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Big Road Blues Show 4/10/11: What Kind Of Piano Player Is This? – Barrelhouse & Boogie Giants

April 10, 2011April 15, 2024 Jeff Leave a comment

ARTIST	SONG	ALBUM
Cow Cow Davenport	5th Street Blues	Boogie Woogie Blues
Cow Cow Davenport	Jim Crow Blues	The Essential
Cow Cow Davenport	Cow Cow Blues	The Essential
Charlie Spand	Soon This Morning	Dreaming The Blues
Charlie Spand	Good Gal	Dreaming The Blues
Charlie Spand	Back To The Woods Blues	Dreaming The Blues
Cripple Clarence Lofton	You Done Tore Your Playhouse Down	Cripple Clarence Lofton: Vol.1 1935-1939
Cripple Clarence Lofton	Strut That Thing	Cripple Clarence Lofton: Vol.1 1935-1939
Cripple Clarence Lofton	Brown Skin Girls	Cripple Clarence Lofton: Vol.1 1935-1939
Walter Roland	Red Cross Blues	Lucille Bogan & Walter Roland: The Essential
Walter Roland	Penniless Blues	Lucille Bogan & Walter Roland: The Essential
Walter Roland	Jookit Jookit	Lucille Bogan & Walter Roland: The Essential
Cow Cow Davenport	Chimes Blues	The Essential
Cow Cow Davenport	That'll Get It	The Essential
Cow Cow Davenport	State Street Jive	The Essential
Charlie Spand	Thirsty Woman Blues	Charlie Spand: 1929-1931
Charlie Spand	Moanin' The Blues	Dreaming The Blues
Charlie Spand	Hastings St.	Dreaming The Blues
Cripple Clarence Lofton	Lofty Blues	Cripple Clarence Lofton: Vol.2 1939-1943
Cripple Clarence Lofton	I Don't Know	Boogie Woogie Piano: Chicago-New York 1924-45
Walter Roland	45 Pistol Blues	Lucille Bogan & Walter Roland: The Essential
Walter Roland	Early This Morning ('Bout Break Of Day)	Lucille Bogan & Walter Roland: The Essential
Walter Roland	Railroad Stomp	Walter Roland: Vol. 1 1933
Cow Cow Davenport	Mama Don't Allow No Easy Riders	The Essential
Cow Cow Davenport	Railroad Blues	The Essential
Charlie Spand	Room Rent Blues	Dreaming The Blues
Charlie Spand	Ain't Gonna Stand For That	Dreaming The Blues
Cripple Clarence Lofton	Crying Mother Blues	Broadcasting The Blues
Cripple Clarence Lofton	Streamline Train	Cripple Clarence Lofton: Vol.2 1939-1943
Walter Roland	House Lady Blues	Walter Roland: Vol. 1 1933
Walter Roland	Big Mama	Lucille Bogan & Walter Roland: The Essential

Show Notes:

Today’s show spotlights a quartet of great, mostly little remembered, barrelhouse and boogie pianists who’s heyday was in the 1920’s and 30’s. Piano blues records were very popular on record in the 20’s and 30’s and by the early 1940’s there was a full-fledged Boogie-Woogie craze. Today’s pianists plied their trade in the juke joints, clubs and rent parties of Chicago, Detroit and down south. Today’s best known artist is undoubtedly Cow Cow Davenport who’s “Cow Cow Blues” has become a standard. Also on deck are the extroverted piano work of the colorful Cripple Clarence Lofton and the more subtle and technically adept playing of once popular race artists, Walter Roland and Charlie Spand. The bulk of today’s notes come from Peter Silvester’s A Left Hand Like God: A History of Boogie-Woogie Piano and from the liner notes to Francis Smith’s groundbreaking 21 volume piano series on the Magpie label.

While the piano blues is something of a declining art form it flourished on record in the 1920’s-30’s and with the boogie-woogie craze of the 1940’s. To quote Peter J. Silvester’s A Left Hand Like God: A History of Boogie-Woogie Piano: “Originating in barrelhouses and entertainment spots that served the black labor force who worked in the lumber and railroad industries throughout the deep south, it could be heard later at rent parties in Chicago, buffet flats in St. Louis and other black urban centers like Birmingham, Al and several towns in Texas among others. When the music evolved into boogie-woogie entering New York nightclubs like Café Society, pianists such as Meade Lux Lewis, Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons became stars. In the 1940’s the boogie-woogie craze hit big but faded by the 1950’s.”

Cow Cow Davenport is remembered most for his famous song “Cow Cow Blues” which has elements of the style that would flourish as boogie-woogie. Davenport learned to play piano and organ in his father’s church from his mother who was the organist and it looked like he was going to follow in the family footsteps until he was expelled from the Alabama Theological Seminary in 1911 for playing Ragtime at a church function. Davenport’s early career revolved around carnivals and vaudeville. His first break in pursuit of his objective came when he was offered work as a pianist at a club on 18th Street. Unable to read music, he began to compose his own tunes and to improve his keyboard skills, but he could still play in only one key. With a larger repertoire and a sharper technique he now began to tour the mining towns of Alabama playing in the honky-tonks. It was at one of these establishments hat he was heard by Bob Davies, a trained pianist, who ran a touring company called the ‘Barkroot Carnival’. Davies invited Davenport to join the show as the pianist. One of the requirements was to accompany the women singers, which necessitated being able ro play in several keys. Davies took Davenport under his wing and began to teach him.

He toured TOBA with an act called Davenport and Company with Blues singer Dora Carr and they recorded together in 1925 and 1926. The act broke up when Carr got married. Davenport didn’t cut a 78 record until 1927 although prior to that he made a number of piano rolls between 1925 and 1927 including three versions of “Cow Cow Blues.” Cow Cow was desperate for money, so he negotiated with a piano-roll company, called the Vocal Style, to make some piano rolls of his new composition. Neither Mr Miller, the owner, nor any of the musical stores in Cincinnati, where the company was situated, would handle the piano rolls, so Cow Cow traveled from house to house selling them. He managed t o do this successfully o an equal-share basis with the manufacturer until he had repaid the cost of cutting the rolls. As the rolls sold well, Miller included ‘Cow Cow Blues’ on the company’s catalog of piano rolls. We open our show with one of those rolls, “5th Street Blues”, which was made in 1926.

As for Cow Cow’s most famous song it came about when Dora left. He was deeply upset by this, so much so that he composed the “Railroad Blues”, which finally took form as the “Cow Cow Blues”. The new name was said to have been inspired by a section in the music where Charles was trying to use musical imagery to describe the signalman boarding the engine from the front of the train where the cow catcher was situated. During one theater engagement shortly after he had composed the number, and while playing the section, he sang, ‘Nobody rocks me like my Papa Cow Cow do.’ There was no particular reason why he introduced the expression “cow cow” but the name stuck and thereafter Charles was known to his fellow-pianists and his friends as “Cow Cow” Davenport.

Davenport briefly teamed up with Blues singer Ivy Smith in 1928 and worked as a talent scout for Brunswick and Vocalion records in the late 1920’s and played rent parties in Chicago. They formed an act called the Chicago Steppers which lasted for some months and, in 1928, the partnership began to record for the Paramount Company. Among these sides were “Jim Crow Blues”, a reflection of Davenport’s racist experiences in the South:

I’m tired of being Jim Crowed, gonna Leave this Jim Crow town
Doggone my black soul, I’m sweet Chicago bound

Yes I’m leaving here from this old Jim Crow town
I’m going up North where they say money grows on trees
I don’t give a doggone if my black soul is free
I’m going where I don’t need no baby

Jimmy Yancey(left) listens to Charlie Spand,
Chicago, 1940’s. Photo from A Left Hand Like God.

He moved to Cleveland, Ohio in 1930 and toured the TOBA vaudeville circuit and recorded with Sam Price. In 1938 Davenport suffered a stroke that left his right hand somewhat paralyzed and affected his piano playing for the rest of his life, but he remained active as a vocalist until he regained enough strength in his hand to play again. In the early 1940’s Cow Cow briefly left the music business and worked as a washroom attendant at the Onyx Club on 52nd Street in New York. In 1942 Freddie Slack’s Orchestra scored a huge hit with “Cow Cow Boogie” with vocals by seventeen year old Ella Mae Morse which sparked the Boogie-Woogie craze of the early 1940s; this led to a revival of interest in Davenport’s music. He tried to make a “comeback” in the forties and fifties but his career was often interrupted by sickness. He died in 1955 of heart problems in Cleveland.

Despite his popularity, Charlie Spand remains a shadowy figure despite numerous attempts to uncover his story. The first factual information about Charlie Spand is his residence in Detroit, Michigan, where he played piano on Hastings and Brady Streets in the Black Bottom, Detroit’s black section. Together with pianists James Hemingway, Hersal Thomas and Will Ezell, Spand formed the boogie nucleus of the city. He likely also performed in Chicago as well during this period.

Spand’s recording career started for Paramount on 6th June, 1929; during the next two years he recorded 24 songs. He cut two titles at this first session: “Soon This Morning Blues” and “Fetch Your Water” with the accompanying guitarist thought to have been Blind Blake. Probably recorded by Paramount on the suggestion of Blake, Spand’s first record was a hit. After three records he was considered important enough to be included on the Paramount “sampler” “Home Town Skiffle” alongside such established artists as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Papa Charlie Jackson, the Hokum Boys, Will Ezell and Blind Blake.” By 1929 Spand had moved to Chicago, and recorded “45th Street Blues” at Grafton in 1930, the title being an indication of his recent Chicago address. In September 1930 Spand traveled to Grafton to record some more titles for Paramount, six in total. Spand’s last session for the Paramount label was recorded in Grafton, Wisconsin in July 1931, by which time the company was on its last legs.

Nothing much is known about Spand’s activities during the 1930’s, although it is rumored that he returned to Detroit. Boogie-woogie was in full swing by the late 1930’s. Artists like Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons and Jimmy Yancey embraced the popularity of boogie-woogie and were subsequently recorded during the 1939-1940 period. Spand may have taken advantage of the revival of interest in piano blues and boogie-woogie. He got the opportunity to do two separate recording sessions for OKeh, on 20th and 27th June, 1940, recording a total of eight songs, including a remake of his “Soon This Morning.” No major rediscovery story resulted and no coverage was given on the whereabouts of Spand, in contrast to Lofton and Yancey. After his final 1940 sessions there is concrete information about Spand. Several sources believed that he died in Chicago around 1975.

Regarding his style, Bob Hall and Richard Noblett write in the Piano Blues vol. 16: “His playing was typical of the Detroit pianists of his day, essentially consisting of two main styles, an insistent rolling-boogie using a walking octave bass in the key of F or occasionally in the key of Bb,and a deliberate, at times almost majestic, barrelhouse style using a stride piano bass …it is however, his lyrics that set Span apart from his contemporaries. Not only have numbers like “Soon This Morning” become blues standards, but we hear in his work very strong indications of the future direction of the music. His songs frequently have a continuity which come from a genuine sense of poetry rather than the mere stringing together of traditional verses. Spand was in fact one of the first real blues song-writers, foreshadowing the work of such ‘thirties artists as Leroy Carr.”

Cripple Clarence Lofton (left) and Jimmy Yancey,
c. 1950’s. Photo from A Left Hand Like God.

Cripple Clarence Lofton was born as Albert Clemens in Tennessee in 1887, although he is most closely associated with his adopted hometown of Chicago, where he was a popular entertainer noted for his energetic performing style that, in addition to piano playing and singing, included tap dancing, whistling, and finger-snapping.A description of Lofton is provided in an excerpt from Boogie Woogie by William Russell:

“No one can complain of Clarence’s lack of variety or versatility. When he really gets going he’s a three-ring circus. During one number, he plays, sings, whistles a chorus, and snaps his fingers with the technique of a Spanish dancer to give further percussive accompaniment to his blues. At times he turns sideways, almost with his back to the piano as he keeps pounding away at the keyboard and stomping his feet, meanwhile continuing to sing and shout at his audience or his drummer. Suddenly in the middle of a number he jumps up, his hands clasped in front of him, and walks around the piano stool, and then, unexpectedly, out booms a vocal break in a bass voice from somewhere. One second later, he has turned and is back at the keyboard, both hands flying at lightning- like pace. His actions and facial expressions are as intensely dramatic and exciting as his music.”

Owing his nickname to a limp from which he suffered, he became a favorite of early jazz collectors during the boogie-woogie craze of the late 1930’s along with Meade Lux Lewis, Jimmy Yancey, Cow Cow Davenport, and many others. Born in Tennessee he lived most of his life in Chicago becoming a fixture on the Chicago nightlife scene. He owned his own nightclub called the Big Apple where he ran his own boogie school teaching youngsters the art form. Between 1935 and 1943 he cut close to forty sides for Vocalion, Swaggie, Solo Art and Session including exuberant pieces such as “Brown Skin Girls,” “Policy Blues,” “Streamline Train,” and “I Don’t Know,” the latter a number one R&B hit for Willie Mabon in 1952. The bulk of these were solo sides with guitarist Big Bill Broonzy adding support for two sessions. In addition Lofton provided accompaniment to Red Nelson, Sammy Brown, Al Miller and Jimmy Yancey. Lofton remained on the scene cutting sides for the Gennett, Vocalion, Solo Art, Riverside, Session and Pax labels. He stayed around Chicago until his death in 1957 from a blood clot in the brain.

As for his playing style, Peter Silvester writes: “Lofton was an eclectic performer who played in two keys, C and G. While his pounding style and interpretation were his own he obtained inspiration from the themes of other pianists. His most compelling composition, ‘Streamline Train’, was inspired by ‘Cow Cow Blues’, while ‘Pinetop’s Boogie-woogie’ was transformed into a very powerful and almost unrecognizable number. He was an undisciplined pianist and would often begin playing a new chorus before he had fully completed the one he was playing. The twelve-bar pattern would sometimes be reduced to ten, as was the case in ‘I Don’t Know’ or eleven and a half bars, as in some interpretations of ‘Streamline Train’. What he lacked in discipline, however, he more than made up for with vivacity and exuberance. I n some respects he can be compared to players like Jimmy Yancey and Montana Taylor, because their playing was untouched by time and their recordings reflected accurately the closed community of the rent party. None of them was required to perform relentlessly for the public, as Johnson, Ammons and Lewis were obliged to do when they became commercially popular. Lofton remained untouched by commercialism to the end.”

As Bob Hall and Richard Noblett write in the Piano Blues vol. 6: “In the annals of the blues there are many artists who have made outstanding contributions to the music, but whose personal lives remain a mystery. Just such a man is Walter Roland, who during the Depression, recorded over ninety issued sides for ARC as a soloist and accompanist.”As for his style and influence, they write: “…There is no doubt that Roland was a major and highly influential figure in his time, and his recorded output contains compositions which have become part of the repertoire of a host of younger musicians. …He was a highly accomplished pianist capable of playing in two distinct styles. The first employed a simple rolling boogie woogie bass, most often in the key of F, played in a variety of tempos. The second, less common barrelhouse style employed a stride piano bass of alternating octaves and chords, usually in the key of E. Throughout Roland’s work certain distinctive treble phrases emerge, and particularly striking is his use of repeated single note staccato triplets, foreshadowing the use of the same device by the post-war Chicago pianists.”

Roland was born at Ralph, Tuscaloosa County, Alabama on 20 December 1902 (according to his Social Security documents) or 4 December 1903 (according to his death certificate). Roland was one of the most technically proficient of all blues pianists, and in addition he displayed considerable feeling in his playing and singing. He was also an able guitarist, and recorded several titles backing his own vocals and those of others, playing guitar. Roland was said to have been based in the 1920’s or 1930’s around Pratt City, near Birmingham, Alabama.

Walter Roland

Although his recording career began in 1933, it is evident that Walter was already an accomplished musician with a fully formed style. Roland partnered Lucille Bogan when they recorded for the A R C labels between 1933 and 1935, in the course of which, he recorded in his own right. Walter’s first disc, “Red Cross Blues” has since become a blues standard, versions having been recorded by Sonny Scott, Sonny Boy Williamson, Champion Jack Dupree, Robert McCoy, Forest City Joe, and many others. In 1933, he was recorded at New York City for the American Record Company, and he had apparently traveled to the session with Lucille Bogan and guitarist Sonny Scott. His best-selling recording was “Early This Morning”, a reworking of an earlier Paramount recording by Charlie Spand, “Soon This Morning”, but Walter was successful enough to continue recording until 1935.

At some later time, possibly as late as 1950, Walter became a farmer. Roland was reputedly playing guitar as a street singer in the 1960’s. As well as Birmingham, he worked around Dolomite and the Interurban Heights, around Brighton and elsewhere. In about the late 1960’s, Walter was trying to be a peacemaker in a domestic argument between a neighboring husband and wife and one of the disputing parties fired a shotgun, with the result that Walter was blinded by buckshot. By 1968, Walter had retired from music because of his blindness, and was cared for by his daughters at Fairfield, near Miles College. In 1968, he applied for an old age pension. He died there of bronchogenic carcinoma on 12 October 1972.

–Charlie Spand – Back To The Woods by Alex van der Tuuk (Blues & Rhythm No. 217, 2007) (PDF)

–Cripple Clarence Lofton In Memoriam by Albert J. McCarthy (Jazz Monthly, November 1957 p. 31-32) (PDF)

–Walter Roland Blazed Through Music World Then Faded by Ben Windham (Tuscaloosa News Feb 27, 2000) (PDF)

–The Piano Blues Vol. 6: Walter Roland 1933-1935 (JPG)

–The Piano Blues Vol. 9: Lofton/Noble 1935-1936 (JPG)

–The Piano Blues Vol. 16: Charlie Spand 192-1931 (JPG)

Big Road Blues Show 12/12/10: Walking Basses – Little Brother Montgomery & Roosevelt Sykes

December 12, 2010April 13, 2016 Jeff 1 Comment

ARTIST	SONG	ALBUM
Little Brother Montgomery	No Special Rider Blues	Little Brother Montgomery 1930-1936
Little Brother Montgomery	Vicksburg Blues No. 2	Little Brother Montgomery 1930-1936
Little Brother Montgomery	Frisco Hi-Ball Blues	Little Brother Montgomery 1930-1936
Roosevelt Sykes	All My Money Gone Blues	The Way I Feel
Roosevelt Sykes	Devil's Island Gin Blues	The Essential
Little Brother Montgomery	The First Time I Met You	Little Brother Montgomery 1930-1936
Little Brother Montgomery	A&V Railroad Blues	Little Brother Montgomery 1930-1936
Little Brother Montgomery	Shreveport Farewell	Little Brother Montgomery 1930-1936
Roosevelt Sykes	Night Time Is the Right Time	Roosevelt Sykes Vol. 5 1937-1939
Roosevelt Sykes	The Cannon Ball	Roosevelt Sykes Vol. 5 1934-1936
Roosevelt Sykes	Doin' the Sally Long (Flames of Evaporation)	The Essential
Little Brother Montgomery	After Hour Blues	After Hour Blues
Little Brother Montgomery	Cow Cow Blues	La Salle Chicago Blues Recordings Vol. 1
Roosevelt Sykes	Trouble and Whiskey	The Essential
Roosevelt Sykes	Living in a Different World	Roosevelt Sykes Vol. 8 1945-1947
Roosevelt Sykes	Drivin' Wheel	Roosevelt Sykes Vol. 9 1947-1951
Little Brother Montgomery	Walking Basses/Dud Low Joe/The First Vicksburg Blues	Conversation With The Blues
Little Brother Montgomery	West 46th Street Boogie	Blues
Roosevelt Sykes	They Call Him "Pork Chops"/Forty-Four Blues	Conversation With The Blues
Roosevelt Sykes	You Can't Be Lucky All the Time	Crescent City Bounce
Roosevelt Sykes	She's Jail Bait	Roosevelt Sykes Vol. 10 1951-1957
Roosevelt Sykes	an Blues Out My Window	Blues By Roosevelt Honeydripper” Sykes
Little Brother Montgomery	Pleading Blues	Tasty Blues
Little Brother Montgomery	Buddy Bolden's Blues	Little Brother Plays and Sings
Little Brother Montgomery	Santa Fe	Tasty Blues
Roosevelt Sykes	North Gulfport Boogie	Hard Drivin' Blues
Roosevelt Sykes	Feel Like Blowing My Horn	Feel Like Blowing My Horn
Roosevelt Sykes	Dirty Mother For You	Dirty Mother For You
Little Brother Montgomery	Up the Country Blues	Farro Street Jive
Little Brother Montgomery	West Texas Blues	I Blueskvarter Vol. 2
Little Brother Montgomery & Edith Wilson	That Same Dog	He May Be Your Man (But He Comes To See Me Sometimes)
Roosevelt Sykes	Too Smart Too Soon	The Meek
Roosevelt Sykes	Music Is My Business	Music Is My Business

Show Notes:

Little Brother Montgomery and Roosevelt Sykes rank among the greatest blues pianists of the 20^th century and had unusually long and prolific careers. Both men were born in 1906, passed away in the early 1980’s and began their careers within a year of each other; Sykes made his debut in 1929 while Montgomery made his in 1930. Both men also chose to record their versions of “44 blues” at their debut sessions,; Sykes cutting it first in 1929 as “Forty- Four Blues” and following year by Montgomery as “Vicksburg Blues.” Montgomery is usually credited with the development of the song, taught it to another blues pianist along the way by the name of Lee Green; Green, in turn, taught it to Roosevelt Sykes. Both men also recorded steadily through the decades unlike many artists who began in the pre-war era only to fall out of music for decades until rediscovered during the blues revival. Both men began their careers down south before making their way to Chicago; Montgomery in 1928 and Sykes in the early 30’s. It was Sykes, however, that achieved the greater popularity becoming a major blues recording star of the 30’s, and a major figure in the transition to jump blues and R&B in the 40’s. Prior to cutting blues for the revival market of the 60’s, Sykes cut over two hundred sides geared to the black record buying public. Montgomery was recorded much more sparingly, cutting some two-dozen sides in the 30’s, without a doubt his greatest recordings, barely recorded in the 40’s and 50’s but saw ample recording opportunities starting with the blues revival of the 1960’s.

Eurreal Montgomery was the fifth of ten children, born to Harper and Dicy Montgomery. The family home in Kentwood Louisiana where Harper ran a honky-tonk where logging workers gathered on weekends to drink, dance, gamble and listen to music. Most all of the Montgomerys were musical. Harper played clarinet, and Dicy played accordion and organ. Eurreal’s brothers and sisters all learned to play piano to one degree or another. Little Brother taught himself to play simple “three finger blues”, as he called them, on a piano his father bought the family. “From then on,” he told his biographer Karl Gert zur Heide, “I just created simple things on my own until later I got large enough and went to hear older people play.… like Rip Top, Loomis Gibson, Papa Lord God.” Montgomery had plenty of opportunity to hear older musicians. Most of them passed regularly through Kentwood and played at his father’s honky-tonk. He claimed that he quit seventh grade, left home at the age of eleven and began playing piano for a living wherever he could. He eventually moved on to Ferriday, Louisiana where he made the acquaintance of two older piano players, Long Tall Friday and Dehlco Robert.The three friends called the new form “the Forty Fours.” Later Montgomery called it “the hardest barrelhouse blues of any blues in history because you have to keep two different timesgoing in each hand.” A common feature of most of these pre-blues was a rollicking walking bass carried on by the left hand. Not much later the style would be called boogie-woogie; in the 1910’s, however, it went by another name. “They used to call boogie piano Dudlow Joes,” bassist Willie Dixon told Gert zur Heide, “I didn’t hear it called boogie till long after. If a guy played boogie piano they’d say he was a Dudlow player.”

Montgomery played his way through Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas. He eventually moved to New Orleans. In the mid-1920s, Montgomery toured Louisiana with a variety of bands, his own and others. In 1928, Montgomery was hired by Clarence Desdune’s Dixieland Revelers, a dance band. At the end of 1928, Montgomery quit the Revelers and moved up to Chicago. He made a name for himself playing rent parties—house parties put on in black neighborhoods to raise money to pay the rent.

In late 1930, Montgomery accompanied Minnie Hicks and on two songs, Irene Scruggs on four and recorded “No Special Rider blues” and “Vicksburg Blues” for Paramount. The song was one of the most popular blues of its day, widely imitated by bluesmen. His next recording opportunity was in October 1936 in New Orleans where he waxed a remarkable 18 song session. The recordings Montgomery laid down were undoubtedly the pinnacle of his career, an astonishing profusion of piano technique, originality and depth of feeling that mark these as one of the finest bodies of piano blues recorded in the era. As Chris Smith writes he was “adept at blues, jazz, stride, boogie and pop which he synthesized into a personal style that ranged easily from the bopping earthiness of “Frisco Hi-Ball” to the pearl-stringing elegance of “Shreveport Farewell.” His high voice and bleating vibrato are unmistakable, especially on his signature piece, “Vicksburg Blues”, a polyrhythmic showcase for his acute but never pedantic timing. it’s also an example of Brother’s poetry of geography; many of his songs, and even the titles of his instrumentals, are rich evocations of places he knew and the railroads that carried him between them.”

Around the time World War II started Montgomery moved north to Chicago where he remained for the rest of his career. After the war, he began playing “old-time jazz” with musicians such as Baby Dodds and Lonnie Johnson. In 1948, he took part in a Carnegie Hall reunion concert by the Kid Ory Band and He played the Chicago club circuit regularly. he only recorded a handful of sides in the 1940’s and 50’s; a four song 1947 session for the Century label with trumpeter Lee Collins , and uniisued 1949 session for Regal and a 1954 solo date for Windin’ Ball.

Montgomery toured briefly with Otis Rush in 1956. His fame grew in the 1960s, and he continued to make many recordings.As electric post-war blues took hold in Chicago, Montgomery was an active session musician. He appeared on some of the influential mid-fifties record made by Otis Rush, and played piano on one of Buddy Guy’s first big hits, his 1960 remake of Montgomery’s “First Time I Met The Blues.” Momentum to Montgomery’s career picked up in the 60’s and he became a world traveller, visiting the UK and Europe on several occasions during the 1960’s, cutting several of his 20-odd albums there, while remaining based in Chicago. He cut some excellent albums during this period including Tasty Blues for Bluesville, one of his finest, plus fine records for Folkways, and on his own record label, FM Records, formed in 1969. A biography, Gert zur Heide’s Deep South Piano: The Story of Little Brother Montgomery, based on interviews with Montgomery, was published in 1970. He continued performing and recording practically right up to his death on September 6, 1985 of congestive heart failure.

Roosevelt Sykes was born on January 31, 1906, in Elmar, Arkansas,and in 1909, he moved with his family to St. Louis. By 1918 he had taught himself the art of blues piano and, three years later, left home to work

as an itinerant pianist in gambling establishments and barrelhouses throughout Louisiana and Mississippi. He later attributed his early piano influences to local St. Louis musicians such as “Red Eye” Jesse Bell, Joe Crump, and Baby Sneed. However, his most important mentor was “Pork Chop” Lee Green, who taught Sykes a rendition of the “Forty-Four Blues” piano style. By 1918 he had taught himself the art of blues piano and, three years later, left home to work as an itinerant pianist in gambling establishments and barrelhouses throughout Louisiana and Mississippi. He led the life of a rambler, playing music in order to survive. As Sykes told Margaret McKee and Fred Chisenhall in Beale Black & Blue, “When I did get started, I wouldn’t do nothing else, just play piano … If I didn’t play, I didn’t eat.”

In 1929 Sykes met Jesse Johnson, the owner of the Deluxe Record Shop in St. Louis. Sykes, who at the time performed at an East St. Louis club for one dollar a night, quickly accepted Johnson’s invitation to a recording session in New York. Accompanied by Johnson, Sykes arrived at the Okeh Studios in New York in June of 1929. He recorded several numbers, including a version of “Forty- Four Blues.” During the same year, while attending a recording session for Paramount, Sykes received the nickname “The Honey Dripper” from a song written by singer Edith Johnson.

In the early 1930s, Sykes moved to Chicago. During the Depression years, he recorded for several labels under various pseudonyms. For the Victor label, he recorded as Willie Kelly on the classic 1930 side “32-20 Blues.” Two years later, he cut his popular number “Highway 61 Blues” for Champion, the subsidiary label of Gennett Records. During the 1930’s, Sykes served as a back-up pianist for more than thirty singers including Mary Johnson and James “St. Louis Jimmy” Oden. Through the recruiting efforts of Mayo “Ink” Williams, Sykes signed with Decca Records in 1934. His 1936 Decca side “Driving Wheel Blues” emerged as a blues classic. Sykes settled in Chicago in 1941 and, within a short time, became a house musician for the Victor/Bluebird label. Although the label marketed him as the successor to Fats Waller, who recorded on the same label and died in 1943, Sykes found success as the creator of his own style and remained active as a session man. While in Chicago, Sykes formed his own group, The Honeydrippers, in 1943. The Honeydrippers consisted of twelve musicians, including many of Chicago’s finest horn players. In addition to his keyboard and vocal skills, Sykes was brilliant and original songwriter. During the 30’s and 40’s he delivered a seemingly endless flow of original and witty compositions, penning several blues standard along the way like “Dirty Mother For You”, “Drivin’ Wheel”, “I Wonder” and “Night Time Is the Right Time.”

Following the end of World War II in 1945, Sykes continued to perform and recorded with several labels. Sykes moved to
New Orleans in 1954 and, despite the decreasing popularity of the blues during the mid-1950s, continued to play in
small clubs around the Crescent City. He returned briefly to St. Louis in 1958 and then moved to Chicago in 1960, where he was “rediscovered” by enthusiasts of the folk music revival. Through the 1960s he recorded for labels like Delmark, Bluesville, Storyville, and Folkways. In 1961, Sykes toured Europe and appeared in the Belgian film Roosevelt Sykes: the Honeydripper. In 1965 and 1966, he toured with the American Folk Blues Festival.

Sykes moved to New Orleans in the late 1960s and often played at the Court of the Two Sisters. He appeared as the opening act for the first annual Ann Arbor Blues Festival in 1969. Sykes appeared in the French film Blues Under the Skin in 1972. In September 1973, he made a triumphant return to the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival. That same year, Delmark released Sykes’s album Feel Like Blowing My Horn, featuring guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. and drummer Fred Below. In 1976, he took part in the BBC television series The Devil’s Music-A History of the Blues. Sykes continued to perform at festivals and in concert until his death from a heart attack on July 17, 1984, in New Orleans.

Big Road Blues Show 3/28/10: Some Piano Player, I’ll Tell You That – A Tribute To Francis Smith & The Piano Blues

March 28, 2010March 31, 2016 Jeff 4 Comments

ARTIST	SONG	ALBUM
Little Brother Montgomery	Vicksburg Blues	The Piano Blues Vol. 1 Paramount
Charles Avery	Chain 'Em Down	The Piano Blues Vol. 1 Paramount
Blind Blake & Charlie Spand	Hastings St.	The Piano Blues Vol. 1 Paramount
Lucille Bogan	Ally Boogie	The Piano Blues Vol. 2 Brunswick
Mozelle Alderson	Tight In Chicago	The Piano Blues Vol. 2 Brunswick
Louise Johnson	By The Moon And The Stars	The Piano Blues Vol. 1 Paramount
Charles 'Speck' Petrum	Harvest Moon Blues	The Piano Blues Vol. 2 Brunswick
Eddie Miller	Freight Train Blues	The Piano Blues Vol. 2 Brunswick
Bert Mays	You Ca'’t Come In	The Piano Blues Vol. 3 Vocalion
Dan Stewart	New Orleans Blues	The Piano Blues Vol. 3 Vocalion
Cow Cow Davenport	Back In The Alley	The Piano Blues Vol. 3 Vocalion
Joe Dean	I'm So Glad I'm 21 Years Old Today	The Piano Blues Vol. 3 Vocalion
Lee Green	Memphis Fives	The Piano Blues Vol. 3 Vocalion
Pinetop Smith	Pine Top's Boogie Woogie	The Piano Blues Vol. 3 Vocalion
Romeo Nelson	Head Rag Hop	The Piano Blues Vol. 3 Vocalion
Leroy Carr	Alabama Woman Blues	The Piano Blues Vol. 7: Leroy Carr
Walter Roland	Early This Morning	The Piano Blues Vol. 6 - Walter Roland
Turner Parrish	Trenches	The Piano Blues Vol. 5: Postscript
Joe Pullum	Cows, See That Train Comin'	The Piano Blues Vol. 8: Texas Seaport
Andy Boy	House Raid Blues	The Piano Blues Vol. 8: Texas Seaport
Cripple Clarence Lofton	Strut That Thing	The Piano Blues Vol. 9 Lofton/Noble
Alfoncy Harris	Absent Freight Train Blues	The Piano Blues Vol. 11 Texas Santa Fe
Black Boy Shine	Brown House Blues	The Piano Blues Vol. 11 Texas Santa Fe
Pinetop Burks	Jack Of All Trades	The Piano Blues Vol. 11 Texas Santa Fe
Pigmeat Terry	Black Sheep Blues	The Piano Blues Vol. 13: Central Highway
Peetie Wheatstraw	Shack Bully Stomp	The Piano Blues Vol. 13: Central Highway
Georgia White	The Blues Ain't Nothin' But...	The Piano Blues Vol. 13: Central Highway
Whistlin' Alex Moore	Blue Bloomer Blues	The Piano Blues Vol. 15: Dallas
Charlie Spand	Soon This Morning Blues	The Piano Blues Vol. 16 - Charlie Spand
Jabo Williams	Pratt City Blues	The Piano Blues Vol. 17 - Paramount Vol. 2
Pinetop and Lindberg	East Chicago Blues	The Piano Blues Vol. 20 - Barrelhouse Years
Stump Johnson & Dorothy Trowbridge	Steady Grindin'	Piano Blues Vol. 17 - Paramount Vol. 2
Bumble Slim w/ Myrtle Jenkins	Somebody Loses	Piano Blues Vol. 17 - Paramount Vol. 2
Speckled Red	The Dirty Dozen No. 2	The Piano Blues Vol. 20 - Barrelhouse Years
Henry Brown	Henry Brown Blues	The Piano Blues Vol. 1 Paramount

Show Notes:

Some piano player, I’ll tell you that
(Ivy Smith, Alabama Strut)

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On December 4, 2009 Francis Wilford-Smith died and today we pay tribute to him. Smith was an avid collector of 78 records, a broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 (Aspects of the Blues) and the compiler of some excellent piano blues LP’s on the British label Magpie Records, drawing all the material from his own collection. Today’s selections all come from Smith’s groundbreaking 21 volume series he started in 1977 and issued on the Magpie label, a subsidiary o of the Flyright label. Subsequently his collection was used for a piano blues series on Yazoo issued on CD. He had one of the largest collections of piano blues 78’s in the world. Smith also field recorded Roosevelt Sykes and Little Brother Montgomery at his home in Sussex in 1960, yielding two 1980s LP’s of the latter: These Are What I Like: Unissued Recordings Vol. 1 and Those I Liked I Learned: Unissued Recordings Vol. 2. Smith made a good living from cartoons published under the pen name ‘Smilby’ in Playboy, which allowed him to outbid others for rare 78s. Wilford-Smith was 82, had suffered from Parkinson’s disease since 1994, and spent his last years in a nursing home. He died asleep in bed.

On a personal note, it was through the Magpie series that I became a life long fan of piano blues. I came to the series late, my first purchase was volume 20 and I must have been around 16. The album made a huge impression on me and I even remember exactly where I purchased it – Tower Records on West 4th St., NYC. I went back and picked up as many of the rest of the albums I could find and over the years completed the entire series. The series had everything you would want; each thematically well assembled, excellent liner notes (brief introductions by Smith) by Bob Hall, Paul Oliver and Richard Noblett and superb transfers.

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Before I give some background on the individual volumes, its worth quoting Wilford-Smith from his introduction to the series: “The well-merited reissue of so many excellent blues guitar records over the past few years has had, perhaps, one unfortunate and unintentional – in that it caused the pianist to be unfairly overshadowed. This album marks the start of a series which, it is hoped, will put into perspective the role of the piano in blues history and do justice to the memory of the many fine pianists who have so enriched the music. We are only using 78 originals from my own collection, thus giving the listener the rare chance to hear records; at their best. No dubs, no tape-tracks that have wandered in and out of half-a-dozen tape collections before being issued with that all too familiar dead and muffled cotton-wool-in-the-ears sounds. No ordinary filtering of any sort has been done in any misguided attempt t0 ‘improve’ the quality, and each listener is left free to filter to his own taste. Surface noise there may be, but freshness and vitality are not strained away. The selection of records both here and throughout the series will be essentially subjective and reflect my own taste, but l shall endeavor to include a wide-ranging variety of piano styles and treatments to give as broad as possible a picture of the whole blues piano scene.”

More or less, we work our way through the series volume by volume. The first volume and volume 17 are devoted to Paramount and as Smith writes: “…We start with Paramount, almost unchallenged as the greatest blues label, and its piano content lives up to its reputation. Here are joys indeed – and some of the greatest blues piano ever recorded. Spand, Little Brother, Ezell, Louise Johnson, Wesley Wallace, Garnett. …I think the playing here must satisfy the most critical lover of the blues.” From those volumes we spin tracks by Little Montgomery, Charles Avery, Charlie Spand, Louise Johnson, Henry Brown and Jabo Williams.

“…The second volume”, Smith writes, “in our Piano Blues Series, will be found very different in character to Volume One. … Here on Brunswick a large proportion of the piano blues bear a strong family resemblance and emotional unity. This perhaps because several of the artists would seem to hail from the St. Louis area, and share that hollow-chorded easy-rocking piano style.” The Piano Blues Vol. 3 is devoted to the Vocalion label which was founded in 1916 and acquired by Brunswick in 1925. These are particularly strong volumes and we included several tracks from these collections including Eddie Miller, Charles “Speck” Pertum, Lucille Bogan, Mozelle Alderson, Romeo Nelson and Joe Dean among others.

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Next to St. Louis, one of the most musically rich piano regions was Texas as Paul Oliver observed: “Texas was as rich in piano blues as Mississippi was in guitar blues …A cursory glance through the discographies will emphasize the fact that a remarkable number of blues pianists came from Texas.” Four volumes in the series are devoted to the piano blues of Texas: The Piano Blues Vol. 4 – The Thomas Family 1925-1929, The Piano Blues Vol. 8 – Texas Seaport 1934-1937, The Piano Blues Vol. 11 – Texas Sante Fe 1934-1937 and The Piano Blues Vol. 15 – Dallas 1927-1929. The Texas pianists, Oliver notes, “…can be grouped into ‘schools’, characterized by certain similarities of style and approach, that were partly a reflection of the environments in which they worked, of their friendships and associations with other pianists, and by the isolation of Texas from other states.” One school was the so-called “Santa Fe group” who were based in the southwestern part of the state where the cities of Galveston, Houston and Richmond lie. Here was where the music thrived and pianists could be found like Pinetop Burks, Son Becky, Rob Cooper, Black Boy Shine, Andy Boy, Big Boy Knox, Robert Shaw, Buster Pickens and the singers who worked with them like Walter “Cowboy” Washington and Joe Pullum. The other important school was a cluster of pianists and singers based in Dallas such as Alex Moore, Texas Bill Day, Neal Roberts Willie Tyson, and singer Billiken Johnson. The earlier Texas piano tradition is documented on The Piano Blues Vol. 4 – The Thomas Family 1925-1929. As David Evans states: “It is likely that no family has contributed more personalities to blues history than the Thomas family of Houston, Texas, whose famous members included George W. Thomas, his sister Beulah “Sippie” Wallace, their brother Hersal Thomas, George’s daughter Hociel Thomas, and Moanin’ Bernice Edwards who was raised up in the family.”

Several volumes in the series are devoted to individual artists or a cluster of artists: The Piano Blues Vol. 6 – Walter Roland 1933-1935, The Piano Blues Vol. 7 – Leroy Carr 1930-1935, The Piano Blues Vol. 9 – Lofton-Noble 1935-1936 (Cripple Clarence Lofton and George Noble), The Piano Blues Vol. 12 – Big Four 1933-1941 (Little Brother Montgomery, Walter Davis, Roosevelt Sykes, Springback James) and The Piano Blues Vol. 18 – Roosevelt Sykes/Lee Green 1929-1930.

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Among the other volumes in the series we play tracks from The Piano Blues Vol. 5 – Postsript 1927-1935, The Piano Blues Vol. 13 – Central Highway 1933-1941, The Piano Blues Vol. 14 – The Accompanist and The Piano Blues Vol. 20 – Barrelhouse Years 1928-1933. Among the tracks we spin from these collections are Turner Parrish’s remarkable “The Trenches” who Bob Hall calls “an eccentric and probably unschooled pianist with nevertheless a considerable technique”, Georgia White accompanying herself on piano on the boisterous “The Blues Ain’t Nothin’ But…”, the obscure Pigmeat Terry who sings magnificently on the moving “Black Sheep Blues” accompanied by his own piano and the wonderful Pinetop and Lindberg’s “East Chicago Blues.”

The piano blues series officially concluded with The Piano Blues Vol. 21 – Unfinished Boogie 1938-1945 which collects unreleased recordings of Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis. As mentioned previously two collections of recordings by Little Brother Montgomery were made at Smith’s home in 1960 and were the final albums issued on the Magpie imprint. Yazoo Records launched their own piano blues series also using 78’s from Smith’s collection. As far as I can tell the series has stopped but they issued seven excellent collections.

Notes to The Piano Blues Vol. 8 – Texas Seaport 1934-1937, The Piano Blues Vol. 11 – Texas Sante Fe 1934-1937 and The Piano Blues Vol. 15 – Dallas 1927-1929 (Word Doc)