QRS R. 7049 – James (Stump) Johnson and his Piano – 1928

The Jazz Age saw several notable pianists by the name of “James Johnson”: stride master James P. Johnson, Lonnie Johnson’s brother James “Steady Roll” Johnson, songwriter and bandleader J.C. Johnson (who, in fact, was not named “James”, but is sometimes misidentified as such), and the St. Louis blues singer James J. “Stump” Johnson.  Perhaps one day every one of those Johnsons will have his time in the Old Time Blues limelight, but today we turn our attention only to the last, with his first and surely most popular recording.

James Jesse Johnson was born on January 17, 1902, to Henry F. and Betty Johnson of Clarksville, Tennessee.  When he was about seven years old, his family relocated to St. Louis, Missouri.  Growing up in a city rich in blues and ragtime, Johnson taught himself to play piano.  Standing just under five feet tall and just over two-hundred pounds as an adult, he earned the nickname “Stump” from his squat stature.  With the aid of his brother Jesse Johnson, a prominent music promoter and owner of the De Luxe Music Shoppe in St. Louis, he made a career for himself as a musician.  In late 1928, brother Jesse arranged for A&R man “Uncle” Art Satherley to bring Stump and his sister-in-law Edith North Johnson to the studio for their recording debut with a pair of discs for the short-lived QRS label, produced by the manufacturer of the eponymous piano rolls.  Subsequently, he made a series of sporadic recordings for various labels in the years that followed, both under his own name and under several pseudonyms, typically not making more than one or two records at a time.  His next record date came in August of 1929 with a Chicago session for the Brunswick company, making a single record under the name “Shorty George” with Tampa Red backing him on guitar.  In October of the same year, he went to Richmond, Indiana, to cut four sides with a small ensemble at the Gennett studio to be released on Paramount.  The following month, he was back in Chicago making two records for Okeh as “Snitcher Roberts” with pianist Alex Hill and guitarist Harry Johnson (presumably his brother of the same name).  Although Johnson himself was a competent piano player, a number of his recordings found him only taking the vocal while other pianists provided his accompaniment.  He next made one further Paramount in February of 1930 at their new Grafton, Wisconsin, recording facility.  It would be two more years before Johnson record again, breaking that dry spell with a February, 1932, session for Victor in Dallas, Texas, waxing another two sides, on which he was accompanied by fellow pianist Roosevelt Sykes (a.k.a. Willie Kelly)—plus one accompanying blues singer Walter Davis.  His last pre-war recording session was in Chicago in August of ’33, for RCA Victor’s Bluebird subsidiary, producing three sides featuring the piano of Aaron “Pine Top” Sparks and guitar of Joe C. Stone (believed to be a pseudonymous J.D. Short), one of which found him in duet with Dorothea Trowbridge.  As work for a musician became scarcer during the Great Depression, Johnson turned to work as a deputy constable and tax collector for the city of St. Louis, and he served in the army during the Second World War.  More than thirty years after his previous session but still in fine form, Stump made his final recordings in St. Louis in 1964, one of which appeared on the Euphonic label.  Only five years later, on December 5, 1969, Stump Johnson died from esophageal cancer at the Veterans’ Administration Hospital in his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri.

QRS R. 7049 was recorded in Long Island City, New York, in December of 1928 (some sources suggest January, 1929) and released the following year.  It was also issued on Paramount 12842.  As the label indicates, it features James “Stump” Johnson singing and accompanying himself on the piano.

An instant classic, “The Duck—Yas—Yas—Yas” (better known as “The Duck’s Yas Yas Yas”) was undoubtedly Stump’s most famous and successful song, spawning cover versions for decades to come, by artists ranging from hokum kings Tampa Red and Georgia Tom to jazz bands like Eddie Johnson and his Crackerjacks.  Stump himself re-recorded the song at least twice.

The Duck—Yas—Yas—Yas, recorded c. December 1928 by James (Stump) Johnson.

Though not as big of a hit as the former, “The Snitchers Blues” was evidently another of Johnson’s signature songs, as he recorded it several times over the course of his career, and adopted it’s title as his nom de disque for his Okeh recordings of 1930.  Stump’s exclamation at the end of “What?  Well give me another drink then, that’s all right then,” was apparently a candid remark in reference to the booze offered to him and other black musicians in the studio by the record producers in hopes of loosening them up and getting better performances.

The Snitchers Blues, recorded c. December 1928 by James (Stump) Johnson.

Paramount 12650 – Blind Lemon Jefferson – 1928

Back in the days of 78 RPM, it was not an altogether uncommon sight to find records bearing elaborate and often colorful “picture labels” (not to be confused with picture discs), individuating special releases or records by big-time hit-makers from the hoi polloi.  The Columbia company was perhaps the chief exploiter of this gimmick, issuing special label designs on many discs by their stars Paul Whiteman and Ted Lewis in the 1920s, and one more on their subsidiary Okeh for Seger Ellis.  On the other hand, the New York Recording Laboratory of Port Washington, Wisconsin, manufacturer of Paramount records produced only three such picture labels, which were used for only three different records; the first was in 1924 for their top star “Ma” Rainey, the next for white preacher Rev. J.O. Hanes in 1927, and finally, in 1928, one for their new big moneymaker, Blind Lemon Jefferson.

On a striking bright label of white and (appropriately) lemon yellow—in stark contrast to Paramount’s standard black and gold design—were emblazoned the words “Blind Lemon Jeffersons’ [sic] Birthday Record”.  As to exactly what day it was celebrating, that is not concretely known.  The most commonly agreed upon date attributed to Lemon Jefferson’s birth is September 24, 1893, supported by both the 1900 and 1910 United States censuses, but others have been suggested.  Lemon himself gave a date of October 26, 1894, to one Edward Seaman, registrar of his 1917 draft card, which also seems to be supported by his reported age of twenty-five in the 1920 census.  His 1930 obituary in the Wortham Journal gave his age as forty-five, suggesting he was born as early as 1884.  Others still have proposed a birth date of July 11, 1897.  Some oddities exist surrounding Lemon’s census records, which further complicates matters.  In his entry in the 1900 census, the enumerator, one Leonard Carrier, appears to have reported his birth date as “Sept 24”, with the number written in small print above the month, despite the fact that dates of birth were not recorded in that census, only months, and no other birth dates were recorded for other individuals in the same or adjacent pages.  Why then, did Mr. Carrier seemingly write down the full date of birth for Lemon and only Lemon?  Did he somehow foresee that this six-year-old blind boy would one day be a star, and this information would be valuable one-hundred years from then?  Did Lemon’s mother or father give the full date (which incidentally is the only date or month recorded for the entire Jefferson family) and he decided to write it down for the heck of it, despite no space for it being given?  Or could this errant “24” have some other obscure meaning, perhaps lost to time?  Those are questions which I, at this time, cannot answer.  Perhaps some census expert may have better insight.  The same census also reported Lemon’s name as “Jefferson, Lemmon\Bl”, which has been misinterpreted to mean that Lemon’s real, full name was “Lemmon B. Jefferson”.  That is not the case—in fact, the “Bl” next to his name was to denote his blindness (some censuses contained a separate column to indicate whether the subject was blind, but 1900 did not); so it seems that, at least by the United States federal government, he was already dubbed “Blind Lemon Jefferson” by the age of six.  The anomalous spelling of “Lemmon” can be easily discounted as well, for the census was taken orally and filled out be the enumerator, thus numerous spelling errors are present.  In any event, Lemon’s “Birthday Record” was released to the public in August of 1928, which could be interpreted as belatedly celebrating his July birthday, or preemptively celebrating his September birthday—that is assuming it was not simply a marketing gimmick irrespective of the actual date of his birth, a prospect that may well be the most probable.

Paramount 12650 was recorded circa March and June of 1928, respectively, and was released in August of the same year, with the first advertisement for it appearing in the Chicago Defender on August 4, 1928.

“Piney Woods Money Mama” is one of Lemon;s lyrical masterworks, one of many songs he recorded which appear to be mostly original, rather than drawn from the “floating verse” tradition, as so many blues songs of his day were.  “She got ways like the devil and hair like a Injun squaw; she’s been tryin’ two years to get me to be her son-in-law.”

Piney Woods Money Mama, recorded c. March 1928 by Blind Lemon Jefferson.

On the “B” side, the hoodoo-tinged “Low Down Mojo Blues” is perhaps not as memorable a song as the former, but still a testament to Lemon’s songwriting genius and expressive guitar playing.

Low Down Mojo Blues, recorded c. June 1928 by Blind Lemon Jefferson

Okeh 8455 – Blind Lemon Jefferson – 1927

Blind Lemon Jefferson, circa 1926; as pictured in the Paramount Book of Blues.

In his all-too-brief four year recording career, Blind Lemon Jefferson produced nearly one-hundred songs that helped to define the country blues and open the door for future guitar-slinging blues singers to record their art.  All but one of those records appeared on the Paramount label—a few of which have been examined previously on Old Time Blues—this time around, we turn our attention to the odd one out.

As 1926 turned to ’27. Blind Lemon Jefferson’s recording career entered its second year.  The previous one had seen a bountiful debut, producing a total of twenty recorded songs to his credit (roughly one-fifth of his total recorded output), all for Paramount Records of Port Washington, Wisconsin.  The Texas bluesman was becoming a sensation, and other record companies soon took notice.  It wasn’t long before the Okeh record company—then a subsidiary of Columbia Records and top competitor to Paramount with their extensive catalog of popular “race” records featuring the music of black artists—was the first to act  Early in 1927, Jefferson was contacted by Atlanta-based Okeh representatives Polk C. Brockman (best remembered for orchestrating Fiddlin’ John Carson’s recording debut) and T.J. Rockwell.  They extended an invitation to Jefferson for a recording session in Atlanta, to which he obliged.  The singer arrived at his destination in mid-March, a little later than expected, for Jefferson had made an unplanned stop in Shreveport, Louisiana, as he had never “seen” the city before.  Thus, on March 14, 1927, Lemon Jefferson recorded seven songs for Okeh, and one more the next day.  The first two of those titles were released the following month, comprising Okeh 8455.  When the record began to gain steam on the market, Paramount evidently threatened legal action against Okeh for “poaching” one of their top stars, and as a result, the remaining six sides were never issued.  While the recordings are now presumed lost, what is known of those six songs reveals a rather different character than most of the material he recorded for Paramount.  Of those six titles, “Elder Green’s in Town” was a version of “Alabama Bound”, and “Laboring Man Away from Home” was a rendition of the English ballad “Our Goodman” (also recorded by others as “Cabbage Head Blues” and “Drunkard’s Special”).  “English Stop Time” was an instrumental piece similar to “Buck Dance” pieces recorded by many blues and ragtime guitarists.  “Woman’s Labor Man” (or “Laboring Man Blues”) and “‘Stillery Blues” were evidently original songs never otherwise recorded or published.  When Lemon returned to the Paramount recording laboratory in Chicago the next month, he remade “My Easy Rider” as “Easy Rider Blues”, coupled with a re-recording of “Match Box Blues”.  The company saw to it that Lemon didn’t get away again, and all of Jefferson’s further recordings were for Paramount.

Okeh 8455 was recorded on March 14, 1927, in Atlanta, Georgia.  It was first advertised for sale on April 23 of the same year.  Great efforts have been taken to coax out as much music as possible out out of this, quite frankly, wiped out record.

On the “A” side of Okeh 8455, Lemon sings a re-telling of his famous “Black Snake Moan”, one of his more popular Paramount recordings, which he had recorded about five months prior to his Okeh session.

Black Snake Moan, recorded March 14, 1927 by Blind Lemon Jefferson.

The “B” side contains Jefferson’s first recording of another of his most memorable—and most widely covered—hit songs: “Match Box Blues”.  Jefferson subsequently re-recorded two more takes of the soon-to-be blues standard upon his return to Paramount, each one noticeably different than the others.

Match Box Blues, recorded March 14, 1927 by Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Columbia 14624-D – Blind Willie Johnson – 1929

Against odds stacked against him, the guitar evangelist and musical visionary Blind Willie Johnson rightly secured his place as a gospel music pioneer and veritable legend in the annals of American music.  While he found neither great fame nor fortune during his life, his rousing religious songs and inspired slide guitar have received much admiration from music lovers, and the convoluted details surrounding his life have inspired much interest from researchers (and as such, some of the facts presented herein are of rather tenuous accuracy) in the decades since.

Willie Johnson was born to “Dock” (variously reported in source documents as Willie, Sr., or George) and Mary Johnson in Pendleton, Texas (though other sources have suggested Independence, some one-hundred miles southeast), in January of 1897; his draft card gave a date of the twenty-fifth, while his death certificate proffered the twenty-second.  He spent most of his life from childhood to adulthood in Marlin, Texas.  His mother died when he was four years old, and his father later remarried.  It is widely believed that Johnson became blind around the age of seven, though the cause of his blindness is not definitively known; the most popular story—based upon an account by his alleged widow Angeline—asserts that he was blinded by lye water thrown by his stepmother during a marital dispute with his father (and accounts differ as to whether the lye was meant for Willie or his father).  A perhaps more plausible theory suggests that he became blind from viewing a solar eclipse which would have been visible from Texas on August 30, 1905, through a piece of broken glass.  No matter the unfortunate circumstance, Johnson found religion and thus aspired preach the gospel.  Inspired by fiddling evangelist Blind Madkin Butler, he learned to play guitar in a distinctive style using a steel ring for a slide to accompany his coarse, false bass singing (though he naturally possessed a pleasant singing voice).  He traveled from town-to-town, playing and singing his religious songs on street corners around the Brazos Valley, sometimes sharing the space with Blind Lemon Jefferson and his blues songs.  Around the middle of the 1920s, Johnson met Willie B. Harris, who would soon become his (possibly second) wife and singing partner, and with whom he would have one daughter in 1931.  He made his first recordings on December 3, 1927—one day after fellow Texas gospel blues man Washington Phillips made his own debut—for Columbia, who had set up a temporary recording laboratory in Dallas, Texas, possibly at the Jefferson Hotel.  His religious songs proved quite successful, some records rivaling the popular Bessie Smith’s blues songs in sales figures.  Ultimately, Johnson had three more sessions in Dallas, New Orleans, and Atlanta, producing a total of thirty issued sides for the Columbia Phonograph Company—plus an additional two unreleased masters credited in the company ledgers to “Blind Texas Marlin”, which are speculated to have been pseudonymous recordings of secular material, or which may have simply been a clerical error—before the crush of the Great Depression curtailed their field recording activity and thus ended his recording career.  Sometime in the 1930s, Johnson left his family in Marlin for the Gulf Coast, where he eventually settled in Beaumount, evidently with a woman named Angeline (with whom he may have had relations concurrent to his marriage to Harris), purportedly the sister of blues guitarist L.C. Robinson.  He continued to sing on street corners in the vicinity, and may have appeared on the radio on KTEM in Temple in the early 1940s, according to an anecdote related by Houston folklorist Mack McCormick, and operated a “house of prayer” in Beaumont.  A decade after his recording career had concluded, John A. Lomax expressed interest in Johnson’s music in an interview with another Blind Willie in 1940, but McTell perplexingly informed the ballad hunter that the gospel singer was dead, according to a letter he had received from Johnson’s wife.  His house in Beaumont reportedly burned in the middle 1940s, and Blind Willie Johnson died on September 18, 1945, from a cause reported as malarial fever.

As with so many of history’s truest luminaries, Blind Willie Johnson’s greatest fame was achieved posthumously.  Only seven years after his demise, Harry Smith included his 1930 recording of “John the Revelator” in his influential Anthology of American Folk Music, presenting Johnson’s music to a new generation of folkies.  In 1977, Johnson’s instrumental “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” was selected among the twenty-seven musical recordings included on the Voyager Golden Record, sending the blind pilgrim’s celestial music to an appropriate venue amongst the stars.

Columbia 14624-D was recorded in New Orleans, Louisiana, on December 10 and 11, 1929, respectively.  It was not released until October of 1931, making it Johnson’s last issued record.  Reportedly, only 900 copies were pressed, and it is the only of Johnson’s records to be listed in the “Rarest 78s” column of 78 Quarterly, with an estimate of fifteen or fewer copies known to exist (though whether or not it actually is his rarest record is debatable)—this copy, incidentally, appears to match the description of the one which formerly belonged to Mr. Roger Misiewicz.  Blind Willie Johnson sings both sides in his growling false bass voice and eschews his slide in favor of chording the frets with his bare fingers, he is joined by Willie B. Harris on the second side.

On the first side, recorded the former date, Willie sings “Sweeter as the Years Roll By”—an apt title for his final record—a folk interpretation of Lelia Naylor Morris’s 1912 hymn “Sweeter as the Years Go By” (which in fact are the lyrics Johnson sings in the evidently mis-titled song).

Sweeter as the Years Roll By, recorded December 10, 1929 by Blind Willie Johnson.

On the traditional spiritual “Take Your Stand”, Johnson’s vocals are complimented by the soprano of his wife Willie B. Harris.  The song was also recorded by Elders McIntorsh and Edwards in 1928, and by Charley Patton (under the pseudonym “Elder J.J. Hadley”) as the first part of his “Prayer of Death” in June of 1929.

Take Your Stand, recorded December 11, 1929 by Blind Willie Johnson.

Updated with improved audio on June 30, 2024.

Columbia 14333-D – Washington Phillips – 1927

While now regarded alongside the nigh-legendary Blind Willie Johnson as a pioneer of the gospel music genre, snuff-dipping jack-leg preacher from Texas Washington Phillips was once largely forgotten and shrouded by mystery and misconceptions.  Today, thanks to the tireless efforts of folklorists and researchers like Michael Corcoran, Phillips may finally begin to receive the appreciation he has so long deserved.

George Washington Phillips was born on January 11, 1880, near Cotton Gin, Texas, a few miles west of Teague in Freestone County—the very same region that produced pioneering blues luminary Blind Lemon Jefferson—one of at least ten children born to Timothy and Nancy Phillips.  As an adult, he worked for a time as a hotel waiter in Mexia, but soon continued in the family trade of farming, working a strip of land very near the place of his birth in rural Simsboro.  On the side, he found his calling as an itinerant preacher and sanctified singer in local churches and any opportune venues.  In stark contrast to the fire-and-brimstone preaching of contemporaries like Blind Willie Johnson and his fellow guitar evangelists, Phillips’s music was delivered with a gentle touch and kind nature.  More remarkably, Phillips eschewed the guitar in favor of accompanying his singing on an ethereal sounding instrument of rather enigmatic origin, previously thought to have been a toy-piano like zither known as a Dolceola (which may be heard on some of Lead Belly’s 1944 Capitol recordings, played by Paul Howard), but now widely believed to have been an instrument of his own invention which he dubbed a “manzarene”, comprised of two modified tabletop zithers (a celestaphone and a phonoharp) played in tandem, with which he was photographed in 1927.  Possibly owing to an association with Lemon Jefferson, when the Columbia Phonograph Company made their first field trip to Dallas, Phillips made the journey eighty miles northward to record his sacred music.  On Friday, December 2, 1927, directly following a session by the Cartwright Brothers’ cowboy singing duo, Washington Phillips became the first African-American musician, and only the second overall, to be recorded at the field trip.  He waxed a total of six sides that day and the following Monday, and subsequently returned the following two Decembers to record a further twelve (two of which are presumed lost).  Though the sudden onset of Depression curtailed Columbia’s field trips south, Phillips was still in Dallas in 1930, lodging at Wade Wilson’s shotgun house near Oak Cliff, though he eventually returned to the country life in Freestone County.  Locally, “Wash” Phillips was as well known for his mule cart from which he peddled farm-fresh produce as he was for his music, and many of his hometown acquaintances were unaware that he had made records.  Census records indicate that he was married at least twice, first to Anna, and then to Susie.  At the age of seventy-four, Washington Phillips died following a fall on the stairs outside the Teague welfare office on September 20, 1954.

Columbia 14333-D was recorded in Dallas, Texas, on December 5, 1927, possibly at the Jefferson Hotel.  On it, Washington Phillips sings and accompanied himself on “manzarene”.  78 Quarterly estimated “possibly as many as 30 to 40 copies” were extant.

Perhaps Washington Phillips’s best known recording and composition, in “Denomination Blues” he chides various religious sects for their perceived hypocrisy.  Split into two parts, he sings and plays “Part 1” on the first side.

Denomination Blues – Part 1, recorded December 5, 1927, by Washington Phillips.

He concluded the number with “Part 2” on the reverse, turning his attention to the different varieties of “so-called Christians.”  Of Phillips’s limited discography, the song proved particularly influential, being later adapted into the gospel song “That’s All” (for which Phillips received no credit, possibly because the song was believed to be of traditional origin), recorded by artists as diverse as Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Merle Travis alike, which rather altered the song’s message by deviating from Phillips’s anti-sectarian “you better have Jesus, and that’s all” theme.

Denomination Blues – Part 2, recorded December 5, 1927, by Washington Phillips.

Updated with improved audio on May 3, 2023, and again on June 20, 2024.