Sunday Morning Blues - Little Willy John, Smiley Lewis, Furry Lewis, Robert Lockwood

Picking up where I left off with the ABC Of The Blues box set, Volumes 25 and 26.

Continued adventures into the Blues...

Little Willie John
Born in 1937, William Edward John started with a gospel group with his brothers. His story is a good blues-legend story, even if his music tended towards the R&B and Doowop side of things. He had several hits in the late 1950s on the R&B charts, most of which appear here. In the 60s his temper and drinking got the best of him, convicted of manslaughter in 1966, he was released while the case was reconsidered, which is when he recorded his 'comeback' album. It wasn't released until 2008, and Little Willie died in jail in 1968.

The music here is good, solid, and very early Rhythm & Blues music. A few ballads and some swingers, but nothing strictly 'blues' as it were. Even the few 'blues' songs have more of a doo-wop feel to them than a blues tune. I put it down to the near absence of a lead guitar. Little Willie showcases his vocals over everything else, and it's too bad he had such a short career, he's got an amazing voice.

Smiley Lewis
Or Smiling Lewis, he was billed as both, has been called the 'Unluckiest Man in New Orleans' - mostly due to his inability to gain popularity where contemporaries such as Fats Domino did - doubly unlucky since he wrote songs for Domino and others. Overton Amos Lemons had an active career through the late 1940s and into the mid-1960s, when he died of stomach cancer in 1966. A very toned down kind of New Orleans blues style, he never achieved great success with his own music. Others, though, did cover his songs and had hits almost every time.

The music, oh, it's just amazing. His voice isn't gravelly, but it's still a classic slow blues wail. As is common for post WWII blues it's a full band and not just voice and guitar. Smiley makes good use of horns and an excellent rhythm section. Very New Orleans with the near R&B full swing sound, but still very entrenched in the blues. It's a shame he didn't have a better career and produced more music of his own.

Furry Lewis
Moving way back, an early blues artist of the Folk, Country, and Delta blues styles. Walter E. Lewis didn't start his recording career until the 1920s, but even before that, starting possibly as early as 1908, he was on the road with musicians performing parties and juke-joints. He was one of the first artists to get a come back in the Folk-Blues revival of the 1960s, though he never did stop performing his entire life - but he didn't tour at all, keeping a permanent job as a street sweeper in Memphis, Tennessee.

Furry takes up three quarters of Volume 26 here, all 15 tracks are very early tracks of his from the 1920s. Given these aren't the easiest recordings to come by, I'll take it. Some are in excellent condition, no doubt having been preserved over the years as they're classics and hits of his. Some contain a great deal of hiss after being pulled from old 78s.

Robert Lockwood
Sometimes known as Robert Junior, as the famous Robert Johnson lived with his mother on and off for ten years and Lockwood learned guitar from him. His early career was classic Delta Blues in the same style as Johnson, however his later career had him in Chicago where he was part of the Electric-Blues scene, often playing with Sonny Boy Williamson II and Little Walter. He played until he died of a stroke in 2006 after a more than seventy year career.

He only has five tracks in this collection, which is unfortunate for someone who had such a long, and varied, musical well to draw from. While I appreciate getting some of the rare tracks from Furry Lewis, we inevitably short change another artist, and to do so with Robert Lockwood is unfortunate. The five songs we do get are from his later repertoire as a Chicago Blues musician. Though it includes an excellent version of Aw Aw Baby (aka Sweet Home Chicago).

That's halfway through the amazing box set of the ABC Of The Blues... so far the collection is amazingly diverse, which puts it a level above most 'definitive' collections. Next Week we look at Magic Sam, Jimmy McCracklin, Percy Mayfield, and Johnny Moore's Three Blazers.