Tag: Scrapper Blackwell

Show Notes:

Today’s show spotlights several artists who were proficient both on guitar and piano and recorded on both instruments. A number of today’s artists are linked, including Scrapper Blackwell, Pete Franklin and Tampa Red. The team of Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell were highly influential, influencing both pianists and guitarists alike. Pete Franklin, whose mother was good friend with Leroy Carr (he roomed at their house shortly before he passed in 1935) was influenced on guitar by the work of Scrapper, whilst on the piano his style was similar to Carr. Both Scrapper and Franklin were captured playing piano on a number of fine recordings. Tampa Red proved himself a capable pianist, first recording on piano in the mid-30s and backed Franklin on piano on some 1949 recordings. Skip James, Bukka White, Lonnie Johnson, Hacksaw Harney and Henry Townsend were known for their guitar playing but all recorded captivating sides on piano. Other artists heard today include Clifford Gibson, Blind Blake, Leadbelly, Lightnin’ Hopkins, James “Guitar Slim” Stephens among others. We also hear from pianists Walter Roland and Peetie Wheatstraw, the only pianists today featured on guitar and harmonica blower Forrest City Joe who also played piano.

From the 20s-40s we spin a grab bag of artists who recorded on multiple instruments. Guitarists Blind Blake and Clifford Gibson backed other artists on piano, recording under their own names strictly as guitarists. Peetie Wheatstraw was a proficient guitarist as heard on “Police Station Blues” which forms the basis for Robert Johnson’s “Terraplane Blues.” Leadbelly recorded a few piano solos including “Eagle Rock Rag”, “The Eagle Rocks”, and “Big Fat Woman” which are all essentially the same piece, featuring some singing and a lot of scat. Lonnie Johnson played piano, guitar, violin and today we hear him playing piano on two numbers from 1930 and 1931. Then there’s Skip James who recorded quite a bit on both instruments. James grew up at the Woodbine Plantation in Bentonia, Mississippi and as a youth learned to play both guitar and piano. In his teens James began working on construction and logging projects across the mid-South, and sharpened his piano skills playing at work camp barrelhouses. James traveled to Grafton, Wisconsin, for his historic 1931 session for Paramount Records, which included thirteen songs on guitar and five on piano. He was sent to Paramount by talent scout H.C. Speir who was impressed by James’ audition.

Recording agent Ralph Lembo of Itta Bena arranged for Bukka White to record his first blues and gospel songs in 1930 in Memphis. Victor only saw fit to release four of the 14 songs Bukka White recorded that day. In 1937 White recorded a minor hit, “Shake ‘Em On Down,” in Chicago, but that year he was also sentenced for a shooting incident to Parchman Penitentiary, where John Lomax of the Library of Congress recorded him. After his release White recorded twelve of his best-known songs at a Chicago session in 1940. Among the songs he recorded on that occasion were “Parchman Farm Blues”, “Good Gin Blues,” “Bukka’s Jitterbug Swing,” “Aberdeen, Mississippi Blues,” and “Fixin’ to Die Blues,” all classic numbers. Two California-based blues enthusiasts, John Fahey and Ed Denson tracked Bukka down and he resumed his recording career for labels like Takoma and Arhoolie. He recorded his first piano pieces for those labels.

Scrapper Blackwell was a self-taught guitarist, building his first guitar out of a cigar box, wood and wire and also learned to play the piano. Blackwell and Carr teamed up in 1928 and t a remarkably consistent body of work of hundreds of sides notable for the impeccable guitar/piano interplay, Carr’s profoundly expressive, melancholy vocals and some terrific songs. Blackwell actually made his solo recording debut three day prior to his debut with Carr, on June 16, 1928, cutting “Kokomo Blues b/w Penal Farm Blues.” Blackwell’s last recording session with Carr was in February 1935, for Bluebird Records. The session ended bitterly, as both musicians left the studio mid-session and on bad terms, stemming from payment disputes. Two months later Blackwell received a phone call informing him of Carr’s death due to heavy drinking and nephritis. Blackwell soon recorded a tribute to his musical partner “My Old Pal Blues” and then shortly retired from the music industry. Blackwell returned to music in the late 1950’s and in 1962 cut the magnificent Mr. Scrapper’s Blues and teamed with Brooks Berry, resulting in the marvelous My Heart Struck Sorrow. Scrapper plays piano on both records.

My Heart Struck Sorrow was the lone album by singer Brooks Berry. As producer Art Rosenbaum wrote: “Brooks met Scrapper shortly after she moved to Indianapolis and thus began a long though at times stormy friendship that was to end suddenly some fifteen months after the last of the present recordings were made. On October 6, 1962. Scrapper was shot to death in a back alley near his home. Brooks has been, during the four years I have known her, reluctant to sing blues without her friend’s sensitive guitar or piano playing behind her; and she will sing less and less now that he is gone.” Some additional sides by Berry and Blackwell appear on the collection Scrapper Blackwell with Brooks Berry 1959 – 1960 on Document which were recorded live at 144 Gallery in Indianapolis in 1959.

Edward Lamonte Franklin was born in Indianapolis on January 16, 1927. Despite being billed as Guitar Pete Franklin, he was equally adept on the piano. His guitar work was influenced by the work of Scrapper Blackwell, whilst on the piano his style was similar to his mother’s one time lodger, Leroy Carr. Pete was only eight but remembered the hours Carr spent at the piano in their living room. He started playing guitar at eleven by watching and listening to the guitarists who would stop by the house, not only Scrapper Blackwell but also Jesse Ellery who played on Champion Jack Dupree’s first sessions and the last by Bill Gaither. After getting discharged from the army, Franklin headed to Chicago where his first recording took place in 1947, when he accompanied St. Louis Jimmy Oden on guitar for the latter’s single, “Coming Up Fast”. Franklin’s own work started in 1949 with his single release, “Casey Brown Blues b/w Down Behind The Rise.” Two other sides from that session, “Mr. Charley” and “Naptown Blues” were not issued at the time. Franklin also made recordings backing Jazz Gillum, John Brim and Sunnyland Slim. In 1963, Bluesville Records released The Blues of Pete Franklin: Guitar Pete’s Blues, which was recorded on July 12, 1961, in Indianapolis. A few other sides appeared on the Flyright album Indianapolis Jump. Franklin died in Indiana, in July 1975 from heart disease, aged 47. Regarding his style John Brim offered the following: “Yeah, he’d play his style-and Jesse Ellery’s. Play his style and ideas that he put a little more in it than Scrapper did.”

Tampa Red accompanies Franklin on piano as he sings and plays guitar on three tracks from 1949. At the same session Tampa also played piano behind Mildred White with Franklin again on guitar. Tampa’s piano playing encompasses the sound of another major figure of the Chicago blues scene, Big Maceo Merriweather. Tampa first recorded on piano back in 1936 on “Stormy Sea Blues” which we feature today.

Pianist Walter Roland recorded over ninety issued sides for ARC as a soloist and accompanist. Roland partnered Lucille Bogan when they recorded for the ARC labels between 1933 and 1935. 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. With Scott, he switched to guitar and the duo knocked out two remarkable guitar pieces.

Henry Townsend recorded in every decade from the 1920s through the 2000s. By the late 1920s he had begun touring and recording with the pianist Walter Davis and plays on numerous records by him through the early 50s. During this time period, he also learned to play the piano. He backed other artists in the 30s including the Sparks Brothers, Big Joe Williams, and Roosevelt Sykes. His recording was sparse in the 40s and 50s. Articulate and self-aware, with an excellent memory, Townsend gave many invaluable interviews to blues enthusiasts and scholars. Paul Oliver recorded him in 1960 and quoted him extensively in his 1967 work Conversations with the Blues. In the 60s he recorded for Bluesville and Adelphi and continued to record for labels like Nighthawk, where he cut Mule in 1980, one of his finest, as well as Arcola, APO, Wolf and others. He also appeared in films such as Blues Like Showers of Rain and The Devil’s Music. In 1999 his autobiography, A Blues Life was published. Townsend died on September 24, 2006, at the age of 96.

Other artists featured today include Pine Bluff Pete, Forrest City, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Roosevelt Sykes, Richard Hacksaw Harney, James “Guitar Slim” Stephens. Art Rupe remembered “Pine Bluff Pete” as a “very black man” who had been running errands during the session. Rupe said “when it was felt the other singers couldn’t perform effectively any more because of alcohol, fatigue, or both, Pine Bluff Pete asked to record. He looked like he could use the recording fee, and everybody was feeling good, so we recorded him. We never actually intended to release the records, so we paid him outright, not even getting his full name.” The name “Pine Bluff Pete” was given to him by Barry Hansen who discovered the tape in the Specialty vaults.

In his The Land Where the Blues Began, Alan Lomax told about meeting Forrest City Joe one September afternoon in Hughes, a small town in Arkansas cotton country, about eighty miles south of Memphis: “Joe was sitting on the front gallery of a tavern, identified in the shaky lettering of a sign, ‘The Old Whiskey Store.’ He was playing the guitar for a group of loungers. …I listened a while, bought him a drink, and we agreed to round up musicians for a recording session that evening. …By nine o’clock that evening Pugh had rounded up his band, Boy Blue and His Two (when backing him they became Forrest City Joe’s Three Aces), and Lomax had set up his recording machine on the bar at Charley Houlin’s juke joint.” Sadly, Joe was killed in a car crash not long after.

While living within the Delta, Richard Hacksaw Harney formed a guitar playing duo with another of his brothers, Maylon. They became known by their family nicknames of Can and Pet. In December 1927, they recorded for Columbia Records, backing vocalist and button accordion player Walter Rhodes, as well as blues singer, Pearl Dickson. Pet and Can’s musical career came to an abrupt halt shortly afterwards when Maylon was stabbed to death in a juke joint. Following his brother’s murder, Harney claimed he attempted to learn to play both parts. Primarily though his income came from his daytime work as a piano tuner and repairman, based in and around Memphis, Tennessee. He recorded an album for Adelphi and began playing again at workshops and music festivals such as the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

James “Guitar Slim” Stephens began playing pump organ when he was only five years old, singing spirituals he learned from his parents and reels he heard from his older brother pick on the banjo. Within a few years, Slim was playing piano. When he was thirteen, Green began picking guitar, playing songs he heard at local “fling-dings,” house parties, and churches. A few years later he joined the John Henry Davis Medicine Show, playing music to draw crowds to hear the show master’s pitch; this took him throughout the southeastern Piedmont. In 1953 he arrived in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he lived for the remainder of his life playing both guitar and piano–singing the blues at house parties and spirituals at church. Green as first recorded in the early 70’s by Kip Lornell who recorded him on several occasions in 1974 and 1975. His first LP, Greensboro Rounder, was issued in 1979 by the British Flyright label and are comprised of these recordings. Green also appears several anthologies and his final recordings were made in 1980 by Siegfried Christmann and Axel Küstner for the Living Country Blues USA series of albums.