blind blues

Introduction
This collection of biographies of pre-war performers celebrates the genius of the blind musician. It focuses on the Blues singers and players from the depression era, who had to find work and survive at a time of great economic unrest and social prejudice.
The musicians featured are instrumentalist/singers who made a living playing street corners, medicine shows and juke joints, many varying their repertoire to suit the location.
One could argue that a compilation of blind musicians is pointless. Why single out the blind? It is simply for the reason that when compared to sighted players, blind musicians cannot be singled out. A musical appraisal of, for example Robert Johnson and Lemon Jefferson, despite their differing styles, would leave a listener in no doubt that they were both brilliant. Blind people have excelled in music, none more so than the artists featured in this compilation. Within the field of such improvisation and inspiration eyes are unnecessary. At a time when human rights were out of the equation these musicians found equality with the sighted.
The work of blues scholars in uncovering and detailing the lives of some of these artists is invaluable. We are provided with a fascinating insight into their work and pursuits. It is arguable that many would not have sung a note were it not for their lack of sight, music being one of the few careers available to the blind.
The church was a refuge for the blind. Gospel and spiritual songs were a source of inspiration and hope for many musicians who combined their religion with the blues.
There were many blind artists in this era, playing jazz, gospel, blues, hillbilly etc; too many to cover in this compilation, so only blues musicians are included.
Many were taken into consideration when preparing the content; musical style and era were the main constraints. Pure gospel singers such as Connie Rosemond, Gussie Nesbit, Benny Parish and Wife, Mamie Forehand a street singer who performed with her husband A. C. and Roger Hays didn’t make the final list. Nor did hillbilly players such as Alfred Reed and Riley Puckett. Maxwell Street favourite Arvella Gray, despite being born in 1906 and losing his sight in a bungled robbery in 1930, did not record until 1946.
All the greats are included even though it is widely known that Lemon Jefferson had some residual sight, as did Joe Taggart. Sleepy John Estes only went totally blind in 1949.
© Mike Ward January 2003.
Blind Bogus Ben Covington
Ben Covington aka Ben Curry aka Memphis Ben was the banjo player in the Birmingham jug band (according to Big Joe Williams); they recorded eight tunes during one session for Okeh records in Atlanta, Georgia on December 11th 1930.
His solo recordings, heavily influenced by his early medicine show experience, are great. These were recorded during three sessions for Paramount: a total of eight numbers, during September 1928 and on October 9th and 10th 1929. There is debate about whether he was really blind, hence ‘Bogus’.
Blind Boy Fuller
Blind Boy Fuller came from a non-musical family. He did not take his guitar playing seriously until he developed ulcers behind his eyes, blinding him at the age of 25. Unable to work, he learnt guitar from Blind Gary Davis who played the Piedmont style of blues.
He was born Fulton Allen in Wadesboro, North Carolina in on July 10th 1907. Following the death of his mother in the mid-1920s his family moved to Rockingham where Allen met his wife, Cora Mae Martin. They married in South Carolina as it had a lower age of consent than the North: Cora Mae was only fourteen. Two years later, following Allen’s loss of sight the couple moved to Durham in pursuit of the government aid for the blind available there.
It was in Durham that Allen met Gary Davis who was to become his musical mentor, although later they would argue over styles. Following the granting of a busking licence in 1933 he was spotted on a street corner by James Baxter Long, a United Dollar Store manager and talent scout for the American Recording Company. Long became Allen’s manager and dubbed him ‘Blind Boy Fuller’. In July 1935 Fuller made his debut recordings in New York accompanied by washboard player George Washington (also known as Bull City Red). Following the success of the first session he recorded again, this time solo, in April 1936; then again in February 1937 accompanied once again by Bull City Red and guitar player Floyd Council. Fuller’s next recording was for Decca, a session at which his friends Richard and Willie Trice also recorded. There is speculation over his decision to change labels. Gary Davis says he was being cheated by Long, maybe the Trice brothers persuaded him, or perhaps Fuller just wanted the opportunity to record more. Following this Decca recording Long made Fuller sign an exclusive contract binding him to the ARC.
His next sessions featured rising star Blind Sonny Terry on harmonica. Fuller was selling a lot of records and was very popular throughout the Carolinas. His hits included “Truckin’ My Blues Away”, “Harmonica Stomp” where he backed Terry and “Step It Up and Go” which became a country blues classic. It was around this time Fuller was diagnosed with arrested syphilis, failing kidneys and bladder. His health deteriorated rapidly and his recording output slowed. His last session was in June 1940, shortly after this he was admitted to hospital, he died on February 13th 1941.
Between 1935 and 1940 Fuller recorded 130 numbers. During this time he was the most popular exponent of the Piedmont Style with a wide and varied repertoire of smutty party tunes and melancholy blues songs. Undoubtedly his ability and style benefited from his relationship with Blind Gary Davis, from whom he gained many of his skills. Fuller integrated many of the songs and licks he was taught with tunes he learnt from records to form his own potent version of the Carolina style.
Blind Clyde Church
Clyde Church was a blues piano player. He had two tracks released on the Victor label from a session on September 30th 1929; these were ‘Number Nine Blues’ and Pneumatic Blues’.
Blind Joe Reynolds
Joe Reynolds aka Willie Reynolds (real name Joe Sheppard) was born in Arkansas in 1900. His two stage names were among many aliases that he used to stay hidden and cover up a rambling, chequered past which included two prison terms. His blindness was the result of a shotgun blast of birdshot to the face that blew away his eyes during a drunken argument with a friend near Tallulah, Louisiana in the mid-1920's.
Miraculously surviving this assault, his unique bottleneck slide guitar playing was discovered playing in barrelhouses by talent scout H.C. Speir near Lake Providence. He recorded eight numbers in two sessions for the Paramount label in November 1929 and November 1930, four of which still remain elusive to collectors. He died in Monroe, Louisiana on March 10th 1968.
Blind Joe Taggart
Joel ‘Blind Joe’ Taggart, a singer/guitar evangelist from South Carolina, blinded (or left with very poor sight) by cataracts, made his first recording in 1926 for the Vocalion label. This included duets with his wife Emma and his children James and Bertha; and “C and O Blues” issued under the pseudonym Blind Joe Amos so not to be associated with the ‘devils music’. During his career Taggart recorded under several names: Blind Joe Amos, Blind Jeramiah Taylor, Blind Tim Russell and Blind Joe Donnell and perhaps Six Cylinder Smith. He may also have been Blind Percy or a member of his Blind Band. The name changes relate to Taggart’s ability to play different music, ranging from sweet gospel to bawdy blues, each name corresponding to a different style. Each assumed name afforded Taggart the opportunity to record outside his existing recording contract. Six Cylinder Smith is unique amongst Taggarts’ personas as the only performer that wasn’t ‘Blind’, he is also the only one to play the harmonica. If Smith was Taggart, he would have had to play a rack-mounted harmonica, a technique that’s only other exponent at the time, was One Man Blues Band Jesse Fuller. However Smith could be backing Taggart on harmonica. The fact that Smith is not ‘Blind’ could indicate that he was a separate sighted musician. Lead-boy Josh White remembers Taggart having partial sight, his cataracts allowing him vision well above what would have been classed legally blind.
During a session for Paramount Taggart ‘recorded two of the most intriguing recordings in the history of American folk music,’ according to Ken Romanowski. ‘It is my contention that "Been Listening All the Day" and "Goin' to Rest Where Jesus Is" provide a window into the immediate post Civil War period in the South when a shared black and white musical tradition existed. One would be hard pressed to find sacred music as oddly compelling as these two superlative performances, but the record sold poorly as only a few copies are known to have survived.’ Interestingly, Josh White, whilst in conversation with Max Lomes said: ‘the meanest man I ever ran across was Blind John Henry Arnold. After him came Joe Taggart. These were the meanest, but there was hardly one was kind to me. All of them were scared of being cheated. Arnold was "mean, honest mean" while Taggart was "tricky, nasty mean”. Blind people I met were really hard. I should hate them for what they did to me but I don't. But really, I wouldn't give a blind man a penny now."
Blind John Davis
John Henry Davis was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi on December 7th 1913 but migrated with his family to Chicago three years later. Stepping on a rusty nail at age 9, he developed an infection that ultimately blinded him. John’s father, a semi- professional bootlegger, held parties where people danced and consumed the contraband liquor. At 14 John’s father bought him a piano. He learned to play from records and the radio and was soon a paid musician at his fathers’ parties and other joints in the area. In 1933 moved downtown and began playing the white speakeasies with his band Lee’s Music Masters and later the Johnny Davis Rhythm Boys. 1937 saw him hired as the house pianist at the Wabash Music Co. He played on over 100 songs between 1937 and 1942, with artists such as Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Minnie, Lonnie Johnson and Tampa Red with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. He died in Chicago on October 12th 1985.
Blind Lemon Jefferson
Despite his fame and popularity, little is known about Blind Lemon Jefferson. He was born in July 1897 in Couchman, near Wortham in Freestone County, East Texas. Blind from birth, possibly with some residual sight (hence his clear spectacles), Jefferson travelled around Freestone and Limestone Counties playing guitar and singing songs before moving to Dallas in 1917, where he met and played with Leadbelly for a year. Jefferson played most of the Southern States throughout the 1920’s including the Mississippi Delta where there was a lot of work for travelling musicians. A scout for Paramount Records invited him to Chicago to record some blues songs (and some spirituals under the pseudonym Deacon L. J. Bates). Overall he made forty-three records for Paramount and one for Okeh selling 100,000 copies between 1925 and 1929. He died of a heart attack during a December snowstorm in Chicago. Pianist Will Ezell took his body back to Wortham where he was buried on New Years’ Day 1930. Cited as an inspiration to many, although rarely copied, probably due to his highly complex guitar work and distinctive high vocals, Jefferson is one of the finest folk musicians of his time.
Blind Leroy Garnett
Leroy Garnett was a ragtime and boogie-woogie piano player. He recorded eight numbers in sessions between 1929 and 1930, featuring the vocal talents of James ‘Boodle-It’ Wiggins and Marie Griffin.
Blind Blake
In the publicity provided by Paramount to accompany his early releases it states Blind Arthur Blake was born in Jacksonville Florida in the early 1890’s. However blues scholars have contested that he may be from The South Georgia Sea Islands given his ease of pronunciation of the Geechee dialect on 'Southern Rag'. His name might also be Arthur Phelps, or a variation of Arthur Blake. His whereabouts up until the early 1920’s are largely unknown; although it is thought he spent his early years playing for change on street corners as was the life for a lot of blind musicians. About 1923 Kate McTell (Wife of Willie) said that her husband brought Blake to their home city of Atlanta from Florida. From here he traveled widely through Virginia, reportedly playing with Bill Williams in Bristol and was seen by lead boy Josh White in Charleston. He eventually settled in Chicago in 1926. His music suggests a variety of collaborations over the preceding years perhaps with jazz bands or medicine shows although he was playing ragtime and Piedmont blues by the time of his "discovery" by Mayo Williams of Paramount in Chicago. Blake possessed a phenomenal fingerpicking style with quick fingers and a musical wit unrivalled even by today’s players. There is only one known photograph of Blake. Note the similarity between the handwriting on his photograph and that of Blind Lemon Jefferson; they were probably signed by the same person.
Blake joined Lemon Jefferson as the other self-accompanied blues star of Paramount cutting the hit 'West Coast Blues' during his first session. Blake went on to record 80 sides for Paramount. Blues and ragtime were accompanied by skiffle songs with clarinetist Johnny Dodds and percussionist Jimmy Bertrand. His medicine show experience shows through in the songs recorded with Papa Charlie Jackson. He also recorded ragtime duets with Gus ‘Banjo Joe’ Cannon. Blake also accompanied many solo singers such as Ma Rainey and Irene Scruggs. In 1931 Blake toured with the Vaudeville show ‘Happy Go Lucky’ and returned to recording with one final session a year later. These later cuts are considered not to have the same dynamism as Blake’s early work, perhaps an indication that the drink he loved was taking its toll. The end of Blake’s career accompanied the collapse of Paramount from bankruptcy in 1932. By this time he was the undisputed ‘King of the String’ in Chicago musical circles. The nature of his death is widely speculated. Rev. Gary Davis maintained that he was killed in a collision with a street car. But it is more likely the depression that killed the race recording industry sent Blake back home South where he drank himself into obscurity. He died in 1933. It could be said of Blake that he played the styles of ragtime, jazz and blues in a way that would earn him the title of the greatest fingerpicker of them all.
Blind Mack Rhinehart
Mack Rhinehart cut fourteen songs for the Vocalion label during three sessions between 1935 and 1937. He was a blues singer, accompanied on twelve of the recordings by Brownie Stubblefield on guitar.
Blind Percy and His Blind Band
Blind Percy recorded with his Blind Band during two sessions for the Paramount label in 1927. Two songs were released, ‘Coal River Blues’ and ‘Fourteenth St. Blues’. Blind Percy may be another persona of the multifaceted Blind Joe Taggart. Or perhaps Taggart was a member of the Blind Band.
Blind Pete and Partner
Blind Pete, a fiddle player from Little Rock, Arkansas was discovered along with his partner, George Ryan in September 1934 by Leadbelly, a talent scout for (the folklorist and folk music collector) John Ryan. Their version of Banty Rooster Blues could have been adapted from the version played by Charley Patton who travelled in Arkansas regularly and died only five months before Pete and George made their recording.
Blind Richard Yates
Richard Yates was a travelling singer/guitar player, he recorded four songs during two sessions in 1927.
Blind Roosevelt Graves
Roosevelt Graves, a singing blues guitarist, was born in Rose Hill near Meridian, Mississippi. He is credited with recording the first “rock n’ roll” songs in the shape of ‘Dangerous Woman’ and ‘Barbeque Bump’, together with his brother Uaroy on tambourine and kazoo and Cooney Vaughn on piano, at a session in Hattiesburg in 1936. The combination of Vaughn's uninhibited piano playing with the religious feeling and musical versatility of the Graves Brothers spawned the style later known as rock n’ roll. Graves also recorded many songs in a 1929 session in Indiana, both the 1929 and 1936 sessions were for the Paramount label. Graves died in 1960 in Gulfport where he had moved after World War II.
Blind Simmie Dooley
Simeon Dooley was a blues singer and guitar player from Georgia, who settled in Spartanville, South Carolina. Following the departure from town of his performing partner, Dooley joined up with comedian and dancer Pink Anderson. Dooley undertook to teach Anderson the guitar, caning his hands with a switch if he missed a change. Dooley and Anderson played the streets and parties when Anderson wasn’t on the road in his other role as entertainer in Dr. Kerr’s Medicine Show. Dooley rarely accompanied Anderson with the medicine show as he hated travelling and Kerr was not prepared to afford Dooley the special attention a blind man required. In April 1928, Dooley and Anderson were invited to record for Columbia at a field unit in a hotel in Altanta, Georgia. They recorded four songs, all within the medicine show/songster tradition: two were released that year and two more the following year. The success of the first record prompted Columbia to invite Anderson back to record more. They were uninterested in re-recording Dooley as they did not like his voice but Anderson refused to record without his partner. Simmie Dooley died in December 1960. Blind Gary Davis rated him along with Blind Blake and Blind Willie Davis as one of the greatest country blues guitarists.
Blind Teddy Darby
Theodore Roosevelt Darby was born in Henderson, Kentucky, in 1902. Moving to St. Louis as a child he was taught guitar by his mother. However his early life was spent bootlegging and he spent time in reformatories for selling moonshine. Inspired to pick up the guitar again following his loss of sight during a bout of glaucoma in 1926, he moved to East St. Louis and played the blues circuit.
He backed Peetie Wheatstraw, deputising for Charlie Jordan, and recorded six sessions under various names (Blind Darby, Blind Blues Darby and Blind Squire Turner), for the likes of Paramount, Victor, Bluebird, Vocalion, and Decca between 1929 and 1937. In 1937 he renounced the blues in favour of the church and became a deacon, but he did record again in 1964 during the folk music revival.
Blind Willie Davis
Willie Davis was a gospel singer from the Mississippi Delta/Memphis area. He recorded six tunes in sessions between 1928 and 1929.
Blind Willie Johnson
Willie Johnson was a Baptist preacher from Texas. He played around the Dallas and Waco areas and recorded several times between 1927 and 1930. He continued to play on street corners until he died in 1947 from pneumonia as a result of sleeping rough, following the burning down of his house.
He was blinded at age seven by his angry stepmother who threw lye in his eyes, enraged by his fathers’ infidelity. Johnson played gospel slide guitar with a pocketknife. He interpreted sermons and hymns into stirring blues numbers, his unique raspy voice and dextrous playing are his trademark. A female backing vocalist, usually his wife Angeline, accompanied Willie on most of his later recordings. But it is the early sessions of 1927 that contain the most accomplished musicianship and heartfelt singing.
Blind Willie Mc Tell
Born in Thompson, Georgia in 1901, Willie McTell was a Piedmont style 12—string guitar wizard who recorded over 80 blues, ballads, rags and spiritual numbers between 1927 and 1959. Based in Atlanta, Florida he played under the pseudenems Barrelhouse Sammie – The Country Boy (Columbia), Georgia Bill (Okeh), Hot Shot Willie (Victor), Blind Willie (Vocalion) and Blind Willie Mc Tell (Decca/Library of Congress). Blind from infancy, he attended a school for the blind in Macon, where he met Hillbilly musician Blind Riley Puckett. He may have inspired Puckett’s tune ‘Darkey’s Wail’. He married Ruth Kate Williams in 1934, she was an army nurse who stayed at home while the music took Willie all over the country.
Mc Tell often learnt songs from Braille sheet music and had an uncanny sense of direction. He would catch trains, buses even the New York subway. He gave John Lomax directions back to his hotel following a Library of Congress recording session in Georgia; Lomax commented: ‘Stored in his mind was an accurate detailed photograph of Atlanta’.
Blind Willie Walker
Willie Walker was born blind in rural South Carolina. Upon moving to Greenville with his parents in 1911 he matured into the best guitar player in the area, revered by the likes of Gary Davis, Pink Anderson and notorious lead-boy Josh White. He travelled greatly, mainly with fellow guitarist Sam Brooks, but only recorded four songs, two of which were unissued and are now presumed lost. He was one of the great purveyors of the Piedmont style, seldom recorded and therefore sadly, not attributed the fame he deserves.
Sleepy John Estes
John Adam Estes was blinded in his right eye as a child; he later went totally blind in 1949. His nickname came from his chronic blood pressure disorder, which caused him to pass out now and again. Born on January 25th 1904 in Ripley and raised in Brownsville, Tennessee, Estes learned guitar and played local parties before moving to Memphis in the 1920s. He first recorded for Victor in 1929, then for Decca in the 1930s following a move to Chicago. He also recorded for Bluebird from 1940 to 1941. On his early recordings James ‘Yank’ Rachel accompanied Estes on mandolin and Jab Jones on piano. Their differing styles made for a thrilling sound: Estes ‘crying’ vocal style with his 8/8 strumming, the barrelhouse piano of Jones and Rachel’s slower paced mandolin. In the 1930s Hammie Nixon accompanied him with his mournful harmonica, this was the ideal match for Estes vocals.
Despite a strong showing during the blues revival of the 1950s and 60s, Estes died poor in Brownsville in 1979. His sad life and unfortunate situation was the subject of many of his songs.