Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

Today’s show is called Maxwell Street Blues in tribute to Mike Shea’s legendary film on Chicago’s Maxwell Street Market, And This Is Free, which at long last has been re-released by Shanachie Records. And This Is Free was filmed over the course of sixteen Sundays on Chicago’s Maxwell Street in 1964. The Maxwell Street open air market was a seven- to ten-block area in Chicago that from the 1920s to the middle 1960’s played host to various blues musicians — both professional and amateur — who performed right on the street for tips from passerbys. Maxwell Street is an east-west street that intersects with Halsted Street just south of Roosevelt Road. Although there were many fine stationary department stores located in it, the area’s most notable feature was its open air market, precursor to the flea market scene in Chicago. One could almost buy anything there, legal and illegal. In need of jobs and quick cash, fledgling entrepreneurs came to Maxwell Street – many say it was the largest open-air market in the country – to earn their livelihood. In 1994, the Maxwell Street Market was moved by the City of Chicago to accommodate expansion of the University of Illinois at Chicago. It was relocated a few blocks east to Canal Street and renamed the New Maxwell Street Market.

Among those who got their start on Maxwell Street were Little Walter, Earl Hooker and Hound Dog Taylor among many others. Those that appear in the film include Robert Nighthawk, Johnny Young, Jim Brewer and Arvella Gray, all of whom were recorded performing live on the street. All the music recorded during the filming was issued domestically in 2000 on the Rooster label on the 3-CD set And This Is Maxwell Street and we will be hearing several of these cuts on today’s program. We will also be playing a number of cuts from the Ora Nelle label which was run by Bernard Abrams from his Maxwell Street Radio and Record shop located at 831 Maxwell Street, tracks by Big John Wrencher, Maxwell Street Jimmy, John Lee Granderson and James Brewer (all long time fixtures on the Street) plus some pre-war sides that reference Maxwell Street. In addition we will be playing excerpts from an interview with Gordon Quinn who was the sound engineer on And This Is Free.

Ira Berkow, who wrote the book Maxwell Street: Survival In A Bazaar, and contributes to the booklet, described Maxwell Street this way: “It was a carnival, it was a bazaar, it was, as some believed and perhaps with some credibility, a thieves’ den; it was also home to snake charmers, a horse that could count with a clop of his hoof, an ‘Indian chief’ in war bonnet and penny loafers, honest businessmen, the ladies of the night (and morning and afternoon), Gypsies, Jews, Italians, Irish, Bohemians, Poles, Russians, Greeks, Latinos, blacks. As well as the birthplace of a number of prominent Americans. And this, more or less, just for starters.” Hound Dog Taylor, a veteran of Maxwell Street, had this to say: “You used to get out on Maxwell Street on a Sunday Morning and pick you out a good spot, babe. Dammit, we’d make more money than I ever looked at. Put you out a tub, you know, and put a pasteboard in there, like a newspaper. I’m telling you, Jewtown was Jumpin’ like a champ, jumpin’ like mad on Sunday morning.” Jewtown as the area was also known, was so named because, as Lori Grove writes in her excellent essay Historic Maxwell Street, the “Jewish immigrants were the largest and longest-standing ethnic group in the Maxwell Street neighborhood” who “established the old world marketplace and its reputation as a place where bargains could be found.”

Back in 1960 Bjorn Englund and Donad R. Hill documented the blues on Maxwell street by recording some of the street’s stalwarts including Arvella Gray, Daddy Stovepipe, king Davis and James Brewer. The recordings were issued in 1962 on the Heritage album Blues From Maxwell Street. The album is long out of print (i don’t own this record so if anyone knows where I can get a copy let me know!) but the notes by Paul Oliver are worth quoting as they paint an evocative portrait of an era that has long passed. “At 1330 on South Halsted there is a minor intersection. The corners are crowded with people and temporary halls at anytime, but especially on Sunday, for the narrow road that cuts across Halsted is Maxwell and on Sunday morning the Maxwell Street Market is at its busiest. Maxwell Street is at once a sad an exciting place. The walls are blackened and the paint has peeled off the ill-fitting doors; garbage lies thick in the gutters and the narrow side alleys are littered with the refuse of years. To the West, the street loses its identity in the depressing anonymity of the bleak, poverty-struck roads that cross it; to the East it is an almost impassable market of stalls that suddenly give way to a vast, horizonless plain of mud and rubble and debris where an Expressway will sweep Southwards in the undated future. Amongst the rough-clad women who grope through the piles of discarded clothes and the tough, unsmiling men who pick their way through the wires, cables and electrical parts laid out haphazardly on the trestles – amongst the loiterers, the occasional sightseers and the pickpockets – are the beggars, as many as there are to be found in the shadows of the churches in a Southern Italian town, or along the shrouded streets of an “Arab Quarter.” Beggars – but with one striking, exhilarating difference. These are not wheedling seekers after alms with cries of “baksheesh” or “Gawd Bless yer, guv” but proud men, creative artists, singers of the blues who accept the dimes and quarters as tokens of esteem for their paying and singing. If the blues in general has tended to become more sophisticated in recent years Maxwell Street exists as a living storehouse of the folk blues, the blues of the rambling man. And in its few hundred yards is pictured the life story of the blues singer of the streets, from the children who stand wide-eyed to the singers of  their to choice to the young men who are trying their luck and their talent on the critical audience of the market; from the tough music and manner of the street singer of many years to the fading abilities to the old men who have played in the street in all weathers for more years then they can count.”

Today’s program opens with a pair pf pre-war cuts. Papa Charlie Jackson is known to have busked around Chicago in the early 1920’s, playing for tips on Maxwell Street, as well as the city’s Westside clubs beginning in 1924. He cut some 70 sides between 1924-1934, most for the Paramount label. His “Mawell Street Blues” shows he was well aquintated with the seedier side of the street:

Because Maxwell Street’s so crowded on a Sunday, you can hardly passed through
There’s Maxwell Street Market, got Water Street Market too
If you ain’t got no money, the women got nothing for you to do
I got the Maxwell Street blues, mama and it just won’t pay
Because the Maxwell Street women, going to carry me to my grave
I live six twenty-four Maxwell, mama and I’m taking about you

Little is known about his background. Blind Percy was likely Joe Taggart who recorded mainly gospel but sound more worldly as he too sings about those Maxwell Street women on “Fourteenth Street Blues:”

Fourteenth Street women, don’t mean a man no good
Go out and get full of liquor, wake up the whole neighborhood

Today’s show features several tracks from the Ora Nelle label which was founded in 1947 by Bernard Abrams who operated Maxwell Street Radio and Record shop located at 831 Maxwell Street. Two 78’s were released; “I Just Keep Loving Her” (Ora Nelle 711) and “Money Taking Woman” (Ora Nelle 712). The label’s name supposedly came from Walter’s girlfriend. These were Walter’s first recordings. Additional recordings were made by Jimmy Rogers (also his first), Boll Weavil, Sleepy John Estes, Johnnie Temple which were not released at the time. All of the Ora Nelle recordings can be found on the CD Chicago Boogie 1947 on the P-Vine label, a reissue of an album originally issued on George Paulus’ Barrelhouse label in the 1970’s. Boll Weevil (Willie McNeal) cut a pair of acetates for the label circa 1947-48, including “Christmas Time Blues” b/w “Thinkin’ Blues”, and recorded once more in 1956 for another mom and pop label called Club 51.

One-Armed harmonica player Big John Wrencher was a recognizable fixture of Maxwell Street. Wrencher was a traveling musician, playing throughout Tennessee and neighboring Arkansas from the late 1940’s to the early 1950’s. In 1958 Wrencher lost his left arm in a car crash in Memphis. By the early 1960’s he had moved North to Chicago and quickly became a regular fixture on Maxwell Street, always working on Sundays from 10:00 a.m. to nearly 3:00 in the afternoon. His first recordings surfaced on a pair of Testament albums from the 1960’s, featuring Big John in a sideman role behind Robert Nighthawk. He cut the excellent Maxwell Street Alley Blues (recorded in 1969 and issued in 1978) for the Barrelhouse label (reissued on CD on the P-Vine label) and cut Big John’s Boogie for the British Big Bear label in 1975. He also cut a 45 and we play “Memphis To Maxwell Street” from that record. Big John Wrencher passed in 1977.

Nighthawk’s performances form the centerpiece of the recordings made on An This Is Maxwell Street. Nighthawk is present on 22 of the 30 selections. Nighthawk really stretches out on some of his old classics including the stunning medley of his two biggest hits “Anna Lee/Sweet Black Angel” as well as a storming reprise of his “Take it Easy Baby” which he first cut in 1937 for Bluebird. Nighthawk shows off his wide repertoire playing Big Joe Turner’s “Honey Hush”, Dr. Clayton’s “Cheating and Lying Blues” and Percy Mayfield’s “I Need Love So Bad.” In an interview done by Mike Bloomfield, Nighthawk, reflected on what brought him back to Maxwell Street: “Lately I went back to Maxwell St.- I been playing off and on for 24 years now. Most all music more or less starts right off from Maxwell St. and so you wind up going back there. …See it’s more hard to play out in the street than it is in a place of business, but you have more fun in the street, looks like. Well, so many things you can see, so many different things going on, I get a kick out of it, I guess.”

We also play tracks by Maxwell Street stalwarts Arvella Gray, James Brewer, John Lee Granderson and Maxwell Street Jimmy. Arvella Gray made his first recordings in 1960 (released on the Decca and Heritage labels) and in early 1964 he made sides for his own Gray label, selling the 45’s on the street. He was also recorded by a team from Swedish Radio the same year. He was regular performer on Maxwell Street on Sundays. Gray’s only album, 1972’s The Singing Drifter was reissued on the Conjuroo label in 2005. James Brewer aka Blind James Brewer (“My mother didn’t name me ‘Blind’, she named me ‘Jim'”) was born in Brookhaven, Mississippi, moved to Chicago in the 1940s spending the latter part of his life busking and performing both blues and religious songs at blues and folk festivals, on Chicago’s Maxwell Street and other venues. He too was recorded by Swedish Radio, cut sides for the Heritage label, Testament plus cut the full-length albums Jim Brewer for Philo and Tough Luck for Earwig. In addition to the full length Hard Luck John (issued posthumously in 1998), Tennessee bluesman John Lee Granderson cut sides on other Testament compilations with further sides appearing on various anthologies. Among those Granderson played with were Robert Nighthawk, Big Joe Williams and Daddy Stovepipe. Charles Thomas aka Maxwell Street Jimmy, wrote Pete Welding was “one of the finest and most expressive of blues performers who regularly work the street…In his dark, urgent, powerful singing and rhythmically incisive guitar playing are strong, pungent echoes of his youth in the Mississippi delta, that spawning ground of so many great bluesmen.” Jimmy recorded little, his best being his lone album, his long out of print self-titled release for Elektra in 1965.

Welding’s liner notes to the album paint a vivid portrait of Maxwell Street in the 1960’s:”Every Sunday morning from late spring to early autumn–whenever, in fact, the weather is warm and clement–the pungent, earthy sound of the traditional blues rings loudly through the streets of Chicago. In the city’s bustling open-air Maxwell Street flea market area, where one can haggle for anything form high-button shoes to a winnowing machine, the cries of the hawkers and vendors mingle sharply with the acrid, pain-filled shouts of the blues singer and the fervent moans of the sidewalk evangelist. Through most of contemporary America, street singing is a fast disappearing folk art. Municipal legislation and the compulsory licensing of peddlers have seen to that in most large US cities, and the days of the itinerant sidewalk minstel seem sadly though inevitably numbered. Except, that is, in Chicago. If anything, the art appears to be thriving here. It’s tied directly, or course, to the continued flourishing of the Maxwell Street market as a vigorous facet of Chicago culture that has refused to give up the ghost in the face of urban renewal, increasing cultural homogeneity and other aspects of modern ‘progress’.”

Show Notes:

Today’s show is a continuing series on forgotten blues heroes; those artists who perhaps don’t have enough sides for a full a feature and lesser-known figures that don’t fit into our other themed shows. Today we spotlight six great slide/bottleneck guitar players: Casey Bill Weldon, Kokomo Arnold, Oscar “Buddy” Woods, Black Ace, Bo Weavil Jackson and Sylvester Weaver. The Hawaiian guitar influence can be heard to good effect in the playing of Casey Bill Weldon, Oscar Woods and the Black Ace. It was a style performed flat across the player’s knees as he slides a steel bar along the strings, producing glissando or vibrato effects. Kip Lornell writes that “blues guitarists sometimes tune their instruments to an open chord (often a D Major), place their guitar in their lap and then use a bottleneck or slide to fret it. This style of playing was used as early as the late 19th and early 20th century, but became more popular during the craze for Hawaiian music that occurred  during the teens.” The style was used extensively by hillbilly artists as well. Also notable in is a strong country/Western Swing influence in the playing of artists like Casey Bill, Oscar Woods and particularly Sylvester Weaver, showing that there was a good deal of cross pollination among white and black musicians.

Despite several busy years in the recording studio and a couple of medium-sized hits (“Somebody Changed The Lock On My Door” and “We Gonna Move (To The Outskirts of Town)”), very little is known about Casey Bill Weldon. It was assumed he was the Will Weldon who played with the Memphis Jug Band but that remains in dispute. Between 1927 and 1935 he cut just over 60 sides for Victor, Bluebird and Vocalion. He was also an active session guitarist, appearing on records by Teddy Darby, Bumble Bee Slim, Memphis Minnie, Peetie Wheatsraw and others. His first recordings were with Peetie Wheatsraw which clearly inspired his vocal style. His guitar style owes a clear debt to the Hawaiian guitarists and was even billed as the Hawaiian Guitar Wizard but also got some inspiration from country and Western Swing. As Tony Russell wrote regarding the influential “Somebody Changed The Lock On My Door”, “the flurry in notes on bars 3 and 4 was the first indication of a blues slide guitarist who had listened to Hawaiian players and a session the following day by the Washboard Rhythm Kings elicited further passages of playing that was as close to Sol Hoopii as to Tampa Red.” As for the influence of country, Russell writes “‘Walkin’ In My Sleep’…is a country tune, and at this point the gap between the group and contemporary Western Swing bands narrows dramatically. Not for the last time: ‘I Believe You’re Cheatin’ On Me’ opens with a figure from ‘Steel Guitar Rag’ as recorded by Bob Willis.”

Kokomo Arnold was born in Georgia, and began his musical career in Buffalo, New York in the early 1920’s. During prohibition, Kokomo Arnold worked primarily as a bootlegger, and performing music was a only sideline to him. Nonetheless he worked out a distinctive style of bottleneck slide guitar and blues singing that set him apart from his contemporaries. In the late 1920’s, Arnold settled for a short time in Mississippi, making his first recordings in May 1930 for Victor in Memphis under the name of “Gitfiddle Jim.” Arnold moved to Chicago in order to be near to where the action was as a bootlegger, but the repeal of the Volstead Act put him out of business, so he turned instead to music as a full-time vocation. From his first Decca session of September 10, 1934 until he finally called it quits after his session of May 12, 1938, Kokomo Arnold made 88 sides. Some of Kokomo Arnold’s songs proved highly influential on other musicians. His first issued coupling on Decca 7026 paired “Old Original Kokomo Blues” with “Milk Cow Blues.” Delta Blues legend Robert Johnson must’ve known this record, as he re-invented both sides of it into songs for his own use — “Old Original Kokomo Blues” became “Sweet Home Chicago,” and “Milk Cow Blues” became “Milkcow’s Calf Blues.” Arnold also did session work backing Peetie Wheatstraw, Roosvelt Sykes, Alice Moore, Mary Johnson and others. Arnold quit the music business in disgust in 1938 but continued to play the clubs until the late 1940’s. By the time he was rediscovered in 1959 Marcel Chauvard and Jacques Demetre he had given up music altogether and didn’t even own a guitar. He showed no interest in returning to music whatsoever. Arnold died of a heart attack at the age of 67 on November 8, 1968.

Oscar “Buddy” Woods was a Louisiana street musician known as “The Lone Wolf” and a pioneer in the style of lap steel bottleneck blues slide guitar. It is said that Woods developed his bottleneck slide approach to playing blues guitar after seeing a touring Hawaiian troupe of musical entertainers in the early 1920s. Not long after arriving in Shreveport, Woods began a long association with guitarist Ed Schaffer, and together they performed as the Shreveport Home Wreckers. Woods and Schaffer made their first two recordings as the Shreveport Home Wreckers for Victor in Memphis on May 31, 1930. From this first session up until his last, a field recording for the Library of Congress made on October 8, 1940, Oscar “Buddy” Woods was involved in the making of no less than 35 sides. On May 27 and 28 1931, Ed Schaffer was in Charlotte, North Carolina recording six sides headed by white country artist (and future Governor of Louisiana) Jimmie Davis along with New Orleans-based jazz guitarist Ed “Snoozer” Quinn. Nearly a year later in Dallas, Texas (on February 8, 1932) Davis made four sides with the Shreveport Home Wreckers as accompanists, and then the Home Wreckers made another pair of sides on their own, issued this time on Victor as by “Eddie and Oscar”. Woods did not record again until made a trip to New Orleans to make some solo records for Decca on March 21, 1936. One of these recordings was of Woods’ signature tune, “Lone Wolf Blues”, and another his first recording of “Don’t Sell it- Don’t Give it Away”. These did so well in the race record market that Jimmie Davis took a renewed interest in the Shreveport Home Wreckers. By the time Woods returned to record making in a session set up by Davis in San Antonio on October 30-31, 1937, the Home Wreckers had expanded into a six or seven piece string band called The Wampus Cats. The Wampus Cats also included a female vocalist by the name of Kitty Gray, guitarist Joe Harris and mandolinist Kid West. The Wampus Cats made an additional session in Dallas on December 4, 1938, on which Kitty Gray does not appear, but unknown trumpet and saxophone players were added to the mix. Woods cut his last five selections for the Library of Congress in 1940 John Lomax wrote the following about the session: “Oscar (Buddy) Woods, Joe Harris and Kid West are all professional Negro guitarists and singers of Texas Avenue, Shreveport…The songs I have recorded are among those they use to cajole nickels and dimes from the pockets of listeners.” Woods died in 1956.

Babe Karo Lemon Turner AKA Black Ace grew up in a farm in Hughes Springs, Texas. He took up the guitar seriously when he moved to Shreveport in the mid-1930’s and met Oscar Woods from whom he learned the local slide guitar style, playing the guitar flat across the knees. Smokey Hogg’s brother, John Hogg, recalled that “back in Greenville, Texas, before he got into the recordin’ business, Smokey and a guy they called Black Ace…would play country dances. I’d carry Smokey on one side of town, he d play this dance over there and I’d take Black Ace on the other side of town to play. About the time the guys would be ready to wrap-up, I would run over and get Black Ace, double back and get Smokey. We would party together the rest of the night. I used to sing with Black Ace at them parties and dances. He played a guitar across his knees with a knife blade and he wanted me to sing.” By 1936 he moved to Fort Worth where he secured a gig broadcasting on local station KFJZ between 1936-1941. In 1941 he appeared in the film “The Blood of Jesus.” As his reputation grew he toured and cut six sides for Decca in 1937 (two sides recorded for ARC in 1936 were never released). War service disrupted his career and he worked a variety of jobs outside of music. Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records and Paul Oliver ventured to Fort Worth in 1960 and recorded an album by him that year. Those recordings were originally issued the following year on Black Ace’s only LP, subsequently issued on CD as I Am The Boss Card In Your Hand which included some of his 1937 sides. Turner passed in 1972 showing no interest to get back in the music business after his Arhoolie session.

Bo Weavil Jackson was a shadowy figure whose name may have been Sam Butler or James Butler or was it James Jackson?. He was a street singer from Birmingham, AL who was discovered by local talent scout Harry Charles. Jackson cut six sides for Paramount circa August 1926 and six sides for Vocalion in September 1926 where he recorded as Sam Butler. His material was a mix of blues and gospel and he was one of the first slide players to record.

Sylvester Weaver was a versatile guitarist from Louisville who made the first solo recordings of blues guitar playing. Sylvester Weaver first recorded in New York in 1923, where on October 23 of that year he accompanied vaudeville blues singer Sara Martin on two numbers, “Longing for Daddy Blues” and “I’ve Got to Go and Leave My Daddy Behind,” for Okeh. Two weeks later, Weaver cut his first pair of solo recordings, “Guitar Blues” and “Guitar Rag” for the same label. The Sara Martin selections represented the first time on records that a popular female singer had been backed up solely by guitar, and were an immediate success. Weaver would cut 25 more selections accompanying Martin in the years through 1927. He also backed singer Helen Humes on sides in 1927. Weaver’s were well-received and would prove massively influential in the country market. “Guitar Rag” was later re-invented by Bob Wills into “Steel Guitar Rag” and became a country standard. Through the end of 1927, when Weaver decided to retire from music altogether, he recorded a total of 26 solo sides, and on some of the later ones Weaver was joined by another guitarist, Walter Beasley. Weaver’s work lies stylistically between blues and country music, and he had considerable impact on both musical fronts. Weaver was almost totally forgotten by the time he died in 1960. An interesting footnote is the discovery of a scrapbook Weaver kept of his musical activities. Some of the contents were published in Living Blues Magazine in 1982.

In our continuing exploration of the blues advertisements that appeared in the Chicago Defender we turn our attention to versatile guitarist Sylvester Weaver, known as “the Man with the Talking Guitar”,  who has the distinction of making the first solo recordings of blues guitar playing. Weaver first recorded in New York in 1923, where in October of that year he accompanied vaudeville blues singer Sara Martin on two numbers, “Longing for Daddy Blues” and “I’ve Got to Go and Leave My Daddy Behind,” for Okeh. Two weeks later, Weaver cut his first pair of solo recordings, “Guitar Blues” and “Guitar Rag” for the same label. The Sara Martin selections represented the first time on record that a popular female singer had been backed up solely by guitar, and were an immediate success. Weaver’s guitar was mentioned in Martin’s ads; one was advertised as “the first blue guitar record” while another made note of his “big, mean, blue guitar.” In a January 8, 1924 Chicago Defender ad the depiction shows a headshot of Martin alongside a drawing of a little black girl listening to an old black man with a guitar in front of a run down wooden shack. Elijah Wald conjectures that “a possible explanation is that they [Okeh] had been having some success  with white ‘hillbilly’ records and were testing the waters to see if there was a similar market for rural styles in the black community. …By 1924, the basic style of the blues queens was thoroughly established, and the record companies were hunting around for novelties that might set their products apart.” Weaver’s own records were advertised in the Chicago Defender three times in 1927 (one alongside Sara Martin) and twice in 1928.

Weaver was born in 1897 in Louisville, Kentucky, a resident of “Smoketown”, a neighborhood one mile southeast of downtown Louisville. “Smoketown” has been a historically black neighborhood since the Civil War. With its shotgun houses and narrow streets, the neighborhood was a densely populated area with a population of over 15,000 by 1880. African American property ownership was rare, with most living in properties rented from whites. Weaver immortalized the area in the 1924 recording “Smoketown Strut.” His 1923 recording of “Guitar Rag” was later re-invented by Bob Wills into “Steel Guitar Rag” and became a country standard. In fact Weaver’s work lies stylistically between blues and country music, having considerable impact on both musical genres. Through the end of 1927 Weaver recorded a total of 26 solo sides, and on some of the later ones he was joined by guitarist Walter Beasley in who’s company he recorded his greatest blues instrumentals, “St. Louis Blues” and “Bottleneck Blues.” Weaver cut over two dozen selections accompanying Sara Martin through 1927 and also backed singer Helen Humes on eight sides in 1927. In addition Weaver cut a record with E.L. Coleman and one with Virginia Liston. Weaver retired from music after 1927, working as a chauffeur in Louisville. He was almost totally forgotten by the time he died in 1960. An interesting footnote is the discovery of a scrapbook Weaver kept of his musical activities. Some of the contents were published in Living Blues Magazine in 1982.

I don’t love nobody, that’s my policy (2x)
I’ll tell the world that nobody can get along with me
I can’t be trusted, can’t be satisfied (2x)
The men all know it and pin their women to their side
I will sure back-bite you, gnaw you to the bone (2x)
I don’t mean maybe, I can’t let women alone

Pull down your windows and lock up all your doors (2x)
Got ways like the devil, papa’s skating on all fours

and “Penitentiary Bound Blues:”

Thought I was goin’ to the workhouse, my heart was filled with strife (2x)
But I’m goin’ to the penitentiary, judge sentenced me for life
There’ll be rock walls around me, burnin’ sand below (2x)
There forever, got no other place to go
Goodbye, here’s the jailer with the key (2x)
Farewell to freedom, tain’t no use to pity me
Gonna get my number, 4-11-44 (2x)
Soon be an inmate, steel upon my door
Killed my triflin’ woman, folks I done commit a crime (2x)
Nothin’ will release me but old Father Time

The number 4-11-44 was a popular combination for playing policy (laying bets on combinations of numbers) and it’s odd that Weaver uses it in such a context.  Several blues songs mention this combination including Papa Charlie Jackson’s “Four-Eleven-Forty-Four” recorded in 1926. A few months later Weaver would cut another fine prison number,”Rock Pile Blues.”

It was a real honor to have pianist Ernest Lane in the studio the other day. Lane was in town playing a couple of gigs with Joe Beard and Steve Grills & the Roadmasters. Lane was in great form over the weekend when he performed with Joe and Steve and for those in the Rochester area you should check him out this Thursday when he plays at the Dinosaur BBQ. You can hear the entire feature (included below) as Ernest talks about his new recording, playing with Robert Nighthawk and Earl Hooker, doing a stint with the Monkees and his childhood pal Ike Turner. In addition we play several tracks from his recent CD’s as well as some vintage material.

I met Ernest only briefly several years back when he was in town playing with Ike Turner’s band. Prior to that I had talked to him on the phone a couple of times while doing some research on Robert Nighthawk. In 2004 Ernest issued his belated debut, The Blues Is Back!, and I promptly interviewed him on my Bad Dog Blues radio show. Just recently Ernest released Born With The Blues on the Evejim label.

Ernest is in his late seventies now, although you wouldn’t now it by looking at him or hearing him play. Ernest has had his own bands throughout the years although he’s probably best know for his work with folks like Robert Nighthawk, Earl Hooker and his life long pal Ike Turner. Unfortunately Ernest hasn’t gotten in the studio all that often; he cut his first record under his own name for Blues & Rhythm in 1952 (an off shoot of Modern), “What’s Wrong Baby” b/w “Little Girl, Little Girl”, plus a pair of singles in L.A. in the early sixties, “What Kind Of Love” b/w “Sliced Apples” for M.J.C. and “What’s That You Got” b/w “Need My Help” for Sony. Ernest wasn’t even aware that the Blues & Rhythm sides were issued but does recall the session which was setup by Ike Turner who was acting as a talnet scout for Modern. As for his session work, Ernest appears on on the July 1949 Robert Nighhawk session and it was either him or Sunnyland Slim on the September 1948 session. The titles include: “Down The Line”, “Handsome Lover”, “Return Mail Blues”, “My Sweet Lovin’ Mama”, “She Knows How To Love A Man”, “Black Angel Blues ( Sweet Black Angel)”, “Anna Lee Blues (Anna Lee)”, “Return Mail Blues” and “Sugar Papa.” Ernest played for a spell with Jimmy Nolen and appears on the following 1959 session for Fidelity: “Swingin’ Peter Gunn Pt. 1″, Swingin’ Peter Gunn Pt. 2” and “Blues After Hours.” In 1961 Nolen’s band, with Ernest, backed George “Harmonica” Smith on a session for Sotoplay: “Sometimes You Win When You Lose”, “Come On Home”, “You Can’t Undo What’s Been Done” and “Rope That Twist.” Ernest also recalls playing on the Earl Hooker’s 1969 album Sweet Black Angel even though Ike Turner is listed as the pianist. In 1969 he did some studio work with Canned Heat which can be found on The USA Sessions – Classic Recordings from 1969. 1969 was also the year he toured with the Monkees whom he backed as a member of Sam & The Goodtimers. More recently he’s appeared on records by Eddie Clearwater and Ike Turner. In the early 1980’s he cut a saession for Rooster Records but only one 45 was issued, “Doggin’ No More” b/w “Little Girl.”

Ernest is a terrific piano player and singer who’s looking to be a headliner in his own right. Hopefully with a couple of CD’s now out he can get some gigs. If you’re reading this and are a club owner of festival promoter, Ernest would make a great addition as he remains at the top of his game, playing in classic style that’s rarely heard anymore.

Ernest Lane Feature 9/14/08 (mp3)