Subject: Blind Blake 78 Found in Steamer Trunk
From:
Tweed
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 10:34 AM
Treasure trove of old blues records:
Like a time capsule, this small steamer trunk sat unopened for more than four decades in a trailer park off Poole Road on the east side of Raleigh, North Carolina. Its contents, about one hundred 78 rpm records, still in their original paper sleeves, represent some of the greatest blues artists active during the Great Depression.
The records were bought new in the mid-1930s by a young African-American woman living near Durham, the epicenter of blues activity in the Carolinas. Her favorite bluesman was Blind Boy Fuller, an artist she knew personally, and saw often at local juke joints and house parties. Her collection also includes discs by other Durham luminaries like Floyd "Dipper Boy" Council and Bull City Red. Many of the sleeves are stamped with the names of area record vendors such as the Carolina Music Shop of Chapel Hill and United Dollar Store of Durham, a business then operated by Blind Boy Fuller's manager J.B. Long.
A true blues connoisseur, this woman treasured her records and kept the collection intact until her death in the 1960s. At that time, the steamer trunk went to her son, who locked it away in his Raleigh mobile home. Finally, in 2007, the trunk and its contents again saw the light of day when the son cleaned house, getting ready for a move to an assisted living facility. A telephone tip and subsequent negotiations led to the acquisition of the collection by Old Hat Records.
The collection includes outstanding records by St. Louis bluesman Charley Jordan, Atlanta's Buddy Moss, "Guitar Wizard" Tampa Red, Memphis Minnie, Bessie Jackson, Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell, Casey Bill, Georgia Tom, and the jug band duo of Daddy Stovepipe & Mississippi Sarah, to name just a few.
These discs were originally issued on Perfect, Vocalion, Bluebird, and Decca, labels that adapted their marketing strategies in order to survive the Depression. Paramount Records, on the other hand, failed to adapt and went bust in 1933. Included here are tracks from the tail end of Paramount's production, the 13000 series, records of exceeding rarity. Skip James' "22-20 Blues" of 1931 is an eccentric piano masterpiece, and the Mississippi Sheiks' 1932 version of "New Stop And Listen" is arguably their greatest recording. "Boodle De Bum Bum" by the obscure Ben Curry is only the third known copy of this disc to emerge, and its condition surpasses that of the other two. The trunk's rarest yield was a unique copy of Paramount 13123 by guitar ace Blind Blake, a record unknown to collectors until now.
More here with sound clips, at Old Hat Records.
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