Topic: Surprisingly small number of solo guitar/vocals recorded by Chicago players

[Johnm]

Hi all,
In purchasing DG&R and working with it the past couple of years, I noticed a surprising (to me) trend: the relative lack of solo guitar/vocal numbers recorded by Country blues players living in Chicago in the 20s and 30s. Looking at just two of such players, Big Bill Broonzy and Tampa Red, both of whom were stellar guitarists and strong singers, we find the following numbers in their pre-War recordings in the above category:
   * Big Bill Broonzy had 18 solo guitar/vocal numbers released (he recorded a few additional ones that were not released) in the pre-War period, with the last of them, "Long Tall Mama", being recorded on March 30, 1932.
   * Tampa Red had just two (!) solo guitar/vocal numbers released in the pre-War period, "Turpentine Blues" and Western Bound Blues", both recorded on May 7, 1932. Tampa Red did have a surprising, or maybe not so surprising, number of solo guitar instrumentals released, 10.

How is one to explain the record companies giving up so soon on doing solo recordings by these artists? There are a number of possible factors that occur to me, all of which are conjecture.
   * Chicago was such a center for Jazz during this period that the record companies may have assumed that nobody, or at least fewer of the record-buying public would be interested in purchasing anything as old-fashioned and out of it as a solo guitarist accompanying his own singing.
   * Tampa Red's case may have been affected by his recording with Georgia Tom of the enormous hit, "Tight Like That", at his very second recording session, on September 19, 1928, after which the record company may have assumed that continuing to record with that instrumental sound would make for a better chance of having another hit of that magnitude.
   * Big Bill Broonzy and Tampa Red themselves may have felt that their solo recordings were less appealing to the public than their ensemble and duet numbers, and might have lobbied for at least duet recordings.

Like I said, all of the above is guesswork, but the solo recordings that both of these musicians did in the post-War period make it pretty obvious that their pre-War solo numbers didn't even scratch the surface of their solo repertoires and what they were able to do operating as solo performers.

All best,
Johnm
   

[Slack]

That's an interesting ponder there Johnm.  I like your number 1 guess, but for reasons intimated in guesses 2 and 3.  I think of Chicago as an incubator of artistic expression (and to this day, based on both of my sons experience)... such a rich environment for collaboration that musicians could not help but want to play together.  And producers liked what they heard.

Over simplified, but I'm sticking with it.

[Stuart]

Interesting observation, John. The Great Depression and its adverse effect on record sales may have been a factor. Given economic conditions and the amount of discretionary income people had to spend on entertainment, perhaps the demographics and preferences of the record buying public had something to do with it. Maybe when budgets were tight, people tightened up on what they bought. But that's a guess, one, I'll be the first to admit, is based on ignorance of what was actually happening at the time.

[lindy]

Dancers prefer ensembles to solo performers. As a jazz center in the 20s and 30s, Chicago clubs (like New Orleans clubs before them) catered to dancers. It would be a couple-three decades before jazz became a musical form where people sedately sat at tables sipping overpriced drinks and just listening to the music rather than squeezing onto dance floors. My guess is that the same situation was true for blues clubs and blues-oriented rent parties/house parties in Chicago--the dancers preferred trios or bigger groups for a danceable feel.

I'm not offering this as "the answer," just one of several possible factors resulting in John's observation.

Lindy

[Stuart]

Good point, Lindy.

[Lignite]

I kind of agree with Lindy about the dance aspect at that time with the Chicago audience. It is something that a lot of us non-dancing country blues guitar players tend to forget about because we tend to concentrate so much on the music and its structure. The solo format at that time seemed to be kind of a rural thing and tended to be passé in that environment. What I find interesting is how Chess Records kept Muddy Waters in pretty much of a solo setting for so long in his early post-war recordings. I Can't Be Satisfied was a hit on the Aristocrat label in 1948 with Muddy accompanied only by Big Crawford on bass in a very sparse musical setting very different from  most of the blues releases at that time. I guess that it must have stuck a nerve with the southern transplants in the city then and maybe reminded them of the the down home blues from back home. It seems that the record label did not want to "mess with the formula" and had Muddy playing in this basically solo setting for many of his early record releases although (from what I've read) he was already performing successfully with a full band including Jimmy Rogers and many of his future sidemen in many of the Chicago clubs. I guess that the one hit song (I Can't Be Satisfied) struck a chord with the Mississippi transplants in the city and it reminded them of of the old time down home blues that was already a thing of the past.

[Tim Connor]

I think it's a little misleading to call the Chicago players "Country Blues"--since the folk-blues revival of the 60s we've tended to use that label to distinguish blues played on acoustic guitars from the post-war electric style, but I hear a marked stylistic difference between the Chicago players (also Scrapper Blackwell in Indianapolis) and the Delta players like Son House. The Chicago bluesmen played more varied and sophisticated melodies, they experimented with song structures beyond the basic 12-bar form, and of course they mostly played in duos or larger groups. I don't think they thought of themselves as "country"--they were urban professionals playing for a sophisticated urban audience (remember, Broonzy didn't learn to play guitar until he got to Chicago--when he was "country" he played the fiddle).

[Johnm]

You make a good point, Tim. "Acoustic" would have described their playing in that period better than "Country". I remember a quote to similar effect from Lonnie Johnson in which he said the country had nothing to do with his music, it was all from the city.

[rein]

Would nt Tommy mc Clennan and Robert Petway classify as chicago players ?And Papa Charlie Jackson, who didnt play guitar but recorded a lot solo. I believe they lived in chicago at the time they recorded for Bluebird. Didnt Memphis Minnie  record some sole numbers in the late 1930s ? But maybe it also has to do with the way the recording industry worked, instead of scouting for talent they had the talent right there, often seasoned performers that often played together. I often feel there ere two distinct eras in prewar recorded blues, the pioneer ¨paramount¨ fase of 1926-1931 that was ended by the depression and the late 1930s that is typically represented by the Bluebird sound.

[Johnm]

I don't know, rein, to me McClennan and Petway are Mississippi players all the way who happened to record in Chicago. I don't think their sound was influenced by Chicago in any way. The same for Booker White's recordings there, or Arthur Crudup for that matter. In all of these instances, I think the players' fundamental sounds, both instrumentally and vocally, were already in place by the time they recorded in Chicago--it just happened to be where they were recorded.

[blueshome]

Chicago appears to be an exception amongst the larger cities, There was plenty of solo activity in Atlanta and other cities and towns in the Piedmont. Even New York in the immediate post-war period.
I suppose this reinforces the point the John was making.
 Maybe Chicago solo players were not picked up by the record companies looking for blues talent and focussing on the South.

[Tim Connor]

I'm more inclined to think it was that Chicago audiences (and urban audiences in general) preferred a more "modern," sophisticated band sound, and the record companies found that sold better in the cities (what sold in the South to rural audiences may have been different, regardless of where the recording took place. A lot of Delta artists went to New York to record, but that doesn't mean the records were marketed there). Broonzy started out mostly solo, but rather quickly went to playing with Black Bob and others--Lester Melrose liked to put together groups to record, like the State Street Boys, who don't seem to have had any existence outside the studio. Big Bill reinvented himself as a solo "country blues" singer after the Spirituals to Swing concert in 1938, but that was mostly for the white audience that was into folk music and thought band music was too commercial. He kept up the two-track career--solo for the white folk crowd and band records for the urban black crowd--until his kind of blues became decisively unfashionable with the black audience by about 1950, and then he mostly played for white audiences, especially in Europe.

Lightnin' Hopkins did something similar in the late 50s-early 60s--playing solo acoustic for folk clubs and festivals, but recording electric with bands for the R&B market.