Category: New York Blues

ARTIST	SONG	ALBUM
Big Chief Ellis	She Is Gone	Rub a Little Boogie: New York Blues 1945-56
Big Chief Ellis	Dices, Dices	Rub a Little Boogie: New York Blues 1945-56
Champion Jack Dupree with Big Chief Ellis & His Blues Stars	My Baby's Comin' Back Home	Early Cuts
Champion Jack Dupree with Big Chief Ellis & His Blues Stars	Just Plain Tired	Early Cuts
Guitar Slim & Jelly Belly	Keep Straight Blues	Ain't Times Hard
Guitar Slim & Jelly Belly	Yellow And Brown Woman	Carolina Blues
Guitar Slim & Jelly Belly	You're My Honey	Carolina Blues
Guitar Slim & Jelly Belly	Early Morning Blues	Carolina Blues
Alec Seward	Risin' Sun Shine On	Late One Saturday Evening
Alec Seward	Blues All Around My Head #2	Late One Saturday Evening
Ralph Willis	Cool That Thing	Ralph Willis Vol. 1 1944-1951
Ralph Willis	Sportin' Life	Ralph Willis Vol. 1 1944-1951
Ralph Willis	Every Day I Weep And Moan	Ralph Willis Vol. 1 1944-1951
Alonzo Scales	We Just Can't Agree	Rub a Little Boogie: New York Blues 1945-56
Alonzo Scales	She's Gone	Rub a Little Boogie: New York Blues 1945-56
Gabriel Brown	Down in the Bottom	Mean Old Blues
Gabriel Brown	I've Done Stopped Gamblin'	Mean Old Blues
Gabriel Brown	Hold Me Baby	Shake That Thing
Sticks McGhee	Lonesome Road Blues	Sticks McGhee 1947-1951
Sticks McGhee	Blues Mixture	Sticks McGhee 1947-1951
Sonny Terry	Dirty Mistreater, Don't You Know	Whoopin' The Blues
Sonny Terry	Mad Man Blues	Whoopin' The Blues
Tarheel Slim	Wine	Too Much Competition
Tarheel Slim	My Kinda Woman	Too Much Competition
Tarheel Slim	Too Much Competition	Too Much Competition
Duke Bayou & His Mystic Six	Doomed	Rub a Little Boogie: New York Blues 1945-56
Duke Bayou & His Mystic Six	That's All Right With Me	Rub a Little Boogie: New York Blues 1945-56
Duke Bayou & His Mystic Six	She Can Shake It	Rub a Little Boogie: New York Blues 1945-56
Duke Bayou & His Mystic Six	Rub A Little Boogie	Rub a Little Boogie: New York Blues 1945-56
Guitar Slim & Jelly Belly	In Love Blues	Down Home Blues Classics Vol. 6
Guitar Slim & Jelly Belly	Mean Girl Blues	Carolina Blues
Guitar Slim & Jelly Belly	Travelin' Boy's Blues	Carolina Blues
Gabriel Brown	Youngster's Blues	Shake That Thing
Gabriel Brown	Stick With Me	Down Home Blues Classics Vol. 6
Ralph Willis	Tell Me Pretty Baby	Shake That Thing
Ralph Willis	Gonna Hop On Down The Line	Shake That Thing

Show Notes:

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Today’s show is the third of a three-part series spotlighting a batch of little remembered downhome blues artists who migrated to New York, cutting some fine records for commercial and non-commercial labels between the 1940’s and 1970’s. These shows can be seen as belated sequel to a two-part (part 1 /part 2) New York blues series we aired several years back. Many of the bluesmen who moved to New York in the postwar period were to make their first recordings there, some to go on to greater fame and others to return to obscurity. Several of these artists recorded together and most of them had some connection to Brownie McGhee who was very active on the New York recording scene in the 40’s and 50’s. Over the course of these shows we hear from Alec Seward and Louis Hayes who recorded together under several names in the 1940’s. Seward did some session work in the 40’s and 50’s and cut a full-length album in the 60’s. Like Seward, Ralph Willis was influenced by the hugely popular and influential Blind Boy Fuller, and recorded prolifically between 1944 and 1953. Gabriel Brown made his first recordings for the Library of Congress in 1935 then moved to New York City where he began recording commercially in 1943 through 1952. Leroy Dallas, like Seward and Willis, was a friend of Brownie McGhee, and made a few recordings in 1948 and 1949, cutting a couple of more tracks for Pete Welding in 1962. Tarheel Slim was from North Carolina and influenced by the Blind Boy Fuller 78’s his mother played. He worked in a variety of blues and gospel groups and cut some fine downhome blues , garnering success teaming up with his wife Ann. Wilbert Ellis AKA Big Chief Ellis came up to New York from Alabama and came under the tutelage of Brownie McGhee. He recorded a handful of sides under his own name as well as doing some session work. Both Tarheel Slim and Ellis were recorded by Pete Lowry in the 70’s. Finally we spin sides by the obscure Alonzo Scales who was born in North Carolina and cut a 1949 session and one in 1955.

Guitarist Alec Seward, one of fourteen siblings, was born in Charles City County, Virginia in 1901 and began to play his brother’s guitar at an early age. He remembered that itinerant potato pickers around Norfolk had helped teach him. Like Gabriel Brown, Ralph Willis and Brownie McGhee, he relocated from the South to New York. Although he settled in New York as early as 1924, he had played little until he took lessons with Brownie McGhee, who had set up his “Home of the Blues” teaching guitar on 125th Street. Seward lived on 123rd and was his first pupil, but Brownie told Paul Oliver that he didn’t study enough; didn’t come more than three times a week.” Seward befriended Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry and retained his Piedmont blues styling despite changes in musical trends. During the early post war years, Seward was part of the New York folk revival, meeting Moses Asch, Alan Lomax and playing, recording and broadcasting with Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie or Cisco Houston. Around 1944 Seward, Guthrie, and Terry recorded several songs, including “Chain Gang Special”, and some other older songs. These sides were originally issued in the Stinson label.

During the same time, he also created a blues duo with another East Coast bluesman Louis Hayes (who later became a minister in northern New Jersey) from Carolina with whom he recorded between 1944 and 1949 some vocal and instrumental duets under several nicknames (Jelly Belly & Guitar Slim, The Blues Kings, The Back Porch Boys). They recorded for several different labels including Solo, Super Disc, Tru-Blue, MGM and Apollo. Hayes recorded a couple of tracks for the Apollo label before vanishing into obscurity while. Regarding Louis Hayes, Chris Strachwitz wrote: “Louis Hayes is the rougher and perhaps more ‘country’ styled of the two singers. He was born in Asheville, N.C., around 1912 and met Alex Seward (also spelled Alec) in New York in the 1940s while he was employed in the ship yards between 1944 and 1945. The two of them started working around together at house parties and made these records according to several letters from Mr. Hayes, in 1944. They made further recordings for the Apollo label and according to correspondence from Mr. Hayes, they also recorded with Sticks McGhee under the direction of Mayo Williams for the Decca label. …He told me that the records had been made under a union contract, local 802, and that the man who recorded them was Mort Brown, who had a studio on Broadway above Jack Dempsey’s restaurant! He further told me that he and Alex were the owners of the True Blue label, under which logo many of these sides originally appeared as 78 rpm releases.”

Seward appeared on several other records during the 1940’s. The earliest of these are from 1944 alongside Sonny Terry and Woody Guthrie. These songs were issued on the 10 inch albums Chain Gang Vol. 1 & 2 on the Stinson label and may be from radio broadcasts. While it may seem odd to have Woody Guthrie sharing a recording session it was very much part of the era as Chris Smith writes: “When Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee moved to New York in 1942, the musical market they were hoping to break into was not primarily the black community, although they did find in that fiercely competitive entertainment arena as well. Rather, they were targeting the audience which Leadbelly and Josh White had a corner on: sympathetic white leftists, who could be found at hootenannies, political rallies, trade union meetings, and fundraising events. Inevitably, among the musicians the fell in with was Woody Guthrie, whose energetic self-promotion, considerable songwriting talents, rough and rowdy ways, and Oklahoma origins had cumulatively made him the leading light and musical conscience of the New York urban music scene.”

Seward also appeared on a rollicking four-song 1949 session cut for Apollo as Duke Bayou and His Mystic Six but listed in files s by Alec “Slim” Seward’s Washboard Band. The band consisted of Champion Jack Dupree, Alec Seward, Brownie McGhee, Washboard Doc and possible Bobby Harris. Seward and Bobby Harris seem to be the ones splitting the vocal duties.

Sources suggest that Ralph Willis was born either near Birmingham, Alabama, or at Irvin, Wilkes County, Georgia. In the late 1930’s, he moved to North Carolina and started to play with musicians who were familiar with Blind Boy Fuller. Willis made his first recordings in 1944 and continued recording until 1953, issuing fifty tracks on several labels, including Savoy, Signature, 20th Century, Abbey, Jubilee, Prestige, Par, and King. Like Gabriel Brown, Alec Seward and Brownie McGhee, Willis relocated to New York City. Although there was a folk revival developing in New York City in the 1940s, centered on Brownie McGhee, Sonny Terry, Leadbelly, Josh White and Woody Guthrie, who were performing to a predominantly white audience, Ralph Willis did not become a part of this scene. At first he was recorded on his own, but eventually his record companies frequently paired him with accompanists. Judson Coleman joined Willis on his 20th Century recordings, and McGhee was employed in 1949. McGhee and Sonny Terry contributed to Willis’s later recordings. Willis died in New York in June 1957.

Gabriel Brown was born in 1910 in Orlando, Florida, where he attended Jones High School.He graduated to the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College but also studied medicine. Born to a poor family, he was always working jobs on the side; and, being musical, he played Hawaiian guitar and sang with a group called the Sun to Sun Singers. He soon changed to Spanish guitar, playing mostly in the open tunings of G and D and became accomplished enough to represent the state of Florida at the St Louis National Folk Festival in 1934 where he won first prize as the outstanding singer of folk songs and as a guitarist. The next year Brown was discovered by Zora Neale Hurston, the eminent black writer/folklorist/novelist/anthropologist who had accompanied Alan Lomax to South Georgia, where they were engaged in collecting black folk songs. Together they went into Florida where they located and recorded Gabriel Brown for the Library of Congress. Between 1935 and 1939, Brown was connected with the Federal Arts Theater under the direction of Orson Welles. There he obtained the acting skills that he soon would apply to a few of Ms Hurston’s plays.

In 1939 Gabriel Brown was singing on Cincinnati radio with Richard Huey in the “Sheep and Goats Club” programme, and played in the cast of “St Louis Woman’.” The latter gig probably brought him to the attention of producer/entrepreneur Joe Davis who had produced some of Huey’s gospel recordings in 1943. In 1942 Joe Davis founded the Beacon Record Company and one year later recorded his first eight Gabriel Brown numbers at the Empire Broadcasting Studios in New York City. Some of these sides were also issued on Gennett and the Joe Davis label. In 1944, despite the fact that only two of the eight sides from the initial session had been released, Davis brought Brown into the studio on two separate occasions to record a total of twelve numbers. Four of these tracks were never released as 78 rpm discs. In 1945 eight titles were recorded. In 1947, Joe Davis left the record company to concentrate on the publishing business where he had spent most of the 1930’s. But in 1949 he took a break from publishing to record Brown once again with Decca picking up the titles. Davis recorded Brown again circa 1952-1953 with sides leased to MGM. It’s believed Brown had drowned in a boating accident while fishing in Florida in 1972.

The story of Leroy Dallas has much in common with that of Ralph Willis. Dallas was born in Mobile, Alabama on December 12, 1910 and raised on a farm. In 1924 the family moved to Memphis, and Leroy stayed there until 1930, when he left home. On his travels he met and played washboard with Brownie McGhee around Maryville, Tennessee. He also teamed up with singer-guitarist James McMillan to form a novelty act with Dallas again on washboard. They journeyed through Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia and Tennessee, playing on the streets and in juke-joints. McMillan taught Dallas the rudiments of guitar playing, and his ability on the instrument improved when he met Frank Edwards in Mobile, Alabama. The pair teamed up, and were later joined by Georgia Slim (George Bedford) to form-a trio, with Edwards switching to harmonica. They traveled around the southern states together in the late 1930’s and played with the Star Band in Atlanta. Dallas moved to Chicago in 1941, but in 1943 settled permanently in Brooklyn. There he worked in a variety of jobs, including those of porter, truck driver, waterfront worker and cafeteria helper. He made his first recordings in 1949, for the Sittin’ In With label, in a session comprising six titles. He was accompanied on guitar by his friend Brownie McGhee, who was instrumental in getting him the session. None of the releases were a commercial success. Dallas was rediscovered by blues researcher Pete Welding in Brooklyn in 1962, and recorded, a couple of tracks, which were issued on the Storyville and Milestone labels. It is not known what has happened to him since then.

Wilbert Ellis was born in 1915 and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. His parents were religious and allowed no music in their house. Ellis circumvented the restriction by working out an arrangement with his great aunt, who owned a piano and who would allow him to practice every time he mowed her lawn. By the time his parents found out it was too late, for Ellis was already a respected musician in the community. Ellis was a professional gambler for most of his adult life. This occupation allowed him to travel and provided occasions for him to learn from other musicians – notably Walter Davis in Chicago. He settled in New York City in 1942 where he ran night clubs for several years and after 1945 became a session pianist on many record sessions. One of these, for Lenox in 1945, produced his own “Dices, Oh Dices”, which remains his signature piece. Oddly enough, this was the second recording of his own tune. Ellis had performed it often while still living in Birmingham – it was picked up by Walter Roland, who recorded it in 1933, a full year ahead of the composer. The song was Iater recorded live on February 19 1949, at a WYNC Jazz Festival (they were the only bluesmen present).

During this period Ellis backed artists such as Leroy Dallas, Champion Jack Dupree, Tarheel Slim and Sonny Terry. Another significant recording was made during the late 40s, Stick McGhee’s “Drinking Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee. This R&B bestseller had been composed previously by Ellis while he was serving in the army at Ft. McClellan, Alabama. A white record executive in New York heard it and purchased the song for a few dollars, making a hit for someone else. Stick McGhee was Brownie’s brother, and Ellis and Brownie are both heard on the hit release. Ellis eventually retired from music for a long stretch. Regarding his comeback, Pete Lowery writes: “I received a letter from Bob Eagle of Australia, whom Brownie McGhee him informed that Chief might be living in the Washington area. One phone call confirmed that this was so, and that I had introduced myself to a man who would become a close friend …Chief has discovered that people once again love and respond to his music and he is taking it to bars, clubs, festivals, concerts, and to the homes of his many friends.” One festival Ellis performed at was the 1976 Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, one track issued on a Smithsonian anthology. Ellis’ self-titled Trix album debut was recorded between 1974-1975 and features Brownie McGee, Tarheel Slim and John Cephas. Norbert Hess was planning to get Chief to Europe in 1978 but sadly he passed in December 1977.

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Tarheel Slim  was born in Bailey, North Carolina. He seems to have used both “Alden” and “Allen” as his forename at different times; researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc state that his birth records read “Allen”. Initially he worked in local tobacco fields, but by the early 1940’s he had started singing with various gospel groups, including the Gospel Four and the Selah Jubilee Singers, where he joined the latter group’s founder, Thermon Ruth. Bunn was the group’s baritone and second lead singer, and provided guitar accompaniment. In 1949, Ruth and Bunn decided to form a secular singing group as a spin-off from the Selah Jubilee Singers. Initially called the Jubilators, the group recorded for four different record labels in New York under four different names on one day in 1950. Eventually settling on the name The Larks, the group’s recording of “Eyesight to the Blind” on the Apollo label, with lead vocals and guitar by Bunn, reached number 5 on the Billboard R&B chart in July 1951; and the follow-up, “Little Side Car”, also sung by Bunn, reached number 10 on the R&B chart later the same year. The Larks then toured with Percy Mayfield and Mahalia Jackson. Bunn lived in New York from 1950 for the rest of his life.

Early in 1951, Allen Bunn (so credited) left for a solo career, first recording blues for Apollo, accompanied by Sonny Terry and Big Chief Ellis, and then moving to Bobby Robinson’s Red Robin label in 1953, when he was credited as “Alden Bunn” or “Allen Baum.” Around 1955, he married Anna Lee Sandford, and they began singing together, recording as The Lovers for the Lamp label, a subsidiary of Aladdin Records. Bunn also managed, and recorded with, a group known variously as the Wheels (on the Premium label) and the Federals (on the De Luxe label). Bunn returned to solo recording, using the name Tarheel Slim, in New York in 1958, for producer Bobby Robinson’s Fury label. His first recordings for Fury were “Wildcat Tamer b/w Number 9 Train.”  The record was not a success at the time, and Bunn’s later recordings for Robinson’s Fire and Fury labels, in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, were all co-credited to the duo of Tarheel Slim and Little Ann. Their first record for Fire, “It’s Too Late”, reached number 20 on the R&B chart in 1959. Later records by Tarheel Slim and Little Ann were not commercial successes. The duo recorded briefly for Atco Records in 1963, but then disappeared from view. In the early 1970’s, Tarheel Slim was “rediscovered” by researcher Peter Lowry, and emerged to play solo, with acoustic guitar in the style of Brownie McGhee, at festivals and for college audiences. He recorded an album, No Time At All, released on Trix Records in 1975, with pianist Big Chief Ellis on some tracks. He also played with John Cephas on Ellis’ own 1977 album for Trix. Tarheel Slim was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1977, and died at the age of 53 in August of that year.

Alonzo Scales cut a 1949 session backed for Abbey and a four song session in 1955 for Wing.  For a long time nothing was known about Alonzo Scales and even his death was announced in Living Blues 23 as having taken place “sometime in June 1975.” More is now known, taken from two registration cards that have turned up. The first is from 1916, when he was drafted for war service. From it we learn  that Scales was born June 5, 1888 in Stonesville, NC. At the time he was living in Hazard, KY, about thirty miles from the Virginia border. The second is dated April 27, 1942, when Alonzo Alfred Scales, 5’6” and 165 lbs, was 53 years old. He was living in Stratton Alley in Williamson, WV, just over the Kentucky border. We learn that his sister, Myrtle Edwards, was living at 629 Vinson Street in the same town and he was working at the Crystal Block Coal & Coke Co. in Labota, WV. Hazard, KY was 104 miles back down the road. All of which indicates Scales was over sixty when he made his first record, accompanied by Jack Dupree and Brownie McGhee. Six years later, both McGhee and Terry are in Scales’ backing band, along with Bob Gaddy on piano.