Lord Larehip

Blind Lemon Henry Jefferson (1893-1929). Born blind as one of eight children in a sharecropping family, he was called Lemon due to his rotund build. He took up guitar in his teens and played picnics but eventually started busking in the streets of East Texas. In the early 1910s, Lemon frequently played in Dallas alongside Lead Belly. In 1917, Lemon took on a protégé, Aaron “T-Bone” Walker, who would act as a guide for Lemon whose busking netted him enough to live on comfortably and some say he even
supported a wife and child on this money (there is no definitive proof he was married or had children).

Lemon’s first release was on Paramount very early in 1926, two gospel numbers recorded under the name of Deacon L. J. Bates. In March, he began recording blues as Blind Lemon Jefferson and he immediately
became a very popular artist. Every blues fan had Lemon’s records in those days. Lemon was one of the earliest true bluesmen to record. From ’26 to ’29, Lemon recorded 43 sides and was a hot seller. The recordings earned Lemon the title of “The Father of Texas Blues.”

He played his guitar with it sitting flat in his lap but even when standing he held the guitar this way—perpendicular to his chest. Not surprisingly, T-Bone Walker played his guitar in the identical position. Other bluesmen of that time said Jefferson was a highly proficient guitarist and very difficult to match much less beat.

Life busking on the streets was not without its risks, especially for a blind man. Consequently, Lemon carried a handgun in case someone tried to steal his tip money. One might feel tempted to ask what good a firearm is for a blind man but those who knew Jefferson said he was a crack shot. One man said, “If he could hear you, he could hit you.” Assessments of his character range from that of a foul, womanizing drunk to a warm, polite man. Neither T-Bone Walker nor Lighnin' Hopkins, both protégés, seemed to have anything bad to say about him.

Rumors abound about Jefferson’s death but, as near as can be determined, he died of either a heart attack or he froze to death in a snowstorm in Chicago at the age of 36. He was a big influence on many bluesmen besides T-Bone and Lightnin’. B. B. King claimed Jefferson as an important influence as did Robert Johnson and Son House. His legacy is far-reaching. Many bluesmen as Billy Gibbons were inspired by Lightnin' but without Lemon there would have been no Lightnin' and hence no Billy Gibbons.

Incidentally, Jefferson Airplane took their name from Lemon indirectly. Guitarist Jorma Kaukonen knew a guy named Steve Talbot who made up funny names for people based on word association. Talbot loved Blind Lemon Jefferson and so called himself Blind Thomas Jefferson Airplane. Blind Tom was a very famous black pianist in the 19th century who was retarded but could play anything on the piano even after hearing it only once. Through word association, Jefferson was hooked onto Thomas and airplane was hooked onto Jefferson (a Jefferson airplane is a paper match that is split so as to hold a marijuana roach—a makeshift roach clip). The band decided to use the last half of Talbot’s name as their own.

To my knowledge, this is the only known photo of Blind Lemon Jefferson. Funny how all the blind artists of the Paramount label were able to sign their autographs and in the same handwriting no less.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXC1jjRCXtg
And you thought Carl Perkins wrote this.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3jG_tsTn_w

Lord Larehip

Mississippi John Smith Hurt (1893?-1966). Born in Teoc, Carroll County, Mississippi and moving to the town of Avalon as a boy, John Hurt began playing the guitar at 9 by playing his mother’s boyfriend’s guitar whenever he stayed with them. The boyfriend showed little if anything to Hurt. He was completely self-taught.

While he encountered a great many blues artists later in life, he knew of few when he started playing. One was a local man named Rufus Hanks who never recorded. Hanks played a 12-string and a harp. The only other guitarist songster Hurt had heard was Jimmie Rodgers—the Singing Brakeman. Hurt said he played the guitar the way he thought a guitar it was supposed sound. Consequently, John Hurt sounded like no one else. While usually included with the Delta bluesmen, Hurt was not really one of them
as he didn’t play low-down blues. His was a light mixture of country, blues, folk, ragtime, bluegrass and a bit of jazz. Later on, he incorporated helpings of rocknroll. In 1923, he partnered with a fiddler named Willie Narmour who won a fiddler contest in 1928 for which the prize was to record some sides for the OKeh label. Narmour requested Hurt as his accompanist and the producer brought him in after hearing him play. The sessions were held in Memphis and New York. The records didn’t go anywhere and OKeh, teetering on the brink of bankruptcy due to the Depression, did not sign Hurt or Narmour to a contract (OKeh went bust shortly after).

Hurt returned to Mississippi and lived as a sharecropper. He hung around with Skip James and played the jukes on weekends but otherwise his musical career was nondescript. For over 20 years, nobody had given John Hurt a thought when suddenly his “Frankie” and “Spike Driver Blues” were included on an anthology of American folk roots music. This spurred an Australian fan to search out other John Hurt songs and located “Avalon Blues,” a song Hurt wrote about his hometown. In 1963, Hurt was located still living in Avalon and was persuaded to embark to Washington D.C. and revive his career while the interest in first generation blues was riding a wave of popularity. Hurt performed at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival and garnered the notice and attention that had eluded him so many years earlier. He recorded three albums on Vangard and played an endless string of coffeehouses, auditoriums and college venues where kids flocked to see a bona fide Mississippi bluesman. He played The Tonight Show as well.

A hero to a new generation of folk and blues musicians, John Hurt returned to Mississippi as a local boy made good. He died of a heart attack at the age of 74 or 75 in Granada, Mississippi. John Fahey, Tom Paxton and Wizz Jones have all written tribute songs to Hurt and the Jim Kweskin Jug Band recorded his “Richland Woman” in 1967 with vocals by Maria Muldaur (although she was Maria D’Amato at that time) who covered the song again in a solo release in 2001. The town of Avalon erected a memorial to Mississippi John Hurt along Rural Route 2 where he grew up.

Below, Mississippi John Hurt in his later years. Age did nothing to diminish his guitar proficiency:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vphs2YYBSr0
I play this one at open mics but I'm not quite a proficient as the master. At least I have the key right--G.

Lord Larehip

Nehemiah Curtis “Skip” James (1902-1969). His personality and beliefs were as intricate and complex as his superb guitar-playing. While many sharecroppers were illiterate, James graduated from high school. He worked in the 20s as a laborer building roads and levees and wrote his first song, “Illinois Blues” about his experiences. He later became a sharecropper on the Woodbine Plantation in the Bentonia area of Mississippi where he excelled at bootlegging. All the tenant farmers at Woodbine agreed that James made the best moonshine they had ever consumed. Bluesmen were a varied lot in personality—some were very friendly and others very hostile. James, while not precisely hostile, had a caustic personality. He griped a lot about everything and took no real pleasure in much besides seeing the bad side of things. Once while riding in a car past a marriage, James laughed bitterly and said, “Let’s see how happy they are when they get divorced in two years.” He once ran a blues school but referred to his students as “a bunch of dummies” and said, “They didn’t learn nothin’ cuz I didn’t want ‘em to!” While James is known for his innovative, complex guitar work, the organ was his first instrument (his father was a clergyman), took up guitar at 8 and he later taught himself piano.

He was discovered by H. C. Speir who signed him to Paramount and sent him to Grafton, Wisconsin to record. Unfortunately for James, the Depression hit and his records didn’t sell. No doubt this left him embittered. He was aloof and didn’t hang with many other bluesmen except for Mississippi John Hurt whose niece he married. Although called a misogynist because he stated he had little use for women beyond sex, James remained married to her for life. He was re-discovered in 1964 virtually at the same time as Son House and this is what kicked off the blues revival although James, now in chronic ill health, detested the folk scene and thought his new audience was just a bunch of empty-headed idiots who’d clap for anything. His song “I’m So Glad” was covered by Cream. Clapton’s guitar is far less complex than James’s 1931 version. When James heard Cream’s version, he laughed at it and said he knew that it would never measure up to his. Typical of James, his version of “I’m So Glad” was based on an older song called “I’m So Tired (of Living Alone)” done by Gene Austin and turned it into a man who was glad to be living alone because he was sick to death of that wretched woman and her ways—glad she’s gone and don’t come back. Speir said James went on a religious bender and refused to play blues anymore. Speir thought that Charlie Patton was the best singer he ever recorded but stated, “But you know James, Skippy James, was real tough. Catch Skippy on the right day—the right day, mind you—and he was as good as Patton…” an odd comparison since James sang in a mournful falsetto and Patton bellowed as gruff as an enraged bear. Skip James lived in a house in Philadelphia bought for him by Eric Clapton and died there of cancer in 1969 but has become a cult figure since that time.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byZXD-AHg3g


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SgS6OZZ_KU
Skip James on piano. Maria Muldaur covered this one.

Lord Larehip

Lizzie “Memphis Minnie” Douglas (1897-1973). Born in Algiers, Louisiana, Memphis Minnie recorded hundreds of sides over a 40-year period. Among the blues fanatics, she is well known and respected. Among the general population, she is all but unknown. Not only was Minnie unique as the only female blues guitarist of her era, her guitar-playing was excellent. While recording with her first husband, Kansas Joe McCoy, she supplied the leads while Joe played backing guitar. Moreover, she played with fingerpicks but with a volume many thought only possible with a flatpick. Minnie is thought to be the first blues guitarist to start using the metal-bodied resonator guitars that became such a craze in blues All the bluesmen I know of who switched over to them said they did so after hearing Minnie use one.

Minnie’s career began during the Depression when she was signed up to Bluebird Records. She got noticed because of her unique combination of Louisiana country mixed with Memphis blues. Minnie may have been the first of the Southern blues guitarists to journey to Chicago and switch her style over to the electric guitar—many believe Muddy Waters to have been the first but Minnie preceded him and is probably the true founder of Chicago blues along with Tampa Red and Big Bill Broonzy. She later lived in Indianapolis and then in Detroit. She returned to Chicago some years later and then to Memphis in the late 50s. Minnie played the toughest juke joints around and could handle her own with any man. If he made a play on her, she belted him. If he cussed at her, she cussed right back at him. She wasn’t afraid of anything and she knew how to fight. Memphis Minnie would die of a stroke in Memphis in 1973. Bonnie Raitt paid for her headstone.

Muddy’s hit, “Honey Bee,” was likely based on Minnie’s “Bumble Bee.” One of Minnie’s most famous songs was “When the Levee Breaks” due to being covered by Led Zeppelin. Joe McCoy sings the lead vocal on that one but Minnie was a perfectly fine singer. She could rank up there with the best blues divas of her day just on vocal ability alone (in fact, her niece was the great Chicago blues diva, LaVern Baker). Another song of Minnie’s that had a great influence was “What’s the Matter with the Mill” (again with Kansas Joe) which provided the framework by which Chuck Berry recorded many of his hits including “Johnny B. Goode,” “It Wasn’t Me,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Nadine,” etc. Some of her other outstanding songs are “Frisco Town” and “Frankie Jean.” Because of her gender, Memphis Minnie has been inexcusably neglected. When naming some of the finest blues guitarists and personalities of the day, Minnie is, more often than not, unmentioned despite having played with Big Bill Broonzy, Tampa Red, Booker White and Little Walter among others. Had she been a man, she would have been far better known than she is, her genius proclaimed loud and clear.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVb-An-R4-Q


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVPyOA_e5eQ

Lord Larehip

Blind Boy Fuller (1907?-1941). Born Fulton Allen in North Carolina, he was renamed Blind Boy Fuller by his manager, James Baxter Long, who wanted him to have as bluesy a moniker as possible. He was one of the main Piedmont artists of his era. One source said that he was blind from birth but he actually seems to have lost his sight in his mid-teens—no one is sure of the cause.

Long owned a record store and got Fuller signed to he ARC label. His earliest sides were recorded in New York in 1935 along with the accompaniment of a washboard player/guitarist/singer named George Washington. Long gave Washington, a partial albino from Durham, the moniker of Bull City Red—a name he kept to the end of his career. He was the only member of a great blues quartet that could see. The quartet consisted of Fuller, Red, guitarist Reverend Gary Davis and harpist Sonny Terry. Fuller recorded 120 sides in all for ARC leading up to 1940.

Known for his fiery temper, Fuller was jailed in 1938 for shooting his wife in the leg during an argument. He also played with another notable Piedmont artist Floyd Council. Fuller’s protégé was Brownie McGhee who later teamed up with Sonny Terry to form one of the most famous and enduring blues acts ever. Fuller died at the height of his popularity and so J. B. Long originally dubbed McGhee “Blind Boy Fuller No. 2” to continue to capitalize on Fuller’s posthumous popularity. A typical Piedmont bluesmen, Fuller played a lot of rags and raggy-flavored blues. He died of a kidney infection in 1941 at the age of 33.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGVShoAWp00
Nice hokum piece--What's That Smell Like Fish? Gee, I don't know. Bull City Red on washboard no doubt.