The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #100308 Message #2204922
Posted By: Azizi
29-Nov-07 - 03:12 PM
Thread Name: Blind Blues singers
Subject: RE: Blind Blues singers
Hello, Doc John. I'm glad you found this thread. I need to correct your statement that this is my thread. I've been a poster to this thread. However, the person who started this thread is the Mudcatter whose tag name is "Leadbelly" [See thefirst post to this thread.]
You mentioned the name "Crippled Clarence" and I googled that name since I hadn't heard of that performer before. Here's an excerpt from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cripple_Clarence_Lofton :
"Cripple Clarence Lofton (March 28, 1887 - January 9, 1957) was born Albert Clemens in Kingsport, Tennessee. Though he was born with a limp (from which he derived his stage name), Clarence actually started his career as a tap-dancer. This was not his true calling, and he showed his true talent in the blues craze known as boogie-woogie and moved on to perform in Chicago"
Most of his songs were twelve-bar blues to which Lofton brought a unique excitement by dropping bars and portions of bars to end up with nine-, ten-, or eleven-bar blues songs.
With such a unique style, it wasn't long until Clarence found himself a mainstay in his genre. His first recording was in the month of April with another local success Big Bill Broonzy for Vocalion Records. He later went on to own the Big Apple nightclub in Chicago and continued to record well into the late 1940s, when he retired..."
-snip-
In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, there used to be a facility called The Home For Crippled Children". It's been at least 15 years if not more that that facility has changed its' name to "The Children's Rehabilitation Center" .
Attitudes have changed about the appropriateness of describing individuals by referring to their disabilities.
Thank goodness.