This is the second post of a multi-part series that will identify as many of the blues artists from around the world that I can locate information and/or photos of. I hope that you’ll follow along with me on this journey from the deep south to the far ends of the earth as I tell these stories.
Part I of the series is entitled: Early Country Blues
PART Ib: Early Country Blues (continuation from Part 1a)
Name Birth Year Death year
Jim Jackson (c.1884 - 1937) was an African American blues and hokum singer, songster and guitarist, whose recordings in the late 1920s were popular and influential on later artists.
Jim Jackson 1884 1937
John Jackson (February 24, 1924 – January 20, 2002) was an American Piedmont blues musician; his music did not become primary until his accidental "discovery" by folklorist Chuck Perdue in the 1960s. He had effectively given up playing for his community in 1949.
John Jackson 1924 2002
Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James (June 9, 1902 – October 3, 1969) was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter. Born in Bentonia, Mississippi, he died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
He first learned to play guitar from another bluesman from the area, Henry Stuckey. His guitar playing is noted for its dark, minor sound, played in an open D-minor tuning with an intricate fingerpicking technique. James first recorded for Paramount Records in 1931, but these recordings sold poorly due to the Great Depression, and he drifted into obscurity. After a long absence from the public eye, James was "rediscovered" in 1964 by three blues enthusiasts, helping further the blues and folk music revival of the 1950s and early 60s. During this period, James appeared at several folk and blues festivals and gave live concerts around the country, also recording several albums for various record labels.
Skip James 1902 1969
"Blind" Lemon Jefferson (September 24, 1893 – December 19, 1929) was an American blues singer and guitarist from Texas. He was one of the most popular blues singers of the 1920s, and has been titled "Father of the Texas Blues".
Jefferson's singing and self-accompaniment were distinctive as a result of his high-pitched voice and originality on the guitar. He was not influential on some younger blues singers of his generation, as they did not seek to imitate him as they did other commercially successful artists. However, later blues and rock and roll musicians attempted to imitate both his songs and his musical style. His recordings would later influence such legends as B.B. King, T-Bone Walker, Lightnin' Hopkins, Canned Heat, Son House and Robert Johnson.
Blind Lemon Jefferson 1893 1929
"Blind" Willie Johnson (January 22, 1897 – September 18, 1945) was an American singer and guitarist, whose music straddled the border between blues and spirituals.
While the lyrics of his songs were often religious, his music drew from both sacred and blues traditions. His music is distinguished by his powerful bass thumb-picking and gravelly false-bass voice, with occasional use of a tenor voice.
Blind Willie Johnson 1897 1945
Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson (February 8, 1899 – June 16, 1970) was an American blues and jazz singer/guitarist and songwriter who pioneered the role of jazz guitar and is recognized as the first to play single-string guitar solos. Johnson was not only one of the few black blues musicians invited to be 'guest featured' on a number of jazz recording sessions, he was also one of the only classic 1920's blues artists to have a revived a high-charting career after WWII.
Lonnie Johnson 1894 1970
Mary Johnson (1900–1970) was an American classic female blues singer, accordionist and songwriter. Her most noted tracks were "Dream Daddy Blues" and "Western Union Blues." She wrote a number of her own tracks including "Barrel House Flat Blues", "Key To The Mountain Blues" and "Black Men Blues." Johnson variously worked with Peetie Wheatstraw, Tampa Red, Kokomo Arnold and Roosevelt Sykes, and was married to her fellow blues musician, Lonnie Johnson.
Mary Johnson 1900 1970
Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) was an American blues singer and musician. His landmark recordings from 1936–37 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that have influenced later generations of musicians. Johnson's shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend, including a Faustian myth. As an itinerant performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson enjoyed little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime.
His records sold poorly during his lifetime, and it was only after the first reissue of his recordings on LP in 1961 that his work reached a wider audience. Johnson is now recognized as a master of the blues, particularly of the Mississippi Delta blues style. He is credited by many rock musicians as an important influence; Eric Clapton has called Johnson "the most important blues singer that ever lived." Johnson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an "Early Influence" in their first induction ceremony in 1986. In 2003, David Fricke ranked Johnson fifth in Rolling Stone 's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.
Robert Johnson 1911 1938
Tommy Johnson (1896 – November 1, 1956) was an influential American delta blues musician, who recorded in the late 1920s, and was known for his eerie falsetto voice and intricate guitar playing.
Johnson was born near Terry, Mississippi, and moved around 1910 to Crystal Springs where he lived for most of his life. He learned to play the guitar and, by 1914, was supplementing his income by playing at local parties with his brothers Major and LeDell. In 1916 he married and moved to Webb Jennings' Plantation near Drew, Mississippi, close to the Dockery Plantation. There he met other musicians including Charlie Patton and Willie Brown.
He died of a heart attack after playing at a party in 1956. He is buried in the Warm Springs Methodist Church Cemetery outside of Crystal Springs, Mississippi. In 2001 a headstone was commissioned through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund, a Mississippi non-profit corporation, by the family of Tommy Johnson and paid for by musician Bonnie Raitt. The large, granite memorial engraved with Johnson's portrait has not been placed on Johnson's grave, however, due to a bitter, ongoing dispute between Tommy Johnson's family, led by his niece, Vera Johnson Collins, the owners of farm property encircling the cemetery, and the Copiah County Board of Supervisors. The headstone has remained on public display in the Crystal Springs, Mississippi Public Library since being unveiled on October 20, 2001. An annual Tommy Johnson Blues Festival is now held in Crystal Springs, on every third weekend in October. The inaugural edition was held in Jackson and Crystal Springs in 2006.
Tommy Johnson 1896 1956
Lottie Kimbrough (1900 – unknown) was an American country blues singer, who was also billed as Lottie Kimborough, Lottie Beaman, and Lena Kimbrough (amongst several others). Kimbrough was a large woman, and was nicknamed "the Kansas City Butterball". Her recording career lasted from 1924 to 1929, however Allmusic journalist Burgin Mathews stated "Kimbrough's vocal power, and the unique arrangements of several of her best pieces, rank her as one of the sizable talents of the 1920s blues tradition.”
Kimbrough was born in West Bottoms, Kansas City, Missouri, and retained close links to her local community. She was managed by Winston Holmes, himself a local musician and music promoter. Her music career began in the early part of the 1920s, when she performed in Kansas City's nightclubs and speakeasys. In 1924 she undertook her first recording session at Paramount Records, where she was recorded alongside Ma Rainey. Her earliest recordings used the twins Milas (banjo) and Miles Pruitt (guitar), whilst she was later backed by Jimmy Blythe (piano). In 1925 she shared recording studio space with Papa Charlie Jackson. The same year she cut some tracks for the Holmes owned Merrit Records.
As time progressed, Kimbrough recorded and performed using a number of pseudonyms. Whilst she used her married name, Lottie Beaman, on almost half of her tracks, Holmes suggested for her 1926 recording sessions that she was renamed Lena Kimbrough. More pertinently her manager substituted a photograph of Kimbrough's more photogenic sister, Estella, for Lottie's publicity purposes. She also appeared billed as either Clara Cary or Mae Moran. She further recorded in Richmond, Indiana, and alternate namings were used for issues by Gennett, Champion (billed as Lottie Emerson), Supertone (as Lottie Brown) and Superior Records (as Martha Johnson). Her Gennett sessions included the tracks "Rolling Log Blues" and "Goin' Away Blues", which music journalist Tony Russell described as having "haunting beauty".
Kimbrough's brother Sylvester appeared with her in vaudeville, and in 1926 he supplied recording accompaniment with Paul Banks' Kansas City Trio. Nevertheless, it was Kimbrough's musical collaboration with Holmes which provided her better known recordings. Holmes supplied a series of yodels, and vocalized bird calls and train whistles on both "Lost Lover Blues" and "Wayward Girl Blues" (1928). Miles Pruitt was part of this recording and was a regular partner throughout Kimbrough's recording and concert career. He was featured again when Kimbrough recorded her final session in November 1929.
Her self-penned song "Rolling Log Blues" has subsequently been recorded by Jo Ann Kelly, Woody Mann, Son House, The Blues Band, Rory Block, Eric Bibb, and Maria Muldaur.
Little is known of her life beyond her recording career
Lottie Kimbrough 1900 unknown
Rubin "Rube" Lacey (January 2, 1901 – 1972) was an American country blues musician, who played guitar and was a singer and songwriter.
Lacey was born in Pelahatchie, Mississippi, United States, and learned guitar in his teens from an older performer, George Hendrix. Working out of the Jackson area in the Mississippi Delta, he became one of the state's most popular blues singers. His bottleneck style inspired that of the better known performer Son House. In 1927, he recorded four songs for Columbia Records in Memphis, Tennessee, though none were released and the masters do not survive.
In 1928, Lacey recorded two tunes, "Mississippi Jail House Groan" and "Ham Hound Cave", for Paramount Records, which constitutes his recorded legacy. Four years later he became a minister, and was later found living in Lancaster, California by blues researcher, David Evans. He died there in 1972.
Rubin Lacey 1901 1969
Furry Lewis (March 6, 1893 - September 14, 1981) was an American country blues guitarist and songwriter from Memphis, Tennessee. Lewis was one of the first of the old-time blues musicians of the 1920s to be brought out of retirement, and given a new lease of recording life, by the folk blues revival of the 1960s.
Furry Lewis 1899 1981
Charley Lincoln (also known as Charley Hicks or Laughing Charley) (March 11, 1900 – September 28, 1963), was an early American country blues musician. He often recorded with his brother Robert Hicks (who was billed as Barbecue Bob).
He was born Charley Hicks in Lithonia, Georgia, United States. In his teens he was taught guitar by Savannah Weaver, the mother of Curley Weaver, and performed in the Lithonia area until 1920. He moved to Atlanta, Georgia and worked outside the field of music, while also performing occasionally with his brother. He recorded with his brother for the Columbia label 1927–30. An example is the two part duet with crosstalk, "It Won't Be Long Now" that the brothers recorded in Atlanta on November 5, 1927.
After Robert's early death in 1931, Charley Lincoln continued to perform into the 1950s. From 1955–63 he was imprisoned for murder in Cairo, Georgia, where he became a prisoner trustee. He died there of a cerebral hemorrhage on September 28, 1963.
Charley Lincoln 1900 1963
Mance Lipscomb (April 9, 1895 – January 30, 1976) was an American blues singer, guitarist and songster. Born Beau De Glen Lipscomb near Navasota, Texas, United States, he as a youth took the name of 'Mance' from a friend of his oldest brother Charlie ("Mance" being short for emancipation).
Lipscomb was born April 9, 1895 to an ex-slave father from Alabama and a half Native American (Choctaw) mother. Lipscomb spent most of his life working as a tenant farmer in Texas and was "discovered" and recorded by Mack McCormick and Chris Strachwitz in 1960 during the country blues revival. He released many albums of blues, ragtime, Tin Pan Alley and folk music (most of them on Strachwitz' Arhoolie label), singing and accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. He had a finger-picking guitar technique, and an expressive voice. Lipscomb often honed his skills by playing in nearby Brenham, Texas, with a blind musician, Sam Rogers. His debut release was Texas Songster (1960). Lipscomb performed old songs like "Sugar Babe," the first song he ever learned, to pop numbers like "Shine On, Harvest Moon" and "It's a Long Way to Tipperary".
Trouble in Mind was recorded in 1961, and released on a major label, Reprise. In May 1963, Lipscombe appeared at the first Monterey Folk Festival in California.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not record in the early blues era, but his life is well documented thanks to his autobiography, I Say Me for a Parable: The Oral Autobiography of Mance Lipscomb, Texas Bluesman, narrated to Glen Alyn, which was published posthumously, and also a short 1971 documentary by Les Blank, A Well Spent Life.
He died in his hometown of Navasota in 1976, two years after suffering a stroke.
Mance Lipscomb 1895 1976
Virginia Liston (1890 – June 1932) was an American classic female blues and jazz singer. She spent most of her career in black vaudeville. Liston recorded "You Can Dip Your Bread In My Gravy, But You Can't Have None Of My Chops," and "Just Take One Long Last Lingering Look." She worked with her then husband, Samuel H. Gray, billed as Liston And Liston, and also alongside Clarence Williams. In the latter context, she sang with both the Clarence Williams Blue Five on "You've Got The Right Key, But The Wrong Keyhole," and "Early In The Morning"; and the Clarence Williams Washboard Band on "Cushion Foot Stomp," and "P.D.Q. Blues."
Virginia Liston 1890 1932
Robert Lockwood, Jr., also known as Robert Junior Lockwood, (March 27, 1915 – November 21, 2006) was an American Delta blues guitarist, who recorded for Chess Records among other Chicago labels in the 1950s and 1960s. He is best known as a longtime collaborator with Sonny Boy Williamson II and for his work in the mid-1950s with Little Walter.
Robert Lockwood, Jr. 1915 2006
Cripple Clarence Lofton (March 28, 1887 - January 9, 1957), born Albert Clemens in Kingsport, Tennessee, was a noted boogie-woogie pianist and singer.
Though Lofton was born with a limp (from which he derived his stage name), he actually started his career as a tap-dancer. Lofton moved on from tap-dancing into the blues idiom known as boogie-woogie and moved on to perform in Chicago, Illinois.
The trademark of Lofton's performances was his energetic stage-presence, where he danced and whistled in addition to singing. A conversant description of Lofton is provided in an excerpt from Boogie Woogie by William Russell:
Cripple Clarence Lofton 1887 1957
Eddie Mapp (c. 1910 – November 14, 1931) was an American country blues harmonica player. He is best known for his accompaniment on record of both Barbecue Bob and Curley Weaver.
Mapp was born in Social Circle, Walton County, Georgia. He relocated in 1922 to Newton County, where he met the guitar player, Curley Weaver. Although he did not sing, Mapp was noted in Newton County as a harmonica virtuoso with a unique style, who often performed for tips on the street. In 1925 Weaver and Mapp left for Atlanta. The twosome played at country dances, then Weaver together with Barbecue Bob and his brother Charlie Hicks formed a group with Mapp, and continued to play locally.
In 1929, and billed as the Georgia Cotton Pickers, they recorded for the Atlanta based QRS label. Mapp also cut one solo track, "Riding the Blinds", the same year. None of the songs sold well.
In November 1931, Mapp was discovered stabbed on an Atlanta street corner. His death certificate recorded that the brachial artery in his left arm had been severed, and gave his age as twenty. No one was charged with his murder. The certificate also noted his employment as 'musician', unusual at the time for a coroner to acknowledge Mapp's status.
Eddie Mapp 1910 1931
Fred McDowell (January 12, 1904 – July 3, 1972) known by his stage name; Mississippi Fred McDowell, was an American Hill country blues singer and guitar player.
McDowell was born in Rossville, Tn. His parents, who were farmers, died when McDowell was a youth. He started playing guitar at the age of 14 and played at dances around Rossville. Wanting a change from plowing fields, he moved to Memphis in 1926 where he started to work in the Buck-Eye feed mill where they processed cotton into oil and other products. He also had a number of other jobs and played music for tips. Later in 1928 he moved south into Mississippi to pick cotton. He settled in Como, Mississippi, about 40 miles south of Memphis, in 1940 or 1941, and worked steadily as a farmer, continuing to perform music at dances and picnics. Initially he played slide guitar using a pocket knife and then a slide made from a beef rib bone, later switching to a glass slide for its clearer sound. He played with the slide on his ring finger.
While commonly lumped together with Delta Blues singers, McDowell actually may be considered the first of the bluesmen from the 'North Mississippi' region - parallel to, but somewhat east of the Delta region - to achieve widespread recognition for his work. A version of the state's signature musical form somewhat closer in structure to its African roots (often eschewing the chord change for the hypnotic effect of the droning, single chord vamp), the north hill country blues style (or at least its aesthetic) may be heard to have been carried on in the music of such figures as Junior Kimbrough and R. L. Burnside, while serving as the original impetus behind creation of the Fat Possum record label out of Oxford, Mississippi.
The 1950s brought a rising interest in blues music and folk music in the United States and McDowell was brought to wider public attention, beginning when he was discovered and recorded in 1959 by Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins. McDowell's records were popular, and he performed often at festivals and clubs. McDowell continued to perform blues in the North Mississippi blues style much as he had for decades, but he sometimes performed on electric guitar rather than acoustic guitar. While he famously declared "I do not play no rock and roll," McDowell was not averse to associating with many younger rock musicians: He coached Bonnie Raitt on slide guitar technique, and was reportedly flattered by The Rolling Stones' rather straightforward, authentic version of his "You Gotta Move" on their 1971 Sticky Fingers album
McDowell's 1969 Malaco Records album I Do Not Play No Rock 'N' Roll, recorded in Jackson, Mississippi, was his first featuring electric guitar. It features parts of an interview in which he discusses the origins of the blues and the nature of love. (This interview was sampled and mixed into a song, also titled "I Do Not Play No Rock 'N' Roll" by Dangerman in 1999.) McDowell's final album, Live in New York (Oblivion Records), was a concert performance from November 1971 at the Village Gaslight (aka The Gaslight Cafe), Greenwich Village, New York.
McDowell died of cancer in 1972, aged 68, and was buried at Hammond Hill Baptist Church, between Como and Senatobia, Mississippi. On August 6, 1993 a memorial was placed on his grave site by the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund. The ceremony was presided over by Dick Waterman, and the memorial with McDowell's portrait upon it was paid for by Bonnie Raitt. The memorial stone was a replacement for an inaccurate and damaged marker (McDowell's name was misspelled) and the original stone was subsequently donated by McDowell's family to the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Mississippi Fred McDowell 1904 1972
Walter Brown ("Brownie") McGhee (November 30, 1915 - February 16, 1996) was a Piedmont blues singer and guitarist, best known for his collaborations with the harmonica player Sonny Terry.
Brownie McGhee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee. As a child he had polio, which incapacitated his leg. His brother Granville "Sticks" or "Stick" McGhee was nicknamed for pushing young Brownie around in a cart. His father, George McGhee, was a factory worker known around University Avenue for playing guitar and singing.
Brownie's uncle made him a guitar from a tin marshmallow box and a piece of board. McGhee spent much of his youth immersed in music, singing with local harmony group the Golden Voices Gospel Quartet and teaching himself to play guitar. A March of Dimes-funded leg operation enabled McGhee to walk.
At age 22, Brownie McGhee became a traveling musician, working in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and befriending Blind Boy Fuller, whose guitar playing influenced him greatly. After Fuller's death in 1941, J. B. Long of Columbia Records had McGhee adopt his mentor's name, branding him "Blind Boy Fuller No. 2." By that time, McGhee was recording for Columbia's subsidiary Okeh Records in Chicago, but his real success came after he moved to New York in 1942, when he teamed up with Sonny Terry, whom he had known since 1939 when Sonny was Blind Boy Fuller's harmonica player. The pairing was an overnight success; as well as recording, they toured together until around 1980. As a duo, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee did most of their work from 1958 until 1980, spending 11 months of each year touring, and recording dozens of albums.
Despite their later fame as "pure" folk artists playing for white audiences, in the 1940s Terry and McGhee also attempted to be successful black recording performers, fronting a jump blues combo with honking saxophone and rolling piano, variously calling themselves "Brownie McGhee and his Jook House Rockers" or "Sonny Terry and his Buckshot Five," often with Champion Jack Dupree and Big Chief Ellis. They also appeared in the original Broadway productions of Finian's Rainbow and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
During the blues revival of the 1960s, Terry and McGhee were very popular on the concert and music festival circuits, occasionally adding new material but usually remaining faithful to their roots and their audience. With Sonny Terry, he appeared in the 1979 Steve Martin comedy The Jerk. In 1987, McGhee gave a small but memorable performance as ill-fated blues singer Toots Sweet in the supernatural thriller movie, Angel Heart. He appeared in a 1988 episode of "Family Ties" titled "The Blues Brother" in which he played fictional blues musician Eddie Dupre, as well as a 1989 episode of Matlock entitled "The Blues Singer."
Happy Traum, a former guitar student of Brownie's, edited a blues guitar instruction guide and songbook for him. Using a tape recorder, Traum had McGhee instruct and, between lessons, talk about his life and the blues. Guitar Styles of Brownie McGhee was published in New York in 1971. The autobiographical section features Brownie talking about growing up, his musical beginnings, and a history of the early blues period (1930s onward).
One of McGhee's final concert appearances was at the 1995 Chicago Blues Festival.
McGhee died from stomach cancer in February 1996 in Oakland, California at age 80; he missed his planned return trip to Australia.
Brownie McGhee 1915 1996
Blind Willie McTell (born William Samuel McTier May 5, 1898 – August 19, 1959), was an influential Piedmont and ragtime blues singer and guitarist. He played with a fluid, syncopated fingerstyle guitar technique, common among many exponents of Piedmont blues, although, unlike his contemporaries, he came to exclusively use twelve-string guitars. McTell was also an adept slide guitarist, unusual among ragtime bluesmen. His vocal style, a smooth and often laid-back tenor, differed greatly from many of the harsher voice types employed by Delta bluesmen, such as Charlie Patton. McTell embodied a variety of musical styles, including blues, ragtime, religious music, and hokum.
Born blind in the town of Thomson, Georgia, McTell learned how to play guitar in his early teens. He soon became a street performer around several Georgia cities, such as Atlanta and Augusta, and first recorded in 1927 for Victor Records. Although he never produced a major hit record, McTell's recording career was prolific, recording for different labels under different names throughout the 1920s and 30s. In 1940, he was recorded by John Lomax for the Library of Congress's folk song archive. He would remain active throughout the 1940s and 50s, playing on the streets of Atlanta, often with his longtime associate, Curley Weaver. Twice more he recorded professionally. McTell's last recordings originated during an impromptu session recorded by an Atlanta record store owner in 1956. McTell would die three years later after suffering for years from diabetes and alcoholism. Despite his mainly failed releases, McTell was one of the few archaic blues musicians that would actively play and record during the 1940s and 50s. However, McTell never lived to be "rediscovered" during the imminent American folk music revival, as many other bluesmen would.
McTell's influence extended over a wide variety of artists, including The Allman Brothers Band, who famously covered McTell's "Statesboro Blues", and Bob Dylan, who paid tribute to McTell in his 1983 song "Blind Willie McTell"; the refrain of which is, "And I know no one can sing the blues, like Blind Willie McTell". Other artists include Taj Mahal, Alvin Youngblood Hart, The White Stripes, Ralph McTell and Chris Smither
Blind Willie McTell 1901 1959
Big Maceo Merriweather (March 31, 1905 – February 23, 1953) was an American Chicago blues pianist and singer, active in Chicago in the 1940s.
Born Major Merriweather (or Merewether) in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, he was a self-taught pianist. In the 1920s he moved to Detroit, Michigan and began playing parties and clubs. In 1941, a desire to record led him to Chicago where he met and befriended Tampa Red. Red introduced him to Lester Melrose of Bluebird Records, who signed him to a recording contract.
His first record was "Worried Life Blues" (1941), which promptly became a blues hit and remained his signature piece. Other classic piano blues recordings such as "Chicago Breakdown", "Texas Stomp", and "Detroit Jump" followed. His piano style developed from players like Leroy Carr and Roosevelt Sykes, as well as from the Boogie-woogie style of Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Ammons. He in turn influenced other musicians like Henry Gray, who credits Merriweather to helping him launch his career as a blues pianist.
His style had an impact on practically every post World War II blues pianist of note. His most famous song, "Worried Life Blues" is a staple of the blues repertoire, with artists such as Eric Clapton featuring it regularly in concert. "Worried Life Blues" was in the first batch of songs inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame "Classic Blues Recordings - Singles or Albums Tracks" alongside "Stormy Monday," 'Sweet Home Chicago," "Dust My Broom," and "Hellhound On My Trail."
His career was cut short in 1946 by a stroke. Poor health and a lifetime of heavy drinking eventually led to a fatal heart attack. He died on February 23, 1953 in Chicago, and was interred at the Detroit Memorial Cemetery in Warren, Michigan.
His sparse recordings for Bluebird were released in a double album set as Chicago Breakdown, in 1975. They have since been reissued on a variety of labels.
In 2002 he was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
On May 3, 2008 the White Lake Blues Festival took place at the Howmet Playhouse Theater in Whitehall, Michigan. The event was organized by executive producer, Steve Salter, of the nonprofit organization Killer Blues to raise monies to honor Merriweather's unmarked grave with a headstone. The concert was a success, and a headstone was placed in June, 2008.
Big Maceo Merriweather 1905 1953
Hazel Meyers was an American classic female blues and country blues singer. She spent most of her career in black vaudeville, although on recordings she was billed as a blues artist. Her more famous numbers included "Heartbreaking Blues" and "Blackville After Dark", both sung in her contralto voice.
Meyers' recording career composed of a total of forty-one sides, the majority waxed between September 1923 and August 1924. She saw her output released by several record labels, including Ajax, Brunswick (issued under the Vocalion banner) Pathė, Banner, Bell, and Emerson, with her final couple of releases appearing on Okeh in June 1926. Meyers had gramophone record releases on six different labels in 1924. Her accompanists variously included Fletcher Henderson, Porter Grainger, James "Bubber" Miley, Leslie "Hutch" Henderson and Don Redman, plus on one recording, Fats Waller. Meyers' tracks included the first female vaudeville artist recording of the satirical song, "Black Star Line", released in May 1924. The song was recorded by both Meyers and Rosa Henderson within a twenty four hour period.
One source speculated that Meyers also recorded under the pseudonyms of Mae Harris for Domino, and Louella Smith for Oriole.
Meyers appeared in vaudeville throughout the 1920s. Detailed information is not available, but she did appear in Steppin' High, a variety show staged in Harlem, New York, where she was backed by the orchestra of Fletcher Henderson. More generally, she is believed to have made regular appearances in the theater until the early 1930s.
However, little is known of life outside of her professional engagements.
Meyers entire recorded work was made available in 1996 by Document Records.
Hazel Meyers unknown unknown
Memphis Minnie (June 3, 1897 – August 6, 1973) was an American blues guitarist, vocalist and songwriter. She was the only female blues artist considered a match to male contemporaries as both a singer and an instrumentalist.
Born Lizzie Douglas in Algiers, Louisiana, Minnie was one of the most influential and pioneering female blues musicians and guitarists of all time. She recorded for forty years, almost unheard of for any woman in show business at the time and unique among female blues artists. A flamboyant character who wore bracelets made of silver dollars, she was a very popular blues recording artist from the early Depression years through World War II. One of the first generation of blues artists to take up the electric guitar, in 1942, she combined her Louisiana-country roots with Memphis blues to produce her own unique country-blues sound; along with Big Bill Broonzy and Tampa Red, she took country blues into electric urban blues, paving the way for Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Little Walter, and Jimmy Rogers to travel from the small towns of the south to the big cities of the north.
According to some reports she was married three times, each time to an accomplished blues guitarist: Kansas Joe McCoy later of the Harlem Hamfats, possibly Casey Bill Weldon (though there is little if any evidence for this), and Ernest "Little Son Joe" Lawlers. Paul and Beth Garon's 1992 biography on Memphis Minnie, Woman With Guitar: Memphis Minnie's Blues, makes no mention of a marriage to Weldon, but only says that she recorded two sides with him, in November 1935, for Bluebird Records. It does describe the relationships and marriages to McCoy and Lawlers.
After learning to play guitar and banjo as a child, she ran away from home at the age of thirteen. She travelled to Memphis, Tennessee, playing guitar in nightclubs and on the street as Lizzie "Kid" Douglas. The next year, she joined the Ringling Brothers circus. Her marriage and recording début came in 1929, to and with Kansas Joe McCoy, when a Columbia Records talent scout heard them playing in a Beale Street barbershop in their distinctive 'Memphis style,' and their song "Bumble Bee" became a hit. In the 1930s she moved to Chicago, Illinois with McCoy. She and McCoy broke up in 1935, and by 1939 she was with Little Son Joe Lawlers. In the 1940s she formed a touring vaudeville company. Some of her most potent and enduring work was made in the early 1940s, such as "Nothing in Rambling," "In My Girlish Days," "Looking The World Over" and "Me and My Chauffeur Blues".
Later in the 1940s Minnie lived in Indianapolis, Indiana and Detroit, Michigan, returning to Chicago in the early 1950s. From the 1950s on, however, public interest in her music declined, and in 1957 she and Lawlers returned to Memphis. Lawlers died in 1961.
After her health began to fail in the mid 1950s, Minnie returned to Memphis and retired from performing and recording. She spent her twilight years in a nursing home in Memphis where she died of a stroke in 1973. She is buried at the New Hope Baptist Church Cemetery in Walls, DeSoto County, Mississippi. A headstone paid for by Bonnie Raitt was erected by the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund on 13 October 1996 with 35 family members in attendance including her sister, numerous nieces (including Laverne Baker) and nephews. The ceremony was taped for broadcast by the BBC.
Her headstone is marked:
Lizzie "Kid" Douglas Lawlers
aka Memphis Minnie
The inscription on the back of her gravestone reads:
"The hundreds of sides Minnie recorded are the perfect material to teach us about the blues. For the blues are at once general, and particular, speaking for millions, but in a highly singular, individual voice. Listening to Minnie's songs we hear her fantasies, her dreams, her desires, but we will hear them as if they were our own."
Memphis Minnie 1897 1973
Eugene "Buddy" Moss (January 16, 1914 – October 19, 1984) was, in the estimation of many blues scholars, one of two the most influential East Coast blues guitarists to record in the period between Blind Blake's final sessions in 1932 and Blind Boy Fuller's debut in 1935 (the other being Josh White). A younger contemporary of Blind Willie McTell, Curley Weaver and Barbecue Bob, Moss was part of a coterie of Atlanta bluesmen, and among the few of his era who had been involved in the blues revival of the 1960s and 1970s. A guitarist of uncommon skill and dexterity with a strong voice, he began as a musical disciple of Blind Blake, and may well have served as an influence on the later Piedmont-style guitarist Blind Boy Fuller. Although his career was halted in 1935 by a six-year jail term, and then by the Second World War, Moss lived long enough to be rediscovered in the 1960s, when he revealed his talent had persevered throughout the years. He was reputed to have been cankerous and mistrusting of others, the extent to which this is a case is subjective.
In later years, Moss credited friend and band-mate Barbecue Bob with being a major influence on his playing, which would be understandable given the time they spent together. Scholars also attribute Arthur "Blind" Blake as a major force in his development, with mannerisms and inflections that both share. It is also suggested by Alan Balfour and others that Moss may have been an influence on Blind Boy Fuller, as they never met and Moss' recording career ended before Fuller's began — Moss's first recordings display some inflections and nuances that Fuller had not put down on record until some years later.
Moss died in Atlanta on October 19, 1984, once again largely forgotten by the public. In the years since, his music was once again being heard courtesy of the Biograph label's reissue of the 1966 performance and the Austrian Document label, which has released virtually every side that he released between 1930 and 1941. While there were some who tried to get him to record, his difficult personality made that impossible - once again, he was his own worst enemy - in spite of his immense talent and importance. As a result, his reputation has once again grown, although he is still not nearly as well known among blues enthusiasts as Blind Willie McTell or Blind Boy Fuller.
Buddy Moss 1914 1984
Charlie Patton (between April 1887 and 1891 – April 28, 1934), better known as Charley Patton, was an American Delta blues musician. He is considered by many to be the "Father of the Delta Blues", and is credited with creating an enduring body of American music and personally inspiring just about every Delta blues man (Palmer, 1995). Musicologist Robert Palmer considers him among the most important musicians that America produced in the twentieth century. Many sources, including musical releases and his gravestone, spell his name “Charley” even though the musician himself spelled his name "Charlie."
Charlie Patton 1891 1934
Buster Pickens (June 3, 1916 – November 24, 1964) was an American blues pianist. Pickens is best known for his work accompanying Alger "Texas" Alexander and Lightnin' Hopkins, although he did record a solo album in 1960
He was born Edwin Goodwin Pickens in Hempstead, Texas.
In the 1930s Pickens, along with Robert Shaw and others, was part of the "Santa Fe Circuit", named after touring musicians utilizing the Santa Fe freight trains. From that time, Pickens described people doing the slow drag to "slow low-down dirty blues" in barrelhouse joints.
Following service in the United States Army in World War II, Pickens returned to Houston, Texas. He appeared on his first disc recording on January 13, 1948, providing backing for Perry Cain on his single "All The Way From Texas" / "Cry Cry", released by Gold Star Records. Further recording work followed over the next eighteen months, as he played on different sessions as part of the accompaniment to Cain, Bill Hayes, and Goree Carter.
Pickens later recorded for Freedom Records in 1950, playing accompaniment to Alger "Texas" Alexander on the latter's final recording session. Pickens later performed live on a regular basis with Lightnin' Hopkins, and played on several of Hopkins's albums in the early 1960s, including Walkin' This Road By Myself (1962), Smokes Like Lightning (1963), Lightnin' and Co. (1963). Pickens had by this time also recorded his own debut solo album, Buster Pickens (1960), and appeared in the 1962 film, The Blues.
Pickens was shot dead, following an argument in a bar in Houston, in November 1964.
Buster Pickens 1916 1964
That’s it for Part Ib: Early Country Blues, I’ll be following up with Part Ic to complete the series on Early Country Blues. There are many more to follow so I hope you decide to follow along through each part/section of the series.
I’m looking forward to receiving some honest comments from all of you. It helps me to develop my site so that it is what you are interested in and like to see and read about.
Well once again, until next time ~ ~ ~
Musician By Night . . .
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