Listening to Prestige 509: Doug Quattlebaum

LISTEN TO ONE: So Sweet

Doug Quattlebaum had a brief but well-deserved moment in the limelight, and he attained it the old-fashioned way: the modern equivalent of the old 19th and early 20th century medicine show. He had gotten a record deal in 1953, cut three songs for a Philadelphia label, and saw two of them released on a 78 RPM single. Then nothing until 1961, and his contemporary medicine show. Whereas the old timers used music to draw a crowd to whom they could sell patent medicines, Quattlebaum had taken a job driving a Mr. Softee ice cream truck. In the afternoon, he would park in a neighborhood, get out his guitar, plug into an amp he had rigged up on the truck, and start entertaining--old songs, current hits...and some blues. When he had the crowd, he could start selling ice cream. Someone told jazz and blues producer/historian Pete Welding about the Mr. Softee guy. He came, he heard, he was hooked.

Quattlebaum was from South Carolina, where as a toddler he made his first guitar out of a wire stretched between two nails on a stick of wood, then graduated to a homemade cigar box guitar. His model in those early days was fellow Carolinian Blind Boy Fuller. Later his family moved to Philadelphia, where his mother remarried. His new stepfather was Arthur (Big Boy) Crudup's brother, and he bought young Doug his first real guitar when he was 14, and taught him the only chord he knew. He taught himself the rest, and started playing accompaniment for gospel groups. After his career started and stopped in 1953, he went back to playing for gospel groups, including Clara Ward and the Ward Singers. The gospel influence can be heard in his approach to singing the blues.

For this session, he draws blues from a variety of sources, and adds a few of his own, drawing on traditional material. He pays respects to his early influences, with Blind Boy Fuller's "So Sweet" and Arthur

Crudup's "Mama Don't Allow Me to Stay out All Night Long." It's the kind of set a medicine show pitchman would put together -- something borrowed, something blue, a little something for everyone, and quite satisfying.

On the strength of this album and Welding's sponsorship, he did the blues and folk circuit for a while, then returned to Philadelphia where he continued backing gospel groups and may have become a minister.

Welding and Kenneth Goldstein produced. Softee Man Blues was released on Bluesville.