Papa Charlie Jackson: The First Popular Bluesman
The Life, Times, and Music of a Flatpicking Pioneer
The first commercially successful male blues artist, Papa Charlie Jackson sang with a relaxed, confident voice and usually played an unusual 6-string guitar-banjo. He began recording for Paramount in 1924 and produced nearly three dozen 78s by 1930. His versions of “Salty Dog,” “Shake That Thing,” “I’m Alabama Bound,” and “All I Want Is a Spoonful” set the template for countless covers to come.
Playing finger-style or with a flatpick, Papa Charlie conjured a strong, staccato attack on his big guitar-banjo. His unstoppable rhythms were perfectly suited for dancing, and he was one of the first bluesmen to flatpick solos on record.
Even during his prime, Papa Charlie’s old-time approach may have seemed an anachronism. But like Jim Jackson, Gus Cannon, Charley Patton, Henry Thomas, Lead Belly, and other recording artists born in the 1880s or earlier, his non-blues records struck a resonant chord among listeners and provide us with examples of what Black music sounded like before the turn of the 20th century. Jackson, most likely born in New Orleans on November 10, 1887, had a special affinity with ragtime and minstrel fare. It’s likely he toured with medicine and minstrel shows before World War I.
By 1920 Papa Charlie Jackson had settled in Chicago, where he gave guitar lessons, worked in clubs, and played for tips along Maxwell Street, probably performing ragtime. Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey, who recorded blues as Georgia Tom, explained to Living Blues that when he arrived in Chicago from Atlanta in 1919, “Wasn’t much of the blues then. Ragtime. See, you didn’t have the blues singers. The blues wasn’t recognized until the blues singers got a break, till they got a chance [to record], see. And then the blues began to spread. Blues singers came in by the score. Well, they had had them before, but they had no place to sing them, to exhibit what they had. And when they started to making these records of blues singers, that was all we all needed.”
The Paramount Book of Blues, a strangely punctuated 1927 promotional booklet, gave this insight into Papa Charlie Jackson:
Decked in a fashionable three-piece suit, Papa Charlie stared calmly into the lens for the promotional photograph that accompanied the write-up. An inscrutable, serious-looking man with a dimpled chin and long, tapering fingers, he held his guitar-banjo.
Norman Blake, renowned bluegrass flatpicker, describes the instrument: “Papa Charlie’s holding a Gibson GB, for ‘guitar-banjo,’ and I have one from 1921. This particular model is a very primitive open-back with a huge fourteen-inch head – I call mine ‘Goliath.’ It has a regular old-style Gibson laminated guitar neck with sort of a moccasin-type headstock rather than the snake-head variety. The three-on-a-plate tuners are like those on the old Gibson guitars, and it also has a short trapeze-type tailpiece and a white ivoroid pickguard that mounts and slides on a rod.
“The instrument is soft-sounding compared to what you generally think of as being in the banjo family. This is probably because the sound is spread out by that big head. When Papa Charlie just strums rhythm chords on some things, he gets kind of a funky, sloshy sound, and I like his general looseness.” Despite labels and ads listing him as playing ukulele or “blues banjo,” he usually recorded with his guitar-banjo or a standard acoustic guitar.
The Paramount Book of Blues also included sheet music with vocal and piano music and often inaccurate lyric transcriptions for a few of his songs. “Shake That Thing,” “Salty Dog,” and “Alabama Bound” listed Charlie Jackson as the songwriter, while on “Up the Way Bound” he shared credit with singer Lillian Brown.
Most of Jackson’s sessions were held in Chicago. He made his first recordings, “Papa’s Lawdy Lawdy Blues” and “Airy Man Blues,” in mid to late August 1924. His guitar-banjo set in standard A=440 guitar tuning, he played his debut selection in the key of E. But despite its title, winsome humming and plaintive refrains of “Lordy Lord, Lordy Lord, Lawd, Lawd, Lawd,” the first tune is more of an eight-bar vaudeville number than a traditional blues. Fast, danceable, and expertly fingerpicked, “Airy Man Blues” mixed eight- and twelve-bar structures and is a direct precursor of Taj Mahal’s “Fishin’ Blues.” The song’s lyrics, which mention Chicago’s State Street, suggest that the record’s correct title should probably have been “Hairy Man Blues.”
Paramount announced the release with an ad in the Chicago Defender. “Well, Sir,” read the copy, “here he is at last! Papa Charlie Jackson – the famous blues-singing-guitar-playing man.” Promoting Papa Charlie’s “Original Lawdy, Lawdy Blues,” the ad went on to proclaim Jackson the “only man living who sings, self-accompanied, for blues records.”
This assertion was incorrect, though. Five months earlier, an OKeh field unit in Atlanta had recorded Ed Andrews, a rough-hewn country bluesman who accompanied himself on guitar. Two months after that, Johnny Watson had recorded as Daddy Stovepipe, accompanying himself on a guitar and harmonica, and Samuel Jones, a self-styled one-man band who called himself Stovepipe No. 1, had already played his first session. The first Papa Charlie Jackson ad also assured readers “that this man Charlie can sing and play the blues even better than a woman can.” Meanwhile, the fine print listed titles by Trixie Smith, Ida Cox, Anna Lee Chisholm, and Ma Rainey.
Warm and humorous, Papa Charlie’s follow-up release, the ragtimey, eight-bar “Salty Dog Blues,” made him a recording star. The song conveyed the sly perspective of an “outside man”:
“Now, the scaredest I ever been in my life,
Uncle Bud like to caught me kissin’ his wife,
Salty dog, you salty dog . . .”
As the recording progressed, Jackson’s chugging banjo rhythm sped up, perhaps the result of natural excitement or an engineer’s nod that time was running out. On its flip side, “Salt Lake City Blues,” Papa Charlie capped his first recording of a standard 12-bar blues with a sure-handed solo.
Old-time New Orleans musicians recalled hearing filthier versions of “Salty Dog Blues” long before Papa Charlie’s recording, and more versions followed. In May 1926 Clara Smith recorded an inoffensive version for Columbia. Two months later, Papa Charlie Jackson made an outstanding band version with Freddie Keppard’s Jazz Cardinals featuring Johnny Dodds on clarinet. The session may have been a reunion of sorts, since Keppard, Dodds, and Jackson all hailed from New Orleans. The performance concluded with a rousing aside of “Papa Charlie done sung that song!” Originally released as Paramount 12399, the Keppard version of “Salty Dog” was reissued by other labels during the ensuing years, including a version on American Music and an interesting 1941 pressing issued by the United Hot Club of America.
White country musicians picked up on Jackson’s songs as well. In 1927, Opry star Kirk McGee did close covers of “Salty Dog Blues and “Salt Lake City Blues” on Vocalion. “It was natural that Sam and Kirk McGhee, who used to play with Uncle Dave Macon back in the old days, were borrowing some of Papa Charlie’s stuff,” says Norman Blake. “Because Papa Charlie flatpicked, he crossed the line towards hillbilly or country. He recorded during that good era when there wasn’t exactly a distinction between black and white music and the musicians all kind of sounded the same when they played the mandolin, banjos, and fiddles.”
Jackson’s unusual guitar-banjo sound brought him session work backing other blues artists. It’s believed he accompanied warm and soulful Lottie Beaman on the October ’24 Paramount session for “Mama Can’t Lose,” with Jimmy Blythe on piano. This performance came out on Paramount credited to Lottie’s real name, and on Silvertone credited to “Jennie Brooks.” During April ’25 Jackson joined Ida Cox, one of the great classic blues singers, on the two-part “Mister Man,” playing guitar-banjo and adding vocals. He rejoined Cox in September for “How Long Daddy, How Long,” playing sparse, quickly damped accompaniment to her elegant voice.
At the first of his own 1925 sessions, in January, Jackson reworked his “Lawdy, Lawd” motif in “The Cats Got the Measles,” a Murphy-Smiley composition that gathered traditional verses. He injected a fine low-register guitar-banjo solo into the suggestive “I Got What It Takes but It Breaks My Heart to Give It Away.”
Jackson’s follow-up session that same month produced a memorable cover of the eight-bar “Shave ’Em Dry,” which had already been recorded by Ma Rainey. Its flip side, his original “Coffee Pot Blues,” was set to the familiar “Sliding Delta” melody. While not nearly as salaciously funny as the novelty version recorded a decade later by Lucille Bogan, Jackson’s “Shave ’Em Dry” did hint of the risqué:
“Now just one thing, can’t understand,
Why a bow-legged woman likes a knock-kneed man,
Mama can I holler, Daddy won’t you shave ’em dry”
Papa Charlie Jackson struck pay dirt in May 1925 with his biggest hit record, “Shake That Thing.” Decades later, Thomas A. Dorsey credited the 78 with inaugurating the 1920s hokum craze. After a novel stop-time solo, Jackson sang:
“Now Grandpa Johnson grabbed sister Kate
He shook her just like you shake the jelly from a plate,
You gonna shake that thing,
Aw, shake that thing,
I’m getting sick and tired of telling you to shake that thing”
The success of Jackson’s “Salty Dog Blues” and “Shake That Thing” reportedly convinced producer J. Mayo “Ink” Williams to record Blind Blake and Blind Lemon Jefferson. By year’s end, “Shake That Thing” had been covered by Eva Taylor for OKeh and by Ethel Waters for Columbia. Within months, there were new versions out by Viola McCoy on Vocalion and by Jackson’s label mates Viola Bartlette and Jimmie O’Bryant’s Famous Original Washboard Band.
Jackson kept churning out records, usually producing one complete 78 per session. Around late May ’25 he and a talented unknown second banjoist recorded his sprightly “I’m Alabama Bound” – melodically similar to Charley Patton’s later recording of “Elder Green Blues” – and a nicely fingerpicked original called “Drop That Sack.” His sound was better captured at the July session for “Hot Papa Blues” and “Take Me Back Blues,” with its memorable low-string solo presaging the guitar work on Blind Lemon Jefferson’s 78s. The next month, Jackson took a noteworthy chord solo in the pimp tale “Mama Don’t Allow It (And She Ain’t Gonna Have It Here).”
In September ’25 Jackson made the first known recording of “Spoonful,” titled “All I Want Is a Spoonful.” The song was reputed to be sexually graphic – scandalously so – in its folk form, so Papa Charlie’s version was considerably cleansed:
“I told you once, this makes twice,
That’s the last time – don’t you burn that rice,
Because all I want, honey babe, is just a spoonful, spoonful
“You can brown your gravy, fry your steak,
Sweet mama don’t make no mistake,
’Cause all I want, honey babe, is just a spoonful, spoonful”
Its release was backed with the picturesque “Maxwell Street Blues,” in which a man pleads for the release of his trick-turning gal.
Around November 21, 1925, Jackson trudged across Chicago’s bleak winter landscape to record his wistful “I’m Going Where the Chilly Winds Don’t Blow,” followed by two takes of “Texas Blues” – one played on banjo, the other on an acoustic guitar. He demonstrated considerable finesse on the guitar version, playing dexterous chord voicings on the treble strings. His easy-rolling fingerpicking was reminiscent of Blind Blake’s style, while one of the verses resurfaced a few years later in Blind Willie McTell’s masterful “Travelin’ Blues.” Jackson produced two more 78s in January ’26, including an original guitar boogie, “Jackson’s Blues.”
Over the next year and a half, Jackson recorded only eight songs. His smooth, string-bending guitar performance on “Up the Way Bound” was similar to Robert Wilkins’ style and perhaps gives credence to the rumor that Papa Charlie may have spent some time living in Memphis. He also cut a banjo version of the tune. An unidentified second banjoist with a fabulous tremolo joined him at the March ’27 session for his original compositions “She Belongs to Me Blues” / “Coal Man Blues,” reportedly the first electrically recorded Papa Charlie Jackson 78. An ad in the Chicago Defender credited the artists on “Coal Man Blues” as “Jackson and Jackson – two Banjos.”
Jackson’s next studio date, in June 1927, teamed him with Lucille Bogan for “War Time Man Blues” and “Jim Tampa Blues.” The sides capture a warm rapport, with Papa Charlie making asides and turning in a crackerjack performance on his guitar-banjo. During the instrumental section of his “War Time Man Blues,” Lucille encouraged him with “Oh, play it, Papa Charlie, play it! Whoop that thing!” He laced “Jim Tampa Blues” with flatpicked chords, strong bass lines, and a fiery double-time break.
During the same session, Papa Charlie performed “Skoodle Um Skoo,” a lighthearted dance tune in the vein of “Shake That Thing” and some of the songs in Blind Blake’s repertoire. Paired with another original, “Sheik of Desplaines Street,” the 78 sold well, with “Skoodle Um Skoo” inspiring covers by Big Bill Broonzy and Seth Richard, who played 12-string and kazoo on his version. Charlie himself re-cut the song in ’34.
By the end of 1927 Jackson had recorded three more titles under his own name. His original composition “Look Out Papa Don’t Tear Your Pants” was a curious mix of ragtime syncopation and risqué blues, all wrapped up in a bravura flatpicking performance. Jackson delivered the pimp imagery of its flip side, the rollicking foot-stomper “Baby Don’t You Be So Mean,” with falsetto flourishes. Around October ’27, he played guitar on the pop tune “Bright Eyes.” The influence of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s guitar approach resonates in the session’s other side, “Blue Monday Morning Blues.”
During January ’28, Papa Charlie Jackson delivered strong vocal performances on “I’m Looking for a Woman Who Knows How to Treat Me Right,” backed with a countrified reading of “Long Gone Lost John.” During “Long Gone Lost John” Jackson sings, “Now if anybody should ask you who composed this song, tell ’em Papa Charlie Jackson, then idle on.” But the song had already been published in 1920 as “Long Gone (From Bowling Green)” by W.C. Handy and lyricist Chris Smith. It was probably based on an old Kentucky folk song about a Black jail trusty who was set free to test the efficiency of a pack of bloodhounds.
In Jackson’s version, Long John fashions a pair of shoes with heels on both ends and makes it to town, where he visits his “brown” and knocks down a policeman before making a clean getaway to the Gulf of Mexico. On the Paramount release, the 78 was credited to Papa Charlie Jackson. On the less-expensive Broadway label, the artist was listed as “Charlie Carter.” The 78 was reissued as a dub in England and Austria.
Jackson focused on hokumy shtick on his next releases. The seductive “Ash Tray Blues” backed with “No Need of Knockin’ on the Blind,” details the Boccaccio-like goings-on in the marriage of an 82-year-old man to a 22-year-old woman. “I Like to Love My Baby” emphasized Jackson’s rhythmic prowess and good-time scat-singing, while “Baby – Papa Needs His Lovin’” recycled tried-and-true motifs.
Backed by “Good Doing Papa Blues,” his “Lexington Kentucky Blues” was advertised in the Chicago Defender, December ’28, with a drawing of Jackson on a sideshow stage playing banjo for a hoochy-koochy dancer. “‘Papa Charlie’ Jackson went down to the great Kentucky State Fair last summer,” claimed the copy, “and he must have had a wonderful time. All kinds of experiences, and he sings about what he did and what he saw in this ‘Lexington Kentucky Blues,’ as he plays a mean banjo accompaniment.”
During October 1928, Jackson joined Ma Rainey on a pair of minstrel-style duets. Derived from Victoria Spivey’s popular “T.B. Blues,” “Ma and Pa Poorhouse Blues” began with an exchange in which listeners hear how Papa Charlie had to pawn his big guitar-banjo and somebody stole Ma’s bus. Learning they’re both broke, the singers decide to go to the poorhouse together.
Their next song, “Big Feeling Blues,” was destined to be Ma Rainey’s final recording. Ma played a man-hungry woman to Papa Charlie’s interested “big-kid man.” Soon after this session, Paramount canceled Ma’s contract. By then, a Paramount exec reported to Charles Edward Smith during the 1950s, “Ma’s down-home material had gone out of fashion.”
For a while Paramount continued to support Papa Charlie’s 78s with catchy ads. The copy for “Jungle Man Blues,” recorded on December 28, 1928, read like the script of a two-reel cliff-hanger: “As he sings this ’Jungle Man Blues,’ he grabs the wild cat by the collar, looks the panther right in the eye, and asks the tiger what he has to say. Look at him – a rattle snake watch chain and a scorpion for a fob! ‘Papa Charlie’ Jackson, aided by his trusty banjo, sings this wild one on Paramount 12721.”
By late March 1929 Jackson had provided the voice of Dentist Jackson on Hattie McDaniel’s two-part “Dentist Chair Blues.” (This blues singer is the same Hattie McDaniel who won the 1939 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Mammy in Gone With the Wind.)
On his ensuing recordings, Papa Charlie recycled previous material. For the lazy “Hot Papa Blues No. 2,” he replaced the original version’s flashy guitar-banjo runs with stock guitar accompaniment. He recast “Take Me Back Blues No. 2” as a slow-paced guitar blues.
Paramount’s ad for “Hot Papa Blues, No. 2” was far more enthusiastic than the performance, depicting a dapper Papa Charlie strutting in front of a gang of flappers being held back by a police officer. “No wonder they all fall for him!” explained the copy. “He’s just a red-hot papa in a class all by himself, and it takes a cop or two to hold the mamas back when he struts down the avenue. ‘Papa Charlie’ Jackson sure knows how to sing and play this kind of blues.” He also played guitar on the hokumy “We Can’t Buy It No More.”
That fall Jackson recorded “’Taint What You Got but How You Do It” / “Forgotten Blues,” possibly in a temporary studio that had been set up in Milwaukee. In late January 1930 he returned to Grafton to record “Papa Do Do Do Blues” / “I’ll Be Gone Babe.”
He then yucked it up with his label mate on the two-part “Papa Charlie and Blind Blake Talk About It.” Their guitar-banjo and guitar blended together nicely, and the emphasis was clearly on having a good time. The musicians exchanged good-natured banter, scat-sang together, and stepped out on their instruments, with Jackson playing a memorable muted solo over Blake’s accomplished big-band-style comping. Today this is considered one of Papa Charlie’s rarest Paramount 78s, with only about a half-dozen known copies in the possession of collectors.
In another cross-promotional effort, Paramount featured a segment of Papa Charlie’s “Shake That Thing” on its two-part Paramount All Stars’ 78 of “Hometown Skiffle,” advertised in February 1930 as a “descriptive novelty featuring Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, Will Ezell, Charlie Spand, The Hokum Boys, Papa Charlie Jackson.” Papa Charlie would supply only one additional release for the label that had made him famous, the lackluster “You Got That Wrong” / “Self Experience,” recorded on guitar in the first week of June 1930.
Jackson’s next studio appearance, in June ’34, was as a sideman on Big Bill Broonzy’s “At the Break of Day” / “I Want to Go Home,” issued on Bluebird. Afterwards, he reportedly backed Big Boy Edwards and Amos “Bumble Bee Slim” Easton on sessions. Jackson recorded his final pair of issued 78s in November ’34. Upbeat and very well-recorded, his new cover of “Skoodle Um Skoo,” with its effective by-the-bridge banjo strums, was paired with the trucking “What’s That Thing She’s Shaking?” The less-fancy “If I Got What You Want” / “You Put It In, I’ll Take It Out” – actually a song about money – came out on OKeh and Vocalion.
“Towards the end of his career,” Sam Charters described in The Country Blues, “he was used to cover hits by other singers. He was a tall, awkward man, unable to read or write. To record a new song he had to have someone sitting behind him whispering the words into his ear, just as many of the blind singers did.”
Alex van der Tuuk points out that this information contradicts Jackson’s 1920 census listing, which states that he was able to read and write, adding, “Mayo Williams, in a 1961 letter to Tony Standish, wrote that Jackson was an unlearned Creole.” Big Bill Broonzy, who claimed to have studied guitar with Jackson in the early 1920s, sat alongside him on March 8, 1935, when he made his final three records for ARC, which never issued them.
While lesser-known today than many of his pre-war contemporaries, Papa Charlie Jackson nonetheless helped popularize the blues during the 1920s. His recordings endure, providing listeners with an aural passport to the earliest blues. Papa Charlie Jackson died at home in Chicago on May 7, 1938.
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This article is an excerpt from Early Blues: The First Stars of Blues Guitar, published by the University of Minnesota Press.
For more coverage of pre-war blues, check out the Talking Guitar articles linked here: Blind Blake, Barbecue Bob, Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey, Memphis Minnie, Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Willie Johnson, Johnny Shines, Rev. Robert Wilkins, Blind Willie McTell, Son House and Willie Brown, Blind Boy Fuller and Rev. Gary Davis, the Atlanta Blues, and the Origins of Spanish and Vestapol Tunings.
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