Big Road Blues Show 9/8/19: Gayle Dean Wardlow Pt.1 – Blues Detective

Show Notes:

Gayle Dean Wardlow holding a King Solomon Hill 78. Photo by Jeff Harris, 2019.

On a recent a road trip down south I decided to look up and interview legendary blues writer, researcher, investigator Gayle Dean Wardlow. Over the course of two shows we air my interview with Gayle conducted at his home in Milton, Florida. It’s interesting that some of the pioneering blues researchers like Mack McCormick, Paul Oliver and Gayle have almost become as famous as the bluesmen they sought out. Over the course of two shows we talk about Gayle’s early years knocking on doors looking for blues 78’s and trying to uncover information about the men behind the records such as Charlie Patton, Son House, Tommy Johnson, Willie Brown, King Solomon Hill, and others. Gayle knocked on doors, tracked leads and used his journalism background to find documentation like death certificates to fill in the life of these mysterious bluesmen. Over the years he has written dozens of liner notes and articles in magazines like Blues Unlimited, 78 Quarterly, Blues & Rhythm and Living Blues. Many of his articles were collected in the book Chasin’ That Devil Music. He has co-authored two other books: King of the Delta Blues: The Life and Music of Charlie Patton (with Stephen Calt) and earlier this year, Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson (with Bruce Conforth) which has garnered widespread praise.

In the late 50’s and early 60’s white interest in blues of the 20’s and 30’s resulted in the earliest blues books and reissues: Samuel Charters’ The Country Blues (1959), Paul Oliver’s Blues Fell This Morning (1960), the Origin Jazz Library label established by Bill Givens and Pete Whelan in 1960 began reissuing blues from the 1920’s and 1930’s and there was a group of New York record collectors known as the Blues Mafia, who’s tastes help shape the blues cannon, particularly Delta bluesmen like Charley Patton. In Texas there was Mack McCormick, who worked largely independently, although he had a decades long transatlantic collaboration with Paul Oliver. The so-called Blues Mafia consisted of collectors such as Don Kent, Steve Calt (writer of liner notes and books), Samuel Charters (author/RBF Records), David Freeman (County Records), Lawrence Cohn (CBS/Epic, Columbia/Sony Records), John Fahey (musician, Takoma Records), Stefan Grossman (Kicking Mule Records), Tom Hoskins (who located Mississippi John Hurt), Bernie Klatzko (Herwin Records), Jim McKune, Nick Perls (Yazoo and Blue Goose Records), Phil Spiro (who, along with Nick Perls and Dick Waterman tracked down Son House) and Pete Whelan (Origin Jazz Library/78 Quarterly). Around 1962 Whelan and Klatzko encouraged Wardlow, to find information on some long forgotten Delta bluesmen, particularly Charlie Patton, who was revered by those northern collectors. The fruits of his searches first appeared as notes to Whelan’s Origin Jazz Library LP’s and then as magazine articles.

Wardlow soon found information on Patton, including an ex-wife, and when Bernard Klatzko came down to Mississippi in 1963, found additional people who knew Patton in Holly Ridge, Dockery’s Plantation and Lula. He also found information on Tommy Johnson, including locating a contemporary of his in Ishmon Bracey who had recorded for Victor in 1928 and Paramount in 1930 as well as interviewing Johnson’s brother Ledell. From Bracey he located and interviewed H.C. Speir a record store owner and talent scout who helped Tommy Johnson, Charlie Patton, Skip James, Son House, Robert Johnson and others to get on record. Speir became the subject of Wardlow’s first blues feature article, “Legends of the Lost,” published serially in 1966 by Blues Unlimited. During the mid-1960’s, Wardlow supplied tape copies of rare records to Klatzko and Whelan for their Origin Jazz Library reissues, providing notes on musicians few knew anything about. The very first album on that label was Charlie Patton! 1929-32 (reissued as The Immortal Charlie Patton 1887-1934 in 1964 with notes by David Evans) in 1961 with notes by Bernie Klatzko. The label’s second release, Really! The Country Blues 1927-1933 was issued in 1962 with notes by Wardlow. He also wrote notes for 1963’s The Mississippi Blues 1927-1940.

After Whelan left OJL in 1966, Wardlow wrote articles for Whelan’s 78 Quarterly which started up in 1967. In 1988, Whelan revived 78 Quarterly after a 20-year publishing hiatus and Wardlow provided profiles of William Harris (1988), Henry “Son” Sims (1996), and a new biography of H.C. Speir (1994). Between 1965-1968 Wardlow found death certificates for Tommy Johnson, Willie Brown, Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson. Wardlow continued to find valuable informants like William and Elizabeth Moore, who provided information on Robert Johnson and others, and Hayes McMullan and Rev. Booker Miller, both musical associates of Charlie Patton.

Wardlow’s research has not been without controversy. Scholar David Evans has been one of his chief critics, particularly about Wardlow’s research on King Solomon Hill and Willie Brown. Wardlow and Calt’s King of the Delta Blues: The Life and Music of Charlie Patton has also garnered it’s fair share of criticism as well. Most recently historian T. DeWayne Moore has called into question Wardlow’s interviews with H.C. Speir and others.

During our conversation we talked about numerous artists Wardlow sought out information on including Charlie Patton, King Solomon Hill, Tommy Johnson, Ishman Bracey, Robert Johnson among others. We touch on Robert Johnson and the new book a bit at the end of this show but the bulk is covered in the follow-up program. I’ve written a fair amount about Patton and Johnson over the years, and even interviewed Johnson scholar, David Evans several years back. It’s worth giving background on a few artists discussed today including Hill and Bracey.

Mississippi John Hurt’s “Avalon” Blues” provided a road map some thirty plus years later to the singer just as Bukka White’s “Aberdeen Mississippi Blues” led to the rediscovery of White (John Fahey and Ed Denson addressed a letter to “Bukka White (Old Blues Singer), c/o General Delivery, Aberdeen, Mississippi”). Similar, but more roundabout was a clue the mysterious King Solomon Hill left back in 1932. In 1966 Stephen Calt contacted Wardlow writing that he heard “goin’ Minden” in King Solomon Hill’s “The Gone Dead Train.” That correspondence led to the unraveling of one of the blues greatest mysteries. “… I went to Minden and began asking people on the streets in the black section if they heard of a King Solomon Hill who made records in 1932. One of them said, after listening to the King Solomon Hill cuts from the Sam Collins LP ( Origin Jazz Library OJL-10), ‘That sho’ ’nuff sounds like Joe Holmes. You go down there to Sibley. That where he come from.’” Sibley was the hometown of Holmes which resulted in Wardlow’s “King Solomon Hill” (78 Quarterly no. 1) and “One Last Walk Up King Solomon Hill” (Blues Unlimited no. 148) both reprinted in the book Chasin’ That Devil Music. In the latter article Wardlow provides evidence that King Solomon Hill was the name of a community containing the King Solomon Hill Baptist Church. The concrete evidence that the King Solomon Hill community was where Joe Holmes lived was documented by a published letter from a retired Minden postman, E.B. Wall, who ran the mail route through the Sibley and King Solomon Hill communities during and after Holmes’ lifetime.

Both Mississippi John Hurt and Bukka White were duly rediscovered and went on to successful comebacks during the blues revival. No such luck for King Solomon Hill who died in 1940. Hill’s legacy is the six sides he cut for Paramount in 1932: “Whoopee Blues”, “Down On My Bended Knee”, “The Gone Dead Train”, “Tell Me Baby”, “My Buddy Blind Papa Lemon” and “Times Has Done Got Hard.” The last two numbers were not found until 2002 by record collector John Tefteller. (that story was published by Tefteller in 78 Quarterly No.12, “Gold in Grafton! Long Lost Paramount Photos, Artwork, 78’s Surface After 70 Years!”)

Ishmon Bracey was born in Byram, about ten miles south of Jackson, in January 1899. He learned guitar from locals Louis Cooper and Lee Jones and moved to Jackson in the late 1920s after encountering Tommy Johnson. Bracey soon became one of the most popular musicians in the Jackson area’s vital blues scene. Bracey’s music came to broader attention after he auditioned for recording agent H. C. Speir, who operated a furniture store on North Farish Street. Speir arranged for Bracey and Tommy Johnson to make their debut recordings at a session for Victor in Memphis in February of 1928. At that session and another for Victor later that year, Bracey was accompanied on guitar and mandolin by Charlie McCoy. Bracey recorded again in 1929 and early 1930 for the Paramount label. In 1963, when blues researcher Wardlow met and interviewed him in Jackson, Bracey had been a Baptist minister for over a decade, and, although he would no longer play blues, he provided important information on the early blues scene in Jackson. Wardlow’s article on him was published in 1982 as “Got Four, Five Puppies, One Little Shaggy Hound” (Blues Unlimited 142) which was reprinted in Chasin’ That Devil Music.