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DE AGOSTINI GROUP PART 84 HOW TO CONTINUE YOUR COLLECTION

Customer Services EAST COAST If you have any queries on THE BLUES COLLECTION please telephone (0990) 673331. BLUES UK & REPUBLIC OF IRELAND Subscriptions Simply call our subscriptions hotline on (0990) 673331 (Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm) to find out about our subscriptions offers. Back Issues You can order back issues by phoning (0990) 673331 (Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm). Or write to: Back Issues Department, THE BLUES COLLECTION, Orbis Publishing Ltd, PO Box 1, Hastings TN35 4TJ. When ordering, please enclose: 1) Your name, address and postcode. THE MUSIC EAST COAST BLUES’ 2) The issue number(s) and number of copies of each issue you require. 1 WASH-BOARD CUT OUT 8 ROLLIN’ DOUGH BLUES 8 PLAY MY JUKE BOX Important: Remember to specify whether you require cassette or CD. 3) Your payment of the cover price plus 50p per copy, postage 2 CAROLINA BLUES and packing. This can be made by postal order or cheque made NINETY-NINE YEAR 9 SLIPPIN' AND SLIDIN’ UP THE payable to Orbis Publishing Ltd. Binders (UK) BLUES GOLDEN STREET 1 5 DOWN IN THE BOTTOM Please phone (0990) 673331 for details. 3 SOUTHERN RAG 1 0 TOM BROWN SITS IN HIS 1 6 GAS RATION BLUES AUSTRALIA 4 IF I CALL YOU MAMA PRISON CELL 1 7 I GOT WHAT MY DADDY LIKES Subscriptions 5 POOR 5 DEPRESSION'S GONE FROM ME 18 A AND B BLUES Telephone (02) 9979 0222. Or write to: THE BLU ES COLLECTION, JANE BLUES c/o Weldon-by-Mail Pty Ltd, PO Box 993, Mona Vale NSW 1658. Back Issues. 6 TURKEY BUZZARD BLUESBLUES 1 9 DON'T WANT PRETTY WOMEN Telephone (03) 9805 1700. Or write to: Gordon & Gotch Ltd, PO Box 290, Burwood, Vic 3125. Please enclose your payment of 7 PICK POOR ROBIN CLEAN 1 2 WALKING AND LOOKING BLUES 2 0 TAMPA BLUES the cover price plus $1 per issue p&h. Binders Telephone (03) 9872 4000. Or write to: Bissett Magazine Service THE PUBLICATION Pty Ltd, MC Box 460, Eastern Mail Centre, Vic 3110. NEW ZEALAND EAST COAST BLUES 997 Subscriptions The music of the eastern seaboard states of the USA was blessed Telephone: (09) 525 8686. Or write to: THE B LU E S COLLECTION, c/o Weldon-by-Mail Pty Ltd, PO Box 18071, Auckland. with a distinctive light touch. Ragtime and finger-picking were Back Issues & Binders among the dominant blues styles of such states as Virginia and North Telephone (09) 274 6700. Or write to: Netlink Distribution Co, Private Bag 47906, Ponsonby, Auckland. and South Carolina. Musicians from these states were often of an idiosyncratic nature and found commercial success difficult to come by MALTA

Their legacy is a trove of unexplored treasures Back Issues These can be ordered through your newsagent. THE DIDDIE WAH DIDDIE MAN Binders 999 Contact Miller Distributors Ltd, telephone: 664488. Little is known about Blind Blake's background or the details of his life despite his being one of the mainstays of the East Coast blues scene. SOUTH AFRICA

He was rarely seen in public even at the height of his career. But there Subscriptions are no grey areas in his music: it is East Coast blues at its best Telephone (011) 652 1888 for details. Or write to: THE BLUES COLLECTION, Knowledge Ltd, Freepost JH2121, Sandton, Johannesburg. FURTHER LISTENING 1005 Back Issues Telephone (011) 477 7391 for details. Or write to: Back Issues The music of Blind Blake and other prominent eastern excellencies Department, Republican News Agency, PO Box 16034, remains, despite its respectable age, remarkably well-preserved on a Doornfontein 2028. Please enclose your payment of the cover price plus 2 Rand per issue p&h. series of intriguing collections. The guitar work on these compilations Binders is among the most beautiful to be found anywhere in the blues These can be obtained at the shop where you bought this issue. BLUES NOTES 1007 SINGAPORE, MALAYSIA

East Coast Blues is a unique collection, featuring some first-ever Back Issues and Binders reissues of original numbers. Stunning imagery and intricate harmonies These can be obtained at the shop where you bought this issue. characterise the numbers collected here THE BLUES COLLECTION EDITORIAL is published by & D ESIGN PLUS Orbis Publishing Ltd, Brown Packaging Ltd Griffin House, 257 Liverpool Road THE STORY OF THE BLUES (84) Back cover 161 Hammersmith Road, London W 6 8SD London N1 1LX After the initial postwar success of Chicago as a blues city, decline might easily have EDITORIAL CONSULTANT Picture credits: set in, but the blues scene revived in the 1980s, and remains as healthy as ever today Tony Russell Sylvia Pitcher Photo Library/Bruce Bastin FC; Simon Ritter/Redferns 997; Tony Russell Collection 998, CONTRIBUTOR 1001, 1002, 1004; Sylvia Pitcher TO THIS ISSUE MUSIC QUALITY GUARANTEED Photo Library 999, 1000,1003; Val Tony Russell Wilmer 1006; Beryl Bryden/ Due to careful purchasing, we can bring you the best blues music at an amazingly low Redferns 1007; Steve Gillett/ price. Many tracks are original live recordings, preserving the atmosphere of blues Redferns IBC sessions in front of an audience. The original analogue recordings have been digitally i Orbis Publishing Ltd remastered to the highest possible standard, but the sound quality on some vintage N84 96 11 14 recordings can be variable. We believe, however, that the historical and aesthetic value Printed in Italy by Officine ISBN 0 7489 1372 6 (CD) Grafiche de Agostini, Novara of the work outweighs any minor imperfections. The cassettes use top quality chrome ISBN 0 7489 1472 2 (MC) dioxide tape and are presented in the latest slimline case. EAST COAST BLUES

The southeastern United States have a long blues history that's quite distinct from that of the Deep South or Texas. Here the blues are played with a light touch and a jaunty swing, and the music is delicately flavoured by ragtime and the hillbilly music from just across the tracks. Out of this soil sprang Blind Boy Fuller, Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry and a great throng of lesser-known, richly rewarding musicians. EAST COAST BLUES

FRONT COVER: Gabriel Brown moved to New York in the 1940s to play in virtually useless. A great deal of Greenwich Village cafés. Georgia blues, for instance, lacks PREVIOUS PAGE: Keb’ Mo', the most prominent East Coast stylist in the 1990s. those ragtime and hillbilly connec­ ABOVE: East Coast bluesman Spark Plug Smith was named after a racehorse. tions: for every artist who evinces them, like Blind Willie McTell, there’s a ‘hard’ bluesman who doesn’t, such as E ast Coast blues’ is one of ‘East Coast’ tends to be pinned on Barbecue Bob. So a condensed narra­ those phrases that slip into almost any blues with a melodic, rag­ tive like this must be highly selective, bluespeak as serviceable time character, or blues influenced by full of leaps and switches of direction, shorthand terms but hillbilly music. dangling with loose ends. which, as soon as they’re closely The north Georgia blues scene examined, become elusive. What it P ied m o n t b l u e s around Atlanta in the 1920s and 1930s ought to mean is the music of the Blues historian Bruce Bastin, author of (the era of Barbecue Bob and McTell, southeastern seaboard states: Red River Blues: The Blues Tradition in Curley Weaver and Peg Leg Howell), Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and the Southeast, has tried to eliminate will not come into the story. This gap Florida. But the manner in which it’s some of this vagueness by propagating can be partly filled by reading the often used, in the titles of compilation the term ‘Piedmont blues’. ‘Piedmont’ Blind Willie McTell issue of The Blues albums for example, seems to act as refers to the section of the Southeast Collection. an open invitation to blues artists from ‘between the mountain foothills and Nor will much be said about Blind Alabama, East Tennessee, Kentucky... the coastal plain’ taking in parts of Boy Fuller, the dominant figure in the The problem is that the term is Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. region during the 1930s, since he too employed to say something not only But this is an area of enough musical has been the subject of an issue of The about geography but also about style. diversity to make any single definition Blues Collection. Nevertheless, his 998 BLIND BLAKE

Blind Blake was a kingpin of the blues scene in the 1920s, a fluent THE DIDDIE and versatile guitarist whom other artists were avid to have on their sessions. His influence touched many East Coast guitarists WAH DIDDIE and his songs have been revived by Ry Cooder and Leon Redbone. MAN Yet the facts of his life continue to elude blues historians. Coupled with the delicate and tune­ Charlie Spand, ‘Hastings Street’, is per­ ful ‘Early Morning Blues’, it was one of haps the most exciting guitar-piano the hits of 1926 and assured Blake of a blues duet ever recorded. future as a recording artist. Yet sightings of Blake in action are Over the next six years he made scarce. The Virginia-born guitarist Bill almost 80 sides of his own ‘with that Williams (1897-1973) claimed that he snappy guitar playing,’ as a Paramount met him in the 1920s around Bristol, A rthur Blake, he called Records advert claimed, 'like only Blind Tennessee, and worked with him for a Ahimself on a record. Paramount Blake can do’. He contributed some few months, but that may have been a Records said that he came from exceptional accompaniments to singers tease. No doubt Blake played at par­ Jacksonville, Florida. He spent a few such as Ma Rainey, Irene Scruggs and ties, maybe on the vaudeville theatre years in the 1920s living in Chicago. Elzadie Robinson. There were memo­ circuit too, but his absence from even That virtually sums up the hard data rable duet recordings, too, with the his contemporaries’ reminiscences sug­ about one of the outstanding musi­ banjoist Gus Cannon and Papa Charlie gests that he may have died not long cians of the early blues, a man who not Jackson, and his four hander with after he stopped recording. only put the blues guitar instrumental on the recording map but so refined it that virtually nobody afterwards dared to tackle it. To meet the demands of the market he recorded a lot of vocal blues (pic­ tured right is his Paramount record ‘He’s in the Jailhouse Now’), and he was a pleasant enough singer, but one feels that he would have been happier left to play his rag songs like 'Diddie Wah Diddie’ or ‘Come On Boys, Let’s Do That Messin’ Around’ with only the briefest of vocals, concentrating on producing those cascading, dizzying chord progressions and that faultless finger-picking. Harmonically, Blind Blake was more knowledgeable than most of the blues ELECTRICALLY R ECO RD ED guitarists of his day. He displayed a rich melodic imagination even in the most conventional of blues settings, while 12565-A Vocal anchoring his tones to a rock-steady Guitar and Banjo yet supple beat with his dextrous thumb-picking. His first record, ‘West Coast Blues’, He s In The Jail House Now was a guitar rag with talking - a free­ (Miller and Williams) form verbal doodling - part dance instruction, part self-advertisement: Blind Blake ‘Now we goin’ to the old country rock ... first thing we do, swing your part­ ner... promenade... now people, if you ever heard something that make you feel good, you gonna hear somethin’ in a few minutes... ’

999 EAST COAST BLUES

ABOVE: John Cephas, one of the most prominent modern practitioners of East songs’, like Traveling Coon’, ‘Cocaine’ Coast ragtime guitar, was greatly influenced by Blind Boy Fuller. and ‘Pick Poor Robin Clean’, which dis­ OPPOSITE: Buddy Moss also influenced Cephas and Tarheel Slim, among others, play his unflustered fingerpicking as while Moss himself had been inspired by the music of Blind Blake. well as his eerily high voice. Another Peer discovery was Julius Daniels (1902-47), a rich-voiced singer influence was so wide and enduring It’s no coincidence that many of the and guitarist from around Charlotte, that its reverberations will sound region’s most fascinating figures were North Carolina. Daniels’ stock of blues, repeatedly both in this narrative and recorded by Victor: Ralph Peer, the hymns and rag songs, such as ‘Can’t in the accompanying CD/cassette. company’s talent scout for southern Put the Bridle on That Mule This music, was genuinely interested in Morning’ (a variant of a common-stock R eg io n a l b ia s what he thought of as idiosyncratic song known all over the South), may If this is a somewhat ragged discussion artists or unusual material. have seemed to Peer more rewarding, of East Coast blues, in a way th a t’s It was entirely typical, for example, commercially and aesthetically, than a rather appropriate: between the 1920s that he should be drawn to a per­ batch of blues all cut from the same and the 1940s the area’s music was former like Luke Jordan. This intrigu­ pattern. Unfortunately, record-buyers recorded fitfully and haphazardly. ing singer and guitarist, born probably don’t appear to have shared his vision. Once it had become an industry tenet about 1890, was well known around that blues hits came from Texas (Blind Lynchburg in south central Virginia. L o s t in m usic Lemon Jefferson), or Memphis (Jim He sang blues - his first recording, For an excellent example of how the Jackson), or from northern cities like ‘Church Bells Blues’ (1927), was blues craze could distort an artist’s Indianapolis (Leroy Carr) and Chicago remembered and alluded to or copied potential we have only to consider the (Tampa Red & Georgia Tom, Big Bill by several bluesmen over the next career of Blind Blake - a brilliant blues Broonzy), nobody gave much thought quarter of a century - but he also had guitarist, it’s true, but capable of much to the possibilities of the Southeast. a store of turn-of-the-century ‘rag more, had he only been given more

1000 THE FLORIDA BLUES

SUNSHINE AND SONG

Blind Blake probably came from Jacksonville, and singer-guitarist Louis Washington, who took the professional title Tallahassee Tight on some 1934 recordings, was presumably from Tallahassee or nearby Quincy, which he mentions in his song 'Quincy Wimmens’. Those two aside, it’s hard to find a blues musician with any significant Florida connection if you look at artists’ commercial recordings. Following the trails of folklorists brings you to a different conclusion. In 1935 Alan Lomax described a recent Florida visit as his ‘most exciting field-trip’ yet. He encountered singer-guitarist Gabriel Brown, whom he described as ‘better even than Leadbelly’, and, at a transient workers’ camp, a superb band of two harmonica- players and a guitarist, led by Booker T. Sapps. Some of these artists’ music was preserved for the Library of Congress and has been issued by specialist labels. Forty years later, folklorists could still find rural musicians whose memories stretched back before the blues. But the most vivid account of early black music in Florida comes from a popular magazine of about 1904: ‘One of the familiar sights in Florida is the strange "jug bands” which are formed in nearly every district by negro boys... Close at hand, the sounds which they draw from their large stone jugs, into which they blow or whistle, are as unlike music as could be imagined... people generally get rid of the “musicians” as soon as possible by giving them small coins... The Jug Band, therefore, resolves itself into a kind of musical blackmailing association. ’

1001 EAST COAST BLUES CHRONOLOGY 1926 1927 1939 1932 1935 1949 1941 1947

Blind Blake makes his Howard Armstrong Blind Boy Fuller Blind Boy Fuller dies. first records for and Carl Martin make makes his first Sonny Terry and Paramount. their first record, as recordings, and Brownie McGhee members of the becomes the major become a permanent Tennessee Chocolate influence on the partnership, moving Drops. hey will sound of East to New York the record together again Coast blues following year. in the 1970s, and Armstrong will release a fine CD in 1995, at the Alec Seward and age of 86. Josh White begins to Louis Hayes (aka Victor’s Ralph Peer record blues and Guitar Slim and Jelly make field folksongs with an Belly) make their first recordings of North Blind Blake makes his element of social records in New York, Carolinian Julius last recordings, and protest, in contrast to but i an Daniels, and Virginia’s disappears from his earlier straight old-fashioned, Luke Jordan. the scene. blues recordings. acoustic style.

barber in the world can shave you and give you music while he’s doing it,’ comments a bystander.

B ela t ed recognition Virginia could claim to be a lost world of the blues. Moore and Jordan’s suc­ cessors include singer-guitarists Carl Martin (born 1906), Archie Edwards (born 1918), Pernell Charity (1920-79), John Tinsley (born 1920), Carl Hodges (born about 1933) and Turner and Marvin Foddrell (born 1920s), all of whom secured places for their elegant music on LPs in the 1960s and 1970s. Martin, alone among these, had pre­ viously recorded, in the 1930s while living in Chicago. Also recorded in that decade (in the deadly Depression year of 1933) was Lynchburg’s Spark Plug Smith, a jolly-looking singer and gui­ tarist with a high, wavering voice not unlike Luke Jordan’s, who varied his blues with such left-field material as the pop songs ‘My Blue Heaven’ and ‘A Shanty in Old Shanty Town’. opportunities to play according to his demanding music they could produce. Alec Seward (1901-72) left his birth­ own tastes rather than that of the mar­ Some artists escaped the blues noose, place, the naval port of Newport News, ket. Or take the guitar and harmonica like the enchanting guitarist William during the mid-1920s to live in New team of Bobbie Leecan and Robert Moore, a barber with the melodious York, a journey that would be repeated Cooksey, a hot act in the black sec­ address of Tappahannock on the river tions of New York and Philadelphia in Rappahannock, in the Tidewater area the 1920s. They dutifully met the of East Virginia. At a single session in ABOVE LEFT: During the 1920s the father and son relentless demand for blues with a 1928 he recorded a beguiling set of rag team Andrew and Jim Baxter recorded both blues stream of elegant 12-bar instrumentals. songs, such as ‘Ragtime Millionaire’ and traditional white tunes. It was only when they were let loose in and ‘Tillie Lee’, interspersed with lilt­ OPPOSITE: Harp player Phil Wiggins teamed up a jazz band or skiffle setting that they ing guitar set-pieces, like ‘Old Country with John Cephas in the late 1970s. During the showed what sparkling and technically Rock’ and ‘Barbershop Rag’. ‘Only next two decades they toured all the continents. 1002 BUND BOY FULLER

1961 1969 1972 1978 1982 1987 1994 1996__

Folklorist Sam Rev Gary Davis, Blind Sonny Terry and Keb' Mo' releases his Charters records Pink Boy Fuller’s guitar Brownie McGhee eponymous first CD; Anderson and Baby teacher, dies in New break up their team although bom in Los Tate in North York; he had been a after 40 successful Angeles in the 1950s, Carolina. In gospel singer for years together. Terry he has much of the Philadelphia, Pete many years, but his dies in 1986. easy ragtime spirit of Welding records brilliant playing was the East Coast. Brownie McGhee Doug Quattlebaum admired by and dies aged 80. He had and Blind Connie Bruce Bastin and influenced blues been retired for 10 Williams. Peter B. Lowry begin guitarists worldwide. years, but he researching in the re-emerged to work southeastern states, with Californian recording many Elizabeth Cotten, blues-singer Elmer surviving blues- Guitarist John Cephas composer of 'Freight Lee Thomas, whose singers, including and harmonica player Train’, dies aged 95. band accompanied guitarist Willie Trice Phil Wiggins make She was still playing Brownie on his last and harmonica player their first recordings guitar until not long recordings in Peg Leg Sam. together. before her death. May 1995.

over the next 20 years by countless southeasterners. In the 1940s, part­ nered by another singing guitarist, Louis Hayes from Asheville, North Carolina, Seward made recordings of placid blues with intricate twin-guitar accompaniments. Impossible to think of as New York music, the recordings sound instead like treasured memories of a rural landscape long left behind; blues remembered hills.

T h e m ain m an By the time most of these men were getting started in music the entire Southeast had fallen under the spell of one man, Blind Boy Fuller from Durham, North Carolina. From the mid-1930s to the present day, Fuller looms over the story of the region’s blues. For a while everybody played like him, whether they were outright disciples, like Floyd ‘Dipper Boy’ Council and the Trice brothers, Rich and Willie, or people who simply knew him from his records. Fuller died in 1941, never having ven­ tured far from his stamping-grounds except briefly to make records. But within a few years seeds from his stock were being scattered in the northern cities of New York, Newark and Baltimore by migrants like singer- guitarists Boy Green and Sunny Jones. And of course by Brownie McGhee, an ex-pupil of Fuller who had become a New York resident by the early 1940s and was busy building a career in the

1003 EAST COAST BLUES

It seems somehow appropriate to bring Keb’ Mo’ in here. Kevin Moore, as he started out, was born in Los Angeles in the early 1950s. Both his parents were from the southwest and his early musical experiences included playing guitar with the violinist Papa John Creach and portraying Robert Johnson in a movie docudrama. Not a whiff of East Coast air so far - but in his remarkable mid-1990s trans­ formation into a postmodern acoustic bluesman Keb’ Mo’ has acquired an airy ease that surely owes something to models like Fuller and McGhee, especially when he plays a vintage National steel guitar just like Fuller’s. And here and there in his albums K eb ’ Mo ’ and Ju st Like You he also evinces a delicate ragtime sensibility that would have been familiar to Luke Jordan or William Moore.

K ing g u ita r It will be apparent by now that the gui­ tar lorded it over other instruments even more in the southeast than else­ ABOVE: 'Colonel’ Bill Williams claimed that while working as part of a road gang in where. Or so it seems from the record­ the early 1920s, he was sought out by fellow guitar-picker Blind Blake and that ed evidence but, as always, this is a they became a popular duo playing for Williams’ fellow workers. One of Williams’ historical hot potato: were guitars most intriguing pieces was a ragtime interpretation of 'The Star-Spangled Banner’. really ubiquitous, or did recording scouts simply shake their heads at the fiddlers, banjoists and piano players clubs and studios with his partner had first recorded in 1928 - named who turned up for auditions? Sonny Terry. McGhee can hardly be Seth Richard or Richards. A few pianists did make it through called an East Coaster: he grew up Fifty years on, the combination is the net, like the Savannah, Georgia, around the East Tennessee cities refreshed and recast in the partner­ player Sugar Underwood, or Curtis Knoxville and Kingsport, but his inces­ ship of singer-guitarist John Cephas Henry and ‘Peg-Leg’ Ben Abney, who sant travelling made him familiar with and harp-player Phil Wiggins. Cephas, recorded in Charlotte in the 1930s (but all the music one might hear in Appal­ born in Washington DC in 1930, was may not have been locals). But there achia and on the eastern seaboard. raised in Bowling Green, Virginia, and appears to have been no pianists’ cir­ learned some of his trade from the cuit, as in the Texas logging camps, to A UNIFYING LANGUAGE pianist Wilbert ‘Big Chief Ellis, who sustain a tradition of barrelhouse The McGhee-Terry sound, with its had worked with McGhee in the 1940s. blues. The piano-players who ruled the smooth interlocking of guitar and har­ Beginning their collaboration in New York blues scene of the 1940s and monica, would grow over the years 1978, Cephas and Wiggins gradually 1950s were from elsewhere: Big Chief into a kind of Basic English of the moved from straightforward McGhee- Ellis from Alabama, Jack Dupree from blues, spoken everywhere from New Terry stylings to a subtler approach, New Orleans. York to Newcastle. We can hear a ver­ informed by deep knowledge of the What emerges from the research of sion of it as early as the early 1940s in entire blues legacy. A 1995 album, the writer Bruce Bastin is a detailed the few obscure but captivating Cool Down (Alligator), finds Cephas map of untapped talent: fiddlers and recordings by Skoodle Dum Doo & engaged in experiments like playing banjo players whose music, even in Sheffield, the former a 12-string-guitar Skip Jam es’ ‘Special Rider’ in duet with the 1920s, seemed to the record com­ playing bluesman from way back - he Senegalese kora player Djimo Kouyate. panies to be too archaic to become 1004 DISCOGRAPHY Further Listening

n album of Blind Blake should be a cornerstone of any songs and guitar pieces of William Moore. It also has six Ablues collection, and Yazoo’s Ragtime Guitar’s sides by an effervescent harmonica-and-guitar duo, Foremost Fingerpicker makes an ideal choice. The Chicken Wilson & Skeeter Hinton, who come over like a Master of Ragtime Guitar (Indigo JGOCD 2046) and The more rowdy and downhome Leecan & Cooksey (whose Best o f Blind Blake (Wolf WBJ-017-CD) are good value own complete work is assembled on two Document vol­ too, but are fraught with duplications, both of each other umes, DOCD-5279 and DOCD-5280. ) and of the Yazoo. Carolina Blues Guitar (Old Tramp) is a deceptive Among the highlights of East Coast Blues 1926-1935 title for an album that includes the very odd (and conceiv­ (Yazoo) are the lilting guitar duets of South Carolina’s ably white) Cedar Creek Sheik, who specialised in sugges­ Willie Walker and the ragtime improvisations of Virginia’s tive songs with raggy guitar, like a kind of Carolinian Bo William Moore. The album’s title makes a baggy defini­ Carter. Roosevelt Antrim and Sonny Jones are singer- tion, since Bo Weavil Jackson hailed from Alabama and guitarists broadly in the Fuller mould, but Virgil Childers Tarter & Gay respectively from the highlands of East reveals a mixed repertoire of blues, minstrel songs and Tennessee and southwestern Virginia, where Carl Martin more modern pop songs. came from too, but it’s still an attractive collection. So is The population shift northwards in the 1940s moved Mama Let Me Lay It on You (Yazoo 1040), an East Coast eastern blues artists, along with everyone else, to cities anthology in all but name, with selections by Blake, Blind like New York, Newark and Baltimore, where tiny inde­ Boy Fuller, Josh White and the Virginia oddball Spark Plug pendent labels erratically recorded their music - a period Smith (whose bizarre oeuvre can be found in full on that is excellently documented by Play My Juke-Box Document DOCD-5387). The songs by Irene Scruggs and (Flyright). Among many rare and piquant recordings from Leola B. Wilson have brilliant Blake accompaniments. the 1940s and 1950s, the lovely, restful guitar duets of The best thing about Ragtime Blues Guitar Guitar Slim & Jelly Belly (Alec Seward & Louis Hayes) (Document) is its gathering of all the remarkable rag demand to be heard.

BLIND BLAKE Old Time Blues (Carl Martin)/ Dupree Blues/South Carolina Rag PLAY MY JUKE-BOX: EAST RAGTIME GUITAR'S Blind Arthur’s Breakdown (Blind (takes 1 & 2) (Willie Walker) COAST BLUES 1943-1954 FOREMOST FINGERPICKER Blake )/Barbershop Rag/ (FLYRIGHT PLY CD 45) (YAZOO 1068) Raggin’ the Blues (William CAROLINA BLUES GUITAR Play My Juke Box/A&B Blues (Boy Diddie Wa Diddie/Come on Boys Moore)/Pistol Blues (Bo Weavil 1936-1939 Green)/Some Rainy Day (Curley Let’s Do That Messin’ Around/ Jackson)/Myrtle Avenue Stomp/ (OLD TRAMP OTCD-03) Weaver)/I Got What My Daddy Southern Rag/Police Dos Blues/ D.C. Rag (Chicken Wilson & Ford V-8/Watch the Fords Go By/ Likes (Marylin Scott)/ C. C. Pill Blues/Hard Pushing Skeeter Hinton) Mary Had a Little Lamb/ West Kinney Street Blues/ Papa/Rope Stretching Blues/ She’s Totin’ Something Good/ Tampa Blues/Broom Street Blues/ Skeedle Loo Doo Blues/Chump RAGTIME BLUES GUITAR What a Pity/I Believe Somebody’s Gas Ration Blues (Skoodle Dum Man Blues/Hastings Street/ (1927-1930) Been Ridin’ My Mule/Don’t Use Doo & Sheffield)/Harlem Georgia Bound/Righteous Blues/ (DOCUMENT DOCD-5062) That Stuff/Buy It from the Poultry Women/Awful Shame (Hank Too Tight Blues No. 2/ Dry Bone Shuffle (unissued take) Man/Don’t Credit My Stuff/Jimmy Kilroy)/l Love That Woman Blind Arthur’s Breakdown/ (Blind Blake)/One Way Gal/ Shut His Store Doors (Cedar (Guitar Shorty)/Dices Dices (Big One Time Blues/Playing Policy Ragtime Crazy/Midnight Blues/ Creek Sheik)/No Use of Worryin’/ Chief Ellis)/One o’Clock Boogie Blues/You Gonna Quit Me Blues/ Ragtime Millionaire/Tillie Lee/ Complaint to Make/ (Julius King)/ Hello Central, Bad Feeling Blues/Hey Hey Barbershop Rag/Old Country I Guess you’re Satisfied/ Please Give Me 209/Good Daddy Blues/Black Dog Blues/ Rock/Raggin’ the Blues (William Station Boy Blues (Roosevelt Looking Woman Blues (Robert Seaboard Stomp/Sweet Papa [Bill] Moore)/Brownie Blues/ Antrim)/Dago Blues/ Lee Westmoreland)/Humming Low Down/Sweet Jivin’ Mama. Unknown Blues (Tarter & Gay)/ Red River Blues/Who’s That Bird Blues/I've Been Dreaming Myrtle Avenue Stomp/D.C. Rag/ Knockin’ at My Door/Somebody (Guitar Slim & Jelly Belly)/ EAST COAST BLUES 1926- Chicken Wilson Blues/ Stole My Jane/Travelin’ Man/ Leaving Home Blues/ 1935 (YAZOO 1013) House Snake Blues/Frog Eye Preacher and the Bear (Virgil Don’t Want No Pretty Woman South Carolina Rag/Dupree Blues Stomp/Station House Rag Childers )/Won't Somebody (Sunny Jones)/Better Get Ready (Willie Walker)/Brownie Blues/ (Chicken Wilson & Skeeter Pacify My Mind/ (Bider R. Wilson & Family)/ Unknown Blues (Tarter & Gay)/ Hinton)/Jamestown Exhibition/ I’m Pretty Good at It/Love Me The Jinx Is on Me (Gabriel Black Dog Blues/Original Blues Black Dog Blues/Original Blues/ with a Feeling/Dough Roller Brown)/Too Much Competition (Bayless Rose)/Crow Jane/ Frisco Blues (Bayless Rose)/ (Sonny Jones) (Tarheel Slim)

1005 EAST COAST BLUES

ABOVE: North Carolina bluesman Tarheel Slim (right) with record producer Pete Lowry. doubly unlucky. Not only have the rag Slim moved to New York in the early 1950s and proved capable of blending his songs and banjo tunes gone the way of traditional musical background with the demands of R&B. the Charleston and the T-Model Ford, fading into history as they have done everywhere, but even the region’s commercial. In North Georgia, fiddlers played chiefly for white university stu­ blues tradition has failed to transform Eddie Anthony, who worked with Peg dents. Guitarist Jamie Alston was a itself into a viable urban idiom. Leg Howell, and Andrew Baxter, who member of an otherwise white string­ duetted with his guitarist son Jim, did band, also round Chapel Hill. Orange S tu n ted g r o w t h make a few records of jagged blues County, in which Chapel Hill lies, had a The East Coast touch and easy swing and hoedown fiddle-tunes. We know smaller black population than many have never been successfully translat­ that the Piedmont landscape was dot­ North Carolina counties, and, as else­ ed on to electric guitars, nor reshaped ted with small groups, including man­ where in the south, this encouraged to create a modern band music on the dolins and banjos, but few traces of musical interaction between the races Chicago or California model. From this stringband activity can be found - or, to put it another way, helped to Robert Johnson to Elmore James to in the record archives. relieve the pressure on black musi­ George Thorogood; fromT-Bone Walker Maybe it all seemed too similar to cians to play only for their own com­ to Gatemouth Brown to Stevie Ray the music of the hillbilly stringbands. munity, and play only blues. Vaughan - these are genuine lines of In some cases it clearly was much the Decades later, all this is virtually development. The East Coast trail, same kind of music. A black group unrecoverable history, or exists only winding from Blind Boy Fuller to from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who in the fading memories and autumnal Brownie McGhee to John Cephas, has were unable to resist the temptation to performances of a handful of old musi­ yet to find a junction where it can turn call themselves the Chapel Hillbillies, cians. But the southeast has been into a modern musical superhighway. 1006 LISTENER'S GUIDE BluesNotes EAST COAST BLUES A Listener's Guide to: EAST COAST BLUES ■ This unique compilation, specially produced for The Blues Collection, spans 20 years of black music in the eastern seaboard states, from rural songsters of the 1920s to northern, city- dwelling blues specialists of the 1940s. ■ Several of these recordings are from a time and place in which the blues craze had yet to blot out older musics such as ragtime and common-stock dance tunes. sent their first mobile recording team and Laurens. He played with the n Bobbie Leecan's Need- into the South, headed by their A&R □ Luke Jordan: IF I CALL blind gospel singer Gussie Nesbitt, More Band: WASH-BOARD man Ralph S. Peer. At a brief stop in YOU MAMA born in 1910, and was probably of a CUT OUT Atlanta, Georgia, they recorded some (Luke Jordan) similar age. The two men were scout­ (Bobbie Leecan) gospel musicians and, on 19 3 '16" ed by a local store-owner for a Victor 2 '57" February, the magnificent songster 'If I Call You Mama’, made at Luke session in Charlotte, North Carolina, Guitarist Bobbie Leecan and harmon­ Julius Daniels. Jordan’s last session in New York, on on 29 May 1931 and recorded four ica player Robert Cooksey were Despite its title, this is not a blues 19 November 1929, exhibits his deli­ numbers - two sacred duets which among the most technically accom­ but a rag song with a jail motif, cate high-pitched singing and relaxed were never issued and two solo plished black musicians of their day. elements of which turn up all over guitar playing in a blues full of arrest­ blues by Gowdlock which were - On numerous recordings in 1926-27, the southern musical landscape. The ing images, including early appear­ but the record sold so poorly that 65 some as a duo, others with skiffle- blues historian Bruce Bastin hears ances of favourite one-liners like 'I years later not even the most assidu­ type line-ups like this, they created ‘distinct banjo undertones in the asked for whiskey/water, she gave me ous collectors had ever seen or wonderfully infectious dance music. guitar playing’. gasoline’. The original 78 of this song, heard it. Fortunately a copy has sur­ In 1926 Leecan and Cooksey were coupled with 'Tom Brown Sits in His vived and Gowdlock’s blues (this and working in Harlem, but some of their 3 Blind Blake: SOUTHERN Prison Cell’ (track 10), is exceedingly track 8) can be heard at last. tunes allude to Philadelphia. 'Wash­ RAG rare and this first-ever reissue is from 'Poor Jane Blues’ is a version of board Cut Out’ was cut in Camden, (Blind Blake) the only known copy. the hugely widespread eight-bar New Jersey, on 5 April 1927. 2' 54" blues usually known as 'Crow Jane’, One of the finest examples of Blind 5 Jack Gowdlock: POOR sometimes as 'Red River Blues’, in □ Julius Daniels: NINETY- Blake's ragtime guitar picking, this JANE BLUES other regions as 'Sliding Delta’. NINE YEAR BLUES recording, which was made in (Jack Gowdlock) Gowdlock alludes to the first two

(Composer not known) Chicago about October 1927, also 3 '00" titles in his opening and closing vers­

3' 14" lets us hear a fine example of Blake Gowdlock was a blues-singer and es. Julius Daniels recorded a version A few weeks before the recording of word-painting a scene of black rural guitarist from the small town of Cross of the theme in 1927 and the Virginia 'Wash-board Cut Out’, Victor Records life in the southeast. Keys, South Carolina, between Union singer Carl Martin did it in 1935. More 1007 EAST COAST BLUES

recently it has been recorded by Skip Julius Daniels was assisted by guitarist James and Mississippi John Hurt. Bubba Lee Torrence, probably from 13 Boy Green: PLAY MY JUKE 1 7 Marylin Scott and Her Charlotte. This is one of them, a BOX Guitar: I GOT WHAT MY (Boy Green) 6 Peg Leg Howell & Eddie serenely-paced gospel song. DADDY LIKES 259" Anthony: TURKEY BUZZARD Daniels occasionally employs the (Composer not known) Many of the remaining tracks in this 2' 42" BLUES device, so often used by Blind Willie collection testify to Blind Boy Fuller’s We seem to be eavesdropping on a (Composer not known) Johnson, of letting the slide guitar enormous influence. In this dramatic party or an off-duty moment at a 3 '05" ‘sing’ some of the text. Amongst the several blues recorded example, both the sound of the recording session, as Marylin Scott by Georgia’s Peg Leg Howell, with his ED Luke Jordan: steel-bodied guitar and the sly sug­ picks and sings a saucy blues to fiddle-playing sidekick Eddie Anthony, TOM BROWN SITS IN HIS gestiveness of the lyrics faithfully repli­ appreciative guffaws. Yet this was a can be found this lively example of PRISON CELL cate the master’s touch. commercial release, albeit a terribly the common-stock fiddle-tune (Luke Jordan) Boy Green made his only record­ obscure one. Scott also sang with the 'Turkey in the Straw’, recorded in 258" ing - this song coupled with 'A and B Johnny Otis orchestra and other small Atlanta on 30 October 1928. The dis­ As with ‘Pick Poor Robin Clean’ (track Blues’ (track 18) - for a small New groups in a jump-blues idiom, while tance between this performance and 7), both storyline and language evoke Jersey record label in 1944. maintaining a career on the other side the same tune played by white the now rather unapproachable of the spiritual tracks as a gospel Georgian musicians, like fiddler Gid world of the 'coon song’ and the 14 Brownie McGhee & Sonny singer under the name Mary Deloach Tanner and guitarist Riley Puckett, is burnt cork minstrel, albeit updated by Terry: CAROLINA BLUES or Deloatch. On one record she is (Walter B. McGhee) next to nothing at all. the reference to telegrams. Much the billed as 'The Carolina Blues Girl’. same air of greasepaint and gaslight 309" ‘I Got What My Daddy Likes' is D Luke Jordan: PICK POOR hangs about certain other recordings Fuller’s closest imitation for a few based on Lucille Bogan’s 1935 disc ROBIN CLEAN of this era by black singers, such as years after his death was Brownie ‘That’s What My Baby Likes’, which in (Composer not known) Alec Johnson’s 'Mysterious Coon’ or McGhee, whose easy-going, urbane turn took some of its striking sexual manner would take him into worlds 3 '16" Blind Blake’s 'He’s in the Jailhouse metaphors from a novelty blues of the The implications of this strange rag Now’ - and by white artists too, like Fuller could never have entered. Here 1920s, 'My Handy Man’. he and his partner in that adventure, song, which Jordan recorded at his Charlie Poole in 'Coon from first session, in Charlotte on 16 Tennessee’. 'Tom Brown’ is from the harmonica-player Sonny Terry (both EEL Boy Green: A AND B August 1927, are revealed by the same session as track 4. pictured on previous page), BLUES black writer Ralph Ellison, who had demonstrate their almost telepathic (Boy Green) heard it sung in Kansas City. It was ED Blind Blake: empathy in a recording from 12 300" 'inevitably productive of laughter - DEPRESSION’S GONE December 1944. The point of the title may be elusive, even when we ourselves were its FROM ME BLUES but Green’s picking on what may be a object. Each of us recognised that (Composer not known) 15 Gabriel Brown and His National Steel guitar is clean and deft. Guitar: DOWN IN THE [the poor robin’s] fate was somehow 3' 37" Strange that he should have made so our own. Our defeats and failures... The sombre blues guitar melody not BOTTOM little impact on fellow musicians that (Gabriel Brown) were loaded upon his back and only belies the optimistic title but is nobody seems to recall him. 259" given ironic significance and thus quite uncharacteristic of Blind Blake’s Hard to believe that Gabriel Brown, a made more bearable. ’ playing - enough for some experts to 19 Sunny Jones: DON’T musician with all the elegance of an The use of what would nowa­ doubt whether it is Blake. The other WANT PRETTY WOMEN old badger, could have rivalled the days be regarded as racially demean­ side of the original release adds to (Composer not known) ing terms locates the composition in the controversy, being an equally suave Brownie McGhee, but Brownie 3 '12“ the 'coon song’ era: the 1890s and untypical performance of an old himself recalled a time when he and Robert 'Sunny’ Jones was born in early 1900s. music-hall song, 'Champagne Charlie is Gabriel divided New York’s blues- Georgia but around 1930 moved to My Name’. club work between them. That was North Carolina, where he performed 8 Jack Gowdlock: ROLLIN’ In fact there can be little doubt presumably in the mid-1940s, when at dances and fish fries with Blind Boy DOUGH BLUES that we are hearing Blake, though he Brown was popular enough to make Fuller and Sonny Terry. In ‘Leaving (Jack Gowdlock) seems slightly ill at ease with the song, a lot of records for the entrepreneur Home Blues’, the flipside of 'Don’t 2' 55" a variant of 'Sitting on Top of the Jo e Davis. This one from 26 August Want Pretty Women’, he speaks of This strange, harmonically primitive World’. Curious, too, that one of the 1943 is typical, with its loose struc­ ‘goin’ back to Wilson, N.C.’ He blues, with its meagre chordal move­ greatest guitarists of his day should ture and acrid guitar toning. accompanied Fuller and Terry to a ment, recalls the approach of such end his recording career - this was his Memphis recording session in 1939 idiosyncratic players as Louisiana’s last disc, cut around June 1932 - on, 16 Skoodle Dum Doo & and cut a couple of discs, then Robert Pete Williams or Alabama's Ed literally, a sour note. Sheffield: GAS RATION reappeared some years later on an Bell. The sexual imagery, already a BLUES obscure label from Baltimore. He blues commonplace, would also be 12 Blind Boy Fuller: (Seth Richards) plays in the basic style of the Fuller deployed by southeastern bluesmen WALKING AND LOOKING 245" circle on this paean to ugliness. Buddy Moss ('Dough Rolling Papa’) BLUES In a pretty variation of the McGhee- and Sonny Jones (‘Dough Roller’). (Blind Boy Fuller) Terry guitar-harmonica effect, Skoodle mj Skoodle Dum Doo & 309" Dum Doo & Sheffield offer what may Sheffield: TAMPA BLUES 9 Julius Daniels: SLIPPIN’ The era of blues domination which be the only blues about wartime (Seth Richards) AND SLIDIN' UP THE overtook Blind Blake in the early gasoline shortages. This is another of 307" GOLDEN STREET 1930s would throw up no more those scarce items, a recording made According to Bruce Bastin, this lively (Composer not known) important figure in the southeast than in 1943: the American Federation of and unusual song (from the same 321" Blind Boy Fuller, heard here in a Musicians’ dispute with the record session as track 16) was familiar to On some of the numbers he record­ particularly fine slow blues from a companies kept all union musicians blues musicians in a few counties in ed at his first session (see track 2) session on 12 July 1937. out of the studios during that year. South central Virginia in the 1930s.

1008 THE STORY OF THE BLUES

84: The Young Generation Comes of Age

In the 1980s a new crop of Chicago blues artists grew up, nourished by the old traditions but ready to seek fresh inspiration. A decade later, they had, mostly, fulfilled their promise.

Having previewed the 1980s, so to easier to acquire in Europe, where he speak, with their six albums of Living had made a couple of albums even Chicago Blues, the musical watchdogs before Bluebloods. Like Dawkins, he too at Alligator Records took a few years’ is an all-over-the-guitar player, whose nap and woke up in 1987 with the expertise is touched with the spirit of same idea. Well, not quite. This time Jimi Hendrix - an important model for there would be just one album and, many blues guitarists of his generation. unlike the earlier project, it would leave Singer, guitarist and tenor sax player no space for veteran keepers of the Maurice John Vaughn had caught flame. The New Bluebloods was blueslovers’ attention in the mid-1980s designed to introduce, in the words of with the witty move of releasing an its subtitle, The Next Generation of album in a plain white cover under the Chicago Blues’. title Generic Blues. On the evidence of So bold an assertion amounts to a his 1993 set In the Shadow of the City bet. Less than ten years on it seems fair (Alligator), Vaughn is a developing tal­ to ask how many of the Bluebloods ent worth watching, not least for his ABOVE: The Kinsey Report, one of several bands runners paid off. pungent songwriting. who, during the 1980s and 1990s, worked hard to And the answer is most of them. One keep the Chicago blues young at heart. who didn’t, but takes no blame for it, Imperial style was Valerie Wellington, an extremely Alligator also nurtured Lil’ Ed Williams, a much in demand for harp cameos on promising singer in the mould of Koko musician of another stripe altogether. other people’s records. Taylor, who had already excited Nephew of bluesman J. B. Hutto, he The Bluebloods liner notes made no blueswatchers with her 1984 album absorbed every last raw drop of that fuss about it, but guitarist Dion Payton’s Million Dollar Secret (Rooster Blues) energetic singer and slide-guitar player’s 43rd Street Blues Band offered a sight but who died, tragically young, a few musical spirit. From the mid-1970s rare in Chicago blues groups, a white years later. Not much has been heard onwards, with his band the Blues female guitarist. Since then Joanna lately of John Watkins, then 33 and Imperials, Lil’ Ed filled the role of Connor has become known as a blues- working with his uncle Jimmy Johnson. Chicago Chainsaw Blues Massacre Man rock guitar heavy with a big following in But as for the others... previously played by his uncle and Europe, where she has recorded for before him by Hound Dog Taylor. the German labels Ruf and Inak. Family members Booked to record a single track for All sorts of old barriers were breaking The big success story belongs to the Bluebloods, the band piled into the down. Several Chicago bands had Kinsey Report. They had started out as studio and emerged little more than members from Canada, Europe or the backing group for Big Daddy Kinsey, three hours later with enough stuff to fill Japan. The flow of musicians from soul a Muddy Waters devotee and father of an album, which Alligator duly pro­ to blues and blues to soul was brisker three members of the band, but gui­ duced - Roughhousin'. than ever and, as Alligator’s Bruce tarist Donald Kinsey took a wide detour The Sons of Blues were the only band Iglauer pointed out in the Bluebloods from Chicago blues during the 1970s, in the Bluebloods cast to have been notes, ‘the influence of both rock and forming a rock band then going over to featured on Living Chicago Blues. The black radio can be heard in new reggae and working with Peter Tosh 1987 line-up was somewhat different, rhythms, new instruments (synthesisers and Bob Marley. He returned home in since the group had merged with are common on the scene now, and 1984 and rejoined the family group, bassist J. W. Williams’ Chi-Town Hustlers many a guitarist has his array of effects which went on to play in Europe and (retaining both names), but still boast­ pedals), and an increased emphasis on make powerful albums for Pointblank. ed the best of the younger harmonica instrumental technique and flash. But Melvin Taylor, like Jimmy Johnson and players, Billy Branch, then 35. A decade the raw soul of Chicago,’ he concluded, Jimmy Dawkins before him, found fame later he remained a top-rated player, ‘is still there in the city’s music.’