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Texas and the Deep South: People keep asking me where the blues started and all I can say is that when I was a boy we always was singing in the fields. Not real singing you know, just hollerin', but we made up our songs about things that was happening to us at that time, and I think that's where the blues started.
... Son HouseSon House was one of the most important blues artists of all time and quite possibly the music's greatest singer.
W.C. Handy's "Memphis Blues" was written in 1911 as a campaign song for Memphis mayor Edward H. "Boss" Crump and enjoyed more than local success. In 1914, Handy followed up this song with "The St. Louis Blues," which became an international sensation and is sometimes cited as the world's first published jazz composition.
Clifton Chenier, the undisputed King of Zydeco music, is to zydeco what Muddy Waters is to Chicago blues. Chenier gave new meaning to "accordian music."
________ Lightnin' Hopkins became the darling of the folk blues world shortly after he was "discovered" in Texas.
________ Joe McCoy was a multitalented singer -composer -instrumentalist as well as the organizer of countless recording sessions.
________ Oh, I'm gonna get me religion, I'm gonna join the Baptist church. Oh, I'm gonna get me religion, I'm gonna join the Baptist church. I'm gonna be a Baptist preacher, and I sure won't have to work.
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Robert Nighthawk, as he was popularly known, was actually Robert Lee McCoy, cousin of Joe and Charlie McCoy. He worked with his cousins as a mouth harp player and a spectacular one at that.
Bubka White was one of the true titans of the slide guitar, employing a vigorous, rhythmic, propulsive approach to playing. Possessed of remarkable imagination, he produced songs that amount to miniature operas.
________ Leadbelly - (Huddie Ledbetter) because of his style as well as the great breadth of his repertoire, Leadbelly was really a songster and not exclusively a blues artist.
________ Blind Lemon Jefferson was a veritable giant during his time and an unqualified commercial success to boot.
________ The Reverend Robert Wilkins, also known as Tim Wilkins, circumspectly recorded some spectacular blues sides between the years 1928 and 1935, after which he turned to the church and refused to do further blues. He stayed active as a gospel artist until his death well into his nineties.
________ Walter "Furry" Lewis - Many people who are asked about their introduction to country blues invariably respond with the name of Walter Lewis. As a young man he was a Beale Street regular and was rumored to have played guitar in W.C. Handy's band.
________ The McCoys - The husband and wife team of Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe - The McCoys - enjoyed great popularity between 1929 and 1934, recording countless sides in various settings and achieving commercial success during the worst of the Great Depression. Big Joe Williams was a nine-string guitarist. A traveling bluesman for his entire life, he was a veritable walking encyclopedia of the blues, who always seemed to know who was where, who was living, and who had passed on to the next world.
________ Mary Johnson - known as "Signifying" Mary Johnson - was an excellent singer and songwriter who was married to Lonnie Johnson for several years. She recorded with such giants as Henry Brown, Tampa Red, Roosevelt Sykes, Kokomo Arnold and Peetie Wheatstraw.
________ Willie Black a tenor banjo player was misidentified as a mandolin player for years. Willie Black played for the Whistler's Jug Band.
________ William Bunch, variously known as Peetie Wheatstraw, the Devil's Son-in-Law, and the High Sheriff of Hell, was a tremendously popular pianist-singer who occasionally played guitar and was in constant demand as an accompanist.
________ Roosevelt Sykes - Another important artist with a host of pseudonyms was Roosevelt Sykes - aka/a Dobby Bragg, the Honeydripper, Easy Poppa Johnson, St. Louis Johnny, and Willie Kelly. He was a masterful blues boogie-woogie barrelhouse pianist, an excellent songwriter and singer, and an accompanist nonpareil.
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Robert Johnson, whose spider-like fingers displayed a musical awareness far beyond the artist's years and era, was a giant now revered by people in all walks of musical life. The extensive mythology surrounding him includes the notion of selling his soul to the devil - at the "crossroads" and on the stroke of midnight - in exchange for his unparalleled musical abilities.
People who both traveled and played with Robert Johnson say that he could carry on a conversation in a roomful of people while the radio was playing in the background, ostensibly paying absolutely no attention to the radio, yet the next day play note for note whatever songs had been on the air. He is quite possibly the most influential blues artist of all time. James "Yank" Rachell - The mandolin was never one of the favorite or most frequently used instruments in blues, but perhaps if blues mandolin players all had the virtuosity of James Rachell, it would have been a different story. Also an excellent guitar player, he is probably better known as the perennial associate of Sleepy John Estes than in his own right.
________ Sleepy John Estes was one of the most personal and anguished of all blues poets. His recordings are quintessential examples of the best of blues poetry, and some of his early efforts, particularly those with Jab Jones on piano and his longtime partner Yang Rachell on mandolin, are about as good as the blues gets.
________ Arthur ("Big Boy") Crudup from Midnight, Mississippi, was a superb songwriter, a fine singer, an elemental guitarist, and a great innovator. He was one of the "bridges" between pure country and the newer emerging "electric" blues of the early 1940s.
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John Lee Hooker, from Clarksdale, Mississippi, burst upon the scene in the late 1940s like a gigantic meteor. He is still active today, approaching his music much as he always has. (7/17/95)
Doctor Isaiah Ross, truly a one-man band, is still active today (1993) and has been a great favorite with European audiences.
________ Frankie Lee Sims from Texas was yet another neglected blues artist of great substance.
________ Lowell Fulson - Although he hails from Oklahoma, Lowell Fulson is generally associated with Texas Blues. He is still very much active today. (1993)
________ The Mississippi Sheiks, were made up of: Bo Chatman (a'k'a Chatmon or Carter), Walter Vincson (s/k/a Jacobs or Vincent) and Sam Chatman or Chatmon. The Mississippi Sheiks was a family band. Between 1929 and 1941, Walter Vincson recorded for the Brunswick, Okeh, Decca, and Bluebird companies under the name Walter Vincent, with Chapman's Mississippi Hot Footers; as Walter Jacobs and the Carter Brothers; and solo as Walter Vincson, Walter Jacobs, and Walter Vincent - all of this in addition to his work as a member of the Mississippi Sheiks.
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