More Killer Blues Guitar! 15 Raucous Postwar Obscurities, 1953-1954
Tough, Unrelenting Tracks Issued By Small Record Labels
This second installment of my “Killer Blues Guitar” overview presents the recordings and backstories of fifteen extraordinary postwar guitar performances. Kudos to Klaus Kilian, who originally compiled these recordings for a CD set that was never issued. Thank you, Klaus, for sharing your unassailable taste in raucous guitar playing!
All of these sides were made in 1953 or 1954 and were issued by small independent record labels. Fasten your seat belts, because these guitarists are gonna take you on a wild ride!
Rev. Utah Smith, “Two Wings,” 1953
His voice as gravelly as Blind Willie Johnson’s, his fingers fleet and true, the Rev. Utah Smith sang his 1953 Checker version of “Two Wings” as if he were auditioning for admission through the Pearly Gates. Backed by a handclapping female chorus, he enhanced the song’s jubilee spirit with rip-it-up electric guitar parts that jump between octaves, chords, and spiraling single lines.
Recasting verses from the King James Bible’s Version of Isaiah, Chapter 6, Smith sang:
“I looked and I saw one of the seraphim flying from heaven,
Had him a live coal of fire in his hand,
He touched my lips and said my inequity was purged,
Said, ‘Friend, who will go for us?’
‘Oh, Lord, here am I – send me! I got two wings…’”
An elder in the sanctified Church of God in Christ, Smith, born in 1906, preached his first revival in New Orleans while still in his teens. In a May 1941 newspaper photograph reprinted in Living Blues 198, Smith is depicted playing a Gibson ES-150 arch-top similar to Charlie Christian’s, strong evidence that he was among the first to play electric guitar in a church setting. He wears a large, homemade pair of feathered seraphim wings affixed to his shoulders, a fitting prop for someone who touted himself as the “two-winged preacher.” His extensive travels to revivals around the country earned him another sobriquet, “The Traveling Evangelist.”
Smith made several recordings of his best known-song, beginning with 1944’s “I Want Two Wings.” His cut his third version, the transcendent take heard here, in New York City. Backed with “Take a Trip,” it was issued as Checker 785.
Earl Hooker, “Alley Corn,” 1953
Need a soundtrack for a scene of a runaway train? Earl Hooker’s “Alley Corn” certainly fits the bill. One of the best slide guitarists in any genre, Hooker played this rollicking, romping instrumental sans slide. Paying homage to Elmore James in the opener, Hooker quickly changes techniques, slipping into fervent single lines and punchy double-stops. If anything, the fact that Hooker’s guitar is slightly out of tune adds to the impact of this hard-hitting track.
Hooker recorded it during his second session as a leader, held in Miami, Florida, for Henry Stone’s Rockin’ label around April 1953. Little Sam Davis blew harmonica while a sideman identified only as “Tony” pounded drums. This session yielded just one release, “Sweet Angel” b/w “On the Hook,” as well as “Alley Corn” and other unissued tracks. Hooker, described by Buddy Guy as “the greatest blues guitarist I ever saw,” went on to make brilliant recordings in a mind-boggling array of genres.
John Lee Hooker, “Bad Boy,” 1953
During the early 1950s John Lee Hooker began recording with second guitarist Eddie Kirkland, whose spellbinding fills, slashing rhythms, and savvy bass lines helped Hooker keep a downhome feel while forging a more disciplined sound. With its interlocking guitar parts, 1953’s “Bad Boy,” originally issued as Modern 942 with “Cool Little Car” on the flipside, provides a textbook example of their hypnotic interplay, as well as Hooker’s moaning, deeply moving vocals.
The idea to team the two came from Modern Records exec Bernie Bessman. “Eddie Kirkland and I used different amps in the studio, different mikes,” Hooker recalled of the Modern sessions. “The stuff I made with him was kick-butt, kick-butt. Oh, yeah!” Asked who was the better guitarist at the time, Hooker responded, “That’s a word I wouldn’t use – I’m ‘better’ than you or he’s ‘better’ than me. Different styles. You just play. I never say I’m better than Eddie, and Eddie never say he’s better than me. I just got a bigger break than he got. He never did get the break he should.”
Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, “Dirty Work at the Crossroads”
Like his hero T-Bone Walker, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown drew inspiration from horn players. “I play horn lines and horn kicks,” he explained of his fingers-only approach to electric guitar. “I play horn phrases with my fingers and I can let the strings ring, or I can smother them in a snap and cut it just like a horn would do when your breath run out. The circle of breathing – I can do that by using my fingers.”
From the late 1940s through the early 1960s, Brown cut singles for the Peacock label, dialing in a tough, trebly tone that seemed to pounce off the records. A mournful slow blues, “Dirty Work at the Crossroads,” cut in 1953, presents Brown’s wilder side – dig the crazy pull-offs and paint-peeling solo! Pianist Jimmy McCracklin and his band – alto saxman Johnny Parker, bassist Joe Toussaint, and drummer San Francisco Jeffers – provided the backup.
Albert Collins remembered seeing Brown play a Fender Esquire around the time of this session. On Peacock 1607, Don Robey was listed as the composer, which likely meant he’d purchased the song outright from someone else.
Guitar Slim, “The Story of My Life,” 1953
Earl King remembered Guitar Slim as the “performingest” man he’d ever seen. Born Eddie Lee Jones in Greenwood, Mississippi, Guitar Slim found fame in New Orleans, where he was renowned for his flamboyant clothing, over-the-top stage moves, and eardrum-ringing volume.
He recorded “The Story of My Life” at his third session, held by Specialty Records at J&M Studio in New Orleans. A four-piece horn section supported Jones at the October 27, 1953, date, along with Ray Charles on piano, Lloyd Lambert on bass, and drummer Oscar Moore. Jones began with gospel-infused moaning, then underscored the song’s heartbreak lyrics with wrenching guitar licks. At the 1:46 mark he cranked up his volume for an extraordinarily uninhibited solo. Specialty’s A&R man, Johnny Vincent, remembered him playing a Gibson Les Paul gold-top at the session.
Earl King offered further insight into Slim’s one-of-a-kind tone, explaining to Jeff Hannusch, “Slim was gettin’ a fuzztone distortion way before anyone else. Believe it or not, Slim never used an amplifier. He always used a PA set, never an amplifier. He was an overtone fanatic, and he had those tiny iron-cone speakers and the sound would run through them speakers, and I guess any vibration would create that sound, because Slim always played at peak volume. That’s why it was hard to record him – because of the volume he was accustomed to playing at. Let’s face it – if Slim was playing, you could hear him a mile away.” Paired with “A Letter to My Girlfriend,” “The Story of My Life” was first issued as Specialty 490. The session also yielded Slim’s most famous recording, “The Things That I Used to Do,” which spent 14 weeks atop the Billboard R&B charts.
B.B. King, “Please Love Me,” 1953
We celebrate B.B. King as the master of storytelling solos finessed with his perpendicular-to-the-neck finger vibrato. With characteristic modesty, B.B. explained how he developed his trademark technique: “Bukka White and quite a few other people used bottlenecks. I got stupid fingers. They won’t work. If I get something like that in my hand and try to use it, it just won’t work. So my ears told me that when I trilled my hand, I’d get a sound similar to the sound they were getting with a bottleneck.” On “Please Love Me,” King pushed his bare-fingered approximation of multi-string bottleneck slides to the limit, creating a mighty roar worthy of Elmore James.
The session was held in Houston circa early 1953, with Bill Harvey’s orchestra. B.B. recalled that the Bihari brothers, owners of Modern and RPM, typically set up two portable Ampex recorders in whatever room was available. In a contemporary photo taken onstage with Harvey’s band, B.B. is seen wearing Bermuda shorts and playing an early, blonde version of Gibson’s sumptuous ES-5 arch-top. In those days, King told Tom Wheeler, “I had a little Gibson amplifier that was about a foot wide and about half a foot thick, with a speaker in it of about eight inches, I suppose. That was my amplifier, and I kept it for a long time.” Paired with “Highway Bound” and released as RPM 386, “Please Love Me” climbed to the top of Billboard’s national R&B charts.
Little Milton, “Rode That Train (Lookin’ for My Baby),” March 30, 1954
James Milton Campbell begins this March 30, 1954, recording with a seven-second announcement: “You know what? My baby’s left me and she hadn’t come back. You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna get on this old train and see can I find her!” With that, he launches into raunchy-toned, soaring guitar runs that clang and clamor above the insistent backing of drummer Lonnie Haynes, saxmen Lawrence Taylor and C.W. Tate, bassist Cleophas Robison, and pianist Ike Turner. For the solo, Milton twists his volume knob until distortion cracks and frays his tone into angry squawks. If anything, “savage” is too timid a word for the overheated approach heard on this alternate take.
Campbell’s introduction to Sam Phillips came via Ike Turner. At the time of the session, Milton, yet to find his trademark sound, was a veritable jukebox of contemporary blues, tapping into styles popularized by Elmore James, B.B. King, Guitar Slim, Lowell Fulson, and others. “Back then I didn’t really know what Little Milton was,” he reported in Living Blues 18. “I was just doing whoever came out with a hit record. You’d always be influenced by the record company or somebody saying, ‘Well, let’s cut something that sounds something like this.’” Musically, “Rode That Train” contains hints of Tiny Bradshaw’s “Train Kept A-Rollin’,” and its lyrics recall the Robert Johnson and Elmore James variations of “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom.” The guitar histrionics, though, are pure Little Milton.
Lightnin’ Hopkins, “Moving on Out Boogie,” April 1954
The songs Sam “Lightnin’” Hopkins created – “barrelhouse,” he called them – were sometimes as mournful as a cottonfield holler and as earthy as the Texas bottomlands that had swallowed his sweat. But when the mood struck, Lightnin’ could rock as hard as anyone on the planet.
On “Moving on Out Boogie (Let’s Move),” recorded for Herald Records in April 1954, Lightnin’ pulled out all the stops. Shouting asides such as “Move on out of here!” and “I know you got to go,” Lightnin’ traveled from a subdued 12-bar opening to shuffling chords, brisk boogie patterns, big bass-string swoops, and a sizzling solo that blasts off into the stratosphere. Bassist Donald Cooks and drummer Ben Turner joined him on this hair-raising ride. “Sick Feeling Blues (I’m Achin’)” was issued as its flipside.
Regardless of which guitar he used – a pickup-equipped Gibson J-50 and a Fender Stratocaster were his favorites – Hopkins rested his right-hand pinkie and ring finger on the guitar’s face. He played bass and rhythm with a thumbpick and plucked solos with his bare index finger. And, as heard here, he thrived on first-position shuffles.
Pat Hare, “I’m Gonna Murder My Baby,” May 14, 1954
The song opens easily, with Billy “Red” Love’s stately piano figure and a brief guitar figure reminiscent of B.B. King. Then, just seven seconds into his performance, Auburn “Pat” Hare dials-in wicked distortion and shout-sings:
“Good morning, judge, and your jury too,
I got a few things that I’d like to say to you,
‘I’m gonna murder my baby, yes, I’m gonna murder my baby –
I just thought you’d like to know, judge –
Yes, I’m gonna murder my baby, don’t do nothin’ but cheat and lie’”
Recorded at Sun Records on May 14, 1954, this performance by 23-year-old Hare is a leading contender for the title “scariest record in blues history.” Framed by Hare’s demonically wicked guitar playing, the lyrics proved shockingly prescient when, decades later, Hare did, in fact, murder his girlfriend, along with the first police officer to arrive at the scene.
In the years leading up to the session, the Arkansas-born guitarist had taken lessons with Joe Willie Wilkins, performed as a one-man-band, backed Howlin’ Wolf on live gigs and radio broadcasts, and worked as a session musician at Sun Records. One of only two songs featuring Hare as a leader, “I’m Gonna Murder My Baby” was based on Doctor Clayton’s 1941 recording of “Cheating and Lying Blues.” But the comparatively lighthearted, piano-driven version Clayton recorded for Bluebird pales in comparison to the knockout punch that the hard-drinking, violent-tempered Hare delivers. One wonders how the tape machine survived his needle-burying solo.
James Cotton, “Cotton Crop Blues,” May 14, 1954
On the same day he recorded “I’m Gonna Murder My Baby,” Pat Hare kept his amp tubes aglow for James Cotton’s second Sun single. “Cotton Crop Blues” was, in essence, a cover of Roosevelt Sykes’ 1930 “Cotton Seed Blues.” But unlike Sykes’ dignified piano reading, “Cotton Crop Blues” bristles with frenzied, wall-to-wall guitar that perfectly frames its lyrical description of a sharecropper’s hardships. Cotton, a masterful harmonica player, put aside his instrument for this performance, giving Hare free rein.
Cotton explained to Bill Greensmith in Blues Unlimited 120, “I cut two records for Sun with that little band of mine, which was four sides. I played drums on ‘Cotton Crop Blues’ – there’s a couple of songs I didn’t play the harp on, just played the drums.” Audio evidence suggests that Hare used a guitar pick to become, as Colin Escott so aptly described, “among the first to unleash the frightening potential of the electric guitar.” On Sun 206, Sam Phillips assigned Cotton songwriting credit.
Larry Dale, “Midnight Hours,” June 22, 1954
Mickey Baker revealed an intriguing side of his playing on Larry Dale’s slow, smoldering “Midnight Hours.” Dale, whose real name was Ennis Lowery, journeyed from Texas to New York City for his first recording date, held on June 22, 1954. On the four tracks he cut that day, Groove Records surrounded Dale with a seven-piece band that included Baker and pianist Champion Jack Dupree. “I was playing, I think, a Gibson L-7 back then,” Baker speculated in Guitar Player, “but I’ve never been up on the [model] numbers of guitars.” With his warm tone, perfect string bends, and downward glides from the upper register, Baker dramatically enhanced Dale’s vocals.
Two other songs they recorded that day were released, but “Down to the Bottom” and “Midnight Hours” were shelved. A year after this session, Baker, who’d only recently begun playing the blues after seeing Pee Wee Crayton, would publish The Mickey Baker Jazz Book, the first of several influential guitar instructional manuals he’d author. In 1957, he and singer Sylvia Vanderpool scored a national hit with Mickey & Sylvia’s “Love Is Strange.”
B. Brown & His McVouts, “Good Woman Blues,” June 28, 1954
B. Daniel Brown’s only session of the decade, held in Los Angeles on June 28, 1954, produced a single release, Flash 102. The identity of the hard-driving guitarist on “Good Woman Blues” is listed as “unknown” in discographies, but strong evidence points to 19-year-old Haskell Sadler.
To begin, Sadler was in the studio on the same day, recording Flash 103. The drummer on both of the tracks he fronted, “Do Right Mind” and “Gone for Good,” was listed as “Bee Brown.” The most compelling evidence, though, is the near-identical guitar tone and playing style heard on both the Brown and Sadler 45s. On subsequent recordings, Brown would expand his band’s name to the “Rockin’ McVouts” – rightfully so.
King Charles & His Orchestra, “Bop Cat Stomp,” 1954
Talk about a full-tilt, pedal-to-the-metal arrangement! Trumpet player King Charles produced just one single at his 1954 session in Lake Charles, Louisiana, “Bop Cat Stomp” backed with “But You Thrill Me.” From its opening notes, the unrelenting instrumental “Bop Cat Stomp” never loses steam. Guitarist Blue “Left Hand” Charlie, real name Charles Morris, builds with uninhibited single notes and unison lines, and then, at the 1:18 mark, maxes his distortion for a head-spinning solo. Around this time, Morris also recorded several unreleased singles under the name “Left Handed Charlie.”
Lafayette Thomas, “Don’t Have to Worry (Jumpin’ in the Heart of Town),” 1954
Lafayette Thomas’ playing on this track is the sonic equivalent of that scene in Back to the Future where Marty McFly jumps onstage and plays “Johnny B. Goode.” After wowing his listeners with Chuck Berry licks, McFly leaves them aghast as his playing flashes further into the future.
At the beginning of 1954’s “Don’t Have to Worry,” Thomas’ note-perfect guitar phrase perfectly fits in with the horn-driven arrangement. But a mere 42 seconds into the track, Thomas blasts off into wtf? territory, buzzing like a psycho bumblebee, jumping time, and bending strings in ways you’d be hard-pressed to hear anywhere else. Even forward-leaning listeners must have thought, “This is either one of the best solos I’ve ever heard or a mistake.”
In concert, Thomas was just as uninhibited, playing guitar behind his head and back, with his teeth, and even with his foot. Moving from Shreveport to San Francisco in 1945, Thomas intermittently played in Jimmy McCracklin’s band for more than twenty years. Perhaps his wild playing on “Don’t Have to Worry” played a role in the label’s decision to initially issue Modern 927 only in the San Francisco Bay Area, where those who’d witnessed his onstage antics would have a better idea of what to expect.
Pee Wee Crayton, “You Know, Yeah,” 1954
In just 2:33, Pee Wee Crayton sketches a sexy short story that begins with a chance encounter on the street:
“I was riding down the avenue the other day,
And a fine little chick said, ‘Hey, you goin’ my way?’
I said, ‘You know, yeah,’
I said, ‘You know, yeah,’
I said, ‘You know, yeah, baby, let’s live it up today’”
As they cruise to the edge of town, she asks, “Pretty daddy, do you play around?” After responding “You know, yeah, baby, let’s live it up today,” Crayton blasts off. He starts his solo with a passionate, bare-fingered approximation of Elmore James’ multi-string slides and climaxes with ringing single lines. After that, the narrator suggests they call it a day, but his passenger has another plan: “She says no, baby, let’s get wasted away!” Cue happy ending.
Raised in Austin, Texas, hip-talking Connie Curtis Crayton moved to Los Angeles in the 1930s and worked in Oakland’s naval shipyards during the war. He scored his first solo success with 1948’s “Blues After Hours.” After sessions for Modern and Aladdin, he inked a deal with Imperial. The label sent him to Cosima Matassa’s New Orleans studio in 1954 to record “You Know, Yeah,” among other tracks. Crayton reportedly used the brand-new red Stratocaster that Leo Fender had personally given him. He credited his seemingly open-minded wife with composing “You Know, Yeah.”
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Coming soon: Part 3 of “Killer Blues Guitars,” which will present head-spinning songs featuring Johnny Wright, Bobo Jenkins, Roy Gaines, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, Calvin Frazier, and other extraordinary guitarists from 1955-1957.
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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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