| ARTIST | SONG | ALBUM |
|---|---|---|
| Willie Walker & Sam Brooks | South Carolina Rag | Ragtime Blues Guitar |
| Blind Boy Fuller & Gary Davis | Rag Mama Rag | Blind Boy Fuller: Remastered 1935-1938 |
| Pink Anderson & Simmie Dooley | Every Day In The Week Blues | Times Ain't Like They Used to Be Vol. 4 |
| Charley Patton & Willie Brown | Moon Goin' Down | Screamin' & Hollerin' The Blues |
| William Harris & Joe Robinson | I'm Leavin' Town | The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of |
| Willie Ford & Lucious Curtis | Times Is Getting Hard | Mississippi: Saints & Sinners |
| Buddy Moss & Fred McMullen | Jealous Hearted Man | The Slide Guitar Vol. 2 |
| Blind Willie McTell & Curley Weaver | Bell Street Blues | The Classic Years 1927-1940 |
| Jim & Bob (The Genial Hawaiians) | St. Louis Blues | Country Blues Bottleneck Guitar Classics |
| Shreveport Home Wreckers | Fence Breakin' Blues | Country Blues Bottleneck Guitar Classics |
| Tommy Johnson & Charlie McCoy | Bye, Bye Blues | Legends of Country Blues |
| Ishman Bracey & Charlie McCoy | Left Alone Blues | Legends of Country Blues |
| Johnny Temple & Charlie McCoy | Lead Pencil Blues | Legends of Country Blues |
| Hattie Hart w/ Willie Borum & Allen Shaw | Coldest Stuff In Town | Memphis Blues 1927-1938 |
| Geechie Wiley & Elvie Thomas | Pick Poor Robin Clean | I Can't Be Satisfied Vol. 1 |
| Sylvester Weaver & Walter Beasley | Bottleneck Blues | The Slide Guitar Vol. 1 |
| Kansas Joe & Memphis Minnie | My Wash Woman's Gone | Country Blues Bottleneck Guitar Classics |
| Garfield Akers & Joe Callicott | Cottonfield Blues Pt. 1 | Mississippi Masters |
| Ruth Willis w/ Fred McMullen & Curley Weaver | Man of My Own | Country Blues Bottleneck Guitar Classics |
| Curley Weaver & Fred McMullen | Wild Cat Kitten | Atlanta Blues |
| Famous Hokum Boys | Pig Meat Strut | The Complete Chess Recordings |
| Casey Bill Weldon | You Shouldn't Do That | Bottleneck Guitar Trendsetters |
| The Beale Street Sheiks | Beale Town Bound | Masters of Memphis Blues |
| The Beale Street Sheiks | You Shall | Masters of Memphis Blues |
| Hi Henry Brown & Charlie Jordan | Preacher Blues | Charley Jordan Vol.2 1931-1934 |
| Big Joe Williams & Henry Townsend | Somebody's Been Borrowin' That Stuff | Big Joe Williams Vol. 1 1935 - 194 |
| Two Charlies | Don't Put Your Dirty Hands On Me | Charley Jordan Vol.3 1935-1937 |
| Long ''Cleve'' Reed & Little Harvey Hull | Original Stack O' Lee Blues | Never Let The Same Bee Sting You Twice |
| Tarter & Gay | Brownie Blues | Southwest Virginia Blues |
| Sleepy John Estes & Son Bonds | Little Laura Blues | I Ain't Gonna Be Worried No More |
| Georgia Cotton Pickers | She's Coming Back Some Cold Rainy Day | Good Time Blues: Harmonicas, Kazoos, Washboards & Cow-Bells |
| Georgia Browns | Decatur Street 81 | The Slide Guitar Vol. 2 |
| Lonnie Johnson & Eddie Lang | Blue Room Blues | Lonnie Johnson Vol. 5 1929-1930 |
Show Notes:
On today’s show we feature some of the greatest country blues guitar pairings of the pre-war era. The styles of playing fall roughly into a few distinct patterns. One is where one partner is doing intricate 
treble string runs and the other ornate bass notes and patterns. The arrangements weave back and forth with one guitar then the other taking the lead.
Then there’s the “Boom-Chang” type, like the Beale Street Sheiks (Frank Stokes and Dan Sane), Frank Brasswell and Big Bill Broonzy (Famous Hokum Boys) and Memphis Minnie and Little Son Joe. In these the lead guitar plays a normal sort of tune while the other adds supporting bass notes and runs and strummed chords. In this type the lead guitar part can be played as a arrangement by its self, which is not the case with the case mentioned above where neither part played alone would.
Another is the sort of arrangement found in Johnnie Temple and Charlie McCoy’s “Lead Pencil Blues.” Here the singer (Temple) plays a boogie pattern like Robert Johnson on the bass string with interspersed treble runs. The McCoy part consists of treble notes and runs. Here, unlike the Boom-Chang type, it’s the bass part that can be played separately not the treble part.
Delta guitar duets like Charlie Patton and Willie Brown and Ishman Bracey and Tommy Johnson (both accompanied by Charlie McCoy) are sort of like two guitarists playing the same song together. Different parts, but either could probably make an adequate accompaniment by its self. Another is the “Together” style, like Joe Callicott and Garfield Akers. Often in their duets, like the great “Cottonfields Blues”, it doesn’t sound like two guitars, only one.
Geographically we move around a bit; Areas where the guitar duet style seemed prevalent was Memphis (by way of Mississippi) in the recordings of Memphis Minnie & Kansas Joe, Frank Stokes & Dan Sane and Garfield Akers & Joe Callicott, in Atlanta in the recordings of Blind Willie McTell, Curley Weaver, Buddy Moss and Fred McMullen and South Carolina in the records of Blind Boy Fuller, Gary Davis and Simmie Dooley with Pink Anderson.
As a youth Frank Stokes learned to play guitar before moving to Hernando, Mississippi, home to guitarists Jim Jackson, Dan Sane and Robert Wilkins. In Hernando, Stokes worked as a blacksmith, traveling to Memphis on the weekends to play guitar. Stokes joined forces with fellow Mississippian Garfield Akers as a blackface songster, comedian, and buck dancer in the Doc Watts Medicine Show, a 
tent show that toured the South during World War I. During the 1920s he teamed with guitarist Dan Sane, joining Jack Kelly’s Jug Busters to play white country clubs, parties and dances, and playing Beale Street together as the Beale Street Sheiks. All told, Stokes was to cut 38 sides for Paramount and Victor Records.
Memphis Minnie’s duets with Kansas Joe drew inspiration from the guitar teamwork of Frank Stokes and Dan Sane as well as from her own early partnership with Willie Brown. Her marriage and recording debut came in 1929, to and with Kansas Joe McCoy, when a Columbia Records talent scout heard them playing in a Beale Street barbershop.Between 1929 and 1934 Minnie and Joe cut around one hundred sides together.
Garfield Akers was born in Brights, Mississippi in 1901 and was already performing locally when he moved to Hernando as a teenager. He stayed in that area most of his life and worked as a sharecropper, playing at weekends at house parties and dances, although he toured with Frank Stokes on the Doc Watts Medicine Show. Akers met up with Joe Callicott in the 1920’s and they became lifelong friends and partners, the two of them taking turns to play lead and second guitar as they sang blues. Garfield made his first recording, “Cottonfield Blues Parts 1 & 2”, in Memphis in 1929 with Callicott on second guitar. Akers and Callicott played together for more than 20 years finally going their own ways in the mid 1940’s. Nothing is known about Akers after the pair split although it is believed that he died around the end of the 1950’s or the beginning of the 1960’s, possibly in Memphis. Callicott was rediscovered and made recordings in the late 60’s.
Employing a second guitarist was particularly prevalent on the recordings of the Atlanta bluesmen who seemed to be a particularly tight knit group. Notable was among them was the underrated Curley Weaver. When he was nineteen years old Weaver partnered up with harmonica player Eddie Mapp and moved to Atlanta. There he teamed up with his old boyhood friends (Barbecue) Bob and Charley Hicks. The three guitarists, along with Mapp, played the streets around Atlanta. Barbecue Bob was the first to record and arranged for his brother and Curley Weaver to make their recording debuts. Weaver’s successful debut led to more recordings, both solo and with Eddie Mapp and Barbecue Bob. It was also through the recording studio that Weaver met up with Buddy Moss, and the two went on to work together for the next ten years. It was during this period that Weaver met up with Blind Willie McTell. 
The two went on to play and record together for 20 years or more.
Bruce Bastin called Fred McMullen “a superb guitarist with a delicate touch.” Virtually nothing is know of him. He made recordings under his own name in 1933 and backed artists Ruth Willis as heard on today’s cut “Man Of My Own”, Buddy Moss, heard on our track “Jealous Hearted Man”, worked with Curley Weaver, heard on the rousing “Wild Cat Kitten”, and was in a group called the Georgia Browns alongside Buddy Moss and Curley Weaver of which we spin “Decatur Street 81.”Buddy Moss recalled him a little while Kate McTell who claimed McMullen introduced Blind Willie to Buddy Moss:”Buddy saw (McTell and Weaver) playing together …and he was playing with Fred McMullen, I believe. Buddy Moss was at the 81 Theater. The Willie asked him …would he like to record some records. …That’s how he met him, through Fred McMullen.”
“Blind” Willie Walker spent most of his life was spent in and around Greenville, South Carolina. on December 6, 1930 Walker had his only recording session. He cut four sides for Columbia in Atlanta with Sam Brooks on second guitar (two sides were never issued). He was described by blues musicians such as Reverend Gary Davis and Pink Anderson as an outstanding guitarist, Josh White called him the best guitarist he had ever heard, even better than Blind Blake.
Rev. Gary Davis only backed Blind Boy Fuller on two numbers for a 1935 session. Many of Fuller’s records were played with his own guitar while others feature second guitar by Floyd “Dipper Boy” Council and Sonny Jones.
In 1916 in Spartanburg, SC Pink Anderson met Simeon “Blind Simmie” Dooley, from whom he learned to be a blues singer, this after experience in string bands. Anderson and Dooley would play to medicine shows in Greenville, Spartanburg, and other neighboring communities. They recorded four tracks for Columbia Records in Atlanta in April, 1928, both playing guitar and singing.
Moving to Chicago we spin tracks featuring Big Bill Broonzy and Casey Bill Weldon. The Famous Hokum Boys consisted of Georgia Tom, Frank Braswell, Big Bill Broonzy and singer Jane Lucas (Mozelle Alderson).The group specialized in raunchy blues numbers, recording some two-dozen sides in 1930 including some blistering twin guitar romps on numbers like our featured cut “Pig Meat Strut” as well as others like “Saturday Night”, “Guitar Rag” and “Black Cat Rag.”
Despite several busy years in the recording studio and a couple of medium-sized hits, very little is 
known about Casey Bill Weldon. 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. 1937’s “You Shouldn’t Do That” with an unknown guitarist finds Weldon playing in a super fast, swinging, up-to-date style.
Also featured today are a trio of recordings featuring second guitar by Charlie McCoy. McCoy ranked among the great blues accompanists of his era and his accomplished mandolin and guitar work can be heard on numerous recordings in a wide variety of settings from the late 1920’s through the early 40’s. Jackson, Mississippi in the 1920’s was a city with a vibrant blues scene including artists such as Tommy Johnson, Walter Vincson, Ishman Bracey, Johnnie Temple, The Chatmon Brothers (Bo, Lonnie and Sam were the most prominent) Skip James and Rube Lacey. Lacey recalled McCoy being among the best of this talented group: “But I really believe Charlie got to be a better musician than I was. He was young, but he got to be about the best musician there was in our band, Charlie McCoy. He was wonderful. He could play anything pretty well you sing. …He was good as I ever want to see.” Today we spotlight McCoy behind Tommy Johnson, Ishman Bracey and on Johnnie Temple’s classic “Lead Pencil Blues.”
Worth mentioning are a few all time favorites by Sylvester Weaver, Jim & Bob and Oscar Woods. On October 23, 1923, Weaver recorded in New York City with the blues singer Sara Martin “Longing for Daddy Blues b/w I’ve Got to Go and Leave My Daddy Behind” and two weeks later as a soloist “Guitar Blues” b/w Guitar Rag”. Both recordings were released on Okeh Records. Th later recordings are the first known recorded songs using the slide guitar style. Weaver recorded until 1927, sometimes accompanied by Sara Martin, about 50 additional songs. On some recordings from 1927 he was accompanied by Walter Beasley and the singer Helen Humes. Beasly and Weaver made a fine team, heard in sublime from on thier masterpice, “Bottleneck Blues.”
Jim Holstein and Bob Pauole were a musical duo known as Jim and Bob, the Genial Hawaiians. They performed on the radio in Chicago and made a handful of impressive recordings that were released in the 1930’s. Their instrumental take on “St. Louis Blues” is a knockout.
Oscar “Buddy” Woods was a Louisiana street musician known as “The Lone Wolf” and a pioneer in the style of lap steel, bottleneck slide guitar. With partner Ed Schaffer they recorded four songs in 1930 and 1932 as the Shreveport Homewreckers and under that name also backed country singer Jimmie Davis. In addition, Woods cut around a dozen sides between 1936 and 1940. The duo’s “Fence Breakin’ Blues” is one of my all time favorite numbers.
