The Memphis Jug Band was an American musical group active from the mid-1920s to the late-1950s.[1] The band featured harmonica, kazoo, fiddle and mandolin or banjolin, backed by guitar, piano, washboard, washtub bass and jug. They played slow blues, pop songs, humorous songs and upbeat dance numbers with jazz and string band flavors. The band made the first commercial recordings in Memphis, Tennessee, and recorded more sides than any other prewar jug band.[2]
Beginning in 1926, African-American musicians in the Memphis area grouped around the singer, songwriter, guitarist, and harmonica player Will Shade (also known as Son Brimmer or Sun Brimmer). The personnel of the band varied from day to day, with Shade booking gigs and arranging recording sessions.[3] The band was as a training ground for musicians who would go on to make careers of their own.[4]
The group recorded under several names for various record labels: the Picaninny Jug Band,[6] the Memphis Sanctified Singers, the Carolina Peanut Boys, the Dallas Jug Band, the Memphis Sheiks, and the Jolly Jug Band. Other releases were credited to individual members of the band — Hattie Hart, Minnie Wallace, Will Weldon, Charlie Nickerson, Vol Stevens, Charlie Burse, "Poor Jab" Jones, and Will Shade—but were performed with accompaniment by other members of the band.[8]
Sound
The remarkable sound of the Memphis Jug Band was partly due to its unusual instruments. The first recorded jug bands, based in Louisville, Kentucky, were jazz-oriented groups with a jug taking the place of a tuba or trombone. The Memphis Jug Band borrowed from this model but added kazoo as a prominent lead instrument, similar in sound to a trumpet in a jazz band.[6] Another variation from the Louisville sound was a focus on country blues songs, like those favored by Jim Jackson and other Memphis-area solo artists. (The Memphis Jug Band recorded Jackson's hit song "Kansas City Blues" twice and performed it on the television program, Blues Street,[9] in 1958.) This is the basic jug band sound that was adopted by other Memphis-area groups, like Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, Jed Davenport's Beale Street Jug Band and Jack Kelly's South Memphis Jug Band.
The band initially played mostly country blues, but its repertoire expanded as new members contributed their own styles. Songs led by Charlie "Bozo" Nickerson, such as "Everybody's Talking About Sadie Green" and "Cave Man Blues", were boisterous and funny; songs led by Charlie Burse, such as "Little Green Slippers" and "Insane Crazy Blues", were more musically complex and jazz-oriented; songs led by Charlie Pierce sounded like Appalachian fiddle tunes, backed by impressive jug playing and shouted challenges from his bandmates.[6] Will Shade continued playing straightforward country blues songs for the rest of his life, but he also introduced some jazz elements, as in his 1962 field recording of "Jump and Jive", which incorporates lyrics from Cab Calloway's "Jumpin' Jive".
The blues scholar Paul Oliver noted that the "raspy, buzzing sound" of some of the jug band instruments was close to the musical aesthetic of Africa, and that the jug and kazoo represented the voices of animals or ancestral spirits.[4] However, many of the Memphis Jug Band's influences are more readily apparent in popular musical styles of their time.
Performances
The Memphis Jug Band played wherever they could find engagements and busked in local parks and markets. They were popular with white and black audiences, playing at country clubs and parties at the Peabody Hotel.[10] The band was a favorite of former mayor Edward Hull "Boss" Crump[11] and was shown performing at one of Crump's parties in a Life magazine photo feature in 1941.
Commercial recordings
Between 1927 and 1934, the Memphis Jug Band made more than eighty commercial recordings, first for Victor Records, then (as the Picaninny Jug Band) for the Champion-Gennett label, and finally for OKeh Records.[3][6] The Victor recordings were made in Memphis and Atlanta, Georgia, between 1927 and 1930; the Champion-Gennett recordings were made in Richmond, Indiana, in August 1932; and the final sessions for Okeh were held in Chicago in November 1934.[12] By that time, their style of music was no longer in demand by record companies, as commercial styles were moving toward a more urban sound.[6]
The other jug band song on The Country Blues was Gus Cannon's "Walk Right In", which was a hit for the Rooftop Singers in 1962. Capitalizing on the success of that recording, the Memphis label Stax Records invited Cannon, then 79 years old, to record a full-length album the following year. Will Shade, the leader of the Memphis Jug Band, backed Cannon on jug, and former member Milton Roby played washboard.
Twenty-eight of the group's commercial recordings from 1927 to 1934 were reissued by Yazoo Records in 1980 on the double album Memphis Jug Band.[13] It was reissued in 1991 on CD with a reduced and reprogrammed 23-track listing.[14]
Field recordings
During the folk revival of the 1950s, Shade made several field recordings. His ongoing activity as a performer and his accessible location in Memphis made him a popular starting point for scholars looking for other musicians in the area. Shade would often gather musicians at his apartment at Fourth and Beale for informal recording sessions featuring former musical rivals (including his former romantic rival Furry Lewis),[15] playing together in different combinations. Shade continued using the name Memphis Jug Band, even for recordings consisting only of him and one or two other members. His wife, Jennie Mae Clayton, who sang on some of the earliest Memphis Jug Band recordings, also sang on some of these field recordings.
The following are commercially available field recordings from this period:
American Skiffle Bands, recorded 1957, reissued 2012, three songs and one interview
Alan Lomax Blues Songbook, recorded 1959, reissued 2003, one song
Conversation with the Blues, recorded 1960, reissued 1997, one interview
Tennessee Recordings (from the George Mitchell collection), recorded 1962, reissued 2006, seven songs
Blueskvarter: 1964, vol. 3, recorded 1964, reissued 2004, two songs
Legacy
The Memphis Jug Band was key in developing the jug band format, which evolved into the blues combo that is the basis of much popular music today. Their legacy, like that of other acoustic blues musicians of their era, has been overshadowed by the electric blues of the 1950s. Modern jug bands still play many Memphis Jug Band songs, but generally the only songs recognizable to a wider audience are those that were covered by rock groups in the 1960s.
The Memphis Jug Band was awarded a Brass Note on the Beale Street "Walk of Fame" in 2009. It was among the first group of inductees into the Jug Band Hall of Fame, an informal website run by jug band musicians, in 2010.
A jug band is a band employing a jug player and a mix of conventional and homemade instruments. These homemade instruments are ordinary objects adapted to or modified for making sound, like the washtub bass, washboard, spoons, bones, stovepipe, jew's harp, and comb and tissue paper. The term jug band is loosely used in referring to ensembles that also incorporate homemade instruments but that are more accurately called skiffle bands, spasm bands, or juke bands because they do not include a jug player.
The Memphis blues is a style of blues music created from the 1910s to the 1930s by musicians in the Memphis area, such as Frank Stokes, Sleepy John Estes, Furry Lewis and Memphis Minnie. The style was popular in vaudeville and medicine shows and was associated with Beale Street, the main entertainment area in Memphis.
Delta blues is one of the earliest-known styles of blues. It originated in the Mississippi Delta and is regarded as a regional variant of country blues. Guitar and harmonica are its dominant instruments; slide guitar is a hallmark of the style. Vocal styles in Delta blues range from introspective and soulful to passionate and fiery.
Gustavus Cannon was an American blues musician who helped to popularize jug bands in the 1920s and 1930s. There is uncertainty about his birth year; his tombstone gives the date as 1874.
Wilbur Joe "Kansas Joe" McCoy was an American Delta blues singer, musician and songwriter.
Noah Lewis was an American jug band and country blues musician, generally known for playing the harmonica.
Robert Timothy Wilkins was an American country blues guitarist and vocalist, of African-American and Cherokee descent. His distinction was his versatility: he could play ragtime, blues, minstrel songs, and gospel music with equal facility.
Hudson Whittaker, known as Tampa Red, was an American Chicago blues musician.
William Shade Jr. was a Memphis blues musician, best known for his leadership of the Memphis Jug Band. He was commonly called Son Brimmer, a nickname from his grandmother Annie Brimmer. The name apparently stuck when other members of the band noticed that the sun bothered him and he used the brim of a hat to shade his eyes.
Charlie Burse was an American blues musician, best known for his work with the Memphis Jug Band. His nicknames included "Laughing Charlie," "Uke Kid Burse" and "The Ukulele Kid." The "uke" in his nicknames referred to the first instrument he was known for, the tenor banjo, which was commonly called a "ukulele-banjo" in the South. Later photographs show him with a tenor guitar, a similar instrument that he played in the same tuning.
"Stealin" is an American blues song from the 1920s. It originated with jug bands, but gained wider popularity after several 1960s contemporary folk musicians recorded it. Although various artists have recorded different verses, the chorus has remained consistent:
William "Casey Bill" Weldon was an American country blues musician.
Jim Kweskin is an American folk, jazz, and blues musician, most notable as the founder of the Jim Kweskin jug band, also known as Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band, with Fritz Richmond, Geoff Muldaur, Bob Siggins and Bruno Wolfe. The Jug Band was a significant part of the folk and blues revival of the 1960s. Maria Muldaur, formerly with the Even Dozen Jug Band, joined the band in 1963. During the five years they were together, the Jug Band successfully modernized the sounds of pre–World War II rural music.
Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions is an American folk music album. It was recorded live by the band of the same name at the Top of the Tangent coffee house in Palo Alto, California in July, 1964, and released in 1999.
Dave Van Ronk and the Ragtime Jug Stompers is an album featuring Dave Van Ronk playing with a jug band.
The Carolina Chocolate Drops were an old-time string band from Durham, North Carolina. Their 2010 album, Genuine Negro Jig, won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards, and was number 9 in fRoots magazine's top 10 albums of 2010.
"Me and My Chauffeur Blues" is a song written and recorded by blues singer and guitarist Memphis Minnie in 1941. It was added to the U.S. National Recording Registry in 2019. A number of other musicians have recorded the song, or adaptations of it, often under shortened titles.
The Even Dozen Jug Band is the debut and only studio album by the American jug band Even Dozen Jug Band, released in 1964.
"Bottle Up and Go" or "Bottle It Up and Go" is a song that is a standard of the blues. Based on earlier songs, Delta bluesman Tommy McClennan recorded "Bottle It Up and Go" in 1939. The song has been interpreted and recorded by numerous artists, sometimes using alternate titles, such as "Step It Up and Go", "Shake It Up and Go", etc.
American Epic: The Best of the Memphis Jug Band is a compilation album released to accompany the award-winning American Epic documentary film series. It collects performances from the Memphis Jug Band's career-spanning recording sessions for Victor Records and OKeh Records between 1927 and 1934. The album was released as a 15-track download and a vinyl LP.
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