Publisher: Agram Blues Books
Product Details:
- Format: Hardback
- Publication Date: February 2023
- Price: €35 / €40 CD Included
- Publisher: Agram Blues Books
Robert Brown, who called himself Washboard Sam, was the only player of his makeshift instrument to become a star in the blues world. Nevertheless, he is a neglected artist, and many blues lovers still underestimate him. This is mainly due to The Country Blues, published in 1959, in which Samuel B. Charters coined “the Bluebird Beat” as a catch-all term for the content of that label’s blues records. Charters did so because he considered the label’s output to have been “with few exceptions, a stereotyped product” where it was “almost impossible to tell one singer from another.” His exceptions – grudgingly made, one feels – include Washboard Sam (“fairly distinctive”), and Big Bill’s “warmth and personality,” but the Bluebird label had been thoroughly stigmatized and more than sixty years later many people still wrongly consider Bluebird to be synonymous with musical boredom.2
Like Washboard Sam’s original audience, Charters was evaluating him by listening to 78s; there were no LPs of his music in the 1950s, and the CDs which could hold an hour or more of it were far in the future. It is obvious that African Americans in the 1930s and 1940s took a quite different and much more enthusiastic view of Washboard Sam: he made no fewer than 151 recordings, most of them issued, in a little over seven years, between April 1935 and July 1942. (There would be another 36 between 1947 and 1964, but musical fashions had changed, and they are the long tail-end of what had been a highly successful career.)
Booker T. “Bukka” White, whom Sam accompanied on records in 1940, reacted to his music in a way that was no doubt similar to the response of the many people who bought his records or summoned them with a nickel in the jukebox:
Memphis Minnie, Washboard Sam, Tampa Red, Big Bill, they were my favorite ’cause they really would knock the cover off a house. They play in the nightclubs, would play house parties through the day.
This book tries to explore their response in more detail by considering Sam’s original lyrics, his powerful voice, and the tremendous swing that he generated with seven thimbles and a washboard.
AGRAM BLUES ABCD 2029 – THE CHICAGO BLUES OF WASHBOARD SAM
01. C-1059-A Mama Don’t Allow No. 2 Vocalion 03375
02. 100315-1 You Done Tore Your Playhouse Down Bluebird B-6355
03. 100940-1 Give Me Lovin’ Bluebird B-6518
04. 01884-1 Come On In Bluebird B-6870
05. 01885-1 Big Woman Bluebird B-6870
06. 07620-1 Lowland Blues Bluebird B-7096
07. 020146-1 It’s Too Late Now Bluebird B-7664
08. 020148-1 Down At The Old Village Store Bluebird B-7526
09. 020149-1 The Gal I Love Bluebird B-7655
10. 020813-1 I’m Gonna Keep My Hair Parted Bluebird B-7732
11. 030815-1 Walkin’ In My Sleep Bluebird B-7977
12. 034793-1 Booker T Blues Bluebird B-8211
13. 049040-1 She Fooled Me Bluebird B-8450
14. 049042-1 Beale Street Sheik Bluebird B-8500
15. 049344-1 Good Time Tonight Bluebird B-8644
16. 059128-1 Come On Back Bluebird B-8699
17. 064484-1 She Belongs To The Devil Bluebird B-8937
18. 074686-1 I Laid My Cards On The Table Bluebird 34-0710
19. D9VB 388 No. 1 Drunkard RCA Victor 22-0017
20. D9VB 2000 Motherless Child Blues RCA Victor 22-0090
21. D9VB 2001 Gamblin’ Man RCA Victor 22-0090
22. U-7512 Bright Eyes Chess 1545
23. U-7513 Diggin’ My Potatoes Chess 1545
24. I’m Gonna Hit This Old Highway Jefferson unissued
AGRAM 