Meanwhile in Alabama

By Manfred Curinckx

Meanwhile in Alabama...

Alabama, when it comes to blues history, doesn’t seem equally reputed as it’s fellow states Mississippi,
Georgia, the Carolina’s or Texas. So why is that?
Answering that question is not so easy. Several factors must have been at play, causing the Alabama blues
to become less documented and somewhat missing its deserved place in music history. By no means the blues in the 1920’s and 1930’s was less prevalent in Alabama than in its neighboring state Mississippi. Field researchers, Folklorists and recorders for Library Of Congress Alan and John Lomax combed through the Alabama counties and prisons, looking for and recording blues men and women. This luckily gave us the opportunity to somehow reconstruct a view on what the early blues in Alabama was like. The geography and location of Alabama had an enormous influence on the local blues and folk music in the 19th and early 20th century. The Southern and Central part of the State has very fertile soil. Farms and plantations for cotton were abundant. This was the area were the early blues was influenced largely by the songs and traditions of the slaves.
Here we can find the ‘Black Belt’, famous for its blues history. The name mainly relates to the darkness of the soil, to lesser extent to the skin colour of the people living and working there, although this area was where the african decendent population mainly lived, many related to the slaves of the decades before them. Typical for the blues in that area is the similarity to Mississippi Delta and Country blues. Cross border migration, similar working and living conditions and day to day problems (like the boll weevil infestation for instance) contributed largely to that. There were other influences however that affected the sound of the early blues in Alabama. The Appalachian Mountain range, running into the North of the State, and the State of Georgia to the east, argely affected the sound, adding Piedmondstyle and Jazz influence to mix. A clear picture of the early blues is offered by the Alabama Public Television film "Alabama Black Belt Blues". In this film the early Lomax and Ruby Pickens Tartt recordings of Vera Hall, Dock Reed, Rich Amerson and others bring the music to the fore and demonstrate the blues tradition, which is still very strong there today. The movie explains the role of the blues in the region from slavery onward, in cotton fields, church pews, prisons and juke joints. The recorded artists naturally give us the best idea of what the music was like, and there were many among which Bo Weavil Jackson, Ed Bell, Big Mama Thornton, Vera Hall, Lucille Bogan, Daddy Stovepipe (Johnny Watson), Sonny Scott, Clifford Gibson, Cow Cow Davenport... And let’s not forget the great Louisiana Red, who was born in Bessemer, Alabama in 1932. Johnny Shines lived in Alabama for a large part of his life. Another very important blues guitarist from Alabama was Ike Zimmerman. I will also mention W.C. Handy as well and some Jazz artists like Dinah Washington and Nat King Cole, but since my focus is on early blues guitar I will leave the honour to documenting them to others.

Who is who?

In order to fully understand the early Alabama blues sound, I picked a few of these artists:

Bo Weavil Jackson was one of the first country blues guitarist who recorded. There is some debate about whether he was born in Alabama but nevertheless he was active in the Birmingham, Alabama region when he was discovered. We also know him as Sam Butler but according to blues historian Paul Oliver that was not his real name. He recorded in 1926 for Paramount and Vocalion. He sings about his Alabama environment in songs like Jefferson County Blues and about the boll weevil in "Devil and My Brown Blues". He had his own particular style of playing, often with bottleneck, using virtuoso licks and melody lines.
This can be heard in the already mentioned song "Jefferson County Blues", in "You Can’t Keep no Brown" and "Poor Boy Blues" as well. He was a great fingerpicker too, in a similar style as Blind Blake and Big Bill Broonzy. No recordings since 1926 are known off and his further path in life is undocumented.

Ed Bell stands as the most influential Alabama artist in pre-war blues recordings. He was born in Fort Deposit, Alabama on a plantation in 1905. Some of his records were released under the pseudonyms Sluefoot Joe and Barefoot Bill from Alabama. His most famous songs are "Mamlish Blues", "Hambone Blues" and "She’s a Fool nr2". His music really pictures the varied Alabama blues style. Some songs have the Delta Blues feel while others, like "Carry it Right Back", "Shake Me Like a Dog" and "She’s a Fool" are typical Piedmont Blues/East Coast Blues songs. He recorded more than 24 songs, some of which unissued, between 1927 and 1930.
His life consisted of travelling and performing as a blues musician and working in agriculture. He played
locally but performed further up north as well, even in Ohio and Philadelphia. His songs tell us among others about hardship and worries, poverty, leaving the area on the trains, women, imprisonment, voodoo, death...
He eventually quit his life as a travelling musician and became a Baptist preacher, married and settled in
Montgomery Alabama. He died in Greenville, Alabama in the 1960’s, date and cause differing due to disagreeing sources.

The man who taught Robert Johnson

Lastly I would like to put Ike Zimmerman in the spotlight. Because of his historic importance and legacy, he can not be surpassed in this listing, regardless of the fact that no recordings of him are known. His life can be pieced together based on the interview one of his daughters gave to the British blues researcher Bruce Conforth. Isaiah (Ike) Zimmerman was born in Grady, Alabama in 1907. Ike was an accomplished and remarkable blues guitar player and guitar teacher. He became the mentor of Robert Johnson and passed his dynamic guitar style onto him. Going by the information from the interview, Ike and his wife Ruth moved with their children to Beauregard, Mississippi in the late 1920’s. Ike played guitar and harmonica in the local juke joints, where Robert from the nearby Hazlehurst came into contact with him around 1931. Robert stayed with Ike and the family for a long time. The both often practiced at night in local cemeteries where they wouldn’t disturb anyone. Robert became awesome at playing guitar and in about a year, the pair toured local lumber camps and juke joints, after which Robert began performing on his own. Members of the Zimmerman’s family also claimed that some of Robert Johnson’s songs like "Rambling on My Mind" were written by Ike before Johnson stayed with the household, singing the song to their children. Other songs like "Dust My Broom" and "Come On In My Kitchen" were reportedly written by Johnson and Zimmerman together. Ike Zimmerman gave up playing in the 1950’s after years of performing in Mississippi. He became a Pentacostal minister and moved to California where he died in 1967, aged 60, from a heart attack. In order not to make this article too long, I will refrain from going into detail on many other amazing blues artists from the era. A lot of the music is still available today and should get a listening. The albums ‘Deep River of Song – Alabama from Lullabies to Blues’ and the Yazoo album ‘Alabama
Blues – 1927-1931’ present some of the amazing Alabama Blues artists who really deserve more credit than they are widely known for. ~