The Iconic Blues Historic Blues from 1930s to 1970s
SOME FULL REVIEWS OF SET 7
MATCHBOX BLUESMASTER SERIES –
SOME FULL REVIEWS OF SET 7
BLUES IN BRITAIN, MAY 2022 Various Artists Matchbox Bluesmaster Series: Volume 7 'Songsters & Saints' MSESET7 (6 CD box set) Matchbox/Saydisc
British writer Paul Oliver wrote several highly regarded books on the history and roots of the blues, including in 1984, Songsters & Saints, but until now the recordings that went with the book have not seen the light of day on CD. Here they are at last and the wait has been more than worthwhile.
In set 7 of the stunning Matchbox Bluesmaster Series not only do we get the amazing recordings that support the book, but also an album featuring the man B.B. King called the greatest guitarist of them all, Lonnie Johnson, and another gem of an album featuring The Famous Hokum Boys. The Lonnie Johnson tracks came out of a creative five year period from 1927 to 1932 and apart from added piano on a few tracks, this is pure Johnson, opening with his two part recording of 'Kansas City Blues' from sessions in Chicago in December '27, followed by his version of 'Careless Love' from a February session in New York the next year. We also get three tracks from another New York Session in 1932 when he recorded as Jimmy Jordan, but throughout these recordings his guitar is outstanding. If you've got none of his recordings I suggest this is one incredible place to start, and that's just disc one.
On to the second offering in this set, and in a series of recordings between 1930-1931, The Famous Hokum Boys offer another set of blues gems. The musicians include Georgia Tom (piano), Big Bill Broonzy (vocals/ guitar) and Frank Brasswell (guitar). As Paul Oliver says, "There's probably no aspect of the blues which has received so little attention as Hokum, a positive embarrassment to many blues collectors". As one jazz writer put it, Hokum was an early term for faking or improvising, a "hoke" chorus was a hot solo. But whatever, these recordings by some great players are worthy additions to any blues collection.
So onto the recordings that I first heard of in Oliver's book and we get four albums to enjoy, covering "Dances And Travelling Shows", "Comment, Parodies & Ballad Heroes", "The Baptist Sanctified Preachers", "Gospel Soloists and Evangelists", "Medicine Show Songsters", "Songsters East and West" and the wonderfully named "Straining Preachers". The collection is subtitled Vocal Traditions On Race Records; but through these four discs there are some incredible recordings to enjoy with artists such as Peg Leg Howell, Charley Patton, Hambone Willie Newbern, Bo Chatmon and Kid Cooley to enrich your knowledge and enjoyment. The titles alone draw your attention: from the "Dances And Travelling Shows" set we get songs such as 'Turkey Buzzard Blues' and 'Under The Chicken Tree', from "Comment, Parodies and Ballad Heroes" there's 'Furniture Man' and my personal favourite 'I Heard The Voice Of A Pork Chop'. Try and beat that - mind you, a few titles here might raise eyebrows today but remember they are of their time. The medicine shows were all over the south and the recordings on the "Medicine Show Songsters" and "Songsters East and West" sets here include Papa Charlie Jackson, Gus Cannon (of Jug Stampers fame), Henry Thomas and a gem of a recording by that great guitarist Blind Blake, joined for this session by Gus Cannon.
Then it's onto three sets of the Preachers, not as we would expect today but with the congregation fully involved and joining in with the singing groups and musicians, and some pretty fine tambourine playing, titles such as 'After The Ball Is Over' and 'Silk Worms And Boll Weevils'. By the final disc, we're introduced to the incredibly named "Straining Preachers" and these you just have to hear, with the preaching of those such as Rev. Jim Beal in Chicago or Rev. Isaiah Sheldon in New Orleans, Rev. J.M. Milton in Atlanta or The Rev. E.S. (Shy) Moore in Memphis. One stand out track is Rev. Leora Ross preaching alongside the Living God Jubilee Choir about 'God's Mercy To Colonal Lindburgh'. What makes these recordings, all issued at the time on record for folks to take home, is the life, vitality and power of what they do. You could write pages on these wonderful recordings. Whether it's the Hokum Blues, the Gospel singers and preachers, the absolutely wonderful playing of Lonnie Johnson, each of these recordings bring you music you will never forget. Long overdue for release, grab yourselves copies while these remain available. This is the blues as good as it will ever get.
Pete Clack
BLUES BLAST MAGAZINE, USA Matchbox Bluesmaster Series – set 7: Songsters & Saints – Vocal Traditions on Race Records Nimbus Records www.wyastone.co.uk www.saydisc.com www.matchboxbluesmaster.co.uk 6 discs
The Matchbox Bluesmaster series were originally released from November 1982 to June 1988 by Saydisc Records. Rare 78 rpm records were loaned to supplement the ones on hand to create what was called “Complete Recordings in Chronological Order” along with some add on tracks. These records were mastered on tape and released on vinyl. I previously looked at volumes 5 and 6 in a prior review and here we have the final set, which is a little different. I noted preciously that Austrian collector Johnny Parth edited the sets and got the recordings grouped and released by Saydisc in the UK. Hans Klement did the remastering work from Austrophon Studios in Vienna. The tracks selected were released in seven sets of six records and are here released on CD. The master tapes have long since vanished, so Norman White took the vinyl pressings and used high end transcription techniques to make the digital recordings. In addition to the 42 releases in these seven sets, even more music is expected for release as they have many pre-Bluesmaster cuts that can be released. Paul Oliver provides ample notes and data on each set of CDs. Oliver is a jazz and blues historian who has written 10 books on blues and gospel history and passed away in 2017 after a long career as a music historian and architect. He provides copious notes in a booklet for each set. The prior sets include entire CDs by a particular artist. Some artists get a couple of CDs to themselves.
As with the prior sets, Matchbox Bluesmaster Series – set 7 offers up the second volume of Lonnie Johnson’s works as an entire CD and also one from The Famous Hokum Boys. Johnson’s works range from 1927 to 1932 while The Hokum Boys cuts are from 1930 and 1931. The other four CDs are Songsters and Saints, Volumes 1 and 2. They range in dates from 1925 to 1931.
Discs 3 through 6 offer a variety of interesting and priceless recordings. All of these recordings were from white owned record labels that produce race records for black audiences and hillbilly music for white audiences; making a buck off music that would sell was the priority. The first two disc continue the series as before. Johnson’s vocals and guitar are splendid. He certainly was captured well, and some of the 78’s were pristine. The Fabulous Hokum Boys live up to their name with entertaining and light-hearted blues. The band is Georgia Tom on vocals and piano throughout, and also includes Big Bill Broonzy on vocals and guitar on a dozen tracks, Hannah Mae on vocals, Kansas City Kitty on vocals, Frank Brasswell on vocals and guitar, and Jane Lucas on vocals. Disc 3 is Dances and Travelling Shows and Comment, Parodies and Ballad Heroes. The former includes greats like Pink Anderson, Peg Leg Howell, Charley Patton, and The Memphis Sheiks. The latter group includes Lil McClintock, Hazekiah Jenkins, Bo Chatman, Kid Coley and many others.
Disc 4 is Baptists and Sanctified Preachers (9 tracks) and Gospel Soloists and Evangelists (9 tracks). There is some fiery old school preaching a little choral singing in the first part while the second part includes preaching and gospel tunes done by Blind Willie Davis, William and Versey Smith, Eddie Head and His Family and more. The fifth disc is Medicine Show Songsters and hen Songsters east and West. The Medicine Show cuts include great music from Papa Charlie Jackson, Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers, Jim Jackson and the Beale Street Sheiks. The Songsters are Sam Jones (Stovepipe No. 1) and David Crockett, Henry Thomas, Luke Jordan and Blind Blake, one of my personal favorite artists. The final disc features The Straining Preachers and Songsters East and West: Saints of Church and Street. A half dozen preachers and some of their flocks are included in the first section while the last set includes Blind Willie Johnson, The Memphis Sanctified Singers, Arizona Juanita Dranes, Blind Joe and Emma Taggart and more.
This final chapter in the Matchbox Bluesmaster Series is unique in that it includes a plethora of sacred and secular music and spoken word. One marvels at the incredible gospel and blues tunes included and the fire and brimstone preaching (often with congregational responses); there is so much cool stuff represented by these recordings.
The seventh set of CDs is a perfect conclusion to the series and offers the listener a variety of songs and spoken word that they will thoroughly enjoy. I highly recommend this and the entire series to those who want to learn how early blues and gospel got recorded and promoted and influences the electrified urban blues, R&B, rock and roll, soul, hip hop and rap music. All of America’s popular music came from these early blues and gospel music and hearing it gives us a great look into how that all happened.
Reviewer Steve Jones is president of the Crossroads Blues Society and is a long standing blues lover. He is a retired Navy commander who served his entire career in nuclear submarines. In addition to working in his civilian career since 1996, he writes for and publishes the bi-monthly newsletter for Crossroads, chairs their music festival and works with their Blues In The Schools program. He resides in Byron, IL.
May2022 issue of the Los Angeles Jazz Scene JAZZ AROUND TOWN The British Saydisc label’s Matchbox Bluesmaster series has reached its conclusion. During 1982-88, Matchbox released 38 albums and two double-Lps of early blues that (with a couple of exceptions) date from 1926-34. Saydisc (www.saydisc.com) has reissued the entire catalog on seven six-CD sets.
The final two volumes came out recently. Matchbox Bluesmaster Series Set 6 brings back Papa Charlie Jackson (1924-29), Memphis Jug Band (1927-34), Barbecue Bob (1927-30), Leecan & Cooksey (1926-27), Roosevelt Sykes (1929-34), and Mississippi Sheiks Vol 2 (1930-34). These once-rare albums of blues, hokum and gospel include performances by both well-known (Sykes) and obscure (Leecan & Cooksey) artists. Papa Charlie Jackson was unusual in that he was a blues-singing banjo player (rather than guitarist) whose music often came close to jazz. The Memphis Jug Band was a spirited party group while singer-guitarist Barbecue Bob (Robert Hicks) ranged from religious numbers (including one of the earliest recordings of “When The Saints Go Marching In”) to lowdown numbers (“Red Hot Mama, Papa’s Going To Cool You Off”). Guitarist Bobby Leecan and harmonica player Robert Cooksey make for a lively duo and are also heard in other settings including with cornetist Tom Morris in the Dixie Jazzers Washboard Band. Pianist-singer Roosevelt Sykes is heard near the beginning of his long career while the Mississippi Sheiks show why they were a very popular attraction during their prime years.
Matchbox Bluemaster Series Set 7 is subtitled Songsters & Saints. Guitarist-singer Lonnie Johnson is featured on the first disc (mostly performing solo although there is a two-part number with Victoria Spivey) and the second CD features the Famous Hokum Boys, a good-time group that features singer-pianist Georgia Tom Dorsey and often Big Bill Broonzy on guitar and vocals. The final four discs reissue a pair of Various Artists two-Lp sets originally titled Vocal Traditions on Race Records: Songsters & Saints Vols. 1 & 2. Many different singers are heard from on one or two selections apiece, giving listeners an idea of what the black music world sounded like before the blues and jazz took over. From folk songs, party tunes, and long-forgotten religious hymns and even some preaching, these four discs provide a strong overview of pre-blues black music from a wide variety of performers.
It is quite rewarding that the entire Matchbox catalog is now available on CD. Paul Oliver’s original definitive liner notes are also included and are a major bonus to this highly recommended series.
Scott Yanow
Songsters & Saints
Matchbox Bluesmaster Series Vol. 7
Henry’s Blueshouse Aug 2022
The last time that Stuart Maxwell reviewed one of that most comprehensive Saydisc releases of early blues recordings, their Matchbox Bluesmaster Series, they were pleased enough with his efforts to feature part of his review on their website:
"…every backwater and flowing mainstream of Western popular music is rooted in this stuff. .. collections like the Matchbox Bluesmaster Series, which Saydisc has reissued with such meticulous care in these multi-disc sets, are so important …It’s a helluva legacy.”
This was from his review of Set 5 which featured on six CDs - Blind Lemon Jefferson, Frank Stokes, Blind Blake, Big Bill Broonzy, The Mississippi Sheiks and Lonnie Johnson.
Stuart, who doubles as singer, harmonica player and bandleader with the redoubtable blues band The Shufflepack, a leading attraction at Henry's Blueshouse has now come up with a review of Volume 7:
Songsters & Saints: Vocal Traditions on Race Records Featuring recordings by Lonnie Johnson, The Famous Hokum Boys, Georgia Tom, Papa Charlie Jackson, Cannon's Jug Stompers and many more.
***
Now that's what we called Race Records
Who will be the Paul Oliver of 2095? Will they be poring over the master recordings from this year's Eurovision Song Contest and expounding on their cultural significance? Actually, they probably could. And not just because Eurovision is always politically and culturally significant, if only by accident. Popular music is an expression of the society it springs from, so it gives your social anthropologist rich pickings.
The point being that these Matchbox reissues are a form of "Now That's What I Call Music" for fans of early popular music. Because make no mistake, this is pop music, recorded and promoted to make money. It follows that, like a lot of pop music, most of it should have been forgotten a long time ago because its time has passed.
We listen now because we're curious about the history of our music, or because we have a romantic attachment to the mythology of the blues. Yes, there will be some who listen just because they like the music, but if Saydisc released Nancy Jane by The Hokum Boys as a single today it would be unlikely to trouble the likes of Cat Burns or Jax Jones in their attempts to snatch the Number 1 spot.
Like it or not, that's the only measure that counts for pop music. If it doesn't sell, it isn't popular. All of which makes an academic reverence for these recordings a bit misplaced. The people who trailed through the American South in search of so-called Race artists were the Simon Cowells of their day, hunting down the next catchy hook or novelty song. Although Simon Cowell has a bit more regard for the wellbeing of his artists than they did back then.
Unless you really love this stuff for its intrinsic value (and Paul Oliver exhorts us so to do in his liner notes) you'll listen once, be vaguely amused or fascinated, and then pop it on the shelf next to the other six CD reissues in the Matchbox Bluesmaster Series, congratulating yourself on the completeness of your collection. It will be a while before you listen again because, frankly, why would you? This music is none of your business.
Beans Hambone, Jane Lucas and the Rev A.W. Nix are singing and talking about stuff that is completely outside your cultural frame of reference. This is not some politically correct rant, it's just a plain fact of rock'n'roll. Pop music by definition is a function of its time and place and some of this stuff is nearly 100 years old.
And yet. There they are on the shelf, these CDs, and they absolutely should be there. Partly because some of the recordings are still powerful and have a real kick, like Blind Willie Davis' Your Enemy Cannot Harm you. Partly also because some of it is still culturally relevant, like Rev Edward Clayborn's Death Is Only A Dream, or the Mississippi Sheiks' He's In The Jailhouse Now, which, amazingly, has not been adopted by conspiracy theorists as a contemporary anthem.
Likewise, before you tune in to another TED talk or prepare your next PowerPoint epic, have a listen to The Downfall of Nebuchadnezzar by the Rev. J.C. Bennett, Sister Ethel Grainger and sister Odette Jackson. It’s a master class in the art of presentation.
For musicians there is also that thing where you can pinch a song and smugly say, "Oh yes, it's an old thing by 'Big Boy' Owens", or "You mean you don't know Bogus Ben Covington?" Of course, the more obscure and outlandish the name, the better it is. But mainly this stuff needs to be documented and treasured because it keeps us from getting carried away by the hyperbole and bombast of modern pop. Stormzy at Glastonbury? Coldplay or Oasis at any stadium you care to name? The Rolling Stones? They're all just the Stovepipe No. 1s or Beale Street Sheiks of our time. (In fairness, I'm pretty sure most of those modern artists would agree). Maybe if we'd had YouTube or Later With W.C. Handy instead of Jools Holland, then Henry Thomas or Hezekiah Jenkins would have had careers like Lady Gaga. In short, these performers deserve their immortality at least as much as our modern-day pop stars.
So once again let's celebrate this excellent project and act on our belief in what Saydisc is doing. Put your money where your misty eyes are and buy this latest collection.
Then, after that first reverent listen, place it on the shelf, dust it regularly, and yes, maybe get it out at a dinner party and amuse your guests with a quick blast of What's That I Smell.
Stuart Maxwell
The Shufflepack, with Stuart Maxwell at the helm, will feature at Henry's Blueshouse on Tuesday 11th October
LIVING BLUES, USA (July 2022)
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Songsters & Saints: Vocal Traditions on Race Records
Matchbox Bluesmaster Series - MSESET7
The seventh and final instalment in the Matchbox Bluesmaster Series, which brought to CD and the digital realm 42 LPs of prewar blues and related material first issued in the 1980s on the English Matchbox label, is among the most interesting, if potentially controversial, of the lot.
That's not fully reflected in this six-CD set's opener, l.onnie Johnson Volume Two 1927-32. Johnson (1899-1970) was among the most frequently recorded pre-war blues artists and one of the few who maintained popularity with Black listeners from his first recordings for OKeh in 1925 to his sides for King nearly 30 years later. The period covered by this collection was Johnson's busiest in the studio, both as featured artist and sideman.
Brilliant as his guitar playing could be, Johnson's standard blues blueprint can turn samey sounding after a few selections. Yet it’s in his well-worn framework that he delivered some of his most striking if downbeat ly ics, misogynistic (Beautiful but Dumb) and misanthropic (Men, Get Wise lo Yourself). The cynicism of Johnson's early '30s lyrics contrast sharply with the sentimental yearnings of 1947's Tomorrow Night, though they bear a kinship to the blunt dialogue delivered in pre-Code Hollywood films of the same era. There's plenty of great late ‘20s - early '30s Johnson you'll have to seek elsewhere, but this collection has its moments.
So, too, does The Famous Hokum Boys 1930-1931. Hokum, Oliver tells us, was originally a vaudeville term for anything "guaranteed to get a laugh." Tampa Red's Hokum Jug Band seems to have been the first to use the term on record (October 1928), and Tampa's frequent partner pianist Georgia Tom Dorsey was a mainstay of most "hokum" groups on record. Oliver calls the Famous Hokum Boys "arguably the most musically accomplished of the groups," boasting not only Dorsey on 88s but Big Bill Broonzy and, on its first session, Frank Brasswell on guitar. The five selections here from the group's debut sessions (April
1930) are outstanding, not least among them the Broonzy/Brasswell guitar duet Black Cat Rag. The energy of TFHB's first sides dissipates on later selections featuring Dorsey and a female foil (either Jane Lucas or Kansas City Kitty) engaging in smutty male-female vaudeville-style musical skits that today sound
more contrived than sexy. Still, one wonders if these leering lyrics ever came back to haunt the then future-father of Gospel Music.
In October 1984 Cambridge University Press published Paul Oliver's Songsters and Saints: Vocal Traditions on Race Records. The following month Matchbox released the first of two double LP sets offering highlights of the music Oliver explored in his book. The selections on Vocal Traditions on Race Records: Songsters & Saints VoL la illustrate two chapters in Oliver’s book. Dancing and Traveling Shows and Commen, Parodies and Ballad Heroes. The Peg Leg Howell
(vocal and guitar) and Eddie Anthony (vocal and fiddle) opener, Turkey Buzzard Blues, is Turkey in the Straw retitled. The boisterous, crowd-pleasing energy of the best medicine show entertainers ‘s exemplified by the Pink Anderson-Simmie Dooley performance Gonna Tip Out Tonight. The scurrilous genre of the "coon song" is presented by Black singers (Big Boy George Owens, Alec Johnson, etc.) in a manner, Oliver argues, in which the protagonist triumphs by “his skill or supernatural powers." Comment, per the chapter title, is heard in Hezekiah Jenkins’ Depression-centric The Panic Is On; a parody (of a hymn) pervades Bogus Ben Covington's imaginative I Heard The Voice of a Pork Chop: Ballad Heroes who transcended racial lines leap to life in William Bennett’s Railroad Bill and the Two Poor Boys' John Henry Blues.
While much of that material is simply entertaining, Songsters & Saints Vol. Ib: Vocal Traditions on Race Records asks more of the listener. The 18 tracks illustrate the chapters Baptist and Sanctified Preachers and Gospel Soloists and Evangelists. Suddenly preachers like Jim Beal exhort us with impassioned rapid-fire sermons ("find my text in the 37th chapter of Ezekiel ... ") that run the gamut from standard sin/salvation fare to doctrinal disputes: baptism by water
vs. baptism by the Holy Ghost. It's not all preaching: some moving lining out-style singing opens Rev. Isaiah Shelton's As The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest, and the Church of the Living God Jubilee Singers offer a lively intro to Rev. Leora Ross’ God’s Mercy To Colonel Lindbergh, recorded some six months after Lucky Lindy's historic trans-Atlantic flight.
Following the intensity of the preachers it's a relief to hear Mother McCollum's delightfully mild waltz -time When I Take My Vacation in Heaven, a Holiness church song that transcended racial barriers (another heard here is Telephone To Glory sung by Blind Roosevelt and Uaroy Graves). The nine songs here illustrating Gospel Soloists and Evangelists are winners all, not least Eddie Head and His Family's Down on Me, revised by Janis Joplin during the Summer of Love.
In May 1985 Matchbox released a second double-LP set as musical companion to Oliver's book. We leave the church on Songsters & Saints Vol. 2a: Vocal Traditions on Race Records.The first nine songs (side one of an LP) illustrate the chapter Medicine Shaw Songsters. Most of the artists -Papa Cha rlie Jackson, Gus Cannon, Jim Jackson, and the Beale Street Sheiks {Frank Stokes and Dan Sane) were born in the 19th century, and Oliver presents songs by them (Long Gone Lost John, Money Never Runs Ou, Old Dog Blue, etc.) that are pre-blues
showpieces rooted in folk tradition ragtime or minstrel show.
That trend continues on the album's last nine selections, tagged Songsters East and West, The artists (Stovepipe No. I, Henry “Ragtime Texas” Thomas, Luke Jordan , Blind Blake) all bring something archaic or at least "non blues" to the party, and what a party it is! There's the syncopated guitar of Blake (West Coast Blues), the bracing energy of Thoma’s (Old Country Stomp). and the novelty of Sam Jones (Stovepipe No. l ) who, Oliver writes, played a stovepipe "to produce a rich and fruity bass sound”
We return to the church for the final leg of this set, Songsters & Saints Vo l.
lb: Vocal Traditions on Race Records. The first nine selections illustrate Oliver's chapter The Straining Preachers, offering the genre's early stars in their full-throated glory: Rev. J.M . Gates . Rev. F.W. McGee, Rev. J .C. Burnett , etc .
McGee's sermon on Jonah ends with spirited singing and good advice: " If you want to get to heaven like a nobody else, treat your neighbor like you treat yourself. "
The final nine selections illustrate the chapter Songsters East and West Saints of Church and Street. They spare us the sermonizing but stay on sanctified ground with the terrific voice and piano of Arizona Dranes, the rough-edged Blind Joe Taggart, the incomparable Blind Willie Johnson, and the blast furnace vocals of Sister Bessie Johnson. It’s a strong closing movement for Oliver's opus to traditions that preceded the blues to which he had devoted a lifetime of research. Nearly 40 years since his book and its complementary albums and over 90 years since these recordings were made, revelations may yet be found here.
-Mark Humphrey
JAZZ JOURNAL June 2022
Matchbox Bluesmaster Series – Set 7
Following previous reviews of this groundbreaking series I am running out of superlatives to use. It is the last of the planned sets, but I believe other recordings may follow. Set 7 contains six CDs, accompanied by extensive notes from blues historian Paul Oliver. There are some wonderful and memorable tracks on these final albums which bring the series to a fitting end.
These early blues recordings were termed “race recordings” by the white-owned record companies and were intended for an exclusively black audience. The same record companies also issued “hillbilly” music for white audiences. But however polarised the intended market was, we now accept that these recordings form the foundation of almost everything that came later in terms of rock ’n’ roll, R&B, Motown, soul and other forms of popular music.
Disc 1 features Lonnie Johnson. There is little doubt that Johnson stands out as someone who has influenced several generations of blues guitarists, who adapted and developed his “one-string” solos into the modern, electric blues-guitar style we take for granted today. B.B. King frequently cited Lonnie Johnson as a greater influence on him than Robert Johnson. But what of Lonnie’s legacy as a singer and composer of hundreds of blues songs? A recent count for a new book on Johnson (The Inconvenient Lonnie Johnson by Julia Simon) puts the total number of recordings he made at 724. Not all of these were blues recordings, since Johnson also played jazz with artists such as Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong and was hugely influential on artists such as Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. But the majority were and they provide convincing evidence that Johnson was indeed the real deal. Tracks such as Back Water Blues, Careless Love and Death Valley Is Just Halfway To My Home are fine examples of Johnson’s work.
Disc 2 features The Famous Hokum Boys. Hokum was originally a jazz term for “faking” or improvising, but in the blues, it became something quite different. It developed into music played at social gatherings with the sole aim of entertaining. Superficially, it was presented as skilfully played but lightweight material; however, underneath the jokiness and playfulness there was often a more serious intent. Paul Oliver observes that there was “a measure of sophisticated cleverness there too, which places the audience at a slight disadvantage”. The songs were frequently riddled with double-entendre jokes, sexual innuendos, knowing looks between the musicians and skilfully crafted lyrics. The Famous Hokum Boys were northerners and this allowed them to bring a lighter approach and greater sophistication to the idiom. Tracks such as It’s Tight Like That, Somebody’s Been Using That Thing and What’s That Smell? are representative of the style.
Discs 3 to 6 feature Songsters & Saints Volume 1 & 2. According to Oliver, the preoccupation with race records issued specifically for black purchasers in the 1920s drew attention away from the other vocal traditions such as the songs of the southern rural dances, comic and social songs, ballads of the medicine shows and travelling entertainers. Even more neglected has been the sacred vocal traditions of the Baptist and sanctified preachers, the gospel songs of the church congregations and the “jack-leg” (incompetent or dishonest) preachers and street evangelists. The 72 tracks on these four discs were selected by Oliver to be representative of all these styles.
Whilst the record companies were interested in recording these songs, it was not done with the same thoroughness as those intended to reach a commercial audience. Yet whilst eclectic and diverse, they offer a unique insight into the many kinds of black song as they were heard in the early 20th century. These songs are old and rarely heard, but they should not be forgotten in our fascination with more accessible forms of blues and gospel music. It is impossible to select a few tracks as representative of the idiom because the range is so diverse. They are all worthy of a listen, as is this entire series.
I have said it many times, but Matchbox/Nimbus do deserve our praise for their work in keeping this music alive. They also deserve our support, and I would wholeheartedly recommend that you go out and buy one or more sets from this groundbreaking Bluesmaster Series.
IAN LOMAX
JAZZ RAG
Matchbox Bluesmaster Series Volume 7: Songsters & Saints
(Various artists)
Now that's what we called Race Records
Who will be the Paul Oliver of 2095? Will they be poring over the master recordings from this year's Eurovision Song Contest and expounding on their cultural significance?
Actually, they probably could. And not just because Eurovision is always politically and culturally significant, if only by accident. Popular music is an expression of the society it springs from, so it gives your social anthropologist rich pickings.
The point is that these Matchbox reissues are a form of Now That's What I Call Music for fans of early popular music. Because make no mistake, this is pop music, recorded and promoted to make money. It follows that, like a lot of pop music, most of it should have been forgotten a long time ago because its time has passed.
We listen now because we're curious about the history of our music, or because we have a romantic attachment to the mythology of the blues. Yes, there will be some who listen just because they like the music, but if Saydisc released Nancy Jane by The Hokum Boys as a single today it would be unlikely to trouble the likes of Cat Burns or Jax Jones in their attempts to snatch the Number 1 spot.
Like it or not, that's the only measure that counts for pop music. If it doesn't sell, it isn't popular. All of which makes an academic reverence for these recordings a bit misplaced.
The people who trailed through the American South in search of so-called Race artists were the Simon Cowells of their day, hunting down the next catchy hook or novelty song, although Simon Cowell has a bit more regard for the wellbeing of his artists than they did back then.
Unless you really love this stuff for its intrinsic value (and Paul Oliver exhorts us so to do in his liner notes) you'll listen once, be vaguely amused or fascinated, and then pop it on the shelf next to the other six CD reissues in the Matchbox Bluesmaster Series, congratulating yourself on the completeness of your collection. It will be a while before you listen again because, frankly, why would you? This music is none of your business.
Beans Hambone, Jane Lucas and the Rev A.W. Nix are singing and talking about stuff that is completely outside your cultural frame of reference. This is not some politically correct rant, it's just a plain fact of rock'n'roll. Pop music by definition is a function of its time and place and some of this stuff is nearly 100 years old.
And yet. There they are on the shelf, these CDs, and they absolutely should be there. Partly because some of the recordings arestill powerful and have a real kick, like Blind Willie Davis' Your Enemy Cannot Harm You. Partly also because some of it is still culturally relevant, like Rev Edward Clayborn's Death Is Only A Dream, or the Mississippi Sheiks' He's In The Jailhouse Now, which, amazingly, has not been adopted by conspiracy theorists as a contemporary anthem.
Likewise, before you tune in to another TED talk or prepare your next PowerPoint epic, have a listen to The Downfall of Nebuchadnezzar by the Rev. J.C. Bennett, Sister Ethel Grainger and Sister Odette Jackson. It’s a master class in the art of presentation.
For musicians there is also that thing where you can pinch a song and smugly say, Oh yes, it's an old thing by “Big Boy” Owens’, or ‘You mean you don't know Bogus Ben Covington?’ Of course, the more obscure and outlandish the name, the better it is.
But mainly this stuff needs to be documented and treasured because it keeps us from getting carried away by the hyperbole and bombast of modern pop. Stormzy at Glastonbury? Coldplay or Oasis at any stadium you care to name? The Rolling Stones? They're all just the Stovepipe No. 1s or Beale Street Sheiks of our time. (In fairness, I'm pretty sure most of those modern artists would agree). Maybe if we'd had YouTube or Later with W.C. Handy instead of Jools Holland, then Henry Thomas or Hezekiah Jenkins would have had careers like Lady Gaga. In short, these performers deserve their immortality at least as much as our modern-day pop stars.
So once again let's celebrate this excellent project and act on our belief in what Saydisc is doing. Put your money where your misty eyes are and buy this latest collection.
Then, after that first reverent listen, place it on the shelf, dust it regularly, and yes, maybe get it out at a dinner party and amuse your guests with a quick blast of What's That I Smell.
Stuart Maxwell, Jazz Rag
LONDON JAZZ NEWS SET 7 REVIEW
This, the seventh (and final) six-CD set in the peerless Matchbox Bluesmaster Series, features blues expert Paul Oliver’s selection of tracks sacred and secular (four CDs) alongside a single-artist album of songs and a CD of humorous ‘hokum’ music.
Lonnie Johnson is featured on the single-artist CD. Generally thought of as something of a sophisticate among blues singers (he collaborated with the likes of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Hoagy Carmichael and Eddie Lang, had his own radio show, and fronted the pit orchestra at the Stanton Theatre in Philadelphia), he worked for Okeh between 1927 and 1932, producing both solo recordings and the odd duet with Victoria Spivey or Jimmy Foster. His guitar playing throughout these sessions is characteristically neat, forceful and imaginative, his voice strong and sure with admirably clear diction, so material such as ‘Death Valley is Just Half Way to My Home’ (based on the ‘Lonesome Road’ theme) and ‘Don’t Drive Me from Your Door’ (on which he plays steady-rolling piano) is highly affecting. His is a fine body of work, professional as well as consistently entertaining, although (as all too often with the classic blues of this period), a number of his songs are, inexcusably, violently misogynistic (‘I’ll take my fist and knock you down’ is the shocking climax to one song).
Moving swiftly on to less controversial territory: The Fabulous Hokum Boys (Georgia Tom and Big Bill Broonzy plus various collaborators such as Hannah May, Jane Lucas and Kansas City Kitty), produce pure entertainment, rags, struts and dance-worthy novelty items. Oliver points out that the Hokum Boys ‘brought a new lightness and sophistication to the idiom, contrasting with the heavy emotion and seriousness of much Southern blues’, and this selection raises spirits with such lines as ‘my [heart] got so hot, burned a hole in my undershirt’ and ‘when she starts to do her stuff, make a bulldog break his chain’. Light-hearted verses and harmonised choruses enliven such subjects as the efficacy of corn liquor and the difficulties experienced by cheating spouses in concealing evidence of infidelity, and the tracks featuring heavy-handed but largely inoffensive sexual innuendo are handled with great aplomb by sweet-voiced but sparky female foils. Both Broonzy and Georgia Tom are, moreover, skilled and deft instrumentalists, making this a wholly enjoyable CD.
Disc 3 comes in two parts: Dancing and Travelling Shows, and Comment, Parodies and Ballad Heroes. These categories cover everything from close-harmony novelty songs, rural folk music and jug-band music, sung to guitar accompaniment augmented variously by violins, kazoos, jugs, mandolins and the odd piano. Performers range from the versatile entertainer Peg Leg Howell and the celebrated bluesman Charley Patton singing non-blues material rooted in the vaudeville stage tradition or the songster repertoire, to more problematic fare: so-called ‘coon’ songs, originally composed to pander to a white audience’s predilection for ridiculing behaviour seen as characteristic of Southern blacks. Examples here include ‘Under the Chicken Tree’ (Earl McDonald dreams of chicken-eating), and the self-explanatory ‘The Coon Crap Game’ (George ‘Big Boy’ Owens). These sit somewhat uneasily in this selection alongside such straightforwardly ‘protest’ songs as ‘Furniture Man’ (a castigation of the repo-man: ‘If ever there was a devil born without horns, it must have been the Furniture Man’) and laments concerning banes of contemporary Southern life such as recalcitrant mules, violent villains and capital punishment.
‘Songsters and Saints’ continue their contributions on Disc 4: the ‘Saints’ are hellfire preachers urging their (extremely vocal) congregations to repent before it’s too late, but there are occasional songs too, spirituals and reflective fare such as Washington Phillips’ ‘I am Born to Preach the Gospel’. Anyone familiar with Phillips’ uniquely touching dulceola-accompanied masterpiece ‘Denomination Blues’ (which can be heard on the classic compilation Screening the Blues, with notes from Paul Oliver) will not be surprised to hear the selections on this disc that detail all the baptist sub-sects and their varying practices and beliefs, but there are also topical references to Colonel Lindbergh, bo weevils and the sinking of the Titanic, so that a fascinating picture of contemporary Southern life emerges from the CD’s 18 tracks.
Disc 5 contains more contemporary commentary, on everything from a subtly satirised visit to President Roosevelt by Booker T. Washington (Gus Cannon’s ‘Can You Blame the Colored Man’) to an anti-liquor 1909 mayoral campaign (Frank Stokes’s ‘Mr Crump Don’t Like It’). Featured artists on this CD include the conversationally informal Papa Charlie Jackson, the slurry-voiced Sam Jones (whose instruments include a stovepipe) and the widely influential Texas bluesman Henry Thomas (whose USP is his use of quills, a pan-pipe-like instrument made from cane reeds). Highlights are Blind Blake’s deft guitar accompaniments to his two cuts, ‘He’s in the Jailhouse Now’ and ‘West Coast Blues’, which provide a suitably musicianly climax to an entertainingly varied selection.
Although it reaches a rousing climax with the rasping, rousing vocals of Sister Bessie Johnson, Disc 6 contains much contemplative matter in the form of preaching about Nebuchadnezzar (J. C. Burnett, who also uses a deck of cards to illustrate his teaching, much as country singers such as Wink Martindale were to do much later in the century), and (again – it seems to have been something of an obsession with Southern preachers) a Blind Willie Johnson song about the Titanic disaster. Johnson has an attractive, growling vocal style and plays a mean slide guitar, and his duet with wife Angeline on ‘The Rain Don’t Fall on Me’ is particularly affecting. Fleshed out with more preaching and cautionary tales, this, the last disc of Matchbox’s exemplary reissue series, provides a useful complement to the secular blues that constitute the bulk of the material on the previous six sets.
As Paul Oliver says, in his summary at the end of his characteristically learned notes: ‘We should no longer let our absorption with blues and gospel deflect our attention from the richness and variety of those idioms of an early era; not only because the roots of contemporary music are embedded in them, but also for their intrinsic worth…’ Amen to that.
(Chris Parker)