Hard Luck Child's Juke Joint

Richard "Hacksaw" Harney- Sweet Man



Biography:
"Richard 'Hacksaw' Harney was born in Money, MS, on July 16, 1902. He passed away on Christmas morning in 1973 of stomach cancer.
Hacksaw was regarded by many musicians as the best guitarist in the Delta.
--Robert Palmer, Deep Blues

 I really think that Hacksaw was a big influence with Robert [Johnson]. He was the only somebody who could compete with him... He played the guitar very, very well. --Robert Lockwood, Jr., Living Blues
       
His talent, virtuosity and flair rank him with the likes of Robert Johnson, Blind Blake, Reverrend Gary Davis and Blind Willie Johnson. And yet, if it were not for these Adelphi/Blues Vault tapes, he would be a blues equivalent of Buddy Bolden, the unrecorded giant whose mysterious legend enlivens early jazz lore. --Larry Hoffman.

Adelphi Records is pleased to present this ten song collection demonstrating the guitar wizardry of Richard Hacksaw Harney, the musician's musician from the motherland of American Music. Hacksaw was sought out by blues researchers in the 1960's because of the high esteem with which his contemporaries regarded him, many of whom were still awed by recollections of his occasional, impromptu appearances in Delta jukes or on the legendary King Biscuit Time radio show in Helena, Arkansas. In 1969, Adelphi's traveling studio followed the Harney reputation from Chicago to Jackson and back to Memphis, where Hacksaw was finally located, with the assistance of a posse of aging but enthusiastic blues musicians. Their persistence was amply rewarded by his sparkling and complex finger-picking playing.

Errata: In the liner notes, we mistakenly attribute the nickname 'Hacksaw' as originating during the artist's brief career in boxing. Pinetop Perkins set the record straight by reminding us that this outstanding musician (equally stunning as a piano player) supported himself by tuning and repairing pianos. "He always carried a little hacksaw with him, and he could grab a piece of anything and make a new key with that hacksaw. He taught me how to repair a piano."
-Adelphi Records

Download Link: http://www.badongo.com/file/16015093

Jack Kelly & His South Memphis Jug Band- Complete Recorded Works (1933-1939)



Biography:
"Singer/guitarist Jack Kelly was the frontman of the South Memphis Jug Band, a popular string band whose music owed a heavy debt to the blues as well as minstrel songs, vaudeville numbers, reels and rags. Little is known of the hoarse-voiced Kelly's origins; he led the group in tandem with fiddler Will Batts, and they made their first recordings in 1933, followed in 1939 by a second and final session. Although the South Memphis Jug Band's lineup changed frequently, Kelly remained a constant, leading the group in various incarnations until as late as the mid-'50s; he died in Memphis in 1960."
-Allmusic.com

Album Review:
"Document's Complete Recorded Works (1933-1939) is an exhaustive overview of Jack Kelly's career. However, for all but completists and academics, the disc is a mixed blessing due to its exacting chronological sequencing, poor fidelity (all cuts are transferred from original acetates and 78s), and sheer number of performances. Casual fans are better off with a less comprehensive package."
-Allmusic.com

Download Link: http://www.badongo.com/file/15971129

K.C. Douglas- A Dead Beat Guitar And The Mississippi Blues



Biography:
"One of the last great rural blues stylists in the San Francisco/Oakland area, K.C. Douglas produced a blues classic when he recorded "Mercury Boogie" in 1949. The tune, which paid homage to the American automobile, was later renamed "Mercury Blues" and covered by Steve Miller and David Lindley. Country superstar Alan Jackson had a number one hit when he recorded the tune in 1992. Rights to the song were purchased by the Ford Motor Company, which used it for a television commercial for Ford trucks.

Born and raised on a family farm near Sharon, MS, Douglas was deeply influenced by the 1920s recordings of Delta bluesman Tommy Johnson. Although he left home in 1934 to work outside of music in the Mississippi towns of Grenada and Carthage, he launched his music career after meeting Johnson two years later. After Douglas impressed Johnson with his baritone vocals and skillful guitar playing, the two musicians began performing together on street corners and parties.

Relocating to Vallejo, CA, in 1945, Douglas found employment in the naval shipyards. Within a couple of years, he gravitated to the San Francisco/Oakland blues scene, forming a band, the Lumberjacks, in 1947. His first recordings were issued on the Oakland-based Downtown label in 1948. Although he continued to perform at dances and small clubs, occasionally with Jesse Fuller, throughout the 1950s and '60s, Douglas supplemented his meager income from music with a variety of jobs. He worked for the public works department in Berkeley from 1963 until the mid-'70s.

While he recorded such songs as "Born in the Country," "Catfish Blues," "Fanny Lou," "Hear Me Howlin'," "K.C.'s Doctor Blues," and "Wake Up Workin' Woman" for Bluesville in 1960 and Fantasy in 1967, Douglas didn't reach his peak until the 1970s. After performing at the Berkeley Blues Festival in 1970, he formed a quartet and became a frequent performer at coffeehouses, clubs, and bars in the East Bay/Modesto/Stockton area and recorded several tracks for the Arhoolie label between 1973 and 1974.

Succumbing to a fatal heart attack on October 17, 1975, Douglas was buried in the Pleasant Green Cemetery in Sharon, MS."
-Allmusic.com

Download Link: http://www.badongo.com/file/15826835

Bill Williams- Low And Lonesome



Liner Notes:
"A 73-year old guitarist can be forgiven for losing the sureness of touch and loose co-ordination demanded in the lost art of blues-playing, particularly if he offers original or authentic material to an audience which has been largely denied the chance to hear yesterday's greats in person. If he is 73 and yet betrays no hint of his age in his approach to the most complicated and diverse guitar styles, one can only marvel in disbelief.
Disbelief is the inevitable reaction to incredible Bill Williams, a former partner of Blind Blake who is without doubt the most technically accomplished living country blues guitarist. Nothing about his effortless playing suggests the now familiar relic of the remote past who must be patronized to demonstrate that country blues are alive and well (they aren't). His present day skills not only put most other oldsters to shame, but are sufficient to have made him a stand- out in any era.
Yet at this writing Williams is practically unknown beyond the confines of Greenup, Kentucky, a small town near the Ohio border whose locale figures as background in the writings of novelist Jesse Stuart. In his very obscurity, Williams is a cherished but little-encountered blues archetype - the unsung great who outplays most of his more prestigious contemporaries.
In every other respect, however, Williams is a refreshing departure from blues tradition. While the most familiar species of bluesman shamelessly exaggerates his musical feats before anyone gullible enough to listen, the unassuming Bill Williams is horrified by even favorable notoriety. He derives greater satisfaction from the placid virtues of solid citizenship (he is a Kentucky Colonel and an election supervisor) and rugged self-sufficiency (he built his own home and raises much of his own food) than his unsolicited position as the blues' most exciting "find" in a long time. Perhaps because he is by now taken for granted in a community where, as one performer puts it, "You're practically a foreigner if you don't play some kind of instrument", he can't quite believe the furor he has begun to generate among blues enthusiasts. "If someone as dumb as me can play," he insists, "anybody can."
His career is no less exceptional than his selfdeprecating attitudes. He came by all of his dazzling technique without any instruction while living sixty miles in the country beyond his native Richmond, Virginia, where he was born in 1897. His brother James. a ragtime guitarist, took pains to safeguard his instrument from Bill's curious hands by tuning his strings so slack that they were unplayable before leaving for work each morning. One day Bill seized the guitar and managed to figure out the chords for Yankee Doodle Dandy, a song he knew from school and still delights in performing, with ragtime embellishments.
Bill subsequently met few guitarists in the Richmond area, but his style nevertheless developed the ragtime emphasis and smooth picking patterns one associates with the East Coast musician. He was first exposed to blues through an old recording of St. Louis Blues a 1914 hit which received wide contemporary pop treatment and would, for the general white audience, practically define the entire blues form. Another early acquisition was the Lucky Blues, which Bill adapted from the work of a local guitarist. He also played pieces like John Henry with a bottleneck in open E tuning (a method he has since discarded). Its strongest inclinations, however, were towards the key of C, the one he considered best suited for his voice. This preference was to favor his development as a ragtime virtuoso, for C is the usual key of guitar rags.
Although Bill must have displayed phenomenal ability in his youth (when, he says, he was at his true peak), he never played music professionally, and never earned money for entertaining at parties and dances. Unlike most contemporary blues singers, he actually preferred manual labor to the idea of playing for a living, even though his jobs were often so fatiguing as to preclude off-hours practice. At the age of fourteen he became a waterboy on a railroad in Wilmington, Delaware. Then he was packed off to relatives in the small town of Lester, Colorado, in his family's old-fashioned belief that labor in the mines would steady his delicate "nerves". But mine conditions proved so unnerving that he virtually fled to Pensacola, Florida, where he became a timber-cutter.
While living in Bristol, Tennessee in the early 1920's Bill met the peerless Blind Blake who was then living with an elderly woman (perhaps a relative) in a desolate nearby country area. For four months Bill worked as Blake's regular second guitarist, always picking his accompaniments instead of strumming in the usual fashion of the back-up musician. Blake was particularly taken with Low and Lonesome, but never borrowed Bill's blues motifs, although his own repertoire was then limited to a few basic pieces. When they parted company Bill worked out arrangements of Blake's trademark songs (including My Girlfriend Left Me and Too Tight) in a nostalgic recollection of his friend, for whom he had both personal and professional regard. Today he ventures only the just criticism that "my man Blake", as he calls him, tended to repeat himself too often in the key of C.
In 1922 Bill left Bristol with no special destination and jumped off a freight train in Greenup. He accepted a job with the C&O Railroad in nearby Russell, Kentucky, and has lived in the area ever since. His railroad routes - to Covington, Ky. and Columbus, Ohio - have largely circumscribed his subsequent career. As the population of this region is almost exclusively white, Bill hasn't played for any Negro dances since coming to Greenup. Not surprisingly, his material betrays this immersion into the white musical community. However, by applying the inventive and vigorous picking techniques of the true blues or rag guitarist to whatever songs he chooses to adapt, he is able to enhance even the most commonplace pieces.
To assuage his audience on those occasions when his usual accompanists failed to keep playing dates, Williams transposed a number of traditional fiddle tunes to guitar: Mockingbird, Long Way To Tipperary (a pop song of World War I vintage) Turkey In The Straw, and Old Joe Clark. These guitar interpretations are unique. Other songs were taken from the popular recordings of Charlie Poole and Riley Puckett, a skilled hillbilly guitarist who once expressed personal admiration for Bill's playing. There is also some Merle Travis influence on Bill's techniques, but this influence may be mutual, since he recalls meeting the younger Travis after his own style matured.
Some of Bill's most arresting pieces are too exotic to fit into any known category, and ultimately make the labels "ragtime" or "blues" guitarist inadequate to describe him. He learned one of his real showpieces, the minor-keyed Pocahontas, from an Italian railroader he met in the 1920's and in turn tutored in blues-playing. (Although the man spoke no English, his version had English lyrics.) Bill's exquisite arrangement of Lazy River far removes it from its usual bland pop moorings and his own picking style, and would have done credit to ultrasophisticated bluesmen like Lonnie Johnson. Even the "hard" blues, I'll Follow You, represents a total departure from all known East Coast blues-playing; but is surprisingly reminiscent of the mainstream Texas sounds of Willie Reed and Will Day. Besides these unconventional works, Bill offers finger-picked renditions of Christmas carols and the Star-Spangled Banner, demonstrating his professed ability to master any tune his listener can hum.
Perhaps as uncanny as Bill's versatility is his very preservation of the gifts that most country bluesmen have long since lost with time or disinterest. Within the last twenty years, or long after the commercial demise of country blues, Bill was figuring out classics like I'll Follow You and Chicken, a minstrel song probably dating to the turn of the century. Before his retirement from the railroad in 1958 his continued practicing was partly attributable to a Sunday morning shift as camp cook that often left him with free time on his hands and no company besides his guitar. Eight years ago a doctor told him that the exercise afforded by guitar-playing was perfect therapy for his arthritic wrist. This advice, coupled with constant local demands for his appearances at social gatherings, has probably kept Bill's music from declining. Today he shows no signs of slowing down, although he insists that the performing grind is undermining his health, and periodically announces his "retirement".
If Bill is increasingly reluctant to perform publically he is even more so to record. Despite a rare command of material that enables him to produce many perfect first takes in a recording studio, he would much prefer less formal performances for friends. But for the unselfish zeal of Charlie Parsons, a local guitar teacher and coauthor of a book on guitar technique, Bill would have remained forever in contented oblivion. A demonstration tape Parsons practically tricked him into recording proved so convincing that Blue Goose immediately scheduled a session - over Bill's protests that he would need three years to get in shape for recording. Once company officials arrived in Greenup, Bill asked: "What you fellows doin' here recording me?" His album should provide the best answer."

Download Link: http://www.badongo.com/file/15733876

Robert Pete Williams- I'm Blue As A Man Can Be



Biography:
"Discovered in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Robert Pete Williams became one of the great blues discoveries during the folk boom of the early '60s. His disregard for conventional patterns, tunings, and structures kept him from a wider audience, but his music remains one of the great, intense treats of the blues.

Williams was born in Zachary, Louisiana, the son of sharecropping parents. While he was a child, he worked the fields with his family; he never attended school. Williams didn't begin playing blues until his late teens, when he made himself a guitar out of a cigar box. Playing his homemade guitar, Williams began performing at local parties, dances, and fish fries at night while he worked during the day. Even though he was constantly working, he never made quite enough money to support his family, which caused considerable tension between him and his wife -- according to legend, she burned his guitar one night in a fit of anger.

Despite all of the domestic tension, Williams continued to play throughout the Baton Rouge area, performing at dances and juke joints. In 1956, he shot and killed a man in a local club. Williams claimed the act was in self-defense, but he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. He was sent to Angola prison, where he served for two years before being discovered by ethnomusicologists Dr. Harry Oster and Richard Allen. The pair recorded Williams performing several of his own songs, which were all about life in prison. Impressed with the guitarist's talents, Oster and Allen pleaded for a pardon for Williams. The pardon was granted in 1959, after he had served a total of three and a half years. For the first five years after he left prison, Williams could only perform in Lousiana, but his recordings -- which appeared on Folk-Lyric, Arhoolie, and Prestige, among other labels -- were popular and he received positive word of mouth reviews.

In 1964, Williams played his first concert outside of Louisiana -- it was a set at the legendary Newport Folk Festival. Williams' performance was enthusiastically received and he began touring the United States, often playing shows with Mississippi Fred McDowell. For the remainder of the '60s and most of the '70s, Robert Pete Williams constantly played concerts and festivals across America, as well a handful of dates in Europe. Along the way, he recorded for a handful of small independent labels, including Fontana and Storyville. Williams slowed down his work schedule in the late '70s, largely due to his old age and declining health. The guitarist died on December 31, 1980, at the age of 66."
-Allmusic.com

Album Review:
"More classic early sides."
-Allmusic.com

Download Link: http://www.badongo.com/file/15570642

Memphis Willie Borum- Introducing Memphis Willie B.



"Willie Borum was born in Shelby County, Tenneessee, in 1911. His musical ability was evident from an early age and his father, who was also a good musician, taught him the guitar.   By the time he was eighteen years old he was playing in Memphis as a member of Jack Kelly's Jug Busters. He also worked the street corners, parties and picnics, and any other venue where he could supplement his income. His career took a step up when he joined the Memphis Jug Band, a professional group that worked out of Memphis and down the Mississippi, playing the delta towns and riverboats, travelling as far as New Orleans. When he was in his early twenties Borum met up with  Noah Lewis, harp player with the other professional jug band in Memphis, Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers. Lewis taught Borum to play harmonica, and the combination of guitar and harp allowed Borum to widen his style and gradually move away from the jug band approach. He started working with other popular bluesmen of the period including Sonny Boy (Rice Miller) Williamson and Robert Johnson.

Borum first recorded when he was twenty three years old for Vocalion using the name Memphis Willie B. He continued to play the party and juke joint circuit in Memphis and in Mississippi until he was drafted into the army in 1943. After the 2nd World War Borum found it difficult to re-establish his career, musical tastes had changed and his style of music was no longer popular, and he was forced to find work outside of music. The blues revival of the 1960's brought a few good years back and he was successful on the college and blues festival circuit for a while. However by the end of the 1960's he disappeared from the music scene and he was reported to have died in Memphis in the early 1970's."
-thebluestrail.com

Download Link: http://www.badongo.com/file/15513888

Curtis Jones- Lonesome Bedroom Blues



Biography:
"The origins of the blues standard "Tin Pan Alley" can be traced directly back to pianist Curtis Jones, who also enjoyed considerable success in 1937 with his "Lonesome Bedroom Blues" for Vocalion (a song inspired by a breakup with his wife).

Jones started out on guitar but switched to the 88s after moving to Dallas. He arrived in Chicago in 1936 and recorded for Vocalion, Bluebird, and OKeh from 1937 to 1941. But the war ended his recording career until 1953, when powerful deejay Al Benson issued a one-off single by Jones, "Wrong Blues"/"Cool Playing Blues," on his Parrot label with L.C. McKinley on guitar. In 1960, Jones waxed his debut album, Trouble Blues, for Prestige's Bluesville subsidiary with a classy crew of New York session aces and Chicagoan Johnny "Big Moose" Walker on guitar. By then, his audience was shifting drastically, as he became a fixture on the Chicago folk circuit. His next LP, Lonesome Bedroom Blues, was a 1962 solo affair for Delmark offering definitive renditions of the title cut and "Tin Pan Alley." Jones left Chicago permanently in January of 1962, settling in Europe and extensively touring the continent until his 1971 death."
-Allmusic.com

"Jones, solo and at the top of his powers on piano and vocally, on a set produced by Bob Koester. The pianist was an exceptional lyricist, evidenced by his classic "Tin Pan Alley" and several lesser-known numbers on this album."
-Allmusic.com

Download Link: http://www.badongo.com/file/15513047

Roy Dunn- Know'd Them All



"Dunn's only Trix album in 1973 was full of simple, evocative stories about the flaws and follies of country folk. He sometimes sang about events ("Pearl Harbor Blues") and other times spun entertaining yarns ("Mr. Charlie"). Dunn was not a great singer or guitarist, but was definitely his own man; his phrasing, delivery, guitar and harmonica playing were not based on elaborate analysis or careful study, but were simply Dunn's way of expressing himself."
-Allmusic.com

Download Link: http://www.badongo.com/file/14866221

Eddie Kirkland- It's The Blues Man



 
"Wildman guitarist/harpist Eddie Kirkland brought his notoriously rough-hewn attack to this vicious 1962 album for Tru-Sound, joined by a very accomplished combo led by saxman extraordinaire King Curtis and including guitarist Bill Doggett. As the crew honed in on common stylistic ground, the energy levels soared sky-high, Kirkland roaring through "Man of Stone," "Train Done Gone," and "I Tried" with ferocious fervor."
-Allmusic.com

Download Link: http://www.badongo.com/file/14704418

Bill Williams- Blues, Ballads And Rags



 
“For a guitarist of such uncommon ability Bill Williams enjoyed an all-too brief period of public recognition. Within fifteen minutes of the time he first picked up an instrument in 1908 he was accomplished enough to play a song, but he was still completely unknown beyond his home town of Greenup, Kentucky before Blue Goose recorded him in the fall of 1970 and issued an album (Low and Lonesome) that brought him unqualified acclaim as a 73-year old folk find. A brief series of concert engagements (notably at the Smithsonian Institution and the Mariposa Folk Festival) followed, along with an extended recording session in New York, before a heart ailment brought about his musical retirement. In October of 1973, nearly three years to the day of his recording debut, he was fatally stricken in his sleep. This memorial album and its soon to be released sequel will constitute the remainder of Bill's musical legacy.
At the time of his death Williams unquestionably ranked as one of America's two or three finest traditional guitarists, and his passing serves as a bleak reminder that the forms he specialized in have all but perished in their original settings. Yet he would have sounded exceptional even in the heyday of country blues and ragtime, and the debut album that drew such comments as "incredible" from reviewers would have done credit to a far younger musician. It is difficult to eulogize Bill's musicianship, however, for there has never been a provision for anyone quite like him within the customary framework of blues or folksong research. Having made no 78 recordings in the Twenties, he had no status as a living or "lost" legend. Nor was he the product of any discernable blues tradition: the musician he most resembled was himself. He was sometimes labelled an "East Coast bluesman", but he had spent the last fifty years of his life in midwestern Greenup, far removed from his Richmond, Virginia origins.
Ultimately, Bill was not even a blues guitarist in the strict sense of the word. In the fashion of Leadbelly, Mississippi John Hurt, and Sam Chatmon, he worked within a myriad assortment of folk forms (blues, spirituals, ragtime, and hillbilly music) coupled with numerous adaptations of pop pieces. He was somewhat bewildered, in fact, by the disproportionate attention his blues received from younger listeners, and liked to chastize his New York admirers for their preoccupation with the form. "I know they're crazy about blues here in New York," he stated during his last recording session, "but if you go anywhere else in this country, you'll find people mostly like patriotic tunes."
A "patriotic" tune, in Bill's lexicon, was any pop or white folk standard. To the end of his life he enjoyed playing such diverse pieces as the Star-Spangled Banner (which he considered the most challenging piece in his repertoire) and Jingle Bells. Although he once recalled that in his native Richmond, "... all you hear ... was blues, because everybody down there played blues," his original guitar effort was the "patriotic" Yankee Doodle Dandy, and his teenage repertoire included such works as Casey Jones (a vaudeville hit from 1909) and Long Ways To Tipperary (an English import popular during World War One), both learned from his older brother James, who strummed his instrument. His Greenup audience, which often heard Bill at square dances accompanying a white fiddler and banjo player, "never paid no attention to blues ..." But for all his dutiful patriotism he was never basically a traitor to the blues idiom: he approached nearly all of his material from a blues perspective, rendering it with what he called "diminished chords" (partial chords), and always fingerpicking with a heavy rhythmic bounce. "There's songs that you could strum a guitar," he told Rob Fleder in an interview for Sing Out, "but I never did believe in the strumming ones so I didn't do much strumming. Once in a while I'd get tired of using my finger, and they'd be dancing and making a lot of noise so I'd strum it." Unlike most blues guitarists, however, he put an equal premium on key variations.
With the self-depreciation that was so typical of him, he said: "I never did like to see nobody play for no dancing or party or nothing and just play in one key. You can't call anybody no musician - course, I'm not really a musician as far as that goes - a person can't call himself a musician that plays in just one key."
As Bill never played professionally (or even for hire), there was no practical reason for his versatility or even his departures from blues norms. Most of his peers in Richmond, he noted, were limited to blues in the key of E, and in the course of his provincial existence, he met few guitarists of any stature. He recalled once seeing Blind Lemon Jefferson (as did, it would seem, nearly every performer of his generation) and the hillbilly great Riley Puckett, but only in passing. His oft-recounted association with the legendary Blind Blake meant much less to himself than to blues researchers, and there were only tenuous musical connections between them. He always seemed to have greater difficulty with the handful of given Blake motifs he played than with daredevil works like Pocahontas or The Chicken (both of which appeared on his first album).
Whether Bill's perfunctory recollections of Blind Blake were plausible or not is still open to question. For example, he once remarked that Blake had joked about wanting to marry his sister, and had begun a correspondence with her after moving to Chicago to make records. When the sister was located near Richmond she proved to have no knowledge whatsoever of Blake's existence.
Perhaps Bill's very claim to have known Blake in the first place was a figment of imagination or an elaborate private joke, for it was often difficult to tell when he was being serious. In order to produce groans from his listeners (whose eventual skepticism made no impression on him) he would make ominous threats to quit guitar-playing, or harp upon how much he despised the activity, even though it appeared to occupy most of his leisure time. Towards the end of his first recording session in Greenup, he made a dramatic announcement that a compelling appointment in nearby Vanceburg would make it impossible for him to complete his album. When first offered a tour of folk clubs in the east, he similarly pretended to balk at the prospect of traveling. With the air of a used-car salesman he would offer to teach his entire repertoire to younger guitarists for forty dollars, making progressively lower offers as his high- pressure sales pitch met with resistance. The purpose of this ruse (if anything, he would have given lessons for free) was never clear. He liked to be mildly scandalous in respectable company, as when he would suddenly recite a ribald toast or recount episodes of barnyard bestiality, giving the impression that it was his favorite outdoor sport. His assortment of quirks seemed no less formidable than his guitar techniques; one recalls his incurable habit of grinding his teeth while playing guitar (which posed a considerable engineering problem during his recording sessions, as it produced a squeaking sound), his perpetual insomnia, and his Spartan diet (he seemed to subsist entirely on cheese, crackers, and baking soda). Locally, it was rumored that Bill had become slightly "touched in the head" after having suffered a fall.
That Bill's musical faculties remained spectacularly intact at an age when most of his contemporaries had gone musically senile is amply illustrated by the songs on this album. Perhaps the true measure of his capabilities was his knack for converting a shopworn staple like Salty Dog into a guitar masterpiece instead of playing it in routine fashion.
The predominant key of Bill's works was C, and he usually tuned a half step (sometimes a full step) low on the guitar. Railroad Bill, a ragtime song in C, is a salute to a once-notorious Alabama train robber and one of the most famous pieces in black folk tradition. Bill's susceptibility to unabashedly sentimental songs (he was capable of shedding tears while listening to a maudlin lyric like Lonnie Johnson's There Is No Justice) is illustrated by his renditions of I'll Be With You When The Roses Bloom Again and Blue Eyes (a piece associated with A.P. Carter), two traditional white ballads in the key of C. While the prohibition era recalled by the former piece (which is said to actually date to the nineteenth century) now seems remote, Greenup County still bans the sale of liquor.
Darktown Strutter's Ball which is played in the key of F, was Bill's recapitulation of the famous ragtime hit by black composer Shelton Brooks, which originally appeared in 1917 and was popularized by Sophie Tucker. The spiritual Some Of These Days (not to be confused with another Brooks standard) ranks with the classic Jaybird Coleman recording I'm Gonna Cross The River Of Jordan (cf. Yazoo L-1022) and is played in the key of C. That's The Human Thing To Do, a pop vehicle, is played in the key of E. Blake's Rag was Bill's impression of an unrecorded Blind Blake instrumental and remains something of a curiosity because Blake never recorded any ragtime instrumentals in the same key (G). Bubblegum, a blues in D, is likewise an evocation of an unrecorded Blake theme.
Mockingbird, one of Bill's supreme instrumental efforts (he considered it almost as difficult to play as the Star- Spangled Banner) was an American pop song of 1855 vintage; though it became a white fiddle standard (from whence Bill derived it), its original composer was a black Philadelphian who played the piece on guitar. Bill's interpretation is played in the key of A. Salty Dog and Corn Liquor Blues (the latter was inspired by a Papa Charlie Jackson recording) are both in the key of G, while the twin ragtime standards, Pallet On The Floor and Nobody's Business, are played in their usual key of C. While many of Bill's songs are traditional, they ultimately illustrate less about blues traditions than about the wizardry that was once Bill Williams.”

Download Link: http://www.badongo.com/file/14704495

 
Bill Jackson- Long Steel Rail 

"Bill Jackson, a likable blues singer and guitarist, only made this one recording in his career, although he came close to recording in 1928. On the first album released by Pete Welding’s Testament label (and reissued on CD in 1994), Jackson is heard at the age of 55 in superior form. He performs in a '30s acoustic blues style, telling stories both verbally and musically. Unfortunately there was no follow-up album and he slipped back into obscurity, but at least this one record survives to show how talented a performer he was. The CD reissue adds four selections (two of which are stories) to the original program and is easily recommended to fans of acoustic blues."
-Allmusic.com

 

Download Link: http://www.badongo.com/file/14113507

Henry Johnson- The Union County Flash!




This is an excellent Country Blues record which features a nearly unknown Henry Johnson. Though there are some complaints in the Blues community about Henry's choice of which guitar to use when recording this album, it's a fantastic record full of epics such as "Crow Jane" and "John Henry". The aforementioned songs sound nothing like the versions done by Skip James and Furry Lewis, respectively. "My Mother's Grave Will Be Found" is another stand-out tune on this record. This is hands-down the best release on Trix Records. It is available at a very cheap price on Amazon.com. It's too bad Henry didn't get a chance to record more, as he was an incredible guitar player and very good singer and lyricist!

Download Link: http://www.badongo.com/file/14113665

A new strategy of mine to help promote this music which I dearly love is to upload full albums to this blog. Please do not use these songs for commercial purposes. Do not burn these songs to a disc with the intention of selling them. These artists and their family members need all the money that they can get from cd sales. You should listen to these songs strictly for your own enjoyment. Please let me know what you think of this disc, "Two Steps From The Blues", by Bobby "Blue" Bland. You will find a picture of the album cover below. Please feel free to leave comments or a reaction to the music.

A new strategy of mine to help promote this music which I dearly love is to upload full albums to this blog. Please do not use these songs for commercial purposes. Do not burn these songs to a disc with the intention of selling them. These artists and their family members need all the money that they can get from cd sales. You should listen to these songs strictly for your own enjoyment. Please let me know what you think of this disc, "Complete Recorded Works (1929-1931)", by Clifford Gibson. You will find a picture of the album cover below. Please feel free to leave comments or a reaction to the music.



 
Here is some information about the album, courtesy of Allmusic.com:

allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll

A new strategy of mine to help promote this music which I dearly love is to upload full albums to this blog. Please do not use these songs for commercial purposes. Do not burn these songs to a disc with the intention of selling them. These artists and their family members need all the money that they can get from cd sales. You should listen to these songs strictly for your own enjoyment. Please let me know what you think of this disc, "Long Steel Rail", by Bill Jackson. You will find a picture of the album cover below. Please feel free to leave comments or a reaction to the music.

Blood Red River http://www.badongo.com/file/13453296
Blues In The Morning http://www.badongo.com/file/13453228
Careless Love http://www.badongo.com/file/13453127
Don't You Put Your Hands On Me http://www.badongo.com/file/13453322
Freight Train Blues   http://www.badongo.com/file/1345326
Freight Train Runs So Slow http://www.badongo.com/file/13453193
Going Back South http://www.badongo.com/file/13453280
Jailhouse Blues http://www.badongo.com/file/13453341
Key To The Highway http://www.badongo.com/file/13453357
Last Go Round http://www.badongo.com/file/13453104
Long Steel Rail http://www.badongo.com/file/13453072
Master & John- The Story http://www.badongo.com/file/13453369
Moaning Guitar Blues http://www.badongo.com/file/13453270
Monkey, Baboon & The Ape- The Story http://www.badongo.com/file/13453383
Old Rounder Blues http://www.badongo.com/file/13452921
Titanic Blues http://www.badongo.com/file/13453158
Trouble In Mind http://www.badongo.com/file/13453211
You Ain't No Woman http://www.badongo.com/file/13453245
 

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This is the wonderful J.T. "Funny Papa" Smith doing "Good Coffee Blues". I'm posting this particular song since I got a request for it, but, in all honesty, it pales in comparison to the two-part, "Seven Sisters Blues", and one of the greatest recordings in the history of American music, "Fool's Blues", which raises the question, "What would Mr. Smith's lyrics have sounded like if were allowed an education?". My answer is that he would have been one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. If you all enjoy this particular song, "Good Coffee Blues", I will gladly post "Fool's Blues", a masterpiece by this wonderful Bluesman. Very little is known about his life, but he is believed to have been born between 1885 and 1890, meaning he was around shortly before the time of the extraordinary Blind Lemon Jefferson, though nobody knows when Smith began playing Blues, and if he was also fluent in the tradition of slightly older musicians, like Henry "Ragtime Texas" Thomas, who played the panpipes and a purely rhythmic/dance music-oriented guitar style (!). Almost none of Smith's lyrics are floating verses, meaning that he, along with "Sleepy" John Estes and Percy Mayfield, was one of, if not THE, most original lyricists in the history of Blues. Please enjoy this recording and help spread the word about this nearly unknown genius.

Unknown Genius

This disc features the unknown genius of the Blues, John T. "Funny Papa" Smith, whose record company mistakenly called him "Funny Paper". There are many stand-out songs on this collection, but "Fool's Blues" and the two part "Seven Sisters Blues" are two of the greatest songs in the history of American music. The guitar playing in these songs, and the majority of Smith's work, is melodically complex but relies on simple bass riffs, and the lyrics are surely 100% original and were never used by any other Blues singers in the history of the music. Smith's voice is easy to listen to, the fidelity of the tracks is excellent, and all of the lyrics are easy to understand. This is essential listening, and it's a terrible shame that more people don't know about this wonderful musician, who was a lyrical genius whom Bob Dylan should envy.



This live recording doesn't come close to the greatness that can be found on Red's "Midnight Rambler" disc, but songs such as "When My Mama Was Livin'" and "Ethel Mae" are intriguing. Unfortunately, the opening track on this album is Red at his worst. As is always the case with Red, the slower songs which feature creative, personal lyrics are his best, whereas the up-tempo songs fail. When I saw him perform earlier this year, it became clear that he is well past his prime and should hang it up.

    Music today is perverse in its lack of originality, honesty, instrumental skill, and vocal passion. Never again will we see or hear something like Lightnin' Hopkins' "Tim Moore's Farm" or a character as original as J.T. "Funny Papa" Smith. Nowadays, children, twenty-somethings and even people in their forties and fifties only know of garbage. It's truly a sad state of affairs when nobody one encounters knows of "John Henry", "Betty & Dupree", "Goodnight, Irene", the majestic "West End Blues", the virtuoso, Lonnie Johnson, the New Orleans street singer with the voice of an Irish tenor, Richard "Rabbit" Brown", or the slide master, Kokomo Arnold. The sad fact is that these men, and women, too, like Memphis Minnie, will never grace us with their brilliance again. Jelly Roll Morton's time and place was one far different from the one in which we currently live. Conditions which caused or at least facilitated this beautiful music to develop will never again be present. In a sense, this is a good thing, as the overt racism that blacks were subjected to is guaranteed to be stuck in the pages of history books. Nowadays, blacks can be lawyers and doctors and don't have the three simple options that black American men of yesteryear had: to be a sharecropper, a reverend, or a foul musician who plays "The Devil's Music". Unfortunately, we, the human race, have lost something. We have lost the spark and the honesty that was found in this great music: Blues and Jazz. I do not speak of bullshit Jazz like Kenny G. or experimental and progressive Jazz, or Latin Jazz, or the Bebop musicians. I speak of Morton, Dodds, Armstrong, Noone, Oliver. We shouldn't sit around and ponder for hours: "What can be done to bring this music back from the dead?". The question we as Blues scholars, historians, musicians and singers should be asking ourselves is: "What can we do to bring this American art to the attention of fans of Clapton, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones?". If we can do this, perhaps this music can be salvaged and preserved for future generations. Small steps should be taken before big ones.
    No country is like America. There is no other nation on the face of the planet Earth that so despises to learn about, know about and listen to its history. While today's Pop "music" has invaded Asia and replaced its people's music with bile, the young people of Korea, Japan, China and India still know something of their respective musical traditions. However, in America, the twelve year old girls who walk around malls with "Juicy!" written on the back of their tight pants know nothing of their own country's music. Let's all take the initiative and try to do whatever we can to introduce people to American musical art. While there will certainly be many who will reject Texas Alexander, Muddy Waters and Luke Jordan, there will surely be some who will say "This is exotic. This is honest. This is foreign. This is American?!? I never would have known! It's not bad at all, actually!"

This is the unbelievable Lonnie Johnson, who basically invented Jazz guitar, wrote, sang and played hundreds of great Blues songs, pioneered Rhythm & Blues, and crooned with the best of them towards the end of his career. He sang about his distrust of women and why love often goes wrong. He was a poet, a wonderful singer, and one of the greatest guitar players of the 20th century.

A Deeper Look At Robert Johnson Is Needed

    A deeper look at Robert Johnson is needed. He was obviously an extremely talented guitar player and had a real way with words; his lyrics were often quite beautiful, as in "From Four Til Late", "Hellhound On My Trail" and "Stones In My Passway". He is the most influential man in Blues history in terms of the proliferation of the "walking bass" sound. He died at just 27 years of age, which enhances his legend. However, now is the appropriate time to take a deeper look at Robert Johnson. The "walking bass" line he's forever associated with was originally used by the lesser-known and less-talented Johnnie Temple a few years before Robert recorded it. The songs which most white Blues fans associated with Robert- the ones about the Devil and hellhounds- are not the songs that strongly influenced black Bluesmen during and after Johnson's death. Instead, harmless party songs like "Sweet Home Chicago" and "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" became standards for many Bluesmen and Blues bands. However, during Robert's short life, he was not an enormously popular star like Leroy Carr or Tampa Red, as Elijah Wald points out in detail in his "Escaping The Delta" book, which covers the history of Blues music, Robert Johnson's life and subsequent legend, and pop music in general. Robert Johnson purposely used the last name, "Johnson", on his recordings because of his love for the older, more talented (yes, more talented!) Lonnie Johnson. Lonnie Johnson was the inventor of Jazz guitar, performed some of the most dazzling and awe-inspiring guitar duets in history with Eddie Lang, came up with a completely original, striking, and ominous way of playing guitar accompaniment for the brilliant singer and lyricist, Texas Alexander, pioneered Rhythm & Blues ten years later, and, in his later years, performed popular songs and Jazz standards with the best of them, showing off his crooning skills. Robert Johnson will be forever eclipsed by Lonnie Johnson in the eyes of musicians and Blues fans with deep insight. Furthermore, Robert's traveling buddy and fellow Blues musician, Johnny Shines, possessed at least as much, if not more, talent than young Robert did. Johnny was one of the greatest singers in the history of the Country Blues, along with Son House and Texas Alexander. Throughout his life, he was able to perform Country Blues originals and standards, electric Chicago-style Blues standards and originals, Soul music, was able to out-do Otis Rush on Johnny's "My Love Can't Hide", which was highly influenced by Otis Rush's "My Love Will Never Die", and craft lyrics that were every bit as original and poetic as those that Robert Johnson sang on the 42 songs that he recorded. Unfortunately, during the 1960s, '70s, '80s and '90s, Johnny was constantly pestered by Blues fans and historians to talk about Robert Johnson, instead of Johnny Shines.
     When Lomax went looking for Robert Johnson, he had trouble down south finding people who knew who Robert was. He wound up recording a young Muddy Waters. The fact that Robert Johnson was not a famous musician in the Mississippi Delta during his lifetime proves that it was the young, white, mostly-male, guitar-playing, Country Blues audience of the late 1950s and early 1960s, along with the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, who popularized the Johnson legend about Robert selling his soul at the Crossroads. In reality, the traditional belief is that one can sell his or her soul to Legba, the trickster deity, and not Satan/the Devil, at the crossroads at midnight. Tommy Johnson, who possessed one of the most beautiful falsetto voices in the history of American music, and wrote and recorded many Blues standards, such as "Canned Heat Blues", "Big Road Blues" and "Maggie Campbell Blues", was a much better singer than Robert Johnson, and his brother stated that Tommy often used the crossroads story to promote himself, back when Robert was just a little boy. Furthermore, the association between Robert Johnson and the Devil is made even more absurd by the fact that a Blues musician named Skip James, who recorded at the height of The Great Depression, was one hundred times more cryptic, bizarre, and spooky than young Robert. Skip James sang in an eerie falsetto, especially on his 1960s records, and openly expressed disdain towards his young white fans during the 1960s; he often stated that the mission of his music was to "deaden the minds" of his listeners. Skip's "I'm So Glad" also eclipses any of Robert's songs in terms of technical ability on the guitar. Blind Blake, Blind Lemon Jefferson, the aforementioned Lonnie Johnson, Reverend Gary Davis, and the under-recorded Willie Walker were all better guitar players than Robert Johnson.
    Furthermore, Robert Johnson was more of an amalgam of great Blues singers and guitar players who came before him than he was a person who came up with an entirely new style of Blues. He was a genius at taking all of these established ideas within Blues and composing songs. He was heavily influenced by Peetie Wheatstraw in terms of vocals, Robert's "Hellhound On My Trail" is his attempt at Skip James' "Devil Got My Woman", young Robert's guitar playing for "Malted Milk" and "Drunken Hearted Man" are directly borrowed from Lonnie Johnson, Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell were a tremendous influence on the young man born in Hazelhurst, Mississippi in 1911, and Robert desperately wanted to play slide guitar as well as Kokomo Arnold, but failed in this respect. With all this being said, I'd like everyone to know that I don't dislike Robert Johnson or his music. In fact, I love his music, his lyrics, and his guitar playing. I'd give anything to be able to play guitar like the man. I just want everyone to dig deeper and take a look at the men who inspired Robert Johnson, men who were at least as talented as the supposed god of the Blues. In Bob Dylan's autobiography, he goes on and on about hearing Robert for the first time and being amazed, while Dave Van Ronk sat in his apartment and simply said that Johnson was very, very good, but far from the best. When I was in high school, I believed the hype completely and thought that Robert Johnson was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Since then, I've realized that there were many Country Blues artists who were just as wonderful as him, if not better, not to mention Post-War electric Blues geniuses like Earl Hooker, who is perhaps the greatest slide guitar player in history. I hope that everyone who reads this review reads my words carefully, takes a look at Elijah Wald's "Escaping The Delta", and buys cds via Amazon.com of Blind Willie McTell, Son House, Furry Lewis, Blind Blake, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lonnie Johnson, etc. There is much more to the Country Blues than Robert Johnson, despite what Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and many young guitar players on Myspace.com seem to think. If you have any questions or comments for me, feel free to leave them beneath this review. Thank you for reading this, and I hope you now have a better understanding of Johnson's place in the history of the Blues.

This is the excellent Paul Butterfield Blues Band playing Elmore James' "Shake Your Moneymaker". This track is off their first and best album. Paul Butterfield is the harmonica player and singer, and Michael Bloomfield is the lead guitar player, with Elvin Bishop playing rhythm guitar. This is a wonderful track to use to introduce Classic Rock-oriented people to electric Blues. Enjoy!

Chicago Blues Masterpiece

Along with Earl Hooker's "The Moon Is Rising", this album is a Chicago Blues masterpiece. Though the lead singer and harmonica player is white, his singing is more than credible and his harmonica playing is excellent. Guitarist Michael Bloomfield plays some incendiary lead guitar, and was taken from us much too early. His death is a tragedy in the truest sense of the world. I recently viewed a video of him at one of the many folk festivals during the 1960s, perhaps Newport, talking about how his father is rich, his family is Jewish, he had a Bar Mitzvah, and how he'll never be able to play or sing like Son House. His admiration for the great Son House was more than obvious. Recently, rock guitar magazines have started to talk more about Bloomfield and his wonderful talents, which is a great thing. He deserves to be ranked up there with Clapton and Allman in terms of white guys who play Blues and/or Blues-Rock. Every track on this album is fun, full of energy and masterfully played. I highly recommend this album to anybody interested in Chicago Blues, especially those coming to the Blues from a Classic Rock or Clapton-related background. My personal favorite on the album is the band's cover of Elmore James' "Shake Your Moneymaker", which is a great deal different than the original, but in a good way.



James Hunter's Got Soul!

Simply put, James Hunter has soul. This is wonderful Soul music for the 21st century, though it certainly sounds an awful lot like Sam Cooke's music from the 1960s, which is definitely not a bad thing at all! For me, the highlight of this disc is "Mollena", which is simply beautiful. Hunter's newest album doesn't do it for me like this release and "People Gonna Talk" do, so I recommend picking up "People Gonna Talk" first, since it is sold at a cheap price on Amazon.com and is an excellent record. If you highly enjoy that disc, you should absolutely purchase this one as well, as it is every bit as good as "People Gonna Talk", though the price is a bit high. It will be wonderful to watch James develop into one of the greatest Soul singers of all-time, along with Sam Cooke and Otis Redding.