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Country
Blues
Guitar
Volume Three
Blues Up
The Country
featuring
Josh White
Jesse Fuller
Furry Lewis
John Jackson
Pink Anderson
Rev. Gary Davis
Robert Pete Williams
Ethel & George McCoy
LEGENDS OF COUNTRY
BLUES GUITAR
(BLUES UP THE COUNTRY)
VOLUME THREE
by Mark Humphrey
Most accounts of the blues revival point to Samuel
B. Charterss 1959 book, The Country Blues, as a piv-
otal work in focusing the then-growing interest in pre-
War blues styles. In it Charters wrote: The country blues
were generally sung by men accompanying themselves
on the guitar, with a highly developed interplay between
their singing and the guitar accompaniment... The coun-
try blues were an intense individual expression of the
deepest strains of Negro music in the South. Revision-
ist historians have sought to discredit Charterss pioneer-
ing study, one he admitted was flawed: A further diffi-
culty of a first study, he wrote, is that there will be con-
siderable error. Errors aside, however, Charters defini-
tion of country blues is still operative. Granted, we now
know that many of the great exponents of country blues
lived and worked in primarily urban settings. Country,
however, is as much about where an artist was from (and
thus perceived the world) as it is about where he or she
wound up. Moreover, its a broad but useful stylistic defi-
nition for a means of expression. Not all the important
guitar-playing pre-War blues singers fit comfortably in a
country blues niche (Lonnie Johnson is a glaring excep-
tion). And while we think of country blues as a soloists
art, usually one employing acoustic guitar, most living
African-American exponents play amplified in small com-
bos. The sense we have of country blues, like most ge-
neric labels, is imprecise and subject to frequent excep-
tions. However, Charterss definition hasnt really been
improved on. It remains useful for placing an important
corps of artistssuch as the ones seen in this video
into a context. Without further caveats then, enjoy this
varied sampling of the deepest strains of Negro music
of the South, commonly called country blues.
2
FURRY LEWIS
(1893-1981)
He plays and
sings even better than
he did thir ty years
ago, singing in the
same beautifully halt-
ing country style, but
he doesnt own a gui-
tar, and he moves
from one furnished
room to another.
Thus did Charters de-
scribe the life of Furry
Lewis in The Country
Blues. Charters had
Photo by Burham Ware
4
JOHN JACKSON
(1924- )
Photo by Keith Jenkins
JOSH WHITE
(1914-1969)
Photo by Dave Gahr
11
Williams performance here of Dear Old Mother of
Mine, a relative of the traditional holy blues, Mother-
less Children, is a knife piece. Williams slide playing
tended to be somewhat more conventional than his other
work, and he followed the example of such masters as Blind
Willie Johnson in using the slide as an antiphonal element,
effectively a second voice. The lyrics, however, show Wil-
liams highly personal sense of symmetr y and verse struc-
ture at play.
PINK ANDERSON
(1900-1974)
In rural America, medicine shows were one of the few
forms of entertainment available well into the twentieth
century. They offered cure-all tonics (often heavily laced
with alcohol), black-face comics, ribald jokes, and music.
Among the disparate talents to perform in medicine shows
were silent film comic Buster Keaton, countr y legends Roy
12
Acuff, Jimmie Rodgers, and Uncle Dave Macon, and a host
of bluesmen, including Pink Anderson. On vacant lots in
southern townships
the medicine shows
would set up their
stages, Paul Oliver
wrote in The Story of
the Blues. A typical
Souther n gentle-
man in Stetson and
goatee beard would
introduce a team of
performers; a few girl
hoofers perhaps, or
a jug band, or just a
young Negro with his
JESSE FULLER
(1896-1976)
On the back sleeve of the 1958 album, Jesse Fuller:
Jazz, Folk Songs, Spirituals & Blues (Good Time Jazz L-
12031), this announcement appears: Jesse Fuller sings
and accompanies himself in actual performance on twelve-
string guitar, harmonica, kazoo, cymbals & fotdella. No
overdubbing, multiple recording, tape editing, or other elec-
tronic techniques have been used to create any of his
sounds. Fullers one-man-band appearances here bear
16
Photo by Dave Gahr
witness to the truth in this disclaimer. Handling five instru-
ments and singing were seemingly no chore for Fuller, who
didnt really begin cultivating his remarkable one-man-
band talent until he was well into his fifties.
Born in Jonesboro, Georgia, Fuller spent his early years
in the country around Atlanta, where such men as Barbe-
cue Bob (Robert Hicks) and Blind Willie McTell would
record with twelve string guitars. However, we can only
guess at the impact of the Atlanta twelve-string tradition
on Fuller, who was already in California, where he got his
first twelve-string, before any of the Atlantans recorded.
Before leaving Georgia, however, Fuller picked up a
lot of music. The first music I ever heard, he told Lester
Koenig, I used to make a bow like the Indians make a
bow and arrow, put some wax on the string, put the bow in
my mouth and pick the string-sound like a jews harp. He
also heard track-lining songs, a banjo-picking brother-in-
law, and some fellows that could really play guitar pick-
ing blues. By the time Fuller began riding the freights at
about twenty, he was doing that himself.
Fuller became adept at both playing for tips and swing-
ing onto the freights which brought him to California. I
could catch them trains runnin thirty miles an hour with
my guitar strapped behind my back, Fuller told Koenig.
Every time Id hit a railroad division Id go amongst the
store people and play a song. There wasnt any radios in
17
them days. Theyd fill my cap up.
Arriving in California around 1917, Fuller found var-
ied employment in silent movie era Hollywood, none of it
musical. Carving and selling wooden snakes was lucrative
for awhile: Im a professional on wooden snakes, Fuller
proudly recalled. I can make em so they scare anybody,
tongue licking out... Fuller shined stars shoes in a barber
shop near the United Artists Studio and did some movie
extra work himself (I was the fellow carrying the balloons
on my head in The Thief of Baghdad, he said). He fondly
recalled that director Raoul Walsh helped him set up a hot
dog stand inside the United Artists Studio. Memorabilia of
Fullers Hollywood days were with him for life: a framed
picture of Fuller with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and Sidney
Grauman hung on the wall of his West Oakland home.
Fullers Hollywood interlude was followed by decades
of hard work: picking cotton in Californias Central Valley,
working for the Southern Pacific Railroad and, during World
War II, welding in the shipyards of Oakland, his home since
1929. Music was a sideline at best during this time. But in
1951, having heard about musicians and singers making
lots of money on records, the 55 year-old Fuller decided
to join them. It wasnt easy at first. I tried to get some
fellows to play with me, he told Koenig, but that didnt
work out. So, Fuller recalled, I thought, Im going to
get me up a one-man band. I took me a whole week one
time when I wasnt doing anything, and I made this thing I
call the fotdella in my back room...I thought about doing
something like that so I could have something to go along
with me and help me out instead of another fellow. I just
took some masonite, heated some wood in hot water and
rounded it off around a wheel. I learned that in the barrel
factory where I used to workthats the way they do the
staves...I tried to use bass fiddle strings but they dont do
so good, they stretch out of tune, so I use piano strings.
My wife named it the Fotdella because I played it with my
foot, like foot diller. Id been playing harmonica and kazoo.
I added the cymbals later, welded it myself. I decided Id
get into it and might make me some money...If I didnt, Id
just be the same old Jesse. I wouldnt cry about it.
Reviving busking skills learned around the time of
World War One, Fuller hit the streets of Oakland and San
18
Francisco with his arresting one-man band. His hunch that
I might get lucky paid off. In 1955, a ten-inch album on
the World Song label (Folk Blues: Working On the Rail-
road with Jesse Fuller) was released. One of its songs was
San Francisco Bay Blues, described by Tom Mazzolini
as a classic train blues put to sea. It would become a
standard of the 1960s folk revival and bring an unlikely
celebrity to the gently anachronistic Fuller, whose nick-
name was The Lone Cat. It seems somehow fitting that
the only country bluesman to have sold hot dogs to silent
movie stars would near the end of his life supply music for
The Great White Hope, a 1970 film about Jack Johnson,
heavyweight champion of the world during the years (1908-
15) a young Jesse Fuller was first hearing the Georgia
country blues.
RECORDING INFORMATION
The footage presented in this video is some of the
rarest material we have ever discovered. The performances
from The University Of Washington were not known to
exist but Stefan Grossman had a feeling that out-takes
from sessions recorded between 1968-1972 should be in
storage somewhere at the University. Between the years of
1993 and 1994 with the great help of University Of
Washington archivist Laurel Sercombe, the material was
discovered in long forgotten boxes and rusty film cans in a
dusty corner at the Ethnomusicology Archive offices.
Furry Lewis recorded May, 1968 at the University Of
Washington.
John Jackson recorded 1970 at the University Of
Washington.
Robert Pete Williams recorded 1970 at the University
Of Washington.
Jesse Fuller recorded April, 1968 at the University Of
Washington.
Josh White performing YOU KNOW BABY WHAT I
WANT FROM YOU and NUMBER 12 TRAIN from Swedish
TV 1962; NOBODY KNOWS YOU WHEN YOU'RE DOWN
AND OUT from Swedish TV 1967.
Ethel & George McCoy recorded Memphis, 1969.
Pink Anderson recorded in 1970 in North Carolina.
Rev. Gary Davis performance from Pete Seeger's
Rainbow Quest, 1969.
19
Photo by Stefan Grossman
20
Vestapol 13037
FURRY LEWIS
1. Judge Boushe Blues
JOHN JACKSON
2. That Will Never Happen
No More
JOSH WHITE
3. You Know Baby What I Want
4. Number 12 Train
ROBERT PETE WILLIAMS
5. Dear Old Mother Of Mine
ETHEL & GEORGE M C COY
6. Black Mary
PINK ANDERSON
7. She Knows How To Stretch It
8. Ain't Nobody Home But Me
FURRY LEWIS
9. Furry's Blues
REV. GARY DAVIS
10. Oh Glory How Happy I Am
JESSE FULLER
11. Running Wild
JOHN JACKSON
12. Rag In C
FURRY LEWIS
13. See That My Grave Is Kept
Clean
14. John Henry
PINK ANDERSON
15. Crow Jane
16. You Don't Know What The
Lord Told Me
JESSE FULLER
17. The Woman I Had She Left Me
JOSH WHITE
18. Nobody Knows You When
You're Down and Out
Much of the extremely rare perform-
ance footage presented in this video
has never before been publicly seen
and documents the diversity of a
music which was as personal as a
fingerprint yet as universal as the
blues itself. John Jackson, Pink An-
derson, Rev. Gary Davis and the charismatic Josh White manifest different
aspects of the rich Piedmont ragtime/blues tradition. In Memphis, echoes
of the Mississippi Delta could be heard in the music of Furry Lewis. While
the delightfully eccentric Jesse Fuller and the introspective Robert Pete
Williams embody country blues which defies regional identity.
Running Time: 60 minutes B/W and Color ISBN: 1-57940-919-9
Front Photo Sylvester Weaver & Sara Martin
Courtesy of Kyana Blues Society Collection
Back photos: Robert Pete Williams by Tom Copi
& Rev. Gary Davis by Stefan Grossman
Nationally distributed by Rounder Records,
One Camp Street, Cambridge, MA 02140
Representation to Music Stores by Mel Bay Publications
2001 Vestapol Productions
A division of Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop Inc.
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