Vaudeville Blues

JSP's first volume of chronologically presented recordings from the dawn of Duke Ellington's career bears a title that epitomizes producer John Stedman's whimsical sensibilities by utilizing the name of young Edward Kennedy Ellington's piano teacher, Mrs. Marietta...

As evidenced by the five double-disc sets issued by Columbia at the end of the last century, Bessie Smith was at the very least prolific. From the beginning of her series of recordings for the label in 1923, she recorded and toured almost incessantly until her death in an automobile accident in...

Butterbeans & Susie's only LP was recorded at three sessions during the spring of 1960, many years after their heyday as African-American vaudeville's definitive husband-and-wife team. This modern stereophonic recording is actually the best way to appreciate and understand their...

If you considered the total recorded output of Bessie Smith and tried to condense it into a single 22-track CD, you'd be hard-pressed to do a better selection job than on this premier release. The Milan and Ryko labels have collaborated, and done well, to reissue these songs which have...

Jazz Oracle is one of the world's greatest historic jazz reissue labels, and should really be winning awards for its beautiful packaging, thorough research, concise documentation, color reproductions of 78 rpm record labels, and impeccable sound restoration. Issued in early 2008, Jazz...

Although hokum had its heyday from 1928-31, the name of the Hokum Boys was revived for some recording dates during the years 1935-37. This CD features selections from a couple very different editions of the Hokum Boys, plus numbers from the related Chicago Five and Bob Robinson. The first seven...

Butterbeans (Jodie Edwards, 1898-1967) and Susie (Sue Hawthorne, 1899-1963) were the archetypal Ma and Pa comedy team in the world of African-American vaudeville during the 1920s. Married on-stage while young teenagers as part of a minstrel show act, they made it legal soon afterwards and began...

Vol. 2 in Document's three-part history of Coot Grant and Kid Wilson focuses largely upon Wilson's career. Nine of twenty-four tracks feature vocals by Grant, with accompaniments by Fletcher Henderson's band, guitarists Bobby Leecan, Bernard Addison and (possibly) Eddie Lang, as...

Edith Wilson is remembered as an accomplished actress and vocalist who first rose to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance. Her early recordings (1921-1922) were reissued by RST in 1995 among the collected works of cornetist Johnny Dunn. In 2000, 15 records she cut during the years 1924-1930...

Document presents 25 historical recordings made between June and December 1929 by a constantly changing little group of Chicago musicians who called themselves the Hokum Boys. Key members were pianists Jimmy Blythe and Alex Hill, operating in cahoots with any of several guitarists including Dan...

Not a lues singer in the classic sense, like a Bessie Smith, but more of a vaudeville performer, Helen Gross recorded some of the strangest material ever marketed as lues. Recorded in New York in the mid-'20s with many of the best jazz players of the day -- including horn players Bubber...

There have been numerous collections that boast the title "Copulation Blues" or "Copulatin' Blues," but none of them holds a torch to this Trikont compilation that features 25 bawdy tales of well, you know, doin' it. If you slap this slab on the stack at a bash,...

It is perhaps a testament to the harmonica's status in music that even its finest practitioners remain relatively obscure. Compiling a disc of harp players, as Yazoo has done here, isn't going to turn up a bunch of familiar names. As an early document of an instrument that remained...

Although one may think of the lues harp beginning with Little Walter, the first Sonny Boy Williamson, or Sonny Terry, a variety of harmonica players did record in the '20s. Some of their recordings were technical displays that featured them imitating everything from animals to trains,...

Continuing the label's exploration deep into the early vernacular music of the United States, Yazoo Records devotes this compilation to some of the finest harmonica players of the 1920s and 1930s. Harmonica Masters features performances by harp greats like DeFord Bailey, Noah Lewis, Jed...

The soundtrack to the Louie Bluie film has Louis Armstrong in informal settings with various musicians, including Ted Bogan, Ikey Robinson, Yank Rachell, and Tom Armstrong. The selection of material gives a good indication of the breadth of the songster's repertoire, with agtime, songs in...

Since leaving the Rolling Stones in 1993, Bill Wyman has gone on a one-man crusade to promote the music he obviously loves. Wyman fronts his own lues band, the Rhythm Kings, and has been instrumental in keeping the names of both classic and obscure lues artists in the public eye through...

Vol. 3 in Document's nearly complete chronological tribute to Coot Grant and Kid Wilson presents what appears to be everything they recorded between 1931 and 1938 for the Columbia, Okeh, Oriole, Vocalion and Decca labels. Famous during the '20s as the counterpart to Butterbeans &...

My Rough and Rowdy Ways, Vol. 2 features 23 songs from the '30s about badmen and hellraisers, by artists ranging from legends like Uncle Dave Macon, Mississippi John Hurt, and Big Bill Broonzy to obscure music pioneers like George Reneau and groups like the Haywood County Ramblers. The mix...