All 1920s Artists in Chronological Order
A list by 1920s
Collaborators: thao9292
[List124759] | 
+95
From All of Us to All of You!
Here you can see how it went down, who influenced who? way back in those days!
Started: 2008-03-23 -> Now with short(er) intros/wiki biographies -> 2024-04-28 ->
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| 1 |  | 1.Marion Harris | ||
| 1916-
"Marion Harris (1896 - Apr 23, 1944) was an American popular singer, most successful around 1920. She was the first widely known white singer to sing jazz and blues songs. Born Mary Ellen Harrison, probably in Indiana, she first played vaudeville and movie theatres in Chicago around 1914. She was spotted by dancer Vernon Castle, who enabled her entrance into the New York theatre scene where she debuted in a 1915 Irving Berlin revue titled Stop! Look! Listen!. In 1916 she began recording for Victor Records, singing a variety of songs such as "Everybody's Crazy 'Bout the Doggone Blues, But I'm Happy", "After You've Gone", "When I Hear that Jazz Band Play", her biggest success "I Ain't Got Nobody", and "A Good Man Is Hard to Find", later recorded by Bessie Smith. In 1920, after the Victor label would not allow her to record W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues", she joined Columbia Records where she recorded the song successfully. Sometimes billed as "The Queen of the Blues", she tended to record blues- or jazz-flavoured tunes throughout her career. Handy wrote of Harris that "she sang blues so well that people hearing her records sometimes thought that the singer was colored". She herself said: "..you usually do best what comes naturally [and] so I just naturally started singing Southern dialect songs and the modern blues songs.." In 1922 she moved to the Brunswick label. She also continued to appear in Broadway theatres throughout the 1920s. She regularly played the Palace Theatre, appeared in Florenz Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic, and toured the country with vaudeville shows. After a marriage which produced two children, and her subsequent divorce, she returned to the theatre in New York in 1927, and returned to the Victor label to make more recordings. Also that year, she appeared in an eight minute promotional film, Marion Harris, Songbird Of Jazz, and made a flop Hollywood movie, the early musical Devil-May-Care with Ramon Navarro. She then temporarily withdrew from performance, because of an undisclosed illness." | ||||
| 2 | | 2.Vernon Dalhart | ||
| 1917-
"Vernon Dalhart (Apr 6, 1883 – Sep 14, 1948), born Marion Try Slaughter, was a popular American singer and songwriter of the early decades of the 20th century. He is a major influence in the field of country music. Dalhart was born in Jefferson, Texas. He took his stage name from two towns, Vernon and Dalhart in Texas, between which he punched cattle in the 1890s. He saw an advertisement in the local newspaper for singers and applied, and was auditioned by Thomas Alva Edison; he would thereafter make numerous records for Edison Records. From 1916 until 1923, using numerous pseudonyms, he made over 400 recordings of light classical music and early dance band vocals for various record labels. He was already an established singer when he made his first country music recordings which cemented his place in music history Dalhart's 1924 recording of "The Wreck of the Old 97"—a classic American railroad ballad about the September 27, 1903 derailment of Southern Railway Fast Mail train No. 97 near Danville, Virginia—for the Victor Talking Machine Company, became a runaway hit, alerting the national record companies to the existence of a sizable market for country-style vocals. It became the first Southern song to become a national success. The double-sided single eventually sold more than seven million copies, a colossal number for a mid-1920s recording. It was the best-selling single to its time, and was the biggest-selling non-holiday record in the first 70 years of recorded music. Research by Billboard statistician Joel Whitburn determined "The Prisoner's Song" to have been a No. 1 hit for 12 weeks in 1925-26. In 1998, "The Prisoner's Song" was honored with a Grammy Hall of Fame Award and the Recording Industry Association of America named it one of the Songs of the Century." | ||||
| 3 | | 3.Cliff Edwards | ||
| 1919-
"Cliff Edwards (Jun 14, 1895 - Jul 17, 1971), also known as "Ukelele Ike", was an American singer and musician who enjoyed considerable popularity in the 1920s and early 1930s, specializing in jazzy renditions of pop standards and novelty tunes. Clifton A. Edwards was born in Hannibal, Missouri. He left school at age 14 and soon moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he entertained as a singer in saloons. As many places had pianos in bad shape or none at all, Edwards taught himself to play ukulele (then often spelled "ukelele") to serve as his own accompanist (selecting that instrument as it was the cheapest in the music store). He got the nickname "Ukelele Ike" from a club owner who couldn't remember his name... ...Edwards made his first phonograph records in 1919. He recorded early examples of jazz scat singing in 1922. The following year he signed a contract with Pathé Records. He became one of the most popular singers of the decade, and appeared in several Broadway shows. He recorded, in his distinctive style, many of the pop and novelty hits of the day, such as "California Here I Come," "Hard Hearted Hannah," "Yes, Sir, That's My Baby," and "I'll See You in My Dreams." He also recorded a few "off-color" novelty numbers for under-the-counter sales, including "I'm a Bear in a Lady's Boudoir."... ...Edwards was very friendly with MGM's comedy star Buster Keaton, who featured Edwards in three of his films. Keaton. himself a former vaudevillian, enjoyed singing and would harmonize with Edwards between takes. One of these casual jam sessions was captured on film, in Doughboys (1930), in which Buster and Cliff scat-sing their way through "You Never Did That Before"." | ||||
| 4 | | 4.Esther Walker | ||
| 1919-
"Esther Walker (Oct 18, 1894 - Jul 26, 1943) was an American musical comedy performer. She was born Ester Thomas in Louisville, Kentucky on October 18, 1894. Adopting the stage name of Esther Walker, she appeared on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre in a 1919 production of Monte Cristo, Jr., and later that year performed at the 44th Street Theatre in Hello, Alexander. Walker recorded over 32 songs for Victor and Brunswick record labels, during the years 1919-1920 and 1925-1927, including "Sahara (We'll Soon Be Dry Like You)" from Monte Cristo, Jr." | ||||
| 5 | | 5.Mamie Smith | ||
| 1920- "Mamie Smith, 1891-1946, was a versatile performer best remembered for being the first African American to make a blues recording. Born Mamie Robinson in Cincinatti, OH, she began her career in vaudeville and minstrel shows. She moved to New York in 1913 to earn her living in musical theatre. In 1920 she recorded "That Thing Called Love" and "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down. " Based on the success of these she recorded two blues songs, "Crazy Blues" and "It's Right Here For You, If You Don't Get It, 'Tain't No Fault of Mine," the first blues recordings by an African American singer. The record was a gigantic hit, selling over 1,000,000 copies in a year, opening up the up till then underrecognized black audience for records." | ||||
| 6 | | 6.Alberta Hunter | ||
| 1921-
"Alberta Hunter (Apr 1, 1895 - Oct 17, 1984), was a celebrated African-American jazz singer, songwriter and nurse. Born in Memphis, she left home while still in her early teens and settled in Chicago. There, she peeled potatoes by day and hounded club owners by night, determined to land a singing job. Her persistence paid off, and Alberta began a climb through some of the city's lowest dives to a headlining job at its most elegant night spot, the Dreamland Café. Her career flourished as both singer and writer (her songs include the memorable double-entendre number "(My Man is Such a) Handy Man" in the 1920s and 1930s, and she appeared in clubs and on stage in musicals in both New York and London." | ||||
| 7 | | 7.Ethel Waters | ||
| 1921-
"Ethel Waters (Oct 31, 1896 – Sep 1, 1977) was an African-American blues and jazz vocalist and actor. ...Waters was very talented and had many achievements. After her start in Baltimore, she toured honky tonks in the South. As she described it later, "I used to work from nine until unconscious." Despite her early success, Waters fell on hard times and joined a carnival which traveled in freight cars to Chicago, Illinois. She enjoyed her time with the carnival, and recalled, "The roustabouts and the concessionaires were the kind of people I'd grown up with, rough, tough, full of larceny towards strangers, but sentimental, and loyal to their friends and co-workers." She did not last long with them, though, and soon headed south to Atlanta, Georgia. There, she worked in the same club with Bessie Smith. Smith demanded that she not compete in singing the blues opposite her, and Waters conceded to the older woman and instead sang ballads and popular songs and danced. ...In 1921 Waters became the fifth black woman to make a record. She later joined Black Swan Records, where Fletcher Henderson was her accompanist. Waters later commented that Henderson tended to perform in a more classical style than she would prefer, often lacking "the damn-it-to-hell bass". According to Waters, she influenced Henderson to practice in a "real jazz" style. She first recorded for Columbia Records in 1925; this recording was given a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1998. Soon after, Waters started working with Pearl Wright, and together they toured in the South. In 1924 Waters played at the Plantation Club on Broadway. She also toured with the Black Swan Dance Masters. With Earl Dancer, she joined what was called the "white time" Keith Circuit. They received rave reviews in Chicago, and earned the unheard-of salary of US$1,250 in 1928. In 1929, Harry Akst helped Wright and Waters compose a version of "Am I Blue?", her signature tune." | ||||
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| 8 | | 8.Vaughn De Leath | ||
| 1922-
"Vaughn De Leath (1894 - 1943) was a famous female radio jazz singer who gained popularity in the 1920s and became known as "The Original Radio Girl" and "First Lady of Radio". She was also one of the early crooners. One of her songs was "Are You Lonesome Tonight?", recorded in 1927 and later recorded by Elvis Presley in 1960. Although popular in the 1920s, De Leath is little known today. She was born as Leonore Vonderlieth in the midwestern town of Mt. Pulaski, Illinois in 1894. Her parents were George and Catherine. At age 12, she moved to Los Angeles with her mother and sister, where she finished high school and studied music. While at Mills College, she began writing her own songs, but later dropped out to pursue a singing career. Later she changed her name to Vaughn De Leath. De Leath's vocals ranged from soprano to deep contralto and easily adapted to the Jazz and radio age in the 1920s. Her first break was in January of 1920 when the inventor Lee DeForest brought her to his studio in New York City's World Tower. Vaughn De Leath sang "Swanee River", in a cramped room, and most of her listeners were only equipped with crystal radio. This was said to be the first live singing broadcast, although some modern historians now question this. By 1921, in the formative years of commercial radio, she began singing at WABC (AM)WJZ, then in Newark NJ, which was later known as WABC in New York City. She had also performed on the New York stage in the early to mid 1920s, but radio became her first love, and she made a name for herself as a radio entertainer. In 1923, she became one of the first female executives to run a radio station, WDT in New York City, where she also performed. In 1922 she had begun recording on different labels, including Edison Records. In 1928, she appeared on an experimental television broadcast and later became a special guest for the debut broadcast of Voice of Firestone Radio Hour." | ||||
| 9 | | 9.Bascom Lamar Lunsford | ||
| 10 | | 10.Harry Reser | ||
| 1922-
"Harry F. Reser (17 Jan 1896 – 27 Sep 1965) was an American banjo player and bandleader. Born in Piqua, Ohio, Reser was best known as the leader of The Clicquot Club Eskimos. Reser was regarded by some as the best banjoist of the 1920s. He played with midwestern dance bands, relocating to Buffalo, New York in 1920. Arriving in Manhattan the following year, he became an in-demand session musician during the early 1920s. In 1925, he found fame as the director for NBC's Clicquot Club Eskimo Orchestra, continuing with that weekly half-hour until 1935. At the same time, he also led other bands using pseudonyms. "Harry Reser and His Six Jumping Jacks," with vocals by Tom Stacks, were the zany forerunners to comedy bands like Spike Jones and His City Slickers." | ||||
| 11 | | 11.Eck Robertson | ||
| 1922-
"Alexander "Eck" Robertson (Nov 20, 1887 Delaney, Arkansas - Feb 15, 1975 Borger, Texas) was an American fiddle player. On Jun 30, 1922, he became the first country musician to be recorded when he performed 8 tracks for the Victor Talking Machine Company in New York City. His rendition of "Sally Gooden" showcased his ability to interpret one melody with several variations. In 1923, it was released along with a duet of Robertson and fiddler Henry C. Gilliland playing "Arkansas Traveler"." | ||||
| 12 | | 12.Louis Armstrong | ||
| 1923-
"Louis Armstrong (Aug 4, 1901 – Jul 6, 1971), nicknamed Satchmo and Pops, was an American jazz musician. Armstrong was a charismatic, innovative performer whose inspired, improvised soloing was the main influence for a fundamental change in jazz, shifting its focus from collective melodic playing, often arranged in one way or another, to the solo player and improvised soloing. One of the most famous jazz musicians of the 20th century, he first achieved fame as a cornet player, later on switching to trumpet, but toward the end of his career he was best known as a vocalist and became one of the most influential jazz singers." | ||||
| 13 | | 13.Ida Cox | ||
| 1923-
"Ida Cox (25 Feb 1896 – 10 Nov 1967) was an African American singer and vaudeville performer, best known for her blues performances and recordings. By 1920, she was appearing as a headline act at the 81 Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia; another headliner at that time was Jelly Roll Morton. After the success of Mamie Smith's pioneering 1920 recording of "Crazy Blues", record labels realized there was a demand for recordings of race music. The classic female blues era had begun, and would extend through the 1920. From 1923 through to 1929, Cox made numerous recordings for Paramount Records, and headlined touring companies, sometimes billed as the "Sepia Mae West", continuing into the 1930s. During the 1920s, she also managed Ida Cox and Her Raisin' Cain Company, her own vaudeville troupe." | ||||
| 14 | | 14.Jelly Roll Morton | ||
| 1923-
"Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton (Oct 20, 1890 - Jul 10, 1941) was an American virtuoso pianist, a bandleader, and a composer who some call the first true composer of jazz music. Morton was a colorful character who liked to generate publicity for himself by bragging. His business card referred to him as the "Originator of Jazz". New Orleans" | ||||
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| 15 | | 15.Ma Rainey | ||
| 1923-
"Gertrude Pridgett Rainey, better known as Ma Rainey (Apr 26, 1886 – Dec 22, 1939), was one of the earliest known professional blues singers and one of the first generation of such singers to record. She was billed as The Mother of the Blues. She did much to develop and popularize the form and was an important influence on younger blues women, such as Bessie Smith, and their careers... ...Ma Rainey was already a veteran performer with decades of touring with African-American shows in the U.S. Southern States when she made her first recordings in 1923. Rainey signed with Paramount Records and, between 1923 and 1928, she recorded 100 songs, sometimes accompanied such jazz notables as Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory, Fletcher Henderson, and others. Rainey was extremely popular among southern blacks in the 1920s, but the Great Depression and changing tastes ended her career by 1933, when she retired." | ||||
| 16 | | 16.Bessie Smith | ||
| 1923-
"Bessie Smith (July, 1892 or Apr, 1894 – Sep 26, 1937) was an American blues singer. The most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and '30s. Smith is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era, and along with Louis Armstrong, a major influence on subsequent jazz vocalists." | ||||
| 17 | | 17.Clara Smith | ||
| 1923-
"Clara Smith (1894 - 2 Feb 1935) was a popular blues singer. She was billed as the "Queen of the Moaners", although Smith actually had a lighter and sweeter voice than her contemporaries and main competitors Smith was born in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. In her youth she worked on African American theater circuits and tent shows. By the late 1910s she was appearing as a headliner at the Lyric Theater in New Orleans, Louisiana and on the T.O.B.A. circuit. In 1923 she settled in New York, appearing at cabarets and speakeasies there; that same year she made the first of her commercially successful series of gramophone recordings for Columbia Records, for whom she would continue recording through to 1932. She cut 122 songs often with the backing of top musicians (especially after 1925) including Louis Armstrong, Charlie Green, Joe Smith, Freddy Jenkins and James P. Johnson (in 1929). Plus she recorded two vocal duets with Bessie Smith, and four with Lonnie Johnson. The comparisons with near namesake Bessie Smith were inevitable. Clara Smith was on the whole less fortunate than Bessie in her accompanists, and her voice was less imposing but, to some tastes, prettier, and many of her songs were interesting. In 1933 she moved to Detroit, Michigan and worked at theaters there until her hospitalization in early 1935 for heart disease, of which she died." | ||||
| 18 | | 18.Sippie Wallace | ||
| 1923- "Sippie Wallace (Nov 1, 1898 - Nov 1, 1986) was an American Texas-styled blues singer, and songwriter. Although her recording career stretched throughout most of the '20s, her best work was done from 1923 to 1927 when she was recording with Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds, Sidney Bechet, King Oliver, and Clarence Williams. She recorded over 40 songs for Okeh Records, many written by herself or her brothers, George and Hersal Thomas. Among the top female blues vocalists of her era, Wallace ranked with Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, Alberta Hunter, and Bessie Smith. She was born in the Delta lowlands of Jefferson County, Arkansas in 1898 and raised in Houston, one of 13 children. In her youth Wallace sang and played the piano in Shiloh Baptist Church, where her father was a deacon, but in the evenings the children took to sneaking out to tent shows. By her mid-teens, they were playing in those tent shows. By performing in the various Texas shows, she built a solid following as a spirited blues singer. She came from a musical family: her brother George Washington Thomas became a notable pianist, bandleader, composer, and music publisher; a brother Hersal Thomas, was a pianist and composer; her niece Hociel Thomas (George's daughter) was a pianist and composer. In 1915 Wallace moved New Orleans, Louisiana with brother Hersal and marrying Frank Seals at the age of sixteen; two years later after the divorce, she lives with Matt Wallace, and changed her name, but couldn't married him until 1923. After following her brothers to Chicago, Illinois in 1923, Wallace worked her way into the city's bustling jazz scene. Her reputation led to a recording contract with Okeh Records in 1923. Wallace's first recorded songs, "Shorty George" and "Up the Country Blues," the former written with her brother George, sold well enough to make Wallace a blues star in the early '20s. Other successful recordings followed, including "Special Delivery Blues" (with Louis Armstrong), "Bedroom Blues" (written by George and Hersal Thomas), and "I'm a Mighty Tight Woman." Her younger brother Hersal died of food poisoning in 1926 at age of nineteen. Wallace moved to Detroit in 1929, her husband Matt died in 1936 and her brother George Thomas died one year later." | ||||
| 19 | | 19.Sylvester Weaver | ||
| 1923-
Sylvester Weaver (Jul 25, 1897 – Apr 4, 1960) was an American blues guitar player and pioneer of country blues. On October 23, 1923, he recorded in New York City with the blues singer Sara Martin "Longing for Daddy Blues" / "I've Got to Go" and "Leave My Daddy Behind" and two weeks later as a soloist "Guitar Blues" / "Guitar Rag". Both recordings were released on OKeh Records. These recordings are the very first country-blues recordings and the first known recorded songs using the slide guitar style. "Guitar Rag" (played on a Guitjo) became a blues classic and was covered in the 1930s by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys as "Steel Guitar Rag" and became a country music standard too. Weaver recorded until 1927, sometimes accompanied by Sara Martin, about 50 additional songs. On some recordings from 1927 he was accompanied by Walter Beasley and the singer Helen Humes. Weaver often used the bottleneck-style method, playing his guitar with a knife. His recordings were quite successful but in 1927 he retired and went back to Louisville until his death in 1960. | ||||
| 20 | | 20.Duke Ellington | ||
| 1924-
"Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (Apr 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American composer, pianist, and band leader who became one of the most influential figures in jazz, if not in all American music. As a composer and a band leader, Ellington's reputation has increased since his death, with thematic repackagings of his signature music often becoming best-sellers. Posthumous recognition of his work include a special award citation from the Pulitzer Prize Board. Ellington called his style and sound "American Music" rather than jazz, and liked to describe those who impressed him as "beyond category", including many of the musicians who served with his orchestra, some of whom were themselves considered among the giants of jazz and remained with Ellington's orchestra for decades." | ||||
| 21 | | 21.Papa Charlie Jackson | ||
| 1924-
"Papa Charlie Jackson (c.1885 — 1938) was an early American bluesman and songster. He played a hybrid guitar banjo and ukulele, his recording career beginning in 1924. Much of his life remains a mystery, but it is probable that he was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and died in Chicago, Illinois in 1938. Born William Henry Jackson, he originally performed in minstrel and medicine shows. Jackson was playing all around Chicago in the early 1920s. He was noted for busking at the famous Chicago Maxwell Street Market. He soon recorded "Papa's Lawdy Lawdy Blues" and "Airy Man Blues", the first commercially successful, self-accompanied recordings, by a male singer of the blues. One of his following tracks, "Salty Dog Blues", became his most famous song. He soon began cutting records with Ida Cox, Hattie McDaniel and Ma Rainey. The late 1920s saw Jackson reach the pinnacle of his career, recording "Papa Charlie and Blind Blake Talk About It" (a two-part song) with Blind Blake. A few more recordings followed before the 1930s, but then Jackson left Paramount Records and moved to Okeh Records, recording with Big Bill Broonzy. His importance in the history of the blues has been lessened by several factors. His flair for unique and irreverent material, similar to that of Charley Patton, along with his fast upbeat tempo which made his records sell, did not fit into the traditional blues category. His records were of poor quality since about half of his 66 sides were recorded with an acoustic horn, not a microphone. The rest contained a lot of "hiss" since Paramount used inferior quality materials in their pressing of records. Also, his banjo was not viewed as a traditional blues instrument. However, no one has duplicated his unique performances." | ||||
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| 22 | | 22.Uncle Dave Macon | ||
| 1924-
"Uncle Dave Macon (Oct 7, 1870 - Mar 22, 1952), also known as "The Dixie Dewdrop", was an American banjo player, singer, songwriter and comedian known for his chin whiskers, plug hat, gold teeth and gates-ajar collar. ...Though he had performed as an amateur for years, and was well known for his showmanship, Macon's first professional performance came in 1918. At age fifty, he joined a vaudeville touring company, putting on a comedy show and playing old-time music accompanying himself on banjo. During a performance at a Nashville barber shop, he was spotted by a talent scout from Loew's Vaudeville circuit. In 1923 he began a tour in the eastern part of the states together with fiddler Sid Harkreader. His popularity increased and he made his first recordings for Vocalion in July 1924. Between 1924 and 1938 he recorded more than 180 songs on different labels like Brunswick, Bluebird and Gennett. He formed the Fruit Jar Drinkers and performed over the years with Sam McGee, Kirk McGee, Delmore Brothers, Roy Acuff and Bill Monroe. He was often accompanied by his son Dorris who played the guitar. Macon began to appear on WSM Grand Ole Opry in 1925." | ||||
| 23 | | 23.Emmett Miller | ||
| 1924-
"Emmett Miller (1900-1962) was a minstrel show singer with an extraordinary yodel-like falsetto voice. Born in Macon, Georgia he started his career early touring widely with various minstrel shows, however, today he is only remembered for his recordings. Miller made several recordings for Okeh Records between 1924 and 1929. He had the good fortune to have top-notch Jazz musicians assigned to his Okeh sessions in the late 1920s. His final recording session was for Bluebird Records in 1936." | ||||
| 24 | | 24.Ramón Montoya | ||
| 1924-
"Ramón Montoya (Nov 2, 1880, Madrid, Spain - 1949), Flamenco composer. Born into a family of Gitano (Romani) cattle traders, Ramón Montoya used earnings from working in the trade to buy his first guitar. He began playing in the cafés de cante before he was twenty years of age. He formed a partnership with the flamenco cantaor (singer) Chacón that lasted for more than a decade. These two were largely responsible for establishing the form of the various traditional flamenco cantes that are recognized today." | ||||
| 25 | | 25.Riley Puckett | ||
| 1924-
"George Riley Puckett (May 7, 1894 Alpharetta, Georgia, USA - Jul 13, 1946) was a country music pioneer mostly known for being a member of Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers. An accident during infancy left him blind. He had his formal education at the Georgia School for the Blind in Macon, Georgia. He sang and played guitar and banjo. He was first heard on the radio as a part of Clayton McMichen's Hometown Band. His vocalizing was a regular feature at the Georgia Old-Time Fiddlers' Conventions. Newspaper reporters covering these events referred to him as the "Bald Mountain Caruso" in admiration of his renditions of such songs as "When You and I Were Young, Maggie" and "Sleep, Baby, Sleep." For several years Puckett played and sang with the Home Town Boys, a string-band ensemble composed of Atlanta-area musicians. They made their debut on Atlanta's six-month-old radio station, WSB, on September 18, 1922. Until going off the air in 1926, they remained one of the station's most popular acts. In 1924 Puckett accompanied fiddler Gid Tanner to New York, where, on March 7 and 8, they recorded twelve songs and tunes for the Columbia Phonograph Company. They were the first country-music artists to record for that firm. These recording sessions yielded vocal selections by Puckett and fiddle tunes by Tanner. One of Puckett's songs, "Rock All Our Babies to Sleep," established him as probably the first country-music artist to yodel on records. Yodeling was employed as an embellishment by numerous country music vocalists well into the 1940s." | ||||
| 26 | | 26.Ernest Stoneman | ||
| 1924-
"Ernest Van "Pop" Stoneman (May 25, 1893 – Jun 14, 1968) ranked among the prominent recording artists of country music's first commercial decade. Born in Monarat (Iron Ridge), Carroll County, Virginia, near what would later become Galax, Stoneman was left motherless at age three and was raised by his father and three musically inclined cousins, who taught him the instrumental and vocal traditions of Blue Ridge mountain culture. He became a singer and songwriter, and proficient musician on the guitar, autoharp, harmonica, clawhammer banjo, and jew's harp." | ||||
| 27 | | 27.Blanche Calloway | ||
| 1925- "Blanche Calloway (Feb 9, 1902 - Dec 16, 1978) was a Jazz singer, bandleader, and composer from Baltimore, Maryland. She is not as well known as her younger brother Cab Calloway, but she may have been the first woman to lead an all male orchestra. Cab Calloway often credited her with being the reason he got into show business. Her first high-profile gigs were at the lively Ciro Club in New York City in the mid-'20s, leading to widespread touring with various revues and territorial bands. Some of these groups would establish residencies at Chicago clubs, giving the singer something of a foothold in the Windy City jazz scene. Of even more importance was a long stint at the Pearl Theatre in Philadelphia in 1931, where she was the front-line singer for the Andy Kirk band. The next challenge was leading a group on her own, a process which continued through the fall of 1938. Although there were periods of success, the final chapter in her story as a bandleader would have to be numbered 11, literally. Official records from the year indicate that she filed for bankruptcy under her married name of Blanche Calloway Pinder, a move that made the dismantling of her musical group a necessity. In the '40s and '50s she continued working as a solo artist, and in the '60s she became the programming director of a radio station in Florida. She returned to her native Baltimore and retired the following decade." | ||||
| 28 | | 28.Kelly Harrell | ||
| 1925-
"Kelly Harrell (Sep 13, 1889 - Jul 9, 1942) was a country music singer in the 1920s. He recorded more than a dozen songs for OKeh Records and Victor Records and wrote songs which were recorded by other artists, including Jimmie Rodgers and Ernest Stoneman, in his own lifetime. In early 1925, when Harrell was already 35 years old, he went to New York and recorded four tracks for Victor Records, among them "New River Train" (made famous by Bill Monroe and "The Roving Gambler". He recorded for OKeh later that year, including a version of "The Wreck of the Old 97" and "I Was Born 10,000 Year Ago" (the latter often known as "The Bragging Song" and recorded by Elvis Presley, The New Christy Minstrels, Odetta and several others). He made more records for Victor in 1925, 1926, 1927 and 1929. "The Butcher's Boy" and "I Wish I Was Single Again" on Victor 19563 on 1/7/25."The Dying Hobo" (1926) is a variant of the traditional English folksong George Collins. "My Name Is John Johannah" was recorded in 1927 at RCA Victor's studios in Camden, NJ, with Posey Rorer on fiddle, Alfred Steagal on guitar, and R.D. Hundley on banjo. Variations of this song ("Maggie Walker Blues", "State of Arkansas", "For Dave Glover") were performed and recorded by Bob Dylan. After 1929, his recording career came to a halt, owing to his inability to play an instrument—Harrell always required backing by other musicians, and the Great Depression had so damaged the recording business that Victor was unwilling to pay the cost of hiring backup musicians. | ||||
| 29 | | 29.Bertha "Chippie" Hill | ||
| 1925-
"Bertha "Chippie" Hill (Mar 15, 1905 – May 7, 1950), was an American blues and vaudeville singer and dancer, best known for her recordings with Louis Armstrong. Hill was born in Charleston, South Carolina, one of sixteen children, but in 1915 the family moved to New York. She began her career as a dancer in Harlem, and by 1919 was working as a dancer with Ethel Waters. At age 14, during a stint at Leroy's, a noted New York nightclub, Hill was nicknamed "Chippie" because of her young age. She also performed with Ma Rainey as part of the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, before establishing her own song and dance act and touring on the TOBA circuit in the early 1920s. She settled in Chicago in about 1925, and worked at various venues with King Oliver's Jazz Band. She first recorded in November 1925 for Okeh Records, backed by cornet play Louis Armstrong and pianist Richard M. Jones on songs such as "Pratt City Blues","Low Land Blues", and "Kid Man Blues" that year, and on "Georgia Man" and "Trouble in Mind" with the same musicians in 1926. Recording in 1927, with Lonnie Johnson vocal duet, "Hard Times Blues", "Weary Money Blues", "Tell Me Why", and "Speedway Blues". In 1928, some tracks with Tampa Red vocal duet, "Hard Times Blues", "Christmas Man Blues", and in 1929 with "Scrapper" Blackwell & The Two Roys, Leroy Carr on piano, song "Non-skid Tread". Bertha "Chippie" Hill recorded 23 titles during 1925 to 1929. In the 1930s she retired from singing to raise her children." | ||||
| 30 | | 30.Sol Hoopii | ||
| 1925-
"Sol Hoopii (1902 - Nov 16, 1953) was perhaps the most famous Hawaiian steel guitarist of the 20th century. The youngest of twenty-one children from Honolulu, Hawaii, he came to the mainland in 1919 as a stowaway in an ocean liner to San Francisco, California and later began recording in Los Angeles. Sol Hoopii's Novelty Trio often mixed jazz and blues with traditional Hawaiian music. The distinctively rhythmic slide techniques he invented later influenced country music steel guitarists." | ||||
| 31 | | 31.Blind Lemon Jefferson | ||
| 1925-
""Blind" Lemon Jefferson (Oct 26, 1894 – Dec 1929) was an influential blues singer and guitarist from Texas. He was one of the most popular blues singers of the 1920s. Despite his commercial success, Jefferson stands alone in a category of his own. His musical style was extremely intense and individualistic, bearing little resemblance to the typical Texas blues style of the 1930s. Jefferson's singing and self-accompaniment seemed only loosely connected, and he appeared to improvise his accompaniment. His irregular vocal style and his freely structured field holler rhythms made the tension between his guitar and his voice wildly unpredictable. He was not influential on younger blues singers as they did not seek to imitate him as they did other commercially successful artists. On the other hand, the white North Carolina performer Arthel "Doc" Watson credited listening to Jefferson's recordings as his first exposure to the blues, which would powerfully influence his own style." | ||||
| 32 | | 32.Lonnie Johnson | ||
| 1925-
"Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson (Feb 8, 1899 – Jun 16, 1970) was an American blues and jazz singer/guitarist and songwriter who pioneered the role of jazz guitar and is recognized as the first to play single-string guitar solos... ...In 1925, Johnson entered and won a blues contest at the Booker T. Washington Theatre in St. Louis, the prize being a recording contract with Okeh Records. To his regret, he was then tagged as a blues artist, and later found it difficult to be regarded as anything else. He later said, "I guess I would have done anything to get recorded - it just happened to be a blues contest, so I sang the blues." Between 1925 and 1932 he made about 130 recordings for the Okeh label. He was called to New York to record with the leading blues singers of the day including Victoria Spivey and country blues singer Alger "Texas" Alexander. He also toured with Bessie Smith's T.O.B.A. show. In 1927, Johnson recorded in Chicago as a guest artist with Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, paired with banjoist Johnny St. Cyr. In 1928 he recorded with Duke Ellington, as well as with a group, The Chocolate Dandies. He pioneered the guitar solo on the 1927 track "6/88 Glide" and many of his early recordings showed him playing 12-string guitar solos in a style that influenced such future jazz guitarists as Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt, and gave the instrument new meaning as a jazz voice. He excelled in purely instrumental pieces, some of which he recorded with the white jazz guitarist Eddie Lang, whom he teamed up with in 1929. These recordings were among the first in history to feature black and white musicians performing together, but Lang was credited as Blind Willie Dunn to disguise the fact. " | ||||
| 33 | | 33.Charlie Poole | ||
| 1925-
"Charlie Poole (Mar 22, 1892 - May 21, 1931) was an American banjo player. Born in Spray (now part of Eden), Rockingham County, in the northern part of North Carolina, near the Virginia border. He spent much of his adult life working in textile mills. He learned banjo as a youth and also played baseball. His three-fingered playing technique was the result of a baseball accident. He had made a bet that he could catch a baseball without a glove but closed his hand too soon. The ball broke his thumb and resulted in a permanent arch in his right hand. In addition to being a talented musician, Poole was a fast living and hard drinking man. His life ended after a 13-week drinking bender." | ||||
| 34 | 34.Fiddlin' Doc Roberts | |||
| 1925-
"Fiddlin' Doc Roberts (Apr 26, 1897 - Aug 4, 1978) was an American Kentucky-style old-time fiddler. Dock Philipine Roberts was born and raised on a farm in Madison County, Kentucky and learned to play the fiddle at an early age with some help from his older brother Liebert. Doc's and Liebert's musical mentor was the African-American fiddler Owen Walker. In 1925, a talent scout, Dennis Taylor, recruited Roberts along with Welby Toomey and Edgar Boaz as old time recording artists for Gennett Records. In early 1927, Roberts recorded with the string band, the "Booker Family". Together with Dick Parman and Ted Chestnut, he formed the Kentucky Thorobreds. They recorded in April 1927 for the Paramount Records label. In the fall of 1927, he formed a duo with Asa Martin called Martin & Roberts. They made their recording debut in May 1928 for the Gennett label. Between 1927-1934, the duo performed at fiddler's conventions, in schoolhouses, on vaudeville stages, and on radio (WHAS in Louisville, Kentucky). Martin & Roberts recorded altogether more than 200 sides on 11 different labels. Later on, with the addition of Doc Roberts' son James, the Fiddlin' Doc Roberts Trio was formed. In 1928, Roberts was hired, through the agency of Bradley Kincaid, by the National Barn Dance radio show in Chicago. He was paid $50 a week. After only two weeks he quit the show and moved back to Kentucky. The reason was that he was unable to sleep due to the noise of the big city. The Doc Roberts Trio lasted until 1934 when Roberts retired as a recording artist" | ||||
| 35 | | 35.Carl T. Sprague | ||
| 1925-
"Carl T. "Doc" Sprague (May 10, 1895 - Feb 21, 1979) was an American country musician. He was often dubbed "The Original Singing Cowboy". Sprague was one of the first country musicians on record, recording in the early 1920s. Sprague grew up on a farm near Houston, Texas and learned traditional cowboy songs as a child. During his college years at Texas A&M, he played in a band and later on, worked as an athletic trainer. He also found time to conduct a weekly radio program on campus. He graduated from college in 1922. Sprague served in World War I, and was offered occasional work performing on radio. He received a recording contract by Victor in 1925. In August, the same year, he went to Camden, New Jersey to record his first ten songs. His debut sides were "When the Work's All Done This Fall" and "Bad Companions"; the former would go on to sell over 900,000 copies. His recording of "The Dying Cowboy" became a hit in 1926. Other successful recordings was "The Boston Burglar" and "The Two Soldiers". He recorded with Victor until 1929, releasing 33 songs." | ||||
| 36 | | 36.Blind Blake | ||
| 1926-
"Blind" Blake (born Arthur Blake, 1893, Jacksonville, Florida - 1933) was an influential blues singer and guitarist. He is often called "The King Of Ragtime Guitar". There is only one photograph of him in existence. He recorded about 80 tracks for Paramount Records in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He was one of the most accomplished guitarists of his genre with a surprisingly diverse range of material. His complex and intricate fingerpicking has inspired Reverend Gary Davis, Jorma Kaukonen, Ry Cooder, Ralph Mctell and many others. He is most known for his distinct guitar sound that was comparable in sound and style to a ragtime piano." | ||||
| 37 | | 37.Lucille Bogan | ||
| 1926-
"Lucille Bogan (Apr 1, 1897 - Aug 10, 1948) was an American blues singer, among the first to be recorded. She also recorded under the pseudonym Bessie Jackson. Bogan sang straight-talking blues about drinking ("Sloppy Drunk Blues"), prostitution ("Tricks Ain't Walking No More"), gambling, lesbianism and other facets of what her generation called 'the life'. The jazz critic and sexologist Ernest Borneman grouped her with Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith in the "the big three of the blues"." | ||||
| 38 | | 38.Burnett and Rutherford | ||
| 1926-
"Richard Burnett (vocals, guitar, banjo) and Leonard Rutherford (fiddle) were a well-known string band duo in south central Kentucky in the 1920s and 1930s, and they stayed active as performers into the 1950s. They are best known for the archaic-sounding ballad "Willie Moore," which was included on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music." | ||||
| 39 | | 39.Rev. Edward W. Clayborn | ||
| 1926-
"Reverend Edward W. Clayborn was an American musician, known as the "Guitar Evangelist". He sang a form of blues gospel similar to Blind Willie Johnson. Clayborn recorded forty songs for Vocalion between 1926 and 1930. In The Ganymede Takeover, the San Franciscan author Philip K. Dick, a record enthusiast, has a character state that "True Religion", sung by Clayborn was one of the first jazz recordings." | ||||
| 40 | | 40.Ruth Etting | ||
| 1926-
"Ruth Etting (Nov 23, 1896 – Sep 24, 1978) was an American singing star of the 1930s, who had over sixty hit recordings. Born in David City, Nebraska, she left home at age seventeen to attend art school in Chicago. Her job designing costumes at the Marigold Gardens nightclub led to employment singing and dancing in the chorus there. She became a featured vocalist at the nightclub and married gangster Martin "Moe the Gimp" Snyder on July 12, 1922. He managed her career, booking radio appearances, and eventually had her signed to an exclusive recording contract with Columbia Records." Her signature tunes were "Shine On Harvest Moon", "Ten Cents a Dance" and "Love Me or Leave Me", and her other popular recordings included "Button Up Your Overcoat", "Mean to Me", "Exactly like you", and "Shaking the Blues Away"." | ||||
| 41 | | 41.Annette Hanshaw | ||
| 1926-
"Annette Hanshaw (Oct 18, 1901 - Mar 13, 1985) was one of the first great female jazz singers. In the late 1920s she ranked alongside Ethel Waters, Bessie Smith and the Boswell Sisters. Her singing style was relaxed and suited the new jazz-influenced pop music of the late 1920s. Although she had a low opinion of her own singing, she continues to have fans because of how she combined the voice of an ingenue with the spirit of a flapper... ...Between September 1926 and February 1934, she recorded prolifically. From 1926-1928 she recorded for Pathe (her sides were released on both the Pathe and Perfect labels. Starting in June 1928, she recorded for Columbia, most of these were issued on their dime store labels Harmony, Diva, Clarion and Velvet Tone. A handful were also released on their regular price Columbia and OKeh. Although most were released under her own name, she was renamed Gay Ellis (for sentimental numbers) and Dot Dare or Patsy Young (for her Helen Kane impersonations)." | ||||
| 42 | | 42.Clifford Hayes & The Dixieland Jug Blowers | ||
| 1926-
"A shadowy figure in jazz and blues history, Clifford Hayes was a violinist, but was more significant as a leader of recording sessions. He recorded with Sara Martin (1924), and often teamed up with banjoist Cal Smith in early jug bands including the Old Southern Jug Band, Clifford's Louisville Jug Band, the well-known Dixieland Jug Blowers (1926-27), and Hayes' Louisville Stompers (1927-29). One of the Dixieland Jug Blowers' sessions featured the great clarinetist Johnny Dodds, while pianist Earl Hines was a surprise star with the otherwise primitive Louisville Stompers (a jug-less group with a front line of Hayes' violin and Hense Grundy's trombone). Clifford Hayes' last recordings were in 1931, and all of his sessions (plus those of some other jug bands) are available on four RST CDs." "Clifford Hayes came from a musical family that performed together as a string band in Barren County, Kentucky, before moving to Louisville's hot music scene around 1912, when Clifford was 17. Local jug master Earl McDonald hired the youth to play fiddle with his Louisville Jug Band, and soon the group was playing major engagements in New York City and Chicago. His glimpse of the big time and exposure to the exploding jazz scene fired Hayes's fantasies of fame and fortune far beyond his role as country fiddler in a jug band. Tall, handsome, and charming, Hayes became a notorious swindler, which led to his breakup with McDonald until their reunion with the Dixieland Jug Blowers, a supergroup formed by record-company suits." | ||||
| 43 | | 43.Peg Leg Howell | ||
| 1926-
"Joshua Barnes Howell, known as Peg Leg Howell (Mar 5, 1888 - Aug 11, 1966), was an African American blues singer and guitarist, who connected early country blues and the later 12-bar style. He had the strong delivery and ear-catching repertoire of the professional street-singer. He was born on a farm in Eatonton, Georgia, and taught himself guitar at the age of 21. Over time he became skilled in finger picking and slide guitar techniques. He continued working on the farm until he was shot in a fight, as a result of which he lost his right leg and began working full-time as a musician. In 1923 he moved to Atlanta, Georgia and began playing on street corners, but also served a period in prison for bootlegging liquor. In 1926, he was heard playing on the streets of Atlanta and was recorded for the first time by Columbia Records. They released "New Prison Blues", written whilst in prison and one of the first country blues to be issued. Over the next three years Columbia recorded him on several occasions, often accompanied by a small group including Henry Williams (guitar) and Eddie Anthony (fiddle). His recorded repertoire covered ballads, ragtime and jazz, as well as blues. Anthony's vigorous dance playing gives us a rare view of the black string-band music that was almost obliterated by the craze for recording blues guitarists." | ||||
| 44 | | 44.Frank Hutchison | ||
| 1926-
"Frank Hutchison (1897–1945) was a blues musician and coal miner. He is also considered to be the first white man to record the blues, as he did on several tracks for Okeh records. He worked as a coal miner in Logan County, West Virginia, United States, both before and after his career as a recording artist. Hutchison participated in medicine shows in the 1920's and recorded for a stretch of only 3 years starting in 1926. These few years however were quite productive with Frank recording over 30 songs, many released on 78rpm by the Okeh record company. Hutchison is considered one of the finest performers of the "white country blues" genre of early folk music. Hutchison is responsible for the bluegrass standard "Train That Carried My Girl From Town," whether it is a composition of his is unclear, but if it is an older tune, it survives only because Hutchison recorded it. Hutchison was one of many recording artists whose recording career was ended by the Great Depression." | ||||
| 45 | | 45.Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon | ||
| 1926-
Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon (Feb 3, 1895 - 1944?) was an African American vaudeville singer, female impersonator, stage designer and comedian, popular in the 1920s and 1930s. He was born in Montgomery, Alabama, orphaned, and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. His nickname of "Half Pint" referred to his 5'2" height. He started in show business around 1910 as a singer in Kansas City, before travelling extensively with medicine shows in Texas, and then touring the eastern seaboard. His feminine voice and outrageous manner, often as a female impersonator, established him as a crowd favorite. By 1917 he had begun working regularly in Atlantic City, New Jersey and in Chicago, Illinois, often with such performers as Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters, whose staging he helped design. In the late 1920s he sang with top jazz bands when they passed through Chicago, working with Bennie Moten, King Oliver and Freddie Keppard among others. He also performed and recorded with the pianists Charles "Cow Cow" Davenport, Tampa Red with his Hokum Boys and Thomas A. Dorsey, recording with the latter pair under the name of The Black Hillbillies. He also recorded with Harlem Hamfats. In the 1930s he was often on radio in the Chicago area, and led his own band, Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon and his Quarts Of Joy. Jaxon appeared with Duke Ellington in a film short called Black and Tan Fantasy (1929). Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" (1931) is based both musically and lyrically on Jaxon's "Willie the Weeper" (1927). His recordings, such as "Fan It" (later recorded by Woody Herman), are mostly filled with bawdy comedy, double entendres and hokum. Blues fans reserve a special place in their hearts for his orgasmic parodies of "How Long How Long Blues" and "It's Tight Like That", louché collaborations with Tampa Red, Georgia Tom and assorted jugbandsmen. | ||||
| 46 | | 46.أم كلثوم [Umm Kulthum] | ||
| 1926-
"Umm Kulthum (Arabic: أم كلثوم; Egyptian Arabic: Om Kalsoum; the name is spelled variously using the Roman alphabet as Om Koultoum, Om Kalthoum, Oum Kalsoum, Oum Kalthum, Omm Kolsoum, Umm Kolthoum, Um Kalthoom, Omme Kolsoum, and others. In Turkish she is known as Ümmü Gülsüm. Born أم كلثوم إبراهيم البلتاجي Umm Kulthum Ebrahim Elbeltagi (Dec 31, 1904 – Feb 3, 1975) was an Egyptian singer, songwriter, and actress. Born in El Senbellawein, she is known as "the Star of the East" (kawkab el-sharq). More than three decades after her death, she is still recognized as one of Egypt's most famous and distinguished singers of the 20th century." | ||||
| 47 | | 47.Sam McGee | ||
| 1926-
"Sam McGee was born 1894, near Franklin Tennessee. He grew up in Franklin with his brother Kirk McGee (born 1898). There Sam learned to pick guitar from local black musicians. The use of alternating bass and playing the melody on the treble strings had more in common with the Blues than local string band playing. Sam and Kirk intertwined with some of the best old time acoustic musicians of the 20th Century, including Uncle Dave Macon (with whom they made their first recordings), the Delmore Brothers, and Fiddlin' Arthur Smith, as well as moving into bluegrass with Bill Monroe. They rode the wave of the first radio and recorded music and the dawn of the Grand Ole Opry to forming the hot string band called the Dixieliners with Fiddlin' Arthur Smith. Besides guitar, Sam played the banjo and the Gibson banjo-guitar. He and Kirk were often billed as comedy acts, with Sam wearing a red wig to become a Toby character developed in minstrel shows. A lot of his songs show his comedic side, but were accompanied with masterful runs and bends on the guitar. By 1932, they appeared with Arthur Smith as the Dixieliners. By the late 30's the Dixieliners dissolved, and the McGees took up their day jobs, still appearing regularly on the Opry in the old-time segment, which was retained into the 60's." | ||||
| 48 | | 48.Gid Tanner and His Skillet-Lickers | ||
| 1926-
"The Skillet Lickers (aka Gid Tanner & His Skillet Lickers) were an old-time band from Georgia, USA. When Gid Tanner teamed up with blind guitarist Riley Puckett and signed to Columbia in 1924, they created the label's earliest so-called "hillbilly" recording. Gid Tanner formed The Skillet Lickers in 1926. the first line-up was Gid Tanner, Riley Puckett, Clayton McMichen and Fate Norris. Between 1926 and 1931 they recorded 88 sides for Columbia. Eighty-two of these were commercially issued. Later members were Lowe Stokes, Bert Layne, Hoke Rice, Arthur Tanner and Hoyt "Slim" Bryant... ...The band recorded in two long recording sessions per year, from 1926 to 1931. Few members of the group were full-time professional musicians." | ||||
| 49 | | 49.Roy Smeck | ||
| 1926-
"Roy Smeck (born Leroy Smeck, 6 Feb 1900 – 5 Apr 1994) was an American musician. His skill on the banjo, guitar, steel guitar, and especially the ukulele earned him the nickname "Wizard of the Strings." Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Smeck started on the vaudeville circuit. His style was influenced by Eddie Lang, Ikey Robinson, banjoist Harry Reser, and steel guitarist Sol Hoopii. Smeck could not sing well, so he developed novelty dances and trick playing to supplement his act... ...Smeck invented and endorsed the Vita-Uke and other stringed instruments marketed by the Harmony Company of Chicago. He made over 500 recordings for various companies, including Edison Records, Victor Talking Machine Company, Columbia Records, Decca Records, Crown Records, RCA Records and others. He also wrote instruction/method books and arrangements for the instruments he played... ...His 1928 recording of Sam Moore's "Laughing Rag", played on the octachorda - an 8 string Hawaiian guitar, is considered a classic of slide guitar by some." | ||||
| 50 | | 50.Victoria Spivey | ||
| 1926-
"Victoria Spivey (15 Oct 1906 - 3 Oct 1976) was an American blues singer and songwriter. She was born Victoria Regina Spivey in Houston, Texas, the daughter of Grant and Addie (Smith) Spivey. Her father was a part-time musician and a flagman for the railroad; her mother was a nurse. Her sisters were Addie "Sweet Peas" Spivey, also a singer and musician, who recorded for several major record labels between 1929 and 1937; and Elton "Za-Zu" Spivey, who also followed a professional singing career. Victoria Spivey's first professional experience was in a family string band led by her father in Houston. She also played on her own at local parties and, in 1918, was hired to accompany films at the Lincoln Theater in Dallas. As a teenager, she worked in local bars, nightclubs, and buffet flats, mostly alone, but occasionally with singer-guitarists like Blind Lemon Jefferson. In 1926, she moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where she was signed by Okeh Records. Her first recording, "Black Snake Blues", did well, and her association with the record label continued. She made numerous Okeh sides in New York until 1929, then switched to the RCA Victor label... ...She recorded many of her own songs, which dwelt on disease, crime and outré sexual images." | ||||
| 51 | | 51.Texas Alexander | ||
| 1927-
"Alger "Texas" Alexander (Sep 12, 1900 - Apr 16, 1954) was a blues singer from Jewett, Texas. A short man with a big, deep voice, Alexander started his career performing on the streets and at local parties and picnics in the Brazos River bottomlands, where he sometimes worked with Blind Lemon Jefferson. In 1927 he began a recording career that continued into the 1930s, recording sides for the Okeh and Vocalion labels in New York, San Antonio, and Fort Worth. In November 1928, Alexander recorded what is believed to be the earliest version of "The House of the Rising Sun." Other songs he recorded include "Mama's Bad Luck Child," "Sittin' on a Log," "Texas Special," "Broken Yo Yo" and "Don't You Wish Your Baby was Built Up Like Mine?". His early records for Okeh are notable not only for the personal originality of his songs, but for the musical motifs against which they are set. Alexander did not play an instrument himself, and over the years he worked with a number of other musicians, including King Oliver, Eddie Lang, Lonnie Johnson, Little Hat Jones, Eddie Lang, the Mississippi Sheiks, and his cousin, Lightnin' Hopkins. He sang in the free rhythm of work songs, such as the migrant cotton pickers he performed for might have sung, which posed a challenge for those accompanying him. Indeed, his singing is difficult to follow, and on his gramophone records his accompanists can often be heard resetting their watches to Alexander Time. His finest collaborator was Lonnie Johnson, who devised free-form guitar melodies in counterpoint to the vocal lines." | ||||
| 52 | | 52.Barbecue Bob | ||
| 1927-
"Robert Hicks, better known as Barbecue Bob (Sep 11, 1902 – Oct 21, 1931), was an early American country blues musician. His nickname came from the fact that he was a cook in a barbecue restaurant. One of the two extant photographs of Bob show him playing his guitar whilst wearing a full length white apron and cook's hat. He was born in Walnut Grove, Georgia. He and his brother, Charlie Hicks, together with Curley Weaver, were taught how to play the guitar by Curley's mother, Savannah "Dip" Weaver. Bob began playing the 6-string guitar but picked up the 12-string guitar after moving to Atlanta, Georgia in 1923-1924. He became one of the prominent performers of the newly developed Atlanta blues style." | ||||
| 53 | | 53.Dock Boggs | ||
| 1927-
"Moran Lee "Dock" Boggs (Feb 7, 1898 – Feb 7, 1971) was an influential old-time singer, songwriter and banjo player. His style of play, as well as his singing, is considered a unique combination of old-time Appalachian mountain music and the blues. Boggs is deemed by contemporary old-time musicians and performers as a seminal figure in old-time music, at least in part because of the appearance of two of his recordings from the 1920s, "Sugar Baby" and "Country Blues", on the influential Anthology of American Folk Music collection. Boggs was born in Norton, Virginia and began working in the coal mines of Appalachia at the age of twelve. At around this time, Boggs became interested in the banjo. As was the case of many musicians and performers of his era, Boggs learned to play the banjo watching and listening to family members and other performers, drawing additional influence from local African-American musicians. While familiar with the older knock-down style of playing, sometimes called clawhammer or frailing, Boggs preferred a three-finger method, mostly of his own development, which involved picking up on the strings of the banjo. This style permitted him to execute crisp single-note runs in a manner similar to that of a fingerstyle guitarist." | ||||
| 54 | | 54.Big Bill Broonzy | ||
| 1927-
"Big Bill Broonzy (26 Jun 1898 – 14 Aug 1958) was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played Country blues to mostly black audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with white audiences. In the 1950s a return to his traditional folk-blues roots made him one of the leading figures of the emerging American folk music revival and an international star. His long and varied career marks him as one of the key figures in the development of blues music in the 20th century. Broonzy copyrighted more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including both adaptations of traditional folk songs and original blues songs. As a blues composer, he was unique in that his compositions reflected the many vantage points of his rural-to-urban experiences... ...Thanks to his association with Jackson, Broonzy was able to get an audition with Paramount executive J. Mayo Williams. His initial test recordings, made with his friend John Thomas on vocals, were rejected, but Broonzy persisted, and his second try, a few months later, was more successful. His first record, "Big Bill's Blues" backed with "House Rent Stomp", credited to "Big Bill and Thomps" (Paramount 12656), was released in 1927. Although the recording was not well received, Paramount retained their new talent and the next few years saw more releases by "Big Bill and Thomps". The records continued to sell poorly. Reviewers considered his style immature and derivative." | ||||
| 55 | | 55.Gus Cannon | ||
| 1927-
"Gus Cannon (12 Sep 1883 — 15 Oct 1979) was an American blues musician who helped to popularize jug bands (such as his own Cannon's Jug Stompers) in the 1920s and 1930s... ...Cannon began recording, as "Banjo Joe", for Paramount Records in 1927. At that session he was backed up by Blind Blake. After the success of the Memphis Jug Band's first records, he quickly assembled a jug band featuring Noah Lewis and Ashley Thompson (later replaced by Elijah Avery). Cannon's Jug Stompers first recorded at the Memphis Auditorium for the Victor label in January 1928. Hosea Woods joined the Jug Stompers in the late 1920s, playing guitar, banjo and kazoo, and also providing some vocals." | ||||
| 56 | | 56.The Carolina Tar Heels | ||
| 1927-
"A trio comprised of Doc Walsh on banjo, Clarence "Tom" Ashley on guitar, and Garley Foster on harmonica and guitar, the Carolina Tar Heels earned notice as one of the best string bands in the Piedmont region during the 1920s. The group was originally formed by Walsh and Gwen Foster, with Garley Foster (no relation) and Clarence Ashley joining the group by 1928. The Carolina Tar Heels recorded for Victor and other labels during the late '20s and early '30s, and also appeared around the region quite a bit before disbanding in 1932." | ||||
| 57 | | 57.The Carter Family | ||
| 1927-
"The Carter Family was a country music group that performed and recorded between 1915 and 1956. Their music had a profound impact on bluegrass, country, southern gospel, pop and rock musicians, as well as on the U.S. folk revival of the 1960s. They were the first vocal group to become country music stars. Such songs as "Wabash Cannonball," "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," "Wildwood Flower" and "Keep On the Sunny Side" became country standards. The original group consisted of Alvin Pleasant "A.P." Delaney Carter, his wife Sara Dougherty Carter, and his sister-in-law Maybelle Addington Carter. Maybelle was married to A.P.'s brother Ezra (Eck) Carter, and was also Sara's first cousin. All three were born and raised in southwestern Virginia where they were immersed in the tight harmonies of mountain gospel music and shape note singing. Maybelle's distinctive and innovative guitar playing style became a hallmark of the group. The Carters got their start on July 31, 1927, when A.P. convinced Sara and Maybelle (pregnant at the time) to make the journey from Maces Springs, Virginia, to Bristol, Tennessee, to audition for record producer Ralph Peer who was seeking new talent for the relatively embryonic recording industry. They received $50 for each song they recorded." | ||||
| 58 | | 58.Sam Collins | ||
| 1927-
"Sam Collins (Aug 11, 1887 - Oct 20, 1949) who was sometimes known as Crying Sam Collins and also, according to one authoritative website, as Jim Foster, Jelly Roll Hunter, Big Boy Woods, Bunny Carter, and Salty Dog Sam, was an early American blues singer and guitarist. He was born in Louisiana, United States, and grew up just across the state border in McComb, Mississippi. By 1924 he was performing in local barrelhouses, often with King Solomon Hill with whom he shared the use of falsetto singing and slide guitar. He was first recorded by Gennett Records, on "Yellow Dog Blues", in 1927, and recorded again in 1931, some of his later recordings appearing under different pseudonyms. His rural bottleneck guitar pieces were among the first to be compiled on LP. His best known recording was "The Jail House Blues"." | ||||
| 59 | | 59.Will Ezell | ||
| 1927-
"Will Ezell was a formidable, albeit little-known purveyor of pre-war barrelhouse piano. Ezell plays a variety of pre-boogie-woogie styles. He accompanies several strong and even lesser-known singers (Marie Bradley, Ora Brown), but the heart of his sets is solo piano tunes, some of which also offer sharp, direct vocals. Ezell was no innovator, but he was consistently able to travel the distance between ragtime and blues with speed and power. Guitarist Roosevelt Graves chips in on several numbers." | ||||
| 60 | | 60.Lillian Glinn | ||
| 1927- "Lillian Glinn was born around 1902 in Hillsboro, Texas and moved to Dallas in her twenties, where she was discovered while singing in a church by Blues singer Hattie Burleson, who encouraged her to pursue a career in music. Dallas entrepreneur R. T. Ashford helped her get a record contract with Columbia, for which she made her first recordings in 1927, recording 22 sides until december 1929. Glinn, who sang in a heavy contralto voice, was often accompanied by banjo, piano, and bass brass instruments. Her songs, which were often labeled "race music," revealed her life experiences in Dallas and the harsh realities of life on the streets. Her lyrics, some of which advised other women how to keep their men and how to handle unreliable lovers, often included strong sexual overtones. In 1928, she cut her best-known record, "Shake It Down," in a New Orleans session. In April 1929 she recorded a session in Atlanta, probably accompanied by a white Jazz band. Later that year she recorded another session in Dallas that included the pop song "I'm Through (Shedding Tears Over You)". After recording for only two years she gave up her "secular" work to return to the church. In the early 1930s, she distanced herself from her former life. She moved to California, where she married the Rev. O.P. Smith and sang in his church in Oakland. She died on July 22, 1978 at Richmond, California." | ||||
| 61 | | 61.Helen Humes | ||
| 1927-
"Helen Humes (Jun 23, 1913 - Sep 9, 1981) was an American jazz and blues singer. The versatile Humes was successively a teenaged blues singer, band vocalist with Count Basie, saucy R&B diva and a mature interpreter of the classy popular song. Humes was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and was spotted by the guitarist Sylvester Weaver and made her first gramophone records in 1927; her true young voice consorting oddly with bizarre material like "Garlic Blues"." | ||||
| 62 | | 62.Jim Jackson | ||
| 1927-
"Jim Jackson (c.1884 - 1937) was an African American blues and hokum singer, songster and guitarist, whose recordings in the late 1920s were popular and influential on later artists. Jackson was born in Hernando, Mississippi and was raised on a farm, where he learned to play guitar. Around 1905 he started working as a singer, dancer, and musician in medicine shows, playing dances and parties often with other local musicians such as Gus Cannon, Frank Stokes and Robert Wilkins. He soon began travelling with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, featuring Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, and other minstrel shows. He also played clubs on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. His popularity and proficiency secured him a residency at Memphis's prestigious Peabody Hotel in 1919. Like Leadbelly, Jackson knew hundreds of songs including blues, ballads, vaudeville numbers, and traditional tunes, and became a popular attraction. In 1927, talent scout H. C. Speir signed him to a recording contract with Vocalion Records. On October 10 1927, he recorded "Jim Jackson's Kansas City Blues", which became a best-seller, and in the melody and lyrics of which can be traced the outline of many later blues and rock and roll songs, including "Rock Around The Clock" and "Kansas City". Following his hit Jackson recorded a series of 'Kansas City' follow-ups and soundalikes, it also Lead to other artists covering and reworking the song, including Charley Patton, who changed it to "Gonna Move To Alabama". He moved to Memphis in 1928, and made a series of further recordings, including the comic medicine show song "I Heard the Voice of a Pork Chop". He also appeared in King Vidor's all-black, 1929 film, Hallelujah!. Jackson ran the Red Rose Minstrels, a travelling medicine show which toured Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama. As a talent scout for Brunswick Records, he discovered Rufus "Speckled Red" Perryman, gaining him his first recording session. Shortly afterwards, in February 1930, Jackson recorded his own last session. He later moved back to Hernando, and continued to perform until his death in 1937." | ||||
| 63 | | 63.Buell Kazee | ||
| 1927-
"Buell Kazee (Aug 29, 1900 - Aug 31, 1976) was an American country and folk singer. He is considered one of the most successful folk musicians of the 1920s. Buell Kazee was born at the foot of Burton Fork, Kentucky, a mountain in Magoffin County. By the age of five, Kazee found publicity playing banjo at church. In 1927, Kazee he received an inquiry from Brunswick Records, asking if he would consider recording in their studio in New York City. Kazee traveled to New York, and eventually signed with the label. His first record was "Roll On John" backed with "John Hardy". Over the next two years, backed by an assortment of New York musicians, he recorded 51 songs, including such hits as "Gray Lady," "The Sporting Bachelors," and "The Little Orphan Child." His greatest success was On Top Of Old Smoky, which has been covered over 15,000 times. Kazee's lyrics were often dominated by religious subjects, but also treated everyday problems of the working man." | ||||
| 64 | | 64.Bradley Kincaid | ||
| 1927-
"William Bradley Kincaid (Jul 13, 1895 - Sep 23, 1989) was an American folk singer and radio entertainer. He was born in Point Level, Garrard County, Kentucky but built a music career in the northern states. His first radio appearance came in 1926 when he performed on the National Barn Dance show on WLS-AM in Chicago, Illinois. A prolific composer of folk and country music tunes, the first edition of his 1928 songbook called "My Favorite Mountain Ballads" sold more than 100,000 copies; later editions brought the total to 400,000. He recorded on Gennett Records. | ||||
| 65 | | 65.Furry Lewis | ||
| 1927-
"Furry Lewis (Mar 6, 1893 - Sep 14, 1981) was a country blues guitarist and songwriter from Memphis, Tennessee. Walter E. Lewis was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, but his family moved to Memphis when he was aged seven. Lewis acquired the nickname "Furry" from childhood playmates. But by the time he was re-discovered in the 1950s not even Furry himself could remember why. In 1927, Lewis cut his first records in Chicago for the Vocalion label. A year later he recorded for the Victor label at the Memphis Auditorium in a session that saw sides waxed by the Memphis Jug Band, Jim Jackson, Frank Stokes, and others. He again recorded for Vocalion in Memphis in 1929. The tracks were mostly blues but included two-part versions of "Casey Jones" and "John Henry". He sometimes fingerpicked, sometimes played with a slide. Lewis' style of Memphis blues was in many ways typical of the songsters who operated in and around Memphis in the 1920s, for whom the value of a song was the story it told, and who tended to back their words with hypnotic repetitive riffs and subtle slide guitars. Lewis's soft voice and quick slide work were particularly effective in this style. He recorded many successful records in the late 1920s including "Kassie Jones", "Billy Lyons & Stack-O-Lee" and "Judge Harsh Blues"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNBZzH99Dpo (later called "Good Morning Judge")." | ||||
| 66 | | 66.Blind Willie McTell | ||
| 1927-
"William Samuel McTell, better known as Blind Willie McTell (May 5, 1901 – Aug 15, 1959), was an influential American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He was a twelve-string finger picking guitarist, and recorded from 1927 to 1955. Born William Samuel McTier in Thomson, Georgia, blind in one eye, he had lost his remaining vision by late childhood, but became an adept reader of Braille. He showed an inherent proficiency in music from an early age and learned to play the six-string guitar as soon as he could. His father left the family when he was still young, so when his mother died in the 1920s, he left his hometown and became a wandering busker. He began his recording career in 1927 for Victor Records in Atlanta." | ||||
| 67 | | 67.Memphis Jug Band | ||
| 1927-
"The Memphis Jug Band was an American musical group in the late 1920s and early to mid 1930s. The band featured harmonicas, violins, mandolins, banjos, and guitars, backed by washboards, kazoo, and jugs blown to supply the bass; they played in a variety of musical styles. The band recorded almost a hundred titles. Between 1927 and 1934 various African-American musicians in the Memphis, Tennessee area grouped around singer, songwriter, guitarist, and harmonica player Will Shade (1898–1966, also known as Son Brimmer or Sun Brimmer). The personnel of this jug band varied from day to day, with Shade booking gigs and arranging recording sessions." | ||||
| 68 | | 68.King Bennie Nawahi | ||
| 1927s- (I can't find exact year, and 1927 is the earliest mention, so far)
"King Bennie Nawahi (Benjamin Keakahiawa Nawahi) was an American steel guitar master from Hawaii, well-known throughout the country in the 1920s and 30s. He performed well into the 1970s, when a stroke left him partially paralyzed. Nawahi learned to play in the parks of Honolulu with his brother's band, the Hawaiian Novelty Five, playing on a passenger liner that sailed from Honolulu to San Francisco. The group began touring and Nawahi left for a solo career in the early 1920s. He began recording for multiple record labels, and under multiple names (including Red Devils, Q.R.S. Boys, Slim Smith, Hawaiian Beach Combers, Georgia Jumpers, Four Hawaiian Guitars and King Nawahi & the International Cowboys), with bandmates that included future star Roy Rogers. In 1935, Nawahi was stricken with inexplainable blindness, but he continued recording with his brother as the Nawahi Trio. He also became to the only blind person to swim from San Pedro to Catalina Island. Shortly before his death, he appeared briefly in an Academy Award-nominated documentary film on Roy Smeck, Wizard of the Strings." | ||||
| 69 | | 69.Washington Phillips | ||
| 1927-
"Washington Phillips was a pioneering gospel performer in the 1920s. Born Jan 11, 1880 in Texas, Phillips has recorded sixteen remarkable songs, some of which amount to highly specific and detailed gospel sermons. The songs, recorded between 1927 and 1929, feature Phillips' voice self-accompanied by an instrument that sounds like a fretless zither. This instrument, which has been variously identified as a Dolceola, a Celestophone, and a Phonoharp (and also is considered by some to be an instrument entirely home-made by Phillips) creates a unique sound on these recordings that makes them immediately recognizable. Ry Cooder covered Phillips' Denomination Blues on his album Into the Purple Valley and Tattler on his album Paradise and Lunch. Will Oldham covered Phillips' "I Had A Good Father and Mother" on the Palace Brothers album There Is No-One What Will Take Care of You (1993)." | ||||
| 70 | | 70.Jimmie Rodgers | ||
| 1927-
"Jimmie Rodgers - Father of Country Music. "The Original" James Charles "Jimmie" Rodgers (Sep 8, 1897 – May 26, 1933) was the first country music superstar. Rodgers, known as The Singing Brakeman and The Blue Yodeler, was born in Pine Springs, Mississippi, USA but considered his hometown to be Meridian, Mississippi, and spent most of his early life from boyhood accompanying his father on railroad jobs. He eventually became a railroad brakeman, an extremely dangerous and highly skilled job. In the days before air brakes, the brakeman had to stop the train by running on top of the moving train from car to car setting mechanical brakes on each one. Tuberculosis forced him to leave the railroad, and he undertook all sorts of work, ranging from police detective to blackface performer in minstrels and medicine shows.before answering an advertisement from Ralph Peer of the Victor Talking Machine Company to audition as a performing artist. This audition in Bristol, Tennessee, on August 4, 1927 (two days after the Carter Family answered the same ad and recorded in the same hall) led to Rodgers' phenomenally successful recording career. His songs, most of which he wrote himself, were typically either sentimental songs about home, family and sweethearts, or tough takes on the lives of hoboes, "rounders", and his beloved railroads and railroaders, on his own hard life and happy marriage." | ||||
| 71 | | 71.Lowe Stokes | ||
| 1927-
This classic old-time fiddler is a bit of a mystery man, showing up as the senior member of a band formed in 1918 by fellow fiddle genius Clayton McMichen, one of the regular sidekicks of Lowe Stokes over the years. At first called the Lick the Skillet Band, then the Old Hometown Band, this double-fiddle group eventually morphed into Gid Tanner & the Skillet Lickers, one of the most famous and well-loved of old-time groups from this era that managed to be recorded. But if the saga of Stokes is to be believed, life on the road with this band was more about licking one's wounds than licking skillets. On one tour, the trouble-bound Stokes was stabbed perilously near the heart as the nasty consequence of a love triangle, then was shot in the hand in a drunken altercation a few days later while still healing from the earlier wound. This was something of a gory preliminary to the next Skillet Lickers tour, where the poor Stokes would have his hand shot off completely. Luckily, a fellow fiddler in the outfit was a skilled engineer and was able to design a special hook that allowed Stokes to hold his bow despite the injury. This was something of a distinction obviously, with old-time music fans decades later still commenting on the wonders of seeing "a photograph of Lowe Stokes, playing one-handed" on fiddle chat rooms in cyberspace. Stokes was mostly known as a sideman. In the Skillet Lickers, he played alongside guitarist and singer Riley Puckett and mandolinist Ted Hawkins, fiddlers Bert Layne and Gid Tanner, as well as the aforementioned McMichen. He also worked in the group Seven Foot Dilly & His Dill Pickles, led by fellow North Georgia fiddler John Dilleshaw. There was a series of recordings Stokes did as frontman for his band, the North Georgians, including titles such as "I Wish I Had Stayed in the Wagon Yard," "Home Brew Rag," "Wave That Frame" and "Take Me to the Land of Jazz." Many of these recordings were collected for a series of reissues on the Document Records. He also recorded with cowboy singer Hugh Cross. In 1925, poet Stephan Vincent Benet wrote a poem, entitled The Mountain Whipporwill, which was based on seeing Stokes win a fiddle contest in Atlanta the year before. Not quite as timeless as a piece of poetry, Stokes nonetheless was feeling fit enough to fiddle at the 1982 Brandywine festival, leaving ecstatic fans still guessing about his exact age. He remains one of the classic icons of old-time fiddling, an important influence to all new generations of players taking on this genre. ~Eugene Chadbourne, All Music Guide | ||||
| 72 | | 72.Henry Thomas | ||
| 1927-
"Henry Thomas (1874-1950s?). Henry (Ragtime Texas) Thomas was a major pre-war country blues singer and musician. Born in Big Sandy, Texas, he began his musical career as an itinerant songster (minstrel), and recorded twenty-three songs from 1927 to 1929. He accompanied himself with the guitar and the quills, a folk instrument made from cane reeds that sound similar to the quena used by musicians in Peru and Bolivia. Some of his songs are difficult to categorize — they sound more like precursors to blues than like what is now called "blues." They are, therefore, a rare testimony of the kind of music which preceded the establishment of the blues music in the 19th century. His best-known influence has been through two songs. "Fishin' Blues" was covered by Taj Mahal and The Lovin' Spoonful, and "Bull Doze Blues", was recorded by Canned Heat as "Going Up The Country"." | ||||
| 73 | | 73.Casey Bill Weldon | ||
| 1927-
"Casey Bill Weldon (Jul 10, 1909, Pine Bluff, Arkansas - 196?) was an African-American blues musician best known for his slide guitar skill. He played upbeat, almost hokum, tunes usually in a band. He is best known as a member of the Memphis Jug Band with whom he played and recorded. In the late 1920's he married Memphis Minnie and they made some great recordings together in the mid '30s. In October 1927, when the Victor field recording unit visited Atlanta Georgia, he recorded two amazing sides. A chilling, haunted song called, "Turpentine Blues", would have left him immortalized if he had never recorded again. And he almost didn't, not entering another studio for almost 8 years. When he laid down many recordings for Vocalion. After his divorce from Memphis Minnie he pretty much faded away and stopped recording by 1938." | ||||
| 74 | | 74.Pink Anderson | ||
| 1928-
"Pinkney "Pink" Anderson (Feb 12, 1900 - Oct 12, 1974) was a blues singer and guitarist, born in Laurens, South Carolina. After being raised in Spartanburg (in Upstate South Carolina), he joined Dr. Kerr of the Indian Remedy Company in 1914 to entertain the crowds whilst Kerr tried to sell a concoction purported to have medicinal qualities. In 1916 in Spartanburg, Anderson met Simmie Dooley, from whom he learned to be a blues singer. When Anderson was not travelling with Dr. Kerr, he and Dooley would play to small gatherings in Spartanburg and neighboring communities, recording a couple of tracks for Columbia Records in April 1928... ...Syd Barrett, of English progressive rock band, Pink Floyd, came up with the band's name by juxtaposing the first names of Anderson and fellow Carolina bluesman, Floyd Council. | ||||
| 75 | | 75.Clarence Ashley | ||
| 1928-
"Clarence "Tom" Ashley (Sep 29 1895 - Jun 2 1967) was a 20th-century American clawhammer banjo player and singer. Born in Bristol, Tennessee and nicknamed "Tommy Tiddy Waddy" by his grandfather, Ashley became best known to friends and acquaintances as 'Tom'. He began to play banjo and guitar at a young age, and at 16 joined a traveling medicine show as a banjo-picker and singer. Ashley made his first recordings with Garley Foster and Doc Walsh in 1928. Throughout the late '20s and early '30s, Ashley recorded with Gwen Foster, The Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers and Byrd Moore & His Hot Shots. He also made solo banjo recordings. He would become well known for his recordings of "The Coo Coo Bird," "The House Carpenter" and "Peg and Awl" (Carolina Tar Heels) which were featured on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. For several of his solo songs Ashley used a G-modal banjo tuning that he called the 'sawmill' tuning (gDGCD)." | ||||
| 76 | | 76.Ishman Bracey | ||
| 1928-
"Ishman Bracey (Jan 9, 1901 - Feb 12, 1970), was a blues singer and guitarist from Mississippi, considered one of the most important early delta blues performers. With Tommy Johnson, he was the center of a small Jackson, Mississippi group of blues musicians in the 1920s. His name is incorrectly spelled "Ishmon" in some sources and on some records. Bracey was born in Byram, Mississippi, and started playing at local dances and parties around 1917. He also worked as a waterboy on the Illinois Central Railroad. He first recorded in Memphis in 1928 for the Victor label, with Charlie McCoy on second guitar, recording two sessions in February and August that year. At that time his style had not fully formed and his performances varied considerably, probably in his attempts to become more commercially successful. Bracey's blues "Saturday Blues" and "Left Alone Blues", used interesting variations in the usual three line verse form. Bracey was one of the few Mississippi bluesmen who sang with a nasal tone without embellishment. In "Saturday Blues" he used on of the conventional infidelity themes, but he changed the form of the verses to fit a newer melodic concept. His lyrics loosen up enough to sing about skin creams and powder advertised as being able to lighten dark skin." | ||||
| 77 | | 77.Leroy Carr | ||
| 1928-
"Leroy Carr (Mar 27, 1905 – Apr 29, 1935) was an American blues singer, songwriter and pianist who developed a laid-back, crooning technique and whose popularity and style influenced artists like Nat King Cole and Ray Charles. Carr was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1905 and grew up in the black section of Indianapolis, Indiana. Here he partnered with jazz guitarist Scrapper Blackwell and their work showed a distinctive urban influence that was unlike the intensely emotional vocals and heavily rhythmatic guitar back up, often bottleneck guitar style, of the Mississippi bluesmen. Carr was one of the first Northern bluesmen. Vocalion Records recorded him in 1928 and his first release "How Long, How Long Blues" was an immediate success. The innovation was in the sophisticated piano-guitar accompaniment and the wistfully sad mood. Music had moved from the lone guitarist in the fields to clubs with pianos for ready entertainment." | ||||
| 78 | | 78.Bo Carter | ||
| 1928-
"Armenter "Bo Carter" Chatmon (Mar 21, 1893, Bolton, Mississippi — Sep 21, 1964, Memphis, Tennessee) was a popular early blues musician. He was a member of the Mississippi Sheiks in concerts, and on a few of their recordings. Carter also managed that group, which included his brother, Lonnie Chatmon, on fiddle and occasionally Sam Chatmon on bass, along with a non-relative, Walter Vinson, on guitar and lead vocal. Since the 1960s, Carter has become best known for his bawdy songs such as "Banana in Your Fruit Basket", "Pin in Your Cushion", "Your Biscuits Are Big Enough for Me" and "My Pencil Won't Write No More". However, his output was not restricted to risqué music. In 1928, he recorded the original version of "Corrine, Corrina", which later became a hit for Big Joe Turner and has become a standard in various musical genres. Carter and his brothers (including pianist Harry Chatmon, who also made recordings) first learned music from their father, ex-slave fiddler Henderson Chatmon, at their home on a plantation between Bolton and Edwards, Mississippi. Their mother, Eliza, also sang and played guitar. Carter made his recording debut in 1928, backing Alec Johnson." | ||||
| 79 | | 79.Thomas A. Dorsey | ||
| 1928-
Thomas Andrew Dorsey (Jul 1, 1899, Villa Rica, Georgia - Jan 23, 1993, Chicago). He is known as "the father of gospel music". Earlier in his life he was a leading blues pianist known as Georgia Tom. As formulated by Dorsey, gospel music combines Christian praise with the rhythms of jazz and the blues. His conception also deviates from what had been, to that time, standard hymnal practice by referring explicitly to the self, and the self's relation to faith and God, rather than the individual subsumed into the group via belief. Dorsey's father was a minister and his mother a piano teacher. He learned to play blues piano as a young man. After studying music formally in Chicago, he became an agent for Paramount Records. He put together a band for Ma Rainey called the "Wild Cats Jazz Band" in 1924. He started out playing at rent parties with the names Barrelhouse Tom and Texas Tommy, but he was most famous as Georgia Tom. As Georgia Tom, he teamed up with Tampa Red (Hudson Whittaker) with whom he recorded the raunchy 1928 hit record "Tight Like That", a sensation, selling seven million copies. In all, he is credited with more than 400 blues and jazz songs. Dorsey began recording gospel music alongside blues in the mid 1920s. This led to his performing at the National Baptist Convention in 1930, and becoming the bandleader of two churches in the early 1930s. Dorsey wrote "Peace in the Valley" for Mahalia Jackson in 1937, which also became a gospel standard. He was the first African American elected to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and also the first in the Gospel Music Association's Living Hall of Fame. | ||||
| 80 | | 80.Cleoma Falcon | ||
| 1928-
"Cléoma Falcon (née Breaux) (May 27, 1906 – Apr 4, 1941) was a Cajun guitarist and vocalist born in southwest Crowley, Louisiana. She is best known for being the wife of Joseph F. Falcon as well as being one of the first people to record Cajun Music. The song "Allons à Lafayette" was recorded on April 27, 1928 in New Orleans. Afterwards, she performed across southern Louisiana and Texas. Cléoma had an enormous impact on Cajun music. At the time, women had a significantly smaller presence in Cajun Music. Her vocals and guitar skills fascinated many people. This made her recordings very successful. Besides a successful recording career, she frequently performed in dancehalls, which was considered improper. However, she overcame this stigma, most probably because she was alongside Joseph F. Falcon. She recorded until 1940, when she was seriously injured by a car; she died from her injuries the following year. Cléoma's importance to Cajun music was recognized when she was the first woman to be inducted into the Cajun Music Hall of Fame in 2002." | ||||
| 81 | | 81.Joseph F. Falcon | ||
| 1928-
"Joseph Falcon (Sep 28, 1900 – Nov 19, 1965) was a Cajun accordion player in southwest Louisiana, best known for the first recording of a Cajun song entitled "Allons à Lafayette" in 1928 . He and his wife Cléoma Breaux left for New Orleans to record the first Cajun record and went on to perform across southern Louisiana and Texas. As a young man, Joe was friends with accordionist Amadie Breaux of the legendary Breaux family and sometimes accompanied him on triangle. Amédée’s sister, Cléoma, a gifted guitarist and singer, became Joe’s frequent accompanist and they married not long after the onset of their recording career. In April 1928, a jeweler, George Burrow, from Rayne, Louisiana persuaded Columbia records to record Joe and his wife Cléoma by agreeing to purchase the records. Recorded on April 27, 1928 in New Orleans, "Lafayette" caused a sensation when it was released by Columbia Records in the summer of 1928. Thousands of copies were sold and Falcon became the first Cajun-recording star, playing to packed dance halls in Louisiana and neighboring Texas. Joe and Cleoma recorded more material at sessions in New York in August 1928 and Atlanta in April 1929. After a hiatus caused by the onset of the Great Depression, the couple resumed their recording career in 1934, recording again in New York, then at New Orleans in 1936 and San Antonio in 1937. Cléoma died suddenly on April 9, 1941, but Joe continued to perform as leader of Joe Falcon and His Silver Bell String Band, which included his second wife, Theresa Meaux, on drums. Despite this success, Joe’s career flagged in the late 1930s with the increasing popularity of fiddle-based country-and-western influenced bands. His music came to be considered old-fashioned and he stopped recording after his last session in 1937. Though Joe continued to play local dances into the 1960s, he declined to make further recordings, maintaining he had been cheated by record companies." | ||||
| 82 | | 82.Son House | ||
| 1928-
"Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. (Mar 21, 1902 – Oct 19, 1988) was an American blues singer and guitarist. He was known for his slide guitar playing, and his singing often incorporated elements of southern gospel and spiritual (music). A seminal Delta blues figure, House remains influential today. The middle of seventeen brothers, House was born in Riverton, two miles from Clarksdale, Mississippi. Around age seven or eight, he was brought by his mother to Tallulah, Louisiana after his parents separated. The young Son House was determined to become a Baptist preacher, and at age 15 began his preaching career. Despite the church's firm stand against blues music and the sinful world which revolved around it, House became attracted to it and taught himself guitar in his mid 20s, after moving back to the Clarksdale area, inspired by the work of Willie Wilson. He began playing alongside Charley Patton, Willie Brown, Robert Johnson, Fiddlin' Joe Martin, and Leroy Williams, around Robinsonville, Mississippi and north to Memphis, Tennessee." | ||||
| 83 | | 83.Mississippi John Hurt | ||
| 1928-
""Mississippi" John Smith Hurt (Mar 8, 1892, Teoc, Carroll County, Mississippi - Nov 2, 1966, Grenada, Mississippi) was an influential blues singer and guitarist. Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, he learned to play guitar at age 9. He spent much of his youth playing old time music for friends and dances, earning a living as a farm hand into the 1920s. In 1923 he often partnered with the fiddle player Willie Narmour (Carroll County Blues) as a substitute for his regular partner Shell Smith. When Narmour got a chance to record for Okeh Records in reward for winning first place in a 1928 fiddle contest, Narmour recommended John Hurt to OKeh Records producer Tommy Rockwell. After auditioning "Monday Morning Blues" at his home, he took part in two recording sessions, in Memphis and New York City (See Discography below). The "Mississippi" tag was added by OKeh as a sales gimmick. After the commercial failure of the resulting disc and OKeh records going out of business during the depression, Hurt returned to Avalon and obscurity working as a sharecropper and playing local parties and dances." | ||||
| 84 | | 84.Blind Willie Johnson | ||
| 1928-
""Blind" Willie Johnson (1897-1945) was an American singer and guitarist whose music straddled the border between blues and spirituals. While the lyrics of all of his songs were religious, his music drew from both sacred and blues traditions. Among musicians, he is considered one of the greatest slide or bottleneck guitarists, as well as one of the most revered figures of depression-era gospel music. His music is distinguished by his powerful bass thumb-picking and gravelly false-bass voice, with occasional use of a tenor voice." | ||||
| 85 | | 85.Tommy Johnson | ||
| 1928-
"Tommy Johnson (1896 – Nov 1, 1956) was an influential American delta blues musician who recorded in the late 1920s. Johnson was born near Terry, Mississippi, and moved around 1910 to Crystal Springs where he lived for most of his life. He learned to play the guitar and, by 1914, was supplementing his income by playing at local parties with his brothers Mager and LeDell. In 1916 he married and moved to Webb Jennings' Plantation near Drew, Mississippi, close to the Dockery Plantation. There he met other musicians including Charlie Patton and Willie Brown. By 1920 he had become an alcoholic and itinerant musician, based in Crystal Springs but travelling widely around the South, sometimes accompanied by Papa Charlie McCoy. In 1928 he made his first recordings with McCoy for Victor Records. The recordings included "Canned Heat Blues", in which he sang of drinking methanol from the cooking fuel Sterno. The song features the refrain "canned heat, mama, sure, Lord, killing me." The blues group Canned Heat took their name from this song. Johnson's "Big Road Blues" inspired Canned Heat's song, "On The Road Again". A significantly different version of the song appears as "Canned Heat" on the Big Road Blues album by K. C. Douglas. He recorded two further sessions, in August 1928 and for Paramount Records in December 1929. Johnson's recordings established him as the premier Delta blues vocalist of his day, with a powerful voice that could go from a growl to a falsetto. He was also an accomplished guitarist. His style influenced later blues singers such as Robert Nighthawk and Howlin' Wolf, whose song "I Asked for Water (She Brought Me Gasoline)" was based on Johnson's "Cool Water Blues". He was a talented composer, blending fragments of folk poetry and personalized lyrics into set guitar accompaniments to craft striking blues compositions such as "Maggie Campbell". To enhance his fame, Johnson cultivated a sinister persona. According to his brother LeDell, he claimed to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his mastery of the guitar. This story was later also, and probably erroneously, associated with Robert Johnson, to whom he was unrelated. Tommy Johnson also played tricks with his guitar, playing it between his legs and behind his head, and throwing it in the air while playing." | ||||
| 86 | | 86.Helen Kane | ||
| 1928- "Helen Kane (Aug 4, 1904 – Sep 26, 1966) was an American popular singer, best known for her "boop-boop-a-doop" trademark and her signature song, "I Wanna Be Loved By You". Fleischer Studios animator Grim Natwick used Kane as the model for his studio's most famous creation, Betty Boop. Born as Helen Schroeder, she attended St. Anselm’s Parochial School in the Bronx. Her German father's employment was questionable at times and her Irish mother worked in a laundry... ...Kane made 22 song recordings during the height of her fame, during 1928-1930." | ||||
| 87 | | 87.Charlie McCoy | ||
| 1928-
"Charles "Papa Charlie" McCoy (May 26, 1909, Jackson, Mississippi - Jul 26, 1950, Chicago, Illinois was an African American delta blues musician and songwriter. He was best-known by the nickname "Papa Charlie", McCoy became one of the major blues accompanists of his time. A guitarist and mandolin player, he played in the Mississippi area with his band, The Mississippi Hot Footers. McCoy recorded several sides with Bo Carter as the 'Mississippi Mud Steppers'. Among the tracks recorded with Carter were two variations of Cow Cow Davenport's "Cow Cow Blues" . The first, an instrumental, was released as "The Jackson Stomp". The second, with lyrics and vocals by McCoy, as "The Lonesome Train, That Took My Girl From Town". They also wrote and recorded "The Vicksburg Stomp" which was resurrected and recorded by Mike Compton, of O Brother, Where Art Thou? fame. His nimble, sensitive guitar work enriched recordings from performers including Tommy Johnson and Ishman Bracey. He also recorded regularly in the late 1920s, often alongside Walter Vincson; he also sat in with the Mississippi Sheiks, Rubin Lacy, Son Spand and the many other Delta bluesmen who passed through the Jackson area in the years that followed. He also backed his then sister-in-law, Memphis Minnie in the mid 1930s. As a slide guitarist, McCoy recorded as under the name of Tampa Kid, and released "Keep On Trying". McCoy also joined and performed with his brother (Kansas Joe McCoy) for many years, and they released records under the title of "The McCoy Brothers"." | ||||
| 88 | | 88.Ramblin' Thomas | ||
| 1928-
"The rediscovery of bluesman Jesse "Babyface" Thomas in the '70s was the equivalent of a blues archivist's two-for-one sale. It turned out that the mysterious and up-til-then totally obscure '20s recording artist known as Rambling Thomas was the brother of Jesse Thomas, and the latter man was able to spill the beans on just who the rambling man with the fascinating guitar style really was. The Thomas clan, which also included the guitar picking older brother Joe L. Thomas, were sons of an old-time fiddler and were raised in Louisiana close to the Texas border. The boys got into playing guitar after looking with admiration at various models in a Sears catalog. Jesse Thomas has recalled that the mail-order guitar purchased by his brother, Willard "Rambling" Thomas, came equipped with a metal bar for playing slide; indicating the tremendous popularity of country blues at the time. Thomas rambled, indeed he did. He was discovered by recording scouts playing in Dallas, but prior to that had performed in San Antonio and Oklahoma. His style also seemed influenced by the double threat of blues guitarist and pianist Lonnie Johnson, suggesting a possible St. Louis sojourn as well. Thomas played quite a bit in the key of E, making him harmonically quite a typical Delta bluesman. His picking style is curious, however, and even more interesting is his timing. His rhythmic variations suggest that his nickname might have been handed out by a musician attempting to accompany him, and not just relate to his geographical roaming. On some of his recordings for Paramount and Victor, such as "Ground Hog Blues," he plays it a little straighter, going for an imitation of then current hitmaker Tampa Red. The Document label is among several blues record companies that have released collections of Thomas' material, usually in the form of either a compilation or a collection of several artists; since Thomas was apparently too busy rambling to record a full album's worth of material." http://www.myspace.com/ramblinwillardthomas - A Link to hear some songs (the playing starts by itself). | ||||
| 89 | | 89.Leo Soileau | ||
| 1928-
"Leo Soileau (1904–1980) was one of the most prolific Cajun recording artists of the 1930s and 1940s. He recorded over 100 songs, which was a substantial amount considering the reluctance to record the music during its early stages. His first recording was made in 1928, when he joined fellow musician Mayeus Lafleur in recording what is widely considered only the second documented recording of the genre, "He Mon". After Lafleur was killed in a quarrel over moonshine just two weeks after the recording, Leo began recording with fellow accordionist Moise Robin. His most well-known song was the hit "Jolie Blonde", a song he performed with Amadie Breaux, under the French name "Ma Blonde Est Partie". Leo recorded Cajun music until the start of World War II, when his label, Decca Records, decided to stop recording Cajun artists. He continued to perform with his group The Rhythm Boys until the end of the decade, when he left the music business altogether." | ||||
| 90 | | 90.Frank Stokes | ||
| 1928-
Frank Stokes (Jan 1, 1888 – Sep 12, 1955) was an American blues musician, songster, and blackface minstrel, who is considered by many musicologists to be the father of the Memphis blues guitar style. Stokes was born in Shelby County, Tennessee. Stokes learned to play guitar as a youth in Tutwiler, and after 1895 in Hernando, Mississippi, which was home to such African American guitarists as Jim Jackson, Dan Sane, Elijah Avery (of Cannon's Jug Stompers), and Robert Wilkins. By the turn of the century, at the age of 12, Stokes worked as a blacksmith, traveling the 25 miles to Memphis on the weekends to sing and play guitar with Sane, with whom he developed a long-term musical partnership. Together, they busked on the streets and in Church's Park (now W. C. Handy Park) on Memphis' Beale Street. In the mid 1910s, Stokes joined forces with fellow Mississippian Garfield Akers as a blackface songster, comedian, and buck dancer in the Doc Watts Medicine Show, a tent show that toured the South. During this period of touring, Stokes developed a sense of show business professionalism that set him apart from many of the more rural, less polished blues musicians of that time and place. It is said that his performances on the southern minstrel and vaudeville circuit around this time greatly influenced the great archetypal country and western musician Jimmie Rodgers, who played the same circuit. Rodgers borrowed songs and song fragments from Stokes and was influenced stylistically as well. Around 1920, Stokes settled in Oakville, Tennessee, where he went back to work as a blacksmith. Stokes teamed up again with Sane and went to work playing dances, picnics, fish fries, saloons, and parties in his free time. Stokes and Sane joined Jack Kelly's Jug Busters to play white country clubs, parties and dances, and to play Beale Street together as The Beale Street Sheiks, first recording under that name for Paramount Records in August 1927. All told, Stokes was to cut 38 sides for Paramount and Victor Records. "The fluid guitar interplay between Stokes and Sane, combined with a propulsive beat, witty lyrics, and Stokes's stentorian voice, make their recordings irresistible." Their duet style influenced the young Memphis Minnie in her duets with husband Kansas Joe McCoy. The Sheiks next recorded at a session for Victor Records where Furry Lewis also recorded. At this session, in February 1928, the emphasis was on blues, rather than the older songs that were also part of Stokes' repertoire. Stokes recorded again for Victor that August, playing "I Got Mine", one of a body of pre-blues songs about gambling, stealing and living high. He also recorded the more modern "Nehi Mama", which puns on the Nehi soft drink and the "knee-high" skirts that were fashionable at the time. Sane rejoined Stokes for the second day of the August 1928 session, and they produced a two-part version of "Tain't Nobody's Business If I Do", a song well known in later versions by Bessie Smith and Jimmy Witherspoon, but whose origin lies somewhere in the pre-blues era. The Sheiks also continued to busk the streets, and play informally at parties. In 1929, Stokes and Sane recorded again for Paramount, resuming their 'The Beale Street Sheiks' billing for a few cuts. In September Stokes was back on Victor to make what were to be his last recordings, this time without Sane, but with Will Batts on fiddle. Stokes and Batts were a team as evidenced by these records, which are both traditional and wildly original, but their style had fallen out of favor with the blues record buying public. | ||||
| 91 | | 91.Tampa Red | ||
| 1928-
"Tampa Red (Jan 8, 1904 - Mar 19, 1981), born Hudson Woodbridge but known from childhood as Hudson Whittaker, was an influential American musician. Tampa Red is best known as an accomplished and influential blues guitarist who had a unique single-string bottleneck style. His songwriting and his silky, polished slide technique influenced other leading Chicago blues guitarists, such as Big Bill Broonzy and Robert Nighthawk, as well as Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Mose Allison and many others. In a career spanning over 30 years he also recorded pop, R&B and hokum records." | ||||
| 92 | | 92.Bessie Tucker | ||
| 1928-
"Bessie Tucker was an American classic female, country, and Texas blues, singer and songwriter. Her best-known songs are "Penitentiary" and "Fryin' Pan Skillet Blues". Little is known of her life outside the music industry. Her known recording history comprised just twenty-four tracks, seven of which were alternate takes. Tucker hailed from East Texas. Based on references in her songs, researcher Max Haymes has speculated that she may have been based in Greenville. She had a light complexion and a small frame, but was said to be "a strong singer with a dark voice". In August 1928, she recorded a number of songs, most of which she wrote herself, for the Victor label in Memphis, Tennessee. She was accompanied on piano by the Dallas-born K.D. Johnson. This recording session yielded her best-known song, "Penitentiary". The subject matter of the song was allegedly not unknown to Tucker. A second session in Dallas followed in October 1929.[6] There she was again accompanied by Johnson, and by the guitar playing of Jesse Thomas. After this, nothing more is known of her life. Only one photograph of Tucker survives." | ||||
| 93 | | 93.Curley Weaver | ||
| 1928-
"James "Curley" Weaver (25 Mar 1906 - 20 Sep 1962) was an American blues musician known as the "Georgia Guitar Wizard". He was born in Covington, Georgia and raised on a farm near Porterdale. His mother, Savannah "Dip" Shepard Weaver, was a well-respected pianist and guitarist, who taught Curley together with her friend's sons, "Barbecue Bob" Hicks and Charlie Lincoln. The three formed a group with harmonica player Eddie Mapp, and played in the local area. In 1925 Weaver moved to Atlanta, working as a labourer and playing on the streets and at social events. In 1928, he first recorded with Columbia Records, later releasing records on several different record labels. Although he recorded on his own during the 1920s and 1930s, he was best known for duets with Blind Willie McTell - with whom he worked until the 1950s - Barbecue Bob, Fred McMullen, and harmonica player Buddy Moss. He was also a member of the recording groups The Georgia Browns and The Georgia Cotton Pickers." | ||||
| 94 | | 94.Robert Wilkins | ||
| 1928-
"Robert Timothy Wilkins (Jan 16, 1896 – May 26, 1987) was an American country blues guitarist and vocalist, of African American and Cherokee descent. His distinction was his versatility; he could play ragtime, blues, minstrel songs, and gospel with equal facility. Wilkins was born in Hernando, Mississippi, 21 miles from Memphis. He worked in Memphis during the 1920s at the same time as Furry Lewis, Memphis Minnie (whom he claimed to have tutored), and Son House. He also organized a jug band to capitalize on the "jug band craze" then in vogue. Though never attaining success comparable to the Memphis Jug Band, Wilkins reinforced his local popularity with a 1927 appearance on a Memphis radio station. Like Sleepy John Estes (and unlike Gus Cannon of Cannon's Jug Stompers) he recorded alone or with a single accompanist. He sometimes performed as Tom Wilkins or as Tim Oliver (his stepfather's name). His best known songs are "That's No Way To Get Along" (to which he – an ordained minister since the 1930s – had changed the 'unholy' words to a biblical theme and since titled it "The Prodigal Son", covered under that title by The Rolling Stones), "Rolling Stone", and "Old Jim Canan's". Led Zeppelin also wrote "Poor Tom", which was believed to have been influenced by "That's No Way To Get Along"." | ||||
| 95 | | 95.Amédé Ardoin | ||
| 1929-
"Amédé Ardoin (Mar 11, 1898 – Nov 3, 1942) was a Louisiana Creole musician, known for his high singing voice and virtuosity on the Creole/Cajun Accordion. He is credited by Louisiana music scholars with laying the groundwork for Cajun music in the early 20th century. Ardoin, with fiddle player Dennis McGee, was one of the first artists to record the music of the Acadiana region of Louisiana. On December 9, 1929, he and McGee recorded six songs for Columbia Records in New Orleans. In all, thirty-four recordings with Ardoin playing accordion are known to exist. | ||||
| 96 | | 96.Gene Campbell | ||
| 1929-
Nothing is known about the life of blues guitarist and singer Gene Campbell beyond his surviving 78s and the dates and matrix numbers of his recording sessions. Given his stylistic leanings (he has a vocal approach somewhat similar to Texas Alexander), Campbell is usually listed as a Texan, but that remains conjecture. He did do his first recording session in Dallas, tracking two songs for Brunswick Records in 1929. Ten more songs for Brunswick were cut in Chicago in May 1930, followed by four more back in Dallas later that year in November. Campbell's last known session resulted in eight tracks recorded on January 22 and 23, 1931, in Chicago, again for Brunswick Records, and that's where the trail ends, with Campbell vanishing into thin air. ~Steve Leggett, All Music Guide | ||||
| 97 | | 97.Comedian Harmonists | ||
| 1929-
"The Comedian Harmonists was an internationally famous, all-male German close harmony ensemble (5 singers plus pianist) that operated between 1927 and 1934. They were one of the most successful 20th century musical groups in Europe before World War II and were noted for using their voices to imitate musical instruments. The Comedian Harmonists were founded in Berlin-Friedenau in the flat of Harry Frommermann (Stubenrauchstraße 47). Today a commemorative plaque marks the spot... ...The Comedian Harmonists were heavily influenced by U.S. hot pop music and jazz, with the influence of early Mills Brothers being particularly strong in many of their recordings." | ||||
| 98 | | 98.Blind Teddy Darby | ||
| 1929- "Theodore Roosevelt Darby (Mar 2, 1902 – December 1975), better known as Blind Teddy Darby, was an American blues singer and guitarist. Darby was born in Henderson, Kentucky. He moved to St. Louis with his family when he was a child. His mother taught him to play guitar. He served some time for selling moonshine, and in 1926 he lost his eyesight because of glaucoma. He recorded from 1929 until 1937 under the names of "Blind Teddy Darby", "Blind Darby", "Blind Blues Darby" and "Blind Squire Turner" for the Paramount, Victor, Bluebird, Vocalion and Decca labels. ... In the late 1930s he gave up the blues and became an ordained deacon." | ||||
| 99 | | 99.Sleepy John Estes | ||
| 1929-
"John Adam Estes (25 Jan 1899 — 5 Jun 1977) commonly known as Sleepy John Estes or Sleepy John, was a U.S. blues guitarist songwriter and vocalist, born in Ripley, Tennessee... ...In 1915, Estes's father, a sharecropper who also played some guitar, moved the family to Brownsville, Tennessee. Not long after, Estes lost the sight of his right eye when a friend threw a rock at him during a baseball game. At the age of 19, while working as a field hand, he began to perform professionally. The venues were mostly local parties and picnics, with the accompaniment of Hammie Nixon, a harmonica player, and James "Yank" Rachell, a guitarist and mandolin player. He would continue to work, on and off, with both musicians for more than fifty years. Estes made his debut as a recording artist in Memphis, Tennessee in 1929, at a session organized by Ralph Peer for Victor Records." | ||||
| 100 | | 100.Clifford Gibson | ||
| 1929-
"Clifford "Grandpappy" Gibson (Apr 17, 1901 - Dec 21, 1963) was an influential American blues singer and guitarist. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, he moved to St. Louis in the 1920s and lived there for the rest of his life. He played in St. Louis clubs, and in 1929 began recording for the QRS and Vocalion labels. He is regarded as one of the earliest urban blues performers, with no pronounced rural influences. His guitar playing style resembled that of Lonnie Johnson, with an emphasis on vibrato and improvisation. Among the many themes touched on in his songs, "Don't Put That Thing on Me" is notable for its references to hoodoo, an African American form of folk magic. Gibson accompanied Jimmie Rodgers on a Victor single, "Let Me Be Your Side Track", in 1931, then spent parts of the next three decades playing in the streets around St. Louis." | ||||
| 101 | | 101.Blind Roosevelt Graves | ||
| 1929-
"Roosevelt Graves (Dec 9, 1909, Meridian, Mississippi – Dec 30, 1962, Gulfport, Mississippi) was an American blues guitarist and singer, who recorded both sacred and secular music in the 1920s and 1930s. On all his recordings, he played with his brother Uaroy Graves, who was also nearly blind and played the tambourine. They were credited as "Blind Roosevelt Graves and Brother". Their first recordings were made in 1929 for Paramount Records. Theirs is the earliest version recorded of "Guitar Boogie", and they exemplified the best in gospel singing with "I'll Be Rested". Blues researcher Gayle Dean Wardlow has suggested that their 1929 recording "Crazy About My Baby" "could be considered the first rock 'n' roll recording." | ||||
| 102 | | 102.Lil Johnson | ||
| 1929-
"Lil Johnson (dates and places of birth and death unknown) was an African American singer who recorded bawdy blues and hokum songs in the 1920s and 1930s. Her origins and early life are not known. She first recorded in Chicago in 1929, accompanied by pianists Montana Taylor and Charles Avery on five songs including "Rock That Thing". She did not return to the recording studio until 1935, when her more risqué songs included "Get 'Em From The Peanut Man (Hot Nuts)", "Anybody Want To Buy My Cabbage?", and "Press My Button (Ring My Bell)" ("Come on baby, let's have some fun / Just put your hot dog in my bun"). From her second session onwards, she hit up a striking partnership with the ragtime influenced pianist "Black Bob" Hudson, who provided ebullient support to Johnson's increasingly suggestive lyrics... ...All her songs were sung in a vigorous and sometimes abrasive way, and have been anthologised on many later blues collections." | ||||
| 103 | | 103.Memphis Minnie | ||
| 1929-
"Memphis Minnie McCoy (born Lizzie Douglas, Jun 3, 1897 in Algiers, Louisiana; died Aug 6, 1973 in Memphis, Tennessee) was an American Blues guitarist, vocalist, and composer. Born Lizzie Douglas in Algiers, Louisiana, she was one of the most influential and pioneering female blues musicians and guitarists of all time. Minnie recorded for forty years, virtually unheard of for any woman in show business at the time, and possibly unique among female blues artists. A flamboyant character who wore bracelets made of silver dollars, she was the biggest female blues singer from the early Depression years through World War II. One of the first blues artists to take up the electric guitar, in 1942, she combined her Louisiana-country roots with Memphis-blues to produce her unique country-blues sound; along with Big Bill Broonzy and Tampa Red, she took country blues into electric urban blues, paving the highway for giants like Muddy Waters, Little Walter, and Jimmy Rogers to travel from the small towns of the south to the big cities of the north. She was married three times, and each husband was an accomplished blues guitarist: Kansas Joe McCoy (a.k.a. "Kansas Joe") later of the Harlem Hamfats, Casey Bill Weldon of the Memphis Jug Band, and Ernest "Little Son Joe" Lawlers. After learning to play guitar and banjo as a child, at the age of thirteen she ran away from home to Memphis, Tennessee, playing guitar in nightclubs and on the street as Lizzie "Kid" Douglas. The next year, she joined the Ringling Brothers circus. Her second marriage and recording debut came in 1929, both with Kansas Joe McCoy, when a Columbia Records talent scout heard them playing in a Beale Street barbershop in their distinctive "Memphis style", and their song "Bumble Bee" became a hit." | ||||
| 104 | | 104.Joe McCoy | ||
| 1929-
"Kansas Joe McCoy (May 11, 1905 – Jan 28, 1950 was an African American blues musician and songwriter. McCoy played music under a variety of stage names but is best known as "Kansas Joe McCoy". Born in Raymond, Mississippi, he was the older brother of the blues accompanist Papa Charlie McCoy. As a young man, McCoy was drawn to the music scene in Memphis, Tennessee where he played guitar and sang vocals during the 1920s. He teamed up with future wife Lizzie Douglas, a guitarist better known as Memphis Minnie, and their 1929 recording of the song "Bumble Bee" on the Columbia Records label was a hit. In 1930, the couple moved to Chicago where they were an important part of the burgeoning blues scene. Following their divorce, McCoy teamed up with his brother to form a band known as the Harlem Hamfats that performed and recorded during the second half of the 1930s. Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant took his and Memphis Minnie's recording of "When the Levee Breaks," which was in his personal collection, and presented it to guitarist Jimmy Page, who revamped it and slightly altered it lyrically, and help record it on Led Zeppelin's 1971 album, Led Zeppelin IV." | ||||
| 105 | | 105.Charley Patton | ||
| 1929-
"Charlie Patton, better known as Charley Patton (May 1, 1891 - Apr 28, 1934) is best known as an American Delta blues musician. He is considered by many to be the "Father of Delta Blues" and therefore one of the oldest known figures of American popular music. He is credited with creating an enduring body of American music and personally inspiring just about every Delta blues man (Palmer, 1995). Robert Palmer considers him among the most important musicians that America produced in the twentieth century... ...1929 (Age 38) In July, Paramount releases "Pony Blues," Patton's first issued recording, which sells well." | ||||
| 106 | | 106.Roosevelt Sykes | ||
| 1929-
"Roosevelt Sykes (Jan 31, 1906 in Elmar, Arkansas – Jul 17, 1983 in New Orleans, Louisiana) was an American blues musician also known as "Honeydripper". He was a successful and prolific cigar-chomping blues piano player who influenced blues piano playing with his rollicking thundering boogie. Sykes grew up near Helena, Arkansas but at age 15, began playing piano with a barrelhouse style of blues at various places until ending up in the St. Louis, Missouri area where he met St. Louis Jimmy Oden. He started recording in the 1920s, signing with multiple labels and recording under various names including "Easy Papa Johnson", "Dobby Bragg", and "Willie Kelly". " | ||||
| 107 | | 107.Rudy Vallée | ||
| 1929-
"Rudy Vallée (Jul 28, 1901 – Jul 3, 1986) was an American singer, actor, bandleader, and entertainer. Born Hubert Prior Vallée in Island Pond, Vermont, the son of Charles Alphonse and Catherine Lynch Vallée. Both of his parents were born and raised in Vermont, but their parents were immigrants; the Vallées being of French Canadian origin from neighboring Quebec, while the Lynches were from Ireland. Vallée grew up in Westbrook, Maine. Having played drums in his high school band, Vallée played clarinet and saxophone in various bands around New England in his youth. From 1924 through 1925, he played with the Savoy Havana Band at the Savoy Hotel in London, where his fellow band-members discouraged his attempts to become a vocalist. He then returned to the United States to obtain a degree in Philosophy from Yale and to form his own band, "Rudy Vallée and the Connecticut Yankees." With this band, which featured two violins, two saxophones, a piano, a banjo and drums, he started taking vocals (supposedly reluctantly at first). He had a rather thin, wavering tenor voice and seemed more at home singing sweet ballads than attempting vocals on jazz numbers. However, his singing, together with his suave manner and handsome boyish looks, attracted great attention, especially from young women. Vallée was given a recording contract and in 1928, he started performing on the radio. Vallée became the most prominent and, arguably, the first of a new style of popular singer, the crooner. Vallée also became what was perhaps the first complete example of the 20th century mass media pop star. Flappers mobbed him wherever he went. His live appearances were usually sold out, and even if his singing could hardly be heard in those venues not yet equipped with the new electronic microphones, his screaming female fans went home happy if they had caught sight of his lips through the opening of the trademark megaphone he sang through. Vallée's recording career began in 1928 recording for Columbia Records' cheap labels (Harmony Records, Velvet Tone, and Diva Records). He signed to Victor in February 1929 and remained with them through to late 1931. Along with his group, The Connecticut Yankees, Vallée's best known popular recordings included: "The Stein Song" (aka University of Maine fighting song) in 1929." | ||||
| 108 | | 108.Josh White | ||
| 1929-
"Joshua Daniel White (Feb 11, 1914 – Sep 5, 1969), best known as Josh White, was a legendary American singer, guitarist, songwriter, actor, and civil rights activist... ...White arrived in Chicago with Blind Joe Taggert in 1927. Mayo Williams at Paramount Records recognized the boy's prodigious talents and began using him as a session guitarist. He backed up many artists for recordings before finally scoring his first popular Paramount recording "Scandalous and a Shame", singing and playing in the duet "Blind Joe Taggert & Joshua White" in 1928 while becoming the youngest blues star of the era. Yet he still lived under the yoke of servitude of Arnold and Taggert (who was renting his services), as he continued sleeping in the horse stables of Chicago or the cotton fields of the South and not allowed to wear shoes or long pants. Mayo Williams had left Paramount to start his own label in Chicago, but still remained close with the young boy. In late 1928, angry with how Taggert was treating the boy, Williams threatened the blind man that if he didn't pay the boy for his recording services, buy him a suit and shoes and move him from the horse stables to a black hotel, he would call the authorities and have him arrested for indentured servitude and keeping the boy out of school. White was finally free. For a few months thereafter, White shared a room with Blind Blake at Mayo Williams' home before finding his own place and a sense of freedom and independence at the advanced age of fifteen. For the next two years, White continued an active recording schedule in Chicago, until he finally had saved enough money to return to Greenville and take care of his mother and the younger children." | ||||
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