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Country Blues => Weenie Campbell Main Forum => Topic started by: frankie on September 02, 2004, 05:35:10 AM
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Perhaps the strangest recordings from Alabama (though recorded in Chicago) are the ones by Moses Mason.
Strange indeed, although not entirely without appeal.
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Hi all,
Re Moses Mason, I think it is almost unbelievable that "Molly Man" is a commercial recording, i.e., somebody thought they could make a buck selling a recording by a tamale vendor doing his sales rap with incidental musical accompaniment! It is the kind of recording I would expect some heavy duty ethnomusicologist to make, not a company in the business of trying to sell records. I'm very thankful that the companies often had no clue what would sell. We ended up with some great music as a result.
https://youtu.be/2Gw7WVqu7ug
All best,
Johnm
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Great observation, I feel the same way about that recording. Who can think of some other songs that defy the logic of commercial appeal , I think this can make an interesting discussion. Although I'm going out of town now, so I may miss it. If indeed a discussion begins. Which it may not.
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...and one never did. But another song that got recorded against all logic (and I'm thankful for it) is Beans Hambone and El Morrow's "Beans." I love this recording! I can't imagine how these guys made money though.
https://youtu.be/64JWwdKXoV8
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Hi Montgomery - Haven't heard of this one (nor the excellently named Beans Hambone). I'm assuming this has no relation to Bo Carter's "Beans"...
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Hi Aaron,
I would nominate Wiley Barner's "My Gal Mistreats Me" for this category. I just listened to it to see if it was as strange as I remember it. It is actually stranger, but also more engaging.
https://youtu.be/awgrmlhgZJw
High on the list for this category would also be the recording by the Old-Time singer Kelly Harrell of "Wild Bill Jones", which he sings in F while being accompanied by Henry Whitter on guitar and harmonica in B flat. It's especially weird because Henry Whitter does an intro in B flat stating part of the melody, and Kelly comes in solidly singing it in F, and neither ever gives way. You would have thought one or the other of them would have said, "Gee, what the hell just happened?" Like most stuff of this sort, though, if you listen to it three or four times, it starts to sound regular.
https://youtu.be/Jl2Xx-HEeWQ
All best,
Johnm
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John - haven't heard those. Do you know where they're available?
I've attached an mp3 of Beans.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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:D Beans :D Beans :D Beans,?spoon stickin' in yer beans...
Now that's a song that will get ya smilin'.
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The guy really seems to be enthusiastic about his legumes.
Here's Kelly Harrell singing Wild Bill Jones:
http://www.donegone.net/sounds/wild_bill_jones.mp3
What were they thinking?
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Hi all,
I think the Wiley Barner is on DOCD 5165 Alabama Secular and Religious Music 1927-1934, which should be on the Juke when it is up and running again. Thanks for posting the Kelly Harrell, Frank. Boy, it's one for the books, isn't it? Thanks also for posting that version of "Beans", Montgomery. Like Uncle Bud, I had never heard it before. Where is it from? That V note of the scale the ukulele keeps hitting is brutal. It's a good "story song", though.
All best,
Johnm
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From what I recall, that's not so much a uke as a cigar-box guitar ; the reverse is a version of "Going to tip out tonight" which is pretty interesting as well.
My "how the heck..." record would be the Mobile Strugglers 1949 recording Memphis blues / Fattening frogs for snakes. I know how that one got made, but I'm still amazed.
https://youtu.be/HJVyaiK2Hig
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I like them Beans. Fun tune! Don't have that Sinners and Saints disc. I know the Lonnie Coleman stuff and the Pink Anderson stuff but how's the other material on it?
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?With some of the very old stuff, we'll obviously never know how it got recorded and what the rationale was at the time for documenting such a performance.
However, there are much more recent examples that boggle the mind just as much as "Wild Bill Jones" or "Beans".
My personal "How the heck..." recording is the Arhoolie CD "Blind James Campbell Nashville and his Nashville Street Band".
Guaranteed to cause shock, horror and uncontrollable laughter.
https://youtu.be/u0WZBEqcFns
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Hi all,
I think I would have to add "Chittlin' Supper", recorded by Peg Leg Howell and Jim Hill to this list. I was thinking of trying to transcribe it for the Peg Leg Howell lyric thread, but it is just too nutty. Jim Hill is supposed to be playing a mandolin--if he is, it sounds as though it must be not only tuned in octave courses but cross-tuned as well, so that the pairs are not in unisons, but are in harmony to each other. It really sounds more like a tiple. The song appears to follow no discernible form, and the repartee between Hill and Howell is not exactly sparkling. This is one of those cuts like "Molly Man" where I would love to be able to hear from the engineer or A & R man why they thought the record might sell. It is a mystery.
https://youtu.be/2TXG9vBxelE
All best,
Johnm
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Johnm, My take on Chittlin Supper is that it's like an early narrative of a rent
party and I've always found it amazingly visual, "to the house-in the rear" and an excellent example of Country Blues humor. Particularly amusing is Peg Leg commenting to Jim Hill about him messing him up with his woman. Hill replies "I've been knowing her a long time...I know'd her since she moved to Georgia." To which Peg Leg replies in boastful resigination, "I knowed her first though."
And there's also a lesson in philosophy from Peg Leg, "Liza. Bring me some more of them dad blame chittlins. What for do I care for if they're expensive? I'd just as soon spend a dime as a dollar!
I probably don't have these quotes exact, but you probably get the point.
Actually, it may not be how did these records get recorded, but how did they get released. "Beans" has to be the all time champ. Testifying Meeting" with Rev. P. W. Williams also has to come in for consideration and another one is "Sing And Shout" and "Happy As The Day Is Long" by Rev. Steamboat Bill. True, religion sells, but...
Phil
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Hi Phil,
You make good points concerning "Chittlin' Supper". I think I got too hung up on the musical aspect of it and didn't devote enough attention to the banter.
All best,
Johnm
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Hi all,
This topic has not been posted in for a while, but I heard a performance the past couple of days that is a natural for it: Gabriel Brown's piece, "A Dream of Mine", which can be found on the JSP "Shake That Thing" set. The notes inform us that the piece is in the Hawaiian style that Brown started out on guitar in, but from listening, you would think he had never previously attempted it. It is an inchoate mess, sound in a vain search for melody or musical sense, and Brown's characteristically lax approach to tuning his instrument doesn't exactly help things along, either. Whew! This piece could define "difficult listening".
https://youtu.be/7U-2o8wEqPI
All best,
Johnm
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I've been helping a friend of mine with some mandolin stuff and listening to lots of Charlie McCoy. He was a pretty versatile guy - capable of real uptown playing, especially on the mandolin. He also plays guitar - a little on the noodly side, but a good player overall. On the Document CD devoted to him, there are three sides with Rosie Mae Moore singing with Charlie's accompaniment. One of the songs, "Ha-Ha Blues," is a version of "Gonna Tip Out Tonight," recorded by Pink Anderson & Simmie Dooley. Maybe it's even a cover of that performance... at least the singing might be... that's a great song... but Charlie recasts the accompaniment as an Ishman Bracey styled one-chorder... a feat he pulls off with aplomb, but neither he nor the singer back down off of their preconceptions of the piece. Rosie Mae clearly sings a melody that calls out for some chord changes & Charlie ignores her. There's enough overlap in the singing & accompaniment to reassure the listener that these two people are in fact playing together, but only just enough.
https://youtu.be/oaSknMlInrc
The overall effect is completely weird. Rosie Mae doesn't have too much expression as a singer, but McCoy does such a deft accompaniment that you kind of want to like it, but just can't. Weird.
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Hi all,
I've been listening to the Yazoo piano anthology"Mama Don't Allow No Easy Riders Here-Strutting The Dozens". The opening piece on the program is "Trenches", by Turner Parrish. The piece might more accurately have been named "Shambles". Turner Parrish had a nice touch, a fine pulse and knew some blues cliches, but the way he strung things together showed zero concept of having the music make sense in any way other than from instant to instant (and sometimes not even then). His playing reminds me of a friend's description of an acquaintance who never stopped talking and wasn't overly scrupulous about how one idea led to the next: "a random syllable generator." I can envision his playing working well for dancers who either weren't listening or were very drunk.
https://youtu.be/ikVCfT2dB-k
All best,
Johnm
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The record company A&R men mostly didn't know what they were doing. Ralph Peer, for instance, thought Fiddlin' John Carson's music was "pluperfect awful," but he had enough sense to pay attention when the records sold out in Atlanta. I don't know if he ever really appreciated the music, but he learned to recognize commercial potential. That didn't necessarily correlate with musical talent.
I'd nominate "I Got Your Ice Cold Nugrape," by the Nugrape Twins in the "how did that get recorded?" category. Their musical ability is good, but the subject matter would be suitable for a singing commercial on the radio, not a record that would cost a significant chunk of a week's wages.
https://youtu.be/eHRGXvfSu3s
Lyle
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Turner Parrish Trenches (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikVCfT2dB-k#)
Weird!
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wow - major ear fatigue on that one. I'd go one better - how did that get reissued by a company that prides itself on cherry picking the finest performers and performances? Document, I could understand.... but....
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Turner Parrish actually recorded 6 songs over 4 years. Two vocals for Gennett in 1929 featured a plodding piano and a vocal that was somewhat in tune. He did another two vocals for Champion in 1933, by which time both his piano playing and his voice had improved a bit, and two instrumentals at the same session. The second instrumental, "Fives" is every bit as disjointed as "Trenches"
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"Quill Blues" by Big Boy Cleveland! "Oh, yeah, this'll sell a bag of records". Makes one wonder what the hell the third, unissued side done on the day might have been like!!!
https://youtu.be/kTdIMR9bGpM
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I'm embarrassed to mention that I've always kind of enjoyed Turner Parrish :-)! But mainly the recording he made called "Ain't Gonna Be Your Dog No More" (on the Down in Black Bottom Yazoo Comp). I think it's his rhythmic sense (the pulse as John said) that I find attractive. Listening now to Trenches and also "The Fives" from that same compilation I hear train-wreck-ishness of it. I recall there are some other of the barrelhouse guys that have a similarly wacky right hand (a steady left, generally, though). I used to see Pigmeat Jarrett in Cincinnati before he died and he had that style. It's in pretty stark contrast to someone like Jimmy Yancey (or Meade Lux Lewis) who made recordings that had a beautiful narrative structure and flow.
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Well, I'm with Peter. What you're hearing is the essence and definition of barrelhouse. The piano as a folk instrument. Next you'll be saying you don't like Skip James's piano...which was pure all over the place and pure genius at the same time!
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2
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Henry Johnson And His Boys' Blue Hawaii/Hawaii Harmony Blues, Freeman Stowers' Sunrise On The Farm and Jazzbo Tommy Settlers' Big Bed Bug.
https://youtu.be/kyXby7gS3xQ
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I don't know, Professor. I don't think "folk" and "incoherent" are synonymous. Skip is wild, sure enough, but he hits the changes. I feel like you have to be able to exercise some critical faculty--otherwise you end up like a kindergarten teacher--"You made that? It's beautiful!".
All best,
Johnm
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Peter and Professor, it's not that Turner Parrish is unlistenable. He's interesting, in a bizarre sort of way. The question is how did a talent scout, A&R director, and record company exec all come together to think that his records might sell enough to turn a profit?
And Jazzbo, you're right - while Jazzbo Tommy Settlers is interesting enough, how did anyone at Paramount involved with his 1930 session ever think that the world was clamoring for unaccompanied kazoo/vocal records? I mean, it was the depression, and Paramount only had a limited amount of resources. Why did they choose to expend some of those resources on Jazzbo Tommy? I really think the foreman at the pressing plant came in drunk one day and pressed up a few hundred copies each of the wrong masters before he sobered up a bit and realized his mistake. :D
Edited to add: I'm really not putting down Jazzbo Tommy Settlers when I wonder how his records ever got released. Every time I call my wife's cell phone, it rings with the intro to Jazzbo Tommy's "Blue Face Cow".
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Hello all,
I think it's pretty clear, from the research done these past forty years, that the companies and their field reps (A&R men) did not know what would sell to the blacks and hillbillies. So they used the "spaghetti" method....throw it at the wall and see what sticks.
It didn't really cost a field unit much to record local musical weirdos once the equipment was set up in situ. Any successful "artists" could be (more expensively) called to the home office for further recording---Carter Family, MJH et. al.
I think Paramount is a special case--couldn't afford field units for the trial recordings, and by 1930 was so desperate they would bring almost anyone to Grafton.
As to those tracks so outre as to be the head-scratchers of today: I think quite a few, like "Nu-Grape" (which I think is a wonderful piece of music, btw), "Beans" and any kazoo/vocal selection should be viewed as novelties, a genre which has a good commercial track record. Let's recall "Mairzy Doats" from the era, and, more recently, "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini."
best,
bruce
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Nu-Grape is one of my favorite pieces, too -- I never tire of listening to it. I just can't figure out the thought processes of the people in charge of recording it. I have the same problem with "Mairzy Doats." I'm too old to have ever listened to the Polka Dot Bikini song, so I can't comment on that. If there was a novelty tune genre that the A&R men recognized, there must have been some failed examples. Like the Mute Inglorious Miltons buried in the country churchyard, I suppose I never would have run across them.
Lyle
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hey Lyle,
what's thought got to do with the Music Bizness? ;)
bruce
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Hi all,
Maybe I should add that I think the kindergarten teacher approach is appropriate--in a kindergarten. And I take it as a given that we get to like what we like and not like what we don't like. I just feel that if I say I like everything I'm patronizing the music and the people who made it.
All best,
Johnm
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Too much sensible stuff here. Spoils a good argument! >:D
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Prof. S---
Oh yeah? Sez you!
>:D
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Harmonica Frank's "Swamp Root" should certainly go on the list.
https://youtu.be/thtxnq7pMZc
Lyle
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Quill Blues is incredible! I do agree that the third song from Big Boy Cleveland may have been odd indeed though. He has what must be one of the broadest and most fascinating two-track repertoires in this music.
I'm embarrassed to say it but there once was a time when I couldn't understand how Sam Collins or King Solomon Hill got recorded. Some music takes a little investment of time. I'm not a fan of that ice-cold nu-grape though.
David
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Another good example is Noah Lewis' Jug Band's "New Minglewood Blues". Sleepy John Estes, Yank Rachel, and "Hambone" Lewis(?) are all playing in B natural, Noah also sings in B, but his harp is a jarring B-flat! Perhaps he picked up the wrong one?
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Every song by Blind Gussie Nesbit is sung in the wrong key from what he plays except "I'll just stand and wring my hands and cry",
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I haven't heard a ton of Gussie Nesbit but he seems to be singing in the right key on "Canaan Land," though "Motherless Children" is decidedly weird.
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Hi all,
Re Moses Mason, I think it is almost unbelievable that "Molly Man" is a commercial recording, i.e., somebody thought they could make a buck selling a recording by a tamale vendor doing his sales rap with incidental musical accompaniment! It is the kind of recording I would expect some heavy duty ethnomusicologist to make, not a company in the business of trying to sell records. I'm very thankful that the companies often had no clue what would sell. We ended up with some great music as a result.
All best,
Johnm
I do think that some of the A&R men of the pre-war era were not entirely immune to folkloristic tendencies, and that somebody like Art Laibly was capable of saying, "It isn't commercial, but it should be preserved somehow."
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Henry Johnson And His Boys' Blue Hawaii/Hawaii Harmony Blues, Freeman Stowers' Sunrise On The Farm and Jazzbo Tommy Settlers' Big Bed Bug.
Tommy Settlers was the first name that came to my mind when I read the OP. It sounds like he was a one-man band and his appeal would have been mainly visual. "Unaccompanied vocal with kazoo and occasional traps" was never a selling point, either in 1929 or any other time.
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John Lee Hooker with some out of nowhere and out of context organ. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2Y6yREvYTk
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Well, thomas8, that organ certainly fulfils the promise of the song title....
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
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;D ;D ;D ;D
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That's some Yanni-level keyboard skill right there...
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Hi all,
I merged the posts on John Lee Hooker's "It Hurts Me So" with the inexplicable organ playing into this thread, since they seemed to fit better here than with a discussion of "Key To The Highway" and 8-bar blues. That organ entrance is really one for the books.
All best,
Johnm
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Josh White made some strange musical choices during the second half of his career. Here's one of them.
https://youtu.be/4zs2FZZ19jg
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Great God almighty .... the guilty party is Sam Gary, bass singer with Joshua White and His Carolinians, who made two Columbia sessions in mid-1940; I suspect these were aimed at a paler market than White's earlier recordings. Wanna hear more Sam Gary? This'll be good for y'all .... https://youtu.be/js4yhVFYegk
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I think It's kind of neat and ahead of it's time or at least interesting. Its just citifying some old Carolina blues and possibly shows how blues as well as gospel may have been an influence on Doo Wop which developed much later. I think the Chain Gang Songs on Columbia are very effective and were quite influential in their day. Anybody ever hear the old Folkways album where Sonny and Brownie added bass singer Coyal McMahan to their sound? (God, he even played maracas too!) It was kind of the same idea; adding a trained bass voice to a fairly authentic act. That one used to bug me when I was younger.
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Thanks guys. I really like the a capella recording, and can understand how Josh White would want to try including that fine voice into the session. It doesn't happen to work on the Married Woman recording I posted due to genre clash, but it is, as you say, interesting nonetheless.
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I've been reading Elijah Wald's fine biography Josh White, Society Blues the sessions listed in Blues and Gospel Records and the illustrated discography of Stefan Wirtz. B&GR notes before Josh\s March 1940 session:
From this point Josh White's recordings changed in character as they became increasingly targetted at a wider audience.
The break cam in 1936 when Josh badly damaged his hand. Over the next 3-4 years he took time to recover his guitar technique. And he observed changes in the Black recording market, as well as new niches in the White market.
Most importantly for him and Sam Gary was their meeting in the show John Henry which tried to base itself on Black folklore ? which is where Blues was supposed to belong. The star was Paul Robeson and Josh had an important role as Blind Lemon a wandering blues singer. So Josh and Sam were introduced to a new audience and three significant individuals.
The audience were fans of jazz (particularly the simpler forms) and its supposed origins. They were relatively affluent and politically liberal if not out-and-out socialist. Understandably, few of them could afford to be Black.
The first significant individual was Leornard De Paur, the musical director of John Henry with a background in arranging for and conducting choirs of trained singers in the old concert spiritual tradition. Josh engaged him to take a foursome consisting of him and brother Bill with Sam and a future civil rights leader, Bayard Rustin, and turn them into a gospel quartet. They became Josh White and his Carolinians
Another individual was John Hammond, who had organised the Spirituals to Swing concert and was keen to put on record musicians who would advance his vision of the roots of Jazz. Josh ? with and without the Carolinians ? was just what he needed.
The third individual was Alan Lomax the folk music collector with a mission to bring the music to 'the people'. In Wald's analysis Lomax went as far as he could with authentic performers like Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, and then turned to more polished singers with more tenuous folky connections ? Burl Ives for White Folk Music and Josh for Black. So Josh was recruited to sing with the Golden Gate Quartet and others at a 1940 concert organised at the White House by Lomax and Eleanore Roosevelt.
The concert was recorded for the Library of Congress and was archived, not released. But Josh's commercial recording career began ? much according to John Hammond's agenda. The first records were issued on the jazz label Blue Note (with Sidney Bechet) and the educationally-minded Musicraft as themed albums ? literally books like photo albums into which 78's were inserted. One of the albums was Chain Gang with Sam and the rest of the Carolinians singing.
The next album Josh sang on was the Almanac Singers' Ballad For John Doe ? appallingly timed with its left-wing anti-war message just as Stalin was forced to join the War on our side, dragging the American left with him.
She's A Married Woman was recorded between these album sessions. Again, it was with jazz musicians (Edmond Hall and Israel Crosby). Josh brought along his now best buddy Sam ? they would stay friends for life, singing and playing together when they could ? even though the songs were not like the Carolinians' repertoire. One or both of them must have made the connection between the phrase Great God Almighty and the stuff they usually did together. 'What a good idea!' they thought ? except that it wasn't.
If you think She's A Married Woman is a mismatch of styles, listen to what Josh recorded shortly after with Libby Holman. Having been a successful torch singer and notorious scarlet woman, Holman tried to re-invent herself across the racial divide as a politically-informed blues singer. So she hired Josh to teach her. I think she could have made a decent copyist of her Black heroines, but she felt it was more sincere to keep something of her old style. Oh dear!
From their first album (Yes, another three-disc album) Blues Till Dawn, here's Baby, Baby ?based, presumably, on See See Rider:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgOQO-5C_8s
Brownie McGhee has the last word on Josh White in 1942. Still based in Greenville, he made a trip to Washington to do a show with Sonny Terry. From Elijah Wald:
Brownie McGhee ... says that after the gig all the important folk people came over and told him that he had to move to New York because "they didn't have any blues singers up there; that Josh White was the only one, and he'd gone white." McGhee laughingly adds that when he got to New York and met Josh, "when i saw how much money he was making, I said, 'Hey, show me how to go white too.''"
PS
Stefan Wirtz also has a discography of Sam Gary.
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Since you're reading Society Blues you may find this thread (https://weeniecampbell.com/yabbse/index.php?topic=4639.0) interesting.