re: Old Timey -- a thread for pre-rock country, folk, and blues

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Louis Jordan (July 8, 1908 – February 4, 1975) was a pioneering American jazz, blues and rhythm & blues musician, songwriter and bandleader who enjoyed his greatest popularity from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as "The King of the Jukebox", he was highly popular with both black and white audiences in the later years of the swing era. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him no. 59 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

Although Jordan began his career in big-band swing jazz in the 1930s, he became famous as one of the leading practitioners, innovators and popularizers of "jump blues", a swinging, up-tempo, dance-oriented hybrid of jazz, blues and boogie-woogie. Typically performed by smaller bands consisting of five or six players, jump music featured shouted, highly syncopated vocals and earthy, comedic lyrics on contemporary urban themes. It strongly emphasized the rhythm section of piano, bass and drums; after the mid-1940s, this mix was often augmented by electric guitar. Jordan's band also pioneered the use of electric organ.

With his dynamic Tympany Five bands, Jordan mapped out the main parameters of the classic R&B, urban blues and early rock'n'roll genres with a series of hugely influential 78 rpm discs for the Decca label. These recordings presaged many of the styles of black popular music in the 1950s and 1960s, and exerted a huge influence on many leading performers in these genres.

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Jordan was a major influence on B.B. King and especially Chuck Berry.

"Choo Choo Ch'Boogie"

"Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby"

"Caldonia"

"Saturday Night Fish Fry"

While record company scouts were taking many field trips to the south during the late 1920's, different forms of the "Delta" blues were discovered and summarily lumped into the emerging commercial genre. This decade of mining the delta led to the recording of many legends who would go on to shape modern music, but one blues man fell through the cracks.



Mississippi Fred McDowell invented a style all his own. He combined slide technique with a "droning" thumb bass that would define Hill Country Blues. Using few chord changes, McDowell preferred a simple vamp for rhythm with heavy lead lines, creating an almost hypnotic sway. This style was very conducive to dancing, as Fred played mostly at parties and picnics throughout the 20's. Many artists claim Fred as an influence, but two of the most currently notable are Jack White and Dan Auerbach.

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I do not play no rock and roll, y'all... I play the straight natural blues...
only way you can rock Fred you have to put him in a rockin chair

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Mississippi Fred Mcdowell - Baby Please Don't Go

Mississippi Fred McDowell - Goin Down to the River

Mississippi Fred McDowell - You gotta move

Mississippi Fred McDowell - Shake 'Em On Down

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I make the guitar say what I say, understan'. If I say 'Our Father' it'll say 'Our Father'. If I give out a hymn it'll say it. If I play 'Amazin' Grace' it'll sing that too.

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Mississippi Fred McDowell - Freight Train Blues

Mississippi Fred McDowell - John Henry

Mississippi Fred McDowell - When I Lay My Burden Down

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Bob Wills was born in Kosse, Texas in 1905. In 1929 he started the Wills Fiddle Boys in Ft. Worth, then came to the attention of perennial Texas Gubernatorial candidate Pappy Lee O'Daniel who ran the Light Crust Flour Mills in Saginaw, Texas just north of Ft. Worth. Wills lept to fame playing as the Light Crust Doughboys but after several years the band tired of the gig as they were also expected to load flour trucks during the day. In '34 the band moved to Tulsa to get away from Pappy Lee and formed the Texas Playboys. They invented western music with a jazz beat known as Western Swing.

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Bob Wills - Sittin On Top of the World

Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys - Nothin' But The Best For My Baby

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Take it away, Leon!

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Bob Wills - Steel Guitar Rag 1936

Jesse James - "Southern Casey Jones"

This track shows the kind of records Little Richard would have been making if he'd lived 20 years earlier.

Virtually nothing is known about the life of blues singer-pianist Jesse James, except that he recorded 4 sides in Cincinnati in 1936. This site lists a few rumors about him.

Kelly Harrell & The Virginia String Band - "Charles Giteau" (1927)

Another classic from the Harry Smith Anthology, a version of an old folk song about the man who assassinated President James Garfield in 1881


Kelly Harell:




Essay on the ballad -- Features links to various versions


The assassination of President Garfield:




Charles Guiteau:

I'll give ya an amen on Doc Watson and the Louvin Brothers.Emmylou Harris covered many of their songs.

The Sons of the Pioneers - "Castration of The Strawberry Roan" (1943)

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"He's the worst fricking bronco
That has ever been foaled
He's never been rode
And he's twenty years old."

O, that strawberry roan
How many colts has he thrown?
He's got gonorrhea and cankers and syph
He's strictured with clap
But his cock is still stiff
That renegade strawberry roan.

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El Jarocho - "La Bamba" (1939)



The earliest recorded version of the old Mexican folk song (traditionally performed as a wedding dance), later made famous in a rock & roll version by Ritchie Valens (note that Valens had to learn the lyrics from his grandmother, just before the recording session -- he grew up as an English speaker).

You can also hear "La Bamba" in the background of this scene from the 1947 Mexican version of Steinbeck's novel The Pearl.

Son House ----Grinnin' in your face

Skip James----Hard Time Killin' Floor