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Blues Off the Record

Jan 16, 2021 12:00 PM – 3:00 PM

With Sonny Boy Williamson III

12:01 PM		Mississippi Jook Band Hittin' the Bottle Stomp Back to the Crossroads: The Roots of Robert Johnson
12:03 PM		Little Brother Montgomery Buddy Bolden's Blues Little Brother Montgomery (1930-1954)
12:08 PM		Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory, Jimmie Noone Buddy Bolden's Blues The Jazz Age, Vol. 3
12:11 PM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
12:13 PM		Clarence Williams Texas Moaner Blues Clarence Williams Greatest Hits
12:17 PM		Muggys Spanier Livery Stable Blues (Barnyard Blues) 1939–1944
12:19 PM		James P. Johnson Snowy Morning Blues Snowy Morning Blues
12:22 PM		Ma Rainey Shave 'Em Dry Blues Ma Rainey's Black Bottom 1990
12:25 PM		Victoria Spivey T.B. Blues Victoria Spivey Vol. 1 1926-1927 1962
12:28 PM		Lucille Bogan Black Angel Blues Lucille Bogan (Bessie Jackson) Vol. 2 [1930-1933] 1993
12:31 PM		Clara Smith Good Looking Papa Blues Clara Smith Vol. 1 (1923-1924) 1995
12:35 PM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
12:36 PM		Trixie Smith Freight Train Blues Trixie Smith Vol. 2 1925-1929 1995
12:39 PM		Walter Davis Stormy Weather Blues, Pts. 1 & 2 Walter Davis Vol. 1
12:46 PM		Marie Flynt Let Me Know Savage Rockin' Girls
12:47 PM		Jan Robin Honey Doll Savage Rockin' Girls
12:49 PM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
12:50 PM		Chuck Willis (with the Royals) My Story The Okeh Rhythm & Blues Story 1949-1957
12:54 PM		Big Maybelle One Monkey Don't Stop No Show The Okeh Rhythm & Blues Story 1949-1957 Okeh/Legacy/Epic 1993
12:56 PM		Alberta Adams Remember Chess Blues Geffen 1992
1:01 PM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
1:03 PM		Houston Boines Carry My Business on Sun Records - Jump Blues 2012
1:04 PM		Billy Love Hart's Bread Boogie Sun Records - Jump Blues 2012
1:06 PM		Kenneth Banks High But High Sun Record's Epic Blues Cuts pt. 2 2012
1:09 PM		Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown My Time Is Expensive The Peacock Recordings: 1949-1959 Geffen 2018
1:11 PM		Pee Wee Crayton My Idea About You Pee Wee's Blues: The Complete Aladdin and Imperial Recordings Capitol Records 1996
1:14 PM		Dinah Washington Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby Dinah '62 (Remastered) Parlophone UK 2003
1:17 PM		Louis Jordan Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying Jack, You're Dead: The Essential Blue Archive 2007
1:21 PM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
1:21 PM		Harlem Hamfats When the Sun Goes Down In Harlem Harlem Hamfats Vol. 4 1938-1939 1994
1:25 PM		King Solomon Hill Tell Me Baby Backwoods Blues (1926-1935)
1:27 PM		Crying Sam Collins Hesitation Blues Jailhouse Blues
1:30 PM		Frank Fairfield If the River Was Whiskey Music from The American Epic Sessions (Deluxe) Lo-Max/Columbia 2017
1:32 PM		Louis Armstrong and His All Stars Hesitation Blues Satch Blows the Blues 2002
1:37 PM		Rev. Gary Davis Hesitation Blues Classics Appalachian Blues from Smithsonian Folkways
1:43 PM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
1:43 PM		Fury Lewis I Will Turn Your Money Green In His Prime 1927-1928
1:46 PM		Blind Lemon Jefferson Pneumonia Blues Best Recordings of Blind Lemon Jefferson 2017
1:49 PM		Charles "Cow Cow" Davenport Jim Crow Blues Cow Cow Davenport Vol. 1
1:53 PM		Luke Jordan If I Call You Mama The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of: Super Rarities
1:55 PM		Luke Jordan Tom Brown Sits in His Prison Cell "Too Late, Too Late" Vol. 8
1:58 PM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
2:02 PM		Dick Justice Brown Skin Blues Old Time Music from West Virginia
2:05 PM		Little Hat Jones Two String Blues Texas Blues (1927–1935)
2:08 PM		Minnie Wallace The Old Folks Started It Ruckus Juice & Chittlins, Vol. 2 2006
2:11 PM		Phebel Wright Lint Head Stomp Rags, Breakdowns, Stomps & Blues
2:15 PM		Jed Davenport Beale Street Breakdown Memphis Masters: Early American Blues Classics (1927-34) 2006
2:16 PM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
2:17 PM		Jug Rag Blue Ridge Ramblers Rags, Breakdowns, Stomps & Blues
2:20 PM		Scottdale String Band Carbolic Rag Rags, Breakdowns, Stomps & Blues
2:23 PM		Bobby Leecan Macon Georgia Cut Out (feat. Blind Bobby Baker) Guitar Maestro Suitcase Breakdown Frog 2018
2:26 PM		Willie '61' Blackwell Don't Misuse Me, Baby Carl Martin / Willie '61' Blackwell 1930–1941
2:29 PM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
2:29 PM		Big Bill Broonzy Backwater Blues Big Bill Broonzy Sings Folk Songs 1956
2:32 PM		Blind Blake Georgia Bound Ragtime Guitar's Foremost Fingerpicker 1990
2:35 PM		Robert Johnson From Four Until Late King of the Delta Blues Singers, Vol. 2 1970
2:38 PM		Charley Patton Mean Black Cat Blues Charley Patton Vol. 1 (1929) 1990
2:41 PM		Blind Willie Johnson John the Revelator Dark Was the Night (Mojo Workin')
2:45 PM		Son House John the Revelator Father of the Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions Legacy/Columbia 1992
2:47 PM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
2:48 PM		Noah Lewis Like I Want to Be Gus Cannon & Noah Lewis, Vol. 2 (1929-1930) 2005
2:51 PM		Palmer McAbee Lost Boy Blues The Great Harp Players
2:55 PM		Doctor (Peter) Clayton Ain't No Business We Can Do Doctor (Peter) Clayton 1935-1942 1993
2:59 PM		Jody Williams Hide Out The Leading Brand 1978

Chat is archived.

HI S.B.IIIrd -- Trixie Smith "Freight Train Blues" was an especially wonderful selection. Do you have info about the outstanding early jazz combo backing her?

Hi Richard! It's very frustrating, but during these remote broadcasts I'm relying on digital files and often lack access to good liner notes.

I was curious too and found this on the allmusic.com review of the CD: " The 1938 set matches Trixie with the fiery young trumpeter Charlie Shavers, a restrained Sidney Bechet on soprano, and a four-piece rhythm section. Although she had not recorded in a dozen years, Trixie Smith is in prime form on such numbers as "Freight Train Blues," two versions of "My Daddy Rocks Me" and "He May Be Your Man (But He Comes to See Me Sometime)."

This is also usefully corroborated by a DRAM entry! https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/2000291979/63866-Freight_train_blues

Curiously Sidney Bechet is credited with both Clarinet and Soprano sax...

Thanks! You manage to be amazingly informative even from remote.

Well well, Sidney Bechet on that session! I'll give my ear a little credit for hearing that it was some truly exceptional playing, hence my inquiry.

As well you should!

Yes, it can be confusing when session players are credited with two or more instruments. It's often true, but which "axe" on which cut? That's where we must be grateful to discographer-researchers who manage to uncover the details of classic roots music sessions.

That Big Maybelle recording was PRICELESS !!! I swear, it's one of the greatest KILLER R&B tracks I've EVER heard. The lyrics, the arrangement, and especially how she starts off the verses softly and coyly, then winds up and socks it at the end. All I can say is, Yougogirl! :-))

Glad you enjoyed it as much as I did!

Ha! I had no idea 'Iz U' by Nelly had a predecessor

Ditto the personnel behind the fab Dinah Washington now. It's an arrangement and studio orchestra worthy of Nelson Riddle's work on the famed Frank Sinatra come-back recording sessions of the 1950s.

This is the second time in the past few weeks that my ignorance of Nelly has become and obvious gap in my early 2000s cultural knowledge!

Richard -- the album is Dinah '62. I'm looking for the credits!

It seems like Fred Norman was responsible for the arrangements: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/fred-norman-mn0000141772/biography

Nelly is my high school's most famous alumnus, and it took me years to learn that the rest of the world didn

't care about him as much as we did

Thanks, SB IIIrd, you're the man!

Mine is Andy Milonakis. Ditto?

And you're welcome Richard!

Thanks, Elliot, for the Nelly info. I need a lot more education on rap and who the greatest rappers are right now.

Love the many Hesitations

Thanks Brian! A few more coming...

Re the opening comments: I heard the other Freight Train on Weird Old America (E Cotten) and went down a lil online sheet music rabbit hole playing diff versions on my gtr.

And then.. . Your show started...

One o those moments

Elizabeth Cotten almost didn't get credit for that song!

She says she wrote in in the 1910s. She never recorded anything back then and more or less gave up performing. She was a nanny in the Seeger family. Peggy Seeger took the song to England, where it was stolen and made into a skiffle hit.

First heard Hesitation Blues by Hot Tuna (Jorma). First heard River Was Whiskey... lyric as Diving Duck Blues by Taj Mahal. Those guys like many are the gateway into Folk Blues. Then I heard so many variations of them by others

The Seeger family, who later recorded Elizabeth, helped restore the copyright to her.

My big gateways to this material were Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin, but I love Taj and Jorma too!

Yes that Cotten Seeger connection is something. That whole revival period where older musicians got a new chapter of their career late in life. Festival appearances, new LPs, young audience etc

Elizabeth's O Babe It Ain't No Lie (my gateway was Grateful Dead). That lyric is so gentle sounding out of her mouth. But it's pretty intense! And I understand she wrote it very young or based it on childhood about an old woman in the neighborhood that treated her badly.

And then that leads me to Louis Collins... ah so many great tunes

If you want an excellent account of the Folk Revival and its renewal of the careers of great African American blues and gospel stars of the 1920s & '30s (also white old-timey and "hillbilly" performers), check out Baby Let Me Follow You Down: The Illustrated Story of the Cambridge Folk Years by Eric von Schmidt & Jim Rooney. It focuses on the Cambridge-Boston scene (local stars like Joan Baez) but has lots on the nearby Newport (Rhode Island) Folk Festival, Seegers, Libba Cotten, etc.

Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby - my gateway was also cartoons! Thank you for the book rec Richard from RH!

Thanks for the recommendation Richard! I know the von Schmidt name from Bob Dylan who credits him on his first album with teaching him "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down" in the "green pastures of Harvard University." I did my undergrad degree there -- Club Passim, a hub of that scene, still operates (or did before the pandemic at least!)

First thing I thought of too Sonny Boy about Dylan/Eric (aka Ric)

Wow expensive book on the resale market!

Someone should do a reprint!

Ahh the mando... nice in there

Thanks, Brian D. These modern gateways ARE important! Bob Dylan, for example, has been very happy about being a gateway to Woody Guthrie, the Carter Family and lots of general "roots" American music for younger listeners.

Question from ignorance here: are the bass sounds in these recordings made by deep-voiced singers with kazoos?

I think they are jugs!

More Mando!

ah, of course! that's much easier to visualize

But I'll picture them as bass kazoo from now on

Now this.... is a kazoo i think?

(on "Macon Georgia Cut Out")

Just in time! Those chord changes were begging for a kazoo solo

YIKES! I just checked out book sales outlets for Baby Let Me Follow You Down ... Talk about sticker shock! :-0 I'm going to guard my copy with an advanced security system, savage guard dog, spiked-wood pitfalls, etc. etc. ;-))

But there are some fairly inexpensive used copies for sale ...

Great widely used melody on this one (2:32 pm)

From Four Until Late is one

You've anticipated me, Brian.

Four Until Late up next

oops... spoiler alert haha

I saw Thee Headcoats sing "John the Revelator" (sans instrumentation, like this Son House version) in their final New York show.

Very cool!

Good day all

Good day Brian!

Lots of music business for us all yet to do -- great weekend, all!

And thanks so much SBW IIIrd!