Big Road Blues

In part one I discussed Alexander’s sides with Lonnie Johnson, hands down his finest accompanist. That by no means is meant to take anything away from the rest of Alexander’s output or his musical partners, it’s just to point out the sheer genius of the Johnson sessions. After two sessions with Johnson, Alexander was paired with pianist Eddie Heywood on four numbers cut at back to back dates on August 16th and 17th of 1927. The pairing of the sophisticated Heywood with Alexander’s musical unpredictability worked better than one would think particularly on “Sabine River Blues”, a true masterpiece, a beautiful number with a gorgeous melody, sung with great feeling. Heywood’s playing is sensational throughout. “Mama, I Heard You Brought It Right Back Home” has an equally attractive melody with almost a bit of a pop feel. There’s a loose, light feel to the Heywood sides that are quite attractive and all four numbers are quite strong including “Farm Hand Blues” and “Evil Women Blues.” Lyrically “Mama, I Heard You Brought It Right Back Home” is perhaps the most interesting as Alexander freely mixes traditional lyrics with strikingly original imagery:

If I leave here runnin’, mama, don’t you follow me (2x)
If I leave here walking, you can go with me

Sally went to cookin’, man, but she didn’t know how (2x)
Says, she put cayenne pepper, mama, in my hot bow-wow

Says, I’m goin’ up the country, mama, don’t you want to go? (2x)
Said I need another dozen, right on my right side, sho’

If I’m get lucky, mama, should happen to work (2x)
I’m gonna carry my money right on back home again

I’d rather see my coffin easin’ through the world (2x)
Than to see my woman do me like she does

I’m scared to go down that big road by myself (2x)
‘Fore I go, baby, I’ll carry me someone else

These recordings makes one wish he had recorded more often with a pianist. It should be noted that Alexander seems to have given little thought to his accompanists. As Paul Oliver points out he “seems to have made little effort to vary his approach to blues singing, or to adjust to his accompanists; they had to fall in with him, and accept, both his timing and erratic verse structure.”

In part one we discussed “Work Ox Blues” and “The Risin’ Sun” which featured both Lonnie Johnson and Eddie Lang. Lang went on to back Alexander on “St. Louis Fair Blues” and “I Am Calling Blues” and plays in a trio with pianist Clarence Williams and New Orleans jazz legend King Oliver on “Tell Me Woman Blues” and “‘Frisco Train Blues.” Lang’s playing is very fine but lacks the imagination and improvisatory feel of Lonnie Johnson although he seems to have no shortage of interesting ideas. King Oliver plays some beautiful, sympathetic cornet fills on both numbers with Lang taking a particularly lovely solo on “Tell Me Woman Blues.”

On June 15th 1929 Alexander cut eight sides with Texas guitarist Little Hat Jones. Jones played in a classic Texas blues style and opens each number in up-tempo fashion before slowing down to accommodate Alexander. The two made a good team with Jones playing consistently interesting, varied runs behind Alexander’s vocals. The best performance was “Ninety-Eight Degree Blues” sung with plenty of gusto and mixing traditional imagery with frank sexuality:

I’m gonna get up in the mornin’, do like Buddy Brown (2x)
I’m gonna eat my breakfast, God, and lay back down
I say I’m gonna eat my breakfast, man, and lay back down

When a man get hairy, y’know he needs a shave (2x)
When a woman get musty, you know she needs to bathe (2x)

I’ve got somethin’ to tell you, make the hair rise on your head (2x)
Got a new way of lovin’ a woman, make the springs screech on her bed
I’ve got a new way of lovin’ a woman, make the springs screech on her bed

“Someday, Baby, Your Troubles is Gonna Be Like Mine” is a lovely number featuring some exceptional playing from Jones while “Johnny Behren’s Blues” is another stand out track. According to Oliver “Behren (or Behrens) was a local singer who had one extended blues on which he told of his skill as a sailor, jockey or other occupation, and how he ‘learned’ the women he knew”. Alexander delivers it thusly:

When I was a sailor, sailin’ on the deep blue sea (2x)
Say, I learned all the women, man, them ocean ways

Says, I learned a way that every woman crave (2x)
Say, it must be a new way that really won’t behave

When I was a jockey, I learned my baby how to ride (2x)
Say, I learned her how to ride, man, from side to side

It’s a reoccurring oddity in Alexander’s songs that often the title not only doesn’t appear in the song but bears no relation to the song itself.

On November 29 1929 Alexander was paired with another Texan guitarist, Carl Davis who fronted the Dallas Jamboree Jug Band which cut five sides in 1935. Davis also appears on eight sides (two others went unissued) with guitarist Willie Reed on a September 1934 session which ran over two days. Reed had cut solo sides in Dallas in 1928 and 1935. Regarding Davis’ style, Oliver noted that he “had an arpeggio style which linked him with Lonnie Johnson and Gene Campbell, which he was flexible enough to fit around Alexander’s notably erratic song structures.” The highlight from this session is “Texas Special” sporting some terrific flat-picked guitar from Davis and wonderful singing including a gorgeous humming coda. The song is a fascinating grab bag of traditional, original and cryptic lyrics:

When the Blues come to Texas, they come ’round through the woods (2x)
Then they stopped by my house, done all the harm they could

When I leave this time, paint your windows green (2x)
Said, if I don’t never die, woman, I’ll be-e-e seldom seen

I’d rather see my coffin rollin’ up to my back door (2x)
Than to hear my woman say she can’t use me no more

I’d rather see my brother come in staggerin’ drunk (2x)
Than to see my woman, Lord, packin’ up her trunk

The “blues come to Texas” image is one drawn from Blind Lemon Jefferson as is the “matchbox” theme at the end of “Johnny Behren’s Blues.” He references Lemon again with the “piney wood” image in “Peaceful Blues”, yet another lyrically interesting number:

Said, mama told me, told me, papa sat and cried (2x)
Say, “You’re too young a man to have that many women your side.” (2x)

Says, I woke up laughin’, went down the road a-flyin’ (2x)
Says, I always had Miss Margie on my mind

I’m gonna climb my woman’s belly like a yoyo do a string (2x)
If I don’t fix her up, I’ll be in a dirty name

I love my woman better than a cow loves to chew her cud (2x)
Lord, that fool, she got mad, moved to the piney wood

Mmmmm, heeeumm,
Hee-ehhh, ummmuhh
Lord, that fool, she got mad and moved to the piney woods

“Perhaps both singers drew on a common source” Oliver conjectures. “We’ll never know, but the evidence of his recordings reveal Texas Alexander to have been among the most individual of singers, and the least subject to the influence of others.”

*Thanks with lyric transcriptions to John M and the members of Weenie Campbell

Sabine River Blues (MP3)

Ninety-Eight Degree Blues (MP3)

Johnny Behren’s Blues (MP3)

Texas Special (MP3)

Listening to the music of Texas Alexander, like fellow Texan Henry Thomas, transports the listener back to a time before the blues, a time when the unaccompanied sounds of the field holler and work song rang out all over the south. Alexander’s style was described by Paul Oliver as “a personal, tweed-textured holler which did not employ falsettos but moaned in long, sad cadences.” While Paul Garon astutely noted that “Alexander’s style, so often consisting of lengthy moans and hums, often drawn out over unevenly spaced measures, sounds very close to the field holler. Indeed, combining a field holler with the shouts of the section gang caller-where Alexander once worked-and tailoring it into a recordable blues song would produce a sound very similar to Alexander’s.”

Alexander was a Texan through and through, born in Jewett, Texas in 1900, passing in 1954 in Richards some seventy miles south (both towns lie about halfway between Dallas and Houston) and who was vividly remembered by fellow Texas bluesmen such as Lightnin’ Hopkins, Lowell Fulson, Buster Pickens and Frankie Lee Sims. Alexander didn’t play an instrument, although he did carry a guitar around in case their was a guitarist around who could accompany him when he sang on city streets or bars. Alexander’s songs had a distinctly rural, southern viewpoint as evidenced in song titles such as “Corn-Bread Blues”, “Levee Camp Moan Blues”, “Farm Hand Blues”, “Bantam Rooster Blues”, “Bell Cow Blues”, “Work Ox Blues”, “Rolling Mill Blues” and “Prairie Dog Hole Blues” among others. “To the renters and ‘croppers”, Oliver wrote, “who had left the farms and bottom land plantations for the city, the voices of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Rambling Thomas or Texas Alexander were singing for them, sharing their own experiences and predicament. Crowds would cluster round them on Central Tracks and the coins would clatter-nickels and dimes-in their hats and tin cups.” Alexander’s lyrics are consistently interesting, often drawing on traditional motifs but stamped forcefully with his own personality, many of which finding their way into common blues parlance. Throughout his songs there is a frankness about sexuality that goes beyond the stock double entendre as well as strong anti-religious streak.

Alexander was popular and prolific, cutting sixty-four issued sides between 1927 and 1934, first for Okeh and then for Vocalion. He had he good fortune to work with superb accompanists such as guitarists Little Hat Jones, Lonnie Johnson, Eddie Lang, Carl Davis, Willie Reed to the string band blues of the Mississippi Sheiks and the jazz bands of King Oliver and the mysterious His Sax Black Tams. Alexander didn’t fare well in the post-war era; he was supposedly passed over by an Aladdin talent scout in favor of his then partner Lightnin’ Hopkins (a demo tape was purportedly made) and made one final, rather unsatisfactory record for the Freedom label in 1950 before passing in 1954.

Alexander made his greatest records in the company of Lonnie Johnson at six sessions cut for Okeh between August 1927 and November 1928 at recording dates in San Antonio and New York City. Alexander’s erratic sense of timing made him a challenge to work with as Lonnie Johnson related to Paul Oliver: “He was a very difficult singer to accompany; he was liable to jump a bar, or five bars, or anything. You just had to be a fast thinker to play for Texas Alexander. When you been out there with him you done nine days work in one! Believe me, brother, he was hard to play for. He would jump–jump keys, anything. You just have to watch him, that’s all.” Johnson’s approach is a thing of beauty; he plays almost no chords, just melodic, single string lines achieving a gorgeous tone, answering and underscoring Alexander’s magnificent vocals, his moans and hums with a subtle delicacy and empathy. In the notes to the Matchbox series, which collect Alexander’s entire output, Oliver writes: “Johnson alone is completely at ease, anticipating and elaborating with astonishing fluency; this was the period of his most remarkable guitar solos and he seems to be at the peak of his abilities.” The very first song they recorded, “Range In My Kitchen Blues”, sets the template, a beautiful number with Johnson’s opening and closing the number in elegant fashion. Songs from these sessions find Alexander at his most primal; “Levee Camp Moan Blues”, ‘Section Gang Blues” and “Penitentiary Blues” show, as many have written, that Alexander likely had intimate knowledge of the Texas penal system. In “Levee Camp Moan Blues” he sings:

Mmmm,mmmm,mmm
Lord, they accused me of murder, murder, murder, I haven’t harmed a man
Lord, they accused me of murder, I haven’t harmed a man
Oh, they have accused me of murder and I haven’t harmed a man.

Mmmm, they have ‘cused me of forgery and uhh I can’t write my name
Lord, they have accused me of forgery and I can’t write my name.

“Section Gang Blues” is something of a companion piece and like the above song harks back to the era of the unaccompanied work song and field holler:

I’m been workin’ on the Section, Section 32
I’ll get a dollar and a quarter, I won’t have to work hard as you
Lord, I’ll get a dollar and a quarter, I won’t have to work hard as you

Oh, nigger licks molasses, and the white man licks ’em, too
I wonder what in the world is the Mexicans gonna do?
Lord, the nigger licks molasses, the white man licks ’em too

Waterboy, waterboy, bring your water ’round
If you ain’t got no water, set your bucket down
Waterboy, waterboy, bring your bucket ’round

“Oh, Captain, Captain, what time of day?”
Oh, he looked at me and he walked away

“Penitentiary Blues” is a particularly vivid prison number with Alexander making reference to Bud Russell who brought convicts to the Texas prisons:

Spoken: If I had-a listened, Mama, when you was tellin’ me these things, I wouldn’t have to worry with these old rusted chains

I wonder what’s the matter with poor Annie Lee?
Lord, the Captain whupped here and she ain’t been seen
Mmmmm, mmmmmmm
Lord, the Captain whupped her and she ain’t been seen

Oh, if it hadn’t’ve been for the red mule’s head
Lord, the Captain’d killed ol’ Annie dead
Mmmmmm, mmmmmmmm
Lord, the Captain killed ol’ Annie dead

If you get buggy want to see Red River red
Lord, Bud Russell will take you and you won’t be dead
Mmmmm, mmmmmm
Lord, Bud Russell will take you and you won’t be dead

As Oliver notes “the ominous words refer to washing in river water after being beaten with the ‘Black Betty’ leather strap used by Russell.”

As mentioned earlier Alexander’s took a particularly frank view of sex in his songs. A wonderful example is “Boe Hog Blues” a song full of surprising imagery and a remarkably poignant conclusion:

Oh, tell me, mama, how you want your rollin’ done. (2x)
Set your face to the ground and your noodle up to the sun

She got little bitty legs, gee, but them noble thighs (2x)
She’s got somethin’ under yonder, works like a boe hog’s eye

Wanta be your doctor, and I’ll pay your doctor bill
I’ll be your doctor, pay your doctor bill
Says, if the doctor don’t cure you, I’ve got somethin’ will

Mmmm, Mmmm, Lawdy, Lawdy, Lawd
I say if the doctor don’t cure you, I’ve got somethin’ will

Says, I looked up at the Good Lord in the sky
Says, I looked up at the Good Lord’s in the sky
Says, I heard a keen voice, says, “Papa, please don’t die.”

Particularly rich are “Work Ox Blues” and “The Risin’ Sun” cut on November 15, 1928. featuring the addition of the brilliant white guitarist Eddie Lang. The rapport between him and Johnson is extraordinary as they weave a rich tapestry around Alexander’s strong vocals. It’s a shame they didn’t back Alexander on more numbers. Six months later Lang and Johnson would record the first pair of a series of landmark duet instrumentals.

*Thanks with lyric transcriptions to John M and the members of  Weenie Campbell

Show Notes:

Ever since I picked up the 7-CD George Mitchell Collection Vols. 1-45 (collects all 45 of the 7″ records Fat Possum issued plus bonus material) I’ve been featuring the music often on the program and today we finally get around to devoting an entire show to these remarkable recordings. I was also fortunate to interview a very gracious George Mitchell who took some time to recall his field recording days. This show will kick off what will eventually be a series of shows devoted to field recording spotlighting the contributions of John and Alan Lomax, David Evans, Art Rosenbaum and others. I’ve written quite about Mitchell’s recordings so what follows is some brief background plus some links to more in depth articles I’ve written.

From the early 1960’s to the early 1980’s Mitchell roamed all over the south recording blues in small rural communities where the music still thrived. Mitchell wasn’t the only one roaming the south in the 1960’s in search of blues; there was folklorists and researchers such as David Evans, Sam Charters, Gayle Dean Wardlow, Art Rosenbaum and others. Some were hunting for the famous names who made records in the 1920’s and 1930’s, others were seeking to fill in biographical blanks regarding some of the older musicians coveted by collectors and then there were those, like Mitchell, who were seeking to record whoever they could find. These men, in turn, where following in the pioneering field work of John and Alan Lomax.

Mitchell did record some of the famous artists of the past like Buddy Moss, Furry Lewis, Will Shade, Sleepy Johns Estes and was the first to record artists who would achieve later fame such as R.L. Burnside, Jesse Mae Hemphill, Othar Turner and Precious Bryant. While the blues revival was picking up steam with newly discovered artists like Son House, Bukka White and Mississippi John Hurt hitting the circuit, Mitchell’s recordings were a sort of a parallel undercurrent to the more famous artists. What Mitchell recorded in the rural communities of Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi in the 1960’s was a still thriving, if largely undocumented, blues culture. Mitchell had the passion and drive to seek out these folks, and unlike some folklorists didn’t use the music to reinforce his own theories, he simply let the musicians speak for themselves and judging by the recordings they clearly responded to Mitchell’s sincerity (being a southerner probably didn’t hurt as well).

A Look At The George Mitchell Collection – Part 1

A Look At The George Mitchell Collection – Part 2

Joe Callicott: Laughing To Keep From Crying

Houston Stackhouse & Robert Nighthawk

Show Notes:

We cover lots of territory today with recordings spanning from 1926 to 1978. Today’s show features five tracks by John Lee Ziegler, a fine Georgia bluesman who just passed after battling a long illness. I received the following note from Rev. Gary Lucas: “I wish to inform you that one of the great Georgia Blues artists John Lee Ziegler recently passed (May 2008) in Kathleen, Georgia after declining health issues. I performed his Eulogy among family and friends. Truly he was unique with his God given musical talents.” Most have never heard of Ziegler who’s legacy rests on just a handful of recordings made by George Mitchell in the late 1970’s (several other recordings remain unreleased) and some sides made in the 1990’s for the Music Maker organization. Part of John Lee Ziegler’s unorthodox style comes from the fact that he was a left-handed guitarist who played a right-handed guitar upside-down, with the bass strings at the bottom. George Mitchell said: “He was a nice, gentle guy, but he was hard to deal with – he thought I was ripping him off, and wanted to get lawyers involved and all this shit – and the record never happened. But he was something else.”

Well before Mitchell was recording blues in the field, there was John and Alan Lomax who recorded extensively throughout the south and beyond from the 1930’s through the 1950’s. I featured several of their prison recordings on the last program. Today we play tracks from Deep River of Song: Big Brazos -Texas Prison Recordings 1933 & 1934 and Document’s Texas Field Recordings (1934/1939). The latter CD presents recordings made by John Lomax on two collecting trips he made, the first with his son Alan in 1934, and the second with his wife, Ruby, in 1939. The music was being collected for the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress. Tricky Sam cut 3 sides at Huntsville State Penitentiary, Texas. We also play two cuts from Southern Journey, Vol. 3: 61 Highway Mississippi which collects 24 tracks Alan Lomax recorded in Mississippi in 1959. The big star was Fred McDowell, these were his first recordings, but the two cuts by John Dudley show him to be an exceptional talent. All three of his numbers were recorded at Parchman Farm where the Lomax’s had been recording since the 1930’s. We also play a track by the excellent singer Roosevelt Charles who was recorded extensively by folklorist Henry Oster in 1959-1960 in Angola Penitentiary. This cut is from the marvelous Angola Prisoners’ Blues which also features fine cuts from Robert Pete Williams. Charles has sides on various anthologies plus one out-of-print LP on Vanguard, Blues, Prayer, Work & Trouble Songs.

Today’s show features quite a number of down-home post-war blues including a fine batch from the 1950’s; artists like Lightnin’ Slim, Doctor Ross, Papa Lightfoot, Boyd Gilmore and the raucous one-man-band sound of Joe Hill Louis show that there was obviously still a market for down-home blues, a market ably filled by labels like Sun, Modern, Excello and others. Speaking of one-man-bands we jump to to 1968 to hear the great Juke Boy Bonner on the uncompromising “Struggle Here In Houston:”

Struggle in Houston, man just to stay alive (2x)
I don’t mean you die of starvation
I mean you got to watch out for bullets, bottles and knives
There’s some streets in Houston, I stay clear of after dark (2x)
‘Cause there’s some cats that’ll bump you off, just to hear his pistol bark

Weldon Bonner took up the guitar in his teens and caught a break in 1947 in Houston, winning a talent contest that led to a spot on a local radio outlet. He journeyed to Oakland in 1956, cutting his debut single for Bob Geddins’s Irma imprint and then Goldband. He cut his best work during the late ’60s for Arhoolie Records singing tales of his rough life in Houston. A few European tours ensued, but they didn’t really lead too much. Toward the end of his life, he toiled in a chicken processing plant to make ends meet. Bonner died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1978.

As always, plenty of old time blues today including heavyweights like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi John Hurt, Little Brother Montgomery and Leroy Carr. I never get tired of listening to Blind Lemon Jefferson and his “Sunshine Special” is one of my favorites. The Sunshine Special was a locomotive engine pulling the Texas & Pacific “Red Eye” passenger train. These business friendly trains were scheduled to arrive in the Dallas/Ft Worth area at about 9AM from both East and West. Leroy Carr’s “Hustler’s Blues” is one of his best featuring great guitar from longtime partner Scrapper Blackwell as well as Josh White:

Whiskey is my habit, good women is all I crave (2x)
Now I don’t believe them two things will carry me to my grave

When I was a hustler, and in my prime (2x)
I would drink good whiskey and gamble all the time

Unfortunately all that whiskey put him in an early grave, dying of an alcohol-related illness shortly after his 30th birthday. Less well remembered is the once popular Papa Charlie Jackson. Jackson was one of the first male blues artists to record, beginning in 1924 with the Paramount label, playing a hybrid banjo-guitar and ukulele. Jackson spent his teen years as a singer/performer in minstrel and medicine shows. He is known to have busked around Chicago in the early ’20s, playing for tips on Maxwell Street, as well as the city’s Westside clubs beginning in 1924. Little is known about his life. Between 1924-1934 he cut around 70 sides. Alice Moore was another once popular artists little remembered today. She was a very fine St. Louis singer who collaborated with the likes of Kokomo Arnold, Peetie Wheatstraw and Lonnie Johnson. She had two main periods of recording activity: the first in the late ’20s, followed by resurgence in 1934 that lasted through 1937. “Doggin’ Man Blues” is a fine vehicle for her clear, nasal tinged vocals featuring steady rolling piano from Wheatstraw.