Topic: Matthew Prater

[mandoman]

Greetings to all. It has been a long time since I have seen many of you and I wanted to get back in touch. In the past I haven't had much time for internet correspondence but now I've quit my day job and I am totally focused on my music. I hope to spend more time sharing and learning from you all.

I was hoping some may help me with a question. I have become a big fan of Matthew Prater and I want to spread the word in my writing. All I have found is that he recorded a few sides with Nap Hayes and some with Nap and Lonnie Johnson. Anyone have a better scoop. I would like to learn more about him.

The weirdest thing is the way John Fahey included one of their recorded tunes, "The Easy Winner," without explaining where he got it. Fahey titled it the "Bean Vine Blues No.Two."

Any other stuff?

Rich delGrosso

[frankie]

I think Nap Hayes & Matthew Prater only recorded two tunes with Lonnie Johnson:

Memphis Stomp
Violin Blues

and four tunes as a duo:

Somethin' Doin'
Easy Winner
Nothin' Doin'
Prater Blues

I really love the way MP plays the 'middle voice' in the songs with Lonnie Johnson.  That's some truly great ensemble playing, in my opinion.

The songs with Lonnie Johnson are available on Lonnie Johnson vol 3 (Document).  If you have both Violin Sing The Blues For Me and Folks, He Sure Do Pull Some Bow (Old Hat), then you've heard these already.  The four Hayes & Prater sides are available on String Bands (1926-1929) - also on Document.

[mandoman]

Thanks "Done Gone." I have the recordings. I agree about his ensemble playing. I love the pedal point he played on Violin Blues. It works perfect under the violin part.

I was hoping somebody might have a clue about his story...where he was from, when he was born, etc. I can't find a thing. But thanks for the response!

[uncle bud]

Hi Rich - there might be a reason you can't find anything. Nobody seems to know a damn thing about him!

The notes to the Document CD Rags, Breakdowns, Stomps and Blues, which features 2 of their tunes, add only that Prater and Hayes were from Vicksburg, Miss., and that Easy Winner was originally issued in Okeh's hillbilly series. Not much to go on, and where the info that they were from Vicksburg comes from, I don't know.

Bob Eagle has dug into Prater a little with no concrete results. He found records that could have been for Prater but not at all certain. He found a record for someone named Matt Prater, black, born 1886, who was boarding with one Sam Harris in Beat 2 of Leflore County, MS in 1900. Matt and parents were born in MS.

He also found a record for a Nap Hayes. "The most likely Hayes is Nap Hayes, black, born 1885, residing in Lee County, MS in 1918. He was working for one Ben Whitehead and his nearest relative was Lucinda Taylor, of Tupelo."

Those early birth dates might make some sense, given the ragtime-y, Joplin style to some of their material.

[Bunker Hill]

FWIW Tony Russell attempted to track them down in the 60s and drew a blank. However, he had this to say about their music (Blacks, Whites And Blues, November Books, 1970 p. 33).
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Easy Winner and Somethin' Doin', by Nap Hayes and Matthew Prater, who, like Evans and McClain, used the mandolin guitar duet form widely popular among white musicians, such as the Callahan, Shelton and Monroe Brothers. Hayes was probably exposed to ragtime when working with the pianist Cooney Vaughn, and he ably supported Prater's fluent mandolin runs. Both The Easy Winners and Something Doing (to give them their exact names) are by Scott Joplin; and this version of the latter composition was the only one to appear on record between the piano-roll era and the Second World War. The same would be true of Easy Winner, were it not that Hayes and Prater do not play this tune at all, but assemble under its name two strains from Joplin's The Entertainer and one from J. Bodewalt Lampe's Creole Belles. As it happens, this is the only record of The Entertainer from the cited period, too. Creole Belles was recorded by Mississippi John Hurt, soon after his reappearance in the musical world in I963; his guitar treatment may be compared with a I902 version, by banjoist Vess L. Ossman .

The rest of the Hayes-Prater recordings had their surprises, for the pair was joined by Lonnie Johnson, singing and playing violin, and the trio rendered I'm Drifting Back To Dreamland and Let Me Call You Sweetheart, which one suspects Johnson sang, he readily produces numbers like these to this day. Neither performance, however, was issued, and the rags, with blues couplings, appeared only in the OKeh old time series, about the same time as the Mississippi Sheiks were being similarly marketed with The Sheik Waltz and The Jazz Fiddler.
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I seem to have mislaid my copy of Yonder Come The Blues so unable to report if TR had anything new to add in 2001.

[mandoman]

Thanks to all. I knew you guys would have some good thoughts. I appreciate you taking time to respond. Hope I can return the favor! I'll stay tuned.