Decca 7279 – Sleepy John Estes – 1935

Producing more than fifty recordings between 1929 and 1941, Sleepy John Estes ranks alongside Blind Boy Fuller, Big Bill Broonzy, Peetie Wheatstraw, and a few others as one of the most prolific of the pre-war bluesmen.  Though not considered the most capable guitarist, Estes amply made up for whatever he may have lacked in instrumental ability with his distinctive “crying” vocals and storytelling talent.  Estes’s songs—many of which were based on things that happened to him or people he knew—are considered by some to be among the best of their kind, and have proved influential among the generations of musicians that followed him.

Sleepy John Estes with Yank Rachell and Hammie Nixon in 1964. Photo by Len Kunstadt, published in Record Research magazine.

John Adams Estes (while his headstone and modern sources give his middle name as “Adam”, early documents seem to support the “s” as in our second president) was born on January 25 of either 1899 or 1900, in Ripley, Tennessee.  As a youth, he moved with his family to the nearby town of Brownsville, where he learned to play guitar with local musician Hambone Willie Newbern.  Though a farmer by trade, he established himself in the blues scene alongside the likes of Son Bonds, Charlie Pickett, and his frequent accompanists Hammie Nixon and James “Yank” Rachell.  In 1929, veteran blues artist Jim Jackson brought Estes and his compatriots to the attention of Ralph S. Peer of the Victor Talking Machine Company.  Thereafter, Estes made his debut recordings at a series of sessions in September and October of 1929 in Memphis, Tennessee, backed on most by his friend Yank Rachell on mandolin and pianist Jab Jones of the Memphis Jug Band.  He continued to record for Victor until late in 1930, producing sixteen sides including such excellent recordings as “Diving Duck Blues”, “Milk Cow Blues”, and “The Girl I Love She Got Long Curly Hair”, as well as four sides as a member of Noah Lewis’ Jug Band.  As the onset of the Great Depression largely quelled on-location recording activities, Estes had to travel to Chicago and New York to make further recordings, and he did so in 1935 for the fledgling Decca record company, initially appearing on their Champion subsidiary (which they had recently acquired from Gennett).  Joined on most by Hammie Nixon’s harmonica and on many others by Charlie Pickett’s guitar, Estes produced thirty vocal recordings for Decca between 1935 and 1940, as well as several more accompanying pianists Lee Brown and Lee Green, and fellow Brownsville bluesman Son Bonds   Among those thirty were many of his most famous songs, including “Someday Baby Blues”, “Floating Bridge”, “Everybody Oughta Make a Change”, and “Liquor Store Blues”.  Estes final pre-war session was on September 24, 1941, with Son Bonds and Raymond Thomas joining him to wax twelve sides for RCA Victor’s Bluebird label, three of which were credited to Estes, another three found him accompanying Bonds, and the rest were released under the name “The Delta Boys”.  After the war, Estes unsuccessfully attempted to revive his recording career with sessions for Ora Nelle in 1948 and Sun in 1952, but none of the recordings were issued, and he descended into obscurity.  As the folk music revival brought new fame to old blues musicians in the late 1950s and early ’60s, Estes’s recordings were reissued on several prominent compilations, but he was initially believed to be dead (thanks in no small part to the testimony of Big Bill Broonzy).  When he was eventually rediscovered by folkorists Sam Charters and Bob Koester, he was in fact very much alive, albeit blind and living in abject poverty.  Sounding much the same in old age as when he was a young man, Estes, along with Nixon and Rachell, returned to recording and touring with considerable success for the decade-and-a-half that followed.  On June 5, 1977, John Estes suffered a stroke, and died at his home in Brownsville, Tennessee, which has since been preserved for posterity as a museum.

Decca 7279 was recorded on July 9, 1935, in Chicago, Illinois, and was originally issued on Champion 50068 (which does not turn up very often).  This issue.was released in March of 1937.  It features Sleepy John Estes singing and playing guitar, accompanied by Hammie Nixon on harmonica.

On side “A”, Estes sings “Someday Baby Blues” backed by Nixon’s harmonica, an iconic performance if there ever was one (and that’s not a term I use lightly), which inspired numerous covers transcending the blues genre into jazz and country music.  Though Estes and Nixon are credited as the song’s composers and often considered the originators the song, Estes’s rendition was preceded by an unissued recording by Memphis Willie B. the previous year, which did not see the light of day until finally being remastered and released by John Tefteller’s Blues Images in 2022.

Someday Baby Blues, recorded July 9, 1935 by Sleepy John Estes.

On the reverse, he sings the far less famous, but also excellent “Who’s Been Tellin’ You Buddy Brown Blues”.  The titular character, (known to “eat his breakfast, and then lay back down”) has appeared in a few other blues songs, most notably “Texas” Alexander’s “Ninety-Eight Degree Blues” of 1929.

Who’s Been Tellin’ You Buddy Brown Blues, recorded July 9, 1935 by Sleepy John Estes.

Bluebird 34-0706 – Tommy McClennan – 1942

One of the roughest-hewn bluesmen to emerge from the Mississippi Delta, Tommy McClennan was known for his distinctively uncomplicated but hard-grooving style of guitar playing, coarse and gravelly vocals, and evocative, sometimes provocative lyrics.  Though his recording career spanned only three years, McClennan’s records were among the best selling by a Delta musician in the pre-World War II era.  Despite that success, most of the details surrounding McClennan’s life and work are uncertain, if not outright lost to time.

A crop of the only known photograph of Tommy McClennan, pictured in Bluebird catalog supplement.

Tommy McClennan is believed to have been born on January 4, 1905, in Durant, Mississippi, one of Virgil and Cassie McClennan’s several children.  He grew up on plantations in Carroll and Leflore Counties, and was later known to have spent much of his time in Yazoo City and Greenwood.  As a musician, he associated himself with fellow bluesmen Robert Petway and David “Honeyboy” Edwards, and was well known around the southern Mississippi Delta as “Sugar” or “Bottle Up”.  While living on the Sligh Plantation in Yazoo City in 1939, McClennan was “scouted” by Chicago blues impresario Lester Melrose.  Subsequently, like so many of compatriots, he traveled north to make a record.  At five sessions between November 22, 1939, and February 20, 1942, Tommy McClennan recorded forty sides for RCA Victor’s Bluebird label, cutting exactly eight tracks each time—plus an appearance on his friend Robert Petway’s “Boogie Woogie Woman” at the last date.  His twenty records saw considerable success compared to those of many of his contemporaries, and many of songs inspired covers in later years.  Among his recorded songs were his famous “Bottle it Up and Go”, “Cross Cut Saw Blues”, and “Deep Blue Sea Blues”—the last of which he called “the best one I’ve got.”  He was well remembered during that period by Big Bill Broonzy, who later recounted some sordid tales of him, such as an occasion in which Broonzy purportedly shoved him out the window of a Chicago blues club after some of the controversial verses in his “Bottle it Up and Go” riled the crowd to the point of violence.  Although his recording career came as the rural-flavored, unelectrified blues of pre-war years was being supplanted by a more urbane, amplified and ensemble-based style that would dominate in years to come, his music and lyrics were deeply steeped in the Delta blues tradition of his earlier contemporaries.  After the conclusion of his recording career, McClennan evidently remained in Chicago, where he is thought to have continued to perform for about a decade before descending into alcoholism and underworld life.  On May 9, 1961, Tommy McClennan died of bronchopneumonia at the Cook County Hospital in Chicago at the age of fifty-six, just as the folk and blues revival was beginning to gain steam.  Though he didn’t make it to see the revival firsthand, many of McClennan’s recordings have since been reissued on prominent blues compilations, earning him well-deserved recognition in the years and decades since his death.

Bluebird 34-0706 was recorded on February 20, 1942, in RCA Victor’s Studio A in Chicago, Illinois—Tommy McClennan’s last session.  McClennan’s vocal and guitar are accompanied by the prolific Ransom Knowling on string bass.

On the “A” side of 34-0706, Tommy McClennan sings “Roll Me, Baby”, espousing a common theme in blues songs, very similar to Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s “Rock Me Mamma” or “Rockin’ and Rollin'” as made famous by Little Son Jackson.

Roll Me, Baby, recorded February 20, 1942 by Tommy McClennan.

And on the “B” side, Tommy delivers a fine performance on “Blue as I Can Be”, a number which seems to be one of his more popular recordings in the present day.  It is as good an example as any of his famously rugged fashion of both singing and guitar playing.

Blue as I Can Be, recorded February 20, 1942 by Tommy McClennan.

Paramount 12389 – Bo Weavil Jackson – 1926

The life and times of the musician known as Bo Weavil Jackson are shrouded beneath a veil of mystery and obscurity; even his true identity remains an uncertainty.  In fact, it would be difficult to know less about a person.  He made six records, had a remarkably poorly lit photograph taken of him, and then disappeared into oblivion.  This intrigue, of course, only serves to enhance his appeal as a bluesman, much as it might confound historians.

The man called “Bo Weavil” is said to have truly been named James Jackson (or perhaps James Butler or Sam Butler) and is believed to have hailed from Alabama, probably born sometime in the 1890s.  Queries of public records reveal far too many possible results to be narrowed down by the few vague details known.  Indeed, he referred to Birmingham in his “Jefferson County Blues”.  He was playing for spare change on a Birmingham street corner when he was “discovered” by record salesman and talent scout Harry Charles in 1926, who referred him to Chicago to make some records for Paramount, by whom he was promoted as having “come down from the Carolinas.”  There, he waxed six sides, including a version of “When the Saints Come Marching Home” and perhaps the first recording of “Crow Jane”, which are counted among the earliest recordings of country blues by a male performer, in the wake of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s historic debut recordings with the same company only a few months prior.  The following month, Bo Weavil headed to New York to cut another six sides for Vocalion (two of which were unissued but exist in the form of test pressings), this time under the moniker “Sam Butler”.  His recordings reveal that he was a nimble slide guitarist with a unique approach to performance, and his repertoire consisted of a mixture of blues and sacred songs.  What became of Bo Weavil after his brief recording career drew to a close is entirely unknown; perhaps he went back home to Alabama, perhaps he started a new life in New York, perhaps he got run over by a freight train trying to hobo his way back south—we may never know.  Purportedly, another man adopted the moniker of “Bo Weavil Jackson” in the Mississippi Delta in the decade following “Sam Butler’s” recording career.

Paramount 12389 was recorded around August of 1926 in Chicago, Illinois.  It is Bo Weavil Jackson’s first released record, consisting of his third and first recorded sides, respectively, and quite certainly his best-selling.

Firstly, Bo Weavil Jackson demonstrates his eccentric and unpredictable slide guitar work on his tour de force “You Can’t Keep No Brown” (though the last line in the song coupled with the absence of the title verse suggests that perhaps it should have been titled “Long Distance Blues”).  He recorded an entirely different version of this song for Vocalion, but this one, if you could compare the two, is the superior version in my opinion.

You Can’t Keep No Brown, recorded c. August 1926 by Bo Weavil Jackson.

On the “B” side, Bo Weavil sings “Pistol Blues”, which is in actuality a rendition of the folk blues “Crow Jane”; while Julius Daniels’ 1927 recording of “Crow Jane Blues” is often cited as the first recording of the song, Bo Weavil’s predates it by more than a year.

Pistol Blues, recorded c. August 1926 by Bo Weavil Jackson.

Updated with improved audio on July 5, 2024.

Melotone M 12117 – Dessa Foster and Howling Smith – 1931

Some twenty years before Chester Burnett became famous as “Howlin’ Wolf”, another blues musician claimed that title for his own, a Texas guitarist and singer also known as “Funny Paper” Smith, called such after his eponymous “Howling Wolf Blues”, which he recorded in four parts in 1930 and ’31.  Regrettably, like so many of his contemporaries, very little is known of the life and times of the original “Howling Wolf”.

Most sources suggest that the blues singer and guitarist known as “Funny Paper Smith” was John T. Smith, as is indicated on the labels of the records he made for the Vocalion company in 1930 and ’31.  He is usually said to have been born in East Texas the 1880s or ’90s, and to have died sometime in the 1940s.  Indeed, there are some documents to corroborate that a black musician by the name of John Smith existed in Texas during those years, though aside from sharing the most common name around, there is little to connect him to “Funny Paper”.  It is also frequently suggested that his “Funny Paper” sobriquet was a mistake on the part of the record company, and that his nickname was properly “Funny Papa”.  A good deal of that information seems to derive from the notes of the 1972 Yazoo compilation of some of his material—The Original Howling Wolf—which itself appears to have mostly been derived from an interview with fellow Texas bluesman Thomas Shaw (the same album also erroneously displays an early photograph of the Black Ace purported as Smith, thus staining its claim to accuracy).

Recently released research by the esteemed Mack McCormick—continued by Bob Eagle—has related a compelling argument for a different scenario; they suggest that “John Smith” was merely an assumed name used by the artist to evade trouble back home.  In a 1962 interview, McCormick played one of the Smith’s records for Mrs. Alberta Cook White of Smithville, Texas, who identified the singer as her older brother, Otis Cook, whom she claimed was born there in Bastrop County on April 1, 1910.  She related that he learned to play guitar as a youth and began rambling around the state of Texas, leaving behind life as a farmer in favor of becoming an itinerant songster, playing at local functions and sometimes leaving home for weeks at a time to visit Waco and Dallas, possibly encountering Blind Lemon Jefferson along the way.  He was reportedly known to most of his contemporaries as the “Howling Wolf”, not as “Funny Papa” or “Funny Paper”, and he was described as being a tall, dark-skinned man of about one-hundred-sixty-five pounds (to complicate matters, it was suggested that the “Howling Wolf” name may have been used by more than one musician in Texas around the same time).  Census documents suggest he was incarcerated at Ramsey State Farm in Rosharon, Texas, on a charge of attempted arson in the spring of 1930, after which he promptly made for Chicago.  There, “Smith” began his career as a recording artist for Vocalion Records, the details surrounding which are considerably more certain than those surrounding his identity.

Dubbed “‘Funny Paper’ Smith (The Howling Wolf)”, he entered the studio for the first time on September 18, 1930, to make two unreleased test recordings for the Vocalion company, “Hobo Blues” and “Old Rounder’s Blues” for the Vocalion company—the latter perhaps a rendition of Lemon Jefferson’s song of the same name.  He made his debut in earnest the following day, cutting the first two installments of his eponymous, four-part, “Howling Wolf Blues” and two more sides the day after, all of which were issued this time around.  He returned to the studio thrice more before the end of the year to make another five sides.  The following year, he had a further five sessions resulting in fifteen more sides.  Afterwards, “Funny Paper” evidently went back home to Texas.  He resurfaced four years later in Fort Worth to record for Vocalion once again.  From the twentieth through the twenty-third of April, 1935, he cut a total of thirty-two sides—including parts five and six of “Howling Wolf Blues”—on some of which he was joined by Moanin’ Bernice Edwards and Black Boy Shine on pianos and vocals and “Little Brother” Willie Lane on guitar.  Of all those, only his three sides with Bernice Edwards were released, of which only one—a hot “skiffle” record—bore credit to “Howling Smith”; all others were “found to be faulty,” and never released in any form.  In all, his recording activities netted a grand total of fifty-six sides, though only twelve records were issued to his name.  In the late 1930s, “Smith” teamed up for a time with “Texas” Alexander before parting ways near the Oklahoma border, at which point Alexander joined with Lowell Fulson.  Sometime later, Otis Cook is believed to have settled down with a family back home in Bastrop, where he later died on August 29, 1979.  A testament to his reputation in his home state, the “Howling Wolf Blues” later became something of a standard among Texas blues players, with renditions made by his protégé Willie Lane, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Tom Shaw.

In a yet more recent revelation, despite McCormick’s compelling argument for Otis Cook being the true identity of Funny Paper Smith, a recording of Cook released in Playing for the Man at the Door—consisting of field recordings made by Mack McCormick in the 1950s and ’60s—seems to have thoroughly debunked that theory, with Cook’s singing and playing style bearing little resemblance to Smith’s, even when accounting for the passage of some three or more decades.  The notes accompanying the compilation make the assertion that “Cook claims to have learned the song “Howlin’ Wolf” from Funny Paper Smith while traveling near Tulsa with Texas Alexander” and “Cook himself [may have been] misidentified as Funny Paper Smith for many years.”

Melotone M 12117 was recorded on January 19, 1931, in Chicago, Illinois.  It was also issued on Polk P9013 and later on Vocalion 02699 in 1934.  Dessa Foster and J.T. “Funny Paper” Smith duet and banter on a novelty blues in the manner of those made by Victoria Spivey and Lonnie Johnson for Okeh, while Smith accompanies on guitar.  It has been proposed that “Dessa Foster” is a pseudonym for Mississippi Delta blues singer Mattie Delaney (frankly I’m rather dubious, but some compelling evidence has been presented, and there is a compelling aural similarity).

On the first part of the comic duet “Tell it to the Judge—No. 1”, Howling Smith plays the part of a police officer, barging into Miss Foster’s house with the question: “where that booze at?”

Tell it to the Judge—No. 1, recorded January 19, 1931 by Dessa Foster and Howling Smith.

Opening with a fine bit of guitar reminiscent of his work on “Honey Blues”, recorded the following month, Smith assumes the role of the titular judge on “Tell it to the Judge—No. 2”, and he’s not giving any more breaks to “Betty”.

Tell it to the Judge—No. 2, recorded January 19, 1931 by Dessa Foster and Howling Smith.

Updated on August 9, 2024.

Montgomery Ward M-8493 – Roy Shaffer – 1939

Though once a widely known and popular personality on radio stations around St. Louis, with a brief recording career that produced only eight discs, cowboy singer Roy Shaffer since drifted into near total obscurity; in fact, the article hereafter appears to be the only substantial biography of him ever published.

Roy Shaffer and Gang appearing on KWK, St. Louis.  Roy pictured third from left.  Circa 1940s.

Roy was born Jesse Lee Shaffer on December 6, 1906, one of several children of Luther and Anna Shaffer of Mathiston, Mississippi.  After growing up on the farm, he left home to pursue the life of a singing cowboy.  According to one account, he got his start in the famous 101 Ranch Wild West Show, and made his debut appearance on the radio in 1926.  By the middle of the 1930s, he was living in New Orleans and appearing on WWL, billed as the “Lone Star Cowboy” (making him one of quite a few, including native Texan Leon Chappelear, to adopt that sobriquet), an engagement which purportedly brought him as many as 7,462 fan letters in one day.  He also reportedly claimed, at various times, the pseudonyms of the “Rambling Yodeler” ,”Tennessee Kid”, “Mississippi Tadpole”, “Louisiana Bullfrog”, and “Reckless Red”.  During that stint, M.M. Cole of Chicago published a book of his songs, and he made his first phonograph records, cutting four sides for Decca in their field trip to New Orleans in 1936.  Also around that time, he married Cajun girl Edith Falcon, who would later join in in the act, billed as “Eddie Shaffer”.  He returned to the studio once more in 1939 to record a further twelve songs, this time for RCA Victor’s Bluebird label, in Chicago.  These included a rendition of the classic cowboy song “Bury Me Out on the Prairie”, the popular “Great Speckled Bird”, and covers Chris Bouchillon’s “Talking Blues” and Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Match Box Blues”.  Those two sessions accounted for the entirety of Shaffer’s known commercial recording work, but his greatest success was evidently found on the radio; in 1939, Rural Radio magazine reported that Shaffer had appeared on fifty-nine radio stations, “both the smallest and the largest,” though he was reported as “off-the-air” and living in Istrouma, Louisiana, in 1938.  By 1940, he was in St. Louis, where he remained for the majority of his career, and employed by the Carson-Union-May-Stern furniture store to appear on their radio programs on several different local stations.  He made appearances on WEW from 1939 into ’41 with his “Hillbillies”, after which he began appearing on KWK with his “Gang”, a gig he still held in the middle-to-late part of the decade; he was also on KSD in 1942 with his “Missouri Ramblers”.  By the early 1950s, he was on KWRE in Warrenton, Missouri.  He also made off-air appearances, attending and participating in rodeos and giving live programs for his fans, often at events put on by Carson’s Furniture Store.  In the 1950s, he owned and operated a “hillbilly park” in Mexico, Missouri.  He was still active on the radio in St. Louis as late as 1956.  Roy Shaffer died in March of 1974 in Greenville, Mississippi, at the age of sixty-eight.  Several of Shaffer’s recordings were later reissued on BMG’s East Virginia Blues: The Secret History of Rock and Roll and JSP Records’ Classic Field Recordings: Landmark Country Sessions from a Lost Era, but those have done little to rise the artist up and out from the depths of obscurity.

Montgomery Ward M-8493 was recorded on June 26, 1939, at RCA Victor’s Studio C in Chicago, Illinois by Roy Shaffer, singing with guitar.  It was also released on Bluebird B-8234.

In his casual delivery of Chris Bouchillon’s seminal “Talking Blues”, Shaffer oozes southern charm like hot butter through sourdough toast.  “If you want to go to heaven, let me tell you how to do it; just grease yourself in a little mutton suet…”

Talking Blues, recorded June 26, 1939 by Roy Shaffer.

Flip the record over and he gets low-down on his arrangement of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s classic Texas folk blues standard “The Match Box Blues”—one of my personal favorites.

The Match Box Blues, recorded June 26, 1939 by Roy Shaffer.