Category: Atlanta Blues

Show Notes:

Over the course of  two shows we delve deep into the music and history of the great Blind Willie McTell. The inspiration for these shows comes from the new collection It’s The Best Stuff Yet!, which for the first time, collects the entirety of McTell’s final recording captured in 1956 by Ed Rhodes. We’ll spin recordings from that session as well as some of his best sides from the 20’s through the 50’s.

There’s a bit of nostalgia for me doing these shows because I credit the Yazoo album, Blind Willie McTell: The Early Years, as gateway record – the one that really got me down the rabbit hole of old time blues. I bought the album right before I went to college and played it endlessly much to the dismay of my poor roommate who’s tastes ran more towards Phil Collins! The next McTell album I came across was Atlanta Twelve String, collecting his 1949 Atlantic session, which I found at the college radio station.

On our first program we air my interview with Grammy award winning producer Larry Cohn. Cohn has a long history with McTell; he wrote the liner notes to that Yazoo album, produced The Definitive Blind Willie McTell when he ran Sony’s Roots ‘N’ Blues division, was producing his own McTell box set which unraveled under bad circumstances and he was also a close friend of Ed Rhodes whom he shares some wonderful stories about. Cohn still has Ed’s original reels that contain McTell’s final session.

On part two we chat with one of the blues’ premiere scholars, David Evans. Evans wrote the notes to Atlanta Blues 1933 with Bruce Bastin (nominated for a Grammy) in 1979 and The Definitive Blind Willie McTell in 1994 which revealed a wealth of new information. It was a long way from the notes to the Yazoo album which had scant information to relate. Back in the 70’s Evans, along with his parents, conducted in-depth interviews with McTell’s wife Kate that was published in three parts in Blues Unlimited. Evans also wrote the notes for the Document collections Don’t Forget It: The Post~War Years 1949-1950, Stateboro Blues: The Early Years, 1927–1935 and RCA’s Statesboro Blues.

When Larry penned the notes to The Early Years he wrote of McTell that “Of his actual life we know little.” As Chris Smith points out in the notes to It’s The Best Stuff Yet!, “Nowadays, thanks to the research of David Evans and his parents, David Sr. and Anne Evans, who located Kate McTell in 1975; of his biographer; Michael Gray; and of Bruce Bastin, Pete B. Lowry, and other investigators, McTell’s life is among the best documented of any male blues singer of his time and place.” McTell’s recordings came to modern listeners out-of-order and in piecemeal fashion; scattered sides found their way onto anthologies in the late 50’s, including “Statesboro Blues” (covered by The Youngbloods in 1967, followed the next year by Taj Mahal and in 1971 by The Allman Brothers) which appeared in 1959 on Sam Charters’ The Country Blues. The first full-length album was ironically Last Session in 1961 followed by his 1940 Library of Congress recordings issued in 1966, then The Early Years in 1968 and it wasn’t until the 80’s that all of his early recordings saw release.

Blind Willie McTell and his wife Kate circa 1934

As David Evans wrote: “Long before his death and the reissue of  ‘Statesboro Biues’ Blind Willie McTell had created his own one-man blues and folk music revival. Altogether he recorded more than 150 blues, rags, folk ballads, spirituals, and pop tunes, spread about equally over every decade from the 1920s through the 1950s. He made commercial records for six companies, released during his lifetime on nine different labels. He gave four interviews and recorded a session for the Library of Congress’ Archive of Folk Song. He reached white audiences at the beginning o his career and by its end was performing mostly for whites.”

According to the 1910 census, McTell was born William Samuel McTier near Thomson, Georgia on May 3rd, 1903. He was brought up by his mother first in Stapleton then Statesboro. His mother died in 1920 and by that time McTell had been leaving home and playing music. Evans writes: “McTell told an interviewer that he ran away from home with traveling shows a number of times before he ‘got grown.’ Charters reported that he worked in the John Roberts Plantation Show during the 1916 and 1917 seasons. In another interview, however, McTell stated that he quit playing guitar for a period of eight years. From 1922 to 1925 he attended the Georgia State School for the Blind in Macon, followed by brief periods at other blind schools in New York City and Michigan.” Sometime between 1925 and 1927 he settled in Atlanta and began a career in music. McTell was playing six string and was persuaded to pick up the twelve by Blind Lemon Jefferson, probably in 1927 when Lemon went to Atlanta to record. He told Ed Rhodes that he and Lemon played together.

“”I continued my playing up until Nineteen and Twenty-Seven, the eighteenth day of October, when I made records for the Victor Record people. And from then up until 1932 I played with the Victor people alone, by myself…And at meantimes, my different managers that I worked under – started under Mr. Ralph S. Peer of 1619 Broadway of New York,’ So stated Blind Willie McTell to folklorist John A„ Lomax in 1940, recalling every detail perfectly”, wrote Evans. “Peer had made several trips to Atlanta to record blues, starting in 1923 when he was working for Okeh Records. He was there in February 1927 for Victor, but was seeking religious and hillbilly acts. How he discovered McTell is unknown, but McTell was one of the first artists recorded on the first day of Victor’s Atlanta sessions in October.”

Blind Willie McTell in an Atlanta hotel room in 1940

After his debut in 1927, with his records selling moderately well, he recorded for Victor again a year later. As Evans writes “This time, McTell sounded even more confident, and all of his songs were gems. ‘Three Women Blues’ again contained slide guitar and visual imagery focusing on differences in skin color. ‘Dark Night Blues’ was also about three different women but was gloomier in its mood. It was at this 1928 session that he recorded ‘Statesboro Blues,’ not a big hit for him at the time (just over four thousand copies) but the piece that would eventually become his best known song. He had, however, borrowed some of his lyrics and melody from Sippie Wallace’s 1923 record of ‘Up the Country Blues.’ …Victor didn’t come to Atlanta in October of 1929, but Columbia Records did, and McTell used the opportunity to record for them under the alias of Blind Sammie….Blind Willie McTell did not record for Victor during the next two years. The main reason was probably not the Depression, slumping record sales, or McTells contract violations, but simply the fact that Victor didn’t record in Atlanta during those years. Meanwhile, McTell continued to record for Columbia as Blind Sammie and for Okeh as Georgia Bill, doing a mixture of blues and ragtime tunes. Victor returned to Atlanta in February 1932, for one final go-round with McTell.”

In 1933 McTell did sessions for the American Record Company. In the course of eight days he recorded twenty-three sides alongside thirteen sides by Buddy Moss and seven by Curley Weaver. The Weaver and Moss releases came out out on various discount labels in the chain stores while McTell’s on Vocalion. Vocalion only released only twelve of MCtell’s recordings, all but four survived and have since been reissued. The sessions were done in New York and Moss recalled that McTell acted as their leader, directing them through the city’s subway system to various destinations. McTell and Weaver were back in the studio in 1935 when Decca came to Atlanta. McTell did have a session in 1936 for Vocalion playing with Piano Red but nothing was released from this session.

“When the Lomaxes (John and his wife, Ruby) came across McTell in 1940, he was playing in an Atlanta drive-in rib shack -The Pig ‘n Whistle. This seems to have been a frequent haunt of McTell’s. They made an appointment to record McTell the next day. Willie kept the appointment, talking and singing non stop for two hours. The 1940 sessions remained unreleased for many years. The on|y clue as to why is from Jim Powers in Contemporary Musicians magazine. He says that Lomax didn’t care for McTell’s style.

In 1949 and 1950 McTell had his last two commercial recording sessions, both of them for newly established independent record companies. The first was in October 1949 for Atlantic Records of New York. One of its owners, Ahmet Ertegun, had heard about McTell from his Atlanta distributor and came there to record him, knowing of his old Victor 78s. Atlantic chose to release only one blues 78 from the session, further diminishing McTell’s chance for recognition by calling him Barrelhouse Sammy (The Country Boy) on the label. The rest of the session was not released by Atlantic until 1972. McTell recorded again in May 1950 for Regal alongside his long-time partner Curley Weaver. These were part of a massive session conducted by Fred Mendelsohn that also included recordings by bluesmen Frank Edwards and Little David Wylie.

Blind Willie McTell in 1956, photo by Ed Rhodes

At some time in the first half of the 1950s McTell seems to have left the Pig ‘n Whistle and taken a job six nights a week at the all-white Blue Lantern restaurant and night club on Ponce de Leon Avenue near Peachtree Street, playing in the parking lot as well as inside. Here he was discovered by Ed Rhodes, who owned a nearby record store. Rhodes eventually persuaded McTell to make some recordings for him in the fall of 1956. He recorded a mixture of blues, ballads, popular standards, and hillbilly tunes. It must have been similar to the material he performed at the Blue Lantern. Only his spirituals were missing. He also recorded spoken introductions to several pieces and a brief account of his early life. Some of this material came out on Last Session on the Bluesville label back in 1961 with notes by Sam Charters. In an article in Record Research in 1961 Charters writes about the session and lists complete session details.

McTell suffered increasing health problems during the 50s and he began receiving treatments for diabetes. There are reports that he drank alcohol more heavily, and he began losing his balance either because of his drinking or from a combination of his problems. His second wife, Helen, died in October 1958. Willie was badly shaken by her death. He declined an offer to move to New Jersey with his brother. McTell suffered a stroke in 1959 that caused him to give up performing. He was moved to Thomson to stay with his cousin Eddie McTear, and soon his health began to improve and he performed for visitors in the yard. But in August he suffered a more severe stroke. He was taken to the state hospital in Milledgeville, where he died on August 19th. He is buried at Jones Grove Baptist Church near Thomson.