LISTEN TO ONE: Callin' Mama
This session, half of a Bluesville LP that has a 1960 session with Lightnin' Hopkins on the other side, is vintage Sonny Terry. Brownie McGhee backing him up on guitar, Sonny handling harmonica and vocals. Vocals on three of the cuts, the other two Sonny's trademarked harmonica-and-whoop. It's Sonny in his prime, but his prime lasted a very long time. From his 1938 appearance in John Hammond's Carnegie Hall "Spirituals to Swing" concert to his featured solo in the 1986 movie Crossroads, recorded not long before he died, he did what he did, and he was a master.
This would be his last Bluesville session, and it's a good one
Of tangential interest -- the liner notes were written for Bluesville by Leroi Jones. whose book Blues People would be released at around the same time as the album, the first major study of American musi by an African-American author. Jones, who would become Amiri Baraka, had this to say of Terry:
Sonny wheels and deals, just as he always does, coming quite close, sometimes, to convincing any interested listener that his blues is really a new kind of expression, unheard of before this album.
"Callin' Mama" has one of Sonny's virtuoso touches, hardly unheard of before this album but always a crowd pleaser. At Brownie's urging, the harmonica plaintively pleads: "I want my mama."
Kenneth S. Goldstein is credited as producer on the album cover, Goldstein and Ozzie Cadena on Wikipedia's page. The Bluesville LP, Sonny is King, has this session on one side and a 1960 session with Lightnin' Hopkins on the other side. The Brownie side was recorded at an unnamed New York City location, the Lightnin' side, also featuring a jazz bassist and drummer, at Van Gelder Studio. So if I had to guess, I'd put Lightnin' with Ozzie and Brownie with Kenny.
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