Topic: Rare blues photos

[Rivers]

Very cool, thanks.

[MTJ3]

dj, Please pardon my delay in responding.  I check in here very seldom.  In answer to your question, the Vocalion 1593 label that I saw provides composer credit for "Thompson-Guernsey," and the Catalog of Copyright Entries also shows them as holding the copyright.  They are shown as having composer credit on a total of 13 Carr-Blackwell titles (although there are 7 titles in the Carr-Blackwell recording corpus that I have not seen). 

[Sunflower]

This is my favourite, probably around 1930 , a young Son House with lady and umbrella !!!! Fantastic....beyond words
Is it possible that comes from John Tefteller collection?

[Blues Vintage]

Yes, it's from Tefteller.
If I remember correctly he has two more photos from Son House from this period that are unpublished far as I know.

[dj]

For those interested, the Son House photo has already been discussed here: https://weeniecampbell.com/yabbse/index.php?topic=11437.0.

There are a few obvious questions that I haven't been able to answer by poking around the internet.  Any help would be appreciated:

Assuming that the photograph is in Tefteller's possession, how did he get it?  What's the photograph's provenance?  I know, they were "discovered by Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGourty", but where and how were they discovered?  If they'd been in the possession of house's family, you'd think they'd have been known back in the 1960s.

How certain is the identification of House?  This may be answered by the answer to the first question.

Assuming that Tefteller owns the above and possibly two more, why haven't they appeared in one of his calendars.  A picture of a youthful Son House would certainly goose sales.

I'm assuming that the photo(s) surfaced at some point after 2011 (Daniel Beaumont's Son House biography, Preachin' The Blues, doesn't contain or mention them) and 2017, when the American Epic book came out.  Does the book have any mention of where and when the photo was found?

[Blues Vintage]

Here's some more rare stuff. Again from "Why I Love National Guitars".

[Blues Vintage]

Here one that surfaced less than two years ago I think. Big Maceo (Jim O'Neal Collection)

The Blues Archive - The University of Mississippi

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/bluesphoto/

[btasoundsradio]

screen shot from possible footage of Henry Thomas. Seems to be a mobile medicine show, note the bottles and ad on the truck window, and the man with the headdress. The capo position, thumb pick, and quill rack really make me think it might be him.