This third installment of my “Killer Blues Guitar” overview presents the recordings and backstories of a dozen extraordinary postwar guitar performances. These are not for the faint-hearted! All of these recordings were made in between 1955 and 1957 and were issued by small independent record labels. Brace yourself!
Howlin’ Wolf, “I Have a Little Girl”
Cut in Chicago during March 1955, Howlin’ Wolf’s “I Have a Little Girl” celebrates the 45-year-old’s love for his “little girl, only 18 years old,” who, the lyrics suggest, is not his daughter. This foot-stomping, danceable track features an all-star band: pianist Otis Spann, guitarists Jody Williams and Hubert Sumlin, bassist Willie Dixon, and drummer Earl Phillips.
Born in Mobile, Alabama, Jody Williams had moved to Chicago at age five. He took guitar lessons from Bo Diddley and during the early 1950s played with him on the streets. After a tour backing Charles Brown, Williams, one of the first in Chicago to make wide-shaking string bends a hallmark of his style, became a session guitarist for Chess Records. When Wolf came to Chicago in 1954, Williams was the first to join his new band. Hubert Sumlin, born in Greenwood, Mississippi, and raised near West Memphis, Arkansas, was another early recruit. The guitarists first appeared together on Wolf’s 1954 recordings, notably “Evil Is Going On” and “Forty Four.”
Five months later, they reentered the Chess studio for “I Have a Little Girl.” As the always-insightful Cub Koda wrote of their performance that day, “the various musicians of Wolf’s band seem to all be soloing simultaneously—not unlike a Dixieland band—right through Wolf’s vocals.” Thanks to the mixer’s skill, though, the sound never feels off-balance or overbearing.
Bobo Jenkins. “Nothin’ But Love”
During the 1950s Alabama-born John Pickens Jenkins plied his sophisticated blues in Detroit nightclubs while others in town—including John Lee Hooker and Eddie Burns —were mostly relegated to playing house parties. Jenkins inaugurated his recording career in 1954, cutting his enduring “Democrat Blues” for Chess. His second documented session, held in Chicago for the Boxer label during October 1955, yielded one let-her-rip single, “Nothin’ But Love” and “Tell Me Who.”
Despite featuring three guitarists—Willie Johnson, Eddie Taylor, and Jenkins—“Nothin’ But Love” has a disciplined sound, with lockstep rhythm and expertly played, lightly amplified single-string solos. Around the time of this session, Jenkins was photographed playing a gold-top Gibson Les Paul during an appearance at Detroit’s Harlem Inn.
Johnny Wright with Ike Turner’s Orchestra, “The World Is Yours”
During November 1955 singer Johnny Wright traveled to St. Louis to record for RPM. Accompanied by a horn section, bassist, drummer, Annie Mae Turner on piano, and Ike Turner on guitar, Johnny went through four takes and one false start before getting a keeper copy of “The World Is Yours.” Ike Turner’s sharp, spiky tone was the perfect foil for Wright’s voluminous voice.
Turner created that strange, cartoonish sonic effect heard several times in this recording by banging on the whammy bar of his Fender Stratocaster. “The World Is Yours” was issued as RPM 443, with “Suffocate” on the flipside. Annie Mae, about 17 at the time of this session, would eventually change her name to Tina Turner.
Johnny “Guitar” Watson, “Too Tired”
John Watson, who took his stage name after seeing Sterling Hayden in the film Johnny Guitar, also referred to himself at various times as “The Gangster of Love,” “The Superman Lover,” and “The Original Rapper.” Guitar fans especially celebrate him for his edge—that razor-sharp treble, the bright metallic pop of low-slung strings against the fretboard. As Frank Zappa aptly put it, “I never heard anybody with that much treble on their guitar in those days. If you listen to the other R&B records of that time featuring guitar, none of them have that kind of icepick-in-the-forehead tone.”
Born in 1935, Watson took up guitar in Houston after seeing Gatemouth Brown perform. He adapted some of Gate’s techniques such as playing without a pick and using a capo to change keys, and drew further inspiration from T-Bone Walker records. While still in his teens, he moved to Los Angeles and cut his first single for Federal.
His January 1955 session for RPM yielded one of his best early records, “Those Lonely Lonely Nights,” as well as five takes of “Too Tired,” and several other selections. During our 1982 interview, Watson recalled that he played Fender guitars throughout mid 1950s, but he couldn’t remember which model. Regardless of what guitar he played, Watson succeeded in getting lowdown and nasty on “Too Tired,” matching his streetwise vocal delivery with, as Zappa rightly called it, that icepick tone.
Roy Gaines, “Worried ’Bout You Baby”
In a 1951 issue, Sepia magazine ran a photo of a tuxedo-clad youngster playing a big Gibson arch-top electric guitar. “Although he has played the instrument only two years,” read the caption, “14-year-old, Texas-born Roy Gaines has been rated by musicians as the most promising guitarist in the U.S. A devotee of T-Bone Walker, Roy plays everything from hillbilly to bop and has become a television and recording favorite in Los Angeles.”
Five years later, the future mainstay of the Houston scene traveled to New York City to record for the Groove label. McHouston “Mickey” Baker joined him on the June 26, 1956, session that yielded “Worried ’Bout You Baby.” The guitarists’ unstoppable rhythm gives the track its edgy energy, and the solo veers into rockabilly territory, albeit with an extra layer of distortion.
By then, Baker told Guitar Player, he’d abandoned the Gibson arch-tops he’d used on previous sessions: “The whole idea was the make the most noise you could possibly get, and as loud as you could possibly get with lots of feeling. You couldn’t get that on the Gibson guitars, so I started using all Fenders.” Gaines’ rendition of “Worried ’Bout You Baby,” an Arthur Crudup composition, came out as Groove 0161.
Elder Beck, “Rock And Roll Sermon, Part 1 & 2”
Cue churchified organ and shouting preacher: “The subject? Rock and roll! Can I get ‘amen’? Rock and roll has just about brought about the disintegration of our civilization!” Twenty-six years after he recording 1930’s “The Crucifixion” and “I Am Saved,” Elder Charles D. Beck attempted to take a torch to burgeoning rock and roll with this two-part sermon.
Shouting raspy exhortations above organ, piano, and electric guitar, Beck spent the first part urging ecstatic congregants to avoid the evils of rock and roll, which, he claimed, inspired matricide and other devilish deeds. Ironically, as the spirit intensifies, his shouts are underscored with a frenzied variation of the guitar solo from Bill Haley & His Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock”! This unique and sanctifying blend of the sacred and the profane first came out as Chart 624. Who’s the guitarist? The jury is still out on this one.
Calvin Frazier, “Rock House”
During a 1938 visit to Detroit, Alan Lomax had made several country blues field recordings of Calvin Frazier and Sampson Pittman, both of whom were raised in the South, for the Library of Congress. Some of these first Frazier recordings sound so close to Robert Johnson, whom he knew, that they could pass for Johnson outtakes. In 1949 Frazier commenced cutting band-oriented commercial sides for a variety of small labels.
For his 1956 J-V-B recordings, Frazier trimmed his lineup to a single accompanist, Washboard Willie. Recording before a live audience, Frazier employed an unusual approach on “Rock House,” beginning and centering the instrumental on the turnarounds. In another unusual move, midway through Willie switched from washboard to drums. Frazier’s breakneck upper-register flourishes during the solo and big, insistent bends just before the fade-out provide the highpoints of “Rock House,” issued with “We’ll Meet Again” as J-V-B 49. A mid-1950s photograph taken by Bobo Jenkins depicts Frazier playing a sunburst Stratocaster.
Buddy Guy, “This Is the End”
“September 25, 1957, was the day I first came to Chicago,” Buddy Guy remembered in The Cobra Records Story. “I traveled up from Louisiana, where I was raised, carrying my guitar and amp with me. I had a Gibson Les Paul then, and a Gibson amplifier with four 10-inch speakers. I was about 20 years old at the time.”
Just before Guy’s first Chicago sessions, the Les Paul was stolen, and he replaced it with a sunburst Fender Stratocaster. The 1958 session that produced Artistic 1503—“This Is the End” backed with “You Sure Can’t Do”—was held by Eli Toscano in the converted garage behind his record store. “The studio had a bunch of barrels that you could set your amp on,” Guy recalled in the same account, “and there was an upright piano on one side. Eli had a separate little control room, and he would sit in there and do the engineering in a tiny little room behind a pane of glass. Eli could get a good sound in his studio, even though it was just an abandoned garage. Both of my Artistic releases were cut there.”
Joining Buddy on “This Is the End” were bassist Willie Dixon, drummer Odie Payne, pianist Harold Burrage, and Ike Turner regulars Jackie Brenston, Carlson Oliver, and Eddie Jones on saxophones. Ike Turner also played guitar on the date, but with their elastic string bends, off-center phrases, and B.B. King influence, the song’s wildman solos are pure, unadulterated Buddy Guy.
Frankie Lee Sims, “She Likes to Boogie Real Low”
Frankie Lee Sims, born in New Orleans in 1917, moved to Marshall, Texas, when he was ten. In his only known interview, with Chris Strachwitz in 1969, Sims revealed that he and Lightnin’ Hopkins were first cousins: “His mother and my daddy are sister and brother.” Sims also told Strachwitz that he had attended Wylie College and taught at an elementary school in Palestine, Texas, before joining the Marines. Sims cut his first four sides in 1948 for the Blue Bonnet label. At his next session, in Dallas five years later, he cut “Lucy Mae Blues,” which endures as one of the finest examples of postwar Texas juke music.
His journey to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1957 produced eight selections, including two Ace singles and Vin 1006, “She Likes to Boogie Real Low” b/w “I Warned You Baby.” Accompanied by saxophonist Jack White, pianist Willie Taylor, bassist Ralph Morgan, and Julius “Jimmy” Mullen on drums, Sims kicked off his riveting recasting of Louis Jordan’s “Blue Light Boogie” with a fantastic guitar hook. Volume cranked, he then punctuated his vocals with crashing chords, snarling hooks, and a fire-breathing solo. During the ensuing decades, Johnny Winter, Taj Mahal, and many others revisited the song.
Mercy Baby, “Mercy’s Blues”
During the same session that produced his “She Likes to Boogie Real Low,” Frankie Lee Sims backed singing drummer Julius “Jimmy” Mullins on “Mercy Blues.” Although buried in the mix, Sims’ attack is just as strong on this track, but his tone is considerably thinner, perhaps the result less volume or his using a different amplifier. Played with a plectrum, his solo climbs high and climaxes with thrashing two-note bends. The performance was released as Ace 535, which assigned Mullins the pseudonym “Mercy Baby.” A Dallas native, Mullins was reportedly murdered by his wife in the late 1970s.
Elmore James, “The 12 Year Old Boy”
Another all-star lineup assembled in a Chicago studio for the 1957 Chief session that produced Elmore James’ “The 12 Year Old Boy,” “It Hurts Me Too,” and other tracks. Credited to Mel London, the lyrics for “The 12 Year Old Boy” describe a late-night grill worker bemoaning an unsavory event: “I let a boy twelve years old take my baby away from me.”
For this track, James set aside his slide and let Wayne Bennett do the soloing. Buddy Guy, who described Bennett as “one of the most talented guitar players that ever was,” had loaned him a Gibson Les Paul around the time of this session. Eddie Taylor sat in on rhythm guitar, while Homesick James played the song’s bass parts. “But that wasn’t no bass with Elmore,” Homesick clarified. “That was guitar tuned low. In the key of D, I would keep four [highest] strings tuned to that Vastapol [D, F#, A, D, from low to high], and we would run those other two strings, the A and E, down lower just like a bass, so it sounds like a bass.”
Bennett, who would do some of his most memorable work with Bobby “Blue” Bland, was proud of his ability to play virtually any style of guitar. “I’ll tell you what,” he said near the end of his life, “I’m a blues guitarist, as well as a jazz guitarist and a pop guitarist. I like to go the whole gamut, because you never know when people might ask you to do that one thing that’ll get you where you’re supposed to go.” And on the day he joined Elmore and Homesick on “The 12 Year Old Boy” and “It Hurts Me Too,” Bennett knew exactly where to go. On the label of Chief 7001, London’s identity was disguised as “Nel Rondon.”
Bobby “Blue” Bland, “I Smell Trouble”
From 1957 through 1962, Clarence Hollimon worked as a house guitarist for Duke and Peacock, backing dozens of blues and gospel performers. “When you accompanying someone,” Hollimon explained, “the singer is supposed to be heard and you’re supposed to be felt.” This perfectly sums the approach the Texas-born guitarist used while backing Bobby “Blue” Bland on 1957’s “I Smell Trouble.”
The session took place in Houston, with Hollimon putting his perfect sense of timing and beautifully placed blue notes to good effect. The “Bill Harvey Orchestra” listed beneath Bobby “Blue” Band’s name on the single’s release as Duke 167 was actually four musicians – Hollimon, pianist Connie Mack Booker, bassist Hamp Simmons, and drummer Sonny Freeman. Don Robey took the songwriting credit. Johnny Winter claimed that he “learned a lot” from Hollimon’s performance on “I Smell Trouble,” deeming it “amazing!”
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Stayed tuned for Part 4 of “Killer Blues Guitars,” which will present rip-roaring songs featuring Hop Wilson, Larry Davis, Sly Williams, Guitar Shorty,, and other hair-raising guitarists from 1958-1964.
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Thanks to Klaus Kilian, who originally compiled these recordings for a CD set that was never issued.
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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