Listening to Prestige 523: Tampa Red

LISTEN TO ONE: How Long

 When Samuel Charters sought out Tampa Red in Chicago in the late 1950s, he found a singer whose commercial viability had dried up under shifting musical tastes, but who, unlike some of the others Charters found, had not given up on the idea of a recording career, and was itching for the chance to get back in the studio/ In the liner notes to this album, Charters reports that when he first spoke to Tampa (he got the nickname "Tampa" when he arrived in Chicago from Florida; "Red" came later): 

As he talked about the situation, sitting in his small room on Chicago's south side, he said again and again that he could still play the blues and get new songs together if he had a chance to record.

Sadly, for all his enthusiasm, Tampa would not record again after this, his second Bluesville album. although he lived another 20 years.

Neither Bluesville album represented his own choice for recording options. He was presented as a solo act, with just acoustic guitar (and kazoo!), but he had always preferred to work with a partner or even a group, going back as far as his widely popular recordings in the 1920s with "Georgia Tom." particularly "It's Tight Like That." Georgia Tom would become Thomas A, Dorsey, composer of some of America's  most beloved gospel songs. His most frequent partner, Big Maceo Meriwether, had died in 1953, and most of his old bandmates had died or left the business. If this had been ten years later, Tampa would have had no trouble finding young blues enthusiasts, most of them white, dying to play with an authentic blues legend, Even a couple of years later, young Chicagoans like Paul Butterfield, Elvin Bishop and Nick Gravenites were falling in love with the blues and forming a new generation of blues bands. But Tampa went into the studio with no amplified guitar and no fellow musicians.

Into which studio? That's a little unclear. The back cover of the first Bluesville album, at least one pressing of it, says "recorded in Chicago," and the usually reliable jazzdisco.org also gives Chicago as the site of the recording. But the back cover also says "recorded by Rudy Van Gelder," and Rudy wasn't known for taking road trips. The second Bluesville album also lists Van Gelder as the recording engineer. Stefan Wirz, the German blues discographer whose website is remarkably complete, has

Chicago listed as the recording site for both albums--and for both albums, has crossed out Chicago and written in Englewood Cliffs. That's a little odd--why not cut Chicago completely, rather than just crossing it out? Tampa Red's is one of the few pages on Wirz's site that's still marked "Under Construction," so maybe he's still researching this issue. Conceivably, whoever typed up the copy for the back cover could have put Van Gelder's name down by force of habit.

For now, we'll go with the preponderance of evidence and assign the recording site to Englewood Cliffs. If Esmond Edwards were still producing for Bluesville, he might have brought in some musicians to work with Tampa, but Kenneth Goldstein was more of the new breed of folklorist.

Charters quotes Tampa Red as saying:

My theory of a song is that it should have some kind of meaning to it. If it doesn't a man goes to two or three different meanings before he knows what the song is about.

Of course, in his younger hokum days, double entendre songs were exactly what he was about. But he'd mostly outgrown that by this time  (he does give us a little of the old hokum in "Jelly Whippin' Blues"), and he gives us the blues, straight, no chaser. It's too bad he never got to record again. 

The Bluesville album is entitled Don't Jive Me.

Listening to Prestige 423: Tampa Red

These were Tampa Red's last recordings. He was 57 years old, and already not in good health, although he would live another twenty years. His best years may have been the late 1920s, when he moved to Chicago and teamed up with piano player Georgia Tom as The Hokum Boys. Hokum was a somewhat genre-bending form--there's country hokum as well as blues hokum--and its main characteristic is suggestive lyrics. Tampa Red and Georgia Tom can be said to have started the hokum craze with their 1928 hit, "It's Tight Like That." Georgia Tom, who had also been Ma Rainey's piano player and arranger, was pretty good at

writing dirty songs. In fact, he was very good. But when, a couple of years later, he got religion, reclaimed his birth name of Thomas A. Dorsey, and began writing hymns, he found his true calling, and wrote some of the most beloved songs in the American canon, including "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" and "Peace in the Valley."

Red remained in Chicago, playing the blues. He and Big Bill Broonzy formed the nucleus of the Chicago blues scene of the 1930s, but the 1930s were not a great time for the blues as a commercial venture. It was the Depression, and too many people had the blues. Still, they persevered, and became the elder statesmen of the 1940s Chicago blues scene. Red was known for helping out blues singers and musicians new in town, with a hot meal and a place to sleep. He had some successes, including a local  hit with "Black Angel Blues." written by the queen of seriously dirty blues, Lucille Bogan. But his life really fell apart in 1954, when his wife died, and he spent some time in mental institutions.
This recording doesn't display the bottleneck guitar wizardry of the performances from his prime, but his guitar work is still lovely. It does feature his kazoo, which he had first employed as a street singer in the 1920s. And it features a couple of his classic hokum songs, "Let Me Play With Your Poodle" and "It's Tight Like That." And it's a winning, endearing record.

It was recorded in Chicago, but beyond that, there's no record of where, or who supervised the recording. This, and one other Chicago session for Bluesville, marked the end of his career. He lived with a friend who took care of him until 1974, and after death he was in a nursing home until he died in poverty in 1981. Certainly not the only sad story in lives of blues greats, but our country and our culture owed these people so much more.

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

EXPECT VOLUME 4, 1959-60, BY THE END OF THIS YEAR.