Category: Alabama Blues

Show Notes:

As Peter Silvester writes in A Left Hand Like God: “One city where boogie-woogie appears to have had a long tradition is Birmingham Alabama and its surrounding districts.The quality of the piano players who went on to make recording careers in the 1920s and 1930s suggests that they were strongly influenced by local players of exceptional talent during their formative years.” Blues writer Chris Smith noted that “…Despite flourishing gospel quartet and piano traditions, the state’s blues are comparatively under-represented on ‘race’ records.” And as Paul Oliver underscored: “…Alabama was largely neglected by the location recording units and even by the talent scouts….” Thankfully several fine pianists based in Birmingham including Cow Cow Davenport, Jabbo Smith, Robert McCoy and Walter Roland all got on record.

Cow Cow’s early career revolved around carnivals and vaudeville. Davenport didn’t cut a 78 record until 1927 (two 1925 sides for Gennett were unissued) although prior to that he made a number of piano rolls. Davenport briefly teamed up with singer Ivy Smith in 1927, backing her on some two-dozen sides as well as waxing around thirty sides under his own name through 1938. Jabo Williams was a highly talented pianist/vocalist hailing from Birmingham, Alabama who cut eight sides for Paramount in 1932. Walter Roland recorded over ninety issued sides for ARC as a soloist and accompanist, backing singer Lucille Bogan on dozens of sides. Robert McCoy was born in 1912 in Aliceville, Alabama but raised on Birmingham’s North Side and by 1927 was a well-known local artist. He backed several local artists in 1937 and in 1963 McCoy recorded two albums. Clarence “Pine Top” Smith first performed in public in Birmingham about the age of fifteen. He worked as a pianist at house parties in Troy, Alabama before moving on to Birmingham, where he sometimes worked with Robert McCoy. Cow Cow Davenport recommended Smith to Mayo Williams of Brunswick/Vocalion records where he cut eight sides between 1928 and 1929.

As Bob Hall and Richard Noblett write in the notes to the Magpie album Piano Blues Vol. 6: “In the annals of the blues there are many artists who have made outstanding contributions to the music, but whose personal lives remain a mystery. Just such a man is Walter Roland, who during the Depression, recorded over ninety issued sides for ARC as a soloist and accompanist.”As for his style and influence, they write: “…There is no doubt that Roland was a major and highly influential figure in his time, and his recorded output contains compositions which have become part of the repertoire of a host of younger musicians. …He was a highly accomplished pianist capable of playing in two distinct styles. The first employed a simple rolling boogie woogie bass, most often in the key of F, played in a variety of tempos. The second, less common barrelhouse style employed a stride piano bass of alternating octaves and chords, usually in the key of E. Throughout Roland’s work certain distinctive treble phrases emerge, and particularly striking is his use of repeated single note staccato triplets, foreshadowing the use of the same device by the post-war Chicago pianists.”

Roland was born at Ralph, Tuscaloosa County, Alabama on 20 December 1902 (according to his Social Security documents) or 4 December 1903 (according to his death certificate). Roland was one of the most technically proficient of all blues pianists, and in addition he displayed considerable feeling in his playing and singing. He was also an able guitarist, and recorded several titles backing his own vocals and those of others, playing guitar. Roland was said to have been based in the 1920’s or 1930’s around Pratt City, near Birmingham, Alabama. Although his recording career began in 1933, it is evident that Walter was already an accomplished musician with a fully formed style. Roland partnered Lucille Bogan when they recorded for the ARC labels between 1933 and 1935, in the course of which, he recorded in his own right. Walter’s first disc, “Red Cross Blues” has since become a blues standard, versions having been recorded by Sonny Scott, Sonny Boy Williamson, Champion Jack Dupree, Robert McCoy, Forest City Joe, and many others. In 1933, he was recorded at New York City for the American Record Company, and he had apparently traveled to the session with Lucille Bogan and guitarist Sonny Scott. His best-selling recording was “Early This Morning”, a reworking of an earlier Paramount recording by Charlie Spand, “Soon This Morning”, but Walter was successful enough to continue recording until 1935.

Lucille Bogan got off to a rather shaky start on her two 1923 sessions. The feisty, boisterous singing she became known for came into much better focus when she returned to the studio in 1927. As Tony Russell writes in the Penguin Guide To Blues: “Over the next few years she constructed a persona of a tough-talking narrator – ‘They call me Pig Iron Sally, ’cause I live in Slag Iron Ally, and I’m evil and mean as I can be,’ she sings in ‘Pig Iron Sally’ – who knew the worlds of the lesbian and the prostitute. She reports from the former in ‘Women Don’t Need No Men’ and ‘B.D. Woman’s Blues’, and the latter in ‘Tricks Ain’t Walking no More’ – best heard in the affectingly sombre version titled ‘They Ain’t Walking No More’ …and ‘Barbecue Bess.’ Other notable recordings are ‘Coffee Grindin’ Blues’ …and the first recording of ‘Black Angel Blues,’ which after a great change became a blues standard.” On these recordings she finds strong backing from pianists Will Ezell and Charles Avery. “…Thanks to the generally better sound quality and the ever sympathetic accompaniment of Walter Roland, her mid-30s recordings …are the most approachable. ”

At some later time, possibly as late as 1950, Roland became a farmer. Roland was reputedly playing guitar as a street singer in the 1960’s. As well as Birmingham, he worked around Dolomite and the Interurban Heights, around Brighton and elsewhere. In about the late 1960’s, Walter was trying to be a peacemaker in a domestic argument between a neighboring husband and wife and one of the disputing parties fired a shotgun, with the result that Walter was blinded by buckshot. By 1968, Walter had retired from music because of his blindness, and was cared for by his daughters at Fairfield, near Miles College. In 1968, he applied for an old age pension. He died there of bronchogenic carcinoma on 12 October 1972.

Cow Cow Davenport learned to play piano and organ in his father’s church from his mother who was the organist. Davenport’s early career revolved around carnivals and vaudeville. He toured TOBA with an act called Davenport and Company with blues singer Dora Carr and they recorded together in 1925 and 1926. Davenport didn’t cut a 78 record until 1927 although prior to that he made a number of piano rolls between 1925 and 1927 including three versions of “Cow Cow Blues.” Davenport briefly teamed up with blues singer Ivy Smith in 1928 and worked as a talent scout for Brunswick and Vocalion records in the late 1920’s and played rent parties in Chicago. They formed an act called the Chicago Steppers which lasted for some months and, in 1928, the partnership began to record for the Paramount Company.

Davenport moved to Cleveland, Ohio in 1930 and toured the TOBA vaudeville circuit and recorded with Sam Price. In 1938 Davenport suffered a stroke that left his right hand somewhat paralyzed and affected his piano playing for the rest of his life, but he remained active as a vocalist until he regained enough strength in his hand to play again. In the early 1940’s Cow Cow briefly left the music business and worked as a washroom attendant at the Onyx Club on 52nd Street in New York. In 1942 Freddie Slack’s Orchestra scored a huge hit with “Cow Cow Boogie” with vocals by seventeen year old Ella Mae Morse which sparked the Boogie-Woogie craze of the early 1940s; this led to a revival of interest in Davenport’s music. He tried to make a “comeback” in the forties and fifties but his career was often interrupted by sickness. He died in 1955 of heart problems in Cleveland.

Robert McCoy was born in 1912 in Aliceville, AL but raised on Birmingham’s North Side and by 1927 was a well-known local artist. Two of McCoy’s six brothers, Johnny an Willie, played piano and used to run around with the great Jabo Williams. Cow Cow Davenport and Pinetop Smith played at McCoy’s house whenever they were in town and had a profound influence on McCoy. In 1963 McCoy was recorded by Pat Cather, a teenaged Birmingham blues fan. Cather issued two albums on his Vulcan label: Barrelhouse Blues And Jook Piano and Blues And Boogie Classics. Both albums were cut in extremely small quantities and are very rare. Delmark has reissued some of this material on the CD Bye Bye Baby including some unreleased material. In 1964 Vulcan issued a couple of singles and the same year a couple of singles were issued on the Soul-O label (Robert McCoy and His Five Sins) with McCoy backed by an R&B band in an attempt to update his sound. In later years McCoy became a church Deacon. He passed in 1978. In 1983, McCoy was posthumously inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.

Between March 3rd and April 7th 1937, ARC (The American Record Company) sent a mobile recording unit on a field trip firstly to visit Hot Springs, Arkansas and, then to Birmingham, Alabama in search of new talent that could be recorded on location instead of transporting the artists to their New York studio. Sometime between 18th and 24th March the unit arrived in Birmingham and, over a two week period set about recording a number of gospel and blues musicians. Among those were Charlie Campbell, Guitar Slim (George Bedford) and James Sherrill (Peanut The Kidnapper) all of whom were backed by the lively piano of Robert McCoy who did not record under his own name.

Jabo Williams was a highly talented pianist/vocalist hailing from Birmingham, Alabama. In the early 1930’s, north Alabama, including the mill towns of Birmingham and Huntsville, had a distinctive group of blues pianists including Walter Roland, Robert McCoy and Cow Cow Davenport. It’s not clear if he was discovered there or when he relocated to St. Louis. In St. Louis he may have been recommended to Paramount by local record store owner and talent scout Jesse Johnson. Paramount went out of business in 1932, the same year Williams recorded his eight records which were likely pressed in small quantities which makes them extremely rare. In the only known photograph of Williams he’s seen in a wide-brimmed hat and in the company fellow Birmingham pianist Robert McCoy. In St. Louis he was well remembered by pianist Joe Dean as a slim, medium-brown man who played piano in a pool hall on 15th and Biddle.

As pianist/researcher Bob Hall notes, Williams was a “forthright, two-handed pianist in the barrelhouse tradition, who used mostly eight-to-the bar boogie bass patterns and highly individual treble phrases, including a characteristic coda with which he ended many of his pieces. ‘Ko Ko Mo Blues Parts 1 and 2’ has similarities to the later ‘Sweet Home Chicago’ and is a medium boogie with a lazy, slurred vocal. ‘Pratt City Blues,’ which is a different tune from the Chippie Hill title, refers to a suburb of the Ensley District of Birmingham. Both this boogie and the stride ‘‘Jab Blues’’ are outstanding instrumental compositions with a relentless drive. ‘My Woman Blues’ and ‘Polock Blues’ revert to medium boogie tempo, the latter taking its name from a part of East St. Louis. Williams shared a disregard of bar lengths with his fellow Birmingham pianist Walter Roland, who subsequently recorded another of Williams’ songs, ‘House Lady Blues.’ ‘Fat Mama Blues’ is a bawdy house song having a lyrical piano melody and an unusual bass line, ending with a characteristic Williams coda.” Williams’ records are in such rough shape and extremely rare, like “Ko Ko Mo Blues Parts 1 and 2”, (only two known copies) they are virtually unplayable.

Clarence “Pine Top” Smith first performed in public in Birmingham about the age of fifteen. He worked as a pianist at house parties in Troy, Alabama before moving on to Birmingham, where he sometimes worked with Robert McCoy. From around 1920 Smith was based in Pittsburgh, and the following years he traveled with minstrel and vaudeville shows as a dancer, singer and comedian. He traveled throughout the south where he worked with artists such as Butterbeans & Susie and Ma Rainey. He began to devote more of his energies to playing piano and, at the urging of Charles “Cow Cow.” In in interview with the Chicago Tribune pianist Cow Cow Davenport and Vocalion Records talent scout reported that he first saw Pinetop Smith in Pittsburgh “I happened to hit in Pittsburgh at the Star Theater on Wylie Avenue. … I went with a friend of mine to the Sachem Alley, and there I found Pinetop Smith.”

In an interview with Downbeat magazine in 1939, Smith’s wife Sarah Horton said that her husband first started playing “Pine Top’s Boogie Woogie” in Pittsburgh. Cow Cow Davenport recommended Smith to Mayo Williams of Brunswick/Vocalion records. Smith then moved with his family to Chicago in 1928. On December 29, 1928 Smith recorded his two breakthrough hits: “Pine Top Blues” and “Pine Top’s Boogie Woogie.” This was the first time the phrase “boogie woogie” appeared on record. On January 14 and 15, 1929 Smith recorded six more sides including “I’m Sober Now” and “Jump Steady Blues.” On March 13, 1929 Pine Top made an unissued recording of “Driving Wheel Blues.” Two days later, at age 25, Smith was accidentally shot by a man named David Bell during a fight that broke out in a dancehall.