Killer Blues Guitar! A Dozen Electrifying Postwar Obscurities, 1947-1952
Some of the Most Visceral Guitar on Record
Due to rationing and material shortages, few blues records were made during World War II. Soon afterward, the widespread availability of magnetic tape recording machines allowed enterprising entrepreneurs to create independent record labels. Radio stations and jukeboxes gave them a means to promote their wares. Dozens of blues specialty labels sprang into existence.
At this time the electric guitar was still in its ascendency. A swath of blues musicians young and old began plugging in, cranking up, and pioneering new sounds. In the process, they brought a new vibrancy to the blues. Listed in chronological order, the dozen tracks presented here were originally compiled by Klaus Kilian, for a CD set that was never issued. Thank you, Klaus, for the superlative selections!
All of these tracks were recorded by small, independent labels between 1947 and 1952. They showcase some of the wildest, most visceral guitar ever recorded. Have mercy!
Wright Holmes, “Good Road Blues,” 1947
Born in Hightower, Texas, in 1905, Wright Holmes recorded his first records for Goldstar in 1946. The label withheld them from release, claiming they sounded too much like Lightnin’ Hopkins, who’d just made his first records. The following year Holmes made his final four recordings, three of which came out on Gotham.
Holmes accompanied his hip singing with ultra-imaginative guitar playing that’s notable for its sheer abandon, unfettered soloing, and boogie bass lines that would reappear on early rockabilly records. He sounds like he’s playing an acoustic guitar outfitted with a soundhole pickup. His amp tubes must have been glowing!
Muddy Waters, “Burying Ground,” July 12, 1949
Muddy opens this performance with one of his patented moves: big, low-string slide swoops. On an earlier version recorded for Columbia in 1946, Waters had cut “Burying Ground Blues” with guitarist Homer Harris, drummer Judge Riley, and pianist James Clark. On this version, Muddy let Clark do the lion’s share of the soloing.
The following year Waters signed with Chicago-based Aristocrat Records and began recording with string bassist Ernest “Big” Crawford, who provided the perfect accompaniment for Muddy’s amplified Delta blues. During July 1949 the duo recorded “Burying Ground,” drawing heavily from the Mississippi Delta blues of Waters’ youth. The song’s heartbreaking theme may well have been inspired by the musician who’d tutored Muddy on guitar, Son House. On his 1930 Paramount release “My Black Mama, Part 2,” House sang:
“I got a letter this morning, how do you think it read,
Hurry, hurry, the gal you love is dead”
With its low-string slides, sure-handed turnarounds, and treble zings, “Burying Ground” is far tougher-sounding than the earlier ensemble version. Muddy injects what would become one of his trademark solos into this take, bottlenecking the sonic equivalent of angry, swarming bees.
John Lee Hooker, “Slim’s Stomp,” September 1949
After settling in Detroit, Mississippi-born John Lee Hooker produced dozens of outstanding unaccompanied blues during the postwar years. To skirt contracts, many of these records were released under pseudonyms such as Delta John, John Lee Cooker, John Lee Booker, or simply The Boogie Man.
Hooker cut his momentum-building instrumental “Slim’s Stomp” in September 1949, playing with bare fingers on a Stella acoustic outfitted with a DeArmond soundhole pickup. Hooker recalled that the engineer typically used a single microphone and set up the guitar amp directly behind him. A plywood board or wooden folding chair was placed beneath his feet to amplify his rhythmic foot taps.
As “Slim’s Stomp” progressed, Hooker’s guitar playing became angrier, to the point where it becomes the sonic equivalent of hitting someone. On its original release as King 4329, “Slim’s Stomp” was credited to “Texas Slim.” Late in life, Hooker would look back at this phase of his career with great fondness: “Back when I was younger coming up, I was playing more hard blues by myself. I could play more guitar and do more by myself. I had no band to interfere. I could do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it.”
Jesse Thomas, “Meet Me Tonight Along the Avenue,” 1949
Jesse “Babyface” Thomas, a Louisiana-born guitarist identified on some singles as “The Blues Troubadour,” was the younger brother of Paramount recording artist Willard “Ramblin’” Thomas. Jesse made his recording debut at age 18, fronting on 1929’s “Blue Goose Blues” and three other Victor sides. After attending a music school in Fort Worth, Texas, Jesse moved to California in 1937 and resumed recording in 1948.
During the next decade he cut singles for no fewer than nine companies, including his own Club label. “Meet Me Tonight Along the Avenue,” an outtake from his 1949 Modern session in Los Angeles, finds him thumbing boogie bass lines beneath upper-register chords and runs. His voice resembles Romeo Nelson’s, but his lyrics lack Nelson’s vivid poetic imagery. “Meet Me Tonight Along the Avenue” was withheld from release until 1970, when Kent issued it on an album. Thomas, who lived in Shreveport, enjoyed a remarkably long career, giving one of his final performances at the 1994 Long Beach Blues Festival.
Country Jim, “Old River Blues,” January 1950
Credited as “Hot Rod Happy,” James Bledsoe cut his first single in 1949 for the Pacemaker label. The following January, he jumpstarted his second session with “Old River Blues.” Cut at the KWKH studio facilities in Shreveport, Louisiana, the song was credited to “Country Jim” on Imperial 5073.
Bledsoe, about whom little is known, sang “Old River Blues” with a gentle, sensitive voice as he accompanied himself with a heavily amplified acoustic guitar. In a 1950 Imperial publicity photo, Bledsoe held a round-hole Harmony Patrician.
Baby Boy Warren, “Bad Lover Blues,” 1950
A few months after his birth in August 1919, Robert Henry “Baby Boy” Warren moved with his family from Lake Providence, Louisiana, to Memphis, Tennessee. He learned some of his guitar style from his older brothers Jack and Willie, with whom he played for tips along Beale Street. His biggest influence, though, was another local musician. “The man I most admired was a midget fellow,” he reported in Blues Unlimited 96. “They called him Little Buddy Doyle. I got most of my style from him. I admired him so much. The other musician I admired was a woman – Memphis Minnie.”
Warren moved to Detroit in 1942 to work in a General Motors plant by day and play house parties by night. A year after his debut recordings, Warren plied his tough, uncompromising sound on 1950’s “Bad Lover Blues” for Sampson Records, then headquartered at 3419 Hastings Street. Backed by Boogie Woogie Red on piano and Curtis Foster on drums, Warren dove deep into the heart of the blues:
“Yes, what my baby done, she slapped her pistol in my face,
‘Baby Boy, if you ain’t careful, I’m going to send you to your grave,’
Ain’t that a real bad love?”
The song’s solo section features stellar guitar-piano interplay, with Warren easily segueing between chords and single lines. In a promotional photo from this era, a smiling Warren, looking dapper with wide lapels and bowtie, holds a Fender Telecaster.
Willie Nix, “Try Me One More Time,” July 1951
Nasty tone alert! During July 1951, red-hot guitarist Willie Johnson joined pianist Billy “Red” Love in the Memphis session that produced Willie Nix’s debut 78, “Try Me One More Time” backed with “Lonesome Bedroom Blues.” With the tall, handsome Nix singing and playing drums, their feisty, swinging sound on “Try Me One More Time” perfectly suited the song’s celebration of a woman who’s “fine and mellow, stacked up from the ground.”
The session came about after producer Sam Phillips heard a Nix broadcast on radio station KWEM. Willie Johnson, born in 1923 in Lake Cormorant, Mississippi, had grown up around Son House, Willie Brown, and Howlin’ Wolf, whose band he joined when he was 14. In time, Johnson’s skill enabled Wolf to turn over the guitar duties to him and concentrate on singing and playing harp. For the Nix session, Johnson cranked up his volume and easily moved between chords, single lines, and sure-handed double-stops that presaged Chuck Berry’s injection of them into the rock and roll mainstream. “Try Me One More Times” first came out as RPM 327.
Dave Bartholomew, “The Golden Rule,” August 16, 1951
Photographs suggest that John Faire was a diminutive man. But when he strapped on his guitar and rolled up the volume, he sounded ten feet tall. During the mid-1940s Faire was a member of The Counts & The Countess, a trio that framed close vocal harmonies a la Slim & Slam with swinging arrangements (here’s a Soundie of them performing “Five Salted Peanuts” in 1945). Given the sophistication of Faire’s Charlie Christian-inspired solos on the trio’s 1945 and ’46 recordings, it’s a wonder he didn’t receive wider recognition in postwar jazz circles.
During the 1950s Faire worked as an on-call studio guitarist for Cincinnati’s King Records. One of his earliest dates was backing New Orleans singer Dave Bartholomew on four songs recorded on August 16, 1951. His tone sweet yet distorted, Faire rocked “The Golden Rule” from start to finish, firing off rapid-fire, pick-melting single lines and chordal climbs that are as much prescient rock and roll as jump blues. The day after the Bartholomew session, Faire was back at the King studio, playing behind Bull Moose Jackson. As the 1950s progressed, he played on records with Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, LaVern Baker, Little Willie John, James Brown, and many others.
Boyd Gilmore, “Take a Little Walk With Me,” January 23, 1952
One of just six recordings fronted by Boyd Gilmore, “Take a Little Walk With Me” was taped by Modern Records executive Joe Bihari during a visit to Mississippi. On the urging of Ike Turner, Bihari set up his Magnecord recorder in Greenville’s Club Casablanca to tape Gilmore on January 23, 1952.
Gilmore, who hailed from Hazelhurst, Mississippi, and reportedly knew Robert Johnson, began the session with a cover of Johnson’s “Rambling on My Mind.” Johnson’s influence likewise cast a long shadow on Gilmore’s “Take a Little Walk With Me,” which derives its melody from Johnson’s “Sweet Home Chicago” and Kokomo Arnold’s earlier “Old Original Kokomo Blues.” Gilmore’s performance, though, is decidedly postwar, as heard in his unusual string-shaking on the opening notes, his fleet-fingered runs, and unusual solo.
Gilmore’s greatest strength, though, is arguably his window-rattling voice. Mixed way in the background, that’s Ike Turner manning the 88s and Jesse “Cleanhead” Love on drums. Backed with the slide-driven “All in My Dreams,” “Take a Little Walk With Me” was originally issued as Modern 872, the songwriting credit going to Boyd Gilmore.
Howlin’ Wolf, “Gettin’ Old and Grey,” January 1952
The first of seven selections Chester Arthur Burnett, a.k.a. Howlin’ Wolf, recorded at Sam Phillips’ studio on January 23, 1952, “Gettin’ Old and Grey” finds the bluesman lamenting the passage of time: “I’m getting old, I’ve got to look out for my older days.” Wolf was 42 at the time.
Pianist L.C. Hubert, drummer Willie Steel, and the unidentified bassist kept their parts subdued, leaving it to Wolf’s melodic harmonica wailing and Willie Johnson’s distorting guitar chords and single lines to provide the instrumental fire. Tapping into a style more closely aligned to T-Bone Walker than to the Mississippi Delta blues of his youth, Johnson started easily, then kicked into high gear for the solo, going toe-to-toe with Wolf’s harp. “Gettin’ Old and Grey” b/w the equally raucous “Mr. Highway Man” was issued as Chess 1510.
Elmore James, “Hand in Hand,” January 1952
Five months after his recording debut – “Dust My Broom” on Lillian McMurry’s Trumpet label – Elmore James returned to Jackson, Mississippi, in January 1952 to record additional songs. After two takes of “Please Find My Baby,” he delivered one of the most cathartic performances of his career, singing “Hand in Hand” as if his fate in the afterlife depended upon it.
With their needle-in-the-red distortion, his bare-fingered and slide guitar fills have a far more menacing sound than his later, better-known records for Fury and Enjoy. Fellow Broomduster Homesick James, who knew Elmore James in his youth, detailed James’ unusual slider: “He’d take one of those slips – tube protectors – from an old amplifier and put it on his finger. If he got a smaller one, then he would split it open – take a hacksaw and saw it open. That’s what we played with all the time.”
The identity of the drummer on “Hand in Hand” remains unverified, but that’s Ike Turner on piano. On its original issue as Flair 1031, “Hand in Hand” was backed with “Make My Dreams Come True.” Soon after the session, his last in Jackson, Elmore journeyed to Chicago and commenced recording for Meteor, Checker, and Chess.
Joe Hill Louis, “When I Am Gone (She Treats Me Mean and Evil),” March 31, 1952
With its foot-stomping beat, minimal use of chords, and mesmerizing, reverb-drenched electric guitar lines, this record could have easily served as a template for the Mississippi hill country blues played by Junior Kimbrough decades later.
Born in Froggy Bottom, Tennessee, in 1917, Leslie Hill got his performing name “Joe Hill Louis” after he won a fight during the time Joe Louis reigned as boxing’s heavyweight champion. Hill often performed around Memphis as a one-man band, as James Cotton described in Blues Unlimited 120: “He was playing by himself. He got on the radio station there, and he never let nobody play with him. Played the drums, guitar, and harmonica all at the same time.”
Louis became a popular attraction on radio station WDIA, which billed him as “The Be-Bop Boy,” despite his rough-edged music bearing little resemblance to complex improvisational jazz. After recording two 1949 releases for Columbia Records, Louis sought out Sam Phillips, whose recording studio was near his home. “When I’m Gone” was taped on March, 31, 1952, with Nolen Hall providing the minimalist drumbeat. The song was originally listed in the company files as “Slow Blues (Echo) I’m Going Over the Sea.” The track was edited for its release as Checker 763, which credited the composition to Louis. Sam Phillips remembered Louis, who died in 1957, as a dapper, likeable loner.
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Stayed tuned for Part 2 of “Killer Blues Guitars,” which will present rip-roaring songs featuring Rev. Utah Smith, Haskell Sadler, Left-Hand Charlie, Mickey Baker, Pat Hare, and other hair-raising guitarists from 1953-1954.
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Want more postwar blues? A paid subscription ($5 a month, $40 a year) gives you access to more than 150 articles and podcasts, including these:
Lightnin’ Hopkins: “I Was Born With the Blues”
Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown at Aladdin Records, 1947
Jimmy Rogers on Songwriting, Muddy Waters, and 1950s Chicago Blues
Elmore James: “Dust My Broom” on Trumpet Records
Muddy Waters: Baby Face Leroy’s Almighty “Rollin’ and Tumblin’”
Otis Rush: “This Is My Life Story”
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