Blues

Gus Cannon & Noah Lewis Vol. 2 1929-1930 (1990)

2015-05-14T15:55:40Z

Gus Cannon & Noah Lewis Vol. 2 1929 -1930 (1990)


01 - Last chance blues 
02 - Fourth and Beal 

Cannon And Woods (The Beale Street Boys):
Gus Cannon - vocal, banjo
Hosea Woods - vocal, guitar

03 - Last chance blues 
04 - Tired chicken blues 
05 - Going to Germany 
06 - Walk right in 

Cannon's Jug Stompers: 
Gus Cannon - vocal, banjo, jug
Hosea Woods - vocal, banjo
Noah Lewis - vocal, harmonica

07 - Chickasaw special 
08 - Devil in the woodpile 

Noah Lewis - harmonica solo

09 - Mule get up in the alley 
10 - The rooster`s crowing blues 
11 - Jonestown blues 
12 - Pretty mama blues 
13 - Bring it with you when you come 
14 - Wolf River blues 

Cannon's Jug Stompers: 
Gus Cannon - vocal, banjo, jug
Hosea Woods - vocal, banjo
Noah Lewis - vocal, harmonica

15 - Like I want To Be 

Noah Lewis - harmonica solo

16 - Ticket agent blues 
17 - New minglewood blues 
18 - Selling the jelly 
19 - Bad luck`s my buddy 

Noah Lewis' Jug Band: 
Noah Lewis - vocal, harmonica
Sleepy John Estes – guitar
Yank Rachel – mandolin
Ham Lewis – jug
Mrs Van Zula Carter Hunt - vocal

20 - Money never runs out 
21 - Prison wall blues 

Cannon's Jug Stompers: 
Gus Cannon - vocal, banjo, jug
Hosea Woods - vocal, banjo
Noah Lewis - vocal, harmonica

After Cannon's Jug Stompers recorded in September 1928 it was about a year before Gus next faced the mikes; when he did, it was as one half of "Cannon And Woods" (The Beale Street Boys)", making a disc for Brunswick in breach of his contract with Victor. "Woods" was Hosea Woods, older even than Gus, a splendid singer with a strong falsetto, and about to replace Elijah Avery as the Stompers' second banjoist and guitarist. Gus Cannon is said to play guitar on the Beale Street Boys sides, but as the instruction to "Percolate that banjo!" is given to "Joe" (i.e. Banjo Joe), it seems more likely that Woods is the guitarist.

The Jug Stompers reassembled to record on 1st and 3rd October 1929. On the intervening day, Noah Lewis made his debut as a name artist with three harmonica solos; a white fiddle piece, with Lewis's falsetto whoops replacing the fiddler's pizzicatos; and a meditative blues that admirably demonstrates Noah's masterful breath control. The full jug band started with remakes: Last Chance had been one of the Cannon And Woods numbers, and Tired Chicken Blues was "Heartbreakin' Blues" from the previous year, with a new, ribald last verse. Going To Germany, on the other hand, really is heartbreaking; there are few songs more yearningly sung than this Noah Lewis performance.

The most famous song from this session, though, was undoubtedly Walk Right In, Gus's theme song, which he'd made up with Ashley Thompson around 1910. In the '60s, it was recorded by a white folk group, the Rooftop Singers, and went to No. 1 in the charts.

Cannon's Jug Stompers made their last session in November 1930, adding Wolf River Blues to their list of songs about places around Memphis. Bring It With You When You Come shows a hillbilly influence in its first verse, and Prison Wall Blues marries a pop-influenced, sixteen bar structure to some rather edgy jokes about the Southern prison system.

In their time, they had been the finest jug band in Memphis, bringing emotional depth to their blues, enthusiastic humour to their novelty numbers, and exceptional musicianship to all their songs and instrumentals. --- Chris Smith, document-records.com

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Gus Cannon Vol.1 1927 – 1928 (1991)

2015-05-12T15:48:16Z

Gus Cannon Vol.1 1927 – 1928 (1991)

Gus Cannon (Banjo Joe)
01 - Jonestown blues 
02 - Poor boy, long ways from home
03 - Madison Street rag 
04 - Jazz gypsy blues 
05 - Can you blame the colored man 
06 - My money never runs out 

Cannon's Jug Stompers
07 - Minglewood blues 
08 - Big railroad blues 
09 - Madison Street rag 
10 - Springdale blues 
11 - Ripley blues 
12 - Pig ankle strut 
13 - Noah`s blues 
14 - Hollywood rag 
15 - Heart-breakin` blues 
16 - Feather bed 
17 - Cairo rag 
18 - Bugle call rag 
19 - Viola Lee blues (take 1) 
20 - Viola Lee blues (take 2) 
21 - Riley`s wagon 

Gus Cannon (Banjo Joe), vocal, banjo, speech, whistling, kazoo.
 
Cannon’s Jug Stompers. Including: 
Gus Cannon, vocal, banjo, jug, 
Ashley Thompson, vocal, guitar; 
Noah Lewis, harmonica; 
Elijah Avery, banjo, guitar, kazoo, 
Hosea Woods, kazoo.
Blind Blake, guitar.

Gus Cannon was already in his mid-forties when he came to record in 1927, so it's not surprising that at his first sessions he cut Poor Boy, Long Ways From Home, one of the earliest blues, setting it to a unique slide banjo accompaniment. His sessions as "Banjo Toe" also featured ragtime pieces and medicine show songs, among them the once-typical Can You Blame The Colored Man, a funny,albeitsomewhat Uncle Tommish, song about Booker T. Washington's 1901 visit to the White House. Blind Blake, who helped out with second guitar on most titles, was added at Paramount’s behest; they had never met before the session.

Some of "Banjo Joe's" songs were remade by Cannon's Jug Stompers in the course of their studio career; Madison Street Rag was one of them, recorded at the band's first session for Victor, early in 1928. The Stompers played a lot of ragtime and novelty pieces, but even on these they were the most consistently bluesy of the Memphis jug bands on record. This was largely thanks to the magnificent harmonica of Noah Lewis, whose immensely forceful playing was always subordinate to an acute musical intelligence, resulting in some of the most sensitive and responsive harmonica work in blues. He injects a haunting, lonesome sound into his playing, a quality which also made his voice perfect for blues, as he proves on the two takes of Viola Lee Blues. Gus himself played both the rushing, syncopated banjo figures that made the band's blues numbers dance, and the fruity, ribald jug (in his case actually a coal-oil can) which he'd mounted on a neck harness.

Lewis, was from Henning, Tennessee, not far from Ripley, to which he paid tribute on Ripley Blues. The Jug Stompers seem to have been keen to boost Memphis and other places they knew: besides Madison Street Rag, Hollywood Rag refers to a suburb of Memphis containing the Springdale Avenue of Springdale Blues; Jonestown was a hamlet in Mississippi; and Mengelwood, wrongly spelt on the record, was a sawmill camp near Ripley. Cairo Rag is named after the Illinois town. Of the same generation as Noah was his neighbour, the guitarist Ashley Thompson, who is also an excellent singer on two titles. Nevertheless, he was dropped after one session and replaced by Elijah Avery who played both banjo and guitar, but left the singing to Lewis and Gus himself, whose booming voice can be heard on Riley's Wagon and Feather Bed, among others. As 1928 gave way to 1929, Gus Cannon must have been well satisfied with his band's success on Victor. The next two years were to see more classic songs recorded, including one that was to bring him an unlikely moment or fame 34 years later; Elijah Avery's replacement by Hosea Woods; and Noah Lewis cutting sides under his own name. All these developments are chronicled on Document CD DOCD-5033, which completes the story of the finest jug band to come out of Memphis. ---document-records.com

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Gus Cannon - Walk Right In (1999)

2010-03-23T10:47:54Z

Gus Cannon - Walk Right In (1999)


1. Narration - 2:59
2. Kill It - 2:10
3. Walk Right In - 2:29
4. Salty Dog - 2:22
5. Going Around The Mountain - 1:58
6. Ol' Hen - 2:33
7. Gonna Raise A Ruckus Tonight - 2:19
8. Ain't Gonna Rain No More - 2:50
9. Boll Weevil - 2:42
10. Come On Down To My House - 1:24
11. Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor - 3:07
12. Get Up In The Morning Soon - 2:06
13. Crawdad Hole - 2:26

Gus Cannon - Banjo, Vocals
Milton Roby - Washboard
Will Shade – Jug

In June of 1963, 79-year-old Gus Cannon went into the studio in Memphis to cut his first recording in close to seven years, all a result of the Rooftoop Singers having made his "Walk Right In" into a number one single. The producers didn't ask for too much out of Cannon, to judge from the results -- just that he sit there with his banjo and old friends Will Shade (jug) and Milton Roby (washboard) backing him, and do his favorite songs. He introduces a few of them in separately indexed spoken passages, and runs through them in leisurely if dedicated fashion: the title track (which is much bluesier than the hit in Cannon's hands), "Salty Dog" (the best track here), "Gonna Raise a Ruckus Tonight," "Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor," and "Crawdad Hole." The album is almost an audio documentary tour through different corners of Cannon's life and career that, ideally, might've run to several volumes. ---Bruce Eder, Rovi

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