13041dvd PDF
13041dvd PDF
13041dvd PDF
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Texans, of course, aren’t alone in playing that way but it’s
notable that exceptions to this rule were so rare. Before look-
ing for other regional similarities among these artists, the role
of the guitar in the blues – and, for that matter, in Texas –
must be considered. It seems ironic that the instruments most
prominently identified with blues soloists – piano, harmonica,
and guitar – were all of European origin, while the African-
American banjo played little role in the music and quickly fell
into disfavor as the popularity of the blues spread. The rise of
this genre appears to have been simultaneous with the wide-
spread dissemination of mass-produced guitars in late nine-
teenth century America.
However, guitars were no strangers in Texas, a state with
a long-standing Hispanic history. We don’t know what ex-
change (if any) existed between guitar-playing Hispanics and
the African-American populace of Texas. When the new sound
of the blues and the newly-available guitar came together,
did Texans have an edge earned from familiarity with the in-
strument? It’s tempting to speculate, but in truth we don’t
know.
What we do know is that a remarkably diverse group of
Texas blues singer-guitarists etched their legacy onto 78s in
the pre-Depression ‘golden age’ of country blues. For the most
part, little is known of these men though some are figures of
legend, and for good reason. Blind Lemon Jefferson (ca. 1897-
1929) wove rhythmically complex and stunningly inventive
conversations between his voice and guitar. The success of
his 1926 recording, “Long Lonesome Blues,” is said to have
sparked the commercial recording industry’s interest in coun-
try blues. Blind Willie Johnson (ca.1902 – ca.1947), a fero-
cious sacred singer with a stylistic kinship to blues, was a
bottleneck guitarist nonpareil. Henry ‘Ragtime’ Thomas (1874-
1930) played a simple strumming style which fit his innocently
ebullient music. All these men were Texans and none sounded
the least bit like the other. The state is vast and so were op-
portunities to develop regional and individual ‘voices’ in an
era when the influence of records on repertoire and style was
nascent.
Two decades after Jefferson’s recording debut, Texans con-
tinued to be in the vanguard of guitar-centered blues. T-Bone
Walker (1910-1975) single-handedly invented a jazz-tinged
blues vocabulary for electric guitar, one which revolutionized
the way a generation of players approached both the genre
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and the instrument. An apparent reaction to Walker’s urbanity
came from the likes of Lightnin’ Hopkins, who experienced
surprising success with spare and rough-hewn ‘downhome’
blues at a time when a West Coast -bred sophistication domi-
nated black popular music. Hopkins and fellow Texans Lil Son
Jackson, Smokey Hogg, and Frankie Lee Sims led a country
blues revival which rallied in the late 1940s and early 1950s,
when their recordings often made the rhythm & blues charts.
By the mid-1950s the audience for Texas downhome blues
had been usurped by the tougher band sound of Muddy Wa-
ters, while Walker’s pervasive influence was absorbed into early
rock ‘n roll via Chuck Berry. The rise of the Chess empire fo-
cused much of the post-War blues business in Chicago and
the dominance of Mississippi migrants in the Windy City un-
derscores our stereotype of blues as Mississippian at root.
Perhaps it is, but the influential strides made by Jefferson in
the Twenties and Walker in the Forties are unexcelled in the
history of blues guitar. And the Texas blues guitar tradition
didn’t dead-end with T-Bone; it continues to deliver such rus-
tic anachronisms as Henry Qualls as well as sundry young
Stevie Ray wannabes, disciples of a man who cut his teeth
absorbing the lessons of Freddie King. At its best, the Texas
blues guitar tradition is, like the state itself, outsize and hard
to corral, disarmingly diverse and, despite fits of legendary
Lone Star bluster, beguilingly genuine. It is embodied by the
four legendary Texans in this video.
Photo by George Pickow
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Albert Collins
(1932-1993)
“A lot of people ask me what’s the difference between
Chicago blues and Texas blues. We didn’t have harp players
and slide guitar players out of Texas, so most of the blues
guitars had a horn section. ...The bigger the band is,
the better they like it in Texas.”
Albert Collins, interviewed by Jas Obrecht, Guitar Player, July 1993
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John Lee Hooker’s 1949 hit, “Boogie Chillen,” was the
first tune Collins learned to play. Later he would be influenced
by T-Bone Walker and popular Houstonian Clarence
‘Gatemouth’ Brown, who convinced Collins to use a capo (or
clamp as he called it) to change keys. By 1952 Collins was
fronting an eight-piece band, the Rhythm Rockers, in Galveston.
Never sure of himself as a singer, Collins generally left the
vocal chores to someone else in his band. In 1954 he went on
tour with singer Piney Brown, and a fogged car windowshield
prompted a bass player to tell Collins, “Man, you better turn
the defrost on!” The remark stuck with Collins, who began
assigning ‘chilling’ titles to his instrumentals. 1958’s “Freeze”
on the Houston-based Kangaroo label was his wax debut, fol-
lowed by “Defrost“(1960, Great Scott) and “Frosty” (1963,
Hall). 1961 was the year of Freddie King’s success with “Hide
Away,” but Collins lacked King’s national label (King/Federal)
support, and despite some regional success with “Frosty,” his
instrumentals didn’t assuage the need to keep day jobs (truck
driving, mixing car paint) to pay the rent. (Collins’ 1963-65
recordings appear on Truckin’ With Albert Collins, MCAD-
10423.)
His fortunes improved when collector-performer Bob Hite
of Canned Heat sought him out in Houston in 1967 when
Canned Heat was appearing on a bill with Lightnin’ Hopkins.
Lightnin’ took Hite to hear Collins at the Ponderosa Lounge
where his act (complete with audience stroll assisted by hun-
dred-foot guitar cord) so floored ‘the Bear’ that he urged Collins
to move to California and work the then-burgeoning Fillmore
circuit. Collins did just that, opening shows for the likes of
Fleetwood Mac and cutting three albums for Imperial in 1968-
69 (reissued on CD as Albert Collins: The Complete Imperial
Recordings, EMI CDP-7-96740-2). Signed by B.B. King's pro-
ducer Bill Szymczyk to his fledgling Tumbleweed label in 1971,
There’s Gotta Be a Change promised to be Collins’ career-
making record (it even put a single, “Get Your Business
Straight,’ into the national rhythm & blues chart). But the sud-
den demise of Tumbleweed left Collins without a label, and
for a number of years he worked West Coast clubs from San
Diego to Seattle, often backed by Robert Cray’s band. When
the opportunity to record for Alligator arose in 1978, Collins
was employed as a mixer in a paint store.
Twenty years after his recording debut, Collins was ready
and eager for a break and made the most of it. Had cancer
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not claimed him in 1993,
Collins would no doubt
still be making music as
powerful as that heard in
this video. “That tone,” ex-
claimed Joe Ely’s guitarist
David Grissom in the docu-
mentary, Further On Down
the Road. “There’s some-
thing about that tone that
just kills you. I like to think
of it like a Louisville Slug-
ger, a baseball bat. Some-
body hitting a home-run
and that bat crackin’. When
Alber t hits the strings,
Photo by Tom Copi
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Freddie King
(1934-1976)
“I used to listen to Freddie King a lot then,
and that drive he had in his early days stayed on my mind.”
Albert Collins to Ellen Griffith, Guitar Player, August 1979
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Lightnin’ Hopkins
(1912-1982)
“Lightnin’, in his way, is a magnificent figure. He is one of
the last of his kind, a lonely, bitter man who brings to the blues the
intensity and pain of the hours in the hot sun, scraping at the
earth, singing to make the hours pass. The blues will go on, but
the country blues, and the great singers who created from the raw
singing of the work songs and the field cries the richness and
variety of the country blues, will pass with men like
this thin, intense singer from Centerville, Texas.”
Samuel B. Charters, The Country Blues, Rinehart & Co. New York, 1959
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Photo by David Gahr
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Mance Lipscomb
(1895-1976)
“Now when I get to playin’ I go out of the bounds of reason
because when I start, I don’t like to stop. As long as it look like
they payin’ attention to me, I can play all night for them.”
Mance Lipscomb, interviewed by Glen Myers
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The Lone Star State boasts
many cultural riches, and its
gifts to the blues tradition are
among its most exemplary trea-
sures. The range of Texas blues
guitar styles, both rural and ur-
ban, is captured in this collec-
tion of fourteen performances
Mance Lipscomb