KIP LORNELL AND TED MEALOR A & R Men and the Geography of Piedmont Blues Recordings From 1924 - 1941 Blues is one of the most important forms ofAfrican American music to emerge in the 20th century. During the middle 1920s downhome blues began to attract the attention of commercial record companies interested in expanding their base of support among black American consumers. Because most of the record companies were based in the North, they utilized a rather haphazard network of musicians, furniture dealers, and a few of their own employees to scout this southern-based "race" talent. This article examines the relationship between the blues musicians who happen to reside in the Southeastern Piedmont of the United States and the record companies themselves. We found that there is a direct correlation between the recording of these blues musicians and the geographical location of the men who scouted talent for the companies. As Fig.1 illustrates, most of the blues musicians that recorded between 1924 and 1941 resided within or near the slowly developing urban corridor between Atlanta, Georgia, and Durham, North Carolina. merican folk and popular music has been studied by historians, sociolo­ A gists, folklorists, ethnomusicologists, and anthropologists, but with the notable exception of George 0. Camey, rarely by geographers. A cultural geographer by academic training, Camey has been especially interested in the spatial aspects of vernacular music in the United States. His research since the early 1970s has resulted in many engaging and groundbreaking publications, as well as the only course on "Geography of American Music" offered in the United States.1 Of all of the types of American music studied by geographers, African American folk music has been the most obvious form overlooked by cultural geographers. One of the most important styles of black American folk music is blues, which emerged in the southern United States around the tum of the 20th century and is also noteworthy as the foundation for later popular forms such as rock 'n' roll.2 With its roots in the indigenous "field hollers," work songs, fiddle and banjo tunes, and religious music of rural blacks, blues is distinctly regional and often reflects a sense of place. Blues remains largely an oral tradition and thus provides insights into the environmental as well as the economic and social conditions of a specific people at a particular time and place, a fact that has not escaped the attention of the scholars who have studied blues on a regional and local level. 3 The Piedmont of middle and northeast Georgia, central and northwest South ARSC Journal XXVI Ii 1996. ©Association (or Recortkd Sound Collections 1996. All rights reserued. Printed in USA. 2 ARSC Journal f ":~,g2;:1 Southern Piedmont 0 100 miles Source: Hunt WTM 94 Figure 1: The Southern Piedmont A & R Men and the Geography of 3 Piedmont Blues Recordings From 1924-1941 Carolina, central North Carolina, and central Virginia, along with the Yazoo Basin of Mississippi and the plains of East Texas are three recognized hearth areas from which blues music has been diffused over the past seventy years. Though it began in the Deep South, by the close of World War I blues had been accepted as a viable music form by blacks throughout the South and most of the urban North. In response to what they perceived as a potential market, commer­ cial record companies earnestly began recording folk and ethnic musicians in the early 1920s. The term "race records" was given to those by gospel, jazz, and blues recordings that were targeted primarily for the African American population not only in the South, but also northern urban areas. The initial and most intensive wave of traditional blues recordings by commercial companies in the United States occurred between 1924 and 1941. Research by Bruce Bastin, Glen Hinson, Kip Lornell, Pete Lowry, George Mitchell, and others, summarized and analyzed in Bastin's definitive book, Red River Blues: The Blues Tradition in the Southeast, indicates that nearly 700 songs were recorded by blues musicians residing in or adjacent to the Southern Piedmont.4 While there were dozens of blues performers in the states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia who gained at least a modicum of local or regional fame, only forty-four individuals from these states are known to have recorded. The Piedmont region was established as an agricultural area in the 18th and early 19th centuries and became home to the majority of the African Ameri­ can population of these four states at the end of the War Between the States. At this time, and with the exception of those in North Carolina, all counties on the Piedmont had populations that were more than 30 percent African American and several had populations in excess of70 percent.6 After the War, larger cities, such as Atlanta, Charlotte, and Richmond, as well as smaller places such as Lynchburg, Virginia, Durham, North Carolina, and Spartanburg, South Carolina, attracted large numbers of African Americans from rural areas of both the southern Piedmont and the nearby Coastal Plains (Fig. 1). Because the Pied­ mont was the center of population growth and the dominant political and industrial region of these four states, blues musicians from throughout these states are usually labeled as "Piedmont blues players". The overwhelming majority of blues musicians discussed in this article, in fact, are native to the Piedmont. Although biographical information about several of these artists remains sketchy, it has been clearly documented that of the 44 individuals who are classified as Piedmont blues artists, 41 (93%) were either born or acquired their musical reputation on the Piedmont. Because of the uncertainty regarding their geographic origins, we excluded approximately twenty musicians who probably are from the Piedmont. They sound like down-home Piedmont blues artists and often recorded at sessions populated by other artists from this specific region of the South. However, it is impossible to pinpoint the precise geographical lineage of such likely artists as Sloppy Henry, Seth Richard, George Carter, Spark Plug Smith, Nellie Florence, Willie Baker, Alec Johnson, and Roosevelt Antrim. We have also omitted female vaudeville blues vocalists like Ma Rainey and Trixie Smith, despite the fact that they were born in Georgia. This is because they learned and plied their trade on the professional vaudeville stages and touring tent shows that criss-crossed the South beginning in the teens and continuing until the 1940s. Their instrumental accompaniment, moreover, generally consisted of a solo pianist or a small jazz band, which is also far removed froni the indigenous down-home Piedmont blues. 4 ARSC Journal Tappahanock N ynchburg• e Big Stone Gap Pineville • Kinston • A Spartanburg Wunlon Greenville Atlanta Number of Blues Artists 20 9 • 1 0 100 miles WTM 94 Figure 2: Home of Piedmont Blues Recording Artists 1924-1941 A & R Men and the Geography of 5 PU!dmont Blues Recordings From 1924-1941 Two other Georgia-born musicians - Amos Easton (a.k.a. Bumble Bee Slim) and Georgia Tom Dorsey - have been eliminated from our sample because both of them left home at a very early age and their music does not reflect their origins. Finally, the handful of guitar evangelists - Gussie Nesbit and Blind Joe Taggart, for example - and the many sacred vocal groups such as the Golden Gate Quartet and the Heavenly Gospel Singers who recorded during this period have also been excluded because of the religious content of their performances. Despite their geographic proximity, these artists clearly do not belong in a study of blues in the Piedmont. Collectively, this group of blues entertainers from the Piedmont recorded 698 songs on nine record labels in eight different cities during the seventeen-year period covered by this survey.6 Table 1 graphically delineates this information. The recordings by these artists defined what is generally considered to be a distinctive genre, "Piedmont Blues," which is characterized by complex synco­ pated ragtime-style guitar playing and laconic, though clearly enunciated, vocals. Small ensembles with a second guitar player or harmonica and washboard accompaniment are often found in the Piedmont. Other stringed instruments - most often a mandolin or fiddle - sometimes augmented these ensembles, which often played on street corners or near the tobacco warehouses during the height of the fall tobacco season when many people came to town to sell their crop and shop. The piano is sometimes used by blues players from this section of the country, but not as commonly as in Texas, for example. Like so many widely hailed downhome "bluesmen" - from Mississippi's Charlie Patton and John Hurt to Piedmont artists such as Peg Leg Howell - quite a few of the musicians included here performed not only blues but other closely­ related secular material, such as Native American ballads, lyric songs and other brief ditties. Many of them, especially those who attended several sessions, also included sacred material as part of their recorded repertoire. They are called "blues musicians" because they were occasionally so identified on the records themselves, but more importantly because they were classified as such by later researchers. Even the prototypical Piedmont blues musician, Blind Boy Fuller, recorded nearly as many blues-like songs, such as "Step it Up and Go," "Shake It, Baby," and "Careless Love," as he did pure twelve-bar blues performances. Despite their frequent departure from the blues tradition itself, all of the musi­ cians in this study are considered to be blues players by Bastin and others who have closely studied this area of black American music. Three primary clusters of recorded blues musicians existed on the Piedmont (Fig. 2). Atlanta was home, either by birth or migration, to at least 20 artists, who accounted for slightly over one-half of all Piedmont blues recordings.