Show Notes: 

Today’s show is the sixth in a series of shows spotlighting small blues labels that popped up in the 60s and 70s. Many of these labels were run by record collectors like Belzona/Yazoo run by Nick Perls, Don Kent who ran Mamlish Records, Bernard Klatzko of Herwin, numerous labels by George Paulus, Leroy Pierson’s Boogie Disease/Nighthawk, John Fahey’s Takoma label, Francis Smith’s Magpie among others. Many of these labels were strictly reissue labels, while others recorded the numerous older blues musician who were “rediscovered” in the 60’s and as well as older artists like Fred McDowell, Thomas Shaw who got recorded in later life. For this installment we spotlight the Southland label operated by Joe Mares. The label was founded c.1948 in New Orleans to spotlight traditional style New Orleans jazz, they continued through to the late 1960s when Mares retired. The label was sold to George H. Buck, Jr. We take a selective look at the label, spotlighting their blues offerings which include great field recordings by George Mitchell as well as recordings by Furry Lewis, Robert Pete Williams, Sunnyland Slim, Little Brother Montgomery, Big Joe Williams and others.

In 1925 Furry Lewis got together with Will Shade, Dewey Thomas and Hambone Lewis to form an early version of the Memphis Jug Band and like Jim Jackson took to traveling with medicine shows. Vocalion talent scouts saw both men in 1927 but it was Lewis who went to Chicago first in April where he cut six sides. Just under a year later Victor recorded eight more titles by Lewis in Memphis and Vocalion brought him in the studio one last time in 1929, cutting four songs at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis. Thirty year would pass before Sam Charters came knocking in 1959 subsequently recordings him for Folkways that same year with two more albums following for Prestige in 1961. Our album, The Fabulous Furry Lewis, was released in Southland in 1973.

Robert Pete Williams began to play for small events such as Church gatherings, fish fries, suppers, and dances. From the 1930s to the 1950s, Williams played music and continued to work in the lumberyards of Baton Rouge.  e was discovered by ethnomusicologists Dr. Harry Oster and Richard Allen in Louisiana State Penitentiary, where he was serving a life sentence for fatally shooting a man in a nightclub in 1956. Oster and Allen recorded Williams performing several of his songs about prison life and pleaded for him to be pardoned. Under pressure from Oster, the parole board issued a pardon and commuted his sentence to 12 years. In December 1958, he was released into ‘servitude parole’, which required 80 hours of labor per week on a Denham Springs farm without due compensation, and only room and board provided. This parole prevented him from working in music, though he was able to occasionally play with Butch Cage and Willie B. Thomas at Thomas’s home in Zachary. By this time, Williams’ music was becoming popular, and he played at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. Our album, When I Lay My Burden Down, was recorded in 1971 in New Orleans.

Using the name William Robertson, in fear of endangering his welfare checks, Cecil Barfield cut the LP South Georgia Blues for Southland in the mid-70’s with several other tracks appearing on Flyright’s Georgia Blues Today (reissued by Fat Possum). George Mitchell recorded Barfield extensively and there were a couple of digital collections available at one point. Art Rosenbaum and Axel Küstner also record Barfield. Barfield was born in 1922 and was farmer all his life until a back injury forced him to retire.  On how he came up with his songs he told Art Rosenbaum “your heart feels a certain way, then your mind follows, then you hands follow that.”

Born March 1, 1935, in Seale, Alabama, Harris spent his childhood working in the fields around Phenix City, and assisting his father making moonshine. At 19, Harris left home to ramble. or all his traveling, Harris frequently arrived back to Phenix City, where George Mitchell found him in 1981. With his older brother Eddie, Jimmy Lee played at rent parties, where the host served liquor and food to pay the rent. Harris died from a heart attack in the early 1980s, not long after Mitchell recorded him. I Wanna Ramble was recorded early 1980s.

Willie Guy ‘Scoot’ Rainey born April 17, 1901 near Anniston in Calhoun County, Alabama. His mother was an organ player, and Rainey began playing organ that same year. By the age of 9, Rainey was playing organ, guitar, fiddle and a pie pan banjo that his mother’s boyfriend made for him. He played music at parties and on the streets of small towns near Atlanta, he finally began playing bars in Atlanta and was “discovered” by music teacher, Ross Kapstein. Guy recorded one album, Willie Guy Rainey in 1978 and with the help of Kapstein and toured Europe before his death. He was the subject of a short film, Nothin’ But the Blues, produced by Georgia Folklore Society. Willie passed in 1983.

This session that makes up Chicago Blues Session (featuring Sunnyland Slim and Little Brother Montgomery) was recorded on July 14, 1960 and arranged and supervised by Paul Oliver. As Oliver wrote: ” The liquor flowed and so did the music. John Steiner recorded it ‘as it came’ with as little indifference with the informality of the session as possible; glasses were filled and filled again; jibes, shouts and comments went on tape with the music. The result was ‘authentic blues’ – the blues and boogie of Chicago as it was then and is today, played and sung by some of its best exponents, no holds barred, without fake or ‘folk.'”

Joe Callicott, waxed a lone 78 in Memphis in 1930, the year before played second guitar on Garfield Akers’ “Cottonfield Blues Parts 1 & 2.” It was  George Mitchell who found him in Nesbit, Mississippi off Highway 51 not far from Hernando and short distance from Brights were Akers was supposedly born. Callicott’s “comeback” was about as short as his first recording career, lasting from the summer of 1967 through the summer of 1968; he recorded nineteen sides for Mitchell either late August or early September (split between Revival’s Deal Gone Down and Arhoolie’s Mississippi Delta Blues – “Blow My Blues Away” Vol. 2) four sides at the 1968 Memphis Country Blues Festival (split between The 1968 Memphis Country Blues Festival and Stars Of The 1969-1970 Memphis Country Blues Festival) and seventeen sides for Blue Horizon in 1968 which have all been issued in 2007 as Furry Lewis & Mississippi Joe Callicott: The Complete Blue Horizon Sessions.

The National Downhome Blues Festival was held in Atlanta in October, 1984. Four volumes of music from the festival were released on Southland.  We hear tracks by Lonnie Pitchford, Precious Bryant, Thomas Burt, Junior Kimbrough, Albert Macon & Robert Thomas, John Jackson, Snooky Pryor & Homesick James, Booker T. Laury, Henry & Vernell Townsend and Larry Johnson.

In addition to the acoustic and electric guitar, Lonnie Pitchford was also skilled at the one-string guitar and diddley bow, a one-string instrument. He was a protégé of Robert Lockwood Jr., from whom he learned the style of Robert Johnson. For a while, Pitchford performed accompanied by Johnny Shines and Lockwood. His first recording appeared in 1980 on the Living Country Blues USA series: Living Country Blues USA: The Introduction and Living Country Blues USA Vol. 7: Afro American Blues Roots. His own debut album, All Round Man was released on Rooster in 1994. Pitchford performed at the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, and at the 1984 Downhome Blues Festival in Atlanta. In November 1998, Pitchford died at his home in Lexington, from AIDS.

Precious Bryant learned to play guitar from her father and uncle before dropping out of high school in eleventh grade and beginning to perform wherever she could. Her uncle was blues musician George Henry Bussey. he was first recorded by folklorist George Mitchell in 1967, who described her as “Georgia musical treasure.” In 1983, she performed at the Chattahoochee Folk Festival, and soon began playing at local, regional, and international venues. In 1995, Bryant met Tim Duffy and became involved with the Music Maker Relief Foundation, who assisted her in booking global tours and shows. She cut three albums in the early 2000s.

Albert Macon began teaching Robert Thomas to play blues guitar when Thomas, who was nine years younger than Macon, was about 15 years old. For over 40 years the two men played music together at fish fries, parties and festivals around Georgia. The two men also received national and international attention, playing such venues as the Knoxville World’s Fair and the American Blues Festival in the Netherlands and the WDR Blues Festival in Bonn, Germany. Macon and Thomas recorded Blues and Boogie from Alabama on the Dutch Swingmaster label as well as recordings captured by George Mitchell.

Booker T. Laury was born in Memphis and grew up with his lifelong friend Memphis Slim. In the early 1930s, in the company of the younger Mose Vinson, Slim and Laury began playing in local clubs. Laury didn’t start recording until the 80s, cutting several albums through the 90s.