The Empress Of The Blues

Bessie Smith- The Complete Recordings, Vol. 3 (Disc 1)



Album Review:
"On the third of five volumes (the first four are double-CD box sets) that reissue all of her recordings, the great Bessie Smith is greatly assisted on some of the 38 selections by a few of her favorite sidemen: cornetist Joe Smith, trombonist Charlie Green, and clarinetist Buster Bailey. But the most important of her occasional musicians was pianist James P. Johnson, who makes his first appearance in 1927 and can be heard on four duets with Bessie, including the monumental "Backwater Blues." Other highlights of this highly recommended set (all five volumes are essential) include "After You've Gone," "Muddy Water," "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight," "Trombone Cholly," "Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair," and "Mean Old Bed Bug Blues." The power and intensity of Bessie Smith's recordings should be considered required listening; even 80 years later they still communicate."
-Allmusic.com

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The Real Tin Pan Alley

Curtis Jones- Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 4 (1941-1953)



Album Review:
"During the 1990s, the Document label reissued 91 recordings made by Texas-born Chicago blues pianist Curtis Jones during the years 1934-1953 without expending any resources to clean up the surface noise that came rising up off of the old 78 rpm platters. Volume four begins in January 1941, includes his 1953 Parrot single "Wrong Blues" b/w "Cool Playing Blues" and ends with three rare sides cut in October 1934 with big-voiced Alfoncy Harris, who sang with Blind Willie McTell and Memphis bandleader Douglas Williams during the '20s. Like the previous volume in the series, this slice of the chronology is striated with several distinctly different styles and moods, from the straightforward gravity of the "Low Down Worried Blues" through the jazzy jive of "It's a Solid Sender" and "Itty Bitty Jitter Bug," to the fully realized, saxophone-fortified postwar Chicago-blues-band sound of the "Flamin' Blues" and its flipside, the "Upside Down Blues." Jones is heard with bassists Ransom Knowling and Alfred Elkins; with drummer Judge Riley and, on the Parrot session, guitarist L.G. McKinley. The famous "Tin Pan Alley," destined to become one of Jones' most famous tunes, refers to a dangerous section of town where even the streetwise may be taking their lives into their own hands. This is, of course, as different as could be from the connotation of the original "Tin Pan Alley," New York's music publishing district on West 28th Street near Broadway. That Tin Pan Alley gave the world songs like "Yes We Have No Bananas." The Tin Pan Alley invoked by Curtis Jones must have been located in the roughest part of Chicago's South Side, and is light years removed from the old stamping grounds of George M. Cohan, Al Jolson, Jerome Kern, and Irving Berlin."
-Allmusic.com

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Curtis Jones' Solid Jive

Curtis Jones- Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 3 (1939-1940)



Album Review:
"The third volume in Document's complete reissued early works of singing blues pianist Curtis Jones contains 22 Vocalion, Okeh, and Bluebird recordings made in Chicago between June 1939 and September 1940. The first two tracks constitute the remaining titles from a session that featured vocalist Lillie Mae Kirkman, who made records with Memphis Slim & the House Rockers a few years later. The guitarist on "What Evil Have I Done?" and "It's a Hard Way to Travel," as well as tracks three through ten, was Hobson "Hot Box" Johnson, whose technique sometimes seems to be cross-threaded with the pianist's individualistic maneuverings. The drummer on most of these recordings was Bluebird's house percussionist Fred Williams; on tracks 15-22 (which also feature blues harpist Jazz Gillum) he is replaced by the venerable Judge Riley. Jones usually chose to sing about love, attraction, separation, and loneliness. Much of his material seems to have been cut out of the same fabric, woven directly from personal experience in his native Texas and up north in Chicago. One tune that stands out from the rest is "Solid Jive," a rare example of Jones adopting a jazzier swing style and mouthing "hepcat" lyrics. This lively number, as well as what appears to have been Jones' only known session involving a harmonica, makes Volume 3 a particularly interesting and texturally varied choice."
-Allmusic.com

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The String Band Lives!

South Memphis String Band- Home Sweet Home



Album Review:
"With their 2010 debut album, Home Sweet Home, the members of the South Memphis String Band -- Luther Dickinson, Alvin Youngblood Hart, and Jimbo Mathus -- have succeeded in producing a recording that sounds like it could have been made at least 80 years earlier. The trio members, each of whom has had other affiliations and recording projects, play acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin, Dobro, and other string instruments, along with the occasional harmonica and kazoo, plus plenty of heavy foot-tapping for percussion, as they make their way through a series of songs credited to "Traditional" as songwriter (as well as occasional covers and originals), trading off roughly sung vocals on matters of rural concern including livestock, bootlegging, and other criminal activity. The murder of outlaw Jesse James by "that dirty little coward" Robert Ford leads things off, and other selections include "Eighteen Hammers," which sounds like it would work fine for a chain gang on a Southern highway, and the self-descriptive "Bootlegger's Blues," borrowed from the repertoire of the Mississippi Sheiks. Dickinson, Hart, and Mathus give the impression they have just gotten together in a studio to trade tunes and then released the first-take results, including count-ins and stray spoken remarks, with the musical arrangements sounding as if they were invented on the spot. It's a devoted act of preservation to seem this spontaneous."
-Allmusic.com

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Van Ronk Does Blues & Woody Guthrie

Dave Van Ronk- Somebody Else, Not Me



Album Review:
"Originally released in the late 1970s, this album was a follow-up to Sunday Street, an album on which Dave Van Ronk had abandoned any attempts to accommodate contemporary popular music and returned to an acoustic context and a repertoire of blues and jazz standards. He did much the same thing here, including material by Jelly Roll Morton and Scott Joplin, as well as Furry Lewis and Brownie McGhee, fingerpicking with his usual care and singing in his usual comforting growl. "Did You Hear John Hurt?," "Pastures Of Plenty," and "Song To Woody" nodded to mentors Mississippi John Hurt and Woody Guthrie, and peers Tom Paxton and Bob Dylan. If the result was not quite the equal of Sunday Street, it was in the same league and continued Van Ronk's mature renaissance. "
-Allmusic.com

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Rare Blueblood Blues

Andrew "Blueblood" McMahon- Blueblood



Biography:
"Chicago bassist who worked extensively with Howlin' Wolf's band before stepping out front as a vocalist with an album for the local Dharma label, Blueblood."
-Allmusic.com

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Big Walter's Harmonica

Big Walter Horton- Big Walter Horton With Carey Bell



Album Review:
"The teacher/pupil angle might be a bit unwieldy here -- Bell was already a formidable harpist in his own right by 1972, when Horton made this album -- but there's no denying that a stylistic bond existed between the two. A highly showcase for the often recalcitrant harp master, and only his second domestic set as a leader."
-Allmusic.com

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Tampa Red, By Request

Tampa Red- Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 11 (1939-1940)



Biography:
"Out of the dozens of fine slide guitarists who recorded blues, only a handful -- Elmore James, Muddy Waters, and Robert Johnson, for example -- left a clear imprint on tradition by creating a recognizable and widely imitated instrumental style. Tampa Red was another influential musical model. During his heyday in the '20s and '30s, he was billed as "The Guitar Wizard," and his stunning slide work on steel National or electric guitar shows why he earned the title. His 30-year recording career produced hundreds of sides: hokum, pop, and jive, but mostly blues (including classic compositions "Anna Lou Blues," "Black Angel Blues," "Crying Won't Help You," "It Hurts Me Too," and "Love Her with a Feeling"). Early in Red's career, he teamed up with pianist, songwriter, and latter-day gospel composer Georgia Tom Dorsey, collaborating on double entendre classics like "Tight Like That."

Listeners who only know Tampa Red's hokum material are missing the deeper side of one of the mainstays of Chicago blues. His peers included Big Bill Broonzy, with whom he shared a special friendship. Members of Lester Melrose's musical mafia and drinking buddies, they once managed to sleep through both games of a Chicago White Sox doubleheader. Eventually alcohol caught up with Red, and he blamed his latter-day health problems on an inability to refuse a drink.

During Red's prime, his musical venues ran the gamut of blues institutions: down-home jukes, the streets, the vaudeville theater circuit, and the Chicago club scene. Due to his polish and theater experience, he is often described as a city musician or urban artist in contrast to many of his more limited musical contemporaries. Furthermore, his house served as the blues community's rehearsal hall and an informal booking agency. According to the testimony of Broonzy and Big Joe Williams, Red cared for other musicians by offering them a meal and a place to stay and generally easing their transition from country to city life.

Today's listener will enjoy Tampa Red's expressive vocals and perhaps be taken aback by his kazoo solos. His songwriting has stood the test of time, and any serious slide guitar student had better be familiar with Red's guitar wizardry."
-Allmusic.com

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Two Centuries Ago

Cowboy Roy Brown- Street Singer



Biography:
"Cowboy Roy Brown was born on April 20, 1875, the son of a fiddle-playing Arkansas preacher. Brown's father taught him to play guitar and he was soon accompanying him at church services. In 1882, when Brown was seven, he moved with his father to Butler County, MO, just across the border from Arkansas on the Black River. Brown moved to Kansas City while in his twenties, and after spending a decade or so there, he moved to Marion, IL, then to Milwaukee, WI, and then to Deadwood, SD, before eventually settling in St. Louis, where he made his living as a street singer. Playing on an ancient guitar he had named "Baby" and punctuating his songs with blasts on a kazoo he called "Leon," Brown worked a versatile street repertoire of folk, blues, gospel, pop, and cowboy songs. He was recorded doing his street act in the mid-'50s (when he was in his seventies or early eighties) and the session was eventually released a half-century later by Delmark Records in 2007 under the title Street Singer."
-Allmusic.com

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Rare Country LP

Hank Thompson & His Brazos Valley Boys- Vintage Collections



Album Review:
"The French LP Hank Thompson & His Brazos Valley Boys is a compilation of live radio performances Thompson and his band gave in 1952, just as his career was beginning to take off with the massive success of "The Wild Side of Life." Even though neither that song, or any of his earlier, lesser hits, are included on this collection, the album doesn't suffer as a result. Thompson & the Brazos Valley Boys sound tough and inspired, bringing a considerable amount of grit to his swinging honky tonk. The record remains an item for collector's only, but for those willing to seek it out, it is an enjoyable and fascinating historical artifact."
-Allmusic.com

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Rare Dink Johnson

Dink Johnson- Mr. Johnson Signing Off



Album Review:
"Although Dink Johnson could also play the clarinet and drums, he was best known for his piano playing -- at least during the final decades of his life -- and on Mr. Johnson Signing Off, his role is that of a singing pianist. The main focus of this hour-long CD is recordings that the New Orleans native/Los Angeles transplant made for the Euphonic label around 1950, when he had about four years left to live. These spirited, good-natured performances often bring to mind Fats Waller, another singing pianist who was known for his healthy sense of humor. As much of a virtuoso as Waller was, he wasn't afraid to laugh -- Waller definitely knew how to have fun, and Johnson brings a similar outlook to the table whether he is performing Jelly Roll Morton pieces (including "Kansas City Stomp" and "Original Jelly Roll Blues") or interpreting familiar Tin Pan Alley standards such as "Lady Be Good" and "Exactly Like You." Comparing Johnson to Waller isn't saying that Johnson was trying to be an exact clone; Johnson was his own man, and Waller was hardly his only influence. Johnson's piano playing also owes a lot to Jelly Roll Morton and James P. Johnson (two other pianists who had a major impact in the '20s), as well as the Southern piano blues tradition. Johnson's humorous performances on Mr. Johnson Signing Off are quite a contrast to the bebop and cool jazz going on in 1950; at a time when many bop and cool artists were pointing jazz in a more complex, intellectual direction, Johnson continued to approach jazz as party music -- an approach that went over well in Southern California. Outside of his adopted home of L.A., Johnson wasn't as well known as he should have been. But that fact doesn't make Mr. Johnson Signing Off any less enjoyable."
-Allmusic.com

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Willie Borum's Blues

Memphis Willie B.- Hard Working Man Blues



Biography:
"Willie Borum, better known under his recording sobriquet of Memphis Willie B., was a mainstay of the Memphis blues and jug band circuit. Adept at both harmonica and guitar, Borum could add pep to any combination he worked in, as well as leaving a striking impression as a solo artist.

He was born in 1911 in Shelby County, TN. He took to the guitar early in his childhood, being principally taught by his father and Memphis medicine show star Jim Jackson. By his late teens, he was working with Jack Kelly's Jug Busters, working for tips on the street with the occasional house party and country supper rounding out his meager paycheck. This didn't last long, as Borum joined up with the Memphis Jug Band, one of two professional outfits in existence at that time. The group frequently worked what later became W.C. Handy Park in Memphis, their touring stretching all the way down to New Orleans during the Mardi Gras. Sometime in the '30s he learned to play harmonica, being taught by no less a master than Noah Lewis, the best harp blower in Memphis and mainstay of Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers. As his style began to move further away from a strict jug band approach, Willie B. began working on and off with various traveling Delta bluesmen, performing at various functions with Rice Miller, Willie Brown, Garfield Akers, and Robert Johnson. He finally got to make some records in New York under his own name in 1934 for Vocalion, but quickly moved back into playing juke joints and gambling houses with Son Joe, Joe Hill Louis and Will Shade until around 1943, when he became a member of the U.S. Army.

It was a much different world he returned to and after a brief fling at trying to pick up where he left off, Borum soon cashed in his chips and started looking for a day job. That would have been the end of the story, except in 1961 -- with the folk and blues revival in full hootenanny steam -- Borum was tracked down and recorded an absolutely marvelous session at the Sun studios for Prestige's Bluesville label. It turned into a little bit of a career upswing for the next few years; Willie B. started working the festival and coffeehouse circuit with old Memphis buddies Gus Cannon and Furry Lewis. But then just as quickly, he dropped out of the music scene and eventually out of sight altogether. The reports of his death in the early '70s still remain unconfirmed as of press time."
-Allmusic.com

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