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Arnold was a very innovative user of the bottleneck, probably the fastest one ever to record, developing some unique rhythmic patterns of his own. His influence was notable on slide guitar players, particularly on Elmore James. The reason why he fell back into a relative anonymity after his brief but successful ten-year career is due to his growing disinterest for music !
It's only when the Prohibition ended in December 1933, that Arnold turned back seriously to music to make a living. Soon spotted by Decca producer Mayo "Ink" Williams, he made his first recording for Decca on September 10, 1934 : "Milk Cow Blues"/"Old Original Kokomo Blues", an adapted version of Scrapper Blackwell's "Kokomo Blues". Until May 1938, he cut some 88 sides for Decca, of which only nine were rejected (two of these banned titles have since been recovered, the remaining seven have been lost unfortunately).
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| Scrapper Blackwell |
On the big majority of them he was performing solo, but he also recorded with or for artists such as singer Alice Moore, the Oscar’s Chicago Swingers (Sam Theard & Odell Rand), pianists Albert Ammonds and Roosevelt Sykes and most of all Peetie Wheatstraw, another very influential blues musician (he was playing both piano and guitar). In a few years he had become a renowned performer around Chicago, performing beside most of the big names in the blues at that time.
But after his last recording session for Decca, on May 12, 1938 (one of his last recorded songs, cut the day before, was symbolically titled "My Well Is Dry"), he suddenly called it quits and left the music industry which he had growingly considered a crooked business, and began to work in a Chicago factory. When blues researchers located him in 1962 at the beginning of the folk & blues revival caused by the resurgence of interest in the blues among young white audiences, he showed no interest in returning to music and recording ! A kind of Arthur Rimbaud syndrome… Arnold died of a heart attack in November 1968, in Chicago.
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| Peetie Wheatstraw |
This two-CD album compilation, not built in chronological order, has chosen to put Arnold's recordings with other musicians at the beginning of CD 1 (except a few further tracks with Wheatstraw). The opener "Try Some Of That" (most likely about some illegal substance), featuring Sam Theard on vocals and Odell Rand on clarinet, both from the Oscar’s Chicago Swingers, and Albert Ammonds on piano, gives a glimpse of Chicago blues as it sounded in the mid-1930s, before Muddy Waters and the likes came up from Mississippi to electrify and modernize the style in the next decades.
On the following "Mister Charlie" Wheatstraw appears on piano and Arnold's bottleneck guitar style and voice are clearly heard, while on the next two tracks, "Cutter Blues" and "Money Tree Man", Alice Moore sings with her metallic voice. We are in May 1936. Roosevelt Sykes' piano comes in on "Delmar Avenue" sung by one Mary Johnson. On the sixth track, "Shake That Thing", recorded on July 9, 1936, Wheatstraw is present again.
Alice Moore
From n° 7, "Backfence Picket Blues", Arnold is alone on guitar and vocals until the end except just a few more interventions from Wheatstraw. This is of course the most interesting part to discover Arnold's powerful vocals and his very personal bottleneck guitar playing. Arnold was left-handed and often placed his guitar in his lap. Was it the reasons why he was probably the fastest bottleneck guitarist ever to record ? He also developed some unique rhythmic patterns punctuated by unexpected off-tempo breaks that he was certainly the only one able to play.
Arnold also appears as an imaginative songwriter, often full of humor, sometimes even sarcastic. Before concluding, I can't help but mentioning "Crying Blues" illustrated by Arnold's hilarious weeping !
Even if his most famous songs are not featured on this compilation, as announced in the beginning of this review, this double album is a nice way to (re)discover this peculiar bluesman who apparently was unconscious of his talent and preferred bootlegging to blues... ■
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