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 12855 – Will Ezell – 1929

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.

Columbia 15510-D – Lubbock Texas Quartet – 1929

This record likely contains the earliest audio recordings of music from Lubbock, Texas, and quite possibly such from the Llano Estacado region in the Panhandle of west Texas (a number of southwest Texas “cowboy country” musicians had recorded previously, such as Jules Verne Allen).

Preceded by a number of earlier vocal groups in Lubbock town in the 1910s and beginning of the ’20s, the group known as the Lubbock Texas Quartet was formed in earnest around 1922 by Tony Q. Dyess a musical entrepreneur and promoter of the “shape note” tradition.  Dyess was born in Brazos County, Texas, on December 15, 1881, and lived in Vernon prior to taking up residence in Lubbock.  In its early years, the quartet was often known locally as the “Lubbock Peerless Quartet”, the “Home Brew Quartet”, or the ‘Lubbock Quartet”—or simply by the names of its members: Dyess, Holland, Wendell, and Wilson.  The group soon affiliated itself with the successful Stamps-Baxter music publishing company in Dallas, and were accordingly promoted variously as the “Lubbock Stamps Quartet” or sometimes simply “Stamps Quartet”, sharing the latter title with a number of other Stamps groups.  The quartet’s Personnel varied throughout its  years of existence, but from the late 1920s through the early 1940s members included Tony and Doc Dyess, Clyde Burleson, Cecil and Glenn Gunn, Wilson Carson, Minnis Meek, Louis Brooks, and Homer Garrison, with the occasional addition of pianist Marion Snider.  In December of 1929, the quartet traveled three-hundred miles to Dallas to record but a single phonograph record for Columbia, who were conducting a series of session in the city on one of their field trips south. The group never recorded again subsequently, but they continued to perform in the Texas Panhandle throughout the following decades, they sang on Lubbock’s KFYO and other stations, in addition to frequent live performances throughout Texas and the surrounding states, even venturing as far as West Virginia.  The group appears to have dissolved around 1943, as the war was escalating in Europe.

If you are interested in reading a more exhaustive examination of the Lubbock Texas Quartet and all of their history, I recommend a look at Curtis L. Peoples’s essay The Lubbock Texas Quartet and Odis “Pop” Echols: Promoting Southern Gospel Music on the High Plains of Texas, published in the Journal of Texas Music History in 2014, from which most of the information included in this article was sourced.

Columbia 15510-D was recorded on December 9, 1929, in Dallas, Texas; their only two recordings. The Lubbock Texas Quartet likely consists of tenors Clyde Rufus Burleson or possibly Cecil Lee Gunn, baritones Minnis Monroe Meek and Wilson Lloyd Carson, and possibly bass Louis M. Brooks, though all are unconfirmed; they are accompanied by an unknown guitarist, probably Carson.  It is reported to have sold a total of 12,776 copies, and remained in “print” until at least Columbia’s “Royal Blue” era around 1933-34; this pressing dates to around 1931.

Their first song, and without a doubt the better remembered of their two due to its appearance in several reissue compilations, is “Turn Away”, composed by prolific songwriter and Methodist Reverend B.B. Edmiaston and published by the Stamps-Baxter Music Company of Dallas, Texas.

Turn Away, recorded December 9, 1929 by Lubbock Texas Quartet.

The mournful “O Mother How We Miss You” is quite a lovely song in spite of its rather morose theme, and includes a brief solo guitar passage by the group’s accompanist.  It has been suggested that this song was the more popular of these two in its own day.

O Mother How We Miss You, recorded December 9, 1929 by Lubbock Texas Quartet.

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.

Brunswick 4684 – George E. Lee and his Orchestra – 1929

Standing alongside Bennie Moten’s famous orchestra as one of the finest of the numerous distinguished jazz units active in Kansas City—though lacking the same enduring repute—is George E. Lee and his Novelty Singing (or “Singing Novelty”) Orchestra.

George Ewing Lee was born on April 28, 1896, in Boonville, Missouri, the son of George and Cathrine Lee, and the elder brother of Julia Lee, who would also go on to success as a singer and musician.  Growing up in a musical family, he got his musical start in his father’s string band as a child.  Prior to the first World War, he was employed as a porter, and served during the conflict in the United States Army, during which time he played in a band.  Following his discharge, Lee sang professionally, and organized first iteration of his Novelty Singing Orchestra with his sister Julia in 1920.  Often booked at Kansas City’s Lyric Hall, Lee’s orchestra soon came to rival Bennie Moten’s for the title of Kansas City’s favorite jazz band in “battle of the band” contests.  The Singing Novelty Orchestra recorded for the first time in 1926 or ’27, making two titles for Winston Holmes’ Kansas City-based Merritt label: “Down Home Syncopated Blues” (a re-arrangement of the “Royal Garden Blues”)  and “Merritt Stomp”.  Their next, and final, session came in late in 1929, when the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company brought their equipment to Kansas City.  For Brunswick, Lee’s orchestra cut four sides, and an additional two accompanying Julia Lee’s singing.  Plagued by mediocre management and high member turnover, the Singing Novelty Orchestra disbanded a few years into the Great Depression, and was “raided” by Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra in 1933.  Lee nonetheless continued to play with and sometimes lead ensembles of varying size—including one the featured a young Charlie Parker—until retiring from music in 1941.  Relocating to Michigan, he managed a nightclub in Detroit in the 1940s before moving once again to California.  George E. Lee died in San Diego on October 2, 1958.  His sister Julia Lee, who had achieved considerable success with a series of rhythm and blues recordings for Capitol throughout the 1940s, survived him by only two months.

Brunswick 4684 was recorded around November 6, 1929, in Kansas City, Missouri.  The Singing Novelty Orchestra consists of George E. Lee directing Sam Utterbach and Harold Knox on trumpets, Jimmy Jones on trombone, Herman Walder on clarinet and alto sax, Clarence Taylor on soprano sax, alto sax, and maybe bass sax, Albert “Bud” Johnson on tenor sax, Jesse Stone on piano, Charles Russo on banjo and guitar, Clint Weaver, on tuba, and Pete Woods on drums.

First, Lee his own self provides the vocals on an outstanding rendition of the timeless “St. James Infirmary”—perhaps one of the finest—capturing the melancholy air of the lyrics which many recordings seem to eschew in favor of hot playing.

St. James Infirmary, recorded c.November 6, 1929 by George E. Lee and his Orchestra.

On the flip, they put forth an exemplary performance of pianist Jesse Stone’s hot instrumental composition “Ruff Scufflin'”.

Ruff Scufflin’, recorded c.November 6, 1929 by George E. Lee and his Orchestra.