The “In Betweens” Part 1
Blues musicians like Tampa Red, Leadbelly, Lonnie Johnson, Leroy Carr and Big Bill Broonzy would shape and direct the move and the sounds of a new kind of blues in the late 1930s and 1940s. These “midway” transitional bluesman were directly influenced by the rural folk bluesman like Charlie Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Tommy Johnson, Son House, Skip James, Memphis Minnie, Johnny Johnson and Robert Johnson, just to name a few.
Although these “In Between” blues musicians/singers were not considered urban or electric, they had an enormous influence on the new electric Urban Blues that would come out of Chicago, New York and other northern cities.
Tampa Red
Tampa Red was born on Smithville, Georgia as Hudson Woodbridge in 1904. His parents died when he was very young and went to live with his aunt and grandmother in Tampa, Florida. Here he was influenced by his older brother and a street musician known as Piccolo Pete who first taught him blues guitar. He learned and perfected a guitar technique known as slide guitar where one used a bottle neck or metal tube to run up and down the fret board to give a glissando effect (a continuous sliding of one pitch to another pitch without any breaks in the sound, similar to the sliding up and down of a pitch on a trombone or a slide whistle).
He moved to Chicago in the 1920s and accompanied the Blues singer pioneer Ma Rainey. He recorded his first hit song “It’s Tight Like That” in 1928 in a raunchy and humorous style that became known as “Hokum”. Tampa Red, along with Georgia Tom (Thomas A. Dorsey), recorded many songs in various incarnations as the Hokum Boys or as Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band. He acquired a steel bodied resonator guitar which helped him further develop his slide guitar technique.
In the 1930s, he went on to play and record with many other famous blues artists like Sonny Boy Williamson, Memphis Minnie, Big Bill Broonzy, Victoria Spivey and Big Maceo (Merriweather), just to name a few. He started the Chicago Five which invented the “Bluebird” sound and became a big influence on the small comb groups of Jump Blues and R&B. He was the center of a community of Blues musicians as they made the trip from the Delta to Chicago. He had many hit songs throughout his career in both Blues and the new R&B styles. In 1942 he had an early R&B hit called “Let Me Play with Your Poodle” and later in 1949 with “When Things Go Wrong with You (It Hurst Me Too)” on electric guitar.
He was later “re-discovered” like so many other bluesmen in the 1950s blues revival and enjoyed a resurgence of critical acclaim. Even though he was a big star, recording over 300 sides, he died in poverty in Chicago at the age of 77. Later, he was recognized as one of the most prolific influences of the Blues and the newer styles (Urban, Jump and Rock & Roll) and is one of the greatest bluesman in the development of the blues genres.
Leadbelly
Huddie William Ledbetter, known as Lead Belly, was an enormous influence on the Folk, Blues and Gospel genres. He was born on a plantation near Mooringsport, Louisiana around 1888. He is best known for his knowledge of many folk and blues standards, his strong tenor singing skills and his virtuosity on the 12- string acoustic guitar. He was a multi-instrumentalist who played piano, harmonica, accordion and many stringed instruments such as the guitar, mandolin and the violin.
His song writing included topics about day laboring, cattle herding, prison life, rural lifestyles as well as being one of the first bluesman to write about socio-economic, social matters including social inequality, bigotry and American politics. He would often write about what was current in the newspapers of his time including the sinking of the Titanic (immortalized in his song “The Titanic), World War I, the Depression era, World War II and the upheaval in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. He had notable success in performing game songs that appealed to children since he performed at children’s birthday parties as a young man.
Leadbelly spent a lot of his life in and out of prison due to his volatile temper, starting in 1915. He had escaped a chain gang in one instance but was again imprisoned after killing a relative in a fight over a woman. He is famous for being pardoned by Texas Governor Pat Morris Neff after he wrote a spiritual song about the Governor (regardless of Texans pledge to issue no pardons). He frequently entertained the prison guards and was highly praised for his abilities as a Bluesman and talented guitar player.
In 1930 he was sentenced to the infamous Angola Prison Farm in Louisiana after stabbing a white man in a fight. It was at Angola where he was recorded in 1933 and 1934, by John and Alan Lomax. They recorded hundreds of songs for the Library of Congress, including his signature song “Goodnight Irene”. Once again, Leadbelly was released on “good behavior” after serving a minimum sentence at Angola.
After his release, Leadbelly was hired by John Lomax as a driver while he continued his mission to record many folk singers and bluesmen in the southern states. Later at the end of 1934, Leadbelly and Lomax went to Pennsylvania where he participated in a performance at Bryn Mawr College. This is when he found fame as the “singing convict”, written about in many newspapers in New York City. He would continue traveling with John Lomax, playing at lecture halls on a short tour of colleges including Harvard. He even had newsreels about his music and life produced by Time Magazine. Alan Lomax wrote a book that came out in 1936 called “Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Leadbelly”.
Lomax and Leadbelly had a falling out due to management contract disagreements where Leadbelly decided to strike out on his own playing and performing at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre in New York City. Life Magazine featured (a rather racist) three page article on Leadbelly in April of 1937, detailing his music and prison life and suggesting that he was pardoned due to his talents as a folk singer and bluesman.
He found success speaking and playing at lectures, concerts and benefits with an emphasis on his southern black culture. He befriended the great black novelist Richard Wright (member of the Communist Party) with whom he became close friends and a literary subject in the “Daily Worker”. At this time Leadbelly wrote left wing influenced “Bourgeois Blues”, one of his more famous songs.
He fell in with Alan Lomax and was featured in the CBS radio show “Back Where I Came From”, befriending many of New York City’s folk scene including Josh White, Sonny Terry Brownie McGhee, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seger in the early 1940s. He recorded for RCA and performed regularly on WNYC radio show for Henrietta Yurchenco; had great success in California on Capitol Records and was one of the first black folk and country bluesman to achieve fame in Europe particularly in France.
Sadly, Leadbelly was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease in 1949, fell ill and died shortly after a tribute performance to his mentor, John Lomax, at the University of Texas. He is honored with a statue at the Caddo Parish Courthouse in Shreveport.
Leadbelly’s influence on the Blues is almost insurmountable to many of his peers. He greatly influenced many bluesman and folk singers that would come to fame later in the 1950s and in the folk revival of the 1960s. He was very influential to the genres of Blues, Folk, Gospel, R&B, Rock & Roll and Rock and is cited by so many artists that the list is too long to cite here.