where Will Shade lived, was an ailing, blind, light-skinned man whom the occupants knew only as Old Man. By a lucky hunch I guessed he might be Bo Carter and the sick man brightened to hear his name. At first he could hardly hold down the strings of his heavy steel guitar with its worn fingerboard. But he slowly mastered it and in a broken voice, that mocked the clear and lively singing on his scores of recordings under his own name and with the Mississippi Sheiks, he recalled incidents from his varied life and some of the songs that had made him one of the most famous of blues singers. Baby When You Marry he had recorded nearly thirty years before (OK 8888) in 1931 and in the years since he had worked on medicine shows, farmed and begged.”

As Carter related: “Well, we called us the Mississippi Sheiks, all of us Chatmons, cause my name’s Bo Chatman only they called me Bo Carter. We toured with the band right through the country; through the Delta, through Louisiana down to New Orleans… …Tell ya, we was the Mississippi sheiks and when we went to make the records in Jackson, Mississippi, the feller wanted to show us how to stop and start the records. Try to tell us when we got to begin and how we got to end. And you know, I started not to make ‘em! I started not to make ‘em ’cause he wasn’t no muscianer, so how could he tell me to stop and start the song? We was the Sheiks, Mississippi Sheiks and you know we was famous.”

Bo Carter, 1960, Photo By Paul Oliver

Sam Chatmon survived to begin performing and recording again in the1960′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  on his own, 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. He stopped traveling in the early ’40s, making himself a home in Hollandale, Mississippi, where he worked on plantations. For the next two decades, Chatmon was essentially retired from music and only worked on the plantations. When the blues revival arrived in the late ’50s, he managed to capitalize on the genre’s resurgent popularity. In 1960, he signed a contract with Arhoolie and he recorded a number of songs for the label. The earliest of these were recorded in 1960 and issued on the album I Have To Paint My Face. As Mack McCormick wrote in the liner notes: “With Bo (who is credited with composing Corrine Corrina) ailing and feeble in Memphis, and the other brothers dead or scattered, Sam Chatman lives in a shotgun house across the tracks in Hollendale, Mississippi, working variously as a yard man, day laborer and truck driver. Adding the scarce but vital element of the near-forgotten minstrel songs to this collection, these are Chatman’s only recordings in the past 25 years.”

Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, he recorded for a variety of labels, as well as playing clubs and blues and folk festivals across America.In 1972 he cut the album The New Mississippi Sheiks, reuniting with Walter Vinson, cut the excellent The Mississippi Sheik for Blue Goose in the early 70′s as well as albums for Rounder, Albatros and Flying Fish among others. Chatmon passed in 1983.

Walter Vinson rarely worked as a solo act, seemingly much more at home in duets and trios; towards that end, during the 1920′s he worked with Charlie McCoy, Rubin Lacy and Son Spand before forming the Mississippi Sheiks. While Vinson, by his own testimony this is the correct spelling, variations on his records include Walter Jacobs, Walter Vincent and Walter Vincson. In 1929 he recorded with Bo Carter and Charlie McCoy as Chatman’s Mississippi Hot Footers with the most interesting number being the solo “Overtime Blues” displaying his prodigious guitar talents. A 1930 session was listed under Walter Jacobs And The Carter Brothers backed by Bo and Lonnie while a two 1936 sessions found him in the company of pianist Harry Chatman on a four song session and possibly backed by Little Brother Montgomery on two sides including “Rats Been On My Cheese”, certainly a novel metaphor for adultery. Vinson concluded his pre-war work with a four-song 1941 session for Bluebird backed by Robert Lee McCoy (Nighthawk) on harmonica which is notable for the lovely, beautifully sung  “Gulf Coast Bay.”

While an active club performer during the early 1940′s, 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. He made some recordings for the Riverside label in 1961 and a decade later teamed up with Sam Chatman plus Carl Martin and Ted Bogan to record an album called The New Mississippi Sheiks issued on Rounder in 1972. Hardening of the arteries forced Vinson into retirement during the early ’70s; he died in Chicago in 1975.

Sam Chatmon, The Mississippi Sheik, Blue Goose Records

As mentioned earlier, members of the Sheiks recorded under several different names between 1928 and 1931 including the Mississippi Blacksnakes, the Mississippi Mud Steppers, the Jackson Blues Boys and backed artists Sam Hill and Alec Johnson. The bulk of these sides can be found on the Document collection Mississippi String Bands & Associates. Between 1928-1931 Charlie McCoy played on a variety of sides, many string band related, in the company of Walter Vinson and Bo Carter. In November 1928 Carter, McCoy and an unknown pianist backed singer Alec Johnson on four of six sides. In November of the same year Carter, Vinson and McCoy backed singer Mary Butler on four numbers. Butler may in fact be Rosie Mae Moore who McCoy backed in February of the same year. With Walter Vinson they cut sides as the Mississippi Mud Steppers, with the addition of guitarist Sam Hill (plus Bo Carter and Sam Chatmon on one track) as the Mississippi Blacksnakes and with Carter and Vinson as the Jackson Blue Boys. With the Mississippi Blacksnakes McCoy’s robust mandolin is heard on the bawdy “Grind So Fine” and the country tinged “Blue Sky Blues” both boasting terrific vocals from Vinson. Two days after the first Blacksnakes session the group recorded again with Bo Carter as the vocalist and either McCoy or Sam Hill on guitar. This is a bluesier session with McCoy again on mandolin/banjo with his mandolin heard in fine form on “It Still Ain’t No Good (New It Ain’t No Good)” and “Easy Going Woman Blues.” One more song by the group, “Bye Bye Baby Blues”, was cut the following day featuring fine slide from McCoy. The two tracks cut as the Jackson Blue Boys are interesting for featuring singing from Carter, Vinson and McCoy in unison and taking solo turns with McCoy playing mandolin.

In 1935 Pianist Harry Chatman cut ten songs across three sessions, two in New Orleans and a final one in Jackson, Mississippi. Bo Carter appears on the two song first session while Walter Vinson backs Harry on the four song second session. The final session was done solo. His second session was his strongest, turning in solid numbers like “Hoo Doo Blues” and “Deep Blue Ocean Blues “, a fine rendition of  “Nobody’s Business.” Harry also backed Leroy Carter on two sides in 1935 (six sides went unissued), a likely  a pseudonym for Walter Vinson.

Show Notes:

We span a good chunk of blues history today, spinning tracks from 1924 through 1976.  On tap on today’s program are a number of fine country blues recordings from the 1960′s and 70′s, a couple of album spotlights and twin spins by pianist Henry Brown and singer Ray Agee. From the blues revival era we open with tracks by Joe Callicott and Sam Chatmon who’s careers bridged the pre-war and post-war blues eras. A product 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 began performing and recording again in the ’60s. 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. Today’s track, “Stoop Down Baby”,  comes from  the collection, Field Recordings From Hollandale 1976-1982 which has recently been issued on the Mbirafon label. Some of these recordings were issued on the Albatros label in the 80’s. It’s interesting to hear Chatmon cover Chick Willis’ “Stoop Down Baby”, a relatively recent hit, it shows that he was still keeping his ears open to new material and the the song itself perfectly fits his repertoire which is built on many such ribald songs.

Joe Callicott waxed a lone 78 in Memphis in 1929, Fare Thee Well Blues b/w Traveling Mama Blues, and a year later played second guitar on Garfield Akers’ “Cottonfield Blues Parts 1 & 2.” It was the indefatigable field recorder George Mitchell who found him in Nesbit, Mississippi off Highway 51 not far from Hernando and short distance from Brights were Akers was supposedly born. Callicott’s “comeback” was about as short as his first recording career, lasting from the summer of 1967 through the summer of 1968; he recorded nineteen sides for Mitchell either late August or early September, four sides at the 1968 Memphis Country Blues Festival and seventeen sides for Blue Horizon in 1968. As Paul Oliver wrote: “A wider recognition came almost too late but Joe appeared at the 1968 Memphis Blues Festival and was looking forward to a European trip. Back at his home, with the birds whistling and witnessed by his wife and their bellcow, he recorded his last testament; he died early in 1969 and with him went the last echoes of Mississippi country music of the earliest phase of the blues.”

From 1969 we spin a trio of cuts from the album Memphis Swap Jam. Released to commemorate the 1969 Memphis Blues Festival, the album features 20 songs by the event’s most notable performers. Although the tracks date from the same period as the festival, they were recorded at Ardent Recording Studio and Royal Recording Studio in Memphis. Chris Strachwitz produced this two-LP set, and it marks one of the few occasions (if not only) when he worked in this capacity for a company other than his own Arhoolie Records. Artists like Bukka White, Furry Lewis, Fred McDowell and Sleepy John Estes had been recorded extensively during the blues revival but still sound quite inspired on these performances. A nice companion CD to this is The 1968 Memphis Country Blues Festival With Bukka White a terrific double CD of live and studio recording by Bukka White, Furry Lewis, Joe Callicott and Robert Wilkins.

We also spotlight another great 2-LP set, Swamp Blues, which has since been reissued on CD by Ace Records. Swamp Blues is a collection of Baton Rogue artists, most of whom had recorded for the legendary Excello label. At this point the label was owned by Nashboro who had a licensing agreement with the British Blue Horizon label owned by Mike Vernon. Blue Horizon already had albums out by Lightnin’ Slim and Lonesome Sundown and was eager to get involved with this project which was issued under the Excello imprint. It was Baton Rogue blues fan Terry Pattison who got the project off the ground. Pattison was in touch with the folks at the great, now defunct, Blues Unlimited magazine and they in turn got in touch with Vernon. An attempt was made to get Lazy Lester and Lightnin’ Slim on board but to no avail. Still it was an impressive roster featuring ex-Howlin’ Wolf pianist Henry Gray, Whispering Smith, Silas Hogan, Clarence Edwards and Arthur “Guitar” Kelly.

As for our twin spins today we play two cuts by pianist Henry Brown, one in a supporting role and one solo number. Henry Brown learned to play the piano from the “professors” of the notorious Deep Morgan section of St. Louis. Brown worked clubs such as the Blue Flame Club, the 9-0-5 Club, Jim’s Place and Katy Red’s, from the twenties into the 30’s. He recorded for Brunswick with Ike Rogers and Mary Johnson in 1929, for Paramount in ‘29 and ‘30. He served in the army in the early 40’s, then formed his own quartet to work occasional local gigs in St. Louis area from the 50’s, and worked the Becky Thatcher riverboat in 1965. In addition to his pre-war recordings, he was recorded by Paul Oliver in 1960, by Sam Charters with Edith Johnson in 1961 and by Adelphi in 1969. Our cuts feature the rollicking (mostly) instrumental “Henry Brown Blues” which was recorded by Paul Oliver and comes from the companion CD to Oliver’s book Conversation With The Blues. “Nickel’s Worth of Liver” features the vocal of Edith North Johnson, a song she first cut in 1929, that time backed by Roosevelt Sykes. Johnson cut 18  sides in 1928 and 1929, including a session with Charley Patton in Grafton, WI, for Paramount Records, although it is doubtful Patton actually appeared on any of her songs. She made her home in St. Louis, where she ran a fleet of taxis during World War II and owned a popular diner. Sam Charters recorded her with Henry Brown in 1961 for his anthology called The Blues in St. Louis Vol. 2 for Folkways Records. Born January 2, 1903, in St. Louis, she died there on February 28, 1988.

We also feature two cuts by the neglected singer Ray Agee. Agee is known primarily for his tough 1963 remake of the blues standard “Tin Pan Alley” for the tiny Sahara logo. Agee recorded for a slew of labels both large and small during the 1950′s and 60′s without much in the way of national recognition outside his Los Angeles home base. After moving to L.A. with his family, he apprenticed with his brothers in a gospel quartet before striking out in the R&B field with a 1952 single for Aladdin Records. Agee slowly slipped away from the music business in the early ’70s. Reportedly, he died around 1990. Thankfully the Famous Groove label has issued all of Agee’s 50′s and 60′s recordings across three CD’s.

Also worth mentioning are tracks by Lonnie Johnson, Little Janice, and Tony Hollis. I never get tired of Lonnie Johnson who’s guitar skills are rightly praised, yet he was also a moving singer and a superb composer. A case in point is his gorgeous “Lines On My Face”, a bit of blues poetry from his 1960 album Losing Game:

Heartaches have caused, these deep lines in my face (2x)
When you’ve been disappointed in love, your heart has no restin’ place

Each line in my face tells a story, the tears tells you the reason why
Deep lines in my face tells a story, teardrops tell you the reason why
When you been hurt in love, it shows on you face until the day you die

If I could take my poor heart and wash it, wash all these aches and pains away (2x)
But I guess I’m so in love, I hope she’ll come back to me some day

My poor heart could talk, there’s so much it could tell (2x)
When the one you love disappoints you in life, life is a livin’ hell

Tony Hollis’ small output belies his influence. Hollis  played around Clarksdale, MS in the 20’s and 30’s which is where he met John Lee Hooker, providing him with his first guitar and was a major influence on Hooker’s style. In 1941 Hollis waxed seven sides for Okeh including the influential “Crawlin’ King Snake” and the first recorded version of “Cross Cut Saw Blues.”Another song from that session, “Traveling Man Blues”, waslater made famous by Hooker as “When My First Wife Quit Me.” He cut one more session in 1951 with Sunnyland Slim. Our selection, “I’ll Get A Break”, which was based on Tampa Red’s 1934 version and comes from that latter session. The song was cut by Hollis at his first session using the title “Big Time Woman.”

Little Miss Janice is a mystery. What little is known about her is that she came from Texas, she played guitar and she had a knack for songwriting as she proves on her tough “Scarred Knees.” After this recording for Proverb, she went on to cut for Paul Gayten’s Pzazz label. Johnny Adams covered “Scarred Knees” on his first LP for Rounder and Esther Phillips cut a stunning version on her 1972 album From A Whsiper To A Scream.

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:

During the 1960′s Nick Perls amassed a vast collection of blues records from the 1920′s and 1930′s. In 1968 he began transferring some of these onto LP, initially naming his label Belzoni (after a town in Mississippi) but after five releases changed the name to Yazoo, also a town in Mississippi. Perls set up the Blue Goose Records label in the early 1970′s. While on Blue Goose’ sister label Yazoo Records Perls compiled rare 78 rpm recordings made in the 1920′s by such singers and guitarists as Charlie Patton, Blind Willie McTell, the Memphis Jug Band, Blind Blake and Blind Lemon Jefferson, on Blue Goose Records he recorded only living artists. He cut albums by blues artists like Sam Chatmon, Son House, Yank Rachell, Shirley Griffith, Thomas Shaw and Bill Williams and Larry Johnson plus younger white blues performers like Jo Ann Kelly, Woody Mann, Graham Hine, John Lewis, Roger Hubbard, Roy Book Binder, R. Crumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders and Rory Block. Unfortunately most of the Blue Goose catalog remains out of print. Since Big Road Blues focuses on traditional black blues performers I have omited the fine white blues singers the label recorded. I’m sure some folks may have a problem with this but hey it’s my show so I can be as finicky as I want!

Among the postwar generation of country blues artists, Larry Johnson ranks as one of the best. He was born on May 5, 1938, in Fulton County, GA. His father was a preacher and his son would often travel with him from town to town. In this environment, Johnson was exposed to early blues records and he especially loved those of Blind Boy Fuller. It was Fuller’s records that made Johnson pick up a guitar. After a stint in the Navy from 1955 to 1959, Johnson moved to New York and befriended Brownie and Sticks McGhee and began playing on records by Big Joe Williams, Harry Atkins, and Alec Seward (aka Guitar Slim). It was Seward who introduced Johnson to his future mentor, Rev. Gary Davis. He released his first single, “Catfish Blues”/”So Sweet,” in 1962 and appeared on numerous live dates with Davis. By 1970, Johnson began releasing albums on small labels, including Fast & Funky on Blue Goose. After years of living from gig to gig, Johnson retreated from the grind of the road. He did, however, manage to release two albums, Johnson! Where Did You Get That Sound? in 1983 and Basin Free with Nat Riddles in 1984. By the ’90s, Johnson began receiving better offers for live performances, especially in Europe. While abroad, he recorded Railroad Man released in 1990 on JSP and Blues for Harlem in 1999 on the Armadillo label. Two years later, Johnson collaborated with National slide guitar extraordinaire Brian Kramer and his band the Couch Lizards, resulting in Two Gun Green on Armadillo.

Bill Williams was a 72-year old bluesman from Greenup, Kentucky, when he made his debut for Blue Goose in the early 1970′s. Stephen Calt wrote that “The previously unrecorded Williams ranks among the most polished and proficient living traditional bluesmen, and has a large repertoire embracing ragtime, hillbilly, and even pop material. He is also the only known living associate of Blind Blake, his own favorite guitarist. …While living in Bristol, Tennessee in the early 1920′s Bill met the peerless Blind Blake who was then living with an elderly woman (perhaps a relative) in a desolate nearby country area. For four months Bill worked as Blake’s regular second guitarist…” Williams cut just two LP’s, both for Blue Goose: Low And Lonesome and The Late Bill Williams ‘Blues, Rags and Ballads plus had one song on the anthology These Blues Is Meant To Be Barrelhoused. From the notes to The Late Bill Williams ‘Blues, Rags and Ballads, Stephen Calt wrote: “For a guitarist of such uncommon ability Bill Williams enjoyed an all-too brief period of public recognition. Within fifteen minutes of the time he first picked up an instrument in 1908 he was accomplished enough to play a song, but he was still completely unknown beyond his home town of Greenup, Kentucky before Blue Goose recorded him in the fall of 1970 and issued an album (Low and Lonesome) that brought him unqualified acclaim as a 73-year old folk find. A brief series of concert engagements (notably at the Smithsonian Institution and the Mariposa Folk Festival) followed, along with an extended recording session in New York, before a heart ailment brought about his musical retirement. In October of 1973, nearly three years to the day of his recording debut, he was fatally stricken in his sleep.”

A product 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 began performing and recording again in the ’60s. 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. He stopped traveling in the early ’40s, making himself a home in Hollandale, Mississippi, where he worked on plantations. For the next two decades, Sam Chatmon was essentially retired from music and only worked on the plantations. When the blues revival arrived in the late ’50s, he managed to capitalize on the genre’s resurgent popularity. In 1960, he signed a contract with Arhoolie and he recorded a number of songs for the label. 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.

Tom Shaw spent about five years on the Texas house party circuit in the 1920′s and early 1930′s before moving to San Diego in 1934. Shaw met many great Texas bluesmen including Smokey Hogg, T-Bone Walker, Mance Lipscomb, Blind Willie Johnson, Ramblin’ Thoms, JT “Funny Papa” Smith and Blind Lemon Jefferson who he was clearly a disciple of.  He met Jefferson in Waco, Texas in 1926 or 27. JT “Funny Papa” Smith offered to let Shaw play on one of his records in 1931 but Smith was sent to jail on a murder charge. In the 1960′s and 70s he recorded for the Advent, Blue Goose and Blues Beacon labels before passing in 1977.

James “Yank” Rachell was the primary exponent of blues mandolin, although he also played guitar, violin, harp and sang as well. Born on a farm outside Brownsville, Tennessee, Yank Rachell picked up the mandolin at the age of eight. Rachell began to work dances with singer and guitarist Sleepy John Estes in the early ’20s. In early 1929, he co-formed the Three J’s Jug Band with Estes and pianist Jab Jones. The group recorded 14 sides credited jointly to Estes and Rachell for Victor for 1929 and 1930. After the record business was flattened by the depression, the Three J’s broke up. Estes and harmonica player Hammie Nixon went on to Chicago to seek their fortune in the nightclubs, but Yank Rachell decided to try his hand at farming and also worked for the L&N Railroad. Ironically, it was Rachell who was next to record — during a stopover in New York Rachell teamed up with guitarist Dan Smith and laid down 25 titles for ARC in just three days, though only six of them were issued. Shortly before the ARC date, Yank Rachell had discovered a kid harmonica player that he believed had real talent, John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson. They worked together at the Blue Flame Club in Jackson, Tennessee starting in 1933. In 1934 Williamson went north to Chicago. With the success of Williamson’s first Bluebird dates of 1937, Rachell decided to join Sonny Boy in Chicago for sessions in March and June of 1938. Yank Rachell also contributed four sides of his own to each session, and then 16 more in 1941 with Sonny Boy backing him up. Rachell kept his day job and did not lead “the life,” at least not the same one that claimed his friend Sonny Boy Williamson on June 1, 1948. After Williamson’s murder, Rachell drifted away from music and relied solely on straight jobs to make his living, settling permanently in Indianapolis in 1958. His wife passed away in 1961, and afterward he began to resume performing. In 1962, Rachell was re-united with Nixon and Estes, and the three of them began tearing up the college and coffeehouse circuit, recording for Delmark as Yank Rachell’s Tennessee Jug Busters. Estes died in 1977, and from that time Rachell worked mainly as a solo act. Yank Rachell was a long-time regular at the Slippery Noodle in Indianapolis, and recorded only sporadically in his last years. Nonetheless, he was working on a new album when he died at age 87.

Born in 1907 near Brandon, Mississippi Shirley Griffith was certainly old enough to have made records in the 1920′s and 30′s and in fact had at least two opportunities to do so. In 1928 his friend and mentor, Tommy Johnson, offered to help him get started but, by his own account, he was too “wild and reckless” in those days. In 1928 he moved to Indianapolis where he became friendly with Scrapper Blackwell and Leroy Carr. In 1935 Carr offered to take Griffith to New York for a recording session but Carr died suddenly and the trip was never made. It was Art Rosenbaum who was responsible for getting Griffith on record and who also precipitated the comeback of Scrapper Blackwell. Rosenbaum produced Griffith’s Bluesville albums. Griffith missed his opportunity to record as a young man but recorded three superb albums: Indiana Ave. Blues (Bluesville, 1964, with partner J.T. Adams), Saturday Blues (Bluesville, 1965) and Mississippi Blues (Blue Goose, 1973). In addition some field recordings from the early 1960′s were issued on the Flyright album Indianapolis Jumps. The fact that all these albums are out of print goes a ways in understanding why Griffith remains so little known. He also didn’t benefit all that much from the renewed blues interest of the 1960′s; he never achieving the acclaim of late discovered artists like Mississippi Fred McDowell, the critical appreciation of a Robert Pete Williams or the excitement surrounding rediscovered legends like Son House, Skip James or Mississippi John Hurt. He did achieve modest notice touring clubs with Yank Rachell in 1968, performed at the first Ann Arbor Blues Festival in 1969 and appeared at the Notre Dame Blues Festival in South Bend, Indiana in 1971. Griffith passed away in 1974

Son House: The Real Delta Blues was issued in 1974 on Blues Goose. This album was a collection of early sixties private tapes released to provide Son House some additional revenue in his later years. Reviewer Chris Smith wrote that “all the greatness of Son House is here – the total involvement, the powerful, yet fundamentally introspective vocals, the lyrical creativeness, the rich dialogue between voice and guitar. …No country blues fan can be without this collection.”

Show Notes:

We open our latest mix show with a quartet of songs revolving around the Chatmon brothers including numbers by Bo Carter, Mississippi Blacksnakes, The Mississippi Sheiks and Sam Chatmon. One of the most popular bluesmen of the ’30′s, Bo Carter cut over a hundred sides between 1928 and 1940. Bo and his brothers Lonnie and Sam Chatmon also recorded as members of the Mississippi Sheiks with singer/guitarist Walter Vinson. Bo died in 1964 but Sam hung in long enough to take advantage of the blues revival, recording prolifically in the 1960′s and 70′s. Unfortunately most all of the LP’s he cut seem to be out-of-print. Today’s selection, “Hollandale Blues”, is from the 1979 Rounder album, Sam Chatmon’s Advice. The Mississippi Blacksnakes cut ten songs over three sessions in 1931for Brunswick with the likley personal of Bo and Sam Chatmon, Charlie McCoy with Walter Vinscon only on the first session.

Moving up to the 1960′s and 70′s we spin some great records by some lesser known players including Luke “Long Gone” Miles, Lum Guffin, Frank Hovington and John Lee Ziegler. Luke Miles was born in Louisiana in 1925 and moved to Houston in 1952. In the liner notes to his only full length LP Country Born (World Pacific, 1965) he said: “I went to Houston for one reason. I went to see Lightnin’ Hopkins. That’s what I went for and that’s what I did. Lightnin’ Hopkins taught me just about everything about blues singing. The first time I ever sang in front of an audience was in 1952 with Lightnin’. The first day I met Lightnin’ he named me “Long Gone” …and I’ve been Long Gone Miles ever since.” By 1961 Miles was in Los Angles were he cut some 45′s for Smash. After the World Pacific LP he cut singles for Two Kings in 1965, Kent in 1969 before supposedly leaving L.A. in 1970. Our selection comes from the LP Country Boy (Sundown, 1984) which is a collection of mostly unreleased sides from  1961 and 1962. Just recently a liver CD of of Miles surfaced from 1985 titled Riding Around In My V8 Ford Live in Venice, California. He died in 1987. Unfortunately just about all of Miles’ recordings remain out of print.

The other gentleman were recorded in the 1970′s, an extension you could say of the 1960′s blues revival that swept up many fine bluesman who never got the opportunity to record in their younger days. Lum Guffin 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. Frank Hovington was an exceptional guitarist in the Piedmont tradition who was reluctant to record but made some superb recordings in 1975 released (issued on the LP Lonesome Road Blues first on Flyright and then on Rounder with additional tracks on the CD Gone With The Wind) and 1980 for the Living Country Blues series. Ziegler passed away May of last year. He cut just a handful of recordings, the best recorded by George Mitchell in the late 1970′s plus some sides made in the 1990′s and issued on the Music Maker label.

We play a twin spin by John Lee Hooker from his Bluesway years. Hooker cut several albums for Bluesway in the 1960′s including: Live At Cafe Au-Go-Go (1966), Urban Blues (1967), Simply The Truth (1968), If You Miss ‘Im… I Got ‘Im (1970)and Kabuki Wuki (1973). Our selections come from Simply The Truth and the excellent Urban Blues featuring Hooker in the company of sidemen like Eddie Taylor, Wayne Bennett, and Louis Myers. Bluesway has been ill served reissue wise, with only a handful of releases issued on CD, usually by labels other than the parent company MCA, and in many cases these CD’s themselves are out of print. I’ll be doing a show on the label in the near future.  Urban Blues was issued on CD in 1994 by BGO with three bonus cuts. One of those bonus cut is the stomping “I Gotta Go To Vietnam” featuring some wild wah wah guitar from Hooker’s cousin Earl Hooker. The “The Motor City Is Burning” is a harrowing account of the 1967 Detroit riots. The flash point began at a drinking joint at Twelfth Street and Clairmount Avenue and quickly spread out. Looting and fires spread through the Northwest side of Detroit, then crossed over to the East Side. Within 48 hours, the National Guard was mobilized, to be followed by the 82nd airborne on the riot’s fourth day. As police and military troops sought to regain control of the city, violence escalated. At the conclusion of 5 days of rioting, 43 people lay dead, 1189 injured and over 7000 people had been arrested. Hooker gives a vivid account of the action:

Ohhh the Motor City is burning, ain’t a thing in the world that I can do
Don’t you know, don’t you know the big D is burning
Ain’t a thing in the world that Johnny can do
My hometown is burning down to the ground, worster than Vietnam
Well it started on Twelfth Street and Clairmount this morning, I just don’t know what it’s all about (2x)
The fire wagon kept coming, the snipers just wouldn’t let them put it out
Firebombs bursting all around me, soldiers standing everywhere (2x)
I could hear the people screaming, sirens filled the air

Doctor Clayton

Also on deck today are some prime 1940′s Chicago blues by Sonny Boy Williamson I, Yank Rachel, Washboard Sam and Doctor Clayton. At the time of his untimely death in 1948 at the age of 34, Sonny Boy was still at his creative peak as she proves on “Sugar Gal” from 1947, a storming update of his classic “Sugar Mama Blues” with a some killer electric guitar from William Lacey. Rachel’s “Up North Blues (There’s A Reason)” from 194 sports some wonderful playing by Sonny Boy and is just one of a batch of sides they cut together between 1938 and 1941. Also on that track is the prolific Washboard Sam who is also heard on his “My Feet Jumped Salty” featuring some stunning amplified guitar from Big Bill Broonzy. Both Sonny Boy I and Washboard Sam will be featured in upcoming programs. Nearly 50 years after his untimely death the exceptional singer and masterful songwriter known as Doctor Clayton is little spoken of today. Clayton worked strictly as a vocalist (by some accounts he could play piano and ukulele), employing an impressive falsetto technique, later refined into a powerful, swooping style that was instantly recognizable. In addition he was an unparalleled songwriter, writing mostly original material with a rare wit, intelligence and social awareness. Clayton’s vocal style was widely emulated and a number of his songs became blues standards. Despite the high esteem he was held in by fellow blues artists and his popularity during his lifetime Clayton’s fine blues recordings remain largely ignored. “Watch Out Mama” is a fine example of his songwriting, filled with a dash of violence and humor:

You clown when you get ready, stay out late as you please
Come home drunk and staggering, and weak in your knees
But watch out momma, Doctor Clayton gonna sneak up on you
Yes, I’m gonna whip your nappy head, just as soon as I find you

As usual we spin some fine piano records including tracks by Big Maceo, Sammy Price and Robert McCoy. Alongside his protege Johnnie Jones and later Otis Spann, Big Maceo is among the greatest Chicago piano men. During the 1940′s he worked with Tampa Red and the duo made some magnifecnt sides including our selection, the romping “Texas Stomp.” Sammy Price fine boogie woogie playing is heard backing Nora Lee King on “Cannon Ball” her uptown rendition of Cow Cow Davenport’s immortal “Cow Cow Blues.” King cut a dozen sides between 1941and 1944 before fading into obscurity. Alabama barrelhouse pianist Robert McCoy had two rare LPs in the early 1960′s on the Vulcan label. A few years back Delmark acquired the masters and reissued the material on CD for the first time with many previously unissued tracks. Unfortunatley no tracks from his second Vulcan album have been included. These were his first recordings as leader although he recorded in the 1930′s accompanying Guitar Slim, Jaybird Coleman and Peanut The Kidnapper. McCoy was part of the fertile Birmingham piano tradition, learning piano from Cow Cow Davenport and Jabbo Williams.

Show Notes:

We open the show on a somber note with two by Pete Mayes. Mayes, a staple of the Houston scene for the past 50 years, died December 16th at the age of 70. Mayes played guitar with greats like Junior Parker and Bill Doggett and has fronted his own band, the Houserockers, for 40 years.  Mayes owned and maintained the historic Double Bayou Dancehall, which once served as a regular venue for Amos Milburn, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Big Joe Turner, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown and scores of others.  It was there that Mayes, then just 16 years old, first heard T-Bone Walker who became a major influence. According to his own story, by the age of 14 he had already worked with Lester Williams, although he did not meet T-Bone Walker until 1954. During the next 20 years, he often worked with Walker and made the acquaintance of many other bluesmen who would later come to fame, most prominently Joe Hughes. Mayes’ discography is slim with just three full length albums;  Pete’s Sake (Antone’s, 1998), I’m Ready (Double Trouble, 1986) and Live! At Double Bayou Dance Hall (GoldRhyme Music, 2005). According to The Blues Discography 1943-1970 he cut the following singles: “The Things I Used To Do” (Home Cooking, 1965), “Crazy Woman” (Ovide, 1969) and “Movin’ Out” (Ovide, 1969). Our opening tracks, “Crazy Woman” and “Lowdown Feeling” come from the Krazy Kat LP  Houston Shuffle.

Lots of vinyl on today’s show as I’ve been trying to organize my LP’s and stumbled across some gems I haven’t played in a while. On tap today are several fine 1960′s and 70′s recordings by Guitar Gabriel, Babe Stovall, Willie Guy Rainey, Guitar Slim Green and Sam Chatmon. Guitar Gabriel is familiar to some collectors Nyles Jones, the name under which he recorded the superb LP, My South, My Blues, for the Gemini label in 1970.Mike Leadbitter, writing in Blues Unlimited in 1970, called the single, “Welfare Blues”, the most important 45 released that year. He dropped out of sight for about 20 years and his belated return to performing was due largely to folklorist and musician Timothy Duffy, who located Gabriel in 1991. With Duffy accompanying him as second guitarist on acoustic sets and as a member of his band, Brothers in the Kitchen, Gabriel performed frequently at clubs and festivals, and appeared overseas. He recorded several albums for Duffy’s Music Maker label before passing in 1996.

West Coast guitarist Slim Green cut “Alla Blues” in 1948, the precursor to Jimmy Wilson’s “Tin Pan Alley.”  He cut singles in the 40′s, 50′s and 60′s for labels such as J & M Fullbright, Murray, Dig,Canton and Geenote. He 1970 he cut his only full length LP, Stone Down Blues, for Kent backed by Johnny Otis and his son Shuggie. From that album we play the fine protest blues “This War Ain’t Right.”

Sam 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. He stopped traveling in the early ’40s, making himself a home in Hollandale, Mississippi, where he worked on plantations. For the next two decades, Sam Chatmon was essentially retired from music and only worked on the plantations. When the blues revival arrived in the late ’50s, he managed to capitalize on the genre’s resurgent popularity and 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.

Born in 1907 in Tylertown, MS, Babe Stovall was the youngest of 11 children, most of them musicians. Stovall learned guitar when he was around eight years old, and was soon playing breakdowns, frolics, and parties in the area, even meeting and learning “Big Road Blues” from Tommy Johnson. In 1964 he moved to New Orleans, where he was “discovered” working as a street singer in the French Quarter. He recorded an LP for Verve in 1964, which is were today’s selection comes off, simply titled Babe Stovall, and did further sessions in 1966 and with Bob West in 1968 and became active on the folk and blues college circuit. He died in 1974.

Willie Guy Rainey was a blues musician from Georgia who became a popular performing artist in the Atlanta area in the 1970′s. Through the promotion of musician Ross Kapstein and the recording of a self-titled album in 1978 for Southland, Rainey (at 77 years old) went on tour, which eventually led to overseas tours. He died in 1983.

We also spotlight several fine vocalists including Helen Humes, Esther Phillips, Bobby Bland, Junior Parker and Jimmy Witherspoon. Helen Humes is in fine form on 1951′s “I Ain’t In The Mood” an answer song to John Lee Hooker’s recent chart-topper titled “I Ain’t in the Mood.” Esther Phillips has long been a favorite and she sizzles on a reading of “I’m Gettin’ ‘Long Alright” recorded live at Freddie Jett’s Pied Piper club from the terrific album Burnin’. In 1999 Collectables released Burnin ‘paired with Confessin’ the Blues, two of her finest records on one CD. From Jimmy Witherspoon we spin “Parcel Post Blues” from the Bluesway album Hunh! featuring an all-star lineup of Charles Brown (piano), Red Holloway (sax) and Earl Hooker and Mel Brown on guitars. Junior Parker is another favorite of mine and a great song interpreter as he proves on his cover of the chestnut “I’d Rather Drink Muddy Water.” This comes from the excellent album I Tell Stories Sad And True from 1972 which unfortunately is out of print.

Other interesting tracks today include numbers by Will Ezell, Victoria Spivey, and some fine field recordings made by George Mitchell. 1929′s “Playing The Dozen” is by great barrelhouse pianist Will Ezell who cut fourteen sides for Paramount between 1927 and 1929. He also backed artists such as Lucille Bogan, Blind Roosevelt Grave, Ethel Waters and others. Speaking of great pianists that’s Little Brother Montgomery backing Victoria Spivey along with Lonnie Johnson on “Every Dog Has Its Day” from 1964. George Mitchell recorded some incredible music in his over twenty years of field recording and considered Cecil Barfield among his greatest discoveries. Barfield’s repertoire was mostly covers but he truly sounded like no one else as he proves on his version of “Bottle Up And Go.” By the way, Mitchell also wrote the notes to the above mentioned Willie Guy Rainey LP.

We wrap up with a trio of 1960′s sides by great soul and blues artist Robert Ward who passed away on Christmas day after a long struggle with health issues. Like many, I first heard Robert Ward when his magnificent Fear No Evil debuted on Black Top in 1990 and was unaware of his earlier recordings. His subsequent Black Top follow-ups, Rhythm Of The People (1993) and Black Bottom (1995), were less inspired with the latter definitely the better of the two. After a five year absence he returned to form with his marvelous Delmark debut New Role Soul (2001). It wasn’t until the Black Top records that I became aware of Ward’s 1960′s recordings which were thankfully collected on the album Hot Stuff (1995) on Relic. These sides spotlighted the recordings Ward cut as leader of the Ohio Untouchables (who later morphed into the Ohio Players long after Ward’s departure) for tiny labels like LuPine, Thelma, and Groove City. These are fiery and soulful sides featuring Ward’s trademark watery guitar playing and passionate vocals on numbers like “I’m Tired”, “Your Love Is Real”, “Something For Nothing” and “Fear No Evil.” Also included are four classic cuts by the Falcons from 1962 sporting lead vocals by Wilson Pickett with the Untouchables in support on the soaring smash hit “I Found A Love” and “Let’s Kiss and Make Up” with some sizzling guitar from Ward.

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

In part one we discussed the some of the superb East Coast musicians Axel Küstner and Siegfried Christmann recorded while this time out we travel with the duo down to Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi. It was Mississippi that occupied most of their time and form a good chunk of the recordings. Mississippi, particularly the Delta has been subjected to immense scrutiny among researchers and with good reason; in the 1920′s and 30′s men like Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson, Tommy Johnson, Skip James and Son House recorded some of the greatest blues records ever made and it was the breeding ground for those who became famous up North like Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Elmore James and countless others. Yet some have said that the region has attracted too much attention among researchers, leaving other areas like the East Coast too sparsely documented. While this is certainly true there’s no denying that Mississippi was an immensely fertile region for the blues and remained so when Küstner and Christmann set up shop in 1980 over the course of eleven days.

Son Thomas

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 for Küstner and Christmann. Thomas plays brooding, darkly hued delta blues with a tightly wound, controlled intensity. Thomas’ fourteen tracks, scattered over several volumes, are all traditional but he gives them a thoroughly invigorating, individual reading; thus he shakes the dust off material like “Bull Cow Blues”, “Rock Me Mama”, “Big Fat Mama”, “61 Highway Blues” laying these numbers down with a throbbing intensity, underpinned by his steady guitar rhythm and dramatic vocal delivery that often dips into a riveting falsetto. By far his most memorable performance is the six minute plus “Catfish Blues”, a hypnotic and downright dirty version of this delta standard. Also fascinating are several numbers Thomas performs with his running buddy Cleveland “Brooman” Jones who would pull a few handfuls of dirt out of his pocket, flip over the broom handle and scrape the floor to produce a bass sound that somehow perfectly meshed with Thomas’ music.

A true anomaly was 25 year old Lonnie Pitchford, the youngest musician recorded who played the most ancient of instruments, the one string diddley bow which he amplified and picked like a guitar. These were Pitchford’s first recordings and he truly sounds like no one else; the music is mesmerizing and hypnotic as he transforms chestnuts like “Boogie Chillen”, “My Babe” and a slashing “Shake Your Money Maker.” Pitchford was still evolving as an artist when AIDS claimed him at the age of 43. Thankfully due to the exposure from this series he was recorded extensively on anthologies and issued a lone album, the terrific All Around Man, for Rooster in 1994.

Lonnie Pitchford

The fact is that the bulk of these artists were older, the remaining holdouts of a fading tradition and the music often sounds like it was trapped in amber, virtually unchanged from the blues of fifty years ago. Certainly that’s the case with musicians such as Walter Brown, Joe Savage and Boyd Rivers. Brown and Savage bring alive the era of the field and levee camp hollers that could once be heard ringing all over the south and in later years primarily survived in prisons as documented by the Lomax’s, Harry Oster and Bruce Jackson. Both Brown and Savage lived hard lives and both men spent time in the notorious Parchman Farm. In fact 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.” Jumping to 1980 we hear Savage recount his prison experience and sing on the harrowing “Joe’s Prison Camp Holler.” Küstner noted that “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.” His “Mississippi Moan” is a bone chilling account of what it’s like to be black in Mississippi where “The place, the town where time done come to civilization and they still call you a nigger.” His “Levee Camp Holler”, sung from experience, is equally arresting as is Savage’s unique spin on “Mean Ol’ Frisco.” The blues is so often romanticized but there’s nothing romantic about the lives of men like Brown, Savage and many of the others on this collection who have led unbearably tough lives under crushing poverty and persistent racism. “I actually thought he was the best and gave the most powerful performances of any that were recorded” Küstner said of Boyd Rivers. A one time bluesman, Rivers plays with unbridled passion, singing in a powerful, raspy voice coupled with hard edged Mississippi guitar attack. His nine selections are startling in there intensity which were his first and unfortunately only recordings.

Among the other notable musicians recorded in Mississippi the most famous was Sam Chatmon who was 81 at the time of these recordings and still in fine form. There are several fine performers one wishes had been recorded more including the excellent Stonewall Mays who’s two song are his sole legacy and Joe Cooper who was Son Thomas’ Uncle and very fine performer in his own right.

Sam “Stretch” Shields

The recordings made in Tennessee and Arkansas are less consistent although there are some very rewarding performances, chiefly from CeDell Davis and Sam “Stretch” Shields. “CeDell “Big G” Davis”,  Küstner wrote, “is probably the most amazing musician I have ever met. At the age of 10 he contracted polio and the disease left him without the full use of his hands. His fingers are crippled, but however, he manages to strum the guitar with his left hand, and chords and slides across the strings with an ordinary table knife that he put in his right hand. The resulting sound, coupled with his roaring voice, makes him a highly individual Blues artist.” Davis’ rough juke joint blues is perfectly encapsulated on numbers like “I Don’t Know Why” and a cover of Tampa Red’s “Let Me Play With Your Poodle.” 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.” His unaccompanied renditions of “Bluebird Blues”, “Mellow Peaches” and the “The Hounds” are enthralling. Of the other performers from the region it sounds like Hammie Nixon has seen better days, pianist Memphis Piano Red is in good form although his piano is badly out of tune while Lottie Murrell delivers some powerful slashing slide guitar but is fairly well inebriated.  I would have liked to hear more from the superb Charlie Sangster who’s two numbers reveal a bluesman of very high order, very much in the classic Brownsville, Tennessee tradition of Sleepy John Estes and Hammie Nixon.

Fans and collectors of early country and traditional blues will find hours of rewarding listening within the fourteen volumes that comprise Living Country Blues USA. Through the 1970′s country blues was still going strong in rural southern communities even if interest was low commercially. Thankfully a handful intrepid researchers stepped into the breach to record a music and culture that was virtually vanishing before their eyes.  As for complaints, well I do wish that some unreleased material was included which seems to me like a real missed opportunity. In addition while the original liner notes are included it would be nice to have some follow-up information regarding what became of these the artists after these recordings.

Son Thomas – Catfish Blues (MP3)

Boyd Rivers – You Got To Move (MP3)

Lonnie Pitchford – My Babe (MP3)

Walter Brown – Levee Camp Holler (MP3)

Joe Savage – Mean Ol’ Frisco (MP3)

Stonewall Mays – Jazz Boogie Woogie (MP3)

CeDell Davis – I Don’t Know Why (MP3)

Lottie Murrell – Spoonful (MP3)

Joe Cooper – She Run Me Out On The Road (MP3)

Charlie Sangster & Hammie Nixon – Moanin The Blues (MP3)

I’ve written quite a bit about blues field recordings and play them often on my radio program so it’s an understatement to say that I was excited to hear that the Living Country Blues USA series was being issued on CD in its entirety (unfortunately there are no additional tracks). These remarkable recordings were issued across 12 LP’s (one double set) on the German L+R label between 1980 and 1981. Considering the title it’s ironic that these recordings weren’t issued domestically until 1999 when the Evidence Records distilled the project down to a 3-CD “greatest hits” package, simply titled Living Country Blues – An Anthology. At the time of this release I have to admit I was only vaguely aware of the original series – in my defense I was only 12 at the time the L+R albums came out, a precocious 12 year old but certainly not listening to country blues! – but what I heard on the Evidence set floored me. In classic collector mentality I set out to track down the original L+R records which wasn’t that easy and turned out to be an expensive proposition. I never did get all the albums but thankfully now that they have been reissued on CD I was finally able  to complete the set. On November 9th I’ll be devoting the entire show to these recordings with a sequel undoubtedly in the future.

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.” The prep work for the project was done in 1978 when Küstner came over alone for a six month survey of the blues scene and made some final arrangements in June 1980 before hooking up with Christmann three months later. If this project reminds you of the recording trips of John and Alan Lomax, that’s exactly what the duo had in mind. Where the Lomax’s had the Library of Congress to back them, Küstner and Christmann had the backing of Horst Lippman who had just started the L+R label with Fritz Rau (the same duo who were responsible for the American Folk Blues Festivals). The project was called Living Country Blues as Alligator had just issued their acclaimed Living Chicago Blues series. As for the sound quality, don’t let the field recording aspect scare you, the sound is exceptional, recorded with a ten-channel mixer and reel-to reel tape.

If you think about it,  it was a bold undertaking to embark on a trip like this in 1980 when one would imagine the country blues had largely died out as a vibrant part of rural black communities. After all George Mitchell and Pete Lowry, two of the most active field recorders, had called it quits by 1980, while others like David Evans, Kip Lornell, Gianni Marcucci and Enzo Castello, Bengt Olsson and Bruce Bastin had largely stopped going in the field after the 1970′s. To be sure there were plenty of fine unheralded country blues players who were still active. Among the great finds of the late 1960′s and 70′s, and subsequently recorded, were men like Mance Lipscomb, Robert Pete Williams, Fred McDowell, Roosevelt Holts, Jack Owens, R.L. Burnside, James “Son” Thomas, Lum Guffin, Frank Hovington, Cecil Barfield, Marvin and Turner Foddrell, Peg Leg Sam, Henry Johnson, not to mention those still active who had recorded in the 1920′s and 30′s like Sam Chatmon, Buddy Moss, Joe Callicott, Furry Lewis, Bukka White, Hammie Nixon and others. George Mitchell wrote that “As late as 1969 a country bluesman who at least occasionally played could be located in most small towns of Georgia. In 1976, there are very few active blues musicians left in the state! In the short span of seven years, one of the worlds most vital and influential forms of music as it was originally performed has all but died out in Georgia, and probably in the rest of the South as well. Most bluesmen have either died or fallen into ill health accompanying old age, and the younger generation of rural blacks long ago turned their backs on the blues.”  It was also, he noted, the Church who claimed many bluesmen as well as the lack of financial incentive to play the blues that was the musics’ death knell. Still Mitchell, Lowry and Lornell were recording many talented artists through the end of the 1970′s and into the early 1980′s. Seen from an historical perspective, Küstner and Christman’s trip was one of the last great large-scale recording trips to survey southern blues and gospel, and the sad fact is that most of these performers have since passed on. Recordings of this type have been spotty and uneven since the 1980′s; some mostly lackluster recordings issued on the the three volume Wolf series Giants of Country Blues (spanning 1967 through 1991), some good records on Fat Possum by R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, Robert Belfour, Asie Payton and Cedell Davis in the 1990′s, the surprisingly prolific, if uneven, Music Maker label and most recently some strong records on the Broke and Hungry label. As for another large-scale survey of southern blues, I’m afraid those days have long passed which makes Living Country Blues all the more valuable.

Guitar Slim

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. While they recorded some extraordinary music in Mississippi a good chunk of the performances spotlight the rich East Coast tradition or Piedmont style, explored in-depth in the 70′s by Lowry, Bastin and Lornell. Among the most striking in this vein are Guitar Frank (Frank Hovington), Guitar Slim (James Stephens) and Archie Edwards. 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 (he was afraid of losing his social security checks), putting his stamp on traditional material like “Railroad Bill”, “Key To The Highway”, fine instrumentals like the gently rolling “90 Goin’ North”, “Chimney Hill Breakdown” and a magnificent version of “Lonesome Road Blues” feature a gorgeous vocal. Guitar Slim hailed from Greensboro, North Carolina but his music falls stylistically between the East Coast style and and the more intense Mississippi approach. He recorded Greensboro Rounder for Flyright in the 1970′s but good luck finding a copy. He was accomplished on six and twelve string and a fine piano player to boot. His loose barrelhouse piano is heard to fine effect on “Lovin’ Blues” and “Lula’s Back In Town” while his lovely singing is heard best on introspective numbers like “Won’t You Spread Some Flowers On My Grave” and an achingly seductive cover of Robert Johnson’s “Come On In My Kitchen.” Sadly he never recorded again. More strongly rooted in the East Coast tradition is Archie Edwards who made his debut with these recordings. Volume six in the series, The Road Is Rough and Rocky, is entirely devoted to this this talented guitarist with a wide repertoire. “Bear Cat Mama Blues”, one of his best numbers, is on the 2-CD introduction, a cover of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Balky Mule Blues.” His original, the raggy, fast paced “The Road Is Rough And Rocky”, is in classic Piedmont style as is the beautiful “Do Lord Remember Me”, apparently the last song Edwards listened to before he passed in 1998.

Archie Edwards

Edwards was based in Washington, D.C. which boasted a number of exceptional players including John Cephas, Phil Wiggins and Flora Molton. The first volume of the series is devoted to the music of Cephas and Wiggins and were the first commercial recordings of the duo (Cephas had appeared on records by Henry Johnson and Big Chief Ellis and both men were recorded extensively by Pete Lowry but those recordings were never issued). The duo has made dozens of records and currently signed to Alligator records but they rarely sounded better then they do here rolling through classic East Coast material like “Goin Down The Road Feelin Bad”, “Chicken Don’t Roost Too High For Me” and “Richmond Blues.” The seamlessly meshed playing of Cephas’ complex, ragtime guitar and Wiggins’ harp are strongly in the tradition of Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry. Flora Molton has played her “Spiritual and Truth Music”, as she called it, on the streets of Washington since the 1940′s eventually benefiting from the blues revival with a steady stream of festival and coffeehouse gigs. Molton gave up the blues after she got sanctified but there’s strong blues component to her music which follows in the tradition of guitar evangelists such as Edward Clayborn, Blind Willie Johnson and Blind Gary Davis. Molton plays serviceable slide as she delivers her declamatory vocals backed by a variety of musicians called The Truth Band.  Volume three focuses entirely on her talents with two numbers on the introductory set including the magnificent “The Titanic”, variations of which have long been a gospel staple as a testimony to man’s hubris. The music is utterly captivating as Molten sings with with the unflagging devotion of a true believer. Outside of a self-produced 45 these are her first recordings.

Guitar Frank – Lonesome Road Blues (MP3)

Guitar Frank – Railroad Bill (MP3)

Guitar Slim – Come On In My Kitchen (MP3)

Guitar Slim – Lulu’s Back In Town (MP3)

Archie Edwards – Bear Cat Mama Blues (MP3)

Archie Edwards – My Road Is Rough And Rocky (MP3)

Cephas & Wiggins – I Ain’t Got No Lovin Baby Now (MP3)

Cephas & Wiggins – Goin’ Down The Road Feelin’ Bad (MP3)

Flora Molton – The Titanic (MP3)

Flora Molton – Vacation In Heaven (MP3)