Listening to Prestige 407: Arbee Stidham

Arbee Stidham was commencing a second career with this album, and although he was only 43, it was three decades after the start of his first career. From a musical family -- his father played with Jimmie Lunceford and his uncle with the Memphis Jug Band -- he had started his own band, the Southern Syncopators, by the time he was thirteen. Not too many 13-year-olds start there own band; fewer still get booked to tour with Bessie Smith, but Stidham did.

As a jazz musician,  he toured with his own band, first in the south and then in Chicago, and played with Lucky Millinder in the 1930s-40s, . A recording contract in 1947 yielded a hit recording, "My Heart Belongs to You," which went to number one on the Billboard Race Records chart (later to become the Rhythm and Blues chart) in 1948.

Stidham was a tenor saxophone player as well as a vocalist, and thought of himself primarily as a jazz musician until injuries suffered in an auto accident left him unable to play the saxophone.

But, determined to persevere in music, he took up the guitar and became a bluesman. He was aided in this by fellow Chicagoan Big Bill Broonzy, who had undergone a metamorphosis of his own. Originally a jazz guitarist, Broonzy had discovered the newly emerging folk music circuit, and had reinvented himself as a folk blues singer, and as a songwriter of major importance. Following Lead Belly's example of tailoring the blues to appeal to a new audience of white leftists, he wrote a number of protest songs, from the ironic "WPA Blues" to the anthemic "Black, Brown and White."

Stidham learned his new instrument well,  and added to his gifts as a blues singer and songwriter, it created new opportunities: a couple of singles for Atlantic subsidiary Abco in 1956, and then this album debut for Prestige Bluesville, followed by a 1961 album for Folkways, and a Folkways collaboration with Jazz Gillum and Memphis Slim that came out under Gillum's name. Then another recording drought until the early 1970s and two more albums, one for Mainstream, primarily a jazz label, and the other for Folkways. The 1970s also saw him venture into the academic world, as a lecturer on the blues at Cleveland State University.

There's plenty on this session to delight a blues lover who may not have heard Arbee Stidham before, and much for a jazz lover to appreciate. King Curtis sits in on saxophone, and on piano, the South Side soul of Chicagoan John Wright, who first recorded for Prestige in August, and would do four more sessions.

Wright is a dominant payer on a seven-minute version of Brownie McGhee's "Pawn Shop Blues," where his piano improvisation stretches out a normally song-length 12-bar blues into something else altogether. Stidham does mostly originals here, but features a few from other composers--why, it's hard to say. "Pawn Shop Blues" is a very good song, and favorite part of McGhee's repertoire, but melodically it's an interchangeable 12-bar blues. I guess it's a nice piece of change in Brownie's pocket, except that nobody ever made any money from having a jazz composition recorded, as Jackie McLean found out when he looked into suing Miles Davis for the composer credit to "Dig."

Two Big Joe Turner songs, the familiar "Wee Baby Blues" and the less familiar "Last Goodbye Blues" are also included, as is a song by drummer Armand "Jump" Jackson, "Teenage Kiss," which sounds more as though it would be given to Frankie Lymon than a fortyish blues singer, and in fact it does give King Curtis room for some hot rhythm and blues honking on the tenor. All in all, it's a fine outing for Stidham, especially if you don't listen to the words too closely, and you really don't have to. I once had a friend who told me that she loved the blues, but she really never listened to the words. I said. "That's like loving Rubens but not noticing the nudes." She said, "I do that too."

The others are all Stidham originals, including a remake of "My Heart Belongs to You," here retitled

"My Heart Will Always Belong to You." Stidham, for a latecomer to the guitar, sure knows how to play the blues on it. And as a veteran jazzman, he knows how to coordinate his blues with a couple of jazz greats. I've picked "You Can't Live in this World by Yourself" as my "Listen to One" because it shows off all of the above -- Stidham as songwriter, guitar player and blues singer, some nice ensemble work by Wright and Curtis.

And for a bonus, if you click through to the YouTube video, it's accompanied by some amazing street photographs -- by whom, I don't know.

Ozzie Cadena produced. The album came out on Bluesville, titled Tired of Wandering.



Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1955-56, and Vol. 3, 1957-58 now include, in the Kindle editions, links to all the "Listen to One" selections. All three volumes available from Amazon.

The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by some of the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.
– Terry Gibbs