Now here we are at Part IIb and the Early Urban Blues artists. You may noticed already that there are some artists that are listed in more than one category. I myself question that item so I will do what I can to get an answer for us on that item for sure.
So here we go with the second half of the Early Urban Blues artists under Part IIb.
Name Birth Date Death Date
Maggie Jones was an American blues singer and pianist, who recorded thirty-eight songs between 1923 and 1926. She was billed as “The Texas Nightingale.” Jones is best remembered for her songs, “Single Woman’s Blues,” “Undertaker’s Blues,” and “Northbound Blues.”
She was born Fae Barnes in Hillsboro, Texas. Her year of birth is most regularly cited as 1900, although this has not been proven. She relocated to New York in 1922, where she performed in local nightclubs. She appeared at the Princess Theater in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1922, and toured the TOBA theater circuit until ca. 1926.
Her debut recording session was on July 26, 1923, for Black Swan Records, where she became the first singer from Texas to record a side. Her recording career saw Jones appear on several record labels including Black Swan, Victor, Pathé and Paramount, although the bulk of her work was released by Columbia. On Black Swan and Paramount she was billed as Fae (or Faye) Barnes; on Pathé and Columbia she recorded as Maggie Jones. It is unknown whether marriage played any part in her name change.
Over a three year period, her accompaniment was variously supplied by notables such as Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, Charlie Green, and Elmer Snowden. Jones is especially noted for her six sides on which she was backed by Fletcher Henderson and Louis Armstrong; author Derrick Stewart-Baxter singled out “Good Time Flat Blues” as “her masterpiece”. With Fletcher Henderson and Charlie Green she recorded “North Bound Blues”, which contained trenchant references to the South’s Jim Crow laws that are unusual for a classic female blues singer. By October 3, 1926, Jones had cut her final disc. In 1927 she performed with the Clarence Muse Vaudeville Company and sang in Hall Johnson’s choir at the Roxy Theater in New York City.
In 1928–1929 Jones appeared with Bill Robinson in the Broadway production of Lew Leslie’s revue, Blackbirds of 1928, which toured the US and Canada. She often worked outside the music industry, including co-owning a clothes store in New York. By the early 1930s Jones moved on to Dallas, Texas, and ran her own revue troupe which performed in Fort Worth, Texas. In 1934 she appeared in the All American Cabaret in Fort Worth. She subsequently disappeared from the public eye.
Her total recording output is available on Maggie Jones, Vol. 1 (1923-1925) and Maggie Jones & Gladys Bentley: Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 2 (May 1925-June 1926)/Gladys Bentley (1928-1929).
Maggie Jones c.1900 unknown
Whistlin’ Alex Moore (November 22, 1899 – January 20, 1989)
Whistlin’ Alex Moore was an American blues pianist, singer and whistler. He is best remembered for his recordings of “Across The Atlantic Ocean” and “Black Eyed Peas and Hog Jowls.”
Born Alexander Herman Moore in Dallas, Texas, After his father’s death, Moore dropped out of school to support his mother and two siblings. He learned the piano before, in 1916, entering the United States Army. His overall sound during the 1920s combined elements of the blues, ragtime, barrelhouse boogie, and stride. The same decade saw Moore acquire his nickname, based upon a whistle he made while playing the piano.
In 1929, he made his debut recordings for Columbia Records. The records he made did not sell in great quantities, and Moore did not record again until 1937, when he issued a few sides on Decca Records.
It was 1951 before Moore recorded again with RPM/Kent. However, throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Moore performed in clubs in Dallas and occasionally other parts of Texas. Arhoolie Records signed him to a recording contract in 1960, and those subsequent recordings saw him obtain nationwide recognition. Throughout the 1960s, Moore played at clubs and festivals in America, as well as a small number of festivals across Europe. He toured with the American Folk Blues Festival in 1969, performing on the same bill as Earl Hooker and Magic Sam. The same year he recorded a session in Stuttgart, Germany, which led to the release of Alex Moore in Europe. He did not record again in either the 1970s or 1980s, yet continued to give live performances up to his death.
He remembered and sang again the blues he had recorded in the 1920s and 1930s, such as “West Texas Woman” and “Blue Bloomer Blues”, with their touching and poetic lyrics.
In 1987, Moore was granted a National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts, becoming the first African American Texan to receive such an honor.
The year before his death, he recorded Wiggle Tail, his final session for Rounder Records On November 22, 1988, the state of Texas designated his birthday ‘Alex Moore Day.’
Moore died of a heart attack in January 1989 in Dallas, aged 89. He never married, but was survived by a son and daughter. He was interred at the Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Dallas.
Music journalist Tony Russell wrote that “Moore was so odd a performer that some newcomers to the blues have been uncertain whether to take him seriously. By the time he became moderately well-known on the international blues scene of the 1960s and 1970s; his always singular style had burgeoned into florid eccentricity, and he would reminisce tirelessly in a foggy half-shout about youthful high times in his hometown, over skipping blues and boogie-woogie piano patterns with occasional bursts of shrill whistling.”
Whistlin' Alex Moore 1899 1989
Ma Rainey (April 26, 1886? – December 22, 1939) was one of the earliest known American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of such singers to record. She was billed as The Mother of the Blues.
She began performing at the age of 12 or 14, and recorded under the name Ma Rainey after she and Will Rainey were married in 1904. They toured with F.S. Wolcott’s Rabbit Foot Minstrels and later formed their own group called Rainey and Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues. From the time of her first recording in 1923 to five years later, Ma Rainey made over 100 recordings. Some of them include, Bo-weevil Blues (1923), Moonshine Blues (1923), See See Rider (1924), Black Bottom (1927), and Soon This Morning (1927).
Ma Rainey was known for her very powerful vocal abilities, energetic disposition, majestic phrasing, and a ‘moaning’ style of singing similar to folk tradition. Though her powerful voice and disposition are not captured on her recordings (due to her recording exclusively for Paramount, which was known for worse-than-normal recording techniques and among the industry's poorest shellac quality), the other characteristics are present, and most evident on her early recordings, Bo-weevil Blues and Moonshine Blues. Ma Rainey also recorded with Louis Armstrong in addition to touring and recording with the Georgia Jazz Band. Ma Rainey continued to tour until 1935 when she retired to her hometown.
Ma Rainey 1886 1939
Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer.
Nicknamed The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s. She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and, along with Louis Armstrong, a major influence on subsequent jazz vocalists
Inducted at: The 1989 Induction Ceremony
Induction category: Early Influence
Bessie Smith earned the title of “Empress of the Blues” by virtue of her forceful vocal delivery and command of the genre. Her singing displayed a soulfully phrased, boldly delivered and nearly definitive grasp of the blues. In addition, she was an all-around entertainer who danced, acted and performed comedy routines with her touring company. She was the highest-paid black performer of her day and arguably reached a level of success greater than that of any African-American entertainer before her.
Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1894. Like many of her generation, she dreamed of escaping a life of poverty by way of show business. As a teenager she joined a traveling minstrel show, the Moss Stokes Company. Her brother Clarence was a comedian with the troupe, and Smith befriended another member, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (a.k.a. the “Mother of the Blues"), who served as something of a blues mentor. After a decade’s seasoning on the stage, Smith was signed to Columbia Records in 1923. Her first recording - “Down Hearted Blues” b/w “Gulf Coast Blues” - sold an estimated 800,000 copies, firmly establishing her as a major figure in the black record market. Smith sang raw, uncut country blues inspired by life in the South, in which everyday experiences were related in plainspoken language - not unlike the rap music that would emerge more than half a century later. She was ahead of her time in another sense as well. In the words of biographer Chris Albertson, “Bessie had a wonderful way of turning adversity into triumph, and many of her songs are the tales of liberated women.”
Some of her better-known sides from the Twenties include “Backwater Blues,” “Taint Nobody’s Bizness If I Do,” “St. Louis Blues” (recorded with Louis Armstrong), and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” The Depression dealt her career a blow, but Smith changed with the times by adapting a more up-to-date look and revised repertoire that incorporated Tin Pan Alley tunes like “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”
On the verge of the Swing Era, Smith died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident outside Clarksdale, Mississippi, in September 1937. She left behind a rich, influential legacy of 160 recordings cut between 1923 and 1933. Some of the great vocal divas who owe a debt to Smith include Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin. In Joplin’s own words of tribute, “She showed me the air and taught me how to fill it.”
Bessie Smith 1894 1937
Clara Smith (c. 1894 – February 2, 1935) was an American classic female blues singer. She was billed as the "Queen of the Moaners", although Smith actually had a lighter and sweeter voice than her contemporaries and main competitors.
Smith was born in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. In her youth she worked on African American theater circuits and tent shows. By the late 1910s she was appearing as a headliner at the Lyric Theater in New Orleans, Louisiana and on the T.O.B.A. circuit.
In 1923 Smith settled in New York, appearing at cabarets and speakeasies there; that same year she made the first of her commercially successful series of gramophone recordings for Columbia Records, for whom she would continue recording through to 1932. She cut 122 songs often with the backing of top musicians (especially after 1925) including Louis Armstrong, Charlie Green, Joe Smith, Freddy Jenkins, Fletcher Henderson and James P. Johnson (in 1929). Plus she recorded two vocal duets with Bessie Smith, and four with Lonnie Johnson.
The comparisons with near namesake Bessie Smith were inevitable. Clara Smith was on the whole less fortunate than Bessie in her accompanists, and her voice was less imposing but, to some tastes, prettier, and many of her songs were interesting (and she was the second best seller on Columbia's 14000-D series, behind Bessie Smith).
In 1933 she moved to Detroit, Michigan, and worked at theaters there until her hospitalization in early 1935 for heart disease, of which she died.
Clara Smith c.1894 1935
Mamie Smith (née Robinson) (May 26, 1883 – September 16, 1946) was an American vaudeville singer, dancer, pianist and actress, who appeared in several films late in her career. As a vaudeville singer she performed a number of styles including jazz and blues. She entered blues history by being the first African American artist to make vocal blues recordings in 1920. Willie "The Lion" Smith (not her husband) explained the background to that recording in his (ghosted) autobiography, Music on My Mind.
Mamie Smith appeared in an early sound film, Jailhouse Blues, in 1929. She retired from recording and performing in 1931. She returned to performing in 1939 to appear in the motion picture Paradise in Harlem produced by her husband Jack Goldberg. She appeared in further films, including Mystery in Swing, Sunday Sinners (1940), Stolen Paradise (1941), Murder on Lenox Avenue (1941), and Because I Love You (1943). She died in 1946, in New York.
Mamie Smith 1883 1946
Ruby Smith (August 24, 1903 – March 24, 1977) was an American classic female blues singer. She was a niece, by marriage, of the better known Bessie Smith, who discouraged Ruby from a recording career. Nevertheless, following Bessie's death in 1937, Ruby went on to record twenty-one sides between 1938 and 1947. She is also known for her recorded explicit, and candid observations, on her own and Bessie's lifestyle.
Ruby Smith 1903 1977
Charlie Spand was an American blues and boogie-woogie pianist and singer, noted for his barrelhouse style. Spand was deemed one of the most influential piano players of the 1920s. Little is known of his life outside of music, and his total recordings comprise only thirty three tracks.
Charlie was an American blues and boogie-woogie pianist and singer, noted for his barrelhouse style. Spand was deemed one of the most influential piano players of the 1920s. Little is known of his life outside of music, and his total recordings comprise only thirty three tracks.
There is speculation about his place of birth. Allmusic stated that some claim Spand arrived in Elljay, Georgia, whilst his self-penned track, "Alabama Blues," had a reference to his birth in that part of the country. Various blues historians also cited Spand's songs, "Levee Camp Man" and "Mississippi Blues," as evidence of connections there.
More certain is that Spand, along with others such as William Ezell, was one of those boogie-woogie pianists who, in the 1920s, performed on Brady Street and Hastings Street in Detroit, Michigan. In 1929, Spand relocated to Chicago, Illinois, where he met and began performing alongside Blind Blake. Spand recorded twenty five songs for Paramount Records between June 1929 and September 1931. The tracks were variously recorded in Richmond, Indiana, Chicago, and Grafton, Wisconsin. From the 1929 Richmond recording sessions, were seven songs which had guitar accompaniment to Spand's piano playing and singing. Most of these were directly attributed to Blake. During Spand's most notable recording, he and Blake had a small conversation during the making of "Hastings Street." Another such duet occurred on "Moanin' the Blues."
After a gap in his recording career, in June 1940 Spand recorded what turned out to be his final eight tracks, this time for Okeh Records. These were made in Chicago, when Spand was backed by Little Son Joe and Big Bill Broonzy. However, after these recordings were made, no further reference to Spand can be located.
In 1992, Document Records issued The Complete Paramounts (1929-1931). Yazoo Records' Dreaming the Blues: The Best of Charlie Spand (2002) had enhanced sound quality, but without the chronological track order favored by Testament.
Spand's track "Back to the Woods" has been recorded by Kokomo Arnold, Joan Crane and Rory Block, while Josh White recorded his "Good Gal."
Charlie Spand unknown unknown
Walter Vinson (February 2, 1901 – April 22, 1975) was an American Memphis blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. He was a member of the Mississippi Sheiks, worked with Bo Chatmon and his brothers, and co-wrote the blues standard, "Sitting on Top of the World". Walter Vinson is variously erroneously known as Walter Vincson and Walter Vincent, and sometimes recorded as Walter Jacobs, thus using his mother's maiden name.
Vinson died in Chicago in 1975 at the age of 74. He was interred at the Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois in an unmarked grave.
In 2004, the Mississippi Sheiks were inducted in the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame, whilst "Sitting on Top of the World" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008.
In 2009, a concert held by executive producer, Steve Salter, of the nonprofit organization Killer Blues raised monies to place a headstone on Vinson's grave. The event was a success, and a stone was placed in October, 2009. The concert was held at the Howmet Playhouse Theater in Whitehall, Michigan. The concert featured blues musicians Thomas Esparza and Lonnie Blonde.
Walter Vinson 1901 1975
Birth:
Nov. 1, 1898 | Houston, Harris County, Texas, USA
Death:
Nov. 1, 1986 | Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan, USA
Born the daughter of a Baptist minister in Houston, Texas, Beulah "Sippie" Wallace was a charismatic blues singer of the 1920s. By the early 1920s, she moved to Chicago, Illinois where she made her first recordings for the OKeh Record label in 1923. She recorded with numerous artists, such as Clarence Williams, King Oliver, and Louis Armstrong during the 1920s. She left the music scene in the late 1920s to become active in her church, the Leland Baptist Church in Detroit, where she served as the organist and as a singer. She made occasional musical performances during the 1940s and 1950s throughout the Detroit area.
She also served as the director of the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses in Chicago. She was "rediscovered" during the 1960's during the "Blues Revival period." She recorded for the Storyville Record label and for Spivey Records as well as touring Europe. She also made appearances on the David Letterman Show and on the TODAY Show. She died on her eighty-eighth birthday of natural causes in Detroit.
(bio by: Adam Maroney)
Search Amazon for Beulah Wallace
Burial:
Trinity Cemetery | Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan, USA
Sippie Wallace 1898 1986
Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896 – September 1, 1977) was an American blues, jazz and gospel vocalist and actress. She frequently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts, although she began her career in the 1920s singing blues.
Her best-known recordings includes, "Dinah", "Stormy Weather", "Taking a Chance on Love", "Heat Wave", "Supper Time", "Am I Blue?", and "Cabin in the Sky", as well as her version of the spiritual "His Eye Is on the Sparrow". Waters was the second African American, after Hattie McDaniel, to be nominated for an Academy Award.
Ethel Waters was born in Chester, Pennsylvania on October 31, 1896, as a result of the rape of her teenaged mother, Louise Anderson (believed to have been thirteen years old at the time, although some sources indicate she may have been slightly older) by John Waters, a pianist and family acquaintance from a mixed-race middle-class background, who played no role in raising Ethel. Ethel Waters was raised in poverty and never lived in the same place for more than 15 months.
Waters is the great-aunt of singer-songwriter Crystal Waters. Waters often toured with Billy Graham on his crusades. She died on September 1, 1977, aged 80, from uterine cancer, kidney failure, and other ailments in Chatsworth, California
Ethel Waters 1896 1977
Jabo Williams was an African American boogie-woogie and blues pianist and songwriter. His total recorded output was a mere eight sides, which included his two best-known "stunningly primitive" offerings, "Pratt City Blues" and “Jab's Blues" (1932). Details of his life outside of music are scanty.
It is generally supposed that Williams was born in Pratt City, Birmingham, Alabama, United States. However, this is based purely on references to that location, in his self-penned recording of "Pratt City Blues". What is certain is that he relocated to St. Louis, Missouri, and was recommended to Paramount Records, by a local record store owner and scout Jesse Johnson. In May 1932, Williams recorded eight tracks in a recording studio in Grafton, Wisconsin, for the Paramount label. The timing was not fortuitous, as Paramount stopped recording that year, and went out of business in 1935. Consequently, Williams's output was limited in both national distribution and the number of issued records. His "Kokomo Blues," followed previous recordings of a similar style with the same refrain, but included the counting line;
One and two is three, four and five and six
This partly paved the way towards the better known song, "Sweet Home Chicago".
By the late 1940s and early 1950s, some of Williams tracks were re-issued on the American Music record label, amongst others. His playing style was somewhat unique, but such belated recognition failed to unearth Williams, whose life details remain a mystery.
He was recalled briefly by Henry Townsend, who stated "I knew him from down on Biddle Street and I played guitar behind him around town". He added that Williams was "an average guy and he was very entertaining... he disappeared from St. Louis and went down in Arkansas some place. I never knew what the hell happened to him."
His total output consisted of the tracks, "Barrelhouse Woman Blues", "Fat Mama Blues", "House Lady Blues", "Jab's Blues", "Kokomo Blues", "My Woman Blues", "Pollock Blues", and "Pratt City Blues". All, except the first title listed, were included on the compilation album, Boogie Woogie & Barrelhouse Piano, Vol. 1 (1928-1932), issued in 1992 by Document Records.
Jabo Williams unknown unknown
Oscar "Buddy" Woods (c. 1895 – December 14, 1955) was an American Texas blues guitarist, singer and songwriter.
Woods, who was an early blues pioneer in lap steel, slide guitar playing, recorded thirty-five tracks between 1930 and 1940. He recorded solo and as part of the duo, the Shreveport Home Wreckers, and with a six/seven piece group, the Wampus Cats. Early in his career he backed Jimmie Davis on some of his recordings. Woods's best known song was "Lone Wolf Blues", from which came his billing as 'The Lone Wolf'.
He was born around Natchitoches, Louisiana, United States, with the birth year variously listed as somewhere between 1892 and 1900. He relocated to Shreveport, Louisiana around 1925, where he started to work as a street musician and played for tips at juke joints. Various sources claim that he learned the rudiments of playing a bottleneck slide guitar after watching an Hawaiian music ensemble, who toured Louisiana in the early part of the 1920s. Woods teamed up with another guitar player, Ed Schaffer, and played billed as the Shreveport Home Wreckers at The Blue Goose Grocery and Market, which was a speakeasy in Shreveport. In May 1930, the duo recorded for Victor Records in Memphis, Tennessee.
In May 1932, the Shreveport Home Wreckers backed Jimmie Davis on four sides recorded in Dallas, Texas. They also recorded another two tracks on their own, and the released single saw them billed as 'Eddie and Oscar'. The significance of this mixed-race recording session spilled over into a joint tour - a unique sociological situation at that time in the South.
Woods next recorded for Decca in March 1936 in New Orleans. The tracks included Woods best known piece, "Lone Wolf Blues," and his his first take of the self-penned "Don't Sell It, Don't Give It Away." The releases sold well, and by the time Woods recorded again in October 1937, the Shreveport Home Wreckers had swelled in numbers to become the Wampus Cats. They backed both Woods, and a female singer, Kitty Gray, on several tracks recorded in 1937 and the following year for Vocalion.
In October 1940, Woods made his final five track recording for the Library of Congress. Following the session, John Lomax wrote: "Oscar (Buddy) Woods, Joe Harris and Kid West are all professional Negro guitarists and singers of Texas Avenue, Shreveport.. The songs I have recorded are among those they use to cajole nickels and dimes from the pockets of listeners." Local records suggest that Woods continued to live in Shreveport, and after his recording career was over, he played again as a street musician and at dances.
Woods died in Shreveport in December 1955.
Oscar "Buddy" Woods c.1895 1955
Well this was a very challenging series to put together today but I gained an awful lot of new information about these particular blues artists especially in the Early Urban Blues genre. The next part in this series is called Pre-World War II Jazz Blues. I hope you found this inspiring and that you’re as anxious to go forward in the research as I am.
Until next time ~ ~ ~
Musician By Night . . .
