Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown - Blackjack (1977)

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Gate, the old Texas swing crocodile

If it was just for the incredible "Street Corner", this album would be a must ! But there's a whole lot of other amazing tracks which make of this record a concentrate of "Gate"'s brilliant musical wizardry and jubilating swing. His inimitable jazzy mix of Texas swing, jump blues and swampy country music sounds like nothing else in Southern music, and his agility on any instrument he touches is simply astonishing. Gate could play guitar, violin and harmonica, but also viola, mandolin and mandola ! This guy was a real phenomenon in the post-war musical landscape, a true giant. And a guy full of humor too.

This album starts with "Here Am I", a swinging title carried by horns and showing his typical unusual finger attack on the strings of his fetish 1966 Gibson Firebird guitar. The following "Tippin' In" sees Don Buzard's pedal steel guitar coming in accompanied by an unusual flute (Bobby Campo). On the blues "Song For Renee (Gate's Tune)", Gate demonstrates his skills on violin while Rod Roddy's piano rolls down, along with Campo's flute again.

Blind Lemon Jefferson - That Black Snake Moan (2008)

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Blind Lemon's moan

Only one known photography of him exists and his recording career spread over just a short four-year period, during which he cut about a hundred songs (some re-recorded several times). Like for most of the early bluesmen/women of the same period the details of his life remain obscure and legend sometimes replaces historical facts. Despite the "famous" awful quality of the 78 rpm discs produced by Paramount Records, his influence on blues music was tremendous and durable.

Born in September 1893 in a small rural community around Streetman, Texas, near Wortham, about 120 km south east of Dallas, Lemon Henry Jefferson led the classic early life of many country bluesman at that time : learning to play guitar in his teens, playing at picnics, parties and other gatherings, later busking in Dallas, where he met and played with Leadbelly (before he went to jail) in the early 1920s. Though Leadbelly was the elder, he was impressed by BLJ's virtuosity on guitar and later wrote the tribute song "Blind Lemon's Blues". It is almost certain that BLJ traveled to the Mississippi Delta and Memphis, and probably further.

The Catch-back, vol. 2 : Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown - Buddy Flett - Snooky Pryor - Johnny Tucker & James Thomas - Doug MacLeod - William Clarke - Fiona Boyes

...some that deserved to be featured here...

Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown - Down South In The Bayou Country (1972-74 / 2006)

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The ex-Deputy Sheriff's country dance

Gatemouth was a surprising character, he always was where you didn't expect him to be  ! Actually, as he explained in the interview mentioned at the end of this review, he didn't appreciate much being categorized as a "bluesman". In this 1974 album for example, he was definitely in a country & western mood. He even left his guitar at home, exclusively playing fiddle, an instrument on which he excelled too (just listen to "Gate's Express" and you'll have a hot demonstration) and perfectly fitting the kind of music he chose to play, blowing his harmonica on some songs, and singing in his inimitable style.

But wait ! when Gatemouth plays country & western, he does it his way, which is not anybody else way : he's cooking a gumbo made of swamp rock, cajun waltz, creole voodoo funk, New Orleans R'n'B, Texas square dance and other Southern music ingredients to come up with his personal Gate's style vision of country & western, from "Breaux Bridge Rag" to "Gate's Express" through "Loup Garou" and "Sheriff's Barbecue"...

Blind Blake - 1926-32 All the Published Sides (2003)

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Ragtime Blake

Very few is known for certain in Blind Blake's life except three dates : 1896, 1926 and 1934. 1896 : his birth year, supposedly in Jacksonville, Florida, but maybe in Newport News, Virginia. 1926 : his arrival in Chicago. 1934 : his death, probably from pneumonia, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A fourth date should be added : 1932, the year Paramount Records went bankrupt, putting a final stop to Blake's recording career.

In the gaps between these dates, his life is pretty much subject to conjectures. Even his real name remains a bit mysterious : some favor Phelps though Blake is most likely the right one. As for his Christian name, the most widely accepted by specialists is Arthur.

Update > Louisiana Red - Over My Head (1997) / I Hear The Train Coming (1997)

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Red's vintage roots

Louisiana Red's life is the archetype of a bluesman life with its usual mysteries, starting by the origin of his "Louisiana Red" stage name, and by his exact birth place and date : Iverson Minter was actually born either in Bessemer (Alabama) in March 1932 or in Vicksburg (Mississippi) in 1936 ! In the excellent "Blow Train" on "Over My Head", he might give a clue : "Oh train take me back to my hometown… I'm going back to Vicksburg, back to my old hometown… Way down Vicksburg, Mississippi, back down where I belong."

His mother died shortly after his birth, and his father was lynched by the Klan in 1937. He possibly spent several years in an orphanage in New Orleans (which could explain his nickname) before going to live with his grand-mother in Pittsburgh.

In 1950 he joined the US Army as a parachutist (the man's stature is massive) and was sent to Korea. When he was discharged, he played with John Lee Hooker in Detroit for a couple of years in the late 1950s, and recorded under the name Rocky Fuller.

In the 1960s and 1970s he recorded a good amount of albums as Louisiana Red, and in 1981 he moved to Hanover in Germany where he spent the rest of his life. He died in 2012 at either almost 80 or 76 leaving behind him an impressive discography of over fifty albums.

Mississippi Fred McDowell - Live At The Gaslight (1971)

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"I do not play no rock'n'roll"

When you get a bit tired of contemporary blues, nothing is better than going back to the basics. With this exceptional live performance of the great Fred McDowell that's exactly where you go : back to the basics of Mississippi slide country blues. But in music basics doesn't necessarily means poorness. McDowell is proving it here.

A rare mastery of the bottleneck, a very recognizable vocal texture perfectly accorded to the sound of his guitar, a long list of Mississippi blues that became classics… all the ingredients were gathered for a memorable concert in one of New York's Greenwich Village temples of the 1960s folk revival that has seen performing some of the greatest folk & blues artists of this period, from Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Dave Van Ronk to Bob Dylan, David Bromberg or Joni Mitchell, from Rev. Gary Davis and Mississippi John Hurt to Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Big Mama Thornton and a young Bonnie Raitt...

Johnny Copeland - Further On Up the Road aka Live in Australia (1990)

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The Texas Bluesman in the bush

Johnny Copeland, known as The Texas Bluesman, actually lived in the Lone Star State less than half of his life. If his name is well known from blues aficionados, his life is probably less familiar to many of them. So here is a little reminder.

Born in Haynesville, in the north of Louisiana, in 1937, the son of sharecroppers who divorced six months after his birth, he then moved with his mother across the state line some 30 km north to Magnolia, Arkansas, where he grew up. The family relocated to Houston when he was 13, and he started to discover blues through musicians like Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Lowell Fulson, Johnny "Guitar" Watson and above all T-Bone Walker who became his inspiring model.

In Houston, he soon met Joe "Guitar" Hughes who became his life-long friend and guitar "teacher". Both formed the band Dukes of Rhythm, which became quite popular locally. In 1958, Copeland started to record singles for small local labels during the next decade, also working as a tour sideman for R'n'B and Soul artists such as Otis Redding and Eddie Floyd.

Special Tommy Bankhead : Please Mr. Foreman (1983) / Message To St. Louis (2000) / Please Accept My Love (2002)

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Special Tommy Bankhead : St. Louis blues

Is it true that Albert King once said  about Tommy Bankhead :  "He was already a star in St. Louis when I first got up there" ? If it is, it's a perfect portrait of the late Tommy Bankhead. A voice forged by a long adventurous musical life that started in his teens, a plain, simple but efficient rootsy guitar style, often swinging, sometimes jazzy or funky, some nicely written songs and an energetic blending of Delta Country blues and Memphis sound, such was Tommy Bankhead.

From his mid-teens, he played with such blues legends as Woodrow Adams, Howlin' Wolf, Joe Willie Wilkins and Sonny Boy Williamson II (Rice Miller) who used to say he was his son because he was too young to enter bars and juke-joints, with his cousin Elmore James, Joe Hill Louis, Henry Townsend, Little Milton, Ike Turner, Albert King, Robert Nighthawk and many other bluesmen… He could also play bass, drums and harmonica.

Otis Rush - All Your Love I Miss Lovin: Live At The Wise Fools Pub Chicago (1976/2005)

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Otis Rush : bad mojo but great blues

It is unbelievable that this live recording from 1976 remained nearly thirty years in a closet at Delmark Records ! Thirty years ! Why ? The explanation has never been given as far as I know…

Just another episode of Rush's "cursed artist" chaotic  career. Bad luck, probably resulting from his tormented and pessimistic personality and by his whimsical refusal to make any musical compromise, led him to wrong personal choices. Some would say a bad mojo was on him. After his first label Cobra went bankrupt in 1959, he never found a record company really willing to support him seriously, passing from one to the other, often not for the better (Duke, Vanguard, Chess, Sonet, Capitol, Bullfrog, Delmark, Universal...) while appearing on a multitude of multi-artists compilations, far many more than his own albums.

Steve James - Two Track Mind (1993) / Nathan James - I Don't Know It (2009)

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Double King James version
Here are two master guitar finger-pickers, both bearing the same name : the elder Steve, born in 1950 in New York, and the younger Nathan, born on the West Coast in the late 1970s near San Diego. Both not only share the same name but also the same passion for "old" acoustic blues and other kinds of roots music.