November 6, 2012
Elizabeth Cotten - Freight Train And Other North Carolina Folk Songs And Tunes

Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten (January 5, 1895 – June 29, 1987) was an American blues and folk musician, singer, and songwriter.

A self-taught left-handed guitarist, Cotten developed her own original style. Her approach involved using a right-handed guitar (usually in standard tuning), not re-strung for left-handed playing, essentially, holding a right-handed guitar upside down. This position required her to play the bass lines with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. Her signature alternating bass style has become known as “Cotten picking”.

Elizabeth Nevills was born in Carrboro, North Carolina, at the border of Chapel Hill, to a musical family. Her parents were George Nevills and Louise Price Nevills. Elizabeth was the youngest of five children. At age seven, Cotten began to play her older brother’s banjo. By eight years old, she was playing songs. At 11, after scraping together some money as a domestic helper, she bought her own guitar. Although self-taught, she became very good at playing the instrument. By her early teens she was writing her own songs, one of which, “Freight Train”, would go on to be one of her most recognized. Cotten wrote “Freight Train” when she saw a train pass by her house on Lloyd Street in Carrboro, North Carolina.

Around the age of 13, Cotten began working as a maid along with her mother. Soon after at age 15, she was married to Frank Cotten. The couple had a daughter named Lillie, and soon after young Elizabeth gave up guitar playing for family and church. Elizabeth, Frank and their daughter Lillie moved around eastern United States for a number of years between North Carolina, New York, and Washington, D.C., finally settling in the D.C. area. When Lillie married, Elizabeth divorced Frank and moved in with her daughter and her family.

Cotten had retired from the guitar for 25 years, except for occasional church performances. It wasn’t until she reached her 60s that she began recording and performing publicly. She was discovered by the folk-singing Seeger family while she was working for them as a housekeeper.

While working for a brief stint in a department store, Cotten helped a child wandering through the aisles find her mother. The child was Penny Seeger, and the mother was composer Ruth Crawford Seeger. Soon after this, Elizabeth again began working as a maid, caring for Ruth Crawford Seeger and Charles Seeger’s children, Mike, Peggy, Barbara, and Penny. While working with the Seegers (a voraciously musical family) she remembered her own guitar playing from 40 years prior and picked up the instrument again to relearn almost from scratch.

During the later half of the 1950s, Mike Seeger began making bedroom reel to reel recordings of Cotten’s songs in her house. The culmination of these recordings would later go on the album Folksongs and Instrumentals with Guitar, which was released on Folkways Records. Since its release, her songs, especially her signature track, “Freight Train”, written when she was 11, have been covered by Peter, Paul, and Mary, Jerry Garcia, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Devendra Banhart, Laura Gibson, Laura Veirs, His Name Is Alive and Taj Mahal. Shortly afterwards, she began playing selected joint shows with Mike Seeger, the first of which was in 1960 at Swarthmore College. One of her songs, “Ain’t Got No Honey Baby Now”, was in fact recorded by Blind Boy Fuller under the title “Lost Lover Blues” in 1940.

Over the course of the early 1960s, Cotten went on to play more shows with big names in the burgeoning folk revival. Some of these included Mississippi John Hurt, John Lee Hooker, and Muddy Waters at venues such as the Newport Folk Festival and the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife.

The newfound interest in her work inspired her to write more material to play and in 1967, she released a record created with her grandchildren which took its name from one of the songs she had written, Shake Sugaree.

Using profits from her touring and record releases, as well as from the many awards given to her for contribution to the folk arts, Elizabeth moved with her daughter and grandchildren from Washington and bought a house in Syracuse, New York. She continued touring and releasing records well into her 80s. In 1984 she won the Grammy Award for “Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording” for her album on Arhoolie Records, Elizabeth Cotten Live. When accepting the award in Los Angeles, her comment was “Thank you. I only wish I had my guitar so I could play a song for you all”. In 1989, Cotten was one of 75 influential African-American women chosen to be included in the photo documentary, I Dream a World.

Elizabeth Cotten died at Crouse-Irving Hospital in Syracuse, New York, at the age of 92.

Elizabeth Cotten began writing music while toying around with her older brother’s banjo. She was left-handed so she played the banjo “backwards”. Later, when she transferred her songs to the guitar, a unique style was formed, since on the banjo the uppermost string is not a bass string, as on the guitar but a short high pitched string called a drone string. This required her to adopt a unique style for the guitar, which she first played with all finger down strokes like a banjo. Later this evolved into a unique style of finger picking, and her signature, alternating bass style is known as “Cotten Picking”.

Her unmistakably original chords, melodies and finger picking techniques would go on to influence many other musicians.

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Cotten)

zip Elizabeth Cotten - Freight Train And Other North Carolina Folk Songs And Tunes

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Filed under: elizabeth cotten freight train north carolina folk blues 
May 16, 2012
Mississippi Blues 1927-1941

This is where it all began for Yazoo Records. Actually, when Mississippi Blues 1927-1941 was first released in the late 1960s, it came out on the Belzona label, which is what record collector Nick Perls had initially decided to call his 78 reissue enterprise. Why he had a change of heart and switched names I’m not certain, but Belzona seems to have been derived from the local inhabitants’ pronunciation of Belzoni, a Mississippi Delta town immortalized in one of the songs by legendary bluesman Charlie Patton. (Denizens of the southern US often enunciate words ending in “i” with a short “a” or “uh” sound. Thus, Missouri becomes “Mizz-ur-uh” instead of “Miss-oor-ee.”)

Although subsequent releases have rendered this collection obsolete for the most part, it can still be thoroughly enjoyed as a thoughtfully compiled sampler of prewar Mississippi blues that is typical of Yazoo’s high standards in that it covers not only Delta stylists but lesser-known musicians from other parts of the state as well. The very first track, “Gang of Brownskin Women,” is a case in point having been recorded by proto-bluesmen the Down Home Boys, who were evidently from the area just south of Memphis. Violinist Henry “Son” Sims is best known for his accompaniment of Charlie Patton in the late 1920s as well as making recordings for the Library of Congress with a young Muddy Waters in the early 1940s, but “Be True, Be True Blues” (a variation on the “Careless Love” idiom) features him recording under his own name for a change. In addition to the screechiest fiddle ever recorded, the performance also includes Patton strumming away on guitar to good effect. The mysterious William Harris teamed up with the even more mysterious Joe Robinson on one of the all time greatest prewar blues guitar duets, “I’m Leavin’ Town.” Notice how the musicians slowly increase the song’s tempo in addition to providing humorous spoken asides such as “Say, boy, how you percolatin’ now?” and “Play ‘em til I get sloppy drunk!” Harris would essentially re-record this song as a solo piece one year later when he waxed “Bullfrog Blues,” which was notably covered by Canned Heat. Do I really need to say anything about Skip James? Well, just in case you follow this blog without being familiar with his repertory, his technically complex “Special Rider Blues” and the harrowing “Cypress Grove Blues” are as good of a place to start as any. “Hang It on the Wall” is a respectable remake of Patton’s own “Shake It and Break It,” which had been recorded five years earlier when he was in much better health. Nonetheless, this rendition is remarkable considering that the man credited with being the “Founder of the Delta Blues” had only a few more months left to live when he recorded it. Geeshie Wiley is my favorite female prewar blues guitarist despite her scant recorded legacy. The title of “Eagles on a Half,” probably her least-known side, refers to America’s national bird that was featured on the backside of half-dollar coins then in circulation. The backing guitar is most likely played by her usual accompanist, Elvie Thomas.

Blues researchers don’t have much information on another guitar-playing, blues-singing woman, the equally impressive Mattie Delaney, whose “Tallahatchie River Blues” can be listened to as a kind of female counterpart to Patton’s “High Water Everywhere,” both of which describe the destruction of the 1927 Mississippi Delta flood with chilling detail. Songster John Byrd seems to have been a native of southern Mississippi, and his distinctive 12-string guitar style stands in contrast to the other material presented here, although liner notes writer Bradley Sweet (another Stephen Calt pseudonym?) posits that he may have been the second guitar player on “Eagles on a Half.” “Mean Black Moan” is a rare Charlie Patton-Son Sims duet that is unfortunately marred by some horrendous surface noise. Someone took the time to decipher its lyrics which describe a possibly apocryphal Chicago railroad strike, which, of course, has nothing to do with the title. “Pea Vine Blues” is one of Patton’s more underappreciated pieces and is exceptional for its melancholy tone. The song’s title refers to a local train line that serviced Patton’s residence at the time, the Dockery plantation in the Mississippi Delta, and is the means by which his lover leaves him as described in the lyrics. Bobby Grant is a complete cipher. The excellent slide guitar showcased on “Nappy Head Blues” suggests a Mississippi origin, but no one really knows for sure. Son House teams up with harmonicist Leroy Williams on “Delta Blues,” a piece recorded for the Library of Congress in 1941 and revived as “Levee Camp Moan” upon the guitarist’s rediscovery in the mid-1960s. Robert Johnson’s then-obscure “Dead Shrimp Blues” sounds remarkably clean and precise in the context of the earthier performances assembled here. Although his popularity has made him an easy target for prewar blues purists in more recent years, hearing him at the conclusion of this set makes it abundantly clear what an outstanding synthesizer of styles he was and how he had updated Delta blues in a way that would make it more easily consumable for an increasingly less racist postwar US.

(source: http://record-fiend.blogspot.com)
zip Mississippi Blues 1927-1941

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Filed under: mississippi blues yazoo belzona son house robert johnson skip james charlie patton 
May 11, 2012
Ten Years in Memphis 1927-1937

Another really solid collection of Memphis blues musicians including Furry Lewis, Robert Wilkins, Frank Stokes, and more.

The Memphis blues is a style of blues music that was created in the 1920s and 1930s by Memphis-area musicians like Frank Stokes, Sleepy John Estes, Furry Lewis and Memphis Minnie. The style was popular in vaudeville and medicine shows, and was associated with Memphis’ main entertainment area, Beale Street.

In addition to guitar-based blues, jug bands, such as Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers and the Memphis Jug Band, were extremely popular practitioners of Memphis blues. The jug band style emphasized the danceable, syncopated rhythms of early jazz and a range of other archaic folk styles. It was played on simple, sometimes homemade, instruments such as harmonicas, violins, mandolins, banjos, and guitars, backed by washboards, kazoo, guimbarde and jugs blown to supply the bass.

After World War II, as African-Americans left the Mississippi Delta and other impoverished areas of the south for urban areas, many musicians gravitated to Memphis’ blues scene, changing the classic Memphis blues sound. Musicians such as Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Nix, Ike Turner, and B.B.King performed on Beale Street and in West Memphis, and recorded some of the classic electric blues, rhythm and blues and rock & roll records for labels such as Sun Records. Sam Phillips’ Sun Records company recorded musicians such as Howlin’ Wolf (before he moved to Chicago), Willie Nix, Ike Turner, and B.B.King. These players had a strong influence on later musicians in these styles, notably the early rock & rollers and rockabillies, many of whom also recorded for Sun Records. After Phillips discovered Elvis Presley in 1954, the Sun label turned to the rapidly expanding white audience and started recording mostly rock ‘n’ roll.

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis_blues)

zip Ten Years in Memphis 1927-1937

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Filed under: ten years in memphis yazoo belzona memphis blues furry lewis robert wilkins 
May 4, 2012
Big Bill Broonzy - The Young Big Bill Broonzy, 1928-1936

Big Bill Broonzy (June 26, 1903 – August 15, 1958) was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly black audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with white audiences. In the 1950s a return to his traditional folk-blues roots made him one of the leading figures of the emerging American folk music revival and an international star. His long and varied career marks him as one of the key figures in the development of blues music in the 20th century.

Broonzy copyrighted more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including both adaptations of traditional folk songs and original blues songs. As a blues composer, he was unique in that his compositions reflected the many vantage points of his rural-to-urban experiences.

Born Lee Conley Bradley, “Big Bill” was one of Frank Broonzy (Bradley) and Mittie Belcher’s 17 children. His birth site and date are disputed. While he claimed birth inBolivar County,Mississippi, an entire body of emerging research suggests that Broonzy was actually born inJefferson County,Arkansas. Broonzy claimed he was born in 1893 and many sources report that year, but after his death, family records suggested that the year was actually 1903. Soon after his birth the family moved toPine Bluff,Arkansas, where Bill spent his youth. He began playing music at an early age. At the age of 10 he made himself a fiddle from a cigar box and learned how to play spirituals and folk songs from his uncle, Jerry Belcher. He and a friend named Louis Carter, who played a homemade guitar, began performing at social and church functions. These early performances included playing at “two-stages”: picnics where whites danced on one side of the stage and blacks on the other.

On the understanding that he was born in 1898 rather than earlier or later, sources suggest that in 1915, 17-year-old Broonzy was married and working as a sharecropper. He had decided to give up the fiddle and become a preacher. There is a story that he was offered $50 and a new violin if he would play four days at a local venue. Before he could respond to the offer, his wife took the money and spent it, so he had to play. In 1916 his crop and stock were wiped out by drought. Broonzy went to work locally until he was drafted into the Army in 1917. Broonzy served two years inEuropeduring the first world war. Then after his discharge from the Army in 1919, Broonzy returned toPine Bluff,Arkansaswhere he is reported to have been called a racial epithet and told by a white man he knew before the war that he needed to “hurry up and get his soldier uniform off and put on some overalls.” He immediately left Pine Bluff and moved to the Little Rock area but a year later in 1920 moved north to Chicago in search of opportunity.

After arriving inChicago, Broonzy made the switch to guitar. He learned guitar from minstrel and medicine show veteran Papa Charlie Jackson, who began recording for Paramount Records in 1924. Through the 1920s Broonzy worked a string of odd jobs, includingPullmanporter, cook, foundry worker and custodian, to supplement his income, but his main interest was music. He played regularly at rent parties and social gatherings, steadily improving his guitar playing. During this time he wrote one of his signature tunes, a solo guitar piece called “Saturday Night Rub”.

Thanks to his association withJackson, Broonzy was able to get an audition withParamountexecutive J. Mayo Williams. His initial test recordings, made with his friend John Thomas on vocals, were rejected, but Broonzy persisted, and his second try, a few months later, was more successful. His first record, “Big Bill’s Blues” backed with “House Rent Stomp”, credited to “Big Bill and Thomps” (Paramount 12656), was released in 1927. Although the recording was not well-received,Paramountretained their new talent and the next few years saw more releases by “Big Bill and Thomps”. The records continued to sell poorly. Reviewers considered his style immature and derivative.

In 1930Paramountfor the first time used Broonzy’s full name on a recording, “Station Blues” – albeit misspelled as “Big Bill Broomsley”. Record sales continued to be poor, and Broonzy was working at a grocery store. Broonzy was picked up by Lester Melrose, who produced acts for various labels including Champion and Gennett Records. He recorded several sides which were released in the spring of 1931 under the name “Big Bill Johnson”. In March 1932 he traveled toNew York Cityand began recording for the American Record Corporation on their line of less expensive labels: (Melotone, Perfect Records, et al.). These recordings sold better and Broonzy was becoming better known. Back inChicagohe was working regularly in South Side clubs, and even toured with Memphis Minnie.

In 1934 Broonzy moved to Bluebird Records and began recording with pianist Bob “Black Bob” Call. His fortunes soon improved. With Call his music was evolving to a stronger R&B sound, and his singing sounded more assured and personal. In 1937, he began playing with pianist Joshua Altheimer, recording and performing using a small instrumental group, including “traps” (drums) and Double bass as well as one or more melody instruments (horns and/or harmonica). In March 1938 he began recording for Vocalion Records. Broonzy’s reputation grew and in 1938 he was asked to fill in for the recently deceased Robert Johnson at the John H. Hammond-produced From Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall. He also appeared in the 1939 concert at the same venue. His success led him in this same year to a small role in Swingin’ the Dream, Gilbert Seldes’s jazz adaptation of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, set in 1890 New Orleans and featuring, among others, Louis Armstrong as Bottom and Maxine Sullivan as Titania, with the Benny Goodman sextet.

Broonzy’s own recorded output through the 1930s only partially reflects his importance to theChicagoblues scene. His half-brother, Washboard Sam, and close friends, Jazz Gillum, and Tampa Red, also recorded for Bluebird. Broonzy was credited as composer on many of their most popular recordings of that time. He reportedly played guitar on most of Washboard Sam’s tracks. Due to his exclusive arrangements with his own record label, Broonzy was always careful to have his name only appear on these artists’ records as “composer”.

Broonzy expanded his work during this period as he honed his song writing skills which showed a knack for appealing to his more sophisticated city audience as well as people that shared his country roots. His work in this period shows he performed across a wider musical spectrum than almost any other bluesman before or since including ragtime, hokum blues, country blues, city blues, jazz tinged songs, folk songs and spirituals. After World War II, Broonzy recorded songs that were the bridge that allowed many younger musicians to cross over to the future of the blues: the electric blues of post warChicago. His 1945 recordings of “Where the Blues Began” with Big Maceo on piano and Buster Bennett on sax, or “Martha Blues” with Memphis Slim on piano, clearly show the way forward. One of his best-known songs, “Key to the Highway”, appeared at this time. When the second American Federation of Musicians strike ended in 1948, Broonzy was picked up by the Mercury label

At the start of the 1950s, Broonzy became part of a touring folk music revue formed by Win Stracke called I Come for to Sing, which also included Studs Terkel andLawrence Lane. Terkel called him the key figure in this group. The group had some success thanks to the emerging folk revival movement. The exposure made it possible for Broonzy to tourEuropein 1951.

InEurope, Broonzy was greeted with standing ovations and critical praise wherever he played. The tour marked a turning point in his fortunes, and when he returned to theUnited Stateshe was a featured act with many prominent folk artists such as Pete Seeger, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. From 1953 on his financial position became more secure and he was able to live quite well on his music earnings. Broonzy returned to his solo folk-blues roots, and travelled and recorded extensively. Broonzy’s numerous performances during the 1950s in theUK, and in particular at folk clubs inLondonandEdinburgh, were influential in the nascent British folk revival, with many British musicians on the folk scene, such as Bert Jansch, citing him as an important influence.

While inHolland, Broonzy met and fell in love with a Dutch girl, Pim van Isveldt. Together they had a child named Michael who still lives inAmsterdam.

In 1953, Dr. Vera (King) Morkovin and Studs Terkel took Broonzy toCirclePinesCenter, a cooperative year-round camp inHastings,Michigan, where he was employed as the summer camp cook. He worked there in the summer from ‘53–’56. On July 4, 1954, Pete Seeger travelled to Circle Pines and gave a concert with Bill on the farmhouse lawn, which was recorded by Seeger for the new fine arts radio station inChicago, WFMT-FM.

In 1955, with the assistance of Belgian writer Yannick Bruynoghe, Broonzy published his autobiography, entitled Big Bill Blues. He toured worldwide to Africa, South America, the Pacific region and acrossEuropeinto early 1956. In 1957 Broonzy was one of the founding faculty members of the Old Town School of Folk Music. At the school’s opening night on December 1, he taught a class “The Glory of Love”.

By 1958 Broonzy was suffering from the effects of throat cancer. He died August 15, 1958, and is buried inLincolnCemetery,Blue Island,Illinois.

Broonzy’s own influences included the folk music, spirituals, work songs, ragtime music, hokum and country blues he heard growing up, and the styles of his contemporaries, including Jimmie Rodgers, Blind Blake, Son House, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Broonzy combined all these influences into his own style of the blues that foreshadowed the post-warChicagoblues sound, later refined and popularized by artists such as Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon.

Although he had been a pioneer of theChicagoblues style and had employed electric instruments as early as 1942, his new, white audiences wanted to hear him playing his earliest songs accompanied only by his own acoustic guitar, since this was considered to be more “authentic”.

A considerable part of his early ARC/CBS recordings have been reissued in anthology collections by CBS-Sony, and other earlier recordings have been collected on blues reissue labels, as have his later European and Chicago recordings of the 1950s. The Smithsonian’s Folkways Records has also released several albums featuring Big Bill Broonzy.

In 1980, he was inducted into the first class of the Blues Hall of Fame along with 20 other of the world’s greatest blues legends. In 2007, he was inducted into the first class of the Gennett Records Walk of Fame along with 11 other musical greats including Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Gene Autry, Lawrence Welk and others.

Broonzy as an acoustic guitar player, inspired Muddy Waters, Memphis Slim, Ray Davies, John Renbourn, Rory Gallagher, Ben Taylor, and Steve Howe.

In Q Magazine (September 2007) it is reported that Ronnie Wood of The Rolling Stones claims that Bill Broonzy’s track, “Guitar Shuffle”, is his favorite guitar music. Wood said, “It was one of the first tracks I learnt to play, but even to this day I can’t play it exactly right.”

During the benediction at the 2009 inauguration ceremony of President Barack Obama, the civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery paraphrased Broonzy’s song “Black, Brown and White Blues”.

Between 1927 and 1942, Broonzy recorded 224 songs, making him the second most prolific blues recording artist during that period. These were released before blues records were tracked by recording industry trade magazines. By the time Billboard instituted the first of its “race music” charts in October 1942, Broonzy’s recordings were less popular and none appeared in the charts.

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bill_Broonzy)

zip Big Bill Broonzy - The Young Big Bill Broonzy, 1928-1936

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Filed under: big bill broonzy yazoo country blues arkansas bluebird Vocalion 
May 2, 2012
Henry Thomas - “Ragtime Texas”: Complete Recorded Works - 1927 to 1929 in Chronological Order

Henry Thomas (born 1874, Big Sandy, Texas – died 1930) was an American country blues singer, songster and musician, who enjoyed a brief but notable recording career in the late 1920s. Often billed as “RagtimeTexas”, Thomas bridged 19th and 20th century styles, providing the basis for what later became known asTexasblues guitar.

Thomas was born into a family of freed slaves in Big Sandy, Texas in 1874. He began traveling theTexasrail lines as a hobo after leaving home in his teens. He eventually earned his way as an itinerant songster, entertaining local populaces as well as railway employees.

Although the circumstances are not known, Thomas recorded twenty-three sides for Vocalion Records between 1927 and 1929. The repertoire on these cuts includes a combination of reels, gospels, minstrel pieces, ragtime numbers and blues. Besides guitar, Thomas accompanied himself on quills, a folk instrument fabricated from cane reeds whose sound is similar to the zampona played by musicians inPeruandBolivia. His springy guitar-playing, probably inspired by banjo-picking styles, suggests that he performed for dances.

Thomas’s legacy has been sustained by his songs, which were revived by musicians beginning in the folk music revival of the early 1960s. Among the first of these was “Honey Won’t You Allow Me One More Chance”, which was re-interpreted by Bob Dylan on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan in 1963 under the title “Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance”. Dylan probably first heard of the blues musician through Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, which ended with one of Thomas’s best-known tunes, “Fishin’ Blues”. Although Dylan re-worked the melody and almost totally re-wrote the lyrics, he credited Thomas as co-writer on the Freewheelin’ release.

Thomas’s song “Fishin’ Blues” was recorded by theUSfolk-rock group Lovin’ Spoonful in 1965, appearing on their hit debut album Do You Believe in Magic?. The song was recorded three years later, in 1968, by blues musician Taj Mahal for one of his first albums, De Old Folks at Home and has since been released on many of Taj Mahal’s greatest hits compilations. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band also covered the song on their album Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Volume III in 2002.

“Bull Doze Blues”, another of Thomas’s Vocalion recordings, remained an obscure blues number until it was picked up by the blues-rock group Canned Heat as the basis for the song “Going Up the Country”. Though re-arranged, the Canned Heat song is musically the same, down to a faithful rendition of Thomas’s quill solos by Jim Horn. Fellow band member Alan “Blind Owl” Wilson re-wrote the lyrics entirely and received credit on the song’s original release in 1968 on Canned Heat’s third album, Living the Blues. The next year,the group played at the Woodstock Festival. Their live performance of “Going Up the Country” was featured in the motion pictureWoodstockand appeared as the second cut on the soundtrack album.

“Don’t Ease Me In” was covered by the Grateful Dead on their album Go to Heaven; and Thomas’s vintage recording of “Don’t Ease Me In” is included on the compilation album The Music Never Stopped: Roots of the Grateful Dead. The Lovin’ Spoonful recorded an original song entitled “Henry Thomas” on their 1966 album Hums of the Lovin’ Spoonful. In 1993 the band Deacon Blue released a song entitled “Last Night I Dreamed Of Henry Thomas” on their Whatever You Say, Say Nothing album. In addition, his arrangement for “Cottonfield Blues” was performed by early Delta blues musicians Garfield Akers and Mississippi Joe Callicott in 1929.

The whereabouts of Thomas after his last recording in 1929 have not been chronicled. While one report places him inTexasin the 1950s, most biographers indicate he died in 1930 when he would have been in his mid-50s.

Many versions of “John Henry” exist, but Henry Thomas’s version, because of his use of reeds, is unique. The reeds have a light, radiant air that lifts this song to something joyous. Thomas was born inTexasin 1874 and didn’t record his first sessions until he was in his early fifties. His music incorporated blues and patched together songs (“rags”) that seemed to come from earlier traditions, including nine pieces on which he uses reeds. The use of them may point to an earlier African-American tradition that had nearly vanished by the time he was recording. These pieces represent the best songs on this collection, with standouts like “The Little Red Caboose” and “Bull-Doze Blues.” The later song sounds very similar to Canned Heat’s “Goin’ Up the Country,” including the reed solo that sets the song in motion. Songs like “Don’t Ease Me In,” would later be performed by the Grateful Dead and many others, while “Honey, Won’t You Allow Me One More Chance?” is lyrically related to an early Bob Dylan song with almost the same title. The songs gathered here have been taken from five recording sessions between 1927 and 1929, and are ordered chronologically. The liner notes explain the origins of reeds/quills in African-American music, and help place Thomas in a historical context. The fidelity on certain cuts is scratchy, but his voice and instrumentation are still always discernable. This is a good collection of an early-Texas songster, especially valuable because of Thomas’ unique use of reeds.

(sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Thomas_(blues_musician); http://www.allmusic.com/album/ragtime-texas-1927-1929-r502421)

zip Henry Thomas - “Ragtime Texas”: Complete Recorded Works - 1927 to 1929 in Chronological Order

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Filed under: henry thomas ragtime texas texas blues vocalion bull doze blues 
April 30, 2012
The Georgia Blues 1927-1933

Although it features Yazoo’s usual fine track selection and their commitment to high-quality sound, The Georgia Blues 1927-1933 might be one of the label’s most inaccurately-titled and haphazardly-compiled compilations in their 1000-series. I’ll cut Nick Perls, Stephen Calt, and company some slack on this album’s shortcomings because blues scholarship in the 1960s wasn’t what it is today, which led to a number of misconceptions at the time. In some instances, this collection includes recordings by musicians who were Georgia-born but generally not musically identified with the state because they had developed their playing styles in other regions. Other songs are done by artists with no collection to the Peach State whatsoever. Nevertheless, fans of prewar guitar blues will find much to enjoy.

Although the legendary Blind McTell is conspicuously absent from The Georgia Blues, his influence is still felt through the presence of Atlanta musicians who operated within the outer periphery of his orbit as well as the prevalence of 12-string guitars on the performances herein. Fred McMullen was best-known as an associate of guitarist Curley Weaver (who served as accompanist on a significant number of McTell’s 78s) but displays a compelling musical individuality on “Wait and Listen,” an interpretation of the “Big Road Blues” theme most closely associated with artists from Mississippi. As an elder statesman of the aforementioned city’s prewar blues scene, it should not be surprising that Joshua “Peg Leg” Howell also presents the most rural-sounding piece on this collection, “Rolling Mill Blues.” The addition of Eddie Anthony’s violin gives it something of a white flavor in accordance with the booklet notes’ contention that it is “of hillbilly origin.” The commentary also concedes that although Blind Blake was a native of Florida, his “career was frequently Georgia-based before it allegedly ended with his death in the 1930s,” thus accounting for the appearance of “Police Dog Blues” and “That’ll Never Happen No More.” Amos “Bumble Bee Slim” Easton and James “Kokomo” Arnold exemplify Georgia-born guitarists whose musical identities were primarily developed in Northern cities as demonstrated on the former’s “No Woman No Nickel” and the latter’s earliest sides from 1930, “Rainy Night Blues” and “Paddlin’ Blues,” both recorded under the nom de disc “Gitfiddle Jim.” In contrast, I have no idea why the lackluster “Can’t Be Trusted Blues” by Louisville, Kentucky musician Sylvester Weaver (whose instrumental recordings are of far greater interest) was selected for inclusion. The remaining cuts, however, can be thoroughly appreciated as excellent examples of a distinctively Georgian approach to playing 12-string slide guitar. Robert “Barbecue Bob” Hicks, seems to have been most responsible for popularizing this style and contributes with the superb “Unnamed Blues,” while his brother Charlie Lincoln (aka “Laughing Charley,” nee Hicks) offers his own intriguing variation on this modus operandi with the sexually euphemistic “Doodle Hole Blues.” Willie Baker and George Carter are performers of a more deliberate variety with a penchant for a comparatively delicate touch as displayed on “Weak-Minded Blues,” “Rising River Blues,” “Hot Jelly Roll Blues,” and “Crooked Woman Blues.”

(source: http://record-fiend.blogspot.com)

zip The Georgia Blues 1927-1933

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Filed under: yazoo georgia blues fred mcmullen blind blake george carter 
April 20, 2012
Skip James - 1931 Sessions

Nehemiah Curtis “Skip” James (June 9, 1902 – October 3, 1969) was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter. Born inBentonia,Mississippi, he died inPhiladelphia,Pennsylvania.

He first learned to play guitar from another bluesman from the area, Henry Stuckey. His guitar playing is noted for its dark, minor sound, played in an open D-minor tuning with an intricate fingerpicking technique. James first recorded for Paramount Records in 1931, but these recordings sold poorly due to the Great Depression, and he drifted into obscurity. After a long absence from the public eye, James was “rediscovered” in 1964 by three blues enthusiasts, helping further the blues and folk music revival of the 1950s and early 60s. During this period, James appeared at several folk and blues festivals and gave live concerts around the country, also recording several albums for various record labels.

His songs have influenced several generations of musicians, being adapted or covered by Kansas Joe McCoy, Robert Johnson, Cream, Deep Purple, Chris Thomas King, Alvin Youngblood Hart, The Derek Trucks Band, Beck, Big Sugar, and Rory Block. He is hailed as “one of the seminal figures of the blues.”

James was born nearBentonia,Mississippi. His father was a converted bootlegger turned preacher. As a youth, James heard local musicians such as Henry Stuckey and brothers Charlie and Jesse Sims and began playing the organ in his teens. He worked on road construction and levee-building crews in his nativeMississippiin the early 1920s, and wrote what is perhaps his earliest song, “Illinois Blues”, about his experiences as a laborer.

In the ’20s he sharecropped and made bootleg whiskey in the Bentonia area. He began playing guitar in open D-minor tuning and developed the three-finger picking technique heard in his recordings. In addition, he began to practice piano-playing, drawing inspiration from theMississippiblues pianist Little Brother Montgomery.

In early 1931, James auditioned forJackson,Mississippirecord shop owner and talent scout H. C. Speir, who placed blues performers with a variety of record labels including Paramount Records. On the strength of this audition, James traveled toGrafton,Wisconsinto record forParamount. James’s 1931 work is considered idiosyncratic among pre-war blues recordings, and formed the basis of his reputation as a musician.

As is typical of his era, James recorded a variety of material — blues and spirituals, cover versions and original compositions — frequently blurring the lines between genres and sources. For example, “I’m So Glad” was derived from a 1927 song by Art Sizemore and George A. Little entitled “So Tired”, which had been recorded in 1928 by both Gene Austin and Lonnie Johnson (the latter under the title “I’m So Tired of Livin’ All Alone”). Biographer Stephen Calt, echoing the opinion of several critics, considered the finished product totally original, “one of the most extraordinary examples of fingerpicking found in guitar music”.

Several of the Grafton recordings, such as “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues”, “Devil Got My Woman”, “Jesus Is A Mighty Good Leader”, and “22-20 Blues” (the basis for Robert Johnson’s better-known “32-20 Blues”, and the band name for the English group 22-20s), have proven similarly influential. Very few original copies of James’sParamount78 RPMs have survived.

The Great Depression struck just as James’ recordings were hitting the market. Sales were poor as a result, and James gave up performing the blues to become the choir director in his father’s church. James himself was later ordained as a minister in both the Baptist and Methodist denominations, but the extent of his involvement in religious activities is unknown.

For the next thirty years, James recorded nothing and drifted in and out of music. He was virtually unknown to listeners until about 1960. In 1964 blues enthusiasts John Fahey, Bill Barth and Henry Vestine found him in a hospital in Tunica, Mississippi. According to Calt, the “rediscovery” of both James and of Son House at virtually the same moment was the start of the “blues revival” in theUS. In July 1964 James, along with other rediscovered performers, appeared at the Newport Folk Festival. Several photographs by Dick Waterman captured this first performance in over 30 years. Throughout the remainder of the decade, he recorded for the Takoma, Melodeon, and Vanguard labels and played various engagements until his death inPhiladelphiafrom cancer in 1969.

Although James was not initially covered as frequently as other rediscovered musicians, British rock band Cream recorded “I’m So Glad” (a studio version and a live version), providing James with the only windfall of his career. Deep Purple also covered “I’m So Glad,” on Shades of Deep Purple, and English blues rock band 22-20s named themselves after “22-20 Blues.” Singer Dion DiMucci released an album in November 2007 titled Son of Skip James.

Since his death, James’s music has become more available and prevalent than during his lifetime — his 1931 recordings, along with several rediscovery recordings and concerts, have found their way on to numerous compact discs, drifting in and out of print. His influence is still felt among contemporary bluesmen. James also left a mark on Hollywood, as well, with Chris Thomas King’s cover of “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues” on O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and the 1931 “Devil Got My Woman” featured in the plot and soundtrack of Ghost World. In recent times, British post-rock band Hope of the States released a song partially focused on the life of Skip James entitled “Nehemiah”, which charted at number 30 in the UK Singles Chart. “He’s a Mighty Good Leader” was also covered by Beck on his 1994 album One Foot in the Grave.

James was known to be an aloof and moody person. “Skip James, you never knew. Skip could be sunshine, or thunder and lightning depending on his whim of the moment” commented Dick Spottswood on James’s personality. He seldom socialized with other bluesmen and fans. Like John Fahey, James loathed the so-called “folkie” scene of the 1960s. He held a high regard for his own work and was reluctant to share musical ideas with other performers. Though the lyrical content of some of his songs led to the characterization of James as a misogynist, he remained with his wife Lorenzo (niece of Mississippi John Hurt) until his death. He is buried with his wife at a private cemetery (MerionMemorial Park) just outside ofPhiladelphiainBala Cynwyd,Pennsylvania.

James often played his guitar with an open D-minor tuning (DADFAD), resulting in the “deep” sound of the 1931 recordings. James purportedly learned this tuning from his musical mentor, the unrecorded bluesman Henry Stuckey. Stuckey in turn was said to have acquired it from Bahamanian soldiers during the First World War, despite the fact that his service card shows he didn’t serve overseas. Robert Johnson also recorded in this tuning, his “Hell Hound On My Trail” being based on James’ “Devil Got My Woman.” James’ classically-informed, finger-picking style was fast and clean, using the entire register of the guitar with heavy, hypnotic bass lines. James’ style of playing had more in common with the Piedmont blues of the East Coast than with the Delta blues of his nativeMississippi.

James is sometimes associated with theBentoniaSchool, which is either a sub-genre of blues music or a style of playing it. Calt, in his 1994 biography of James, I’d Rather Be the Devil: Skip James and the Blues, maintains that there was indeed no style of blues that originated in Bentonia, and that this is simply a notion of later blues writers who overestimated the provinciality of Mississippi during the early 20th century, when railways linked small towns, and who failed to see that in the case of Jack Owens, “the ‘tradition’ he bore primarily consisted of musical scraps from James’ table”. Owens and other musicians who may have been contemporaries of James were not recorded until the 60s revival period. As such, the extent to which the work of said musicians is indicative of any “school”, and whether James originated it or was simply a “member”, remains an open question.

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skip_James)

Skip James - 1931 Sessions

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Filed under: skip james paramount delta blues piedmont blues vanguard 
April 17, 2012
Robert Johnson - King of the Delta Blues Singers

When Keith Richards was first introduced to Johnson’s music by his band mate Brian Jones, he replied, “Who is the other guy playing with him?”, not realizing it was Johnson playing on one guitar. “I was hearing two guitars, and it took a long time to actually realise he was doing it all by himself.”

Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) was an American blues singer and musician. His landmark recordings from 1936–37 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that have influenced later generations of musicians. Johnson’s shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend, including a Faustian myth. As an itinerant performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson enjoyed little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime.

His records sold poorly during his lifetime, and it was only after the first reissue of his recordings on LP in 1961 that his work reached a wider audience. Johnson is now recognized as a master of the blues, particularly of the Mississippi Delta blues style. He is credited by many rock musicians as an important influence; Eric Clapton has called Johnson “the most important blues singer that ever lived.” Johnson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an “Early Influence” in their first induction ceremony in 1986. In 2003, David Fricke ranked Johnson fifth in Rolling Stone ‘s list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

Robert Johnson was born inHazlehurst,Mississippi, possibly on May 8, 1911, to Julia Major Dodds (born October 1874) and Noah Johnson (born December 1884). Julia was married to Charles Dodds (born February 1865), a relatively prosperous landowner and furniture maker with whom she had 10 children. Charles Dodds had been forced by a lynch mob to leave Hazlehurst following a dispute with white landowners. Julia left Hazlehurst with baby Robert but after some two years sent him to live inMemphiswith her husband, who had changed his name to Charles Spencer.

Around 1919, Robert rejoined his mother in the area around Tunica andRobinsonville,Mississippi. Julia’s new husband was known as Dusty Willis; he was 24 years her junior. Robert was remembered by some residents as “Little Robert Dusty,” but he was registered at Tunica’sIndianCreekSchoolas Robert Spencer. In the 1920 census he is listed as Robert Spencer, living inLucas,Arkansaswith Will and Julia Willis. Robert was at school in 1924 and 1927 and the quality of his signature on his marriage certificate suggests that he was relatively well educated for a boy of his background. One school friend, Willie Coffee, has been discovered and filmed, recalling that Robert was already noted for playing the harmonica and jaw harp. He also remembers that Robert was absent for long periods, which suggests that he may have been living and studying inMemphis.

After school, Robert adopted the surname of his natural father, signing himself as Robert Johnson on the certificate of his marriage to sixteen-year-old Virginia Travis in February 1929. She died in childbirth shortly after. Surviving relatives ofVirginiatold the blues researcher Robert “Mack” McCormick that this was a divine punishment for Robert’s decision to sing secular songs, known as ‘selling your soul to the Devil’. McCormick believes that Johnson himself accepted the phrase as a description of his resolve to abandon the settled life of a husband and farmer to become a full-time blues musician.

Around this time, the noted blues musician Son House moved toRobinsonville where his musical partner, Willie Brown, lived. Late in life, House remembered Johnson as a ‘little boy’ who was a competent harmonica player but an embarrassingly bad guitarist. Soon after, Johnson leftRobinsonville for the area aroundMartinsville, close to his birthplace Hazlehurst, possibly searching for his natural father. Here he perfected the guitar style of Son House and learned other styles from Isaiah “Ike” Zimmerman. Ike Zimmerman was rumoured to have learned supernaturally to play guitar by visiting graveyards at midnight. When Johnson next appeared inRobinsonville, he had seemed to have acquired a miraculous guitar technique. House was interviewed at a time when the legend of Johnson’s pact with the Devil was well known among blues researchers. He was asked whether he attributed Johnson’s technique to this pact, and his equivocal answers have been taken as confirmation.

While living inMartinsville, Johnson fathered a child with Vergie Mae Smith. He also married Caletta Craft in May 1931. In 1932, the couple moved toClarksdalein the Delta. Here Caletta fell ill and Johnson abandoned her for a career as a ‘walking’ (itinerant) musician.

Robert Johnson was not unique in choosing to be a traveling musician pursuing paying audiences. Even so, he was remembered as exceptional in his restlessness, in the number of places he stayed in and, by some accounts, in his determination to avoid agricultural labour. From 1932 until his death in 1938, Johnson lived his life in a manner that makes biography scarcely possible. He moved frequently between large cities likeMemphis,TennesseeandHelena,Arkansasand the smaller towns of the Mississippi Delta and neighboring regions ofMississippiandArkansas. On occasion, he travelled much further. Fellow blues musician Johnny Shines accompanied him toChicago,Texas,New York,Canada,Kentucky, andIndiana. Henry Townsend shared a musical engagement with him inSt Louis. In many places he stayed with members of his large extended family, or with women friends. He did not marry again but formed some long term relationships with women to whom he would return periodically. One was Estella Coleman, the mother of the blues musician Robert Lockwood, Jr. In other places he stayed with a woman seduced at his first performance. In each location, Johnson’s hosts were largely ignorant of his life elsewhere. He used different names in different places, employing at least eight distinct surnames.

Biographers have looked for consistency from musicians who knew Johnson in different contexts: Shines, who travelled extensively with him; Lockwood who knew him as his mother’s partner; David “Honeyboy” Edwards whose cousin Willie Mae Powell had a relationship with Johnson. From a mass of partial, conflicting, and inconsistent eye-witness accounts, biographers have attempted to summarize Johnson’s character. “He was well mannered, he was soft spoken, he was indecipherable”. “As for his character, everyone seems to agree that, while he was pleasant and outgoing in public, in private he was reserved and liked to go his own way”. “Musicians who knew Johnson testified that he was a nice guy and fairly average — except, of course, for his musical talent, his weakness for whiskey and women, and his commitment to the road.”

When Johnson arrived in a new town, he would play for tips on street corners or in front of the local barbershop or a restaurant. Musical associates have said that in live performances Johnson often did not focus on his dark and complex original compositions, but instead pleased audiences by performing more well-known pop standards of the day – and not necessarily blues. With an ability to pick up tunes at first hearing, Johnson had no trouble giving his audiences what they wanted, and certain of his contemporaries later remarked on Johnson’s interest in jazz and country music. Johnson also had an uncanny ability to establish a rapport with his audience; in every town in which he stopped, Johnson would establish ties to the local community that would serve him well when he passed through again a month or a year later.

Fellow musician Shines was 17 when he met Johnson in 1933. He estimated Johnson was maybe a year older than himself. In Samuel Charters’ Robert Johnson, the author quotes Shines as saying:

“Robert was a very friendly person, even though he was sulky at times, you know. And I hung around Robert for quite a while. One evening he disappeared. He was kind of a peculiar fellow. Robert’d be standing up playing some place, playing like nobody’s business. At about that time it was a hustle with him as well as a pleasure. And money’d be coming from all directions. But Robert’d just pick up and walk off and leave you standing there playing. And you wouldn’t see Robert no more maybe in two or three weeks … So Robert and I, we began journeying off. I was just, matter of fact, tagging along.”

During this time Johnson established what would be a relatively long-term relationship with Estella Coleman, a woman about fifteen years his senior and the mother of musician Robert Lockwood, Jr. Johnson reportedly cultivated a woman to look after him in each town he played in. Johnson supposedly asked homely young women living in the country with their families whether he could go home with them, and in most cases the answer was ‘yes’…until a boyfriend arrived or Johnson was ready to move on.

In 1941, Alan Lomax learned from Muddy Waters that Johnson had performed in theClarksdale,Mississippiarea. By 1959, historian Samuel Charters could only add that Will Shade of the Memphis Jug Band remembered Johnson had once briefly played with him inWest Memphis,Arkansas. In the last year of his life, Johnson is believed to have traveled toSt. Louisand possiblyIllinois, and then to some states in the East.

In 1938, Columbia Records producer John H. Hammond, who owned some of Johnson’s records, had record producer Don Law seek out Johnson out to book him for the first “From Spirituals to Swing” concert at Carnegie Hall in New York. On learning of Johnson’s death,Hammondreplaced him with Big Bill Broonzy, but still played two of Johnson’s records from the stage.

InJackson,Mississippi, around 1936, Johnson sought out H. C. Speir, who ran a general store and doubled as a talent scout. Speir put Johnson in touch with Ernie Oertle, who offered to record the young musician inSan Antonio,Texas. The recording session was held on November 23, 1936 in room 414 of theGunterHotelinSan Antonio, which Brunswick Records had set up to be a temporary recording studio. In the ensuing three-day session, Johnson played sixteen selections, and recorded alternate takes for most of these. Johnson reportedly performed facing the wall, which has been cited as evidence he was a shy man and reserved performer. This conclusion was played up in the inaccurate liner notes of the 1961 album King of the Delta Blues Singers. Ry Cooder speculates that Johnson played facing a corner to enhance the sound of the guitar, a technique he calls “corner loading”.

Among the songs Johnson recorded inSan Antoniowere “Come On In My Kitchen”, “Kind Hearted Woman Blues”, “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom” and “Cross Road Blues”. The first songs to appear were “Terraplane Blues” and “Last Fair Deal Gone Down”, probably the only recordings of his that he would live to hear. “Terraplane Blues” became a moderate regional hit, selling 5,000 copies.

His first recorded song, “Kind Hearted Woman Blues”, was part of a cycle of spin-offs and response songs that began with Leroy Carr’s “Mean Mistreater Mama” (1934). According to Wald, it was “the most musically complex in the cycle” and stood apart from most rural blues as a through-composed lyric, rather than an arbitrary collection of more-or-less unrelated verses. In contrast to most Delta players, Johnson had absorbed the idea of fitting a composed song into the three minutes of a 78 rpm side. Most of Johnson’s “somber and introspective” songs and performances come from his second recording session.

In 1937, Johnson traveled toDallas,Texas, for another recording session in a makeshift studio at the Vitagraph (Warner Brothers) Building,508 Park Avenue, where Brunswick Record Corporation was located on the third floor. Eleven records from this session would be released within the following year. Johnson did two takes of most of these songs and recordings of those takes survived. Because of this, there is more opportunity to compare different performances of a single song by Johnson than for any other blues performer of his time and place.

By the time he died, at least six of his records had been released in the South as race records.

The accuracy of the pitch and speed of the extant recordings has been questioned. In The Guardian’s music blog from May 2010, Jon Wilde states that “the common consensus among musicologists is that we’ve been listening to [Robert] Johnson at least 20% too fast;” i.e., that “the recordings were accidentally speeded up when first committed to 78 [rpm records], or else were deliberately speeded up to make them sound more exciting.” He does not give a source for this statement. Former Sony music executive Lawrence Cohn, who won a Grammy for the label’s 1991 reissue of Johnson’s works, “acknowledges there’s a possibility Johnson’s 1936–37 recordings were speeded up, since the OKeh/Vocalion family of labels, which originally issued the material, was ‘notorious’ for altering the speed of its releases. ‘Sometimes it was 78 rpms, sometimes it was 81 rpms,’ he says. It’s impossible to check the original sources, since the metal stampers used to duplicate the original 78 discs disappeared years ago.”

Johnson died on August 16, 1938, at the age of 27, nearGreenwood,Mississippi. He had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town about 15 miles (24 km) fromGreenwood. Differing accounts and theories attempt to shed light on the events preceding his death. A story often told is that one evening Johnson began flirting with a woman at a dance, the wife of the juke joint owner, according to rumor, unaware that the bottle of whiskey she gave to Johnson had been poisoned by her husband. In another version, she was a married woman unrelated to the juke joint owner. Johnson was allegedly offered an open bottle of whiskey that was laced with strychnine. Fellow blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson allegedly advised him never to drink from an offered bottle that had already been opened. According to Williamson, Johnson replied, “Don’t ever knock a bottle out of my hand.” Soon after, he was offered another open bottle of whiskey, also laced with strychnine, and accepted it. Johnson is reported to have begun feeling ill the evening after drinking from the bottle and had to be helped back to his room in the early morning hours. Over the next three days, his condition steadily worsened and witnesses reported that he died in a convulsive state of severe pain—symptoms which are consistent with strychnine poisoning.

Musicologist Robert “Mack” McCormick claims to have tracked down the man who murdered Johnson, and to have obtained a confession from him in a personal interview. McCormick has declined to reveal the man’s name, however.

In his book Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson, Tom Graves uses expert testimony from toxicologists to dispute the notion that Johnson died of strychnine poisoning. He states that strychnine has such a distinctive odor and taste that it cannot be disguised, even in strong liquor. He also claims that a significant amount of strychnine would have to be consumed in one sitting to be fatal, and that death from the poison would occur within hours, not days. This observation was also noted in a recent Guitar World comment from contemporary David “Honeyboy” Edwards, who said that it couldn’t have been strychnine, since he would have died much sooner than the three days he suffered.

According to legend, as a young man living on a plantation in ruralMississippi, Robert Johnson was branded with a burning desire to become a great blues musician. He was “instructed” to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery Plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar and tuned it. The “Devil” played a few songs and then returned the guitar to Johnson, giving him mastery of the instrument. This was in effect, a deal with the Devil mirroring the legend of Faust. In exchange for his soul, Robert Johnson was able to create the blues for which he became famous.

This legend was developed over time, and has been chronicled by Gayle Dean Wardlow, Edward Komara and Elijah Wald, who sees the legend as largely dating from Johnson’s rediscovery by white fans more than two decades after his death. Son House once told the story to Pete Welding as an explanation of Johnson’s astonishingly rapid mastery of the guitar. Welding reported it as a serious belief in a widely read article in Down Beat in 1966. Other interviewers failed to elicit any confirmation from House and there were fully two years between House’s observation of Johnson as first a novice and then a master.

Further details were absorbed from the imaginative retellings by Greil Marcus and Robert Palmer. Most significantly, the detail was added that Johnson received his gift from a large black man at a crossroads. There is dispute as to how and when the crossroads detail was attached to the Robert Johnson story. All the published evidence, including a full chapter on the subject in the biography Crossroads by Tom Graves, suggests an origin in the story of Blues musician Tommy Johnson. This story was collected from his musical associate Ishman Bracey and his elder brother Ledell in the 1960s. One version of Ledell Johnson’s account was published in David Evans’s 1971 biography of Tommy, and was repeated in print in 1982 alongside Son House’s story in the widely read Searching for Robert Johnson.

In another version, Ledell placed the meeting not at a crossroads but in a graveyard. This resembles the story told to Steve LaVere that Ike Zimmerman ofHazelhurst,Mississippilearned to play the guitar at midnight while sitting on tombstones. Zimmerman is believed to have influenced the playing of the young Robert Johnson. Recent research by blues scholar Bruce Conforth uncovered Ike Zimmerman’s daughter and the story becomes clearer. Johnson and Zimmerman did practice in a graveyard at night because it was quiet and no one would disturb them, but it was not the Hazlehurst cemetery as had been believed. Johnson spent about a year living with and learning from Zimmerman, who ultimately accompanied Johnson back to the Delta to look after him. Conforth’s article in Living Blues magazine goes into much greater detail. There are now tourist attractions claiming to be “The Crossroads” atClarksdaleand inMemphis.

Most musicians who knew Johnson well, such as Johnny Shines, never heard him claim that he had sold his soul to the Devil. Different accounts give contradictory information in this regard, but there is no conclusive evidence one way or another.

“Me And The Devil” begins, “Early this morning when you knocked upon my door/Early this morning when you knocked upon my door/And I said, ‘Hello, Satan, I believe it’s time to go,’” and continues with, “You may bury my body down by the highway side/You may bury my body down by the highway side/So my old evil spirit can catch a Greyhound bus and ride.”

Johnson’s lyrics to “Cross Road Blues” (“Standin’ at the crossroads, tried to flag a ride”) suggest he was hitchhiking rather than selling his soul to the Devil.

Johnson fused approaches specific to Delta blues to those from the broader music world. The slide guitar work on “Rambling on My Mind” is pure Delta and Johnson’s vocal there has “a touch of … Son House rawness,” but the train imitation on the bridge is not at all typical of Delta blues, and is more like something out of minstrel show music or vaudeville. Johnson did record versions of “Preaching the Blues” and “Walking Blues” in the older bluesman’s vocal and guitar style (House’s chronology is questioned by Guralnick). As with the first take of “Come On In My Kitchen,” the influence of Skip James is evident in James’s “Devil Got My Woman”, but the lyrics rise to the level of first-rate poetry, and Johnson sings with a strained voice found nowhere else in his recorded output.

The sad, romantic “Love in Vain” successfully blends several of Johnson’s disparate influences. The form, including the wordless last verse, follows Leroy Carr’s last hit “When the Sun Goes Down”; the words of the last sung verse come directly from a song Blind Lemon Jefferson recorded in 1926. Johnson’s last-ever recording, “Milkcow’s Calf Blues” is his most direct tribute to Kokomo Arnold, who wrote “Milkcow Blues” and who influenced Johnson’s vocal style.

“From Four Until Late” shows Johnson’s mastery of a blues style not usually associated with the Delta. He croons the lyrics in manner reminiscent of Lonnie Johnson, and his guitar style is more that of a ragtime-influenced player like Blind Blake. Lonnie Johnson’s influence on Robert Johnson is even clearer in two other departures from the usual Delta style: “Malted Milk” and “Drunken Hearted Man”. Both copy the arrangement of Lonnie Johnson’s “Life Saver Blues”. The two takes of “Me and the Devil Blues” show the influence of Peetie Wheatstraw, calling into question the interpretation of this piece as “the spontaneous heart-cry of a demon-driven folk artist.”

Very little is known of Johnson’s early life with any certainty. Two marriage licenses for Johnson have been located in county records offices. The ages given in these certificates point to different birth dates, as do the entries showing his attendance at Indian Creek School, Tunica, Mississippi. That he was not listed among his mother’s children in the 1910 census casts further doubt on these dates. Carrie Thompson claimed that her mother, who was also Robert’s mother, remembered his birth date as May 8, 1911. The 1920 census suggests he was born in 1912. Five significant dates from his career are documented: Monday, Thursday and Friday, November 23, 26, and 27, 1936, at a recording session inSan Antonio,Texas. Seven months later, on Saturday and Sunday, June 19–20, 1937, he was inDallasat another session. His death certificate was discovered in 1968, and lists the date and location of his death.

The two confirmed images of Johnson were located in 1973, in the possession of the musician’s half-sister Carrie Thompson, and were not widely published until the late 1980s. A third photo, purporting to show Johnson posing with fellow blues performer Johnny Shines, was published in the November 2008 edition of Vanity Fair magazine. The same article claims that other photographs of Johnson, so far unpublished, may exist.

Johnson’s records were greatly admired by record collectors from the time of their first release and efforts were made to discover his biography, with virtually no success. Noted blues researcher Mack McCormick began researching his family background, but was never ready to publish. McCormick’s research eventually became as much a legend as Johnson himself. In 1982, McCormick permitted Peter Guralnick to publish a summary in Living Blues (1982), later reprinted in book form as Searching for Robert Johnson. Later research has sought to confirm this account or to add minor details. A revised summary acknowledging major informants was written by Stephen LaVere for the booklet accompanying the compilation album Robert Johnson, The Complete Recordings (1990), and is maintained with updates at the Delta Haze website. The documentary film The Search for Robert Johnson contains accounts by Mack McCormick and Gayle Dean Wardlow of what informants have told them: long interviews of David Honeyboy Edwards and Johnny Shines, and short interviews of surviving friends and family. These published biographical sketches achieve coherent narratives, partly by ignoring reminiscences and hearsay accounts which contradict or conflict with other accounts.

A relatively full account of Johnson’s brief musical career emerged in the 1960s, largely from accounts by Son House, Johnny Shines, David Honeyboy Edwards and Robert Lockwood. In 1961, the sleeve notes to the album King of the Delta Blues Singers included reminiscences of Don Law who had recorded Johnson in 1936. Law added to the mystique surrounding Johnson, representing him as very young and extraordinarily shy.

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson)

rar Robert Johnson - King of the Delta Blues Singers

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Filed under: robert johnson delta blues Vocalion columbia king of the delta blues singers 
April 13, 2012
Blind Willie McTell - Statesboro Blues (1927-1933)

Blind Willie McTell (born William Samuel McTier May 5, 1898 – August 19, 1959), was an influential Piedmont and ragtime blues singer and guitarist. He played with a fluid, syncopated fingerstyle guitar technique, common among many exponents of Piedmont blues, although, unlike his contemporaries, he came to exclusively use twelve-string guitars. McTell was also an adept slide guitarist, unusual among ragtime bluesmen. His vocal style, a smooth and often laid-back tenor, differed greatly from many of the harsher voice types employed by Delta bluesmen, such as Charlie Patton. McTell embodied a variety of musical styles, including blues, ragtime, religious music, and hokum.

Born blind in the town of Thomson, Georgia, McTell learned how to play guitar in his early teens. He soon became a street performer around several Georgia cities, such as Atlanta and Augusta, and first recorded in 1927 for Victor Records. Although he never produced a major hit record, McTell’s recording career was prolific, recording for different labels under different names throughout the 1920s and 30s. In 1940, he was recorded by John Lomax for the Library of Congress’s folk song archive. He would remain active throughout the 1940s and 50s, playing on the streets of Atlanta, often with his longtime associate, Curley Weaver. Twice more he recorded professionally. McTell’s last recordings originated during an impromptu session recorded by an Atlanta record store owner in 1956. McTell would die three years later after suffering for years from diabetes and alcoholism. Despite his mainly failed releases, McTell was one of the few archaic blues musicians that would actively play and record during the 1940s and 50s. However, McTell never lived to be “rediscovered” during the imminent American folk music revival, as many other bluesmen would.

McTell’s influence extended over a wide variety of artists, including The Allman Brothers Band, who famously covered McTell’s “Statesboro Blues”, and Bob Dylan, who paid tribute to McTell in his 1983 song “Blind Willie McTell”; the refrain of which is, “And I know no one can sing the blues, like Blind Willie McTell”. Other artists include Taj Mahal, Alvin Youngblood Hart, The White Stripes, Ralph McTell and Chris Smither.

Born William Samuel McTier in Thomson, Georgia, blind in one eye, McTell had lost his remaining vision by late childhood and attended schools for the blind in the states of Georgia, New York and Michigan. He showed proficiency in music from an early age, first playing harmonica and accordion, learning to read and write music in Braille, and turning to the six-string guitar in his early teens. Born into a musical family, both of his parents and an uncle played guitar; he is also a relation of bluesman and gospel pioneer, Thomas A. Dorsey. His father left the family when McTell was still young, and when his mother died in the 1920s, he left his hometown and became a wandering musician, or “songster”. He began his recording career in 1927 for Victor Records in Atlanta.

McTell married Ruth Kate Williams, now better known as Kate McTell, in 1934. She accompanied him on stage and on several recordings before becoming a nurse in 1939. Most of their marriage from 1942 until his death was spent apart, with her living in Fort Gordon near Augusta and him working around Atlanta.

In the years before World War II, McTell traveled and performed widely, recording for a number of labels under many different names, including Blind Willie McTell (Victor and Decca), Blind Sammie (Columbia), Georgia Bill (Okeh), Hot Shot Willie (Victor), Blind Willie (Vocalion and Bluebird), Barrelhouse Sammie (Atlantic), and Pig & Whistle Red (Regal). The “Pig ‘n Whistle” appellation was a reference to a chain of Atlanta barbeque restaurants, one of which was located on the south side of East Ponce de Leon between Boulevard and Moreland Avenue, which later became a Krispy Kreme. McTell would frequently played for tips in the parking lot of this location. He was also known to play behind the nearby building that later became Ray Lee’s Blue Lantern Lounge. McTell’s style was singular: A form of country blues bridging the gap between the raw blues of the early part of the 20th century and the more refined east coast Piedmont sound. He took on the less common and more unwieldy 12-string guitar because of its volume. The style is well documented on John Lomax’s 1940 recordings of McTell for the Library of Congress. McTell earned $10 from these sessions, the equivalent of $154.56 in 2011.

Postwar, he recorded for Atlantic Records and Regal Records in 1949, but these recordings met with less commercial success than his previous works. He continued to perform around Atlanta, but his career was cut short by ill health, predominantly diabetes and alcoholism. In 1956, an Atlanta record store manager, Edward Rhodes, discovered McTell playing in the street for quarters and enticed him with a bottle of corn liquor into his store, where he captured a few final performances on a tape recorder. These were released posthumously on Prestige/Bluesville Records as Last Session. Beginning in 1957, McTell occupied himself as a preacher at Atlanta’s Mt. Zion Baptist Church.

McTell died in Milledgeville, Georgia, of a stroke in 1959. He was buried at Jones Grove Church, near Thomson, Georgia, his birthplace. A fan paid to have a gravestone erected on his resting place. The name given on his gravestone is Eddie McTier. He was inducted into the Blues Foundation’s Hall of Fame in 1981, and into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 1990.

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Willie_McTell)

rar Blind Willie McTell - Statesboro Blues (1927-1933)

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Filed under: blind willie mctell twelve string piedmont blues georgia blues 
April 10, 2012
Blind Lemon Jefferson - Classic Sides Disc 2

“Blind” Lemon Jefferson (September 24, 1893 – December 19, 1929) was an American blues singer and guitarist fromTexas. He was one of the most popular blues singers of the 1920s, and has been titled “Father of the Texas Blues”.

Jefferson’s singing and self-accompaniment were distinctive as a result of his high-pitched voice and originality on the guitar. He was not influential on some younger blues singers of his generation, as they did not seek to imitate him as they did other commercially successful artists. However, later blues and rock and roll musicians attempted to imitate both his songs and his musical style. His recordings would later influence such legends as B.B. King, T-Bone Walker, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Canned Heat, Son House and Robert Johnson.

Blind Lemon Jefferson was born blind nearCoutchman,TexasinFreestoneCounty, near present-dayWortham,Texas.Jeffersonwas one of eight children born to sharecroppers Alex and Clarissa Jefferson. Disputes regarding his exact birth date derive from contradictory census records and draft registration records. By 1900, the family was farming southeast ofStreetman,Texas, and Lemon Jefferson’s birth date is indicated as September 1893 in the 1900 census. The 1910 census, taken in May before his birthday, further confirms his birth year as 1893, and indicated the family was farming northwest of Wortham, near Lemon Jefferson’s birthplace.

In his 1917 draft registration, Jefferson gave his birth date as October 26, 1894, further stating that he then lived inDallas,Texas, and that he had been blind from birth. In the 1920 Census, he is recorded as having returned to theFreestoneCountyarea, and he was living with his half-brother Kit Banks on a farm between Wortham and Streetman.

Jeffersonbegan playing the guitar in his early teens, and soon after he began performing at picnics and parties. He also became a street musician, playing inEast Texastowns in front of barbershops and on corners. According to his cousin, Alec Jefferson, quoted in the notes for Blind Lemon Jefferson, Classic Sides:

They were rough. Men were hustling women and selling bootleg and Lemon was singing for them all night… he’d start singing about eight and go on until four in the morning… mostly it would be just him sitting there and playing and singing all night.

By the early 1910s, Jefferson began traveling frequently toDallas, where he met and played with fellow blues musician Lead Belly. InDallas, Jefferson was one of the earliest and most prominent figures in the blues movement developing in the Deep Ellum area ofDallas.Jeffersonlikely moved to Deep Ellum in a more permanent fashion by 1917, where he met Aaron Thibeaux Walker, also known as T-Bone Walker. Jefferson taughtWalkerthe basics of blues guitar, in exchange forWalker’s occasional services as a guide. Also, by the early 1920s,Jeffersonwas earning enough money for his musical performances to support a wife, and possibly a child. However, firm evidence for both his marriage and any offspring is unavailable.

UntilJefferson, very few artists had recorded solo voice and blues guitar, the first of which was vocalist Sara Martin and guitarist Sylvester Weaver.Jefferson’s music is uninhibited and represented the classic sounds of everyday life from a honky-tonk to a country picnic to street corner blues to work in the burgeoning oil fields, a reflection too of his interest in mechanical things.

Jeffersondid what very few had ever done; became a successful solo guitarist and male vocalist in the commercial recording world. Unlike many artists who were “discovered” and recorded in their normal venues, in December 1925 or January 1926, he was taken toChicago,Illinois, to record his first tracks.

Uncharacteristically,Jefferson’s first two recordings from this session were gospel songs (“I Want to be like Jesus in my Heart” and “All I Want is that Pure Religion”), released under the name Deacon L. J. Bates. This led to a second recording session in March 1926. His first releases under his own name, “Booster Blues” and “Dry Southern Blues,” were hits; this led to the release of the other two songs from that session, “Got the Blues” and “Long Lonesome Blues,” which became a runaway success, with sales in six figures. He recorded about 100 tracks between 1926 and 1929; 43 records were issued, all but one for Paramount Records. Unfortunately, Paramount Records’ studio techniques and quality were bad, and the resulting recordings sound no better than if they had been recorded in a hotel room. In fact, in May 1926,ParamounthadJeffersonre-record his hits “Got the Blues” and “Long Lonesome Blues” in the superior facilities at Marsh Laboratories, and subsequent releases used that version. Both versions appear on compilation albums and may be compared.

It was largely due to the popularity of artists such as Blind Lemon Jefferson and contemporaries such as Blind Blake and Ma Rainey thatParamountbecame the leading recording company for the blues in the 1920s. Jefferson’s earnings reputedly enabled him to buy a car and employ chauffeurs (although there is debate over the reliability of this as well); he was given a Ford car “worth over $700” by Mayo Williams,Paramount’s connection with the black community. This was a frequently seen compensation for recording rights in that market.Jeffersonis known to have done an unusual amount of traveling for the time in the American South, which is reflected in the difficulty of pigeonholing his music into one regional category. It wasJefferson’s “old-fashioned sound and confident musicianship that made him easy to market. His skillful guitar playing and impressive vocal ranges opened the door for a new generation of male solo blues performers such as Furry Lewis, Charlie Patton, and Barbecue Bob. He sticks to no musical conventions, varying his riffs and rhythm and singing complex and expressive lyrics in a manner exceptional at the time for a “simple country blues singer.” According toNorth Carolinamusician Walter Davis, Jefferson played on the streets inJohnson City,Tennessee, during the early 1920s at which timeDavisand fellow entertainer Clarence Greene learned the art of blues guitar.

Jefferson was reputedly unhappy with his royalties (although Williams said thatJeffersonhad a bank account containing as much as $1500). In 1927, when Williams moved to OKeh Records, he took Jefferson with him, and OKeh quickly recorded and released Jefferson’s “Matchbox Blues” backed with “Black Snake Moan,” which was to be his only OKeh recording, probably because of contractual obligations withParamount. Jefferson’s two songs released on Okeh have considerably better sound quality than on hisParamountrecords at the time. When he had returned toParamounta few months later, “Matchbox Blues” had already become such a hit thatParamountre-recorded and released two new versions, under producer Arthur Laibly.

In 1927,Jeffersonrecorded another of his now classic songs, the haunting “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” (once again using the pseudonym Deacon L. J. Bates) along with two other uncharacteristically spiritual songs, “He Arose from the Dead” and “Where Shall I Be.” Of the three, “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” became such a big hit that it was re-recorded and re-released in 1928.

As his fame grew, so did the tales regarding his life, often personally involving the teller. T-Bone Walker states that as a boy, he was employed by Jefferson to lead him around the streets ofDallas; he would have been of the appropriate age at the time. A Paramount employee told biographer Orrin Keepnews that Jefferson was a womanizing sloppy drunk; on the other hand, Jefferson’s neighbor in Chicago, Romeo Nelson, reports him as being “warm and cordial,” and singer Rube Lacy states that Jefferson always refused to play on a Sunday, “even if you give me two hundred.” He is claimed to have earned money wrestling before his musical success. Victoria Spivey elliptically creditsJeffersonas someone who “could sure feel his way around.”

Jefferson died inChicagoat 10 am on December 19, 1929, of what his death certificate called “probably acute myocarditis”. For many years, apocryphal rumors circulated that a jealous lover had poisoned his coffee, but a more likely scenario is that he died of a heart attack after becoming disoriented during a snowstorm (i.e., he froze to death). Some have said thatJeffersondied from a heart attack after being attacked by a dog in the middle of the night. More recently, the book, Tolbert’sTexas, claimed that he was killed while being robbed of a large royalty payment by a guide escorting him to Union Station to catch a train home toTexas. Paramount Records paid for the return of his body toTexasby train, accompanied by pianist William Ezell. Jefferson was buried atWorthamNegroCemetery(laterWorthamBlackCemetery). Far from his grave being kept clean, it was unmarked until 1967, when a Texas Historical Marker was erected in the general area of his plot, the precise location being unknown. By 1996, the cemetery and marker were in poor condition, but a new granite headstone was erected in 1997. In 2007, the cemetery’s name was changed toBlindLemonMemorialCemeteryand his gravesite is kept clean by a cemetery committee inWortham,Texas.

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Lemon_Jefferson)

rar Blind Lemon Jefferson - Classic Sides Disc 2

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Filed under: blind lemon jefferson texas blues okeh records deacon l.j. bates