Sunday Morning Blues - Bucka White, Josh White, Jimmy Yancey

Here we are, the final two volumes of the ABC Of The Blues: Volumes 51 and 52

Bukka White
Booker Washington White was a Delta Blues guitarist, born in 1909. He started his recording career in 1930, primarily recording country and gospel blues. Though he had been playing for the previous decade. An accomplished slide blues guitarist, he had an on and off career through the next several decades, one of his songs becoming a hit while he was serving time in jail. He died in 1977 of cancer.

The recordings are mostly early ones, but are very clean and clear. It includes his full range of blues styles as well, not just the delta he was known far, which is nice. Anther good artist to have to fill out the early slide and delta musicians roster.

Josh White
Josh was one of the first folk blues, and plain folk, artists to sing protest songs, especially on a full time basis. Before him protest songs were limited to one off, or subtle lyrical content. Josh's were up front and paved the way for folk to follow as the chosen genre of protestors. His primary content was of the unfairness of Jim Crow and the way black people were treated. He started recording in the late 1920s, and eventually came to the attention of Roosevelt, and was the first black performer to make a command performance at the White House in 1941. His career took a downturn and never fully recovered when he was black listed during the 1950 Communist Scare and Committees.

Despite a significant portion of his body of work coming after the 1930s, and a lot of his coming in the 1940s, most of the songs here seem to be early versions. Many also are poorly recorded with plenty of hiss and pop. Despite that this is an excellent collection of early protest songs.

Jimmy Yancey
Jimmy Yancey was one of the early Boogie Woogie pianists, born in the 1890s (the exact year is in dispute), he began playing early. He wasn't recorded until the 1930s however. His left hand style became known as Yancey Bass and was used by other artists later on. He never gained wide spread fame, but his influence on blues and jazz piano is unmistakable. One of his signatures is that he always ends his songs in E-flat. He was also a baseball player for the negro-league during World War One and was a groundskeeper for the White Sox throughout his career and until his death in 1951.

Despite a large part of his solo work never being properly published, a lot of it has been dug up through the years and much of it makes its way onto this compilation. He's given a full disc, given he's one of the only boogie woogie artists represented and that we get a good wide range of his music, it's not much of an issue. If you like a lively piano with a dance rhythm then you'll want to find some Jimmy Yancey to add to your collection.

Next Week:
I'm actually going to over view the entire box set, take a look at the collection as a whole, and give a breakdown of the blues artists (and genres) it covers.