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In the context of limited record releases, later generations of blues fans must be grateful that such minor masterpieces as Lottie Kimbrough’s Goin’ Away Blues and Charlie Kyle’s Leadbelly-esque No Baby, blending idiomatic 12-string guitar phrasing with a melody line that suggests white country repertoire, were issued. Add the declamatory power of William Harris’s Early Mornin’ Blues, the propulsive hill country rhythms of Tom Dickson’s Labor Blues and the spare chording of Texan Willie Reed’s Dreaming Blues. Two further examples of George Carter’s lyricism, Weeping Willow Blues and Ghost Woman Blues, create a unique atmosphere rarely found among his contemporaries. The latter, detailing a strange meeting in a graveyard, and the singer’s protestation, ‘I ain’t no lamp but my wick is burning low’, and his eventual loss of his ghost woman’, approaches art of the highest order.
Jim Jackson had recorded Wild About My Loving in August 1928 but Lonnie Coleman’s 1929 version might be a totally different song, from his gravelly delivery to the relentless presence of his banjo. At this remove it’s hard to understand why some artists had just one song released. How could the singer known only as Freezone leave the studio after just one recording? Indian Squaw Blues is yet another minor masterpiece, even down to the verse where he complains ‘my voice is getting tired and my fingers are getting sore’. Jim Thompkins did record two songs but only one, Bedside Blues, was issued, made intriguing by his fluid slide guitar style. He recorded in Memphis, as did Gitfiddle Jim; Jim emerged as Kokomo Arnold a few years later, Thompkins disappeared. There’s no justice.
The other side of Eli Framer’s only record, God Didn’t Make Me No Monkey Man, showed him to be no mean slide player, with tenuous connections to the Atlanta school and an inability to end his song satisfactorily. Walter Taylor’s Diamond Ring Blues sounds old-fashioned, even by 1930 standards, but this piece of hard-core hokum only reluctantly identifies ‘it’ as the diamond ring in question. Willie Harris’s Lonesome Midnight Dream was a song about a different form of longing. There were few female singer/guitarists and Mattie Delaney showed a ready talent in Tallahatchie River Blues. One can only speculate as to why she made just one record. Women singing blues in a band context were well established, so why was a woman singing country blues not encouraged?
We’ve heard John Byrd backing Mae Glover. He also recorded with Washboard Walter, including Wasn’t It Sad About Lemon, and made a couple of records of his own. Billy Goat Blues is driven by his lusty 12-string strumming, backing a narrative that’s hard to follow except when he sings, ‘When I die, don’t bury me at all, Just pickle my body up in alcohol’. The label said Arthur Pettis on That Won’t Do but he was Petties on his first release cut in Memphis. He’d evidently moved to Chicago and his quietly efficient style was no doubt popular at rent parties but he left few historic traces. The same was true of Gene Campbell who recorded extensively in Dallas and Chicago, where ‘Toby’ Woman Blues was recorded. He’d probably seen Lonnie Johnson in one ot the latter’s forays into Texas - there are hints in both his vocal and his playing. A ‘toby’ seems to have been some sort of mojo.
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Bob Campbell made Starvation Farm Blues in New York City but there seems to be real hardship in his story, full of harsh, direct images which are by no means ameliorated by his song’s tempo. It’s thought he also backed Lucille Bogan during the week he spent in the city. Carl Martin played bass on Knox County Stomp by the Tennessee Chocolate Drops. Five years later, he was living in Chicago and pursuing a solo career. In Farewell To You Baby he puts in the quality of performance that equates with Big Bill Broonzy’s music of the period. His career was revived in the 1960s and he later rejoined Howard Armstrong and Ted Bogan in a partnership that lasted until two weeks before his death in May 1979.
There was a Broonzy connection with Louie Lasky, as well - Bill recorded an almost note-for-note copy of Lasky’s How You Want Your Rollin’ Done, using the same flat-picking guitar style which can also be heard on Teasin’ Brown Blues, the other side ot Lasky’s only release. His lusty singing reveals an older man with a big personality who was versed in more than blues; his lyrics combine references to jelly roll - ‘I had my hand on some this morning and I swear I let it get away’ - and contemporary personalities - ‘she got hair like Gloria Swanson and she walks just like Priscilla Jean’. George Torey recorded Married Woman Blues in Birmingham, AL; despite an accomplished style, he’s a biographical blank, as is Virgil Childers, who today wouldn’t be allowed to record a song called Dago Blues. He opened with the ‘dago/jew’ verse (also used by Eli Framer) which got Tommy McClennan into trouble when he later cut Bottle It Up And Go. Childers was recorded in Charlotte, NC and his other songs suggest he had some experience of medicine shows.
These last artists might be seen as having slipped through the net, for by 1935 they were in a minority. The ‘race record’ industry had organised around a stable of artists whose sales had proved they had the ear of their audiences, Big Bill Broonzy, Bumble Bee Slim, Walter Davis, Tampa Red, Leroy Carr, Roosevelt Sykes among them. But several factors shrank artist rosters. The Depression limited the artistic boundaries of what record companies released. It was also the proliferation of record playing equipment and the politics of choice that refined buyers’ actions. There followed a standardisation of product that suited both the companies’ purses and the customers’ taste. This compilation shows that while this shift may have been predictable and inevitable, a significant body of music encompassing a prolific body of styles and influences was lost. Forever.
Disc D inside cover note
The 'race’ records market shrank in the early 1930s. Pressings went from 10,000-plus per release in 1927 to 350 or 400 by 1932. Gennett closed in 1930, Superior in 1932. Until 1929, Columbia and OKeh each ran their own field units but then shared one. Victor weathered the storm better than most but in 1931 stopped their practise of making two masters of each song and resorting, with a few exceptions, to just one. A maverick corporation was set up in the hope of flourishing where others failed. The American Record Company, or ARC, was formed in 1929, bringing together labels from three existing companies. Cameo, Romeo, Banner, Oriole and Perfect were designated 'dimestore’ labels, since they sold for 25 cents, less than half of what the larger corporations charged.
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