Lord Larehip

Eddie James “Son” House, Jr. (1902-1988)—an unparalleled bluesman, one of the blues genre’s inventors. Born in Riverton, Mississippi about two miles from Clarksdale, he learned from Patton and was the teacher of Robert Johnson. In 1927, Son House was sentenced to 15 years at the Mississippi State Penitentiary then known as Parchman Farm—a very rough place to do time. Apparently, House was performing at a juke joint when a drunken man opened fire in the place. House was hit in the leg, drew his own weapon and killed the man. His sentence was drastically reduced and he was released from Parchman in 1929. He recorded between 1930 and 1943. He recorded some test pressings for Henry Speir and for Alan Lomax and the Library of Congress. He recorded only a few commercial sides. Despite his genius, he was not a dedicated musician and only did it for the money and eventually laid the guitar down. There is some confusion over when he retired from music and why. One source stated that House quit playing in 1948 when his best friend, bluesman Willie Brown, died. But Brown died in 1952. From his retirement until 1963, House did not touch a guitar. This infuriated Howlin’ Wolf, one of his chief disciples, who felt that House had thrown his career away for the bottle. House was located in 1963 living in Rochester, New York working for the railroad. He was persuaded to start playing again but was so long out of music that he could not remember how to play his own material. A 22-year-old Al Wilson (guitarist and founder of Canned Heat) was brought in to teach House how to play House. Wilson literally knew every note that House had played from listening incessantly to the old recordings. With Wilson’s help, House was able to perform a set at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964. House continued to perform all over the U.S. and Europe until 1974 when ill health forced him to retire for good. He moved to Detroit and spent the last 14 years of his life there, dying in 1988 at the age of 86. He had no family. The Detroit Blues Society held a series of benefit concerts to buy a proper headstone for Son House who is buried at Mt. Hazel Cemetery in Detroit.


The grave of Son House at the Mt. Hazel Cemetery in the Brightmoor area (Lahser and Pickford)—an area so incredibly run down and squalid that I didn't feel safe parking my car anywhere when I went to visit his grave.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK7M3n6Wwo0
Watch carefully, kiddies, this is how its done.

Lord Larehip

Tampa Red (real name Hudson Woodbridge). Born in Georgia in 1904, Red’s parents died when he was very young. He was taken in by an aunt and uncle of the name of Whittaker who lived in Tampa and so he was thereafter known as Hudson Whittaker.

Red had an older brother named Eddie who played guitar so Red took up the instrument. He then met a busker called Piccolo Pete who took Red under his wing and taught him about playing and performing blues. In 1928, Red was hired by Ma Rainey to play guitar for her on the song “It’s Tight Like That.” This type of blues, called hokum, became Red’s trademark material for the rest of his career. Hokum is a form of light blues full of sexual innuendo and double entendres. Often a vaudeville dialog with musical accompaniment would serve as a song.

Also in 1928, Red got himself one of the first National tricone resonator guitars. It was gold-plated and so Red became known as “the Man with the Gold Guitar.” On these old recordings, Red’s guitar actually sounds like an electric. Red would go on to play with Georgia Tom (Thomas A. Dorsey who coined the term “gospel music”) and Frankie Jaxon under such names as the Hokum Boys or Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band. Red’s recordings were distinguished by his trademark single string runs done with a bottleneck instead of full chords which prefigured the lead guitar playing of rocknroll.

By 1932, Red was a session man backing such notables as Sonny Boy Williamson (the original), Big Bill Broonzy and Memphis Minnie. By the early 40s, he began using the electric guitar. His band, the Chicago Five, backed many of the Bluebird solo artists and their sound was called “the Bluebird Sound.” He had another hokum hit in 1942 called “Let Me Play With Your Poodle.”

In Chicago, Red’s house was a bluesman’s mecca. Blues personalities coming from the Delta recently moved to Chicago often stayed there until they could get on their feet. Jam sessions, rehearsals and bookings were common at Red’s.

In 1953, Red’s contract with Victor was not renewed and his wife passed away. Red took to drink which plagued him for the rest of his days. He enjoyed a revival of interest in his music in the late 50s when Americans and Britons began to seriously consider blues.

Red made his last recording in 1960 but he was a spent force who lived in obscurity until his death in 1981 at the age of 77. By then, he was destitute and forgotten. His golden tricone guitar was recovered somewhere in Illinois in the 90s and donated to the Experience Music Project in Seattle.


Tampa Red - It Hurts Me Too - YouTube

Lord Larehip

Booker T. Washington White a.k.a. Bukka White (1906-1977). Although frequently listed as “Bukka White,” he never used that name and disliked it, preferring “Booker White.” Born near Aberdeen, Mississippi, White started off playing the fiddle for square dances and was fairly adept on the piano but had learned guitar at age 9 from his father, a railroad worker. White eventually got himself a National steel box Duolian. White was greatly influenced by Charlie Patton whom he claims to have met.

Growing up around trains, White was adept at riding the rails—always a dangerous business—and traveled a large part of the Midwest and South this way. White got a contract with Victor in 1930 where he recorded 14 songs with Memphis Minnie. He had very limited commercial success. He went to Chicago as a boxer and then to Birmingham, Alabama to pitch for the Birmingham Black Cats—a Negro League team. In 1937, White shot a man during an altercation and was sentenced to Parchman Farm (Mississippi State Penitentiary). While incarcerated, he got a recording contract with Vocalian and recorded two sides including “Shake ‘Em on Down” which was a significant hit and has since become a blues standard. Alan Lomax discovered White in 1939 when he came to record prison songs at Parchman. With help from Lomax, White was released from Parchman the following year.

In 1940, White traveled to Chicago to record and 12 songs were the result. These are considered the best of White’s career covering everything from his prison experience to the injustice of Jim Crow. But before he could really enjoy his success, he was drafted into the U.S. Navy during the war. Even then, he would play juke joints whenever he could. After his release from the Navy, White settled in Memphis playing various gigs.

At this time, his younger cousin, a sharecropper from Mississippi, came to Memphis to perfect his blues playing. He stayed with Booker who gave him a Stella acoustic guitar to work with. He taught his cousin how to play, sing, hold his guitar and how to last a whole night bellowing out blues in juke joints with no amplification, no air conditioning in the summer and no heat in the winter. He sent his cousin out to busk on the streets and play with other musicians and learn from them. After about a year, the cousin went back to Mississippi to pay off his debt and get his wife. He absorbed the lessons White had taught him very well and went on to become one of the greatest bluesmen of all time under the name B. B. King.

Booker White was rediscovered the early 60s along with Son House, Skip James and Mississippi John Hurt during the blues revival and played the Newport Folk Festival among other appearances. He also appeared on television singing blues and giving demonstrations on how to play his Duolian with a steel bar. Booker White died of cancer in Memphis at the age of 70. Bluesmen Eric Bibb played White’s old National on his 2010 Telarc release Booker’s Guitar.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0jRX69mxcE


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsMpHHSLSlc

Lord Larehip

Jimmy Rogers (1924-1997), real name James A. Lane, who came into his own backing Muddy Waters, was born in Ruleville, Mississippi. He started off playing harp but took up guitar in his teens. He went to Atlanta and then to Memphis. Jimmy took his stepfather’s surname of Rogers when he embarked on his musical career and lit out for East St. Louis to play with Robert Junior Lockwood.

By the mid-40s, Rogers was in Chicago playing harp under the name Memphis Slim and his Houserockers. In 1947, Rogers got together with Muddy Waters and Little Walter and they recorded as the Headcutters or Headhunters and founded the South Side Chicago Blues sound. When each band member released a solo project, it usually contained the other band members.

Although Rogers was primarily a guitarist in this band, sometimes Rogers and Walter switched around with Jimmy taking up the harp and Walter taking up the guitar. Rogers established himself as a solo artist by 1950 with such hits as “That’s All Right” and had another hit in 1956 “Walking By Myself” which featured some hot harp work by Little Walter.

Rogers stayed with Waters until 1954 and, after a few more hits of his own, he began to work less and less. The popularity of blues was on the wane and Rogers found fewer gigs and had no desire to switch over to rocknroll. By 1960, he was briefly part of Howlin’ Wolf’s outfit, which he had been during Wolf’s early days at Chess but then Jimmy stopped gigging altogether. For a few years, Jimmy drove a cab and ran a Chicago clothing store which burnt down in the 1968 riots following Martin Luther King’s assassination.

Rogers decided to go back into music when blues made a small revival in the early 70s thanks to B. B. King’s “The Thrill is Gone” hitting #1. In 1971, Jimmy toured Europe which is always interested in seeing American jazz and blues acts as well as early rocknroll. By 1977, he was reunited with Muddy Waters and became a full time solo act in 1982. Rogers continued to perform until his death in 1997 of colon cancer.

Jimmy’s son, James D. Lane, also plays guitar (his first, a Gibson acoustic, was given to him by John Wayne) and works as a recording engineer and producer for Blue Heaven Studios and has worked with old and new blues acts including Honeyboy Edwards, Hubert Sumlin, Pinetop Perkins, B. B. King, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Taj Mahal, Mick Jagger, Jonny Lang, Van Morrison, Gary Moore, Robert Plant, Lazy Lester, Jeff Healy and Keith Richards. Not to mention his father.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhjDXXEcocg

Lord Larehip

John Lee Hooker (1912-2001) hailed from Clarksdale, Mississippi where the Ku Klux Klan marched passed his door on their way to a rally or a lynching. He was taught to play guitar by his stepfather, William Moore, who was famous in the area and used to jam with the top bluesmen in the area.

Hooker eventually left Mississippi and went to Memphis working odd jobs. He came to Detroit in 1943 working for the auto companies. In his free time, he played his guitar at the Hastings Street clubs such as Henry’s Swing Club, the 609 Club and the Horseshoe Club.

Stopping into a record store with a recording booth, Hooker cut a song that the storeowner thought had hit potential and played it for Bernie Besman of Sensation Records—a small Detroit indie label. Besman reportedly wasn’t all that impressed but met with Hooker only to learn the man had a stutter (although I’ve never noticed it having heard him speak). Nevertheless, Besman apparently had a hunch and signed Hooker to a contract.

In 1948, Sensation released “Boogie Chillen” which immediately shot to #1 on the R&B chart and rocketed Hooker to international fame when British blues fans took notice. Hooker had a haunting, mesmerizing sound. Some prefer his solo stuff with just his guitar and his stomping foot and others like his full band arrangements better. Either way, he was a very unique artist who, like Muddy Waters, created his own genre of blues.

One thing that set him apart was his total disregard for song form. Hooker would do whatever he felt like doing to a song—suddenly breaking into lead runs or going through unpredictable key changes, strange pauses and starts—and somehow make it come out sounding good despite the song having no apparent structure.

Hooker signed with a number of labels—Vee-Jay, Chess and Modern—recording under various aliases--John Lee Cooker, Texas Slim, etc.--to prevent legal wrangling saying it made no difference what name went on the record “as long as you get the money.” Hooker also recorded quite a number of sides for Detroit’s legendary Fortune label which helped his cohort, Eddie Kirkland, establish himself as a solo artist. Hooker was enormously popular with British blues fans and was given the royal treatment when he toured the country.

He has played with rock bands as the Animals and Canned Heat as well as Van Morrison. His influence in both blues and rock music is inestimable.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Sv-SNDqgo


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4pp02_GN9A


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oRlhbjM59s
One of Hooker’s less known songs and yet one of his best.

Lord Larehip

Lightnin’ Hopkins (1912-1982)—real name Sam John Hopkins—was born in Centerville, Texas and met Blind Lemon Jefferson at a church function. From that time on, Lightnin’ felt the blues welling up within him. Having relatives who played blues certainly helped. One cousin was blues singer Texas Alexander. Another was electric guitarist Frankie Lee Sims (with whom Lightnin’ would later record). Like T-Bone Walker, Lightnin’ became a protégé of Blind Lemon Jefferson and functioned as a guide playing at various church functions with him. Hopkins did time at the Houston County Prison Farm for an offense that has never been disclosed (of course in Texas during that era a man didn’t have to do anything to end up in prison except be black). He was discovered by Aladdin Records in 1946 and went to L.A. to record with pianist Wilson Smith. An exec there decided they needed dynamic, bluesy nicknames and named Hopkins “Lightnin’” and Smith “Thunder.” Hopkins liked his moniker and kept it the rest of his career. He returned to Texas and began recording for Gold Star Records. Even though he rarely toured outside of Texas in the 40s and 50s, Lightnin’ recorded anywhere from 800 to 1000 songs in his career. When Mack McCormick persuaded Lightnin’ to play at folk revival concerts in the late 50s both in Houston and California before integrated audiences (a first for Lightnin’) on the same bill as people as Seeger and Joan Baez, his popularity, already very high among blacks, now skyrocketed him to international acclaim culminating in a performance at Carnegie Hall in 1960. That same year, he released his biggest hit—“Mojo Hand” for Tradition Records. Throughout the 60s and 70s, Lightnin’ released at least one album per year and toured Germany where audiences, hungry for American blues, packed the halls to hear him and many fans followed him from town to town. He toured Holland some years later and Japan in 1978.

Both Stevie Ray and Jimmy Vaughan cite Lightnin’ as a primary influence. Lightnin’, like many acoustic bluesmen, traveled alone and so developed melodic, bass and percussion with his guitar. He picked, strummed and slapped his guitar in ways that set him apart for other bluesmen. His voice was powerful and could fill a room without needing a microphone. A true artist in every sense. In his later career, Lightnin’s backup band consisted of Dusty Hill and Frank Beard—two-thirds of Z.Z. Topp before the band existed—and they once asked Lightnin’ to give them cues when he was about to change so they could change with him. Lightnin’ just looked at them puzzled and said, “Lightnin’ change when Lightnin’ want to change.” As with John Lee Hooker, Lightnin’ played whatever he felt like playing as soon as the
moment struck him and did not know himself until it happened.

He has recorded more albums than any other blues artist. He died of cancer in 1982 and was memorialized in Crockett, Texas with a statue.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keQR4_7DBnM


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK5zYI86wIw


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCqEOboRctY

Plankton

He played with BHT and the M's too.

__________________
See location...

Lord Larehip

Tommy Johnson (1896?-1956) learned the rudiments of guitar from his older brother, Ledell. Their father had been born a slave. The seventh of 13 children, Tommy ran away from home at 12 with an older woman that Ledell believes only took up with him because he could sing and play and she hoped she could make money off him. Tommy later married a 14-year-old girl named Maggie Campbell and together with Ledell and his wife, Mary. moved to the Tom Sander plantation to live as sharecroppers. Tommy played guitar with Willie Brown and Dick Bankston during this time.

Later, Tommy played with Charlie Patton. Tommy moved around a lot and got into a lot of woman trouble. He had women all over the place. Tommy also got into fights with both white and black men. He also had an extreme fondness for alcohol and didn’t care what source he had to get it from—canned heat (his favorite), cough syrup, furniture polish, hair tonic, mouthwash, etc. Once he was recording at a studio and came across some bonded whiskey (unblended whiskey continuously aged in a barrel for at least four years). Tommy drank so much of it that the recording session was a disaster. Johnson also was busted frequently for public drunkenness.

Once, during the Depression, he was thrown in jail and bail was set at $150. He called Speir and begged him to bail him out. Speir did and Tommy promptly skipped town. In the Depression, $150 went a long way and Speir could not afford to lose it so he was forced to pursue Tommy and bring him back to Jackson. When he caught up to Johnson, Speir had no trouble slipping the cuffs on him and getting him in the backseat of his car—Tommy was out cold.

When Tommy came to, he found himself en route to Jackson handcuffed in the back of Speir’s car and begged Speir to leave him be but Spier said, “I’m sorry, Tommy, but I’ll lose my $150 and I can’t afford it.” Still, Speir had a soft spot for Tommy because he had other problems that weren’t his fault—such as a stutter so severe that he often had to break into song to make himself understood—that made his life that much tougher and stood by him, paid off some of his debts and tried to keep him out of trouble but Tommy and trouble seemed to have a knack for finding each other.

Tommy Johnson died in 1956 from the effects of ill-health brought on by his hard-living and excessive consumption of rotgut. That he even made it to 60 amazed many who knew him. Still, he was a blues genius with a distinctive guitar style combined with an equally distinctive smooth voice that broke into falsetto effortlessly and without a trace of a stutter. His recordings, however, are fairly rare. The above photo, probably taken before 1923, is the only one known of Tommy Johnson.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGuoOyeUj-w


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o808EmOukDQ

Lord Larehip

Mississippi Fred McDowell (1904-1972). Despite using Mississippi in his name, Fred McDowell was born near Memphis. He was orphaned at an early age and took up guitar at 14 and played dances. He took up farming, same as his parents, and moved to Como, Mississippi around 1940 or 41 which was not officially in the Delta region but north of it. Fred was discovered in the early 50s by Alan Lomax. He first played slide with a pocketknife, then with a steak rib bone and, finally, a glass bottleneck. He settled on the glass slide for its clarity. He made his own but Buddy Guy borrowed it and it was lost somewhere in Germany. Fred recalled, laughing, that he next asked a fellow to cut the neck off the bottle for him. The fellow didn’t understand what Fred was asking and cut the neck off the bottle and brought the rest of the bottle to him.

“Whatchu handin’ me this for?” Fred asked. “I can’t do nothin’ with this!” So Fred went and cut his own bottleneck slide and used it for the rest of his days—always wearing it on his ring finger (as did Son House).

Fred became a regular at various blues festivals during the revival era and recorded several albums. His style is considered by bluesologists to be its own genre called North Mississippi which has fewer chord changes than regular Delta blues for a droning effect that is considered closer to its African roots played on instruments with droning sympathetic strings. His guitar-playing is top-notch.

Fred was famous for his statement, “I don’t play no rock and roll.” He did, however, praise the Rolling Stones for their straight-up blues version of “You Gotta Move” (which Fred wrote with another blues legend, Reverend Gary Davis). He also taught Bonnie Raitt how to play slide guitar. Fred also frequently played the electric guitar on his recordings and occasionally has a full band arrangement although it was usually just him on guitar and a bassist or harpist. His sound is hauntingly rural and viscerally arresting. His gospel recordings, sung with him and his wife, Annie Mae (shown with him in the above photo), are especially time-reversing—like one is sitting on a porch of a farmhouse in 1920s Mississippi in the cool of the evening listening to some folks playing blues after a hard day’s work in the fields.

While many consider Son House to be the premier slide player, many others insist Fred McDowell is. But Fred and House both admired each other greatly and both admired Patton whose slide abilities were nothing to sneeze at. Critic Art Tipaldi wrote of McDowell: “Few sounds on the planet are as emotionally urgent as McDowell’s bottleneck. The piercing effect of bottle on strings makes hairs tingle. Then his voice explodes in the seer [sic] passion that characterizes the first generation country blues.”

Fred’s last album was recorded at the Gaslight Café in Greenwich Village, Live in New York, in 1971. The following year, Fred McDowell died of cancer at the age of 68. He was buried at Hammond Hill Baptist Church near Como, Mississippi. Bonnie Raitt paid for a headstone. Fred kicked off a flurry of interest in North Mississippi bluesmen that were ignored during the early blues era, which resulted in the establishment of Fat Possum Records in 1992 based in Oxford, Mississippi. The label was dedicated to recording the North Mississippi sound and made blues stars of great artists as R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough (of whom Iggy Pop became a devotee), Asie Payton, King Ernest and Charles Caldwell—first generation blues artists who have all have since died.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtlVSedpIRU


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0L2aUSSfO38

Lord Larehip

Blind Blake is almost a stereotypical blues legend. He began recording for Paramount in 1926, for which he recorded about 80 sides, which were very popular, and he single-handedly put Piedmont blues on the musical map. His real name appears to be Arthur Blake (his songs are attributed to this name and he stated his “right name” was Arthur Blake on one recording) and it is generally believed that he hailed from Jacksonville, Florida having been born around 1893. A check of the city’s records during that period, however, do not list an Arthur Blake. Blind Willie McTell said Blake’s real name was Phelps but this hasn’t yielded up anything useful either. In one recording, he breaks into a Geechee accent which is spoken along coastal Georgia but no city records in that region have yielded up an Arthur Blake or Phelps that matches Blind Blake’s description.

We are not sure of his travels other than being in Chicago. One boogie-woogie number he does, “Hastings Street,” is about Detroit and he performs the song with Detroit pianist Charley Spand. He mentions 169 Brady Street which gives every indication that Blake had toured through Detroit but there is no record of him ever setting foot in the city (the song was recorded in Chicago). John Lee Hooker mentioned Blake as jamming with his stepfather in Clarksdale and we should not too surprised if Blake had been in that area a time or two.

Blake played guitar for other artists as Irene Scruggs and his style is immediately recognizable--the use of the thumb to syncopate the beat, his tendency to switch back and forth between regular time and double time continuously, his improvisation skills on par with any jazz musician's (he composed with jazzmen as Johnny Dodds) as his passes are never repeated exactly but always vary from one another.

Blake was fond of gambling and drinking, which he did with his blind cohorts. Often times he would get into fights with them. His manager said Blake frequently turned up at the studio with bruises or a bloody lip claiming he had gotten into it while gambling. As time wore on, Blake drank more and more and it appears that his final recordings were not really him (one song, “Champagne Charley is My Name,” while a nice rag number, is definitely not Blake although it is attributed to him).

After 1932, Blake was heard from no more. He seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. McTell said Blake fell under a train and was killed but no one knows anything about that. The above photo is the only one known of Blind Blake. White guitarist Eddie Lang (real name Salvatore Massaro) sometimes used the moniker of Blind Blake while recording with black bands and Lang died in 1933 so this seems to explain the whole mystery but actually only deepens it. Eddie Lang is definitely not the Blind Blake who did the amazing rags, blues and boogie-woogie numbers. Lang’s style is totally different and so is his voice. The voice of Blind Blake is not a white man “coon shouting” but is obviously a real black man. On all the recordings bearing the distinctive Blake guitar-playing, we hear that same voice indicating the guitarist and vocalist were the same person and that he was real.

But whoever Blind Blake really was, where he came from and whatever happened to him makes him one of the greatest mysteries in blues.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7921puvgf4


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04bvzgbPVYQ


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40OaCfiaEGI


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTP-8VfIvn0