“The kind of blues I’m playin’, now they call it Texas style”, he explained. “But we called it the country blues, you know… It’s the style of picking, with your fingers and all that. It wasn’t any bottle-necking, like Mississippi blues.”
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| With Bob Corritore (left) and his Rhythm Room All-Stars |
So let's go for this Texas country blues, down-home, electrified and solidly rooted in the Texas dirt, in the tradition of Lightnin' Hopkins or Mance Lipscomb (from whom he delivers a fine cover of “Meet Me In The Bottom”), but occasionally spiced with bits of Chicago or Delta boogies. And by the way, there is some “bottle-necking” actually !
The album is produced by Bob Corritore whose band, the Rhythm Room All-Stars, backs Courtney, featuring the always excellent Corritore himself on harmonica, Chris James on guitar, Patrick Ryan on bass, and Brian Fahey or Willie “Big Eyes” Smith on drums.
Musically, the album is an illustration of the concept “simplicity is efficiency” and has a very attractive warm half acoustic sound, with just enough grease in Chris James' guitar. Which doesn't mean it lacks rhythm and groove. Not at all. Courtney is not the blazing guitar-slinger kind, but his guitar playing is “true”, heartfelt, intense, entirely at the service of his story-telling.
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| In Bordeaux, France, in 2009 |
His nine originals tell ordinary stories drawn directly out of the well of his extra-ordinary life (read below) and often not devoid of double meaning, like on the appealing lively opening “Cook My Breakfast” and the next “Four Wheel Drive”, on “Shake It Up Baby” and the standard “Bottle It Up & Go”.
Among his most autobiographical songs, the nostalgic slow-tempo “Railroad Avenue” tells about an ancient lover who fell into addiction, and most of all, the outstanding “Downsville Blues”, a kind of quintessential country blues lament, is sung with a hoarse nostalgic voice by a man who returns in his home town after so long that he barely recognizes the place where he grew up.
He includes a version of “Cryin' Won't Help You” from a man he saw in his youth at his father's juke-joint : Tampa Red. And doesn't neglect social issues as on "Disaster Blues", about the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
Fine tracks like “Wolf That Howls” (inspired by Howlin' Wolf ?), the mid-tempo boogie “I Wonder”, or the pounding “I'm So Glad” complete this outstanding album which rightly brought immediate fame to Courtney throughout the world.
There's not much use talking about it further, any blues aficionado who would have missed it should look for this album and listen to it. Absolutely ! ■
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| In the 1940's |
At that time the family had moved to a farm in Downsville, just outside Waco, where his father, who played ragtime piano, opened a juke-joint in an old barn where many blues musicians stopped by to play on their way to Dallas.
This is how, probably during the autumn of 1937 or in the early months of 1938, the young Tom saw a legend play : Robert Johnson ! And he adds : “Right after that he died” !
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| Lightnin' Hopkins |
He also knew Blind Willie Johnson, also from Marlin, and in Waco, he saw Robert Brown aka Washboard Sam busking at street corners. At his father's juke-joint barn, he heard Sonny Boy Williamson, Tampa Red or his favorite and main influence, Lightnin' Hopkins who gave him the envy to play guitar instead of the cheap harmonica he was blowing.
“I was more enthused about Lightnin’ than Robert Johnson”, he recalls. “Robert was kind of a drunk, he wasn’t jolly… He played ‘Went down to the Crossroads, fell down on my knees…’ like tears all the time, but Lightnin’ was jolly !”
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| Bill Robinson, the famour Mr Bojangles |
The guitar appeared shortly after. “Actually, I got that guitar from a guy who had a garden”, remembers Courtney. “He had a Stella guitar, the kind Leadbelly and them played, […] and I said, ‘I sure would like to have that guitar'. He said, ‘I tell you what, you help me get these weeds outta the garden and I’ll give you this guitar'. Man, I pulled up every weed out there. […] He gave me the guitar and tried to show me how to play country-western, but I just hated what he was doin’.”
One day in Waco, he saw Bill Robinson aka Bojangles dancing in a medicine show, and started to imitate his steps. In a few months he had become a good tap-dancer, building a little reputation locally. Around 1941, both his parents had died and the 12-year old teenager left home on a cotton truck.
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| Oak Cliff T-Bone aka T-Bone Walker |
He landed in Corpus Christi where he joined one Bee Kelly who was running a show and offered him his first job as a tap-dancer. The show was lead by a dancer and guitar player called Oak Cliff T-Bone, later to be known as T-Bone Walker, who taught him more dancing and guitar.
In 1942, Courtney was back in Waco when the Dailey Brothers Circus came to town. Two men from the circus looked for him and offered him to join the minstrel show part of the circus as a dancer. Soon nicknamed “Red Flaps”, he started an itinerant life with the circus until 1946, meeting on the way musicians like Memphis Slim or Louis Jordan.
When the Circus was off the road, he used to stay in Lubbock, practicing his guitar more seriously, dancing and starting to sing the blues in the honky-tonks and juke-joints around with T-Bone Walker accompanying him on guitar. During this period, he met a young blind pianist named Ray Charles or the singer Bobby Bland.
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| Smokey Hogg |
In 1946, unwilling to follow the circus abroad, he went back to Lubbock and started singing, then playing the blues full time. Around 1951, he toured the Texas juke-joints circuit with the T-Bone Walker’s band, running into other bluesmen like Little Walter, Lil' Son Jackson, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and even Muddy Waters with whom he played one or two times.
In 1952, he met Smokey Hogg, whose niece he had married the previous year, without she telling him he was her uncle. He played a lot with Hogg and his “brother” John (in fact his cousin) for some time, but Hogg's playing was deteriorating from his heavy drinking habit.
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| Bobby Bland |
At that point, Courtney's story differs a bit depending on his different interviews.
In one version, Courtney was in Flagstaff, Arizona, in the late 1950s, when Bobby Bland came trough on his way to L.A. on a cold and snowy winter. His guitarist Wayne Bennett got badly sick, unable to play, and Bland asked Courtney to replace him. He then followed Bland to California.
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| Little Johnny Taylor |
Courtney moved down to San Diego in 1971. One Sunday on Ocean Beach, he entered a music lounge called “Peoples”. It wasn't opening time yet, and people were cleaning up, but the owner accepted to audition Courtney. |
| In 1979 at the Texas Teahouse with his band |
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| Looks a bit like Mud Morganfield, no ? |
It had been a long road for Courtney. He made his home in San Diego until he got infected by the Corona virus by the end of 2020 and died from a consecutive stroke in January 2021. Meantime he had become San Diego’s blues treasure, rewarded by several awards.
Asked how he'd like to be remembered, Tomcat Courtney answered : “I don’t know, man. I think about all these people like Leadbelly, Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone. I hope they’ll think of me that way : he was a bluesman.”
He left 15 grandchildren, 49 great grandchildren, and many many more grieving fans who did consider him as such. ■
Discography
→ “Sundown San Diego”, self-produced and recorded in March 2004, and reissued in 2011 by an unknown label,
Document : |
| With Bob Corritore & the Rhythm Room All-Stars |
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