Topic: william harris and buddy boy hawkins

[Prof Scratchy]

Could be wrong, but I think everything he did was in Spanish, capoed at various positions up the neck.

[CF]

I could be wrong too Prof but it doesn't sound like open tuning playing to me . . . geez, I hope not anyway, I'll have to break my rule to never play in open tuning 

[uncle bud]

I think the Prof. meant Buddy Boy Hawkins played in Spanish and didn't notice you were referring to the William Harris tune, Leavin' Here Blues, which, seems to me to be standard tuning, tuned down a bit more than a whole step to me. So tuning your A string in the neighbourhood of G, a bit lower, and adjusting all the others accordingly. It's then played out of C position. The signature riff seems to me similar to the kinds of things Lemon and Blind Blake do off a C chord.

[Prof Scratchy]

...that's right...I did..getting old....

[CF]

Whooops, man this is embarrassing . . . The song I was actually trying to learn was Joe Calicott's 'Travelling Mama Blues' . . . that's what new names & heavily-loaded compilations can do to you if you're not careful . . . sorry for the confusion . . . .  

[Bricktown Bob]

Doh!  Paramount scouts--H.C. Speir of Jackson, Harry Charles of Birmingham and R.T. Ashford of Dallas.  BBH:  "These is my blues, I brought them all the way from Birmingham," or such like.  Thanks for the correction, Chris! 

On the other hand ("A Rag Blues"): "This here's my rag; I brought it all the way from Jackson, Mississippi," which puts him squarely in Speir country.

[dj]

Listening to King Solomon Hill and Blind Joe Reynolds today took me to Stefan Wirz's Yazoo discography to see what old Yazoo LPs they were on.  This led me to the Tex-Arkana-Louisiana Country LP, where Buddy Boy Hawkins is included in the artist mix.  Which led me to Buddy Boy Hawkins And His Buddies, where Hawkins is again grouped with Texas singers, and whose liner notes, by Jerome Epstein, state "Walter "Buddy Boy" Hawkins was probably born between 1895 and 1900 in Blytheville Arkansas, where he seems to have lived most of his life..."  Yet the more recent sources I have (the notes to DOCD 5035, William Harris and Buddy Boy Hawkins and the essays accompanying Screamin' And Hollerin' The Blues) state that while no biographical details are known concerning Hawkins, it is assumed he came from somewhere around Jackson Mississippi or Birmingham Alabama.  Does anyone know why the 1968 Yazoo notes assume an Arkansas birth and residence, and why that assumption has since been discarded?    

[jostber]

I wonder what this song is about:

William Harris

- No Black Woman Can Sleep In My Cowlot (GEX-742-C)

rec. c. July 18, 1927 in Birmingham, Alabama; William Harris, voc; Joe Robinson, g
   
Gennett unissued


and why did Joe Robinson play guitar here?