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by Ed Davis
In
a world where change comes seemingly every other week, for something to
survive for more than a century is rare indeed. The blues has done that.
The foundation upon which all other American music is based, the blues has
attracted millions of fans all over the world, but most of them know little,
if anything at all, of its fascinating history.
For serious scholars, a huge volume of literature exists and more is being
published every year, but if you’re a casual listener who might like to know
a little more about the blues and its history, Bellport.com presents this
ongoing series which will follow the rise of the blues in the nineteenth
century, its spanning of the twentieth century, and its continued existence
in the twenty first.
Your guide will be Mr. Ed Davis. Ed has been addicted to the blues since
1954. In 1985 he joined the staff of Stony Brook University's radio station
WUSB and for fourteen years he was one of the co-hosts on the long running
Tuesday night blues show. In 1990 he started the Friday morning show, Blues
With a Feeling, which he hosted for eight and a half years.
Ed was a founding member of the Long Island Blues Society, serving as its
vice-president for eight years. For the first several years of the Blues
Society’s newsletter, he wrote a column on blues history and has also
lectured many times on the same subject.
While Tampa Red and Georgia Tom
both cast giant shadows upon early blues, another duo using the same
instruments proved to be even more influential. In this case though, the
piano player was the more important of the two.
Leroy Carr was the first real transitional figure in the blues. Born in 1899
in Nashville, his childhood and early youth were unlike those of most blues
musicians of his day. An only child, he grew up in a stable middle class
environment. His father was steadily employed, working for Vanderbilt
University as a laborer.
He attended school throughout his youth, holding a part time job while in
high school. He took a job in a clothing store after graduating in 1915.
In 1918 he came under the influence of a country piano player named Ollie
Akins, the first of several keyboard men he was to learn from. His
professional career began in 1922 playing at a local dance hall backing a
male singer. When the singer left town, Leroy began to sing himself.
Still living at home and holding on to his day job, he was being
increasingly urged by friends to go up to Chicago and try to secure a
recording contract. Finally, in 1928 he took the train north.
In Chicago, Mayo Williams, the recording director of Vocalion Records
suggested that Leroy should work with a guitarist who had been playing
around town for several years.
Leroy, with his middle class background, urban upbringing and education
approached the blues as an art form rather than as a collection of standard
verses from older blues endlessly recycled in one song after another. Never
having known the unrelenting backbreaking toil of farm labor, his singing
was far less intense than rural singers.
With his soft piano accompaniment, his recordings were greatly enhanced by
the guitar playing of Scrapper Blackwell. Blackwell, whose real name was
Francis Black, rather than playing bunches of chords, provided what would
today be called single string leads. These melodic solo passages dressed up
Leroy’s playing and singing the way embroidery decorates cloth. Their
playing styles meshed so perfectly together that Leroy insisted that
Scrapper’s name also be included on their records.
To quote Samuel Charters, the author of the first scholarly work on the
blues, “The Country Blues,” published in 1959,“ Their first record was so
successful that their reputations were made a few weeks after they began
working together.” That record was to become the first of a number of their
recordings which would become blues standards, the enormously popular “How
Long, How Long Blues.”
Easy to imitate, Leroy’s style became the dominant approach to the blues up
until about the time of the Second World War. He never returned to live in
the South. He married and lived quietly in Indianapolis, leaving only for
occasional club work and recording in Chicago.
Things appeared to be going quite well in Leroy’s life but after a few
years, his relationship with Scrapper was becoming strained. In 1934 Tampa
Red talked him into leaving Vocalion to record for Bluebird, a subsidiary of
RCA. While they were signing the contracts at the Bluebird studios, an
argument broke out. Scrapper felt that Leroy was getting all the recognition
and more of the money from their recordings together. After they calmed
down, they did a bit of recording but Scrapper got angry again and finally
had to be thrown out of the studio.
Leroy went on to record alone, but without Scrapper the magic disappeared.
He would not live much longer. Always a heavy drinker, he died of acute
alcoholism in Indianapolis in the spring of 1935.
The Best of Leroy Carr, Columbia/Legacy
A Big Change Comments...
2/26/2010, Toby Walker wrote...
Keep 'em coming!!!
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Wrapping Up The Twenties- Part Two
As we have seen in the second installment of our history
of the blues, female “City Blues” singers often sang with just piano
accompaniment. For the first few years of blues recording, this was the role
of the piano.
Soon enough though, the piano would come to be recorded as a solo instrument
or the featured instrument in small groups starting a tradition that has
continued down through the years. There has never been a time since the
twenties when there were no great blues pianists.
The first keyboard man to make a name for himself was Charles “Cow Cow”
Davenport. Born in Alabama in 1894, by 1912 he was making a living as a
professional musician. He played ragtime in brothels in New Orleans, in
barrelhouses, at house parties, or anywhere else he could get work. By 1924,
he was working as the accompanist of a blues singer named Dora Carr.
He made his mark on blues history in the summer of 1928 with his recording
of a seminal boogie woogie number with his left hand playing a walking bass
line. His “Cow Cow Blues” proved so popular that he was known for the rest
of his career, which lasted another twenty years, as “Cow Cow” Davenport.
Five months later, another Alabaman, Clarence Smith, who had been living in
Pittsburgh and backing blues singers, including Ma Raney, recorded a piece
for Vocalion Records in Chicago. As was the case with Davenport, the song,
“Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie,” one of the most important boogie woogie records
of all time, was so identified with him that he was forever to be known as
“Pinetop.”
Not only did the song influence every boogie woogie pianist who came after
him, but in 1938, the big band leader, Tommy Dorsey, recorded it with his
full band. Unfortunately, Smith never lived to see any of this. Several
months after cutting his landmark recording, he was killed accidentally by a
bullet meant for someone else. He was twenty five years old.
As important as these two numbers were, neither was known for selling an
extraordinary number of records. With a population only a fraction of
today’s, and a far larger percentage of Americans living in poverty, a hit
blues record might sell seventy or eighty thousand copies. However, the
early days of the blues did have two well-remembered mega-hits.
In October of 1927, another veteran of the medicine shows, Jim Jackson, went
into the studios of Vocalion Records and recorded a two-sided blues called,
“Jim Jackson’s Kansas City Blues,” Parts 1 and 2. Released in December of
that year, it sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
An excellent piece of material, the song became a blues standard still well
known today. It must have sold on the strength of the song because when
great blues guitarists and great blues singers of the Twenties are
discussed, no one mentions Jim Jackson.
Such was not the case with another number which went on to become a blues
standard. The performers were every bit as important as the song, a raucous
bawdy piece called “It’s Tight Like That.”
Tampa Red and Georgia Tom invented the hokum style of blues. Hokum is much
like jug band music but minus the jug or the other homemade instruments.
Tampa Red was a young guitar player born in Florida but living in Atlanta
whose real name was Hudson Whittaker. The first blues artist to record with
a National steel-bodied resonator guitar, his slide playing was smoother and
more urbane than that of the country guitarists. He would go on to become a
major figure of 1930’s blues as part of a career that extended into the
Fifties.
His piano playing partner, Georgia Tom, had an absolutely fascinating
career. He started in the early Twenties as accompanist to Ma Raney before
teaming up with Tampa Red. Their association was brief. In the early
Thirties, after tragedy in his personal life, he began writing religious
songs. At first, because of his blues background, acceptance by churches was
slow, but in 1932 he founded the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and
Choruses.
The individual who coined the term “Gospel Music,” Dorsey, who from that
point on was known as Professor Thomas A. Dorsey, wrote over eight hundred
songs including “there Will Be Peace In The Valley,” a number which sold
over a million copies for both the Country singer, Red Foley, and Elvis
Presley. Dorsey lived to a ripe old age. By the time he passed away in 1993,
he was a legend in Gospel music.
Click below to hear a small portion of each track:
Blues Classics: Disc #1
Cow Cow Davenport - Cow Cow Blues
Pine Top Smith - Pine Top’s Boogie Woogie
Jim Jackson - Jim Jackson’s Kansas City Blues, Pt. 1
Tampa Red & Georgia Tom - It’s Tight Like That
Wrapping Up The Twenties Comments...
2/3/2010, Steve Brauch wrote...
Great column, Ed. Many thanks. Came to your site from Toby Walker's, and I'm very glad I did! I'm facilitating a continuing education course up here in southern Massachusetts on the roots of American folk music - your column will be a fine resource. Thanks again, Steve (a former Long Islander).
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Wrapping Up The Twenties - Part One
So far our history of the blues has covered the City
Blues, the great first generation Country Blues guitarists, early harmonica
players and jug bands, but still more remains to be mentioned about blues of
the Twenties.
Blues and jazz had existed side by side with only the most tentative borders
between them for over a decade, but the blues was about to exert its
influence on another uniquely American art form. In August of 1927, Ralph
Peer, who had already played a very important role in the recording of many
early landmark blues, held auditions in Bristol, Tennessee. Within two days
he discovered and signed the two acts destined to have an enormous influence
on the early days of Country Music.
The Carter Family’s music was Appalachian white but The Singing Brakeman,
Jimmy Rodgers, owed much of his style to the blues. He had traveled about
the South since childhood with his railroad worker father. His first
exposure to the blues probably came from hearing the singing of the black
work gangs who maintained the tracks and roadbeds.
In his short (1927-1933), but meteoric career, the Father of Country Music
recorded thirteen of his famous blue yodels including one (Blue Yodel #8 )
with Louis Armstrong backing him on cornet. He also recorded with jug bands
and, among other blues, covered Blind Blake’s “He’s In The Jailhouse Now.”
While the white Rodgers wove black music into his oeuvre, the black string
band, The Mississippi Sheiks, built their careers performing for primarily
white audiences. The Sheiks were guitarist Walter Vinson and Lonnie Chatmon
who played guitar and violin. They were sometimes joined by Lonnie’s
brothers, Sam, who also played guitar, violin and Armenter, who would become
far better known in the Thirties as Bo Carter and Charlie McCoy who played
banjo and mandolin.
Their music was similar to jug band music but not as hokey. They were best
known for originating the blues standard, “Sitting On Top Of The World.”
With the guitar to this day still the most important blues instrument, 1927
brought an important technological advance. A luthier named John Dopyera
invented the resonator, an aluminum cone which when placed inside a
metal-bodied guitar made the instrument louder.
He formed the National String Instrument Company and began manufacturing
resonator guitars. A National had three of the aluminum cones joined
together. The increased volume helped the guitar to be heard when played in
bands with other instruments.
A year later Dopyera and four of his brothers formed the Dobro Manufacturing
Company. The Dobro had only one resonator, but with the cone inverted, it
was both louder and cheaper to manufacture than the National.
Though the invention of the electric guitar was soon to become a reality, it
would never replace the resonator guitar as the instrument of choice for
players of traditional blues. Today, more than eighty years later, Nationals
and Dobros are both still highly prized by such musicians.
Click below to hear a small portion of each track:
Century Of The Blues, Disc #1
Jimmie Rogers - Mule Skinner Blues
Mississippi Sheiks - Sittin’ On Top Of The World
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In the South in the 1920’s, the overwhelming majority of
black people were poor. Singing and dancing were about their only forms of
entertainment. Much of their music was performed by small groups where the
sound of guitars and harmonicas were augmented by homemade instruments, most
of which were used for percussion. A bass could be fashioned from a
galvanized washtub, a broomstick and a length of clothesline. Washboards,
cowbells, spoons, bones (the shin bones of cows) and kazoos were all
commonly used.
These little groups were known as “jug bands” because quite often a jug was
part of the ensemble. A jug player would make buzzing sounds with his lips
while blowing across the mouth of the jug. A skilled player could create a
surprising range of sounds.
Quite naturally, as blues began to be recorded, some of the better bands
found their way into the studios. These bands for the most part consisted of
veterans of vaudeville and the medicine shows.
Among the earliest to record were the Dixie Jug Blowers from Louisville and
the Birmingham Jug Band. Their repertoires consisted mainly of dance band
jazz which by the Twenties had supplanted Ragtime as America’s popular
music.
But the finest of these groups came from the Memphis area and their music
was mostly Country Blues. The two most famous were the Memphis Jug Band and
Cannon’s Jug Stompers.
The Memphis Jug Band made their first recordings in February of 1927 for
Ralph Peer, the man who had produced the very first blues recording for Okeh
Records in1920 but who had since moved over to Victor Records.
The leader of the group was Will Shade who played guitar or harmonica
depending on who else played on a particular session. Quite a few different
musicians recorded with the band during the seven years of its existence
including a very young Walter “Shakey” Horton who would go on to become one
of the greatest Chicago Blues harmonica players of all time. The heart of
the group was Will Shade and Charlie Burse, who played a four string tenor
guitar and sang duets with Shade. To quote Samuel Charters, the author of
the first scholarly work on the blues, “They drank hard together, played
hard together, and created a new musical style.”
Probably the greatest of all the jug bands was Cannon’s Jug Stompers who
were led by the banjo playing Gus Cannon. Born in 1883, he was older than
almost all first generation blues musicians.
Starting out, as most bluesmen did, on a homemade instrument, by 1900 he had
a real banjo. For the next twenty years he worked at cotton farming or any
odd job he could find, playing music on the side, but by 1918 he was working
regularly with the medicine shows.
In November of 1927 he went up to Chicago to audition for Paramount Records.
He impressed the producer, Mayo Williams, but Williams couldn’t use him by
himself so he brought in Blind Blake and told them to work something out.
They did seven sides together including one of Blake’s best known numbers.
“He’s In The Jailhouse now.”
Back in Memphis, Cannon heard that Victor was coming down in January and
they wanted him to put a jug band together. He recruited two old friends,
guitarist Ashley Thompson, and the great harmonica player, Noah Lewis.
Cannon of course played banjo but he also had a jug in a harness around his
neck which he played at the same time.
At their first session in January of 1928, Cannon and Thompson alternated
the vocal chores. Among the pieces they recorded were Cannon’s signature
tune, “Madison Street Rag” and with Thompson on the vocal, they did one of
the earliest recorded variants of the classic Delta piece, “Rolling &
Tumbling” which they called the “Minglewood Blues.”
Cannon didn’t think Thompson played a strong enough bass line so on two
sessions in September of 1928 he replaced him with Elijah Avery. At the
second on September 20. They recorded a number Grateful Dead fans would be
familiar with, “Viola Lee Blues.”
Their final session came a few weeks later in October when they recorded a
piece that became a huge hit in the Sixties for a one hit wonder of the Folk
Music Era. The group was the Rooftop Singers. The song was “Walk Right In.”
Click below to hear a small portion of each track:
Good Time Blues, Columbia/Legacy
Memphis Jug Band
Cannon’s Jug Stompers, Yazoo
Cannon Jug Stompers
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While the dominant approach to Country Blues in the Twenties was the solo
performance by a singer-guitarist, there were other ways the music was
performed and recorded, ways just as vibrant and just as influential in the
evolution of the blues.
If there is one perfect instrument to accompany a blues guitar, it is the
harmonica because like the guitar, the harp, as it is alternately referred
to, is capable of bending notes to produce blues tones. Popular in the U. S.
since about the time of the Civil War, it has much to offer an untrained
musician.
To begin with, while quality musical instruments of any type are usually
expensive, harmonicas were always cheap and easily available. Add to that
the fact that they are small, light and easily transported so a would-be
harmonica player could slip one in a pocket and pull it out to play any time
the opportunity presented itself for even a few minutes of practice.
Since there were no recordings of harmonica music to learn from, most early
players were self-taught. The result was an abundance of idiosyncratic
styles. No single master of the instrument sounded like any other.
As the blues entered the recording era in the Twenties, any number of
outstanding country harmonica players were recorded. While their names today
are unknown to all but the most rabid enthusiasts of early blues, artists
like Kyle Wooten, Freeman Stowers and Jaybird Coleman were obvious masters.
One among their numbers, however, achieved a much wider fame.
DeFord Bailey’s story is one of the most unusual in all of American music. A
hunchbacked operator of a shoeshine stand, it seems almost inconceivable
that he became one of the earliest stars of the Grand Ole Opry.
He made his first appearance on the show in 1925 before the program even had
that name. In fact, Bailey played a key role in the incident which resulted
in the show adopting the name by which it became world famous – a story just
a bit too long to be repeated here.
Through the late Twenties he made more appearances on the Opry than any
other artist. The fact that he was black seemed to make little difference to
either the show’s cast or its audience. With the exception of the legendary
Uncle Dave Macon, he was the most popular performer on the Opry where he
remained throughout the Thirties, making his final performance in 1941.
There is one more distinction that DeFord Bailey can claim. While Nashville,
the home of the Opry, is world famous as “Music City,” he was the very first
artist to record there.
Bailey and the others mentioned above were all known as solo performers but
another great harp player of the era, Noah Lewis, made his reputation as a
member of a type of ensemble quite popular in the Twenties and Thirties, the
jug band.
Click below to hear a small portion of each track:
Harmonica Masters, Yazoo
Man Trouble Blues, Jaybird Coleman
Medley of Blues, Freeman Stowers
Ice Water Blues,
DeFord Bailey
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First Generation Guitar Wizards of Mississippi
Of all the places that have produced blues artists - and
today that includes virtually anywhere in America, Canada, Australia, the
British Isles and almost every country in Europe - the state of Mississippi
has produced more of the all-time greats than anyplace else.
In the 1920's, dozens of great Country Blues guitarists called the Magnolia
State home. Headed by Charley Patton and Son House, first generation masters
included Willie Brown, Tommy Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James,
Furry Lewis and others. Oddly though, as a group, they did not record until
after the greats of Texas and the East Coast made their debuts.
Patton was a bit older than the others. There is some doubt as to the date
of his birth, but he and the blues were born about the same time. A bantam
rooster of a man, he possessed a huge voice which served him well in an era
where amplification was unknown.
In 1900 his family moved to the enormous Dockery Plantation. There he met
his mentor, Henry Sloan, who was playing a very early style of blues. Sadly,
Sloan was never recorded.
By the time he was nineteen, Patton was already an accomplished guitarist
and was writing his own songs. One of his earliest compositions, the "Pony
Blues" which he recorded at his first session for Paramount Records in 1929
was included in the Library of Congress 9 National Recording Registry as a
song that is culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
Unlike other musicians who traveled throughout the South, he rarely ventured
outside the Delta region. He became well known for his guitar mastery,
influencing many fine players younger than he was. In addition, he was known
for his showmanship, often playing with the guitar behind his back or his
neck.
He recorded about forty sides for Paramount but he suffered from a bad
heart, and soon after he made his final recordings, ten sides for Vocalion,
he passed away in 1934.
Son House was born in 1902. Self taught on guitar, he did not begin playing
until he was in his mid-twenties. Torn between the blues and the church, he
actually spent some time as a preacher in his youth, but the pull of the
blues upon him was powerful and he left the church behind.
His guitar style featured strong repetitive rhythms. Usually playing
bottleneck style, his music was meant for dancing. His strong voice carried
above the noise of the places where he played.
He made his first recordings for Paramount in 1930, but by then the
Depression had taken hold of the country so his output for Paramount was
only about a dozen sides. His recordings of songs like "Death Letter Blues"
and "My Black Mama" are absolute masterpieces.
He continued to play around the Delta until about the start of World War II.
A major influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, he left music and
settled in Rochester, New York and worked for the New York Central Railroad.
The great modern day slide guitarist, John Mooney lived in Rochester in his
youth and absorbed much of House's style, not only instrumentally but
vocally as well.
House was rediscovered and returned to music in the Blues Revival of the
nineteen sixties playing before primarily white audiences at festivals, in
coffee houses, and on college campuses. He also made many new recordings,
both live and in the studios.
His second career lasted nearly a decade before he retired due to poor
health. He died in 1988 at the age of eighty-six.
Click below to hear a small portion of each track:
The Music Of Charlie Patton
Hang It On The Wall
Century Of The Blues
Mississippi Boll
Weevil Blues, Charlie Patton
My Black Mama (Part
One), Son House
Future Blues, Willie
Brown
Canned heat, Tommy
Johnson
Devil Got My Woman,
Skip James
Stack O’ Lee Blues,
Mississippi John Hurt
Blues Classics
Billy Lyons And
Stack O’ Lee, Furry Lewis
First Generation Guitar Wizards Of Mississippi Comments...
9/2/2009, Kate Hines wrote...
I have been reading and re-reading every word. I like the music selections very much. For someone like me, who knows almost nothing of the Blues, these articles have been an eye-opener. All I can say is "MORE!"
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First Generation East Coast Guitar Masters
Not long after Blind Lemon Jefferson made his debut
recordings for Paramount Records, the label signed a man whose guitar style
played a major role in creating a regional style of blues and which to this
day continues to inspire contemporary acoustic players. Oddly enough though,
for as well known and influential as he became, very little has ever been
known about Blind Blake.
For starters, no one has ever proven what his real name was. For many years
it was believed that it was Arthur Phelps, although lately even that has
come into question. The date and place of his birth are unknown but some
researchers think he may have come from Jacksonville, Florida.
What is not in dispute is that his playing was strongly based on ragtime
piano. Ragtime was for the first two decades of the Twentieth Century
America's popular music. Like the blues, ragtime evolved several different
regional styles. Blake's style was fashioned upon East Coast piano rags, so
it seems probable that he came from somewhere in the East.
He made the first of about eighty sides he was to do for Paramount in 1926
and was immediately a successful recording artist. Very soon he began to
cast a wide net of influence vocally as well as instrumentally. He sang in a
laidback wistful manner which was to become the model for blues vocals in
the Thirties.
But of course, it was his guitar mastery which influenced so many less
experienced players. His ragtime rhythms served as a prototype for what
became known as Piedmont Blues, a style quite distinct from either Texas or
Mississippi Delta Blues, and much favored by players of the Appalachian
region. A number of them would leave their marks on 1930's blues.
Even today, talented contemporary pickers will try their hands at a Blind
Blake piece, but there is one among them who has modeled his entire career
upon that of Blind Blake's. The enigmatic Leon Redbone has absorbed Blake's
guitar style as if by osmosis. Not only that, but he has recorded any number
of Blake's originals. Indeed, Redbone's signature tune," Diddie Wa Diddie"
is a Blind Blake piece.
Toward the end of his recording career Blake's records began to fall short
of the artistic level of his earlier work. It may have been because he, like
so many other musicians, was a very heavy drinker. This possibly led to his
passing away shortly thereafter. A mystery man to the end, no one knows
where or when he died.
The only other first generation blues guitarist from the East Coast as
influential as Blake was a man who never matched his success as a recording
artist. Blind Willie McTell never had a hit record yet his talent was so
evident and his approach to blues guitar so unique that from 1927 to 1933 he
recorded over sixty sides for five or six different companies using a
different alias for each.
He differed from all other first generation masters in one quite significant
way. His guitar was a wood-bodied Stella-a twelve string Stella. Among
important Twenties guitarists, the only other twelve stringer was Huddie
Ledbetter (Leadbelly), and he is regarded more as what Southern blacks
called a songster, a man whose repertoire is more important than his
playing.
If playing a twelve string wasn't enough to set McTell apart from the
others, on some numbers he used a slide. It is his slide work, rather than
the up tempo ragtime numbers he was also proficient at which has inspired
countless contemporary players to tackle pieces from his repertoire.
Although most of them play metal bodied six string resonator guitars, they
all capture the essence of his style. Remarkably, not one of them sounds
exactly like McTell, and none of them sound exactly like anyone else, but
half a century after his death, young players still strive to capture his
sound.
Ironically, the McTell piece that more people are familiar with than any
other is one of his two signature pieces - the other is "Broke Down Engine,"
-which was recast by the Allman Brothers into something almost
unrecognizable to those familiar with McTell's original. It's title?
"Statesboro Blues."
Blind Blake – Georgia Bound
West Coast Blues
Diddie Wa Diddie
Police Dog Blues
Blind Willie McTell – The Classic Years, A CD Set
Statesboro Blues
Talking To Myself
Broke Down Engine
Georgia Rag
Savannah Mama
First Generation East Coast Guitar Masters Comments...
8/25/2009, Linda Davis wrote...
Beautifully written and knowledgeable.
8/23/2009, Doc Blues wrote...
A fantastic series with deep insight, detail and love
of the subject. I've saved them on my computer as reference works! Hats off
to the writer.
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First Generation Guitar Wizards - Lonnie Johnson
Of all the first generation blues
guitar greats, one man stands out for the absolute brilliance he brought to
blues guitar technique. Lonnie Johnson grew up in a musical family in New
Orleans absorbing the sounds of his native city. His first instrument was
the violin, but once he began to concentrate on the guitar, he developed a
sophisticated style, fluid and melodic, yet swinging at the same time.
Contemporary guitarists who possess the necessary skills have managed to
replicate the techniques of virtually every other master of the six-string,
but no one else has ever completely captured the sound of Lonnie Johnson.
He was thirty-six when
he made his first recordings in the fall of 1925. Within days of winning a
talent contest, he attracted the attention of a scout for Okeh Records. From
then until 1932 he recorded about one hundred thirty sides that were amazing
in their diversity.
He did solo recordings, both instrumentally and with vocals. He did a series
of double entendre duets with Victoria Spivey and also with Spencer
Williams. He served as accompanist on the recordings of others, most notably
Texas Alexander, a raw country singer who played no instrument himself.
Texas Alexander was known for his idiosyncratic vocals, which made him
difficult to follow.
Johnson's brilliance went beyond the blues. He recorded with both Louis
Armstrong and Duke Ellington's orchestra. He also did a series of remarkable
guitar duets with Eddie Lang, the guitarist in Paul Whiteman’s orchestra,
the so-called "King of Jazz." These duets may possibly have been the first
integrated recordings in America, a fact that was kept hidden by billing
Lang as "Blind Willie Dunn."
He was absent from records from the time he left Okeh in 1932. He spent the
Depression in Chicago until he began a five year stint with RCA Victor's
subsidiary, Bluebird Records, in 1939. He was as successful as ever.
In 1947 he signed with King Records of Cincinnati, a company which had been
primarily producing what, at the time, were still called "Hillbilly"
records, but had branched out into recording black artists. He soon enjoyed
one of his all-time biggest hits, “Tomorrow Night," a lovely ballad which
the young Elvis Presley recorded early in his career.
By this time, Johnson was playing electric guitar, which could not begin to
match the musical depth of his earlier acoustic work. During the Fifties he
was forced to find work outside of music, but in the early Sixties he
returned to recording with several new albums and eventually toured Europe
with the American Folk Blues Festival, of which more will be discussed in a
future installment.
In 1969, Johnson was hit by a car in Toronto. He never recovered, dying of
his injuries a year later.
Click below to hear a small portion of each track:
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"First Generation Guitar Wizards of Texas"
Since 1920, early blues recordings were dominated by
women singers performing the more sophisticated City Blues. Increasingly
however, record companies were receiving requests from America's black
population for Country Blues records.
One of the major record companies employing blues singers, Paramount Records
of Chicago, was the first to attempt to meet the growing demand for Country
Blues. In July of 1924 they recorded a veteran entertainer, Papa Charlie
Jackson.
At the time, he was about forty years old. Singing and playing a six string
banjo-guitar, he recorded a piece called the "Original Lawdy Lawdy Blues."
It was the first of some sixty odd sides he was to record for Paramount but,
pioneer though he was, he and his music slipped into obscurity. He is little
remembered today.
He was shortly to be followed into the recording studios by a number of
Country Blues giants whose material and guitar styles serve as inspiration
to this day for contemporary performers.
The first of these was a fat blind man from East Texas with a dazzling
guitar technique. Born in 1897, Blind Lemon Jefferson was the stuff legends
are made of. While still in his teens, he left his family to earn a living
as a street singer. A habitual wanderer, people recalled seeing him as far
away as Virginia.
In 1925 he recorded the first of seventy nine sides for Paramount. His
signature tune was "Matchbox Blues," of which about half a dozen versions
found their way on to recordings. They differ enough from one another to
show that he never played a piece the same way twice.
He was successful enough to own a car and employ a driver, something few
black men of his day could even aspire to. But a living legend's stature
grows exponentially when he shuffles off this mortal coil, especially if his
death is both memorable and unusual.
In February of 1930, Lemon completed a recording session for Paramount and
headed out into a howling snowstorm. Somehow or other he missed his ride and
froze to death on a Chicago street corner. His body was found in a snowdrift
the next morning. He was thirty three years old.
Another blind string dazzler from Texas could not have been any more the
antithesis of Blind Lemon. Where Lemon was interested in little besides
whiskey and loose women, Blind Willie Johnson never performed anything but
hymns and other religious music, but his slide guitar technique was so great
he has always been ranked with the all time blues masters.
Born around the turn of the century, he lost his sight as a child. Long
before welfare or disability payments existed, music was one of very few
ways a poor blind black man could make a living.
From his youth he played and sang in churches, for religious meetings, and
on the streets. In January of 1928, the first of thirty sides he was to do
for Columbia over the next three and a half years was released. By then, the
nation was at its lowest point in the Great Depression and phonograph
records were selling extremely poorly, but Blind Willie was to continue
singing and playing for the rest of his life.
In 1949 he died in Beaumont, Texas of pneumonia after a hospital refused to
admit him because he was blind.
Blind Willie and Blind Lemon were the two towering figures of first
generation Texas blues, but they ranked no higher than guitar monsters from
Mississippi, the East Coast, or a man from New Orleans- which surprisingly,
does not have a great blues tradition-Lonnie Johnson.
Click below to hear a small portion of each track:
Maxwell Street Blues, Papa
Charlie Jackson, Century Of The Blues – Disc 2, Cut 6
Matchbox Blues, Blind Lemon Jefferson,
Century Of The Blues – Disc 2, Cut 1
Blacksnake Moan, Blind Lemon
Jefferson, Great Blues Guitarists String Dazzlers – Cut 15
Nobody’s Fault But Mine, Blind
Willie Johnson, Great Blues Guitarists String Dazzlers – Cut 10
Mother’s Children Have A Hard Time,
Blind Willie Johnson, Preachin’ The Gospel: Holy Blues - Cut 1
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America in 1920 was an
openly racist nation. Segregation was universally in force throughout the
South and was not unknown in the North. Black Americans were systematically
discriminated against in housing, employment and education. Among the
avenues of opportunity they had been largely excluded from was the fledgling
recording industry.
The blues had been around for over twenty years and hundreds of songs had
been published in sheet music form since 1912. The songwriters, both black
and white, were composing pieces in what came to be known as the "City
Blues" style.
City Blues were sung primarily by women, some of them white. They were
usually accompanied by a piano player or a small combo featuring horns.
As popular as the blues was becoming, the music had not yet found its way on
to records. But in the spring of 1920, after months of rejection, a
determined and resourceful young black songwriter named Perry Bradford
convinced Ralph Peer, the recording director of a new label, Okeh Records,
that there was money to be made in recording a black singer.
Mamie Smith's first record was released in July of that year. It sold well
enough for Peer to record her again. At her second recording session on
August 10, 1920, she made recording history with a number called "The Crazy
Blues." This was the very first blues ever recorded.
Okeh quickly became a major record company. Suddenly black blues singers
were a hot commodity as record companies realized that America's black
population constituted an untapped market. They would advertise their latest
releases in major black newspapers like the Pittsburgh Courier and the
Chicago Defender which were widely circulated in both the North and the
South.
Most large cities had sizeable black populations. World War 1 resulted in
hundreds of thousands of black people leaving the harsh existence of
plantation life or the virtual peonage of tenant farming. They found
employment in the factories, the mills and the shipyards. With regular
paychecks, many of them found, for perhaps the first time in their lives,
that they had some disposable income. Able to buy things other than the bare
necessities, they eagerly snapped up the windup phonographs of the era - and
blues records!
For the first few years, all the blues being recorded were in the more
sophisticated City Blues style. America's first great black recording stars
included Clara Smith, Trixie Smith, Ida Cox, Sippie Wallace, Alberta Hunter
and Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, the mentor of the greatest of them all, the
incomparable Bessie Smith.
The era of the great women City Blues singers lasted roughly until the onset
of the Great Depression, but after the first few years of blues recording,
the newly transplanted residents of the urban black ghettoes began to
express a longing for the type of music they were familiar with- the Country
Blues.
Country Blues used lyrics and harmonic patterns quite similar to City Blues,
but the singing styles and rhythms were those of people working in groups in
the fields. Instead of women accompanied by a variety of instruments, the
Country Blues generally featured a man singing while accompanying himself on
guitar with a highly developed interplay between voice and instrument.
It would not be long before this would become the dominant style of blues on
recordings.
Click below to hear a small portion of each track:
Crazy Blues, Mamie Smith, Rhino Blues Masters – Vol. 2
Railroad Blues, Trixie Smith, Rhino Blues Masters – Vol. 2
Yonder Comes The Blues, Ma Rainey, Rhino Blues Masters – Vol. 2
Down Hearted Blues, Alberta Hunter, Century Of The Blues – Disc 3
I’m A Mighty Tight Woman, Sippie Wallace, Century Of The Blues – Disc 3
Careless Love Blues, Bessie Smith, Century Of The Blues – Disc 3
The Recording Era Begins Comments...
4/27/2009, Chris Taylor wrote...
I LOVE this column! Bob & I have been fans of the
blues (as well as lots of other music) and this is just one more facet that
I personally find fascinating- and so convenient- a huge history, available
a little bit at a time, which is about all my crazy lifestyle can absorb at
the moment! Thanks for putting it together!
4/26/2009, Toby Walker wrote...
Not only is this a joy to read, but the recorded
examples breathe even more life into Ed's story. Keep up the good work.
4/23/2009, Irv Gordon wrote...
What a great treat to find such information on
Bellport.com. Loved the music selections as well as the musical history
lesson...another great service from Ed Davis and Bellport.com.
4/22/2009, Kate Hines wrote...
I enjoyed the second installment as much as the first. Especially enjoyed the song selections. Looking forward to the next article!
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No one knows for sure exactly where or when the blues began, but in the
early 1890's newspapers and magazines began to mention a previously unknown
style of music being performed by black musicians throughout the South.
Almost overnight, this music was being heard from Texas to Virginia.
Combining elements of African and European music, shaped by political,
economic and social conditions, its development was aided by the
availability of good guitars. The Martin Guitar Company, which had even then
been in business for over fifty years, began to market instruments by mail
order at prices within the means of black musicians. With its ability to
sustain notes longer, the guitar quickly replaced the banjo as the
instrument of choice. It was perfect for the blues.
In its infancy, the music was not yet called "blues," though the use of the
word to describe a mood or feeling goes back to the sixteenth century.
Musicians referred to their pieces as "jigs" or "reels" but by 1910 the term
blues was common and the music was becoming increasingly popular. However,
the only way a musician could learn a blues song was to hear someone else
perform it. The dissemination of songs this way is known as “oral
tradition.”
This helps to explain why songs such as "Frankie & Johnny" or "Stack-O-Lee,"
which are still well known today, exist in so many different versions.
Either a musician could not remember exactly how a number was performed or
he purposely made changes to suit himself.
The recording industry in America at that time was still in its infancy and
no blues had yet been recorded. Not until 1912 were the first blues even
published in sheet music form. Ironically, the first piece to appear in
print, the "Dallas Blues," was composed by a white man, a fiddler from
Oklahoma named Hart Wand. Just weeks later the "Memphis Blues" by W.C.
Handy, the so-called "Father of the Blues," was published.
In actuality, Handy, whose most famous composition was the "St. Louis
Blues," was never a bluesman. A formally trained musician who led society
orchestras, Handy was the first to recognize the commercial possibilities of
the blues.
From that point, a great many blues compositions by composers both black and
white were published, but the first blues recordings would not make an
appearance for nearly another decade.
Ed Davis
The History Of The Blues Comments...
3/29/2009, Kate Hines wrote...
OK, you've caught my attention. When will there be more?
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