Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

Willie B. Thomas, Harry Oster, and Butch Cage 1960 (photographer: David Gahr)

Harry Oster was teaching at Louisiana State University a well-received lecture on Old World traditional ballads prompted a colleague to suggest that he apply for a grant to collect local folklore. “Before long,” he recalled, “I found a profusion of unusual material – ancient French ballads, Cajun dance music, Afro-French spirituals… I got the idea that I should issue with my own funds a long-playing record to be called A Sampler of Louisiana Folk Songs.” This and succeeding records such as Folk Songs of the Louisiana Acadians, the first LP of Cajun music, appeared under the auspices of the Louisiana Folklore Society, which Oster created with a couple of friends. Later recordings were on his own label, Folk-Lyric. Oster’s greatest discovery came on a trip to the state penitentiary at Angola. Oster found many impressive blues singers, among them Robert Pete Williams. The singer’s intense improvised narratives about prison life and the events that had brought him there, were presented to the world on the 1959 album Angola Prisoner’s Blues. Oster was also the first to record Snooks Eaglin, the fiddle-and-guitar duo Butch Cage and Willie Thomas, blues guitarist Smokey Babe and Georgia street musician Reverend Pearly Brown. Oster left Louisiana in 1963 to teach at the University of Iowa, where he remained until his retirement in 1993, working on the American Dictionary of Folklore and pursuing his passion of making and disseminating records. His Folk-Lyric catalogue was acquired by Arhoolie Records and has largely been transferred to CD.

Oster formed his Folk-Lyric label in 1959 and in an interview described the label’s genesis: “Eventually I heard that RCA had a customs pressing plant in Indianapolis and I started sending stuff to them and getting stuff professionally printed.  I would send out review copies to major newspapers like New York Times, Down Beat Magazine, Saturday Review, and some newspapers. They gave them good attention and I got in touch with some distributors. My label was essentially one-man operation. I would find performers, record them, edit the tapes, take photographs, write liner notes, etc. I would generally   press about 300 copies. I borrowed $5,000 from a bank to subsidize the operation. I also did some assignments for other companies, and that helped finance it also. I did one record for Elektra which was eventually sold to Folkways. I did some for Prestige Bluesville and Prestige International.”

Oster explained to an interviewer his approach to field recording: “I actually operated rather differently than some of people who’ve  found old time blues singers. Usually they track down someone who recorded  in ’20s or 0s and disappear from sight for a while. I sort of went about it  in a quite different way, which in fact produced some interestingly different results, more offbeat performances and more unusual repertoire. Anyhow, I talked to a psychologist who’d done some research in a prison and he suggested I go see the head of institutions for the state and get his permission to get access to the prison and ask him to spell out the specific  privileges that I wanted to have, lot of which should be the right to call out a specific convicts, in other words, to get someone excused from work for the day or afternoon so he could be interviewed and recorded by me. The head of institution was quite cooperative and friendly, probably influenced by the fact that I was teaching in a state university. He wrote  to the warden and asked him to cooperate with me. The warden was cooperative too and he suggested the good way to proceed would be to start with the recreational director and go down from there. They had a choir of black singers who did spirituals and he said that would be a good place to make contacts. I started there and they gave me some leads on prison work songs and I started going into the different camps. These camps were not maximum security camps and people worked in fields in in daytime.”

The recordings on Angola Prisoner’s Blues were recorded in 1959 and 1960 at Camp H in Louisiana’s Angola Prison. An impromptu studio was set up in the tool room. Oster uncovered many fine bluesman like Hogman Maxey, Guitar Welch, Otis Webster, Roosevelt Charles and most importantly Robert Pete Williams.  Roosevelt Charles was classified a habitual criminal and spend most of his adult life in prison. Charles was recorded extensively by Oster both in Agola and on the outside in 1959 and 1960. A full album of his recordings appeared on Vanguard which is long out of print with other cuts showing up on various anthologies. Many of his sides remain unissued. Oster considered Charles one of his most gifted finds. Another talented performer was Robert Welch, called “Guitar” and “King of the Blues” by the other convicts and was born in Memphis in 1896. He learned from the records of Lonnie Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson and played in bands starting in the late 30’s.

Robert Pete Williams, however,  was in a class by himself as Oster wrote in the liner notes: “The blues of Robert Pete Williams are more original, more directly personal, and more evocative in their expression of love, frustration, and despair.” Williams did some playing at house parties in the 30’s. In 1956, Williams shot and killed a man in a local club. Williams claimed the act was in self-defense, but he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. He was sent to Angola prison, where he served for two years before being discovered by Oster and Richard Allen. The pair recorded Williams performing several of his own songs, which were all about life in prison. Impressed with the guitarist’s talents, Oster and Allen pleaded for a pardon for Williams. The pardon was granted in 1959, after he had served a total of three and a half years. For the first five years after he left prison, Williams could only perform in Lousiana, but his recordings — which appeared on Folk-Lyric, Arhoolie, and Prestige, among other labels — were popular and he received positive word of mouth reviews. In 1964, Williams played his first concert outside of Louisiana — it was a set at the legendary Newport Folk Festival. Williams’ performance was enthusiastically received and he began touring the United States, often playing shows with Mississippi Fred McDowell. During the 60’s and 70’s he performed at several festival including the 1966 American Folk Blues Festival. He passed in 1980.

The album Prison Worksongs focuses on recordings of worksongs recorded in Agola Prison and on the outside between 1959 and 1963. By this point the prison worksong was a dying tradition but Oster managed to record some fine material. “I’’ve always been fascinated with black worksongs, “ Oster recalled, “group work songs, and I had heard that they were essentially extinct in the regular world because of mechanization of farming, and the only place to find them would be in southern prison farms. I decided it would be a good idea to do some recordings in the prison camp in Angola, and I made my first trip there in 1957.”

The songs on the album Country Negro Jam Session were recorded in Southwestern Louisiana between 1959 and 1962, some in Angola Prison, others at house parties around Baton Rouge (the remaining 5 titles on CD reissue were recorded by Chris Strachwitz and Paul Oliver in 1960). In it’s earliest incarnation, the first 14 tracks of the 25 title program were released on Dr. Oster’s now-defunct Folk Lyric label, and then re-released on Arhoolie intact after Chris Strachwitz purchased the Folk Lyric catalog. Oster did a series of field recordings, informal jams with a group of obscure blues men and women, only one of whom, Robert Pete Williams, won fame. Otis Webster was recorded extensively by Oster in 1959 and 1960 all in Angola Prison. Many of the sides remain unissued. Willie B. Thomas (vocal & guitar) and James ‘Butch’ Cage (vocal & fiddle) make up a good part of  Country Negro Jam Session. The duo’s string band music is reminiscent of Peg Leg Howell and his gang and the two play not only blues but also pop, and religious music. They also back singer/guitarist Clarence Edwards on several numbers. Butch Cage was born in 1894 near Meadville, MS, and whom Oster describes aptly in the liner notes as “a great representative of the now virtually extinct 19th century black fiddle tradition”, while Willie B. Thomas was born near Lobdell, LA in 1912.

Born in Itta Bena, Mississippi, Robert Brown AKA Smoky Babe had found his way to Scotlandville, Louisiana by the age of 20. It was there that Oster recorded him on several occasions between 1959-1961 with material appearing on the labels Folk-Lyric, Storyville and Bluesville. As Oster wrote in the liner notes to his Bluesville album: “In February 1960 I was present at a jam session in Scotlandville at the house of the sister of Robert Pete Williams, Mable Lee.  …Smoky, who lives a short distance from Mable Lee Williams, swaggered in – a muscular wiry man of about 5’ 8”, wearing a hat tilted at a rakish angle. His guitar was in pawn so I loaned him mine. As soon as he played a few bars, rich, full, resonant, and excitedly rhythmic, I knew here was an outstanding bluesman.” Nothing is know about his later life.

New Orleans pianist and singer Billie Pierce played jazz and blues with her cornetist husband Dede. The two recorded and toured extensively in the 1950’s and 60’s. Oster issued an LP of them titled Gulf Coast Blues with some other titles appearing on the anthology Primitive Piano that also has tracks by Bat Robinson and Speckled Red. Billie Pierce was a marvelous blues, ragtime, and jazz pianist and a very expressive singer who grew up in Florida where she accompanied Bessie Smith at a Pensacola theatre in the early 1920s. She later moved to New Orleans where she played professionally in honky tonks and later spent much time working for Preservation Hall and touring all over the world with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Her husband, De De Pierce was one of the most joyful and powerful New Orleans trumpeters as well as a superb vocalist specializing in the unique, regional Creole French patois.

Blind from boyhood, Snooks Eaglin played everything he heard on records and the radio, be it jazz, blues, pop or country. When not playing R&B in the New Orleans clubs, Eaglin busked with an acoustic guitar, which is how Harry Oster first encountered him. Besides issuing an LP of Eaglin’s on his Folk-Lyric label, Oster licensed material to other companies with material appearing on labels like Storyille and Bluesville. In an interview Oster recalls how he came across Eaglin: “I heard of him through Richard B. Allen who was first associate curator and then curator of the Jazz Archive in the Tulane University. He had encountered Snooks Eaglin who was young blind man singing on the porch of  his house. Snooks Eaglin was different than performers like Robert Pete Williams for example. He actually was not a real specialist  in blues, he was a popular performer and he wanted to be more popular. And he was. But he could do a lot of blues and he had a wonderful memory. His father said that he didn’t really make up songs. He was like a mockingbird, he had everybody’s song but his own.”

Other artists featured today include Herman E. Johnson of Scotlandville who was recorded in 1961 and Clarence Edwards. Johnson’s tracks appeared on the LP Louisiana Country Blues alongside sides by Smoky Babe. Born near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Clarence Edwards began playing blues in the area in his teens. He was taped by Oster between 1959 and 1962 and by Chris Strachwitz for Arhoolie in 1970. He quit music for a stretch and cut his debut album in 1990. He did festival appearances in the US and Europe before his death in 1993.

Show Notes:

Georgia White & Bumble Bee Slim

Another mix show for today. I’ve finally caught up a bit so the next few weeks I’ll be doing some themed shows.  Today’s program sports two short tributes to Les Paul and Robert Johnson.  We open and close the show with tracks by Georgia White featuring a young Les Paul. White was a popular singer of the 30′s and 40′s who cut around a hundred sides for Decca between 1930 and 1941.  In 1936 she cut five sides backed by guitarist Les Paul who just passed away on August 13^th. These are among Paul’s first recordings and it’s clear he’s already an accomplished guitarist. Little is known of White’s post-recording years outside of the fact that she led an all girl band in the late 40′s and was lasted glimpsed appearing in a Chicago club in 1959.

We also pay tribute to Robert Johnson who died on this date seventy-one years ago, Aug 16, 1938 in Greenwood, MS. I have to admit that I haven’t played Johnson much on my show. At this point more ink has been spilled on Robert Johnson than any other blues artist and while there has been plenty of quality research on the elusive bluesman it’s been largely buried in layers of hyperbole, mythology, speculation, romanticism and sheer nonsense. My main problem is that this obsession on every minutiae of Johnson’s life has taken away the focus on his very real talents and perhaps more importantly this lopsided focus on Johnson has obscured the fact that he was very much part of a tradition; his music firmly built on the artists who came before like Lonnie Johnson and Tampa Red who don’t get a shred of the acclaim that Johnson does. Johnson remains one of the blues great artists, his brilliance was in how he borrowed, reshaped, synthesized and added his own voice to the music of those who came before to create a powerfully individual style. It would be nice if this intense spotlight on Johnson spilled over to raise the awareness of other equally worthy early blues artists who I play on a regular basis.

Charley Patton

One of the guys Johnson was inspired by was Charley Patton who was dead two years when Johnson made his debut in 1936.  From Patton’s last session in 1934 we spin his “High Sheriff Blues.” Collectors and serious listeners have long held Patton as he pinnacle of the Delta blues artists. Patton hasn’t accrued the mythological baggage of Johnson and isn’t as accessible as Johnson, with his often garbled singing paired with particularly noisy records.  Patton has always cast a spell over me although I’ve had a hard time articulating exactly why. I recently ran across the following by Tony Russell in the indispensable The Penguin Guide To The Blues that pretty much nails what makes Patton’s music so compelling and is worth quoting in full:

“In the best-known photograph of Charley Patton a youngish man faces posterity with a straight but somewhat apprehensive gaze. Some of what lay ahead he might have predicted: a hard life, early death, obscurity. What was not on the cards was that some 30 years later he would begin to be described as one of the most singular musicians of the 20th century, a voice of the blues like no other, a teller of stories from a time and place that for his new listeners were as unimaginable  as the dark side of the moon. His sometimes strangled utterances, already half choked by the surface noise of old discs, gradually revealed themselves to be passages from an oral history of black Mississippi in the 1910s and ’20s: its dirt roads and rivers, drinking places and jails, the pest ravaged cottonfields of “Mississippi Bo Weavil Blues”, the drought of “Dry Well Blues”, the flooded bottomlands of “High Water Everywhere” and, turning from natural disasters to man-made ones, the layoff of railroad workers in “Mean Black Moan.” These reports, and the many other types of songs he recorded, from blue-ballads like “Frankie And Albert” and rags like “Shake It And Break It” to hymns and transformed popular songs, are delivered in a voice as tough as steel, to guitar melodies as densely springy as ryegrass. It is extraordinary music, not always easy to understand, but so full of incident that it quickly becomes totally absorbing.”

Turning from the guitar we spotlight a number of fine pianists including Charlie Seger, Kid Stormy Weather Frank Tannehill and Champion Jack Dupree.  Pianist Segar cut ten sides at sessions in 1934, 35 and 40 and cut recorded the first version of “Key To The Highway” in February 1940. Big Bill Broonzy claims to have written the song, a song also claimed by Jazz Gillum. Gillum cut his version a few months later in May 1940 and Broonzy cut his version in May 1941. Kid Stormy Weather recorded two songs in 1935, and was a local legend around New Orleans. He was an influence on Professor Longhair. Frank Tannehill was a fine singer/pianist who cut ten sides in the late 30s and early 40s. “Warehouse Blues” is a poignant working man’s blues:

You know why my baby she looks so fine (2x)
I’m working at the warehouse giving her all my time
I don’t care, that the streets is covered with snow (2x)
I got to work at the warehouse, and bring my baby the roll
The old house burned down, got to wait till’ they build again (2x)
I’m cutting grass now but I’m still bringing money in

“Bad Whiskey And Wild Woman” feature superb guitar from Brownie McGhee and comes form the brand new 4-CD set Champion Jack Dupree Early Cuts on the JSP label which collects everything he cut from 1940 through 1953.

Jumping ahead to the 60s and 70s we spin some great records by Barrelhouse artists Blind Joe Hill and Easy Baby and music from Excello artists Jimmy Anderson and Whispering Smith. The Barrelhouse label was a fine Chicago label run by George Paulus during the 70s featuring a roster that included albums by Washboard Willie, Big John Wrencher, Charlie Feathers, Harmonica Frank Floyd, Blind Joe Hill, Joe Carter, Robert Richard, Easy Baby and others.  Easy Baby is an exceptional singer and harmonica blower who cut two superb records 25 years apart. Our selection comes from Sweet Home Chicago Blues a 1977 album featuring a great band that included guitarist Eddie Taylor and drummer Kansas City Red. In 2000 he cut the album If It Ain’t One Thing It’s Another for the Wolf label, which is nearly as good. Blind Joe Hill was a one-man-band who recorded two albums under his own name on the Barrelhouse and L+R labels and was part of the 1985 American Folk Blues Festival touring Europe. We spin a few songs form the excellent 2-CD set Blues Hangover a collection of Excello rarities including excellent tracks by Jimmy Anderson who sounds uncannily like Jimmy Reed, the fine Whispering Smith who found his way to the label as Excello was circling the drain and the mysterious Early Dranes. The cuts by Dranes come form an Excello audition tape that surfaced decades after the label folded.

Show Notes:

Today’s mix show spotlights quite a number of fine country blues performances from the 1960′s and 70′s plus a few recent reissues that just rolled in. We open up with two fine cuts from the 2-CD set Sunnyland Slim & Johnny Shines: The Complete Blue Horizon Sessions, another entry in a very welcome reissue series of Blue Horizon recordings from the 1960′s. The sessions were recorded separately on the same day in Chicago in 1968 and originally issued as Midnight Jump and Last Night’s Dream. While this isn’t the best work by either artist this is a very solid set particularly our featured Shines cuts; “Solid Gold” a magnificent number backed by just Willie Dixon’s bass while the version of “Heartache” is a previously unissued take, backed just by Sunnyland Slim, it was intended as a run-through but I prefer it it to the issued take. We also spin a cut from the 2-CD set Furry Lewis & Mississippi Joe Callicott: The Complete Blue Horizon Sessions. Lewis and Callicott met for the first time when they were both invited to perform at the 1968 Memphis Country Blues Festival (a previous title in the series).  It was after this appearance that Mike Vernon had the opportunity to book time at the Ardent Studio the following day, along with Bukka White, where these tracks were recorded over an exhaustive 24 hours in the studio and later released as separate artist albums under the series name Presenting the Country Blues. The set includes eight unissued tracks by Callicott, most welcome as his discography is very slim, and two unissued sides by Lewis. Of those unissued cuts we play Callicott’s marvelous “Lost My Money In Jim Kinnane’s.” We do play a Furry Lewis track today which comes from the record Furry Lewis, Bukka White & Friends – Party! At Home recorded in Memphis in 1968 and released on the Arcola label. These recordings are pretty rough around the edges, recorded at a party at Furry’s house, but are a whole lot of fun.

We play several other twin spins today including sides by Sylvester Weaver & Sarah Martin, Scott Dunbar and J.B. Lenoir. Sylvester Weaver was a versatile guitarist from Louisville who made the first solo recordings of blues guitar playing. Weaver first recorded in New York in 1923, where on October 23 he accompanied vaudeville blues singer Sara Martin on two numbers for Okeh. The Sara Martin selections represented the first time on records that a popular female singer had been backed up solely by guitar, and were an immediate success. Weaver would cut 25 more selections accompanying Martin in the years through 1927. Known in her heyday as “the blues sensation of the West,” Martin was one of the most popular of the classic female blues singers of the 1920′s. Martin began her career as a vaudeville performer, switching to blues singing in the early 1920′s. In 1922, she began recording for OKeh Records and continued recording prolifically until 1928. In the early 1930′s Martin retired from blues singing and settled in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky where she died in 1955. We feature one of her collaborations with Weaver, the tough “Black Hearse Blues:”

Oh death wagon, don’t you dare stop at my door (2x)
You took my first three daddies, but you can’t have number four
Smallpox got my first man, booze killed number two (2x)
I wore out the last one but with this one I ain’t through

“Death Sting Me Blues” is equally bleak featuring superb cornet from King Oliver:

Blues you made me roll and tumble, you made me weep and sigh (2x)
Made me use cocaine and whiskey, but you wouldn’t let me die
Blues blues blues, why did you bring trouble to me (2x)
Oh death please sting me, and take me out of my misery

Other pre-war blues today include fine tracks from Johnnie Temple, William Moore, Willie “Poor Boy” Lofton, Lonnie Johnson and Leroy Carr.

Scott Dunbar

Scott Dunbar was born 1904 on Deer Park between the Mississippi and Lake Mary (an eleven mile cut-off arm of the River) west of Woodville and south of Natchez, Mississippi. Frederic Ramsey, jr. recorded a few tracks by Dunbar in 1954 that appeared on Smithsonian anthologies. He cut a one full-length album, From Lake Mary, in 1970 on the obscure Ahura Mazda label, which was reissued by Fat Possum in 2000. He never recorded again, passing in 1994. Close to 60 sides were cut by Dunbar for the 1970 session and the bulk remain unissued. While Dunbar’s repertoire was drawn from traditional sources it was filtered through a wholly idiosyncratic, singular style that was utterly unique and absolutely captivating. He simply sounded like no one else and it’s a real shame that the bulk of his recordings still remain in the can. We also spin a pair of sides by J.B. Lenoir; “Alabama Blues” and “The Mountain” cut fourteen years apart. Lenoir’s final two albums before his death in 1967, Alabama Blues (1965) and Down In Mississippi (1966) were produced by Willie Dixon for L+R Records. Lenoir’s material on these albums, with its finger on the pulse of the mid-1960′s, deal with themes such as Civil rights, racism, lynching, and the Vietnam War, among some other traditional blues. Sadly he died shortly after these albums, in 1967 at the age of 38. “Alabama Blues” is a potent number from this later period:

I never will go back to Alabama, that is not the place for me (2x)
You now they killed my sister and my brother, and the whole world let them peoples down there go free
I never will love Alabama, Alabama seem to never have loved poor me (2x)
Oh God I wish you would rise up one day, lead my peoples to the land of peace

We play an excellent set of West Coast blues from two terrific, brand new collections: Bob Geddins: Big Town Records Story a 3-CD set Acrobat and The Downhome Blues Sessions Vol. 5: Back In The Alley 1949-1954 on Ace. These collections spotlight the contributions of record produce/songwriter Bob Geddins. Geddins was the dominant figure in Bay Area blues from the mid-1940′s to the mid-1960′s. He was involved in a series of labels including Big Town, Down Town, Cava-Tone, Rhythm, Irma, Art-Tone and others. He was notable also for being the first to set up a pressing plant in the Bay area. Many of his records were leased to bigger labels such as Modern. He released records by Lowell Fulson, Jimmy McCracklin, Johnny Fuller, Roy Hawkins, Jimmy Wilson among many others. The first four volumes of Ace’s The Downhome Blues Sessions gather together historic juke joint recordings made by Joe Bihari and Ike Turner in deep South locations between late 1951 and early 1952. Make sure to tune in October 26th as I devote the whole show to the amazing recordings and December 28th when I devote a show to Bob Geddins and the downhome West Coast blues of the late 1940′s and 50′s.

We spotlight two superb collections of field recordings from the 1970′s: Western Peidmont Blues and On The Road Again: Country Blues 1969-1974. Western Peidmont Blues is part of the Virginia Traditions series assembled by the Blue Ridge Institute for Appalachian Studies at Ferrum College in Virginia. This collection brings together field recordings from the mid-’50s and late ’70s with a pair of 78s from the 1920′s to make a nice historical portrait of blues in the region. Also worthwhile in this series are Virginia Work Songs and Tidewater Blues. On The Road Again features field recordings made by Bengt Olsson in Tennessee and Alabama between 1969-1974. These recordings originally were issued on three albums on the Flyright label: Southern Comfort Country, Lum Guffin: Walking Victrola and Old Country Blues. Bengt Olsson was a Swedish blues researcher, field recorder and author of the book Memphis Blues (Studio Vista, 1970) (an updated version is slated to be released on Routledge) as well as numerous articles. He died late January 2008, at age 58. He had recently sold all his original tapes, including uinissued material, to Fat Possum.