Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

Paramount records recorded some of the greatest blues artists of the 20′s and early 30′s and today we kick off the second of a multi-part feature on the label. In addition we’ll also be airing and interview I did with Alex van der Tuuk the author of Paramount’s Rise And Fall. Paramount Records was founded in 1917 as a subsidiary of the Wisconsin Chair Company of Port Washington, Wisconsin. The chair company had made some wooden phonograph cabinets by contract for Edison Records. Wisconsin Chair decided to start making its own line of phonographs with a subsidiary called the “United Phonograph Corporation” at the end  of 1915. It made phonographs under the “Vista” brand name through the end of the decade; the line failed commercially. In 1917 a line of phonograph records was debuted with the “Paramount” label. They were recorded and pressed by Chair Company subsidiary “The New York Recording Laboratories, Incorporated.” In its initial years, the Paramount label offered recordings of standard pop-music fare, on records recorded with below-average audio fidelity pressed in below-average quality shellac. In the early 1920′s, Paramount was still racking up debts for the Chair Company while producing no net profit. Paramount began offering to press records for other companies at low prices. The Paramount Record pressing plant was contracted to press discs for Black Swan Records. When that later company floundered, Paramount bought out Black Swan and thus got into the business of making recordings by and for African-Americans. These so-called “race music” records became Paramount’s most famous and lucrative business. Paramount’s “race record” series was launched in 1922 with its 1200 “race” series exclusively devoted to black music. The early catalog was dominated by female blues singers such as Lucille Hegamin, Alberta Hunter and Monette Moore and a bit later with records by stars Ida Cox and Ma Rainey. A large mail-order operation and weekly advertisements in black owned newspapers like the Chicago Defender were keys to the label’s early success. The label’s successful recordings by Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake shifted the focus from women singers to male. The label went on to record some of the era’s most celebrated male blues artists such as delta legends Charlie Patton, skip James, Tommy Johnson, Son House, Willie Brown plus diverse artists such as Buddy Boy Hawkins, the Mississippi Sheiks, Charlie Spand, Papa Charlie Jackson among many others. The onset of the depression crippled the recording industry and Paramount was eventually discontinued in 1932.

We open part two of our Paramount feature as we did our first, with some of the women who dominated the label’s catalog in the early years before being eclipsed by the popularity of the solo male blues artists. Today we spin tracks by Edna Hicks, Ida Cox, Edna Taylor, Edmonia Henderson, Lena Wilson Ma Rainey, Ethel Waters and others.

Blues singer Edna Hicks was born in New Orleans and was the half-sister of Lizzie Miles and her brother was the trumpet player Herb Morand. Edna left New Orleans sometime around 1916 and worked in a variety of vaudeville and musical comedy shows. She began recording in 1923 with Victor and went on to make records with Brunswick, Gennett, Vocalion, Ajax, Columbia and Paramount. In 1925 she died due to burns that she suffered in an accident involving gasoline in her home in Chicago.

Ida Cox sang in church choirs as a child in Georgia. She ran away from home in 1910 when she was a teenager and performed in minstrel and tent shows as a comedienne and singer. She toured the country throughout the Teens and 1920s sometimes singing with Jazz greats like Jelly Roll Morton and with King Oliver at the Plantation Cafe in Chicago. In 1923 she began her recording contract with the Paramount label, who billed her as the Uncrowned Queen of the Blues. She cut around ninety sides for the label through 1929.

Alongside Bessie Smith, who recorded for Columbia, Ma Rainey is one of the most celebrated woman blues singers of the era. Rainey first appeared onstage in 1900, singing and dancing in minstrel and vaudeville stage revues. In 1902 she married the song and dance man William “Pa” Rainey and from then on became known as Ma Rainey. The couple formed a song and dance act that included blues and popular songs. They toured the country, but primarily the South and became a popular attraction as part of Tolliver’s Circus, The Musical Extravaganza and The Rabbit Foot Minstrels, where Rainey befriended a young Bessie Smith. It was not until 1923 that Ma Rainey signed a recording contract with Paramount. She was billed as the “Mother of the Blues”, recording 100 songs between 1923 and 1928 for the label.

Ethel Waters was one of the most popular African-American singers and actresses of the 1920s. She moved to New York in 1919 after touring in vaudeville shows as a singer and a dancer. She made her recording debut in 1921 on Cardinal records but switched over to the Black Swan label, and recorded “Down Home Blues” and “Oh Daddy” the first Blues numbers for that company. In 1924 she cut five sides for Paramount. She frequently sang with Fletcher Henderson during the early 1920s, but by the mid-1920s Waters had became more of a pop singer.

The heyday of woman blues singers started to fade toward the mid to late 20′s. Paramount’s earliest male blues star was Papa Charlie Jackson who made his debut in 1924 followed by in 1926 by big selling artists Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake. In addition to those artists, who we profiled in part one,  we spin tracks by Frank Stokes and several fine piano players including Charlie Span and Will Ezell. Frank Stokes and partner Dan Sane recorded as The Beale Street Shieks, a Memphis answer to the musical Chatmon family string band, the Mississippi Shieks. Stokes was already playing the streets of Memphis by the turn of the century, about the same time the blues began to flourish. A medicine show and house party favorite, Stokes was remembered as a consummate entertainer who drew on songs from the 19th and 20th centuries. Solo or with Sane and sometimes fiddler Will Batts, Stokes recorded 38 sides for Paramount and Victor.

Next to nothing is known about barrelhouse pianist Charlie Spand (PDF). He waxed 22 sides for Paramount between 1929 and 1931 and two final sessions for Okeh in 1940. Spand first made a name for himself on the Detroit scene of the 1920′s.

Ezell’s early career was spent as an itinerant musician playing dances, labor camps and logging mills in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas. Ezell had a recording career that lasted for four years beginning in 1927 and he produced total of 17 tracks (including alternative takes) for Paramount Records. It was in his role as “house pianist” for Paramount that he supported artists such as Blind Roosevelt Graves, Bertha Henderson and was rumored to have worked for Bessie Smith. His success disappeared during the Depression and nothing is known of him after his last recording session in 1931.

Just a quick note to say that  today’s program is pre-recorded. The show, Son House – The Blues Ain’t No Monkey Junk, originally aired last year. I will be busy at the Hot Blues for the Homeless Concert. If you are in the area and haven’t bought a ticket we hope you decide to come down. It should be a great day of blues.

Related Links:

“Finding ‘Son’ House”
The article that Dick Waterman wrote in The National Observer in July 1964 about how he and Nick Perls and Phil Spiro found Son House in Rochester, NY.

“I Can Make My Own Songs”
An interview with Son House, in his own words, by Julius Lester from Sing Out!, July 1965.

“Hunt For Blues Singer Ends In City” (JPG)
The earliest article on Son’s rediscovery, by Betsy Bues from Rochester Times Union Newspaper, July 6, 1964.

“Blues In The Round”
An account and analysis of the famous 1930 Grafton recording session by Ed Komara.

“Child Is Father To The Man”
How Al Wilson taught Son House to play Son House  by Rebecca Davis.

“An Afternoon With The Father Of CountryBlues/The Real Delta Blues” (doc)
A couple of Son House articles from Talking Blues No. 1, 1976.

“John The Revelator The 1970 London Session” (doc)
Booklet Notes to Son House – John The Revelator The 1970 London Session by Alan Balfour.

Son House Ontario Place 1964 (Link)
An early rediscovery concert at Washington’s Ontario Place by John Meid.

Son House Discography (Link)

Show Notes:

“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.”

That above portrait of Patton was written by Tony Russell and I think serves as a superb  capsule of what makes Patton’s music so compelling. Today’s program spotlights Patton and those artists he worked with and influenced. The rest of the show notes are primarily drawn from David Evans’ essay in the 7-CD box set Screamin’ And Hollerin’ The Blues: The Worlds of Charlie Patton which is also where the bulk of the music comes from.

Born in 1891, Patton was older than the other Delta musicians who recorded during the golden age of the 1920s and 1930s, and he seems to have developed many of the themes that are now considered basic to the Delta blues repertoire. His trademark guitar arrangements were adopted by Tommy Johnson, Son House, and Willie Brown, as well as younger players like Howlin’ Wolf, Roebuck “Pop” Staples, all of whom hung around him in order to master the pieces he had turned into local hits. He apparently gave formal lessons to some of them, using teaching as a secondary source of income in the weekdays between juke joint performances.

Paramount promoted Charley Patton’s second release (12805) with a contest. The initial pressing run of 10,000 copies was issued under the pseudonym “The Masked Marvel,” and customers were encouraged to guess the actual artist’s identity on cards like the one above. Winners could pick a free record of their choice. The contest was formally announced in the Chicago Defender on September 7th.

Around the age of fourteen Patton obtained his first instrument given to him by his father. He first played with members of the Chatmon family and probably other local musicians around Bolton and Edwards, MS. The Chatmons were an important musical family, and a younger set of Chatmon brothers would later become the famous band and recording unit, the Mississippi Sheiks. Patton’s sister stated that he didn’t really learn to pick a guitar until he moved to Dockery’s Plantation. There he came under the influence of older,most importantly a man named Henry Sloan. Sloan was born in January 1870, in Mississippi, and  moved to Dockery’s about the same time as the Pattons, between 1901 and 1904. Charley received some direct instruction, observed and imitated the playing of the older men, and played behind Sloan’s field hollers. Evidently at some point he surpassed them in ability and reputation, probably by 1910, as he was influencing other musicians like Willie Brown at that time.

Paramount recorded some of the greatest blues performances of the era and full credit should go to talent scouts like Henry C. Spier, a music store owner from Jackson, Mississippi. Speir scoured the south for talent and was responsible for getting Son House, Skip James and Charlie Patton on record. Paramount asked Gennett to record 14 tunes by Patton at their Richmond, Indiana studio in June 1929. “Pony Blues” b/w “Banty Rooster Blues” was the first issued. The coupling was a hit and Paramount labeled his second release, “Screamin’ And Hollerin’ The Blues”, as by The Masked Marvel. The advert bore a drawing of a blindfolded singer and the clue that this was an exclusive paramount artists. Anyone guessing his identity would get a free Paramount record of their choice.  In all, Patton recorded 38 numbers for Paramount in 1929, some issued the following year, with two gospel songs issued under the pseudonym Elder J.J. Hadley.

Patton’s basic blues themes–the “Spanish tuning” arrangement he recorded first as “Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues,” and that Willie Brown recorded as “Future Blues,” Son House recorded as “Jinx Blues,” and Tommy Johnson recorded “Maggie Campbell” when recorded by Willie Brown, Son House, and Tommy Johnson respectively, or the basic blues in E he called “Pony Blues,” which was reshaped by Brown into “M&O Blues” and Johnson into “Bye and Bye Blues.”

One of Patton’s many admirers was Howlin’ Wolf who said:  “I didn’t start to fooling with guitar until about 1928, however, and I started on account of on the plantation—Young and Mara’s plantation, where our family was living—there was a guy at that time playing the guitar. He was called Charlie Patton. It was he who got me interested. … It was he who started me off to playing. He showed me things on the guitar, because after we got through picking cotton at night, we’d go and hang around him, listen to him play. He took a liking to me, and I asked him would he teach me, and at night, after I’d get off work, I’d go and hang around.”

Another Patton admirer was Bukka White who recorded the spoken “Remembrance of Charlie Patton” in 1963 in which he had this to say: “Always wanted to be like old Charlie Patton. Long ago when I was a kid, I hear him an play those numbers about:  ‘I’ll hitch up my buggy and saddle my black mare’ an I used to pick cotton an come around in Clarksdale after them cafes, eatin’ cheese an cracker. None of the other boys they didn’t have an idea what I was thinkin’.  I say, I wants to come to be a great man like Charlie Patton, but I didn’t want to get killed he did, the way he got killed, the way he had to go. …And so goes on down and got me old piece a-guitar. And I always wanted to play about ‘Hitch up my buggy, saddle up my black mare I wanna find my baby in this great big world, somewhere.’ …And so Charlie Patton used to sing that song about ‘Hitch up my buggy and saddle up my black mare and I hear, would just knock me off my feet. I was bare-feeted, little bare-feeted boy, too. And I like it so well after I growed up, the first record I put out when I was comin’ up about ‘Downtown women sickin’ them dogs on me’. ["Sic 'Em Dogs On", 1939] I was one that kind-a compare with it. Ah, I think I made a pretty good hit on that!”

In 1930, Arthur Laibley who had produced Charley Patton’s last session for Paramount, stopped in Lula to arrange another session with Patton. Patton told Laibley about Son House and about two other musicians Willie Brown and Louise Johnson, setting the stage for one of the blues most legendary recording sessions. The group headed to the Paramount studios in Grafton, WI, where House recorded six songs at the session: three of which were long enough to fill both sides of a 78: “Dry Spell Blues,” “Preachin’ The Blues,” and “My Black Mama.” On today’s program we spotlight several sides from this remarkable session.

Louise Johnson was barrelhouse pianist and girlfriend of Patton’s who went to Grafton to make records with Patton Brown and House. She cut four sides at that session, her sole recorded legacy. Born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, Willie Brown played with Charley Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson, mostly playing second guitar. Little is known for certain of the man whom Robert Johnson called “my friend-boy, Willie Brown” (“Cross Road Blues”). Brown is heard with Patton on the Paramount sessions of 1930 and cut”M & O Blues and” and “Future Blues” at that date.  In 1941 Alan Lomax recorded Brown with Son House, Fiddlin’ Joe Martin and Leroy Williams. Brown played second guitar on three performances by the whole band, and recorded one solo, “Make Me A Pallet On The Floor.” Brown died in Tunica, Mississippi in 1952 at the age of 52. Despite the disappointing sales of his Paramount records, for Son House the Grafton experience marked the beginning of a long musical friendship with Willie Brown. For much of the 30’s House reverted to his former pattern of preaching and then going back to the blues, usually at the prompting of Brown. In 1934 Charley Patton died and with his death, House became the biggest star in the Delta. He and Brown played all over the Delta as well as Arkansas and Tennessee for the rest of the 1930’s.

Remembered by history as a blues musician, Patton had grown up in the pre-blues era, and he played the full range of music required of a popular rural entertainer. Even though his recording career was sparked by the blues craze, only about half of his roughly fifty records can reasonably be considered part of that then-modern genre. The others are a mix of gospel and religious music like “Runnin’ Wild Blues” and “Prayer Of Death.” Charley not only performed and recorded religious songs but for most of his life wrestled with what he thought was a calling to be a preacher.

Patton had a gift for personal narrative, and seems to have enjoyed documenting events that touched his own experience, and which would have been particularly interesting to his local audience. For example, he wrung wry humor from two of his own run-ins with local lawmen, in “Tom Rushen Blues” and “High Sheriff Blues.” Recorded five years apart, these were essentially two variations on a single musical theme. “Tom Rushen Blues was actually a reworking of Ma Rainey’s “Booze and Blues” cut in 1924.

Patton’s death certificate indicates that the onset of his fatal heart trouble occurred on January 27, 1934. In early April he gave his last performance. It was a dance for whites, probably not too far from Holly Ridge. He had been suffering from bronchitis, perhaps from a winter or spring cold. Bertha Lee stated that he returned home hoarse and unable to talk or get his breath properly. He was visited by a doctor on Tuesday, April 17, and again on Friday, April 20. Many relatives and fellow blues singers and friends visited him during this final illness. His sister said that an attempt was made to take him to a hospital, but his car was bogged in mud from the spring rains. The end came on the morning of Saturday, April 28, 1934, and he was buried the following day at Longswitch Cemetery, less than a mile from his last home at Holly Ridge. He was 43.

Related Documents:

“Blues In The Round” (PDF)
Ed Komara’s account and analysis of the famous 1930 Grafton recording session of Charley Patton, Son House, Willie Brown and Louise Johnson.

“Howlin’ Wolf: “I Sing For The People” (PDF)
1967 interview with Pete Welding where Wolf talks about the influence of Charlie Patton.

Show Notes:

We have a wide ranging mix on today’s program spanning the years 1925 to 1978. We feature many artists from the 1920′s and 30′s including several artists like Lonnie Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, Eugene Powell, Victoria Spivey and Robert Wilkins who bridge both the pre-war and post-war eras. We spotlight three from Lonnie Johnson. Unlike many blues artists who recorded in the 1920′s and were later rediscovered, Lonnie was only out of the music business for a relatively short spell; he was not musically active and made no recordings between 1954 and 1959. He came back strong in the 1960′s through the assistance of Chris Albertson who got Lonnie signed to Bluesville, resulting in a number of strong recordings and an active touring schedule. Featured today are “I’m Not Rough” one of six sides Lonnie recorded with Louis Armstrong in 1927 and 1929. From the 1961 Bluesville album, Another Night To Cry, we spin “Fine Booze and Heavy Dues” and from 1963 “Lonnie’s Traveling Light” from the LP Spivey Blues Parade. The latter record is a grab bag of previously unreleased numbers recorded for the Spivey label and put together as a blues revue. Other artists include Sippie Wallace, Sonny Boy Williamson and Walter Horton among others.

Among the other artists who recorded in both the pre-war and post-war eras we spin tracks by  Son House and Mississippi John Hurt. We hear Son on the magnificent “Pearline” which like “Empire State Express” and “Louise McGhee” are newer songs. Hurt’s wonderful “Richland Woman Blues” is from a 1965 Oberlin College concert which has been issued in various configurations and sequences by several labels under different titles and with different cover art over.

Victoria Spivey, Otis Spann and Samuel Lawhorn

Victoria Spivey made her last pre-war blues in 1937 and reemerged in the early 1960′s. Shortly before she formed her own Spivey label in 1961, Spivey made a fine duo album, Woman Blues!, with  Lonnie Johnson whom she had last recorded with back in 1929. Today’s two tracks come from her Spivey LP’s; “Diving Mama” finds her teamed up with Otis Spann and comes from the album The Muddy Waters Blues Band: They Done It Again! Vol. 2 while “Inter-Mission State” finds her partnered with Walter Horton and comes from the album Spivey’s Blues Parade.

Less well known than the above artists is Eugene Powell who also recorded in the pre-war and post-war eras. In 1936, Eugene Powell, along with Mississippi Matilda, Willie Harris and some of the Chatmon family traveled to New Orleans to record for the Bluebird label. Setting up at the St. Charles Hotel, Powell cut six sides during these sessions under the moniker Sonny Boy Nelson. From that session we spin “Pony Blues.” In the 1970′s Powell began playing festivals and recording again. He died in 1998.

Among the other fine early blues performances are some excellent piano blues. Charlie McFadden was an expressive  St. Louis singer who made some superb sides between 1929 and 1937 backed by St. Louis pianists like Roosevelt Sykes (heard on our selection, “Gambler’s Blues”), Eddie Miller and “Pine Top” Sparks.
The exciting barrelhouse pianist Louise Johnson cut four songs for Paramount at the legendary 1930 session that also included sides by Charlie Patton, Willie Brown and Son House. You can hear Patton, Son House and Willie Brown shouting encouragement in the background. Turner Parrish cut eight sides between 1929 and 1933 including the the rollicking instrumental “The Fives”, a song also recorded by Hersal Thomas, Cripple Clarence Lofton and Jimmy Yancey.

Also worth mentioning is the mysterious Kid Cole of whom we play his “Niagra Fall Blues” which coincidentally makes no reference at all to the famous landmark. Kid Cole was a Cincinnati blues artist who cut four sides for Vocalion in 1928. According to Steven C. Tracy’s Going To Cincinnati, Cole most likely also recorded as Bob Coleman, cutting three sides under that name in 1929 and two sides with the Cincinnati Jug Band the same year. It’s also been suggested that he recorded under the moniker Sweet Papa Tadpole for a six song 1930 session with Tampa Red and the same year as Walter Cole for Gennett.

Also on tap are some fine Chicago blues including sides by Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, Eddie Boyd and Sunnyland Slim. Muddy’s “Forty Days And Forty Nights”comes from the new release, Authorized Bootleg: Live at the Fillmore Auditorium – San Francisco Nov 04-06 1966. This excelelnt set features the great George “Harmonica” Smith who played with Muddy for only a short stint. From the out-of-print LP Blues Southside Chicago we spin Eddie Boyd’s “Where You Belong” a session supervised by Willie Dixon. Mike Leadbitter discusses the aim of the record in his liner notes: “This album was recorded In Chicago’s Southside by Willie Dixon with one aim in mind-to provide the English enthusiast with blues played as they are played in the clubs, without gimmicks and without interfering A & R men. This album is not intended to be commercial in any way and by using top artists and top session men an LP has been produced that doesn’t sound as cold as studio recordings usually do.”

Show Notes:

Newspaper photo of Son House, and a July 14 Rochester Times-Union article about his comeback.

“I’m talking about the blues now, I ain’t talkin’ about no monkey junk”

Today’s title come from a term Son House used often as his biographer Dan Beaumont explains: “House had an amusing phrase he would use when asked about the blues being played in the 1960′s. It was a phrase he used to dismiss much of the blues music of that period. ‘It’s not the blues,’ he would say. ‘It’s just a lot of monkey junk.’ The blues so dominated House’s life-we have now established the price that he had paid for it-that a period in which he all but ceased playing it may well have seemed to him simply so much ‘monkey junk.’” As anyone who’s listened to Son House knows, there was nothing frivolous or gimmicky about Son’s blues. In his hands the blues were a gripping, all consuming feeling:

You know, the blues ain’t nothin’ but a low-down shakin’, low-down shakin’, achin’ chill
I say the blues is a low-down, old, achin’ chill
Well, if you ain’t had ‘em, honey, I hope you never will

Well, the blues, the blues is a worried heart, is a worried heart, heart disease
Oh, the blues is a worried old heart disease

(The Jinx Blues Part 1, 1942)

Today’s show is our annual tribute to Son House who created some of the most visceral and gripping blues of the 1930′s and 40′s and who emerged after two decades to find himself bewilderingly hailed as a blues hero to young white audiences around the world. It’s with a matter of pride that Son’s comeback came in my adopted hometown of Rochester, NY. Over the years I met numerous people who fondly recalled Son House here in Rochester and when I started doing my yearly radio birthday tributes it brought even more people out of the woodwork who gladly shared their memories with me. So it’s puzzling that the city has never honored Son in anyway. For years myself and others thought someone should rectify this sorry state of affairs; a plaque, a statue or something to honor one of the pivotal figures in blues history. The sad fact is there is nothing tangible in this city that shows Son ever made this city his home for a good part of his life (1943-1976). It’s worth noting that Son does have a plaque in Tunica, MS as part of the Mississippi Commission’s Blues Trail.

2009 Hot Blues For The Homeless …A Tribute To Son House Poster

Next week marks the third Hot Blues For The Homeless concert I put on with several other dedicated folks.  Now billed as Hot Blues For The Homeless …A Tribute To Son House,  we had a fantastic turn out last year, raised a good deal of money for the Rochester homeless and hopefully raised some awareness about Son House. If you live in Rochester, live close by are just visiting on June 7th make sure to help us celebrate the memory of Son House.

On today’s program we start out by playing the bulk of Son’s legendary Paramount recordings. In 1930, Arthur Laibley who had produced Charlie Patton’s last session for Paramount, stopped in Lula to arrange another session with Patton. Patton was famous throughout the Delta and had already recorded close to forty sides for the label. Patton told Laibley about House and about two other musicians Willie Brown and Louise Johnson, setting the stage for one of the blues most legendary recording sessions. The group headed to the Paramount studios in Grafton, WI, where House recorded six songs at the session, three of which were long enough to fill both sides of a 78: “Dry Spell Blues,” “Preachin’ The Blues,” and “My Black Mama.” Two songs, “Clarksdale Moan” and “Mississippi County Farm Blues” were issued as a 78, with a lone copy surfacing just recently. In September 2005, a collector announced he had obtained the lost “Clarksdale Moan” 78 in reasonably decent condition. The details of this discovery are not known to the public as the collector has chosen to remain anonymous. On April 4, 2006, both “Clarksdale Moan” and “Mississippi County Farm Blues” were released on the collection The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of from Yazoo Records. While “Clarksdale Moan” is a previously unknown song, “Mississippi County Farm Blues” is an earlier (and faster) version of a song Son House later recorded at his Library of Congress recording session in 1941. The unissued test of “Walking Blues” we spin was not found until 1985.

Rochester Times-Union article about Son House from July 6, 1964. This is the first article written about Son’s rediscovery.

Despite the disappointing sales of his records, for House the Grafton experience marked the beginning of a long musical friendship with Willie Brown. For much of the 30’s House reverted to his former pattern of preaching and then going back to the blues, usually at the prompting of Brown. He and Brown played all over the Delta as well as Arkansas and Tennessee for the rest of the 1930’s. In August of 1941 the folklorist Alan Lomax found House working as a tractor driver on a plantation near Robinsonville. House took Lomax a few miles north to Lake Cormorant where Willie Brown lived. They rounded up two other musicians, Fiddlin’ Joe Martin and Leroy Williams. Behind Clack’s general store, House recorded five songs for Lomax. The next summer in July, House recorded, unaccompanied, ten more songs for Lomax.

A year after the Library of Congress sides House vanished, or did the next best thing which was to move to Rochester, NY. More than two decades would pass before he would resurface. On June 23rd of 1964, Dick Waterman, Phil Spiro and Nick Perls found House living on 61 Grieg Street in Rochester, NY. Waterman became Son’s manager and the following year he was signed to Columbia and played the Newport Folk Festival. Son had several good years on the comeback trail; he toured the US playing folk festivals and the coffeehouse circuit and he did tours of Europe as well. He also performed locally in Rochester. From these later years we spin several tracks for his superb comeback album Father Of The Delta Blues plus several live cuts.

Also on today’s program is my good friend Dan Beaumont. University of Rochester professor Dan Beaumont discusses  his forthcoming book, Preachin’ the Blues: The Life And Music Of Son House. This is the first full-length biography of Son House and will be published by Oxford University Press in 2010. Dan will also be reading excerpts from the book at the workshop component of the Hot Blues event. in addition we also play a couple of clips of Dick Waterman talking about Son from an interview I conducted with Dick several years ago and who was a guest at last year’s event.

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:

Today’s wide ranging mix show spans the years 1927 through 1977. We have a whole slew of fine pre-war recordings on tap today including a set of fine female singers and a set of excellent piano players. We get things rolling today with “Going To Germany” sung in a wonderful, lazy, dreamy style by Noah Lewis. Gus Cannon was the best known of all the jugband musicians and a seminal figure on the Memphis blues scene. Cannon led his Jug Stompers on banjo and jug in a historic series of dates for the Victor label in 1928-1930. The ensemble usually included a second banjoist or guitarist, one of whom often doubled on kazoo, and the legendary Noah Lewis on harmonica. Lewis was one of the finest early harp blowers, cutting over a dozen titles with Cannon’s Jug Stompers as well eight sides under his own name.

Compared to Lewis, Blind Blake was one of the biggest blues stars of the 1920′s. His “Georgia Bound” was recorded on 17th August 1929 in Richmond in Illinois. It has a very similar melody line to the subsequent “Four Until Late” by Robert Johnson and was clearly an influence on him.

The Mississippi Moaner was another fine, if obscure,  vocalist who’s real name was Isaiah Nettles. He recorded four sides for Vocalion Records in Jackson, MS, on October 20, 1935. Only one 78 from the session was ever officially released, “Mississippi Moan” b/w “It’s Cold in China Blues” with “Chicago Blues” b/w “Good Doin’ Papa” tantalizingly unreleased.

Another mysterious and highly revered figure featured today is Geeshie Wiley, represnted by “Pick Poor Robin Clean.” Don Kent wrote in the notes to Mississippi Masters: Early American Blues Classics 1927-35 that “If Geeshie Wiley did not exist, she could not be invented: her scope and creativity dwarfs most blues artists. She seems to represent the moment when black secular music was coalescing into blues.” Wiley recorded just two 78′s in 1930 and 1931, both highly sought after and worth a fortune to 78 record collectors. There are no known photographs and little is known about her. She recorded “Last Kind Word Blues” and “Skinny Leg Blues” in Grafton, Wisconsin for Paramount Records in March of 1930, with Elvie Thomas backing her on second guitar. Thomas also recorded two songs for Paramount at the session, “Motherless Child Blues” and “Over to My House,” Wiley, providing second guitar and vocal harmonies. In 1931 Wiley and Thomas returned to Grafton to record two more sides for Paramount, “Pick Poor Robin Clean” and “Eagles on a Half.”

There are several fine female performers featured today including Bessie Smith, arguably the greatest woman blues singers of her era, Lottie Kimbrough, Bertha “Chippie” Hill and the obscure Johnnie Strauss. From Bessie’s last session in 1933 we spin her sensational “Gimmie A Pigfoot” featuring a crack band that included Frankie Newton, Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman and Chu Berry. Lottie Kimbrough was a Kansas City blues woman whose brief recording career spanned the years 1924 to 1929. Kimbrough was a famously large woman, nicknamed “the Kansas City Butter-ball.” Her “Rollin’ Log Blues” is a tune of haunting beauty propelled by the driving guitar of Mile Pruitt. Backed by Richard Jones Jazz Wizards, “Chippie” Hill turns in a powerful performance on her “Do Dirty Blues.” Compared to the others, Johnnie Strauss is a mere footnote, waxing just four sides for Decca in 1934 backed by Roosevelt Sykes. Her hoarse, yet powerhouse vocals, backed by a fine unknown violinist make for a compelling performance on her “St. Louis Johnnie Blues.”

We spotlight a quartet of excellent piano performances from the 1930′s by Little Brother Montgomery, Judson Brown, Pinetop Burks and Jesse James. Montgomery cut some of the greatest piano blues records if the 1930′s including a remarkable eighteen song session recorded on October 16, 1936 at the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans. Less well known and far less prolific are Judson Brown who cut just one side for Brunswick in 1930 (he also backed singers such as Marry Johnson, Jenny Pope, Mozelle Alderson and others), Jesse James who cut one four soong session in 1936 (two sides were unissued) and Pinetop Burks who cut six fine sides in San Antonio in 1937.

We feature is a trio of tracks from the LP BluesScene USA Vol. 2 – The Louisiana Blues on Storyville. The LP  collect sides cut for the Goldband label in the 1950′s and 60′s including several sides never issued. Goldband was based in Lake Charles, LA and formed by Eddie Shuler in 1945. From that album we hear excellnet sides by lesser known artists such as Big Chenier, Jay Stutes and Ashton Savoy.

In anticipation of our feature on Excello Records next week, we spin a pair of tracks by Lonesome Sundown. Cornelius Green AKA Lonesome Sundown was hired as one of Clifton Chenier’s guitarists in 1955 (Phillip Walker was the other). A demo tape was sent to producer Jay Miller who began producing him in 1956, leasing his “Leave My Money Alone” to Excello. Over the next eight years, Sundown’s Excello output included a host of memorable swamp classics before his 1965 retirement from the blues business to devote his life to the church. It was 1977 before Sundown could be coaxed back into a studio to cut Been Gone Too Long, an excellent comeback. He did some scattered live dates before passing in 1995.

We wrap up our program with two tracks by Rev. Gary Davis off the just released 3-CD set Live At Gerde’s Folk City 1962.  These sides were recorded by Stefan Grossman at Gerde’s Folk City in New York City with a two track Tandberg tape machine. Davis was Grossman’s guitar teacher at the time. These are the first time these sides have seen the light of day and sound quality is excellent.

Show Notes:

John Lomax

In June 1932, they arrived at the offices of the Macmillan publishing company in New York. Here Lomax proposed his idea for an anthology of American ballads and folksongs, with a special emphasis on the contributions of African Americans. It was accepted. In preparation he traveled to Washington to review the holdings in the Archive of American Folk Song of the Library of Congress. Lomax found the recorded holdings of the Archive woefully inadequate for his purposes. He therefore made an arrangement with the Library whereby it would provide recording equipment, obtained for it by Lomax through private grants, in exchange for which he would travel the country making field recordings to be deposited in the Archive. John Lomax was paid a salary of one dollar per year for this work (which included fund raising for the Library) and was expected to support himself entirely through writing books and giving lectures.Thus began a ten-year relationship with the Library of Congress that would involve not only John but the entire Lomax family, including his second wife, Ruby Terrill Lomax, whom he married in 1934.

In July they acquired a state-of-the-art, 315-pound acetate phonograph disk recorder. Installing it in the trunk of his Ford sedan, Lomax soon used it to record, at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, a twelve-string guitar player by the name of Huddie Ledbetter, better known as “Lead Belly,” whom they considered one of their most significant finds. During the next year and a half, father and son continued to make disc recordings of musicians throughout the South.

Prison Compound No. 1, Angola, LA. Leadbelly in foreground.jpg

Through a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, Lomax was able to set out in June 1933 on the first recording expedition under the Library’s auspices, with Alan Lomax (then eighteen years old) in tow. In their successful grant application they wrote, that prisoners, “Thrown on their own resources for entertainment . . . still sing, especially the long-term prisoners who have been confined for years and who have not yet been influenced by jazz and the radio, the distinctive old-time Negro melodies.” They toured Texas prison farms recording work songs, reels, ballads, and blues from prisoners. They also recorded music from many others not in prison.

From 1936 to 1942 Alan Lomax was Assistant in Charge of the Archive of Folk Song of the Library of Congress to which he and his father and numerous collaborators contributed more than ten thousand field recordings. During his lifetime, he collected folk music from the United States, Haiti, the Caribbean, Ireland, Great Britain, Spain, and Italy, assembling a treasure trove of American and international culture. Lomax was the first to record such legendary musicians as Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter, McKinley “Muddy Waters” Morganfield, and David “Honeyboy” Edwards, as well as an enormous number of other significant traditional musicians. He also recorded eight hours of music and spoken recollection with Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton in 1938, and four hours of the same format with Woody Guthrie in 1940.

Although John Lomax would partially retire in 1940, he continued to collect folk music for the remainder of his life and published his autobiography, Adventures of a Ballad Hunter, in 1947. By the time of his death in 1948, Lomax had aided in the collection of over 10,000 folk songs for the Library of Congress.

Blind Willie McTell, Georgia Hotel Room, 1940

From the time he left his position as head of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress in 1942 through the end of his long and productive career as an internationally known folklorist, author, radio broadcaster, filmmaker, concert and record producer, and television host, Alan Lomax amassed one of the most important collections of ethnographic material in the world. After he left the Library of Congress, Alan Lomax continued his work to document, analyze, and present traditional music, dance, and narrative through projects of various kinds throughout the world. With his father and on his own he published many books, including American Ballads and Folk Songs (1934) and Our Singing Country (1941). He received many honors and awards, including the National Medal of the Arts, the National Book Critics Circle award for his book The Land Where the Blues Began, and a “Living Legend” award from the Library of Congress. According to folklorist Roger Abrahams, he is “the person most responsible for the great explosion of interest in American folksong throughout the mid-twentieth century.”

Lomax traveled through Stovall’s Plantation in August of 1941 when he came acrass McKinley Morganfield, Latter to be know as Muddy Waters. Lomax recorded some two-dozen sides by Morganfield including a rendition of “I Be’s Troubled,” which became his first big seller when he recut it a few years later for the Chess brothers’ Aristocrat logo as “I Can’t Be Satisfied.” Lomax returned the next summer to record him again. Lomax knocked on Son House’s door in 1941 to record him for the Library of Congress on a tip from Muddy Waters. House rounded up Willie Brown, Fiddlin’ Joe Martin and Leroy Williams for the session. They cut six numbers that day and next summer in July, House recorded, unaccompanied, ten more songs for Lomax.

Alan Lomax

Alan Lomax returned to Parchman Farm in 1947-48 and made some remarkable recordings, armed with state-of-the-art technology, a cassette machine. These sides were originally issued as the LP Negro Prison Songs and reissued on CD as Prison Songs Vol. 1: Murderous Home by Rounder. Lomax gathered the prisons best lead signers for these recordings, all simply known by their nicknames: men like Bama, 22, Alex, Bull, Dobie Red, and Tangle Eye.

In 1959 and 1960, Alan Lomax revisited the American South to record traditional music in newly developed stereo sound. He recorded Delta blues, fife-and-drum ensembles, Sacred Harp singers, Ozark and Appalachian ballad singers, and prison work gangs. English folksinger Shirley Collins assisted Alan Lomax on the 1959 trip, and his daughter, Anna, accompanied him on the 1960 trip. The endeavor resulted in a seven-album series issued on Altantic Records in 1960, reissued on CD as Sounds of the South, and in a twelve-volume series on Prestige International, reissued in 1997 on Rounder Records as the Southern Journey series of the Alan Lomax Collection.

The advent of new technologies opened up new worlds for Lomax, and in the 1970s and 1980s he made a series of journeys back to the South to videotape traditional musical performances for the PBS series American Patchwork, completed and broadcast in 1990. Throughout the 90s and into the twenty-first century, Rounder records steadily worked toward reissuing a 100-CD series showcasing Lomax’ most legendary field recordings. Alan Lomax continued his work lecturing, writing, and working with the Association for Cultural Equity until his death at the age of 87 on the morning of July 19, 2002.

Show Notes:

We kick today’s show off with the last commercial recordings by Memphis Minnie and husband Ernest Lawlars AKA Little Son Joe. The two first began recording together back in February 1939, cutting about 70 sides together, laying down their last recordings for the J.O.B. label on October 5, 1953.  From this final session we spin the romping “Kissing In The Dark” with Minnie taking the vocal and “A Little Too Late” released under Little Son Joe’s name which is the “B” side of his “Ethel Bea.” He cut only a handful of sides under his name and these later numbers showcase a very fine, plaintive voiced singer and a terrific electric guitarist. Little Son Joe took up with Memphis Minnie in the late 1930′s, replacing her previous husband and partner, Kansas Joe McCoy. He made a few records under his own name at sessions in 1939 and 1941, including the well-known “Black Rat Swing” but mostly appeared in a supporting role. He retired from music with Minnie in the 1950′s.

We play another twin spin, this time moving up to the 1950′s, with a pair of featured tracks by Johnny Fuller. Fuller was a West Coast bluesman who left behind a bunch of 1950′s recordings. He was equally at home with low down blues, gospel, R&B, and rock & roll. Making the Bay Area his home throughout his career, Fuller turned in classic sides for Heritage, Aladdin, Specialty, Flair, Checker, and Hollywood. By and large retiring from the music scene in the 1960′s (with the exception of one excellent album in 1974), Fuller worked as a garage mechanic until his passing in 1985. “Roughest Place In Town” is superb rendition of “Tin Pan Alley” while “Mean Old World”, from the same session, is a smoldering uptempo number with some lyrics that still resonate today:

Well you think you got trouble, oughta see what I’m going through (2x)
Well I’m going through starvation, man jobs are so doggone few
Well the banks foreclosed on my home, had no place to hang my head (2x)
Well my finance man came, took my brand new Cadillac

Another double spin, of sorts, is a spotlight on two excellent out of print Bluesway LP’s: Lee Jackson’s Lonely Girl (Bluesway, 1974) and Andrew “Voice” Odom’s Farther Up The Road (Bluesway, 1969). Guitarist/bass session man Lee Jackson played on records of Eddie Clearwater, Homesick James, J.B. Hutto, Little Walter, Shakey Jake, Johnny Shines, Sunnyland Slim, Roosevelt Sykes, Hound Dog Taylor among others. He cut a few singles of his own on small labels and one full-length LP. He was murdered in Chicago in 1979. Andrew Odom was was a great journeyman Chicago singer who recorded relatively sparingly. Odom fell in with Albert King and Johnny O’Neal on the St. Louis blues scene of the mid-’50s and  made his recording debut in 1961, singing “East St. Louis” with the band of one Little Aaron for the obscure Marlo imprint. He arrived in Chicago around 1960, hooking up with Earl Hooker and working and recording with him through the decade. A single for Nation Records in 1967 (as Andre Odom) preceded his debut album for BluesWay (cut in 1969, it remained in the can for quite a while before the label finally issued it). A guest spot on Jimmy Dawkins’s  All for Business, was a highlight of the ’70s for the singer. He cut his own album for the French Isabel label in 1982 in the company of Magic Slim & the Teardrops (reissued by Evidence in 1993) and finished his career with the superb 1992 set for Flying Fish, Goin’ to California which came out posthumously. Odom passed in December 1991.

There’s some excellent vocal performances on today’s program including a gorgeous reading of Percy Mayfield’s “Please Send Me Someone To Love” by Dinah Washington and Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers on the original 1949 version of  “How Blue Can You Get.” This number was covered in 1951 by Louis Jordan which is where B.B. King first heard the song. King began using it in his live act at recorded it on his classic Live At The Regal album from 1963. Speaking of Percy Mayfield we hear Percy at his world weary best on the mellow “Ha Ha In The Daytime” his last side for Ray Charles’ Tangerine label, a remake of a previously unreleased 1962 number. This one come from Rhino’s Tangerine and Atlantic Sides an indispensable collection of Mayfield’s 1960′s sides.

From the 1970′s we play some fine downhome blues form Guitar Gabriel plus excellent field recordings by James Davis and Albert Macon with Robert Thomas recorded by the tireless George Mitchell. Guitar Gabriel is familiar to some collectors as Nyles Jones, the name under which he recorded the superb LP, My South, My Blues, for the Gemini label in 1970.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. Albert Macon began teaching Robert Thomas to play blues guitar when Thomas, who was nine years younger than Macon, was about 15 years old. For over 40 years the two men played music together at fish fries, parties and festivals around Georgia. The two men also received national and international attention, playing such venues as the Knoxville World’s Fair and the American Blues Festival in the Netherlands and the WDR Blues Festival in Bonn, Germany. Macon and Thomas recorded Blues and Boogie from Alabama on the Dutch Swingmaster label as well as captured by George Mitchell

As usual there’s plenty of vintage blues from the 1920′s and 1930′s. On tap today are classic performances by Henry Thomas, Tommy Johnson, Georgia White, Sleep John Estes, William Moore and all-time blues classics in Blind Willie McTell’s “Statesboro Blues” and Pinetop Smith’s “Pine Top’s Blues.” We also jump ahead to hear Son House on a 1964 performance of “Pony Blues” (34 years after his recording debut for Paramount) which comes from the excellent Blue Goose LP The Real Delta Blues, a great collection of early rediscovery sides that unfortunately has yet to make it to CD.

Show Notes:

Today’s shown revolves around blues songs relating to presidents and politics. Overt political commentary was rare in recorded blues and gospel prior to the 1960′s. Some of the most moving political songs were tributes for Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, who had great appeal to African Americans. One theme running through today’s show is several songs dealing with the death of president Kennedy who was assassinated 45 years ago yesterday. There were also quite a number of gospel songs written on the topic, and although we normally don’t play gospel we make an exception today. Roosevelt was considered the “poor man’s friend” and the lyrical evidence suggests he was viewed “as a benevolent and powerful patron or ‘bossman’” while Truman was seen as much more fallible and “unresponsive to the economic plight of black people as well as their growing demands for equal rights.” Kennedy’s reputation, particularly in the early years, was rather ambivalent but his death, as the lyrical evidence makes clear, “virtually eradicated any criticism of his international or political policies and left him an unadulterated hero.” These last quotes come from scholar Gudio Van Rijn who has written the books Roosevelt Blues, The Truman & Eisenhower Blues and Kennedy’s Blues which analyze lyrics of blues and gospel songs that deal with topical issues. In addition each book has an accompanying CD, which is where many of today’s songs come from. Several of the Kennedy songs come from the album Can’t Keep From Crying: Topical Blues on the Death of President Kennedy on the Testament label.

I guess you can say I wear my sympathies my sleeve with the opening numbers; Champion Jack Dupree’s “God Bless Our New President” and Bobo Jenkins’ “Democrat Blues.” “God Bless Our New President” was cut only a few days after Truman was sworn in following the death of FDR. The flip side was “F.D.R. Blues.” The record was advertised in Billboard as a “new sensational timely blues record.” In “Democrat Blues” cut in 1952 Jenkins is clearly not happy about Dwight Eisenhower who was the first Republican in the White House since 1933. If Jenkins was still with us he would clearly be a happy man.

A running thread throughout today’s show is some remarkable songs on the death of President Kennedy. In the wake of John Kennedy’s assassination, Pete Welding recorded over a dozen acoustic blues tributes to the late president for the compilation Can’t Keep from Crying: Topical Blues on the Death of President Kennedy in late 1963 and early 1964. Several other songs come form Kennedy’s Blues. Not surprisingly Kennedy’s assassination provoked an outpouring of memorial songs where “the deceased president emerges as a near-saint.” As Rijn notes, “the blues and gospel singers’ president was in heaven now. Like Christ he had died for our sins.” Indeed Kennedy’s death is often compared to the crucifixion of Christ a theme hammered home in several gospel songs. Among the moving performances are Otis Spann’s impassioned “Sad Day In Texas”, his voice choked with emotion, Jim and Fannie Brewer’s simply but deeply moving “I Want To Know Why” and Perry Tillis’ “Kennedy Moan.” There are several strong gospel performances including Ronda Mitchell & Mrs. Lovell magnificent “J.F. Kennedy’s Reservation”, The Southern Bell Singers’ soaring “The Tragedy Of Kennedy” and the Dixie Nightinglaes’ haunting “Assassination.”

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president of the United States, thousands of black Americans, traditionally Republican, deserted the party of Lincoln and became Democrats. Roosevelt was immensely popular among blacks as evidenced in songs like Otis Jackson’s two-part “Tell Me Why You Like Roosevelt” and Big Joe Wiilliams’ moving “His Spirit Lives On.” While were practically no blues lyrics critical of Roosevelt, Truman was criticized explicitly early on. Expectations were high for post-war prosperity and Truman’s inability to stem inflation made him ripe for criticism. It wasn’t long for the sentiment expressed in Champion Jack Dupree’s “God Bless Our New President” cut in April 1945 (Truman became President in January that year) became more pointed in songs like J.B. Lenoir’s “Eisenhower Blues” and the “positively revolutionary” variation “Everybody Wants To Know:”

You rich people, listen, you better listen real deep
If we poor peoples get hungry, we gonna take some food to eat

While Rijn has yet to write his book on Nixon (I have no doubt he will) there were a number of songs about Nixon and as you would imagine they were not very flattering. Watergate is a topic taken up by Howlin’ Wolf on “Watergate Blues” on his final album The Back Door Wolf while Big Joe is back with his “Watergate Blues.” Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown addresses Nixon directly in “Please Mr. Nixon” to “Don’t cut off your welfare line.” Other songs that directly addressed the president were several songs that came along at the same time including Roy C’s “Open Letter To The President” and his more explicit “Impeach The President, King Solomon’s “Please Mr President” the Angels Of Joy’s gorgeous plea “Mr President.”

Today’s show also features a trio of fantasy songs inspired by Big Bill Broonzy’s “Just A Dream.” The idea of a black man as a president was the stuff of fantasy as Big Bill relates:

Dreamed I was in the White House, sittin’ in the president’s chair.
I dreamed he’s shaking my hand, said “Bill, I’m glad you’re here”
But that was just a dream. What a dream I had on my mind
And when I woke up, not a chair could I find

Some fifteen years later Johnny Shines recorded his “Livin’ In The White House:”

Now I’m livin’ in the White House, just trying to help old Ike along (2x)
And tryin’ to make an admendment, for things Harry left undone

I want to live in paradise, make servants out of kins and queens (2x)
Now, don’t shake me, please, darling, this is one time I wanna finish my dream

Then there’s Louisiana’s Red surreal, hilarious “Red’s Dream” where he goes “to the U.N. and set the whole nation right”, threatens Castro with a “Georgia shave” (slit his throat) and is finally summoned to the White House by the President where he plans to install some “soul brothers” in the senate like Ray Charles, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Jimmy Reed, Bo Diddley and Big Maybelle! Then of course there’s Louis Jordan’s “Jordan For President.” After announcing that he is ready to move “… from the phonograph record to the ‘Congressional Record’”, Jordan promises to help listeners “… get straight on all the candidates” and “… make the proper selection in the coming election.” Jordan’s hoping you’ll vote for the swing ticket: “For an administration that’ll move you, groove you, and keep you fit” and “… to walk on the sunny side of the street with the candidate with the beat … vote for Jordan for President!” Jordan’s electoral promises: “Every American will get his portion – after I get mine” and “… we’ll all serve – time!.” I Don’t Want To Be President” by the ever philosophical Percy Mayfield takes a Nixon era slant:

Now just suppose I had a girlfriend and called her, and she lived way across the lake
Why Congress would know the whole conversation because, you see, they’d have it on tape
Then they put me on the television to tell the whole world my private life
Hell I wouldn’t mind if people knowing but what about my wife