Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

1924 Paramount Catalog

Paramount Records recorded some of the greatest blues artists of the 20′s and early 30′s and today we kick off 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 wnet 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.

Like all the early race labels, Paramount’s fledgling catalog was dominated by women singers. As Tony Russell wrote: “Blinded by the aurora of Blind Lemon Jefferson and his fellow bluesman, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that for much of the ’20s blues was almost exclusively women’s business, whether on the vaudeville stage or amidst the smoking lights of the tent show.” We open the program with tracks by Alberta Hunter, Monette Moore, Lucille Hegamin, Trixie Smith and Ma Rainey. Hunter would become one of Paramount’s top sellers and her releases were given full-page ads in the Chicago Defender. According to Alex van der Tuuk, Hunter “had been working for a couple of years at the Dreamland Theater in Chicago and had started her recording career with Black Swan in New York, but had become disenchanted with them because they did so little to ptomote her records in contrast with the big buildup they were affording Ethel Waters.” She switched to Paramount in 1922 where her recordings launched Paramount’s 1200 race series. Hunter wrote a lot of her own material and her song “Down Hearted Blues”, became Bessie Smith’s first record in 1923. Hunter staid with the label through 1924, cutting around three-dozen sides.

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.

Less well remembered are Monette Moore, Lucille Hegamin and Trixie Smith. Monette Moore began her career accompanying silent films in Kansas City and then toured the vaudeville circuit as a pianist and singer. In the early 1920s she made her way to New York and became active in musical theater. Her recording career began in 1923. She cut over a dozen sides for Paramount. Lucille Hegamin was the second African-American Blues singer to release a record in 1920, just few months after Mamie Smith’s groundbreaking success with “Crazy Blues.” Hegamin’s first record was “The Jazz Me Blues” and “Everybody’s Blues” for Arto Records and it sold well enough, but her next record in 1921 “Arkansas Blues” and “I’ll Be Good But I’ll Be Lonesome” was one of the most popular records of 1921 and made her a star of the blossoming Blues scene. It was issued on several different labels including paramount. Trixie Smith was born in Atlanta and around 1915 moved north to New York to work in show business. At first she worked in minstrel shows and on the TOBA vaudeville circuit. In 1922 Smith made her first recordings for the Black Swan label and later that year she won a blues singing contest in New York beating out Lucille Hegamin and others with her song “Trixie’s Blues.” In 1924 Smith made her debut for Paramount, cutting twenty sides for the label through 1926.

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 as well as the lesser known, but superb slide player, Bo Weavil Jackson who’s records made virtually no impact among the blues buying public.

“Papa” Charlie Jackson was a six-string banjo who was one of the earliest and most successful of the solo blues singer/instrumentalists. ackson settled in Chicago on the famed Maxwell Street around 1920 where he began earning a living by playing on street corners and at house parties. In 1924 he cut his first solo sides “Papa’s Lawdy Blues” and “Airy Man Blues” for the Paramount label. During this period Jackson also became a sideman with many of the hot groups in and around Chicago.He also recorded with Ma Rainey and Ida Cox before his subsequent death around 1938.

In 1925 Blind Lemon Jefferson was discovered by a Paramount recording scout and taken to Chicago to make his first records either in December 1925 or January 1926.  Jefferson was the first male blues artist to attain a national audience. His extremely successful recording career continued until 1929 when he died under mysterious circumstances. He recorded over 100 sides all for the Paramount label, except one 78 for OKeh. Forty-four ads for his records in the Chicago Defender between 1926 and 1930.

Blind Blake was one of the most popular bluesmen of the 1920’s with his  only rival in popularity was label mate Blind Lemon Jefferson. Blake’s records were advertised heavily in the Chicago Defender with twenty-four ads featured. And as Tony Russell sums up: “Blind Blake’s most remarkable achievement as a recording artist was that in a career lasting almost six years, in which he made about 80 sides, he was never reduced, whether by slipping skill, waning inspiration or the single-mindedness of record company executives, from a multifaceted musician to a formulaic blues player.”

Paramount is famous for its roster of delta blues artists which boasted Son House, Charlie Patton, Tommy Johnson, Ishman Bracey, Skip James, Willie Brown, Louise Johnson, Geeshie Wiley and Rube Lacy. Credit for much of this talent goes to Henry C. Spier, a music store owner from Jackson, Mississippi who 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 and was a hit. In all, Patton recorded 38 numbers for Paramount in 1929. Patton cut one more session for Paramount in 1930 and three final sessions for Vocalion in 1934.

In 1930, Arthur Laibley who had produced 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 Paramount. 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, Brown four (“Kicking In My Sleep Blues b/w Window Blues” has never been found – or has it?), Johnson four and four by Patton backed by Brown.

-Listen to the Alex van der Tuuk interview (edited, MP3, 1 hr.)

Show Notes:

A while back we did our first installment of Forgotten Blues Ladies, which focused primarily on the 1920’s and 30’s. Today’s sequel covers some of the same territory but stretches up through the 1940’s and early 50’s. The Classic Female Blues era as it’s generally called spanned from 1920 to 1929 with its peak from 1923 to 1925. Although officially introduced by Mamie Smith with her hit Okeh recording of “Crazy Blues” in 1920, vaudeville entertainers such as “coon shouter” Sophie Tucker and comedienne Marie Cahill anticipated some aspects of the style on record prior to World War I. Mamie Smith, an educated city girl from the West End of Cincinnati, was something of an anomaly among the early singers; most of the women were from the South and toured on the TOBA booking circuit. A few of these artists, including Ethel Waters, the unrecorded Florence Mills, and the incomparable Bessie Smith, made the transition to ‘legitimate’ venues. Some singers led their own bands, and several key figures in jazz, such as Coleman Hawkins, made their way into the business playing in these groups. After 1930, with the advent of popular singers in a non-”Classic Blues” vein, the genre went into a slow decline. The most popular of these singers were Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Mamie Smith, Ida Cox, Victoria Spivey, Sippie Wallace, Alberta Hunter and Clara Smith. Hundreds of others recorded during this period and we will be focusing on many of these lesser knowns. In some cases they recorded dozens of sides or just a handful, some were quite popular in their day while, others were popular just regionally while others achieved little or no success yet they cut some exceptional blues records that, outside of collectors, remain all but forgotten today.

Bertha “Chippie” Hill

After the era of the classic blues woman, women were mostly confined to singing in cabarets, clubs and barrelhouses for the remainder of the pre-war period. Percentage wise there were far more women blues singers in the pre-war era, with men dominating the market in the post-war era. In the 40’s many woman fronted big bands, which gave way to smaller combos, eventually making the transition to the more hard edged R&B woman singers of the 50’s and 60′s.

From the early era of woman blues singers, Irene Scruggs,  Bertha “Chippie” Hill , Trixie Smith,  Lil Johnson and Edith Wilson achieved a modicum of success but remain largely forgotten today. The great jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams recalled that Irene Scruggs was already an established force on the St. Louis blues scene the first time Williams went there as a young member of a vaudeville revue. “In St. Louis, our show picked up a young blues singer named Irene Scruggs,” Williams said in an interview. “Irene had not long settled in St. Louis, and was starting out to become one of St. Louis’ finest singers.” Between 1924 and 1930 she cut twenty sides backed by big names such as Kid Ory, King Oliver, Lonnie Johnson, Blind Blake and Little Brother Montgomery. By the 40′s, Scruggs had joined the population of expatriate black performers living abroad, residing first in Paris wand later to Germany. In the 50′s, she did several radio broadcasts for the British BBC.

Bertha “Chippie” Hill recorded close to two-dozen sides between 1925 and 1928 and recorded the first version of “Trouble In Mind.” She gave up performing and recording in the 30’s but made a comeback in the 40’s cutting sides for the Circle label between 1946-48, sang in clubs in New York and Chicago and at the 1948 Paris Jazz Festival. She died in 1950 in a traffic accident.

Both Trixie Smith and Lil Johnson were well served on record. Smith moved to New York  and won a blues-singing contest in 1922. She cut close to 50 sides between 1922 and 1939 including the popular hit “Freight Train Blues.” After a 1926 she didn’t record again until 1938. After making a few records in 1929, Lil Johnson didn’t surface again on record until 1935, cutting some 60 sides through 1937.

Edith Wilson’s first professional experience came in 1919 in Louisville’s Park Theater. Lena Wilson and her brother, Danny, performed in Louisville; Edith married Danny and joined their act as a trio. Together they performed on the East Coast in 1920-21, and when they were in New York City Wilson was picked up by Okeh Records, who recorded her in 1921 with Johnny Dunn’s Jazz Hounds. She recorded 17 tunes with Dunn and Okeh in 1921-22. In 1924 she worked with Fletcher Henderson in New York. She remained a nightclub and theater singer, working for years on the New York entertainment scene. She retired from active performance in 1963 but made a comeback in 1973. Her last live show was given at the 1980 Newport Jazz Festival.

Little is known about most of today’s early blues ladies like Liza Brown who cut six sides in 1929, the tough St. Louis singer Lizzie Washington who cut the very first version of “Everyday I Have The Blues”, the sultry sounding fifteen year-old Annie Turner who’s accompanied by Little Brother Montgomery plus fine shadowy singers like Laura Smith, Priscilla Stewart, Cleo Gibson, Hattie Hudson and Gertrude Perkins, the latter three only cutting a solitary 78. Gibson’s  “I’ve Got Ford Engine Movements In My Hips” uses one of the more unique automobile metaphors:

I got Ford engine movements in my hips,
Ten thousand miles guarantee
A Ford is a car everybody wants to ride
Jump in, you will see
You can all have a Rolls Royce
A Packard and such
Take a Ford engine boys
To do your stuff
I’ve got Ford engine movements in my hips,
Ten thousand miles guarantee
I say ten thousand miles guarantee

Moving up to the late 1930′s and 1940′s we spin tracks by Blue Lu Barker, Betty Hall Jones, Paula Watson, Vivian Greene, Albinia Jones, Myra Taylor and  Pearl Traylor. Vivian Greene, Paula Watson and  Betty Hall Jones were part of a wave of piano pounding blues ladies, most based around the Los Angles area in the mid to late 40’s and early 50′s. Blues vocalist, stand-up pianist and occasional organist, Betty Hall Jones worked with Bus Moten’s band and Addie Williams in Kansas City. Returning to California, she performed as a single artist before joining drummer/vocalist Roy Milton’s band in L.A. in 1937. She worked with West Coast artists in the 40′s such as Alton Redd and Luke Jones and recorded under her own name in the late 40′s for Atomic, Capitol and under Luke Jones’ name for Modern. In the 1950′s she recorded for Dootone and Combo.

Little Miss Cornshucks

Singer Blue Lu Barker, Alberta Adams and Myra Taylor had the longest careers of the bunch, with Taylor and Adams still musically active. Barker was born, raised, and buried in New Orleans.  In both the ’30s and ’40s she was one of the more popular blues performers, often appearing alongside artists such as Cab Calloway and Jelly Roll Morton. Sometimes it was her husband, musician Danny Barker, who opened the. Barker’s most famous recordings were done in 1938 including “Don’t You Feel My Leg.” The early Barker material features her husband on banjo and guitar and the couple would continue performing together until his death.  The couple was contracted to Decca in the ’30s and the Apollo label the following decade. Her career continued after that, all the way up to a last recording taped live in 1998 at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

Myra Taylor cut ten sides for Mercury in 1946 and 1947. In 2002 she was voted Comeback Artist of the Year and also Female Blues Artist of the Year by Living Blues Magazine.

Wrapping up in the early 1950′s we play cuts by Christine Kittrell, Alberta Adams, Little Miss Cornshucks, Little Sylvia, Lil Greenwood, Fluffy Hunter, Marylin Scott, Dolly cooper, Ella Johnson, Violet Hall and Terry Timmons. Remarkably Adams remains musically active. Alberta Adams first made her mark on Detroit’s bustling Hastings Street club scene as a dancer, and a short time later she began singing. She got to know and got an education from her contemporaries on Hastings Street’s club scene, and they included John Lee Hooker, Big Maceo, Eddie Burns, and Eddie Kirkland. Adams also recorded for Savoy Records. As her reputation spread beyond Detroit, she had the chance to perform with other touring bands, including those of Duke Ellington, Louis Jordan, Wynonie Harris, James Moody, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, and T-Bone Walker. In the 90′s through the 2000′s Adams recorded several albums and is still active in her 90th year.

“In 1943, when I was 19 or so years old, I went to a nightclub in the northeast black ghetto section of Washington and heard a singer whose name was Little Miss Cornshucks and I thought, “My God!!!” She was better than anything I’d ever heard. She would come out like a country girl with a bandanna around her head, a basket in her hand, and so forth, which she’d set aside fairly early on into the show. She could sing the blues better than anybody I’ve ever heard to this day. I asked her that night if she would mind if I made a record of her for myself. We cut “Kansas City” along with some other blues and she also sang a song called “So Long”. She had such a wonderful sound and I remember just thinking, “My God! My God!” And I didn’t have a record company, I just made those records for myself.” So wrote Ahmet Ertegun in What’d I Say: The Atlantic Story. Little Miss Cornshucks became a major attraction at Chicago’s Club De Lisa by the time she was 18, and began appearing at the Rhumboogie Club from its opening in 1942. Between 1946 and 1951 she cut some two-dozen sides for labels like Sunbeam, Aladdin, Miltone and Coral. In 1960 she recorded an LP for Chess.

Christine Kittrell first recorded tracks in 1951 with Louis Brooks and his Band. In 1954 she recorded tracks for the Republic Label, two of which featured Little Richard on piano and a third with Richard as backing vocalist. During the 1940′s and early 50′s, Kittrell toured extensively, and recorded for Tennessee, Republic, Federal, King and Vee-Jay Records over her career. We spin her biggest hit, “Sittin’ Here Drinking.”

Ella & Buddy Johnson

Lil Greenwood is best known for her time as one the main singers for the Duke Ellington Orchestra in the late 50′s and early 60′s, Between 1950 and 1953 she cut some two dozen numbers under her own name for Modern, Specialty and Federal. Today’s selection, “Monday Morning Blues” is a duet with labelmate Little Willie Littlefield.

Terry Timmons began singing professionally while still in her mid-teens. She moved to Chicago in the late ’40′s and crossed paths with Memphis Slim, through whom she was signed to Premium Records, the label for which Slim was recording at the time. She was a featured performer at Slim’s shows at the end of the 1940s and the start of the 1950s, around the time of her first recording sessions. She cut more sides for Premium in 1951 plus sides for Victor and the United Records label.

Born in Darlington, South Carolina, Ella Johnson she joined her brother Buddy Johnson in New York as a teenager, where he was leading a popular band at the Savoy Ballroom. Johnson scored her first hit with “Please, Mr. Johnson” in 1940. Subsequent hits included “Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?” “When My Man Comes Home” and today’s featured track, “Hittin’ On Me”. Her popular 1945 recording of “Since I Fell For You”, became a jazz standard. She continued to perform with Buddy into the 1960s. She died in New York in 2004.

We wrap up with a trio of salacious blues ladies including Marylin Scott who’s selection gives today’s show its title. Mary DeLoatch, also known as Mary DeLoach, was a Norfolk, VA-based gospel singer who used the name Marylin Scott or Marylyn Scott the Carolina Blues Girl when performing blues. When performing gospel she sounded quite a bit  like Sister Rosetta Tharpe. She switched to exclusively religious material after 1950 and her final recording appears to have been made in 1967 when she was photographed playing an electric guitar while wearing evangelical robes.The raunchy “I Got What My Daddy Likes” is worth quoting:

I got what my daddy likes
Yes I got what my baby likes
An he’s just crazy about me, he  always let me have my fun

Now I’m five feet standing, I’m five feet laying down
I’m a big meat mama from my head on down
I got what my daddy like
Yes I got what my baby Likes
An he’s just crazy about me, he  always let me have my fun

Now he flips my flapjacks, clear across the table
He seats all the horses in my little stable
I got what my daddy like
Yes I got what my baby Likes
An he’s just crazy about me, he  always let me have my fun

Pearl Traylor was another fine, under recorded singer who cut nine sides in 1945 including the magnificent “Jive I Like” who’s tough minded frankness harks back to the earlier era of hard edged blues singers:

If there’s any addictive women in this house, get your hat and coat and walk (2x)
‘Cause I’m going to start my notorious song
You see my little brother smokes reefer, yes and my cousin too (2x)
Yes junk runs in my family, what the heck do you expect me to do

I’m going to drink bad whiskey, smoke Mister Charlie’s tea (2x)
And I don’t care about nobody if they can’t get high with me

Then there’s Fluffy Hunter’s rocking bawdy ‘The Walkin’ Blues” and sixteen year old Little Sylvia’s equally ribald “Drive, Daddy, Drive” (“‘Cause when I wanna ride you gotta, ride me daddy/I’d rather ride than eat”) which makes you wonder just how they got away with songs like this! Little Sylvia would go on to become one half of the duo Mickey & Sylvia and scored a Top 20 hit with “Love Is Strange” in 1957.

Show Notes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Show Notes:

On today’s show we spin multiple tracks by several performers including opening with a trio by Cripple Clarence Lofton plus twin spins of Georgia Tom and Jack Kelly. I’ve long been a fan of Lofton, a hugely entertaining boogie-woogie pianist. In fact when I was asked to contribute to the Encyclopedia of the Blues I chose Lofton as one of the entries to write. As William Russell famously wrote, Lofton was “ a three-ring circus” who would enliven a performance with dancing, whistling, finger snaps and drumming on the body of the piano. As Peter Silvester wrote in A Left Hand Like God: “What he lacked in discipline, however, he more than made up for with vivacity and exuberance.” Of his recordings we play his rowdy “Brown Skin Girls” complete with whistling, scat singing and Big Bill Broonzy’s bouncy fretwork and the rollicking instrumental “House Rent Struggle.”  “Sweetest Thing Born” sports a fine vocal from Red Nelson who cut three other superb numbers with Lofton including the masterpiece “Crying Mother Blues” which we played a few weeks back. Lofton’s politically incorrect nickname stemmed from a congenital lameness in his leg that made him walk with a pronounced limp. Born in Tennessee he lived most of his life in Chicago becoming a fixture on the Chicago nightlife scene. He owned his own nightclub called the Big Apple where he ran his own boogie school teaching youngsters the art form. Between 1935 and 1943 he cut close to forty sides for Vocalion, Swaggie, Solo Art and Session. Lofton remained on the scene cutting sides for the Gennett, Vocalion, Solo Art, Riverside, Session and Pax labels. He stayed around Chicago until his death in 1957 from a blood clot in the brain.

Jack Kelly was born in Mississippi but spent his life playing in the streets of Memphis with musicians such as Frank Stokes, Will Batts and Walter Horton among others. In 1933 he cut 14 sides with his South Memphis Jug Band. Kelly cut another session in 1939 and a final one in 1952 for the Sun label with Walter Horton credited as by Jackie Boy & Little Walter. “Country Woman” has a wonderful world-weary vocal from Will Batts and a gentle drive propelled by the guitars of Kelly and Dane Sane while “World Wandering Blues” is sung powerfully in Kelly’s gruff voice backed by Batts’ ragged, wailing violin as he boasts:

I am in this world, wandering from town to town (2x)
Well if I find my baby, I’m gonna run her just like she was a hound
Well if you play the violin, I will do the howlin’ (2x)
Well, be late at night, these women will start to prowlin’

Georgia Tom Dorsey arrived in Chicago in 1916 where he went to music college and worked as a band pianist for Ma Rainey among others. In 1928 he began recording under his own name and as a session pianist. His duet with Tampa Red that year on “It’s Tight Like That” was a massive hit and provided the men with several years of lucrative recording work. In 1930 he founded his own gospel publishing company and left blues altogether in 1932 devoting himself to gospel which he did for almost a half century. During his blues playing days most of his work was confined to hokum and novelty items with Tampa Red and groups like the Hokum Boys and the Famous Hokum Boys. On slower blues he was often quite exceptional as on a fine eight-song session with guitarist Scrapper Blackwell recorded in early 1930. From that session we showcase the wistful “Mississippi Bottom Blues” and the touching “Gee, But It’s Hard” with outstanding contributions from Blackwell, particularly on the latter number.

As usual we play several fine pianists including Montana Taylor, Frank “Springback” James and Speckled Red. Montana Taylor is best remembered for his instrumentals although he proved himself a fine singer on his rediscovery in 1946. From that date we hear his poignant “I Can’t Sleep” cut for the Circle label. There’s also a live recording of this song from a This Is Jazz broadcast from the same year. All of Taylor’s sides can be found on Document’s Montana Taylor & ‘Freddy’ Shayne 1929-1946.

Pianist Frank James cut 18 sides at five sessions between 1934 through and 1937. Nothing definite is known about him other than he was clearly influenced by the popular Leroy Carr. He delivers a moving performance on “Will My Bad Luck Ever Change?.”  Speckled Red got his start playing in rent parties, brothels and clubs in Detroit in the early 20’s. In 1928 he joined the Red Rose Minstrel Show, which included Jim Jackson. He played with Jackson and Tampa Red in Memphis in 1929-30 and it was there in 1929 that he made his recording debut for Brunswick.  He scored a hit with “The Dirty Dozen”, the first recorded version of the song. He recorded next for Bluebird in 1938. He began recording again at the beginning of the blues revival with sessions in 1956-57 for Tone and Delmark. He made further recordings for Folkways and Storyville among others. He passed in 1973. “Speckled Red’s Blues” comes from a 1930 session and showcases his powerhouse vocals, and rollicking, exciting piano technique.

A few weeks back we paid tribute on our program to the influential singer Doctor Clatyon. Clayton’s influence can be heard on covers of his songs by B.B. King and Smoky Hogg. King’s “Hold That Train” comes from the album My Kind Of Blues, which King called his favorite at one point. King greatly admired Clayton and covered several of his songs. Andrew Hogg was born in Texas and in the 30’s and ran with guitarist the Black Ace playing for dances in small East Texas towns. In 1937 he waxed a solitary 78 and wouldn’t record again until 1947. Hogg only scored two R&B hits but was a consistent seller who cut hundreds of records for numerous labels through the late 50’s. He passed in 1960. Our selection, “I Declare”, is a remake of Clayton’s “I Need My Baby” which B.B. King also covered under the title “Walking Doctor Bill.” In 1951 Hogg also recorded a version of “Walking Doctor Bill.”. He also covered Clayton’s “Angels In Harlem” as “Angels In Houston.”

There’s several great guitarists featured today including T-Bone Walker and Lonnie Johnson. In a 1947 Record Exchanger article, T-Bone noted his favorite blues singers and had this to say about Johnson: “Wonderful blues singer. Don’t ever leave him out. Sharpest cat in the world, wore a silk shirt blowing in the wind in the winter nice head of hair, and a twenty-dollar gold piece made into a stickpin.” From 1952 we hear T-Bone in prime form on “I Miss You Baby.” We jump up to 1956 and hear T-Bone backing guitarist/vocalist R.S. Rankin on “You Don’t Know What You’re Doin “ for Atlantic. As for Lonnie we turn to 1937 to hear his gorgeous instrumental “Got the Blues for the West End.”

Also worth noting are a pair of superb tracks by early woman blues singers Clara Smith and Trixie Smith. Although overshadowed by Bessie Smith, Clara Smith was a magnificent and popular singer who cut over 120 sides between 1923 and 1929. She died of heart disease in 1935 at the age of 41.”It’s Tight Like That” is knockout, rousing version of this oft-covered number sung with gusto and some great trombone form Charlie Green. Trixie Smith moved to New York when she was 1920 and won a blues-singing contest in 1922. She cut close to 50 sides between 1922 and 1939 including the popular hit “Freight Train Blues.” After a 1926 she didn’t record again until 1938, returning in fine fashion as we hear on her remake of “Trixie’s Blues” featuring a marvelous guitar solo by Teddy Bunn. She passed a few years later in 1943.