Big Road Blues Show 4/28/13: Come On Baby, Take A Little Swing With Me – Down South Blues

Show Notes:

Come on baby take a little swing with me (2x)
We gonna jump awhile, ’cause things ain’t what they used to be
(Papa Lightfoot, Jump The Boogie)

Read Liner Notes

Today’s show spotlights a batch of rough and tumble blues artists who cut some great down-home blues records in the South during the 50’s and 60’s. At the heart of today’s show are some remarkable sides cut for the Modern label in the years 1951-52 when Ike Turner was employed by the Bihari brothers, owners of the Modern label, to record new talent for the label. At a session held in Greenville, Mississippi in January of ’52 he recorded the tough juke joint blues of Boyd Gilmore, and in the spring of ’52 Turner and Jules Bihari hit Little Rock, Arkansas where they recorded a bunch of musicians that revolved  Drifting Slim and guitarist Baby Face Turner. They also recorded harmonica blower Sunny Blair and guitarist Junior Brooks who were part of the same circle. Also featured today is Joe Hill Louis, the great one man band who cut some terrific sides for labels like Sun, Modern and Checker and harmonica ace George Papa Lightfoot who waxed some wild sides for a slew of different labels through the 50’s.

Drifting Slim was born Elmon Mickle on February 24, 1919 in Keo, Arkansas. He first became interested in singing the blues in his late teens when he saw a performance in town by John Lee ‘Sonny Boy’ Williamson, together with Yank Rachell. He was so impressed by Sonny Boy’s renditions of ‘Sugar Mama” and ‘Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” that he would never be satisfied until he could sing and play these numbers just like Sonny Boy. He spoke to Sonny Boy after the show, who promised to spend the night with him and teach him to play. During them mid-forties, Elmon and Sonny Boy became firm friends and played frequently together at local clubs and dances. In 1952, Elmon formed his now legendary band consisting of himself on harmonica, Baby Face Turner and Crippled Red on guitars and Bill Russel on drums. Crippled Red is better known by the name he used on record – Junior Brooks. Sunny Blair joined the band very shortly afterwords, having been taught by Elmon to play the harmonica. Almost immediately after the first recording session, Junior Brooks died of a heart attack, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and so Elmon started to practice on the guitar in order to fill in. Sometime later he also learned to play the drums and became a one-man band. In 1957, he decided to leave Arkansas and so he and his wife packed their things and set off for Los Angeles. His first recordings in Los Angeles were for J.R. Fullbright’s Elko label, other sides were cut for his own label E.M., also some titles on the J. Gems label and he also was recorded by Jerry Hooks, an independent black record producer in Los Angeles circa 1966/67 (collected on the Flyright album Somebody Done Voodoo The Hoodoo Man). In the late 60’s Milestone issued his only full length album, Somebody Hoo-Doo’d The Hoo-Doo Man, recorded by Pete Welding in 1966 and 1967. Mickle died in 1977.

Guitarists Baby Face Turner and Junior Brooks with Sunnv Blair ( real name Sullivan Jackson) on harmonica were from Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Bill Russel completed the band on drums . The first session saw two sides each by Blair, Brooks and Mickle issued on Modern and RPM, with Baby Face Turner playing lead guitar on them all . Mickle played harmonica on one side of the Brooks and saw his own sides issued as by Drifting Smith; both being Sonny Boy Williamson I songs. A second session on April 6 saw further sides by Blair, Turner and Mickle issued with Ike Turner on piano. This time Mickie’s pseudonym, on RPM, was Drifting Slim. Unissued sides recorded under Blair’s and Turner’s names were first made available on a Kent LP and eventually issued on CD.

Boyd Gilmore was supposedly a cousin of Elmore James and may have had some connection to Robert Johnson and Robert Lockwood. Gilmore recorded seven sides for Modern in 1952 plus some alternate takes backed by Ike Turner on piano on on some sides. In 1953 he cut another version of “Believe I’ll Settle Down” for Sun backed by Earl Hooker, Pinetop Perkins and Willie Nix that was a superior to the Modern version. Gilmore passed in 1976. Baby Face Turner’s legacy rests on just three sides (one other record, an acetate of the song “44 Blues”, was cut but never found) and he playing guitar on records by Sonny Blair, Junior Brooks and Drifting Slim. Musician CeDell Davis recalled Turner: “He was such a good guitar player …He was one of the old-timers, played nothin’ but the old-time Delta cotton patch stuff.” Turner was reportedly murdered in Mississippi sometime in the early to mid-60’s. Blair cut just four sides at sessions in 1952 and 1952 as well as backing Drifting Slim on record. He went on to play with the King Biscuit Boys in Helena, Arkansas. Blair died in 1966.

Born Alexander Lightfoot in Natchez, Mississippi,he taught himself harmonica as a child. Lightfoot earned a living early on shining shoes on the river docks but soon graduated to the more lucrative work of playing music for tips. His first opportunity to record came in 1949 in Houston for the Peacock label, but the two resulting sides were not issued. The following year he recorded as “Papa George” in Natchez for the tiny Sultan label, and in 1952 he recorded for the Aladdin imprint in New Orleans. Lightfoot then worked with Champion Jack Dupree and toured and recorded with him through 1953. Lightfoot returned to New Orleans to record for Imperial in 1954. After an unissued date for Jiffy as “Little Papa Walter,” he traveled to Atlanta for a 1955 session for Savoy. It is theorized that two songs cut by “Ole Sonny Boy” for Excello in 1956 were actually by Papa Lightfoot, although no existing label documentation verifies it. By the late 50’s he had left music. Steve LaVere tracked down the Lightfoot in Natchez, cutting the album Goin’ Back to the Nachez Trace for Vault in 1969. Lightfoot appeared at the 1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festival and was on the verge of an anticipated comeback when he died the following year of cardiac arrest at age forty-seven.

Joe Hill Louis was born Lester (or possibly Leslie) Hill on September 23, 1921 in Raines, Tennessee. He ran away from home at age 14, living instead with a well-heeled Memphis family. A fight with another youth that was won by young Hill earned him the “Joe Louis” nickname. He picked up Harp first and by the late ’40s, his one-man musical attack was a popular attraction in Handy Park and on WDIA, the Memphis radio station where he hosted a 15-minute program billed as The Pepticon Boy. Louis’ recording debut was made for Columbia in 1949, and his music was released on a variety of independent labels through the 1950s, most notably recording for Sam Phillips’ Sun Records,for whom he recorded extensively as a backing musician for a wide variety of other singers as well as under his own name. “Boogie in the Park” (recorded July 1950 and released August 1950) was the only record ever released on Sam Phillips’ early Phillips label before founding Sun Records. Louis cut sides for Checker Records, Meteor and Ace with his final records cut for House Of Sound shortly before his death from tetanus in Memphis in August 1957.

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