Monkey Joe

The quantity of real information known about Jesse “Monkey Joe” Coleman, who recorded extensively within the 1930s for Lester Melrose in Chicago and who was simply still playing clubs within the Windy City in the 1960s and 1970s, is astonishingly small. He was created sometime around or before 1906, most likely in Mississippi, and appears to have performed the juke joint parts in the region around Jackson in the first 1930s, in addition to New Orleans, where he trim his first program for RCA-Victor’s Bluebird imprint in 1935, in tandem with Small Sibling Montgomery. Coleman initial utilized the “Monkey Joe” name sometime in the 1930s. He afterwards resulted in in Chicago within Lester Melrose’s steady of bluesmen, and acquired his next program there in 1938 supported by guitarist Charlie McCoy and drummer Fred Williams. He appears to have proved helpful variously beneath the brands Jack port Newman at Vocalion and George Jefferson somewhere else, as accompanist to vocalist Lulu Scott. He cut further edges for Melrose, including several sides which he was billed as “Monkey Joe and His Music Grinders.” He also documented for the Okeh label. Very little is well known of Monkey Joe’s precise activities between your 1930s as well as the 1960s, just that he was a fixture in the clubs within the Chicago region in the 1960s and beyond. He’s presumed to get died sometime following the early 1970s. One recording, Crescent Town Blues, coupling him with Small Sibling Montgomery, surfaced in the first 1970s.