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Smoky Babe and Herman E. Johnson - Louisiana Country Blues
Label : Arhoolie
CD Released : 1996
Format : [email protected]
“This stuff is the real thing. . . it combines a pair of strutting, growling guitarists who were first captured in 1960 and 1961, respectively. The rough, rural lives they lived pours out - songs about motherless children, going broke and hungry, bad whiskey and women who drink too much. The style and the sound are reminiscent of Robert Johnson, so much so that you'd think these fellows learned their delivery while sitting at his heels. . . a rare opportunity to hear old-fashioned blues in their original setting from a couple of guys who knew little but the blues.”
-Ed Silverman, Dirty Linen
Smoky Babe (Robert Brown) was born in 1927 in Itta Bena, Mississippi, a farming area some fifty miles from Clarksdale, the country blues capital of the world. His background consists of the stuff of which country blues singers are madea few months of school, early years as a sharecropper on a plantation raising cotton, corn, and garden vegetables, frequent moves to other plantations when the crops petered out or he "didn't get paid right," a spell in city slums while working on a "hot truck" (a carrier of hot steel) in the mill at Bessemer, Alabama, while at the same time in the evenings he worked gigs in Black night clubs where he played for dimes, quarters, and half dollars dancers tossed to the stage.
Herman E. Johnson of Scotlandville, Louisiana, summed up in eloquent words what had been the formative roots of most gifted blues singers:
"I had a good religious mother, a good religious father; they both was members of the Baptist Church. I have one brother an' one sister, an' they is members of the Baptist Church, an' apparently I was the on`iest jack (maverick) of the family. I don't belong to any church.
So my life was just that way, to keep out of trouble, drink my little whiskey, an' go an' do little ugly things like that, but just in a cue-tee (quiet) way. An' in 19 an' 27 I taken up the habit of playin' the guitar, an' I imagine it must have been the good Lord give me the talent to compose things."
Hot Blues Arhoolie R2019(omits track 10)
Smoky Babe and his friends:Hot Blues Folk-Lyric FL 118
01. I'm Broke And I'm Hungry (Smoky Babe) (2:57)
02. Too Many Women (Smoky Babe) (2:46)
03. Two Wings (Smoky Babe) (2:13)
04. Mississippi River (Smoky Babe) (3:16)
05. My Baby She Told Me (Smoky Babe) (2:36)
06. Rabbit Blues (Smoky Babe) (3:25)
07. Black Ghost (Smoky Babe) (5:02)
08. Ain't Got No Rabbit Dog (Smoky Babe) (3:18 )
09. Bad Whiskey (Smoky Babe) (2:42)
10. Black Gal (Smoky Babe) (3:50)
11. My Baby Put Me Down (Smoky Babe) (3:14)
12. Going Back Home (Smoky Babe) (2:50)
13. Regular Blues (Smoky Babe) (2:34)
14. I Just Keeps On Wanting You (Herman E. Johnson) (2:48 )
15. You Don't Know My Mind (Herman E. Johnson) (3:52)
16. Motherless Children (Herman E. Johnson) (4:04)
17. Depression Blues (Herman E. Johnson) (4:45)
18. She's A-Looking For Me (Herman E. Johnson) (3:20)
19. She Had Been Drinking (Herman E. Johnson) (2:31)
20. I'm Growing Older (Herman E. Johnson) (5:09)
21. Po' Boy (Herman E. Johnson) (3:21)
22. Leavin' Blues (Herman E. Johnson) (3:14)
23. Piano Blues (Herman E. Johnson) (2:19)
24. Where The Mansion's Prepared For Me (Herman E. Johnson) (2:30)
Tracks 1-13
Smoky Babe (vocals and guitar)
Henry Thomas (Lazy Lester) (track 2)
William Dortson (vocal) (track 3)
Sally Dotson (vocal) (track 4)
Clyde Causey (harmonica)
Recorded 1960 in Scotlandville, La. by Harry Oster; previously issued on Folklyric LP 118 and Arhoolie LP 2019
Tracks 14-24
Herman E Johnson (vocals and guitar – tracks 14-24, electric guitar on tracks 17, 19, 20 and 22)
Recorded. 1960/1961 in Baton Rouge, LA by Harry Oster; previously issued on Arhoolie LP 1060 LP 2019
Recorded. 1960/1961 in Baton Rouge, LA by Harry Oster; previously issued on Arhoolie LP 1060 LP 2019
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