ARTIST | SONG | ALBUM |
---|---|---|
Mississippi John Hurt | Avalon Blues | Avalon Blues: The Complete 1928 OKeh Recordings |
Mississippi John Hurt | Louis Collins | American Epic: The Best Of Blues |
James Davis | Blue Monday | Angels In Houston |
Charles Brown | You Better Change Your Way of Lovin' | The Classic Earliest Recordings |
Roy Hawkins | Why Do These Things Happen To Me | Sure Fire Hits On Central Avenue |
Howlin’ Wolf | My Troubles and Me | The Sun Blues Box 1950-1958 |
Barbecue Bob | Beggin' For Love | Roots N' Blues: Messed Up In Love... And Other Tales Of Woe |
Charlie Lincoln | Depot Blues | Kings Of The Twelve String |
Willie Baker | Weak-Minded Blues | Charley Lincoln And Willie Baker 1927-1930 |
Roger (Burn Down) Garnett | Lighthouse Blues | The Frog Blues & Jazz Annual No. 1 |
Cal Green | Green's Blues | Jumpin' Houston Guitarists |
Cal Green | Huffing And Puffing | Jumpin' Houston Guitarists |
Willie Dixon & Memphis Slim | Stewball | Willie Dixon & Memphis Slim 1962 |
Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee | Key to the Highway | Blues with Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee |
Son House | Levee Camp Moan | Studs Terkel Chicago 1965 |
Clifford Gibson & J.D. Short | She’s Got the Jordan River in Her Hips | Clifford Gibson 1929-1931 |
Lil Johnson | River Hip Papa | Lil Johnson Vol. 2 1936-1937 |
Washboard Sam | River Hip Mama | Washboard Sam Vol. 6 1941-1942 |
Junior Wells | So Tired | Sittin In With Harlem Jade & Jax Vol. 5 |
L.C. Robinson | Clean Your House | Oakland Blues |
Esther Phillips | Misery | Live In Los Angeles 1970 |
Roosevelt Sykes | Basin Street Blues | The Honeydripper's Duke's Mixture |
Lovey Williams | Coal Black Mare | The Blues Are Alive And Well |
Lovey Williams | I’m Standing in the Safety Zone | Voices of Mississippi: Artists and Musicians Documented by Bill Ferris |
Schoolboy Cleve | My Baby Done Gone | The Ace Blues Masters Vol. 3 |
Little George Smith | Blues In The Dark | Speak Easy: The RPM Records Story Vol. 2 |
Frankie Lee Sims | Hey Little Girl | 4th And Beale And Further South |
Clifford Gibson | Hard-Headed Blues | Clifford Gibson 1929-1931 |
Watson's Pullman Porters | Barbecue Blues | Uptown Blues |
Casey Bill Weldon | Go Ahead Buddy | The Essential |
Jimmy "T-99" Nelson | Second Hand Fool | Cry Hard Luck |
Johnny Copeland | Gonna Make My Home Where I Hang My Hat | The Crazy Cajun Recordings |
J.B. Lenoir | The Mountain | J.B. Lenoir 1951-54 |
Johnny "Guitar" Watson | Thinking | Johnny "Guitar" Watson 1952-55 |
Larry Johnson | Four Women Blues | Fast & Funky |
Frank Hovington | Lonesome Road Blues | Lonesome Road Blues |
Eugene Rhodes | Who Went Out The Back | Talkin' About My Time |
Show Notes
A varied mix show today as we spotlight sets by Mississippi John Hurt, Cal Green, Lovey Williams. Also on deck we hear some outstanding guitarists from Georgia, a set devoted to recordings from Studs Terkel’s radio show, spin some fine downhome blues from the 60s & 70, some great blues from the pre-war era, some superb 50s sides, we track some interesting lyrics across several songs and much more.
We open the show with two numbers from Mississippi John Hurt‘s great 1928 session. I heard the sad new a recently that the museum honoring Mississippi John Hurt has burned to the ground. The museum, a 200-year-old shack with a tin roof, was once Hurt’s home. He was born in the late 1800s, and he lived most of his life in Avalon, an all-Black town in the eastern Mississippi Delta. According to the Mississippi John Hurt Foundation, run by his granddaughter Mary Frances Hurt, the building was a “humble three-room shack befitting of a gentle farm hand with an amazing affinity for the guitar.” Hurt immortalized his hometown in his 1928 song “Avalon Blues:” Avalon, my hometown, always on my mind/Pretty mama’s in Avalon, want me there all the time.” Several years back I drove by the museum but sadly it was closed.
We spin several fine Georgia guitarists today. In his teens, Charlie Lincoln was taught to play the guitar by Savannah Weaver, the mother of Curley Weaver. He moved to Atlanta and worked outside the field of music, occasionally performing with his brother, Barbecue Bob. Between 1927 and 1930 he waxed 14 sides, two unissued. After his brother’s early death in 1931, Charley continued to perform into the 1950s. From 1955 to 1963 he was imprisoned for murder in Cairo, Georgia. He died there of a cerebral hemorrhage on September 28, 1963. Willie Baker may have been part of this group. The manner of Baker’s open-tuned guitar work, often using a slide, and style of singing, allied him with the Hicks brothers, although it is pure speculation whether they were acquainted with each other. Baker recorded around a dozen sides, some unissued, in January and March 1929 in Richmond, Indiana for Gennett Records.
In Willie Baker’s “Weak-Minded Blues” he sings a line that show up in a number of other blues songs: “My gal got a mouth like a lighthouse on the sea/Every time she smiles, she throws that light on me.” After the Baker song we spin Roger (Burn Down) Garnet’s “Lighthouse Blues” where he sings: “My faro got teeth like a lighthouse on the sea/Every time she smiles, the light all over me.” In another set we play one of my favorite Washboard Sam songs, “River Hip Mama”, where he sings: “Every time that woman smiles/She shows the diamonds in her teeth.” “River Hip Mama” was recorded in 1942 and may have been based on Lil Johnson’s “River Hip Papa” from 1937: “He’s a river hip papa/And they all wanna be baptized.” That line, found in both songs, may have come from an earlier song, “She’s Got the Jordan River in Her Hips”, with J.D.D. Short on vocals and Clifford Gibson guitar: “You got Jordan River in your hips ‘n’ your Daddy’s screaming to be baptized.”
Cal Green was born in Dayton Texas in 1937 and was inspired by Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown. He backed Connie McBooker for the Modern label, but his big break came when Hank Ballard and the Midnighters came to town in 1954. Their guitarist Arthur Porter had just been drafted, so 17-year-old Cal stepped in. He played on all Hank’s big hits after ‘Roll With Me, Henry’ and his catchy solo lines on hits like ‘Tore Up Over You’ and ‘Open Up the Back Door’ led Duke/Federal to release Cal’s double-sided instrumental ‘Big Push’/’Green’s Blues’ and a couple of vocal tracks in 1958. After the Midnighters he decided to move to LA and got into the West Coast jazz scene. He appeared on keyboard player Charles Kynard’s acclaimed Professor Soul album of 1963 and went on to play with Jack McDuff and Lou Rawls while making a good living as a session man around the LA studios. He recorded a couple of albums under his own name.
William Ferris recorded Lovey Williams in Morning Star, Mississippi in 1966-1967. “Morning Star is the community where Lovie Williams lived. It is really just a crossroads with a country store there. …Somehow I found out about his having played the blues. I was a student at Davidson College, and I found his home. He did not own a guitar, so I found a guitar and took it there, and he began to play. It was just absolutely overwhelming to hear his voice, so powerful and so beautiful. It was like he was singing his heart out. Everytime I would go home for vacations, I would go over there with a tape recorder and make the recordings. Later, when I was in graduate school, I got a Super Eight camera and filmed him performing. Then, tragically he died. He had an accident on a tractor that turned over and killed him.” Recordings of him appear on the long-out-of-print albums The Blues Are Alive And Well, Blues From The Delta and Bothered All The Time. Additional tracks were on the box set Voices Of Mississippi which Dust-To-Digital issued in 2018.
We spin a trio of recordings from Studs Terkel‘s radio program, which he began In 1953 on WFMT, Chicago and ran until 1998. Studs was a champion of the underdog, the “non-celebrated” and had plenty to say on racial issues. don’t claim to be an expert on Studs and in fact feel a bit guilty that I didn’t read more by him. What I did know about Studs was his connection with the blues; in particular the two wonderful albums of interviews and music that were issued on the Folkways label: Big Bill Broonzy: His Story (1956) and Blues With Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee (1958). The Son House track I don’t believe was officially released. Studs passed in 2008.
We close the show with some great downhome blues by Larry Johnson, Frank Hovington and Eugene Rhodes. Frank Hovington was first recorded by Bruce Bastin and Dick Spottswood in 1975 and issued on the Flyright album, Lonesome Road Blues and later issued on Rounder. In 2000 the album was issued on CD as Gone With the Wind with several additional tracks. My friend Axel recorded him in 1980 for the Living Country Blues USA series of albums.
Bruce Jackson recorded Eugene Rhodes who was doing a ten- to 25-year stretch at the Indiana State Prison, which was where the album Talkin’ About My Time was recorded, 15 songs and a little talking that was eventually released on the Folk-Legacy label in 1963. In the ’20s and ’30s, Rhodes had traveled through the south as a one-man band, including a harmonica rack with a special mount on the side for a horn, a foot pedal powered drum, and of course, a guitar. He reportedly played in the Dallas area, where he claims to have met Blind Lemon Jefferson. He also crossed paths with Blind Boy Fuller in the Carolinas and Buddy Moss in Georgia.