Drop-In: Playlist from November 23, 2024

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Upcoming events:

Sat. Nov 23rd, 6pm - 7pm: Drop In Presents: Wind it Up. (More info...)

Wind up the old Victrola and join medson for an hours worth of blues from the 1920’s 30’s and 40’s.

November 23, 2024: Drop In Presents: Wind It Up

Listen to this show: MP3 - 128K |  Pop-up player!

Artist	Track	Album	Label	Year	Format	Comments	Images	New * / Special ***	Approx. start time
Mamie Smith	Crazy Blues   → "Crazy Blues" by "Mamie Smith"		Okeh	1920		Mamie Smith: (May 26, 1891 - August 16, 1946) was an American singer. As a vaudeville singer, she performed in multiple styles, including jazz and blues. In 1920 she entered blues history as the first African-American artist to make vocal blues recordings.			0:00:00 (MP3 | Pop-up)
Martha Copeland	Daddy, You've Done Put That Thing On Me   → "Daddy, You've Done Put That Thing On Me" by "Mart...		Okeh	1923		Martha Copeland Born 1891–1894. Date of death unknown, was an American female blues singer. She recorded 34 songs between 1923 and 1928. Martha recorded for Columbia, Okeh and Victor. Her records did not sell in the quantities achieved by the Columbia recording artists Bessie Smith and Clara Smith. Apart from her recording career, little is known of her life.			0:04:06 (MP3 | Pop-up)
Alberta Hunter	Down Hearted Blues   → "Down Hearted Blues" by "Alberta Hunter"		Paramount	1922		Alberta Hunter (April 1, 1895 – October 17, 1984) was an American jazz and blues singer and songwriter from the early 1920s to the late 1950s. After twenty years of working as a nurse, Hunter resumed her singing career in 1977. Hunter wrote "Downhearted Blues" with Lovie Austin and recorded the track for Ink Williams at Paramount Records. She received only $368 in royalties. Williams had secretly sold the recording rights to Columbia Records in a deal in which all royalties were paid to him. The song became a big hit for Columbia, with Bessie Smith as the vocalist and sold a million copies.			0:06:55 (MP3 | Pop-up)
Clara Smith	Don't Advertise Your Man   → "Don't Advertise Your Man" by "Clara Smith"		Columbia	1924		Clara Smith March 13, 1894 – February 2, 1935 was an American classic female blues singer, billed as the "Queen of the Moaners", although she had a lighter and sweeter voice than many of her contemporaries. Clara Smith was not related to the singers Bessie Smith and Mamie Smith. Clara recorded close to 150 records for Columbia			0:09:54 (MP3 | Pop-up)
Rosa Henderson	He May Be Your Dog, But He's Wearing My Collar   → "He May Be Your Dog, But He's Wearing My Collar" b...		Silvertone	1924		Rosa Henderson (November 24, 1896 – April 6, 1968) was an American female blues singer and vaudeville entertainer. Born Rosa Deschamps in Henderson, Kentucky, she is remembered as one of the great female blues singers of the 1920s and 1930s classic blues era. Her nine-year recording career began in 1923. During that time she recorded over 100 songs, sometimes using pseudonyms such as Sally Ritz, Flora Dale, Sarah Johnson, Josephine Thomas, Gladys White, and Mamie Harris.			0:12:53 (MP3 | Pop-up)
Ida Cox	Mojo Hand Blues   → "Mojo Hand Blues" by "Ida Cox"		Paramount	1927		Ida M. Cox February 26, 1888 or 1896 – November 10, 1967. Was an American singer and vaudeville performer, best known for her blues performances and recordings. After the success of Mamie Smith's 1920 recording of "Crazy Blues", record companies became aware of a demand for recordings of “race music”. The classic female blues era had begun and would extend through the 1920s. Cox caught the attention of talent scouts and secured a contract with Paramount Records, the same company for which her idol Ma Rainey recorded. Paramount called her "The Uncrowned Queen of Blues". Between September 1923 and October 1929, she recorded 78 titles for Paramount			0:15:57 (MP3 | Pop-up)
Ma Rainey	Prove It To Me Blues   → "Prove It To Me Blues" by "Ma Rainey"		Paramount	1928		Gertrude "Ma" Rainey April 26, 1886 – December 22, 1939) was an American blues singer and influential early-blues recording artist. Dubbed the "Mother of the Blues. In 1923, Rainey was discovered by Paramount Records producer J. Mayo Williams. She signed a recording contract with Paramount, and in December she made her first eight recordings in Chicago,including "Bad Luck Blues", "Bo-Weevil Blues" and "Moonshine Blues". She made more than 100 other recordings over the next five years,			0:19:09 (MP3 | Pop-up)
Victoria Spivey	Dope Head Blues   → "Dope Head Blues" by "Victoria Spivey"		Okeh	1928		Victoria Regina Spivey October 15, 1906 – October 3, 1976), sometimes known as Queen Victoria, was an American blues singer, songwriter, and record company founder. During a recording career that spanned 40 years, from 1926 to the mid-1960s, she worked with Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Clarence Williams, Luis Russell, Lonnie Johnson, and Bob Dylan. In 1926 she moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where she was signed by Okeh Records. Her first recording, "Black Snake Blues" (1926), sold well and her association with the label continued. She recorded numerous sides for Okeh in New York City until 1929, when she switched to the Victor label. Between 1931 and 1937, more recordings followed for Vocalion Records and Decca Records.			0:21:51 (MP3 | Pop-up)
Bessie Smith	After You've Gone   → "After You've Gone" by "Bessie Smith"		Columbia	1927		Bessie Smith April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937 was a widely renowned blues singer . Nicknamed the "Empress of the Blues", she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, she is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and was a major influence on fellow blues singers, as well as jazz vocalists. Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Bessie was young when her parents died, and she and her six siblings survived by performing on street corners. She began touring and performed in a group that included Ma Rainey, and then went out on her own. Her successful recording career with Columbia Records began in 1923, she recorded 160 records for Columbia from 1923 to 1933. In 1937 Bessie died in a car crash at the age of 43.			0:25:10 (MP3 | Pop-up)
Blind Willie McTell	Statesboro Blues   → "Statesboro Blues" by "Blind Willie McTell"		Victor	1929		Blind Willie McTell (born William Samuel McTier; May 5, 1898 – August 19, 1959) was an American Piedmont blues, ragtime singer and guitarist. He played with a fluid, syncopated finger-style guitar technique, common among many exponents of Piedmont blues. Unlike his contemporaries, he came to use twelve-string guitars exclusively. He learned to play the guitar in his early teens. He soon became a street performer in several Georgia cities, including Atlanta and Augusta, and first recorded in 1927 for Victor Records. He never produced a major hit record, but he had a prolific recording career with different labels and under different names in the 1920s and 1930s. McTell's influence extended over a wide variety of artists, including The Allman Brothers Band, who covered his "Statesboro Blues"			0:30:04 (MP3 | Pop-up)
Sippie Wallace	Bedroom Blues   → "Bedroom Blues" by "Sippie Wallace"		Okeh	1924		Sippie Wallace (born Beulah Belle Thomas, November 1, 1898 – November 1, 1986) was an American blues singer, pianist and songwriter. Her early career in tent shows gained her the billing "The Texas Nightingale". Between 1923 and 1927, she recorded over 40 songs for Okeh Records, many written by her or her brothers, George and Hersal Thomas. Her accompanists included Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds, Sidney Bechet, King Oliver, and Clarence Williams. Among the top female blues vocalists of her era, Wallace ranked with Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, Alberta Hunter, and Bessie Smith.			0:32:36 (MP3 | Pop-up)
Bumble Bee Slim	Runnin' Drunk Blues   → "Runnin' Drunk Blues" by "Bumble Bee Slim"		Vocalion	1934		Admirl Amos Easton May 7, 1905 – June 8, 1968 better known by the stage name Bumble Bee Slim, was an American Piedmont blues singer and guitarist. Around 1920 he joined The Ringling Brothers circus. He then returned to Georgia and was briefly married before heading north on a freight train to Indianapolis, where he settled in 1928. By 1931 he had moved to Chicago, where he made his first recordings, as Bumble Bee Slim, for Paramount Records. This Song have have been recorded in 1934 for Vocalion and never released			0:35:39 (MP3 | Pop-up)
Memphis Minnie	Nothing In Rambling   → "Nothing In Rambling" by "Memphis Minnie"		Okeh	1940		Lizzie Douglas (June 3, 1897 – August 6, 1973), better known as Memphis Minnie, was a blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter whose recording career lasted for over three decades. She recorded around 200 songs, some of the best known being "When the Levee Breaks", "Me and My Chauffeur Blues", "Bumble Bee" and "Nothing in Rambling". She began performing with Kansas Joe McCoy, her second husband, in 1929. They were discovered by a talent scout for Columbia Records, in front of a barber shop, where they were playing for dimes. She and McCoy went to record in New York City and were given the names Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie by a Columbia A&R man. Memphis Minnie has been described as "the most popular female country blues singer of all time". Big Bill Broonzy said that she could "pick a guitar and sing as good as any man I've ever heard."			0:38:56 (MP3 | Pop-up)
Frank Stokes	Mistreatin' Blues   → "Mistreatin' Blues" by "Frank Stokes"		Victor	1928		Frank Stokes (January 1, 1877 or 1888 – September 12, 1955) was an American blues musician, songster, and minstrel, who is considered by many musicologists to be the father of the Memphis blues guitar style. There is uncertainty over his year of birth; his daughter and later sources reported 1888, but the researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc give 1877, the date on his World War I draft card. Around 1920, Stokes settled in Oakville, Tennessee, where he went back to work as a blacksmith. He teamed with Dan Sane, playing dances, picnics, fish fries, saloons, and parties in his free time. The two joined Jack Kelly's Jug Busters to play at white country clubs, parties, and dances. Stokes and Sane performed on Beale Street as the Beale Street Sheiks and first recorded under that name for Paramount Records in August 1927. Stokes eventually 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 duets with her husband, Kansas Joe McCoy.			0:41:30 (MP3 | Pop-up)
Washboard Sam	Yes I Got Your Woman   → "Yes I Got Your Woman" by "Washboard Sam"		Blue Bird	1940		Robert Clifford Brown July 15, 1910 – November 6, 1966 known professionally as Washboard Sam, was an American blues musician and singer Brown's date and place of birth are uncertain; many sources state that he was born in 1910 in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, but the researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc suggest that he was born in 1903 or 1904, in Jackson, Tennessee, on the basis of Social Security information. When applying for his musicians union card, he gave his birthdate as July 15, 1914. He was reputedly the half-brother of Big Bill Broonzy He moved to Chicago in 1932, performing regularly with Broonzy and other musicians, including Memphis Slim and Tampa Red, in many recording sessions for Lester Melrose of Bluebird Records In 1935, he began recording in his own right for both Bluebird and Vocalion Records, becoming one of the most popular Chicago blues performers of the late 1930s and 1940s, selling numerous records and playing to packed audiences. He recorded over 160 tracks in those decades.			0:44:49 (MP3 | Pop-up)
Muddy Waters	Country Blues #1   → "Country Blues #1" by "Muddy Waters"		The Library of Congress	1941		McKinley Morganfield April 4, 1913 – April 30, 1983, known professionally as Muddy Waters, was an American blues singer and musician who was an important figure in the post-World War II blues scene, and is often cited as the "father of modern Chicago blues”. Waters grew up on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi, and by age 17 was playing the guitar and the harmonica, emulating local blues artists Son House and Robert Johnson. Waters recorded his first record Country Blues # 1 in 1941 with Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. Too much Muddy to mention Muddy Waters Info Here			0:47:39 (MP3 | Pop-up)
Jazz Gillum	Can't Trust Myself   → "Can't Trust Myself" by "Jazz Gillum"		RCA Victor	1947		William McKinley "Jazz" Gillum (September 11, 1902 or 1904 – March 29, 1966) was an American blues harmonica player. Gillum was born in Indianola, Mississippi. He ran away from home at age seven and for the next few years lived in Charleston, Mississippi, working and playing for tips on street corners. He moved to Chicago in 1923, where he met the guitarist Big Bill Broonzy. The duo started working at nightclubs around the city. By 1934 Gillum was recording for ARC Records and Bluebird Records. Gillum's recordings, under his own name and as a sideman, were included on many of the highly popular "Bluebird beat" recordings produced by Lester Melrose in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1940, he was the first to record the blues classic "Key to the Highway" (featuring Broonzy on guitar), utilizing the now-standard melody and eight-bar blues arrangement. (The song had first been recorded a few months earlier by Charlie Segar, with a different melody and a 12-bar blues arrangement.) Gillum's version of the song was covered by Broonzy a few months later, and his version has become the standard arrangement of this now-classic blues song. Gillum's records were some of the earliest featuring blues with electric guitar accompaniment, when the 16-year-old jazz guitarist George Barnes played on several songs on Gillum's 1938 session that produced "Reefer Headed Woman" and others. He joined the United States Army in 1942 and served until 1945. Gillum recorded an early version of "Look on Yonder Wall" (1946) with Big Maceo on piano, which was later popularized by Elmore James. After the Bluebird label folded in the late 1940s, he made few recordings. His last recordings were on a couple of 1961 albums with Memphis Slim and the singer and guitarist Arbee Stidham, for Folkways Records. On March 29, 1966, Gillum was shot in the head during a street argument and was pronounced dead on arrival at Garfield Park Hospital, in Chicago. He is buried at Restvale Cemetery, in Alsip, Illinois.			0:51:06 (MP3 | Pop-up)
Music behind DJ:	→ "Thank you so much for listening. Got one more for...					Thank you so much for listening. Got one more for ya.			0:53:52 (MP3 | Pop-up)
Robert Johnson	Traveling Riverside Blues   → "Traveling Riverside Blues" by "Robert Johnson"		Vocalion Unissued	1937		Robert Leroy Johnson May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938 was an American blues musician and songwriter. His singing, guitar playing and songwriting on his landmark 1936 and 1937 recordings has influenced later generations of musicians. Although his recording career spanned only seven months, he is recognized as a master of the blues, particularly the Delta blues style, and as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as perhaps "the first ever rock star" Johnson had little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime. He had only two recording sessions both produced by Don Law, one in San Antonio in 1936, and one in Dallas in 1937, that produced 29 distinct songs (with 13 surviving alternate takes). These songs, recorded solo in improvised studios, were the sum of his recorded output. Most were released as 10-inch, 78 rpm singles from 1937–1938, with a few released after his death. Other than these recordings, very little was known of his life outside of the small musical circuit in the Mississippi Delta where he spent most of his time. Much of his story has been reconstructed by researchers. Johnson's poorly documented life and death have given rise to legends. T he one most often associated with him is that he sold his soul to the devil at a local crossroads in return for musical success. His music had a small, but influential, following during his life and in the decades after his death. In late 1938, John Hammond sought him out for a concert at Carnegie Hall, From Spirituals to Swing, only to discover that Johnson had recently died.			0:56:03 (MP3 | Pop-up)