Tag Archives: Texas Blues

Paramount 12855 – Will Ezell – 1929

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At Old Time Blues, we have developed a tradition of honoring both the legends and the lost of recorded American music—and quite often both are one and the same.  In that vein, let us take a look herein at the life and career of Texas native ragtime pianist, boogie-woogie pioneer, and Paramount recording star Will Ezell, and a record that some have hailed as the birth of rock ‘n’ roll.

William Ezell was born in Brenham, Texas, on December 23, 1892, one of six children born to Lorenza and Rachel Ezell.  Beginning in his teenage years, Will was playing piano in juke joints and lumber camp barrelhouses around eastern Texas and western Louisiana—the country where boogie-woogie was born.  As an itinerant piano player, Ezell was known to have played in various locations from Dallas to New Orleans, where he was living by the time of the First World War.  It was perhaps during this time in Louisiana that he encountered blues singer Elzadie Robinson—a native of the Shreveport area—and the two struck up something of a partnership.  Around 1925, Ezell and Robinson traveled north to Chicago, where they made their phonograph recording debut for the New York Recording Laboratories of Port Washington, Wisconsin, manufacturers of Paramount Records.  Subsequently, between 1926 and 1931, Ezell recorded somewhat prolifically for Paramount, both solo and as an accompanist.  A few of his notable piano recordings include “Barrel House Man”, “Heifer Dust”, “Mixed Up Rag”, “Bucket of Blood”, and “Pitchin’ Boogie”.  As an accompanist, Ezell played piano behind such blues singers as Lucille Bogan, Bertha Henderson, Side Wheel Sally Duffie, Blind Roosevelt Graves, and of course Elzadie Robinson.  In 1929, he appeared with Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, Papa Charlie Jackson, Charlie Spand, and the Hokum Boys on the “Hometown Skiffle”, a “descriptive novelty” record featuring Paramount’s top stars.  It has been reported, of uncertain veracity, that Paramount commissioned Ezell to escort the body of their star recording artist Blind Lemon Jefferson home to Texas upon his untimely demise in late 1929.  When the Great Depression struck and severely affected Paramount’s recording activities, Ezell’s output slowed considerably, and he made his final known recordings in early 1931, accompanying Sam “Slim” Tarpley on one record.  Although he made no further recordings, his existing body of work began to see reissues as early as the 1940s.  Subsequently, he reportedly went back on the road, returning for a time to Louisiana, before settling in Chicago permanently by the end of the 1930s, where he found work for the WPA.  According to John Steiner—who revived the Paramount label in the late 1940s—Ezell later made appearances alongside fellow former Paramount artists Blind Leroy Garnett and Charlie Spand at the Big Apple Tavern in Chicago, owned by prolific pianist Cripple Clarence Lofton.  Ezell called Chicago his home for the rest of his life, and he died there on August 2, 1963.

Paramount 12855 was recorded at the Starr Piano Company’s recording laboratory in Richmond, Indiana, on September 20, 1929.  Will Ezell is on the piano, and is accompanied by Blind Roosevelt Graves on guitar, his brother Uaroy Graves on tambourine, and probably “Baby Jay” James on cornet.

Ezell’s hard-driving “Pitchin’ Boogie” is often suggested to be an early antecedent of rock ‘n’ roll, with its stomping barrelhouse piano beat coupled with the guitar and cornet of the Graves brothers’ Mississippi Jook Band making for a prototype of the early rock band lineup.

Pitchin’ Boogie, recorded September 20, 1929 by Will Ezell.

On the “B” side (which the original owner evidently enjoyed more than the former), “Just Can’t Stay Here” dishes out more of the same stuff, but arranged more as a standard twelve-bar blues song than a rent party rollick.

Just Can’t Stay Here, recorded September 20, 1929 by Will Ezell.

Paramount 12650 – Blind Lemon Jefferson – 1928

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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

Globe 122 – Jesse Lockett with Earl Sims’ Sextette – 1946

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Performing and recording alongside more famous contemporaries like Lightnin’ Hopkins, L.C. Williams, and Melvin “Little Son” Jackson, blues shouter Jesse Lockett was a big figure on the 1940s Houston blues scene and a pioneering vocalist in the postwar Texas record industry—notable for making the first blues record to appear on a Texas-based label—yet very little is known of him and his scant recording career today.

Jesse Eugene Lockett was born on September 23, 1912, in Trinity County, Texas.  He grew up in Houston, where he attended Wheatley High School.  In adulthood, he was described as a heavyset, dark complected man, about five feet, ten inches tall and weighing as much as three-hundred pounds, and was called at point a “buxom and vociferous singer of the blues (all gut bucket).”  While living in Houston in the summer of 1935, Lockett—despite a plea of not guilty—was convicted of burglary and theft and sentenced to seven years on the Clemens State Farm in Brazoria County beginning on September 11, 1935.  There, on April 16, 1939, noted folklorist John A. Lomax recorded him singing “Worry Blues” and accompanying himself on the guitar in one of his prison recording trips for the Library of Congress.  Only a few months later, he was released early, walking free on September 14, 1939.  Soon after his release, he formed a band called the Blue Five, which was well received in Houston in the early-to-mid-1940s, making appearances at both public venues and private functions.  Known for composing most of his own material, he earned regular mention in the local black newspaper, the Informer and Texas Freeman, in which he was hailed as “Houston’s gift to the music world.”  Some of his known appearances included regular revues at the Lincoln Theatre at 711 Prairie Street, nightclub shows, including a bi-weekly “Harlem Review” at Lee Curry’s New Harlem Grill and opening night at Sutton Batteau’s Blue Room, and at least one concert at the City Auditorium.  He was often joined in these shows by tap dancer Jimmy De Barber and blackface comedian “Cream Puff” Smith, and he shared the stage at times with such noted bands as LeRoy Hardison’s Carolina Cotton Pickers and I.H. Smalley’s Rockateers.  In the early 1940s, Lockett had a string of engagements on the East Coast, and around the same time was purported to have been a “Decca recording artist,” with some of his songs listed as “Defense Blues” and “The New Sugar Ration Blues”, though no evidence of these songs or of Lockett ever recording for Decca appears to exist.  A few years later, around late 1945, he made his documented commercial recording debut for Bill Quinn’s Houston-based Gulf label with “Boogie Woogie Mama” and “Blacker the Berry”, the first and only known blues record to appear on the first record label based in Texas.  An October 1945 newspaper article reported that Lockett had recorded ten sides for an unnamed “local record company” (presumably Gulf), but only the aforementioned two are known to have been released.  Soon after, he ventured out west to join Earl Sims’ Sextette on a pair of jump blues sides recorded for the Los Angeles-based Globe label.  Following this stint in California, Lockett returned to Houston, at which point he recorded once again for Bill Quinn—whose Gulf label had become Gold Star—cutting four sides as a vocalist with Will Rowland’s Orchestra (who had apparently traveled with him from California) in late 1948, including “Run Mr. Rabbit Run” and “Reefer Blues”.  Afterwards, he seems to have gone back to California, where—apparently finding it hard to stay out of trouble—he was incarcerated again by 1950, this time in the Los Angeles County Jail, ostensibly putting an end to his promising career in music.  After serving his sentence again, Lockett remained in California, where he died in San Luis Obispo on March 14, 1966.

Globe 122 was recorded sometime in 1946 in Los Angeles, California, and released the same year.  Earl Sims’s Sextette consists of Sims on alto saxophone, Doc Jones on tenor sax, Jimmy Moorman on trumpet, Laurence Robinson on piano, C. LeChuga on string bass, and Felix Gross on drums.

On the record’s first side, Jesse Lockett sings a slow blues of his own composition titled “Mellow Hour Blues”.  Lockett seems to have been both a fine singer and songwriter, drawing inspiration from the folk blues tradition.

Mellow Hour Blues, recorded c. 1946 by Jesse Lockett with Earl Sims Sextette.

On the “B” side, Lockett sings a “jump boogie” titled “Hole in the Wall”, not to be confused with the different song of the same name recorded by fellow Texas blues singer L.C. Williams around two years later.

Hole in the Wall, recorded c. 1946 by Jesse Lockett with Earl Sims Sextette

Okeh 8455 – Blind Lemon Jefferson – 1927

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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.

☙ No. 1/2 – Euday Bowman – 1948

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A foremost figure of Texas ragtime, Euday L. Bowman is best known as the composer of one of the most widely performed rags in history: “12th Street Rag”.  Yet despite his renown as a composer, Bowman life and times have proved remarkable elusive, and much of the information regarding his life is of questionable accuracy.  This article will attempt to regurgitate only the legitimate facts, but I cannot indubitably guarantee their veracity.

Euday Bowman, author of “Twelfth Street Rag,” at Fort Worth’s Frontier Fiesta, 06/23/1937 [negative badly deteriorating, cracked, and channeled]. Original image part of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. Identifier: AR406-6 06/23/1937 1061. (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Euday Louis Bowman was born on November 9, 1886 (according to early documents, though some sources suggest 1887 instead), near Fort Worth in Tarrant County, Texas, and was raised in the vicinity of Webb, which has since been engulfed by the city of Arlington.  His family was prominent in the area’s history, and the town of Webb was originally named Bowman Springs after some of his ancestors (a name which lives on in that of a street and a park in Arlington).  In his earliest years, he lived with his grandparents, with whom he may have begun his lifelong association with Kansas City by accompanying his grandfather on periodic visits to the Missouri town. Following his parents’ divorce in 1905, Euday moved from the family farm to the big city of Fort Worth, where he lived with his piano teacher sister, Mary, who taught him to play the instrument on which he later wrought acclaim.  Around the turn of the century, Bowman began to make a name for himself in the same fashion as many other great ragtime piano men—like Jelly Roll Morton—as an itinerant piano picker in many seedier joints such as those of Fort Worth’s infamous “Hell’s Half Acre”, as well as at private parties and most likely any other sort of venues he could.  Meanwhile, he supported himself financially with various labor jobs.

In 1914, Bowman self-published “12th Street Rag”—his first published piece of music—which he claimed to have composed all the way back in 1905, perhaps in a shoeshine parlor off of the Fort Worth street of the same name.  In the years immediately following, he subsequently put out “10th Street Rag”, “11th Street Rag”, “Fort Worth Blues”, “Kansas City Blues”, and many other compositions.  He set up the Bowman and Ward Music Publishing Company to handle these publications, though it seems to have been somewhat short-lived, as in 1916, he sold “12th Street Rag” for three-hundred dollars to J.W. Jenkins Sons Music Company of Kansas City, and the same firm would later handle many more of his compositions.  He traveled frequently to Kansas City to promote his music, and his name name would ultimately become as well associated with there as with Fort Worth (or perhaps, quite wrongly, even more so).  He married his first wife in 1920, though the union was not to last, and they were separated within a year.

In the 1920s, Bowman’s work shifted with the public’s changing tastes away from ragtime and toward blues, and though he composed a fair number, he formally published few pieces after 1921.  While never much of a recording artist, Bowman made test recordings of “12th Street Rag” for the Starr Piano Company in Richmond, Indiana, on February 2, 1924, and for the American Record Corporation in Dallas on December 8, 1938.  Neither of these were commercially issued, though Bowman privately pressed some copies of the former recording in the late 1940s.  A 1923 Gennett recording of “12th Street Rag” credited to Richard M. Jones is also believed by some to have actually been Bowman’s hands at the piano.  In 1937, he reattained the rights to his now-popular “12th Street Rag” with hopes of recouping the royalties he rightfully deserved, but the paydays were slow to come, and he nonetheless continued to struggle financially for some time.

Always a hit with jazz bands and ensembles and performers of most every other genre, “12th Street Rag” was brought to new heights of fame with trombonist and bandleader Pee Wee Hunt’s Capitol record of the piece, which became one of the largest selling records of 1948.  In the wake of that record’s success, Bowman produced a record of his own, featuring a new song on the front, and the famous rag on the back.  His first big royalty check from Hunt’s record early in 1949, and things started looking up for Euday, who celebrated with a new car and a new wife.  Sadly, these good times were short-lived; his marriage fell apart after only a month, and his health began to deteriorate.  Nevertheless, he continued to travel to promote his music and push for his deserved recompense.  While away up in New York on one such venture, Bowman contracted pneumonia, and died at the age of sixty-three on May 26, 1949 (exactly sixteen years to the day after the Big Apple claimed the life of Jimmie Rodgers, as it happened).

This custom vanity pressing, emblazoned with a printers’ flower and numbered individually on each side, was ostensibly produced sometime in 1948—the year before Bowman’s death.  The exact date and location of recording are unknown, and some sources suggest it may have been recorded as early as the 1920s.  Indeed, Bowman did release a 1920s acoustical recording of “12th Street Rag” (apparently the one he recorded for Gennett in 1924) on his personal “Bowman” label around the late 1940s.  This disc however, appears by every indication—for example, the presence of a lead-in groove—to be of post-war manufacture.  The matrix numbers, engraved by hand (in the master, not the individual pressing) in the runout area, are “A-1839” and “ELB #1” on “No. 1”, and  “A-1840” and “ELB #2” on “No. 2”, respectively.

On the side numbered “1”, Bowman plays and sings a raggy twelve bar blues song called “Baby Is You Mad at Me”, drawing heavily on traditional blues “floating lyrics”. Bowman filed the copyright for the song—subtitled “(Mazie Tell Me True)”—on August 8, 1945.  Listening to this song, it’s not too hard to imagine how inaccurate rumors were disseminated that Bowman was a light-skinned black.

Baby is You Mad at Me, recorded 1948 by Euday Bowman.

On “No. 2” Bowman plays his own arrangement—the original and definitive arrangement, that is—of his ubiquitous “12th Street Rag”.  Some say it was named in honor of Fort Worth’s 12th Street—which ran directly through the aforementioned “Hell’s Half Acre” red light district—others claim its namesake was the same in Kansas City; I favor the former case (though I may admittedly be biased).  Unlike the cornball renditions by the likes of Pee Wee Hunt and many others, in its composer’s hands, the piece shows its true colors as a gritty, hard-driving, yet elegant, Texas beer hall rag, not too unlike the barrelhouse music heard from Seger Ellis or Herve Duerson.  If you enlarge the image of the label and look very closely, you will see that it was faintly autographed by Bowman.

12th Street Rag, recorded 1948 by Euday Bowman.