Here she comes! The Black Diamond Express to Hell with Sin the Engineer holding the throttle wide open; Pleasure is the headlight, and the devil is the conductor. You can feel the roaring of the express and the moanin' of the drunkards, liars, gamblers and other folk who have got aboard. They are hell-bound and they don't want to go. The train makes eleven stops but nobody can get off - Vocalion advertisement for Rev. A.W. Nix's 1927 recording Black Diamond Express to Hell
Hello All, Thought the forum might be interested in this small gallery I ran across from 1968 posted by Phil Swango if you haven't seen it, there's a photo of Robert Wilkins playing lap slide, Furry Lewis and Joe Callicot in it : http://pswango.smugmug.com/Other/Memphis-Gallery-1968/805417_GNTHj7#!i=35850259&k=pjZv99h
Yes, thank you, Harriet. These photographs are wonderful, the one of Rev. Wilkins, the ones of Joe, Joe's wife, Joe's wife with her cow, and their friend. The price to purchase them is incredibly reasonable, too. All best, Johnm
Missed opportunity there, if the photog had just managed to persuade Joe to pose with his guitar alongside his wife with her cow that would have been one for the ages.
Eggleson was a real revelation to me when an art prof. brought in some large format originals of his in 1973. Wow.
(I've a friend from Memphis who is a long-time aquantance of Mr. Eggleson AND (getting back to the bluesmen), as a teen also took guitar lessons from Furry Lewis.)
Speaking of old bluesman photos, I was on the Blues Images website just before Christmas and noticed that they had T-shirts and posters featuring a photo of Memphis Minnie I had never seen before, quite young looking and playing an acoustic guitar. I bought one of each.
According to the photo credit in Paul and Beth Garon's Memphis Minnie bio, the image appeared in a 1939 Vocalion catalog, though the poster looks like the source of its image may have been from a separate advertising card.