Before motion pictures, before radio, before television, the traveling Medicine Shows brought entertainment to America! Flamboyant pitch doctors roamed the land, hawking their tonics, elixirs, and miracle cures, and with them came a host of singers, dancers, comedians, banjo pickers, blues shouters, jug blowers, string ticklers, and minstrel men. The shows died out by mid-20th century, but not before a handful of seasoned veterans left their musical legacy on phonograph records.
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THOMAS, HENRY [RAGTIME TEXAS] (1874–1950s?). Henry "Ragtime Texas" Thomas, an early exponent of country blues, was born in Big Sandy, Texas, in 1874, one of nine children of former slaves who sharecropped on a cotton plantation in the northeastern part of the state. Thomas learned to hate cotton farming at an early age and left home as soon as he could, around 1890, to pursue a career as an itinerant "songster."
Thomas first taught himself to play the quills, a folk instrument made from cane reeds that sounds similar to the quena used by musicians in Peru and Bolivia; later, he picked up the guitar. On the twenty-three recordings he made from 1927 to 1929, he sings a variety of songs and accompanies himself on guitar and at times on the quills. His accompaniment work on guitar has been ranked "with the finest dance blues ever recorded." According to Stephen Calt, "its intricate simultaneous treble picking and drone bass would have posed a challenge to any blues guitarist of any era."
The range of Thomas's work makes him something of a transitional figure between the early minstrel songs, spirituals, square dance tunes, hillbilly reels, waltzes, and rags and the rise of blues and jazz. Basically his repertoire, which mostly consists of dance pieces, was out of date by the turn of the century, when the blues began to grow in popularity. Thomas's nickname, "Ragtime Texas," is thought to have come to him because he played in fast tempos, which were synonymous for some musicians with ragtime. Five of Thomas's pieces have been characterized as "rag ditties," among them "Red River Blues," and such rag songs have been considered the immediate forerunners and early rivals of blues.
Thomas took to the rails to escape from a life of farm work, and made a living by singing along the Texas and Pacific and Katy lines that ran from Fort Worth and Dallas to Texarkana. In "Railroadin' Some," he supplies his itinerary, which includes such Texas towns as Rockwall, Greenville (with its infamous sign, "Land of the Blackest Earth and the Whitest People"), Denison, Grand Saline, Silver Lake, Mineola, Tyler (where Thomas was last active in the 1950s), Longview, Jefferson, Marshall, Little Sandy, and his birthplace, Big Sandy.
William Barlow calls "Railroadin' Some" the most "vivid and intense recollection of railroading" in all the early blues recorded in the 1920s. The cadences in this early rural blues "depict the restless lifestyle of the vagabonds who rode the rails and their boundless enthusiasm for the mobility it gave them."
One of the finest musicians to emerge from the sleepy locale of Denton, TX, historic fiddler Prince Albert Hunt packed a lot of significant events into his short lifetime. Many of these happenings were out of his control. He was shot to death outside a bar. His death happened on the same date as that of guitar inventor Leo Fender, some 60 years later. Prince Albert also is considered an inventor, credited with fiddling up the style of Western swing, and although it is always a mistake to give a solitary individual total credit for a style, the recordings he made for Okeh don't have a whole lot of company in terms of early sides that predict the Western swing phenomenon.
The Prince Albert style is also called "hot fiddling," the groups who play it "hot string bands." It developed in Texas and Oklahoma from the late '20s onward, a bit like a hungry camper trying to set up a larder in the village grocery, grabbing at blues, ragtime, jazz, and old-time fiddle music as if these traditions were cans of beans, loaves of bread, and packs of wieners pulled off the shelves. It was music meant for dancing, before working up an appetite; it was also music that combined black and white influences to the point where terms such as "racial mongrel" have been used, although some may find this type of language distasteful. "Blues in the Bottle" was one of the great tracks cut by Prince Albert Hunt's Texas Ramblers, an amalgam of country blues, ragtime, and old-time that was so good that it was no wonder so many later recording artists wanted to take credit for writing it. "Blues in the Bottle" sounded perfectly fresh when recorded by the Lovin' Spoonful, a great folk-rock band of the '60s, so it is safe to say that this artist had a long-range influence on the American music scene. Some of his records were released under the name of Harmon Clem & Prince Albert Hunt. Guitarist Clem was a frequent sidekick of the fiddler's, and although he is certainly obscure, he also can be said to have done much better in the credit department than the third member of the Texas Ramblers, good ol' "Unknown."
Prince Albert sometimes performed in blackface and had a reputation as an ornery character, to the extent of inspiring hyperbole such as the following excerpt from a Texas music website: "The fiddler who was shot to death at the age of 30 for stealing another man's wife. He growls through dirty teeth, rolls on the floor, punches his fist through his stovepipe hat, passes out, gets up, falls down, and after every verse kicks up a dance-call with a single down-stroke so fat and sweet you're ready to hire him to clean up your yard." If the image of the so-called inventor of Western swing raking one's yard isn't bad enough, Prince Albert Hunt has also been mistaken for a can of tobacco.
Johnson-Nelson-Porkchop - G. Burns Is Gonna Rise Again
T.C. Johnson and "Blue Coat" Tom Nelson hailed from VicksburgMississippi. In February 1928, along with singer Porkchop, they cut "G. Burns Is Gonna Rise Again", a parody of a religious song, "Dese Bones Gwine To Rise Again". In the preamble, one of them mentions the miss meal cramps. Whether the name G. Burns had any contemporary significance isn't known. "Blue Coat" Tom Nelson was a fiddler so named for the blue military jacket he always wore.
Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers - Baby All Night Long
The Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers were Tom Ashley, guitar; Clarence Green, fiddle; Gwen Foster, harmonica; Will Abernathy, autoharp and harmonica; and Walter David, lead guitar.
"Tom" Clarence Ashley (September 29, 1895 - June 2, 1967) was the driving force of the band. He was an American clawhammer banjo player, guitarist and singer. He began performing at medicine shows in the Southern Appalachian region as early as 1911, and gained initial fame in the late 1920s as both a solo recording artist and as a member of various string bands, Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers among them. After his "rediscovery" during the folk revival of the 1960s, Ashley spent the last years of his life playing at folk music concerts, including appearances at Carnegie Hall in New York and at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island.
It was with the band known as "The Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers", however, that Tom did his first recordings.
In 1933, Ashley made the first known recording of "House of the Rising Sun", which he claimed he learned from his grandfather, Enoch.
Gwen Foster has been referred to as one of the greatest harmonica players of all time. He is the singer on "Baby All Night Long". He also played guitar.
Clarence Horton Greene was a talented musician and recording artist, noted for his fiddle and guitar work and a pioneer in country music of the 1920s. Greene was born on June 26, 1894 in the small town of Cranberry Gap, North Carolina. While working in a variety of occupations from construction to mica mining, Greene continued to play music at square dances and local functions until the end of his life. He died on October 22, 1961 and is buried at Bear Creek Cemetery in Ledger, North Carolina.
Jim Jackson Bye, Bye, Policeman
Coming from the rich medicine-show tradition of the Memphis area, Jim Jackson veered toward a more pronounced blues feel than most of his songster and jug band contemporaries. Born in Hernando, Mississippi in 1890, Jackson took an interest in music early on, learning the rudiments of guitar from his father. By the age of 15, he was already steadily employed in local medicine shows and by his 20s was working the country frolic and juke joint circuit, usually in the company of Gus Cannon and Robert Wilkins. After joining up with the Silas Green Minstrel Show, he settled in Memphis, working clubs with Furry Lewis, Cannon, and Will Shade. The entire decade known as the "roaring '20s" found him regularly working with his Memphis cronies, finally recording his best known tune, "Kansas City Blues" (one of the great classics of the idiom), and a batch of other classics by the end of the decade. He also appeared in one of the early talkies, Hallelujah!, in 1929. While Jackson's best work may seem a bit quaint by modern standards, he was a major influence on Chicago bluesman J.B. Lenoir and his "Kansas City Blues" was a regular fixture of Robert Nighthawk's set list
Some more Jim Jackson - this contains Speckled Red, and Tampa Red. I first heard this when I was twenty in 1965 nd fell for it hook, line and sinker - recorded in a Memphis hotel in 1929 - these are two sides of a 78. Total entertainment.
Great stuff John. Cheeze Factory is posting alot more of this type of music, but it's too risque to post here. For anyone interested....... http://cheezefactory.blogspot.com/
Stovepipe #1 & David Crockett - A Chicken Can Waltz The Gravy Around
"Stovepipe No. 1" was one-man band and Jug Band musician Sam Jones, who was born sometime before 1900. He was a well-known figure on the George Street red light district in Cincinnati as a street musician who billed himself as "Daddy Stovepipe." He probably did not know of the existence of the Maxwell Street one-man band "Daddy Stovepipe", aka Johnny Watson, until he went to Richmond, Indiana to record for Gennett on May 16, 1924. Doubtless the Gennett staffers would have informed Jones that they had already recorded the Chicago "Daddy Stovepipe" just six days before. Although the Gennett ledgers betray compromise entries such as "Stovepipe Jazz Band" and "Stovepipe Jones", it appears that "Stovepipe No. 1" is what Jones finally settled on, to assert his claim that he was the "original" Stovepipe.
Jones had a good reason for using this odd moniker, as his main musical instrument was, in fact, a real stovepipe, modified and used like a jug. He made use of it on 6 titles for Gennett, and then in the Summer of 1924 for 20 titles for Columbia in New York, of which only six ultimately were issued. These sessions are in an extremely primitive folk idiom, mixing up Gospel tunes with numbers such as "Turkey in the Straw" and "Arkansas Traveler". Sam Jones was a performer who straddled the fence between Blues, Gospel and the Country string band tradition.Given his unusual choice of instrument, Sam Jones was a natural for Jug bands, and in April 1927 he and David Crockett of the King David Jug Band recorded for Okeh in St. Louis. With guitarist Crockett, Stovepipe delves into minstrel and medicine show material, producing the unusual title "A Chicken Can Waltz the Gravy Around" , based on another chicken song: “Chicken Don’t Roost Too High for Me,” which in turn may have originated from “Dem Chickens Roost Too High” and “There Is No Chicken That Can Roost Too High for Me."
I couldn't find any info on the Grant Brothers. The song itself has quite a history though. "Tell It to Me" is a traditional song of unknown authorship. The earliest recorded version is this one, recorded in 1928 It's often known as "Cocaine Blues" and "Let The Cocaine Be". Some musicologists see a relationship to "Take A Whiff On Me" since some versions share the same lines. The song was often performed by the Grateful Dead under its rightful name "Tell It to Me"
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THOMAS, HENRY [RAGTIME TEXAS] (1874–1950s?). Henry "Ragtime Texas" Thomas, an early exponent of country blues, was born in Big Sandy, Texas, in 1874, one of nine children of former slaves who sharecropped on a cotton plantation in the northeastern part of the state. Thomas learned to hate cotton farming at an early age and left home as soon as he could, around 1890, to pursue a career as an itinerant "songster."
Thomas first taught himself to play the quills, a folk instrument made from cane reeds that sounds similar to the quena used by musicians in Peru and Bolivia; later, he picked up the guitar. On the twenty-three recordings he made from 1927 to 1929, he sings a variety of songs and accompanies himself on guitar and at times on the quills. His accompaniment work on guitar has been ranked "with the finest dance blues ever recorded." According to Stephen Calt, "its intricate simultaneous treble picking and drone bass would have posed a challenge to any blues guitarist of any era."
The range of Thomas's work makes him something of a transitional figure between the early minstrel songs, spirituals, square dance tunes, hillbilly reels, waltzes, and rags and the rise of blues and jazz. Basically his repertoire, which mostly consists of dance pieces, was out of date by the turn of the century, when the blues began to grow in popularity. Thomas's nickname, "Ragtime Texas," is thought to have come to him because he played in fast tempos, which were synonymous for some musicians with ragtime. Five of Thomas's pieces have been characterized as "rag ditties," among them "Red River Blues," and such rag songs have been considered the immediate forerunners and early rivals of blues.
Thomas took to the rails to escape from a life of farm work, and made a living by singing along the Texas and Pacific and Katy lines that ran from Fort Worth and Dallas to Texarkana. In "Railroadin' Some," he supplies his itinerary, which includes such Texas towns as Rockwall, Greenville (with its infamous sign, "Land of the Blackest Earth and the Whitest People"), Denison, Grand Saline, Silver Lake, Mineola, Tyler (where Thomas was last active in the 1950s), Longview, Jefferson, Marshall, Little Sandy, and his birthplace, Big Sandy.
William Barlow calls "Railroadin' Some" the most "vivid and intense recollection of railroading" in all the early blues recorded in the 1920s. The cadences in this early rural blues "depict the restless lifestyle of the vagabonds who rode the rails and their boundless enthusiasm for the mobility it gave them."
19 Henry Thomas 'Ragtime Texas' - Railroadin' Some.mp3
Born: 1900, Terrell, TX
Died: 1931
Instrument: Vocals, Fiddle, Performer
One of the finest musicians to emerge from the sleepy locale of Denton, TX, historic fiddler Prince Albert Hunt packed a lot of significant events into his short lifetime. Many of these happenings were out of his control. He was shot to death outside a bar. His death happened on the same date as that of guitar inventor Leo Fender, some 60 years later. Prince Albert also is considered an inventor, credited with fiddling up the style of Western swing, and although it is always a mistake to give a solitary individual total credit for a style, the recordings he made for Okeh don't have a whole lot of company in terms of early sides that predict the Western swing phenomenon.
The Prince Albert style is also called "hot fiddling," the groups who play it "hot string bands." It developed in Texas and Oklahoma from the late '20s onward, a bit like a hungry camper trying to set up a larder in the village grocery, grabbing at blues, ragtime, jazz, and old-time fiddle music as if these traditions were cans of beans, loaves of bread, and packs of wieners pulled off the shelves. It was music meant for dancing, before working up an appetite; it was also music that combined black and white influences to the point where terms such as "racial mongrel" have been used, although some may find this type of language distasteful. "Blues in the Bottle" was one of the great tracks cut by Prince Albert Hunt's Texas Ramblers, an amalgam of country blues, ragtime, and old-time that was so good that it was no wonder so many later recording artists wanted to take credit for writing it. "Blues in the Bottle" sounded perfectly fresh when recorded by the Lovin' Spoonful, a great folk-rock band of the '60s, so it is safe to say that this artist had a long-range influence on the American music scene. Some of his records were released under the name of Harmon Clem & Prince Albert Hunt. Guitarist Clem was a frequent sidekick of the fiddler's, and although he is certainly obscure, he also can be said to have done much better in the credit department than the third member of the Texas Ramblers, good ol' "Unknown."
Prince Albert sometimes performed in blackface and had a reputation as an ornery character, to the extent of inspiring hyperbole such as the following excerpt from a Texas music website: "The fiddler who was shot to death at the age of 30 for stealing another man's wife. He growls through dirty teeth, rolls on the floor, punches his fist through his stovepipe hat, passes out, gets up, falls down, and after every verse kicks up a dance-call with a single down-stroke so fat and sweet you're ready to hire him to clean up your yard." If the image of the so-called inventor of Western swing raking one's yard isn't bad enough, Prince Albert Hunt has also been mistaken for a can of tobacco.
20 Prince Albert Hunt's Texas Rambler's - Traveling Man.mp3
T.C. Johnson and "Blue Coat" Tom Nelson hailed from VicksburgMississippi. In February 1928, along with singer Porkchop, they cut "G. Burns Is Gonna Rise Again", a parody of a religious song, "Dese Bones Gwine To Rise Again". In the preamble, one of them mentions the miss meal cramps. Whether the name G. Burns had any contemporary significance isn't known. "Blue Coat" Tom Nelson was a fiddler so named for the blue military jacket he always wore.
21 Johnson-Nelson-Porkchop - G. Burns Is Gonna Rise Again.mp3
The Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers were Tom Ashley, guitar; Clarence Green, fiddle; Gwen Foster, harmonica; Will Abernathy, autoharp and harmonica; and Walter David, lead guitar.
"Tom" Clarence Ashley (September 29, 1895 - June 2, 1967) was the driving force of the band. He was an American clawhammer banjo player, guitarist and singer. He began performing at medicine shows in the Southern Appalachian region as early as 1911, and gained initial fame in the late 1920s as both a solo recording artist and as a member of various string bands, Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers among them. After his "rediscovery" during the folk revival of the 1960s, Ashley spent the last years of his life playing at folk music concerts, including appearances at Carnegie Hall in New York and at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island.
It was with the band known as "The Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers", however, that Tom did his first recordings.
In 1933, Ashley made the first known recording of "House of the Rising Sun", which he claimed he learned from his grandfather, Enoch.
Gwen Foster has been referred to as one of the greatest harmonica players of all time. He is the singer on "Baby All Night Long". He also played guitar.
Clarence Horton Greene was a talented musician and recording artist, noted for his fiddle and guitar work and a pioneer in country music of the 1920s. Greene was born on June 26, 1894 in the small town of Cranberry Gap, North Carolina. While working in a variety of occupations from construction to mica mining, Greene continued to play music at square dances and local functions until the end of his life. He died on October 22, 1961 and is buried at Bear Creek Cemetery in Ledger, North Carolina.
22 Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers - Baby All Night Long.mp3
Coming from the rich medicine-show tradition of the Memphis area, Jim Jackson veered toward a more pronounced blues feel than most of his songster and jug band contemporaries. Born in Hernando, Mississippi in 1890, Jackson took an interest in music early on, learning the rudiments of guitar from his father. By the age of 15, he was already steadily employed in local medicine shows and by his 20s was working the country frolic and juke joint circuit, usually in the company of Gus Cannon and Robert Wilkins. After joining up with the Silas Green Minstrel Show, he settled in Memphis, working clubs with Furry Lewis, Cannon, and Will Shade. The entire decade known as the "roaring '20s" found him regularly working with his Memphis cronies, finally recording his best known tune, "Kansas City Blues" (one of the great classics of the idiom), and a batch of other classics by the end of the decade. He also appeared in one of the early talkies, Hallelujah!, in 1929. While Jackson's best work may seem a bit quaint by modern standards, he was a major influence on Chicago bluesman J.B. Lenoir and his "Kansas City Blues" was a regular fixture of Robert Nighthawk's set list
09 Jim Jackson - Bye, Bye, Policeman.mp3
21 Jim Jackson's Jamboree, Pt. 1.mp3
22 Jim Jackson's Jamboree, Pt. 2.mp3
I just found this, and I went to the site. All I found were stories about cheese. No music, just cheese. Did I miss something?.........Larry
"Stovepipe No. 1" was one-man band and Jug Band musician Sam Jones, who was born sometime before 1900. He was a well-known figure on the George Street red light district in Cincinnati as a street musician who billed himself as "Daddy Stovepipe." He probably did not know of the existence of the Maxwell Street one-man band "Daddy Stovepipe", aka Johnny Watson, until he went to Richmond, Indiana to record for Gennett on May 16, 1924. Doubtless the Gennett staffers would have informed Jones that they had already recorded the Chicago "Daddy Stovepipe" just six days before. Although the Gennett ledgers betray compromise entries such as "Stovepipe Jazz Band" and "Stovepipe Jones", it appears that "Stovepipe No. 1" is what Jones finally settled on, to assert his claim that he was the "original" Stovepipe.
Jones had a good reason for using this odd moniker, as his main musical instrument was, in fact, a real stovepipe, modified and used like a jug. He made use of it on 6 titles for Gennett, and then in the Summer of 1924 for 20 titles for Columbia in New York, of which only six ultimately were issued. These sessions are in an extremely primitive folk idiom, mixing up Gospel tunes with numbers such as "Turkey in the Straw" and "Arkansas Traveler". Sam Jones was a performer who straddled the fence between Blues, Gospel and the Country string band tradition.
13 Stovepipe #1 & David Crockett - A Chicken Can Waltz The Gravy Ar...
I couldn't find any info on the Grant Brothers. The song itself has quite a history though. "Tell It to Me" is a traditional song of unknown authorship. The earliest recorded version is this one, recorded in 1928 It's often known as "Cocaine Blues" and "Let The Cocaine Be". Some musicologists see a relationship to "Take A Whiff On Me" since some versions share the same lines. The song was often performed by the Grateful Dead under its rightful name "Tell It to Me"
14 Grant Brothers - Tell It To Me.mp3
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