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Song of the Day: Two Delta Blues… Women

August 17th, 2009 categories: Song of the Day

Song of the Day

"All Night Long Blues" by Louise Johnson

"Mind Reader Blues" by Bertha Lee

Lets review where we’ve been on Song of the Day, then lets look at where we are going. We stated with a field holler and work song, which are key influences to the birth of the blues. We’ve looked at the first blues song ever recorded, then we spent some time with the four forefathers of the Delta blues.  We also explored other early blues styles, particularly that coming out of the Piedmont and Texas.

Because it took a technological breakthrough (the first affordable record player in the late 19-teens) to give rise to a record industry, the recording of American music all started at essentially the same time. In addition to the blues, we’ve also looked at the earliest forms of  country music as well.

We’ve also gone back a earlier than the affordable record  when the blues was first published, and about that same time we’ve visited with artists who established the birth of the blues out of tent and minstrel shows.

Coming back to the Delta now, we’re focusing on two women involved with the earliest recordings out of Mississippi. After this we’ll explore a few other artists who also recorded in the ’20′s. Then we’ll take a look at key developments in the ’30′s leading up to Robert Johnson, who first recorded in 1936.

After that we’ll look at the earliest pioneers of the electric guitar, which will lead us to Muddy Waters. It is there that the stage is finally dressed for the birth of rock and roll.

But first, the only two women we know of  who were singers at the beginning of the Delta Blues: Louise Johnson and Bertha Lee.

Listen to song of the day here"All Night Long Blues"  There is little known about Louise Johnson, so little we can’t find evidence of when and where she was born or died. We do not know of a photograph of her. What we do know comes primarily out of research on the famous 1930 recording session in Grafton, Wisconsin with Charlie Patton, Willie Brown and Son House.

It’s likely that Dick Waterman‘s "rediscovery" of Son House in the 1960′s led to much of what we do know of that Grafton recording session, and as such what we know of Louise Johnson at all. (Blues in the Round)

Louise traveled in the car with Charley, Son and Willie Brown from Clarksdale to Grafton that spring. That she was there had to do with two things: (1) she was Charlie Patton’s girlfriend and (2) Patton chose who would be going with him to Grafton to record. (It was Patton’s record deal. He had recorded twice before in Grafton, whereas neither Son, Willie or Louise had ever recorded at all.)

Adding to the folklore of this milestone recording session is the traveling to it. Gas fueled the car that Wheeler Ford (of the gospel group The Delta Big Four) drove, but it was corn liquor that fueled the musicians inside. At one point Charlie and Louise got into an argument sufficient enough for Louise to get in the back seat with Son and Willie. Soon after Louise was Son’s girlfriend. (Some things don’t take long!)

In addition to what came out of this Grafton session, what we like is we have another first: the designated driver! Wheeler Ford was a teetotaler, whereas the other four were a lot more… well, spirited.

Johnson was a provocative singer and a skilled piano player to boot. She recorded the only four songs that are known of her at this Grafton session. Over her tunes we can hear spoken and laughing encouragements from Son and/or Willie as she plays. "All Night Long Blues" also contains one of the first editions of the opening line of so many blues and rock songs: "well, I woke up this mornin’...".

As a postscript to how Patton might have felt about Louise jumping ship so to speak to Son in the backseat, Patton may have later recorded, "Joe Kirby Blues." Though we can find so little about Louise’s life, and there is dispute as to when Joe Kirby Blues was actually recorded, apparently Louise lived on the Joe Kirby plantation north of Robinsonville, MS at the time. (Robinsonville plays much into Robert Johnson folklore, and is now the site of the modern day gaming industry boom in Tunica, MS.)

 

 Listen to song of the day here"Mind Reader Blues" Like Louise Johnson, Bertha Lee also comes to us via Charlie Patton, and also like Louise, very little is known about Birtha Lee. As a youngster she lived in Lula, MS, which put her in proximity of Charlie. Birtha sang on a dozen of Patton’s recordings, and may have been a girlfriend as well (according to legend Patton had many of those). She recorded 3 songs of her own in 1934, the year that Patton died.

 

Previous Songs of the Day  here.

References: (click on ‘em, and click on the book to get one!)
Big Book of the Blues by Bob Santelli Chasin' the Devil's Music by Gayle Dean Wardlow Nancy Meyer
 Deep blues by Robert Palmer Rising Tide by Ed Komara  Peter Aschoff, PhD
Bob Santelli Gayle D. Wardlow Nancy Meyer Robert Palmer John
Barry		 Ed Komara  Peter Aschoff
About this and that:
I know and have worked with most of the folks here, with the exception of Robert Palmer and John Barry. At present Robert Santelli is the Executive Director of the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. It is Gayle Dean Wardlow who is particularly associated with research into the lives of Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson. Our friend Nancy Meyer managed Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy, among others, and has distinguished herself in artists royalty recovery for some 30 years. Deep Blues and Rising Tide are must reads to understand the world from which it all sprung. Ed Komara, also a good friend, was curator of the Blues Archive at the University of Mississippi for years, and now Music Librarian at SUNY Potsdam. Peter Aschoff, PhD was my dear friend, mentor, and blues historian, musicologist and cultural anthropologist for whom this work is dedicated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Song for a Day works:

We’ll do this as often as we can. Sometimes it’ll be nearly every day, sometimes a little longer than that. We’ll focus on something for awhile, like starting off with the beginning of it all, then we might jump into something totally different. Sometimes it’ll be educational, then tangential, as if in protest to it to what we’ve been doing, but always it will be fun.

There are two ways for you to get immediate access to this series: (1) subscribe to this blog at the top of the left sidebar, which will give you immediate email updates, or (2) click on the "Song for a Day" icon in our left sidebar, which will automatically queue up "song for a day" posts only, starting from the most recent to the first.

(Note: The song link above works much easier and faster in Firefox. (Firefox opens a player immediately, whereas IE transfers the song into real player.) Download Firefox instantly  here… it won’t hurt anything, I promise!

 

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