Topic: Tampa Red

[Bunker Hill]

Jim O'Neal has posted to his website the superb notes to the 1975 double Tampa Red RCA LP which he has updated. Jim's also compiled a double CD which Ace has just made released.

http://bluesoterica.com/the-tampa-red-page

(Probably wasting folks time with this as it's probably all over social media by now and already "old hat news brought to you by the man from the dark ages".   

[Gumbo]

Thanks for this. Time not wasted!

[dj]

Thanks for the link, Alan.  It's good to see that O'Neal is working on a Tampa Red book.  I hope it gets finished and finds a publisher.

It should be pointed out that at the top of the linked page there's a link to Jim O'Neal's article on Casey Bill Weldon that was published in Living Blues a few years ago, along with some extra information that has come to light since the article was published.

[Harry]

I love Tampa Red. I played "Delta Woman Blues" on the weenie back porch awhile back. I love his singing, love his guitar playing, love his piano playing but I my opinion a lot of his records records are just ruined by his kazoo playing. I always wished one could go back in time and say "don't do that". Read in the article that Dorsey in fact did try to discourage Tampa from using the instrument.

In the Michael Bloomfield biography "If you love these blues" Mike tells the story when he and Big Joe went to visit Tampa.
And we'd go. Tampa by the time I met him was just a frail wizened little man whose hands shook uncontrollably. He had an expensive Gibson in a case beneath his bed but all he could do was show it to us, his hands wouldn't let him play.

Here's a photo of Tampa in his later years. I don't know the exact date but the record (Oldie Blues ‎? OL 2816, The Netherlands) he's holding up was released in 1977.

[Bunker Hill]

If there wasn't a demand the records would have "bombed" and consigned to oblivion by Bluebird.

Just because we don't approve of those eleven 1932/36 sessions who are we to deem them ruined?

With that I'll step off the soap-box.

[oddenda]

Thank you, BH. OUR aesthetic has nothing to do with that of the Black record-buying public in the 30s. Need go no further than the sainted RJ to see !hat!

pbl

[Stuart]

Harry:

Several years ago there was a passionate discussion at the PWBG regarding Tampa's use of the "Jazz Horn." Our den mother finally had to tell us to cease and desist as a discussion of this topic was  inappropriate for some of the greatest minds in Blues scholarship. I'm sure Alan and Peter fondly recall this episode.

[One-Eyed Ross]

I must admit that when I first started listening to songs that included the kazoo, I was a bit put off by it... (This was back when I listened to 78s as a kid and rock and roll was all the rage.  Hey, it was the 60s, what can I say).

Later in life, when I started really listening to the music, instead of just hearing it, I learned to enjoy it.  I don't know if it was age catching up with me, or just the evolution of my musical ear.  Well, that and listening to a lot of jug band stuff over the years.

I really missed out on a lot, not paying attention to what my father tried to teach me, but I suppose that I am not the only person in that boat.

[Prof Scratchy]

Sorry, but I have an aversion to Tampa Red's kazoo playing. There, I've said it!

[Johnm]

Hi all,
It appears that two different things are being talked about--whether Tampa Red's records with kazoo were successful or ruined and whether people like it or have to like it.  Evidently they were successful in a commercial sense, or Bluebird wouldn't have recorded so many of them.  Not that that has anything to do with whether a particular person wants to listen to them!  As for what black audiences wanted to listen to at the time the music was recorded, that's neither here nor there in determining a person's gut reaction to a particular sound, performance or song.  That was then and this is now, and I would never base my musical opinion on what any mass of people liked anyway.  People are entitled to their likes and dislikes without any further explanation or justification required.  As long as matters of taste are expressed as personal preferences and not as matters of aesthetic "fact", it's perfectly fine to dislike anything that rubs you the wrong way, or like things that almost nobody you know likes.  Personal musical taste doesn't require justification--it's one of our small freedoms.
All best,
Johnm
     

[Rivers]

The kazoo on Red's recordings used to grate on me also. Now I've had time to get older I figure it just 'is what it is', as the saying goes. 

[Stuart]

Sorry, but I have an aversion to Tampa Red's kazoo playing. There, I've said it!

Keep listening. It's still too early to make any final pronouncements. Where there's life, there's hope! 

[Harry]

What was Tampa Red's race/ethnic heritage?

[One-Eyed Ross]

In the "for what it's worth" department, Wikipedia has this note:  "In 1928, Tampa Red became the first black musician to play a National steel-bodied resonator guitar, the loudest and showiest guitar available before amplification, acquiring one in the first year they were available." 

[Bunker Hill]

The attached is in the latest Blues & Rhythm. By John Broven. Superb in every respect.