Tag Archives: Early American Blues

An excellent early Chicago blues pianist, the little-known Myrtle Jenkins, occasionally billed mainly because Miss Myrtle Jenkins, was the featured piano participant on many of Bumble Bee Slim’s recordings for the Bluebird, Vocalion, and Decca imprints, and she played piano aswell (and sometimes sang) with Priscilla Stewart, Mary Mack, the …

Tx songster Henry Thomas remains to be a member of family stranger who made some very nice recordings, then returned to obscurity. Proof suggests he was an itinerant road musician, a musical hobo who rode the rails across Tx and possibly towards the World’s Fairs in St. Louis and Chicago …

The word “metropolitan blues” is normally put on post-World War II blues band music, but among the forefathers from the genre in its pre-electric format was pianist Leroy Carr. Teamed using the exemplary guitarist Scrapper Blackwell in Indianapolis, Carr became among the best blues superstars of his time, composing and …

Blues pianist George “Honey” Hill slice several edges with blues vocalist, songwriter and guitarist Expenses Gaither for the Decca and Okeh record brands between 1931 and 1941. Gaither was a good friend from the blues pianist Leroy Carr, as well as the Gaither and Hill duo was patterned after Carr …

W.C. Handy, the “Dad from the Blues,” brought the music of rural Southern blacks in to the mainstream by copyrighting previous music and writing brand-new music, spurring the blues in to the mainstream of well-known music through the 1910s and ’20s. He was also an extremely trained veteran from the …

From the dozens of good slip guitarists who recorded blues, just a few — Elmore Wayne, Muddy Waters, and Robert Johnson, for instance — left a definite imprint on custom by developing a recognizable and widely imitated instrumental design. Tampa Crimson was another important musical model. During his heyday within …

Frank Stokes and partner Dan Sane recorded because the Beale Road Sheiks, a Memphis response to the music Chatmon family members string music group, the Mississippi Sheiks. Based on local custom, Stokes had been playing the roads of Memphis with the convert of the hundred years, a comparable period the …

Tallahassee Tight was the blues name for Louis Washington, who use his delivery name when he was performing gospel, and utilize the blues name when he was performing the blues, a practice not unusual for southern dark musicians within the 1930s. His delivery date is unidentified, and it’s been assumed …

A reasonably anonymous band of uptown hokum singers and players from Chicago’s Depression-era blues picture, the Chicago Dark Swans may or might not have included blues icon Big Costs Broonzy, who may or might not have created the group’s two risqué 1937 sides, “Don’t Tear My Clothing” and “You Drink …

George Mitchell doesn’t just get the blues, he must go out and discover them. Because of his efforts, followers of authentic nation blues have already been in a position to hear the real thing without making the type of street trips required of the dedicated maker, editor, musicologist, and folklorist. …