Rory Gallagher: The 1991 Interview

Rory Gallagher threw every fibre of his being into his music. Scrappy, unabashed, and bluesy to the core, he was a sublime guitarist and compelling singer. His live and studio recordings, especially during the 1970s, deliver strength, wisdom, and inspiration. Personally, I count him among my favorite guitarists. I seldom travel without his music and sometimes listen to him for weeks on end.

During my decades as an editor for Guitar Player magazine, Rory was high on my wish-list for interviews. The trouble was, after the 1970s, he only played the San Francisco Bay area three times. I was on the road during his 1982 and 1985 appearances. Then, after a six-year hiatus, it was announced that Rory was coming back to the United States to promote a new album, Fresh Evidence. His brother and manager, Donal Gallagher, sent word that Rory would be happy to speak with me.

We met backstage at the Catalyst Club in Santa Cruz, California, on the afternoon of March 15, 1991. I quickly discovered that Rory was charming and enthusiastic and highly intelligent. Here, for the first time, is a complete transcript of that interview.

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You’ve stayed true to the music that inspired you in the beginning.

Yeah, I think that you have to recognize the kind of source point that you have. Even though you develop as a player over the years and you get influenced by different things, you have to keep to the heart of what you started with, that kind of initial vision of music, you know? Obviously, it’s taken me this amount of time to learn a lot of different things about music and playing and so on, but I think I’m getting there slowly. [Laughs.]

You seem to gravitate toward roots American music.

Yeah. Even though I grew up in Ireland, where there’s a lot of folk music and traditional music is very close at hand, it didn’t initially appeal to me, even though I can see traces of it creeping in over the years in my songwriting and some chord patterns and some kinds of solos I do. But I wasn’t really turned on until I heard American music via Lonnie Donegan. You know, I heard him doing Woody Guthrie songs, Lead Belly songs. And of course, I heard Elvis Presley and Eddie Cochrane, the early rockers, Chuck Berry. So it was a mixture of folk, blues, and rock from America. I was only six, seven, eight, nine, at that age, and then I just followed it through and learned about all these artists. And I’m still discovering undiscovered people and learning. But it took me about a good ten or fifteen years to find out who was who in the whole spectrum of things – who were the originators or the prime movers, and who were the followers and copyists.

Are there records you'd recommend for young players who aren’t acquainted with Son House and other early bluesmen?

Well, I mean, everyone is stating the obvious Robert Johnson connection. He seems to be the virtuoso of that era, of that point, but Son House would be very important inasmuch as he gave lessons, I believe, to Robert Johnson. He probably wrote “Walkin’ Blues,” for instance. And Muddy Waters also claims that Son House was important at the time.

It depends. You see, it’s very hard to dictate to some youngster who might listen to Albert King and immediately see themselves in that lineage. I think all young rock and blues players should dig deeper, back beyond the obvious big blues stars like B.B. King and Buddy Guy, who are all great. I’m very interested also in the country blues and the “electrified country blues,” as I would call it – Big Joe Williams and things like that. I also like all the slide players from Earl Hooker through Muddy Waters, obviously. Robert Nighthawk is a favorite of mine, and I eventually discovered Tampa Red kind of late on, and he’s very smooth-playing. Like that lick that Muddy Waters is known for – we all thought that was an original Muddy Waters thing, but he got it from Tampa Red. So this folk music tradition of passing on and picking up and stealing goes on like mad, you know.

But in my own style, being a European very influenced by American music and so on, I try to find a way that if I’m doing a blues number, I can do it very traditional if I want to. I can also add my own element or my own twists to it and have it be a rock song with a blues thing in it. I try to be adventurous and progressive in some material, in others I try to be as downhome and ethnic as possible.

We hear that on your performance of Son House’s “Empire State Express.”

Yeah. That was as close to . . . I did that in one take, on purpose. I did that on St. Patrick’s night, oddly enough, just last year. It was the last track on the album [Fresh Evidence], and I loved the song. I’d lost the [Son House] album that I had, so I had to remember it. Luckily I had written the lyrics down. I do it close enough to Son House’s style. To sing it in the tempo I was doing, I had to slightly adjust the rhythm a bit, but I thought it was great song. I thought it was a very overlooked song, you know? Al Wilson of Canned Heat played a National guitar on one or two tracks of that particular album.

That’s Son House’s Death Letter album?

That’s right – with “Pearline” and “John the Revelator”— that’s another great song on that. And then “Ghost Blues” [on Fresh Evidence] – that’s quite traditional in its approach with the National. The mood also on – what do you call it? “Middle Name” – the guitar on that is more like a Slim Harpo record. So it happens, all kinds of references all over the place. There are a couple of rock tracks alright – “Kid Gloves, “Slumming Angel,” and “Walking Wounded.” The rest are very much in the blues field, I think. “The King of Zydeco,” even though it’s about Clifton Chenier, it’s almost countryish more than zydeco in the feel, but by the time the accordion comes in and the maracas, it is . . . . We did try the washboard on it to see if it gets it – you know, his brother’s “rub board,” as they call it – but it didn’t work in that song. We laid down another track, called “Never Asked You for Nothin’,” which nearly made it to the album, but it’s one of those fifteenth songs that could crop up again, you know. And we were lucky enough to find this guy, Geraint Watkins, who’s an enthusiast of Cajun music and zydeco music and plays great boogie-woogie piano and rock and roll piano. He’s played a lot with Dave Edmunds and he’s played piano with the Stray Cats and so on, and he has his own group called the Balham Alligators. Balham is an area in South London, so it’s a bit of a funny name, really, just a ludicrous name. That’s the way he is.

Also, production-wise, I was very keen on the album before, which was called Defender, which had a lot of blues elements in it as well, but it’s more of a rock production, whereas this [Fresh Evidence] is kind of – not mellow, but we didn’t overdo the compression and we didn’t overdo the cleaning up and the noise gates and things like that. We left it fairly wooly and casual, which is the way I think suits the songs, you know? I hope people catch up on Defender, because that’s an album that’s still quite current in the set, even though we move the repertoire around every night.

What year was Defender?

Two years ago.

It was released in England?

Released in England and all over Europe. It will be released here in two weeks’ time, in fact, so it will be running concurrently with this new album. But obviously the emphasis is on Fresh Evidence. Defender has some rock songs, some tough songs like “Kickback City” and “Road to Hell,” but there are some blues songs. Like, one of the numbers we do is called “Continental Op,” which was influenced by Dashiell Hammett – that’s one of his characters. Even though it’s a rock boogie feel, it’s very much a John Lee Hooker chording, with suspended fourths and things like that. It also had a song called “Loanshark Blues,” which was there again a bit like a Slim Harpo “Shake Your Hips” type of feel, but it had some nice lyrics about a down-and-out guy in debt to the loan shark – very fast, alliteration-type lyrics. There’s a song called “Ain’t No Saint,” which is very much an Albert Collins-Albert King feel. I’d like to get to the point where it will be a Rory Gallagher feel rather than . . . . But you have to refer to all these inspirers or influences, you know.

Although there is definitely a Rory Gallagher feel. For example, there's a continuum between songs like “Slumming Angel” and “Living Like a Trucker.”

“Living Like a Trucker” – I remember that one quite well because we had the clavinet with the wah-wah. I was so straight-laced then, I wouldn’t play a wah-wah pedal myself. It’s like somebody joked to me the other night – they were disappointed to hear certain equipment I was using. They didn’t even want me to use electricity. Some people have this image of you as so purist that you wouldn’t even use . . . you know [laughs].

They’ve obviously never heard Taste at the Isle of Wight.

Right. But this is the way it goes. But “Living Like a Trucker,” I like that track myself. All those albums will come out in the next year or two on IRS on CD, with lyric sheets. And some will be slightly remixed and EQ’d for CD. With this absence behind me, it’ll be great to have all my old material out again and people can look at it and see if it’s held up in court or if it’s not. I think it hasn’t dated too badly.

When you’re recording solos, what do you expect from yourself? What should a Rory Gallagher solo be about?

I try to split the difference between being fairly clever and technical, and still primitive. Because I think if it’s just a technical exercise, that’s all very well. Even if a solo has to lean towards the primitive, so be it. It depends on the song, if you have to play very calculated or if you’re overdubbing the solo sometimes. You know, I used to always go for live leads, mistakes and all, just for feel. But now if a certain song needs a very sort of melodic type of solo, I’m prepared to work on it over and over. But I try not to get in the habit of dropping in [punching in notes] because it’s very tempting to get the perfect solo. I have been guilty of it once or twice, but only just to save it if you’re on a great direction. But as a rule I try to keep a grip on technology, so it doesn’t take the human factor out of it and you get too lazy about things, you know.

Has technology impacted the way you make records? Was recording the new album different than, say, recording Blueprint or Tattoo?

A little bit different, yeah. Of course, we’ve got the 24-track. Both of these albums were 8-track. When we went 16-track, I thought that was the year 2000! In fact, on this album we brought in tape echoes, spring reverb. We tried to use more vintage equipment. We did use, obviously, certain modern EQ’s. I’m not that mad about digital equipment, and obviously if you had to clean up something, you would use a noise gate – you know, very subtly. But performance-wise, I don’t think there’s that much difference, except that we probably were a bit more rigid in those days about getting it. We still try to get it in the first take. I would repair something now if I thought it was a great performance, whereas in the early days, just because of a repair we could have saved some tracks, but we were very keen with getting it as-was, even with the Telecaster whistling and everything. It was ridiculous, that kind of attitude, but that’s the way I thought. We needn’t have been so strict with ourselves, but that’s the way we were. I had the same attitude to echo, as well. I was very conservative in that area, which probably was a mistake. But you learn as you go along. It also depends on the engineer that you’re working with and the confidence you have in him and the whole sound and feel. I still think the approach for performance isn’t that different from the early records, but we’re probably a little more aware of what’s sonically possible now and what we can do. And also all those early albums were done in three to six weeks, whereas albums now take six months, nearly, like with this album, between remixes and retakes and what have you.

Did you try to avoid layering tracks and go for live as much as possible?

Yes, in general. I also went for a strong rhythm guitar part in tracks like “Middle Name” and “King of Zydeco” and “Walkin’ Wounded.” Instead of the Strat, for instance, I’ve got this small Chet Atkins Gretsch which is great for rhythm with fairly heavy strings – not the Eddie Cochrane model, the Les Paul-shaped one, the little orange one. That was great for rhythm. And I used a Les Paul Junior on the rhythm part of “Kid Gloves” and also the rhythm part of “Walkin’ Wounded.” Even though I’m identified with the Strat and I like the Strat, I think if you have Strat rhythm and Strat lead, except in a Hendrix situation, it can be a little bit one-dimensional. So it’s nice to have an alternative guitar to broaden the sounds. Even a Telecaster sounds good for rhythm and then Strat for lead, depending on the track.

Do you still have the old Stratocaster that you used on the early records?

Yes. It’s super-glued together.

Like Albert King’s Flying V guitar – it recently fell into a river and had to be super-glued back together.

I always like the out-of-phase sound Albert had, but he would never give you any information about his tuning or anything. Also, he was one of the few bluesmen that I know that was using Acoustic transistor amps, solid state, which had a distortion control on them. Steve Winwood used to use one alright when he was with Blind Faith. And I think on the Gary Moore album, when Albert was working on it, he was actually playing through a Roland JC-120, which is a transistor. So obviously he’s at home with them. But then the pickups on the Flying V’s are very full and warm, and they can take the match-up with the solid state.

When Albert sent the guitar back to the guy who built it, Dan Erlewine, he put it in a burlap sack without a case, wrapped some rope around it, and shipped it by Greyhound bus.

God almighty!

Dan asked Albert why he did it, and Albert told him it was too good a case to risk having anything happen to it.

[Laughs.] That’s funny. That’s strange.

That’s Albert.

It’s like the story of Mike Bloomfield showing up to record with Bob Dylan with the Telecaster without a case, in a zipper bag. That casual thing is great, you know. Everything’s gone into flight cases now. But we still have a few funky areas left in terms of cases. But the more you travel around the world, you really have to be cautious of your instruments, because it’s only when they stolen or get broken that you really miss them at that particular show.

Have you lost instruments?

I did actually have the Stratocaster stolen in Dublin in the ’60s, and I got it back after two weeks because they had a police program on TV and they put it on there. I lost a Telecaster at the same time – somebody broke into the van and stole the Strat and a Telecaster, which was only on loan to me. That never came back. I got the Strat back, though. It was found over a ditch, with a few extra scratches from the brambles and things. It had been out in the rain, as well. So I swore I’d never sell it or paint it after that. I had to borrow a guitar to get me through that fortnight. I had given of hope in getting it back, and I really couldn’t afford another Strat at that time. I was playing a Burns which a roadie had leant me. But that’s the way it goes. But the Strat is playing well. Obviously, machine heads, frets, pots, and things have been changed over the years, but it’s still the same.

Do you know the year it was made?

It’s November ’61, and I got it in August of ’63. So it was second-hand. It was the first Stratocaster in Ireland, apparently, but the guy who ordered it wanted a red one, like Hank Marvin, and they sent him a sunburst one instead. So he had to wait for a year-and-a-half or whatever to get the red one, and then he sold this one through the shop. So I got it. Prior to that, I had loan of a guitar. I had one electric Solid 7, which was an Italian, very flimsy guitar, which used to distort and everything through this four-watt Little Giant amplifier I had. I wish I had it now as a tune-up amp, because it was like a Pignose type of sound. In those days, you were trying to get the clean sound of Hank Marvin and the Ventures, or whatever. Buddy Holly. But when I got the Strat, I was set.

It must have been a happy day for you.

Oh, it was. I mean, for weeks, every morning I would wake up, I’d go over and look at the guitar in the case, and treat it like a living being or some kind of magical thing. Even the smell of the case – I mean, I was really standing on my head at that time.

Do you still travel with it?

Oh, I do, yeah. I don’t necessarily carry it myself on the plane, but we’ve got it taken care of. We watch it. Luckily, I have a ’57 as well, which is in great condition. I got that from a guitar player named Robert Johnson, of all people, who was based in Memphis at the time and worked with John Entwistle. And it’s a great guitar. I use that on the albums when I don’t use the old Strat. It’s more a Fifties sound – it’s more of a clean, rockabilly, Buddy Holly sound. It has a maple neck, and it’s good if you want a really zingy sound. Because my old Strat is a classic Strat, I suppose. Because of the age and sweat in it and everything else, the tone is a lot dirtier, raunchier, than your standard Strat. It borders on the sound of an SG almost, sometimes, or a real raw Tele, which suits me. But the ’57 is nice. All I’ve done to that was put the big frets on – I like the jumbo frets. And I also disconnect the middle control, which is the tone pot for the rhythm pickup. So on both Strats I have the lower tone pot as a master tone. I like that on a Telecaster you can adjust the tone on the lead pickup. But I think the idea that Fender had was that in those days you played rhythm on the rhythm pickup and then you clicked into the “Peggy Sue” position and went for it. In the early days, you see, some bands didn’t have bass or bass guitar, as you know. The same with the Telecasters – in the rhythm position, that big capacitor creates big, boomy bass lines. In fact, Muddy Waters, up until a couple of years before he died, he left his guitar in that style, so he could great that real boomy rhythm thing, you know.

Muddy played that Tele to the very end, as far as I know.

The red Tele. Apparently the neck was a replacement neck. The guitar was originally blonde, and Fender of Chicago – there must have been a branch there – gave him a neck with an extra-thick back to it, so that’s what happened there. But Muddy had a great feel. Even when he wasn’t playing slide, the figures he would play – particularly with Jimmy Rogers and, of course, Sam Lawhorn, who just passed away fairly lately.

You were lucky to have worked on The London Muddy Waters Sessions.

Yeah, I was. Haunted. Originally Al Kooper was going to produce that album, and he made the call. They changed producers then, and the project was back on. But I was obviously delighted. It was three nights. I was playing every night, gigs, at the same time, and they would hold up the session till midnight till I got there. And he was sitting there tuning his guitar, a glass of sparkling wine in his hand. He handed it to me, treating a 23-year-old youngster. But, I mean, it was serious business, because he had half his own band there, and then he had Mitch Mitchell on drums, Steve Winwood on piano. So we had a good time. They remixed it back in Chicago, I think. They brought a few spare tracks from it out on some of these compilations or best-of series.

What was it like working with Albert King on his Live LP?

The situation was, he showed up in Montreal and it was all arranged to be recorded. His second guitarist left him on the day, so he asked me himself, would I stand in? I said no, because his material is quite arranged – it’s not loose like Muddy’s, you know? He’s a more intense guy than Muddy, I thought, not as friendly. I hate to say it, but I was forced to sit in and just fill out as best I could. There was no rehearsing, no nothing. You just had to guess what chord, what key he was in. Any time I’d ask him what key it was, he’d say “B natural,” and he’s playing in minors. His tuning is like Em6 or Em7, as far as I know, back to front, so I just had to busk it. But it was an experience! [Laughs.] I got over it.

Mike Bloomfield once mentioned being onstage in a cutting contest with Hendrix, and he said Jimi just pulled out all the stops. He said something like, “All I could think was, I wish to God that I were Albert King!”

Yeah. If Albert wants to nail you to the wall, he’s got that amazing attack. He just hits that one-single-note-type syndrome. I was a Hendrix fan and a Bloomfield fan. I met Mike once – we did a TV show, Midnight Special, when the Electric Flag reformed. And he was a very nice, modest guy, and a beautiful player. A really soulful player. I could see him in a situation with Hendrix where he wouldn’t go into that trickery, really. But it’s a compliment to Mike if Jimi was that scared, because normally Hendrix was quite prepared to lay back and even play bass on these jam sessions.

Had you met Jimi?

I never met him. I saw him playing two times, but three shows. I was in the Speakeasy Club in London once, and he was sitting a couple of tables away, talking to someone. I hadn’t the guts to go over and annoy him. That’s happened to me a few times. And you regret it later – I mean, all you got to do is shake their hand and make contact. Because these people pass through this world and you don’t get to say hello to them, you know.

If you could transcend time to see any musicians play, who would be tops on your list?

Oh, there’s a whole glut. I’d like to have seen Django Reinhart live – I believe that was scary. Obviously I’d like to see Robert Johnson – who wouldn’t? I’d like to have seen the first Sonny Boy Williamson. There are so many people. I’d like to have seen Buddy Holly live, for that matter. I didn’t see Son House live, but I was lucky enough in the ’60s to have seen a lot of the main people. I saw Muddy, I saw John Lee Hooker, Big Joe Williams. I saw T-Bone Walker. And we were lucky enough touring the States we played with Freddie King, we played with Juke Boy Bonner. I’d like to have seen Blind Boy Fuller live, mind you, although he was in the line of Blind Boy Blake. And I saw Gary Davis. I’m pretty lucky, really. But certainly some of the early people I’d like to have seen.

Blind Boy Fuller is a fairly obscure figure, even today. How did you happen to come across his music?

The Blues Classics record with Bull City Red and Sonny Terry on it.

With “Step It Up and Go” on it?

Yes, and “Three Ball Blues.” Oh, he was great. And Scrapper Blackwell I liked a lot, particularly when he recorded when he was about 71 or something like that. And he was in great form. In fact, when I went back and listened to the original recordings with Leroy Carr, I was slightly disappointed because he had actually improved, to my ears, as a player. But then the early records were recorded very dull – you couldn’t hear the guitar that well. That was a surprising thing about that blues revival, that Furry Lewis, John Hurt – a lot of them – had improved as opposed to going the other way. It was fantastic. There a lot of people still alive. I hope now that John Lee Hooker has this big hit and that Albert Collins and Albert King are doing well, and B.B. King, that it will draw in some of the more less-known guys, like John Littlejohn and Johnny Shines, Johnny Young. They’re not the classic players, but they all have nice rough sounds, you know.

Do you use open tunings?

Yeah. I use the DADGAD tuning on “Out on the Western Plain,” the Lead Belly song. That’s one of my favorite tunings. That was supposed to be discovered by Davy Graham, a Scottish guitarist, and then it was used a lot by Bert Jansch and Martin Carthy, all great players in their different ways. I’ve been messing around with dropped D lately, which is taking down the bottom E and the top E. It’s quite nice. Open A is related to open G, and I use that a lot as well, putting on the capo.

What tunings did you use on the record for the slide tunes?

Let me see. Open G. Even though “Ghost Blues” is in A, the guitar was tuned to G. The slide on “Walkin’ Wounded” is just in standard tuning, which I can do. “Empire State Express” is open G. I think any other slide parts are in standard tuning, in the same way in which Earl Hooker could play chords and then go into the solo.

Muddy once said that Earl Hooker was the best slide player.

He used to play great single-string guitar too, particularly on the early Junior Wells records. On the original “Messing with the Kid,” he plays great snerfy Stratocaster sounds, before he went off to the Danelectro. And then he went off to that Gibson.

His slide on songs like “Anna Lee” is just out of this world.

“Anna Lee” and “Sweet Black Angel” are both, as you know, Robert Nighthawk songs. But he was the first guy, aside from Hendrix, that I could accept the wah-wah pedal from [laughs].

I had trouble with Earl’s wah-wah – sometimes he went overboard.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think what turned a lot of people was the Howlin’ Wolf record where they added so much wah-wah pedal – remember that one that came out around the time as Electric Mud? [The Howlin’ Wolf Album, on Chess]

The one with Pete Cosey on it.

Yeah. I can’t remember who else was on the album. The liner notes were funny. They even put on the front “Howlin’ Wolf doesn’t like this record, but then he didn’t like his electric guitar …”

Howlin’ Wolf’s main guitarist, Hubert Sumlin, was seriously underrated.

Absolutely, yeah. It’s a shame. How is his health? Is he okay?

I’ve heard he’s feeling good lately.

He’s made some records that I’ve got since the Wolf days, but he’s either produced the wrong way or the material’s not there or he misses Wolf or all the chemistry that went on.

Instead of cutting with house bands provided by labels, he’d probably be better off if he could pick his own band and material and do it his own way.

It’s important. Well, a lot of people think they know best, once they get this producer mentality. I know it’s an important job, but some people can be extremely unsympathetic to what’s right, you know what I mean? But then as the years move on and on, everything becomes tighter in terms of budgets, P.R., pressure, and all these other factors. Hubert’s a guy who deserves his hour in the sun, really, because he played some amazing stuff, both on the Les Paul and on the Strat. You never knew which guitar he was playing on the records – he’s got a great sound. And then he showed up in England with this tigerskin-type Strat. I saw a photograph of it on one of those Kent albums of Memphis blues – all that Joe Hill Louis type era. But there’s a photograph of the guitar, and I have a vague idea it’s an African guitar. Somebody told me it’s a Zanzibar or something like that. If you ever see him, ask him. Particularly with all this interest in pawnshop specials, this one has never cropped up – unless he painted it himself or something.

When you’re playing slide, do you use a guitar pick?

Yeah, pick and fingers, you know. I also vary the slide. Sometimes I use a Coricidin bottle on my ring finger, sometimes on my small finger. Then sometimes I use a brass slide if I’m playing the National. But if I’m playing the straight electric, I use a steel bottleneck.

Do you hear a difference in tones between the various materials?

I do, actually, yeah. The glass is obviously more – I won’t say Hawaiian – but more smooth and sweet. The brass or copper is very harsh, if you want to get that Son House sort of attack. It’s almost too harsh all the time. Steel is a good compromise. It depends on the guitar you are playing.

Do you use a socket wrench like Muddy, or a steel slide?

A steel slide. I have a socket wrench because John Hammond told me he was using a socket wrench, and then Lowell George, who we played with, had one as well. They’re fantastic, but you really need very heavy strings for them. I don’t know which one I have – a 5/8th or 7/8th or whatever it is. They’re fantastic, but if you’re playing more than a couple of numbers, they do wear your small finger down. They’re very heavy, but they’re ideal for slide. That’s my one complaint – not that I like light slides, but you don’t want them to be tiring your hand.

Do you set up your action different if you’re going to play slide, or do you have a special guitar for it?

I have a Gretsch Corvette which is in open G or open A, depending on the song, and that’s got strings from like .013 to .050, something like that – medium. My regular strings would be like .010 to .044, something like that, and the action is quite high. So it’s okay for slide. But to play real open-tuning slide, you need the heavier strings. But I can cope with both, you know. I try to, anyway.

What is your favorite amp?

Good question! It’s a battle between the Vox AC30, which is my first amp, and the 4x10 Bassman Fender, although I love the little Deluxe Fender, which is nice as well. But I have played Ampeg VT-44s, which are very nice. Over the years I’ve used Marshall 50-watt combos in conjunction with a Fender or a Vox, and they’re very good for volume and bite. But the warmth of the Fenders and the character of the Vox are pretty hard to beat, so it’s somewhere in there.

What do we hear on the new album?

On the rhythm tracks it would be a combination of Vox and Marshall. Nearly all the lead parts were done with the Fender 1955 Bassman. We took the back off it and put mikes in the back as well as the front, so we got all kinds of variations. That was pretty much the way – I mean, not every track was laid down as a rhythm track, but I’d say 80% of the tracks were like that – Vox and Marshall for rhythm, left and right, and then the Fender Bassman for leads.

Your fans in America have been waiting a long time for you to tour. What’s been the delay?

I don’t know. We just went back to Europe after the last American tour, in ’85, and we just got stuck in Europe, recording and touring. We played Yugoslavia and Hungary, and so on. And then we were trying to sort out the right record deal in America. I don’t know where the years went.

We’d see ads in N.M.E. that you were playing over there.

We just got irritated too. We were on a couple of big nationwide tours with these big, stadium-type rock bands. We’d do that in order to get to America, to pay for the flights and also to give us some free time to play clubs and colleges. But doing these others gigs, you’d go home feeling dissatisfied, because you’d be badly treated in some cases with monitors and amount of stage room, lights and stuff.

Time onstage.

Time, indeed.

American audiences aren’t always kind to opening acts, especially if it’s a different genre.

Indeed! And that was the problem. It wasn’t so bad when we were on the same bill with, say, ZZ Top or somebody in that line. But then we happened to be on a couple of bills that were totally alien to our kind of stuff. We weren’t booed or anything, but you felt you’d wasted a couple of weeks of your life when you could be playing clubs or small theaters. I regret we didn’t come back in the meantime, but it gave us a chance to reassess what we were doing and we got very busy in Europe and so on. And then I developed a flying problem, to make matters worse.

Fear of flying?

Yeah. I had a couple of bad flights and I got my Buddy Holly complex. It got so bad, I couldn’t even fly to Ireland, which is only an hour away [from London]. Then to play on the Continent, I would have to fly out the night before so I’d be okay on the date. It was not so much a fear of death thing, but a mixture of claustrophobia and a few other things.

This is a miracle – I flew from London to Tokyo, Japan to Australia, Australia to L.A., L.A. to San Francisco, and so on. We’d have to make our way cross country and then back to London. So far, so good. My prayers have been answered, then. To beat that flying phobia was quite an ordeal for me, I can tell you, because it’s the last thing I needed after all those years of touring and flying two times a day. So that compounded my problems of not being able to get to the States.

Do you have advice for keeping your sanity or staying centered while on tour? It’s such an unusual life.

It is, indeed. There’s also a terrible danger – between travel and other things and getting to the gigs and so on, you get little time to play on your own in the hotel, and you can get lazy about playing. So I make a point of playing every day in the hotel room and bring a little cassette player and record what I’m doing, and try and write songs as well, just as a by-product of that. But to keep your sanity, I don’t know, it takes you about twenty years to find out. You know what all the ABC’s are to begin with, but there’s an awful lot of time to wear down the nerves of a musician. It’s just your attitude, really, in terms of traveling and flying, for hotels, for remembering where you are, and trying to keep all that group feeling every night to try to put on a good show. I mean, every musician has to go through that. You just have to develop a sense of humor and patience and just keep it cool, you know. I think the old cliché of deal with tonight’s gig and not worry about the one next Tuesday or the end of the tour. It’s a classic, but it’s true.

If people who knew you from your records heard what you play in the hotel room, would they be surprised?

[Laughs.]

Are you a closet country player or a bluegrass guy or a flamenco player?

Flamenco, definitely. No, I do actually do some country licks. I’m quite keen on the playing of Roy Nichols, who used to be on Merle Haggard’s records, and some of the players that have worked with Waylon Jennings and Johnny Paycheck. I don’t like this commercial country. I can’t really play flamenco that well – I can fake it, but just for my own ears. I do a little bits of jazz things and ragtime – anything that will loosen you up. Also it’s good for your mental health – not necessarily to do what you play onstage. And also even if you’re playing cassettes in your room. I play a lot of folk things, like Martin Carthy and some Irish music and some Django and things. Particularly if you’re doing a very long tour, it’s quite hard to listen to similar kind of music in your room then, I find. So it’s good to play something slightly different. And country and folk is quite a departure. That’s not to say I don’t play blues in the hotel room – I do. It depends what phase you’re going through and what year it is and what mood you’re in and all those other things.

I am continually re-amazed at what a universal language the blues is, how it speaks across borders to so many divergent people.

Particularly this recent interest in it. I was despondent in the late ’70s up until the mid ’80s – I thought we’d gone right into the age of technology, and that was the end of it. Drum machines, techno pop. So there’s this interest in the blues now in the early ’90s, thanks to Stevie Ray and all the people who kept playing it, like Albert Collins and Thorogood and all those people, to this peak that’s happening at the moment with this interest in Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker and so on. And Bonnie Raitt’s come back, if you like. Who would have predicted that? So that makes me very optimistic for the ’90s. I mean, if it gets better and better. Maybe it’ll fade away again, but I don’t think so. I think there’s going to be a nice, serious interest in the years to come, which would be great, you know?

A lot of people are interested in zydeco as well, and African music. And of course the whole world music thing is fresh for the ears, because people have had enough of mainstream pop. A lot of teenagers will surprise you. They say, “Oh, we love real drums. We love real bass guitars.” They get fed up with all that space-invaders machine music. That’s all it was, to my ears anyway. Because all that metronomic heartbeat stuff – I have a theory that’s bad for you. It’s like ticker tape, it’s like tele text. Because the heartbeat and the mind and everything doesn’t work digitally.

It’s more like reggae.

[Laughs.] Something like that, yeah. That’s a good way to put it, yeah. Somebody ought to check that out and see. It’s like some people have that theory about digital echoes – even though it’s in time, it’s different. You get tape echo that’s not entirely to the second. I don’t know – somebody had a ridiculous theory, but I kind of believe it.

I believe the time is coming when music will be used more to physically heal.

That it can do. Music can heal. It can cool down the savage breast, as they say. It does have that power. All kinds of power. By the time you subtract the music business and all of the good and bad things that go with it, you’re left with a piece of music and the player, and it’s important that that should remain fairly – not precious, but organic and true.

What do you like to hear at the end of a show?

Our shows tend to become very rocky some nights – people jump around the place and all that. I can accept that, as long as they’ve listened to the slow blues and the acoustic and the blend. I like it to be fairly up at the end. You can’t pick and choose, but I don’t want it to be a recital where people politely clap. You have to create an atmosphere. But at any one show, I like, if I can, to hit about two or three different bases, in terms of reaction and performance. We try and create dynamics in the set, so it’s not just too predictable. “Oh, that’s going to be another number like that.”

You change the set around from night to night?

Oh, we do, yes. We rarely use a set list – only if it’s gone to the airtime on a TV program, where they have to have cameras ready for whatever. We never use a set list. Occasionally, at a big festival where your time is limited, it doesn’t hurt to have a list just to guide you a bit. But nine times out of ten, I just work off of the top of my head, and we move from album to album. Particularly on this tour, because we’ve been away so long, we’re not just only playing the new songs, we’re doing some old ones as well, just to refresh people’s memories.

You’ve been using the same musicians for a long time.

Yeah. The bass player since ’71 – Gerry McAvoy. Drummer since about 1980 – that’s Brendan O’Neil. The harmonica player for about six or seven years, Mark Feltham.

Not to make you self-conscious, but if someone were to put together a compact disc collection called “The Essential Rory Gallagher,” are there tracks you feel should be included?

I suppose so. If I were to do a best-of from the old days, things like “Cradle Rock,” “Million Miles Away,” “Tattoo’d Lady.” There’s lots of songs that I’d like to re-do and remix, things like “Race the Breeze” I was very fond of myself. I’d like to re-record that, and try to get a Staples Singers-type gospel feel to it.

Pops Staples is another underrated guitar player.

Indeed! Particularly on the early records, with that tremolo on that Jazzmaster, you know. To record a guitar like that, there’s so much room for it to breathe, you know.

Back to the record.

“Loanshark Blues” is a song I like a lot – that’s a track from the new one. It’s very hard for me. I mean, if we’re going to do a box set or something like that later this year or if not early next year, that will be the real testing point of going back and seeing what’s there and what wasn’t released. So that will be interesting.

What’s the scope of your current tour?

In America, we started in the West Coast. We worked all around San Diego, two or three dates, and we played the Roxy in L.A. And then we’re playing in this area, Santa Cruz. We played Oakland last night, we’re playing San Francisco tomorrow night. We’re playing San Jose. And then we’re moving across to Minneanapolis – I can never pronounce that name!

Prince’s home town.

Yeah. We’ll do “Purple Rain” for him there. Actually, he plays good guitar, I think. He’s a very underrated player. And he’s clever to have that old Hofner Tele copy – they were good, and no one spotted them except one guitarist in Nashville who uses one. I think it was the guy who played on Dobie Gray’s “Drift Away.”

Was it Reggie Young?

I think it was Reggie Young. They have reissued these copies, but they’re not as good. But I must keep my eye out for one.

We’re doing, obviously, New York, Boston, Detroit, Chicago. We’re going into Canada to do Toronto. We’re missing out on Washington, Dallas, and all the Southern area, but we’re hoping to come back in two or three months and cover that. We have commitments in Europe after Easter, so we have to go back. Ideally, we should stay here for two or three months, but given that we were in Australia and Japan before this – and this is a fairly hard month’s work – we’ll be glad to get back and get a week off.

Where’s your home?

Well, I’m based in London at the moment.

Do you get back to Cork?

Oh, I do. Because of the flying, I haven’t been there for a while, but if that’s over, I’ll go back as it was for a while. I’d go back every third weekend or every second month. At one stage I was nearly commuting, which was great, because I like to keep my Irish connection. London’s a good town to work out of, but naturally it’s not home, you know what I mean? But all the musicians live there and the studios and so on. But now since the Irish rock thing has boomed, it’s quite feasible to record and do things in Dublin. It’s become quite a rock and roll city.

Is that because of U2?

Well, U2 ultimately, yeah, but it was building up before they because of Thin Lizzy and the Boomtown rats and so on. The music industry took Irish musicians more seriously, whereas in the early days of Van Morrison and when we came out, it was quite hard to cut through the image. Everyone thought you were like the Clancy Brothers or just a dance band. There were very few serious rhythm and blues or rock people from Ireland at that stage. So it was hard to cut through, initially, but it’s great now. I’m half tempted to record the next album in Dublin, just to see. I did three tracks on a Davy Spillane album – he’s a uilleann pipe player – and I enjoyed working in the Dublin studios. But for an Irishman, with the exception of the Irish Tour Live album, I’ve never recorded in Ireland. It might be the X-factor, you know. Whatever that is.

****
Epilog

Rory’s long, stellar set that evening at the Catalyst included many of the songs and artists we’d talked about during the interview – his own “Continental Op,” “Tattoo’d Lady,” “Kid Gloves,” and “Million Miles Away,” as well as covers of Robert Nighthawk’s “Going Down to Eli’s,” Lead Belly’s “Out on the Western Plain,” Son House and Robert Johnson’s “Walkin’ Blues,” Blind Boy Fuller’s “Pistol Slapper Blues,” and Junior Wells’ “Messin’ with the Kid.”

Fresh Evidence was the last album Rory completed, and 1991 marked his final tour of America. On June 14, 1995, he died of complications following a liver transplant. He is buried in Saint Oliver’s Cemetery on Model Farm Road in Cork, Ireland. I gave the master tape of our interview to his brother, Donal Gallagher, who featured portions of it in the BBC’s 2005 radio documentary on Rory’s life.

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Mamie Smith: The First Lady of the Blues

Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues,” the first recording of an African-American singing the blues, revolutionized pop music. Witnesses claimed that after its release in 1920, the song could be heard coming from the open windows of virtually any black neighborhood in America. “That record turned around the recording industry,” remembered New Orleans jazzman Danny Barker. “There was a great appeal amongst black people and whites who loved this blues business to buy records and buy phonographs. Every family had a phonograph in their house, specifically behind Mamie Smith’s first record.”

While blues music had been performed in the American South since the very beginning of the twentieth century, no one had made recordings of it before, largely due to racism and the assumption that African-Americans couldn’t – or wouldn’t – buy record players or 78s. “Crazy Blues” changed all that, sparking a mad scramble among record execs to record blues divas.

The stars they promoted in this short-lived era of “classic blues” were not the down-home country singers who’d record later in the Roaring Twenties, but the glittering, glamorous, and savvy veterans of tent shows, minstrel troupes, and the vaudeville stage. These mavericks defied stereotypes, and there wasn’t an Aunt Jemima among them (with the possible exception of Edith Wilson, who became the Aunt Jemima on the radio). Their lyrics were often erotic, frank, and cynical. Those who’d become most influential – Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Ida Cox – had been performing blues for many years before their first recording sessions. Others emerged from black vaudeville and found quick fame and riches, only to be plunged back into obscurity and poverty. By the close of the 1920s, most of the classic blueswomen would see the popularity of their records eclipsed by male artists such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Big Bill Broonzy, Lonnie Johnson, and Tampa Red.

Unlike country blues, the rural South’s party music, classic blues were conceived for the professional stage. Singers bedecked themselves in sumptuous gowns and paid careful attention to diction while belting out their woes to the accompaniment of a hot jazz ensemble or capable sideman. Whereas country singers could string together random verses as long as they wanted, most classic blueswomen relied on stately tunes by successful songwriters such as Clarence Williams, Porter Grainger, and the wily Perry Bradford, a key figure in the Mamie Smith story. A few of the best, though, wrote their own.

A veteran of vaudeville and the chorus line, the lovely Miss Smith was 37 years old when she made her historic recording of “Crazy Blues” in New York City. She had left Cincinnati’s tough Black Bottom neighborhood when she was ten years old to go on the road with The Four Dancing Mitchells. Five years later she joined the chorus of the Smart Set company, which landed her in Harlem. Mamie settled there and married her first husband, comedian Sam Gardner. Perry Bradford spotted her singing at a cabaret and gave her a spot in the musical Maid of Harlem at the Lincoln Theater. Her big number was his song “Harlem Blues.”

Bradford, who spent his afternoons working out new songs on the piano at Harlem’s Colored Vaudeville and Benevolent Association, had long dreamed of having African Americans record blues songs. According to his 1965 autobiography, Born with the Blues [Oak Publications], most New York musicians didn’t care for blues, which seemed to symbolize everything they tried to leave behind in the South. “Whenever I began drifting into the lowdown, melancholy strains of the levee-camp ‘jive,’ someone would yell to detract my attention,” Bradford remembered. “Anything to keep me from whipping out those distasteful blues.” A Southerner – Mississippi by way of Georgia – Bradford was certain blues could be alchemized into gold by creating a market in the South. For months he had been making the rounds of record companies, trying to sell them on his songs and his protégé, Mamie Smith. His persistence earned him the nickname “Mule.”

His first nibble came from Victor, one of the biggest labels in town. On January 10, 1920, Mamie Smith was ushered into a studio to cut a bare-bones trial recording of Bradford’s song “That Thing Called Love” set to her own piano accompaniment. Victor rejected it. The break Bradford had been searching for came soon afterward, when he caught the attention of Fred Hager, recording director for the fledgling OKeh label. “There are fourteen million Negroes in our great country,” Bradford told Hager, “and they will buy records if recorded by one of their own, because we are the only folks that can sing and interpret hot jazz songs just off the griddle correctly.” Asked what songs he had in mind, Bradford handed Hager sheet music for “That Thing Called Love” and “You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down.” Hager was impressed. He initially wanted Sophie Tucker, a white singer, to record the songs, but Bradford asked him to consider giving a black singer the chance. Mamie Smith, he promised, “will do more with those songs than a monkey can do with a peanut; she sings jazz songs with more soulful feeling than any other girls, for it’s natural for us.”

Hager’s decision was as brave as it was historic. In Born with the Blues, Bradford recounted: “Mr. Hager got a far-off look in his eyes and seemed somewhat worried, because of the many threatening letters he had received from some Northern and Southern pressure groups warning him not to have any truck with colored girls in the recording field. If he did, OKeh Products – phonograph machines and records – would be boycotted. May God bless Mr. Hager, for despite the many threats, it took a man with plenty of nerves and guts to buck those powerful groups and make the historical decision which would echo aroun’ the world. He pried open that old ‘prejudiced door’ for the first colored girl, Mamie Smith, so she could squeeze into the large horn – and shout with her strong contralto voice.”

The recording session was scheduled for Valentine’s Day, 1920. Hager had Mamie perform with his all-white studio band, credited on record as the Rega Orchestra. Mamie poured bluesy feeling into the pop tune “That Thing Called Love”:

“That thing called love has a sneaky feeling,
Being too sure of yourself sets your brain a-reeling,
You lay in bed but just can’t sleep,
Then you walk the streets and refuse to eat”

“Man,” Bradford enthused, “I was overjoyed when Mr. [Charles L.] Hibbard, the engineer, said, ‘It’s okay.’ . . . After Mamie finished recording ‘That Thing Called Love’ and ‘You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down’ that snowy morning in February 1920, I was itching to jump up and yell, right there in the studio, ‘Hallelujah, it’s done!’”

The Chicago Defender, the most widely read black newspaper, covered the event in its March 13, 1920, issue: “Well, you’ve all heard the famous stars of the white race chirping their stuff on the different makes of phonograph records. Caruso has warbled his Jones to the delight of millions; Tettrazini has made ’em like it heavy and Nora Bayes has tickled their ears with a world of delight; but we have never – up to now – been able to hear one of our own ladies deliver the canned goods. Now we have the pleasure of being able to say that at last they have recognized the fact that we are here for their service; the OKeh Phonograph Company has initiated the idea by engaging the handsome, popular and capable vocalist, Mamie Gardner Smith of 40 W. 135 Street, New York City, and she has made her first record, ‘That Thing Called Love,’ a song by Perry Bradford, published by the Pace & Handy Music Co., and apparently destined to be one of that great company’s biggest hits. The OKeh records can be played on all phonographs and they do say that the one in question is a real dream.”

OKeh released “That Thing Called Love” in July. Bradford reported that they sold 10,000 copies “just as fast as the Button-Hole Factory at Scranton, Pennsylvania, could press and ship them all over the South.” In his autobiography Father of the Blues, W.C. Handy described, “In Chicago, large crowds of domestic servants and packinghouse workers waited outside Tate’s Music Store on South State Street to hear us demonstrate ‘That Thing Called Love’ and ‘You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down,’ as sung by Mamie. All over the country music stores sprung up like mushrooms and our folks were begging for OKeh agencies in vain. . . . We bought the records, shipped them and received a prompt check. This was followed by repeated orders of comparable size. Finally the Negro dealers got their agencies.”

Reports of strong sales down South – to whites and blacks – were no surprise to Bradford, who was certain Southerners would buy blues 78s: “They understand blues and jazz songs, for they’ve heard blind men on street corners in the South playing guitars and singing ’em for nickels and dimes ever since their childhood days.” In its July 31 issue, the Chicago Defender called on liberals to support the record’s release: “Lovers of music everywhere, and those who desire to help in any advance of the Race, should be sure to buy this record as encouragement to the manufacturers for their liberal policy and to encourage other manufacturers who may not believe that the Race will buy records sung by its own singers.”

A couple of weeks after the record’s release, Bradford stopped by Hager’s office. “I’ve got news for you,” Hager told him. “Mamie’s record is selling very big in Philly and Chicago; the South, as you said, has gone head over heels for it, and down in Texas, Birmingham, and over in St. Louis, they are falling for the record just like leaves fall in Autumn-time.” Bradford informed Hager that Mamie had just been booked to perform an East Coast vaudeville tour and suggested that OKeh record her singing another song, “Harlem Blues,” before she left town. Hager told him to have Mamie and her musicians in the studio at 9:30 the following Monday morning.

Bradford rushed off to assemble a band, which he named the Jazz Hounds, and to tell Mamie the good news. “At the time,” he wrote, “Mamie Smith had a five-room apartment on the top floor of Charlie Thorpe’s building at 888 West 135th Street, so I walked up to the top floor to her apartment and buzzed, ‘Mamie, we got a date set for you to record with our boys playing for you,’ and told her to come downtown to Bert Williams’ office tomorrow for a rehearsal. When Mom Smith heard the good news she jumped up and shouted, ‘The Lord Will Provide.’ Mamie’s husband Smitty started dancing all over the place.”

A few days later, on August 10, 1920, Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds convened at the OKeh studio near Times Square. Bradford decided to change the title of “Harlem Blues” to “Crazy Blues.” While Bradford took credit for writing the song, James P. Johnson insisted its melody was derived from an old sporting-house ballad called “Baby, Get That Towel Wet.” Mamie’s lineup consisted of seasoned black musicians – Dope Andrews on trombone, Ernest Elliott on clarinet, Leroy Parker on violin, and Johnny Dunn on cornet. In their autobiographies, both Willie “The Lion” Smith and Perry Bradford claimed to have played the piano. The musicians fortified themselves with their favorite prohibition drink, blackberry juice and gin – Mamie didn’t join them – and then got to work. Bradford remembered that there were no written charts: “They were what I called ‘hum and head arrangements.’ I mean we would listen to the melody and the harmony of the piano and each man picked out his own harmony notes.”

“As we hit the introduction and Mamie started singing,” Bradford continued, “it gave me a lifetime thrill to hear Johnny Dunn’s cornet moaning those dreaming blues and Dope Andrews making some down-home slides on his trombone, while Ernest Elliott was echoing some clarinet jive along with Leroy Parker sawing his fiddle in the groove. Man, it was too much for me.” Her voice drenched with emotion, Mamie began with a theme that would echo through countless blues songs to come:

“I can’t sleep at night,
I can’t eat a bite,
’Cause the man I love,
He don’t treat me right”

Her performance built to a heartbreak climax:

“I went to the railroad
To lay my head on the track”
The musicians gave it everything they had, and Mamie sang in grand vaudeville style. After about twelve test takes, they finally produced a final take. “Tears of gladness came into my eyes after the first play-back and the feeling that grabbed me just wouldn’t go all during our eight-hour session – from 9:30 until 5:30,” Bradford wrote. “It was like a pleasant dream that came from heaven, because mental telepathy must have directed the band. We were playing just as we felt, with these home-made ‘hum and head’ arrangements, for I forgotten about leading the band and kept on playing the piano, as I’ve never played before – or any time since.” After recording the 78’s flip side, “It’s Right Here for You (If You Don’t Get It – ’Taint No Fault of Mine),” everyone called it a day. The musicians headed over to Mamie’s apartment, where her mother cooked a celebratory meal of black-eyed peas and rice.

And thus Mamie Smith earned her place in history as the first African American to record a blues song.

But is “Crazy Blues” a true blues? My best answer is that parts of it are and parts of it aren’t. The song’s ingenious structure mixes three verses of 12-bar blues with three verses of 16-bar professional songwriting that uses a harmonic idiom similar to what might appear in a Scott Joplin rag or World War I pop song. The recording is in the key of E, and verses four and five are straight 12-bar blues. Verse two is a slightly modified 12-bar blues, going to the dominant in its second bar. Verses one, three, and six are 16-bar structures with trickier chord progressions and some chromaticisms, such as the descending bass line in the ninth through eleventh bars of verse one. Verses three and six feature secondary dominants that sound relatively “sophisticated” next to simpler blues verses two, four, and five. Listen to it here and judge for yourself: www.archive.org/details/MamieSmithHerJazzHounds.

Issued as OKeh 4169, “Crazy Blues” was credited to “Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds” and described as a “Popular Blue Song.” Sales of the 78 skyrocketed beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. In Harlem alone, 75,000 copies were reportedly sold in less than a month. “Pullman porters bought them by the dozens at a dollar per copy,” remembered Bradford, “and sold them in rural districts for two dollars.”

Mamie and her band were back in the studio on September 12, 1920, for a follow-up 78, “Fare Thee Honey Blues” backed with “The Road is Rocky (But I Am Gonna Find My Way).” In his autobiography, Bradford writes that this was his final recording date for the OKeh label: “On this last session Mr. Everhart, a big dealer from Norfolk, Virginia, was in the studio and booked Mamie Smith and the Jazz Hounds for a one-night performance at a salary of $2,000. Then he, Mamie and the Hounds, sold over ten thousand records, because he had ten helpers handing out the records (at one dollar per copy) so fast during that half-hour intermission under Billy Sunday’s big Gospel Tent that it looked like Barnum & Bailey giving away silver dollars.” Mamie and her band – sans Bradford – soon cut two more 78s, “Mem’ries of You Mammy” b/w “If You Don’t Want Me Blues” and “Don’t Care Blues” b/w “Lovin’ Sam from Alabam.”

With all this Mamie Smith mania, New York City suddenly became the blues recording capital of the world. Singers and orchestra leaders, publishers, talent scouts, record execs – all were ready to cash in. “Everybody tried to sing the blues,” explained Thomas A. Dorsey, “because the blues was paying off.” Variety noted that Mamie Smith’s records had “caught on with the Caucasians” and that “Perry Bradford and the Clarence Williams Music Co. are among the representative Negro music men cleaning up from mechanical royalties with the sheet music angle negligible and almost incidental. . . . Colored singing and playing artists are riding to fame and fortune with the current popular demand for ‘blues’ disk recordings and because of the recognized fact that only a Negro can do justice to the native indigo ditties such artists are in demand.” By December 1920, Mamie Smith music rolls were being advertised; for people with player pianos, these rolls were the equivalent of modern karaoke backing tracks.

The singer became an immediate concert draw. Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds initially earned $400 to $500 net per weeklong appearance, but her fees would soon rise. Bradford recalled that Porter Grainger always played piano at Mamie’s appearances.
On November 29, 1920, the Putnam Theatre in Brooklyn ran a newspaper ad for Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds, proclaiming her an “Attraction Extraordinary.” Smaller print declared that Mamie “just finished a record breaking engagement at the Lafayette Theatre, N.Y., and the Dunbar Theatre, Philadelphia, Pa. Do not fail to hear this sensational singer, who has been made famous by her new phonograph records.” Onstage, Mamie tried to duplicate her records, explaining to the Washington Post on December 19, 1920: “Thousand of people who come to hear me . . . expect much, and I do not intend that they shall be disappointed. They have heard my phonograph records and they want me to sing these songs that same as I do in my studio in New York. Another thing I believe my audiences want to see me becomingly gowned, and I have spared no expense or pains . . . for I feel that the best is none too good for the public that pays to hear a singer.”

Lucille Hegamin was the first Mamie Smith competitor ushered into a studio, cutting an unissued Victor test of “Dallas Blues” on October 11, 1920, with Fletcher Henderson on piano. In November, backed by Harris’ Blues and Jazz Seven, she cut her first hit, “The Jazz Me Blues,” which eventually came out on more than a dozen labels. By 1921, blues recording sessions were going full-swing. Mary Stafford, advertised as the “First Colored Girl to Sing for Columbia,” launched her recording career in early January 1921. In February, Lucille Hegamin had a hit with “Arkansas Blues.” In March, Cardinal Records recorded Ethel “Sweet Mama Stringbean” Waters’ first record, and Emerson Phonograph proclaimed Lillyn Brown “not only a favorite with her own people, but with white audiences as well.” In April, Gertrude Saunders became Mamie Smith’s labelmate at OKeh. Stage star Edith Wilson began recording for Columbia in September. Lavinia Turner cut for Perfect and Pathe Actuelle, Esther Bigeau made 78s for OKeh, and Lulu Whidby, Alberta Hunter, and Katie Crippen records came out on Black Swan.

Among the first wave of classic blueswomen who recorded in 1921, only Alberta Hunter, Ethel Waters, and Edith Wilson would have enduring success. Mary Stafford cut a half-dozen 78s by the year’s end and made a single side for Perfect in ’26 before vanishing from the scene. Lavinia Turner’s days in front of the horn were over by October ’22, with six 78s to her credit. Lillyn Brown cut only two; Lulu Whidby made variations of only one. Gertrude Saunders had a career total of three 78s. Katie Crippen’s four titles with Fletcher Henderson’s Novelty Orchestra helped her land a vaudeville tour, but she was soon working outside of music.

In truth, no one could touch Mamie Smith in 1921. The February 15, 1921, issue of the trade journal The Talking Machine World conveyed some of the national fervor for the singer in an article titled “Has Designs on the Preacher”: “The advertising department of the General Phonograph Corp., New York, received recently an interesting letter from a Mamie Smith enthusiast in North Carolina. Evidently this admirer of the Mamie Smith records has studied jazz music more carefully than the English language, but the letter itself is an indication of the popularity that Mamie Smith OKeh records have attained in all sections of the country. In fact, this letter is only one of many of similar tenor that the General Phonograph Corp. has received during the past few months. It reads:

“‘I rite you to please send me one of your latest catalog of latest popular songs and musical comedy hits popular dacing numbers I got the Crazy Blues all ready and if you have any other latest Blues sung by Mamie Smith and her jazz hounds send along 2 or 3 C.O.D. with the catalog. I want something that will almost make a preacher come down out of the pulpit and go to dancing and hang his head and cry I want all you send to be Blues.’

“The Mamie Smith OKeh library is being steadily augmented by new records made by this popular artist, and the phenomenal success of these records is reflected in the enthusiastic reports of OKeh jobbers and dealers throughout the country who state that the demand for Mamie Smith recordings has far exceeded all expectations.”

Mamie Smith cut twenty-two songs in 1921, including “Jazzbo Ball,” “‘U’ Need Some Loving Blues,” “Mamma Whip! Mamma Spank! (If Her Daddy Don’t Come Home),” and the jazzy “A Little Kind Treatment (Is Exactly What I Need)” (http://www.archive.org/details/JosephSamuelsJazzBandVmamieSmith-ALittleKindTreatment1921atment1921 ). Between sessions, she kept a grueling schedule of concert appearances. The March 15, 1921, issue of The Talking Machine World covered her appearances in Chicago: “Mamie Smith and her jazz hounds came, saw, and conquered in Chicago during the month of February. She played to large audiences on the South Side at the Avenue Theatre with immense success. The Chicago Defender, a newspaper circulating among the colored people of the city, carried large advertisement featuring the OKeh stock, ‘Hear this world-famous phonograph star,’ read the advertisement, ‘sing ‘Crazy Blues’ and all her latest hits, and then hear her popular OKeh records, the greatest blues records of the century. Mamie Smith records have enjoyed tremendous sale in all parts of the country.’”

A month later, in a full-page ad in The Talking Machine World, OKeh Records reported that “Mamie Smith, assisted by her All Star Revue, a large company of well trained artists, is giving concerts in all the large cities throughout the country. Due to her popularity, capacity-filled houses are guaranteed. And the enthusiasm created, in turn, has in every instance stimulated the sale of her records. She has recently filled engagements in Chicago, Indianapolis, Evansville, Lexington, Memphis, Little Rock, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Waco, Beaumont, New Orleans, St. Louis, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Savannah, Richmond, Norfolk, Wilmington, Philadelphia, and numerous other cities.”

Meanwhile back in New York City, Perry Bradford was beset with problems. Not long after the Pace-Handy Co. published “Crazy Blues,” he was sued for having previously sold the same song to Frederick V. Bowers, Inc., under the title “The Broken Hearted Blues,” and to the Q.R.S. company as “Wicked Blues.” Bradford settled out of court. He had legal problems with Mamie Smith as well. His book recounts that in May 1921 Mamie’s “new boyfriend,” Ocie Wilson, gave Bradford a “mouth-full of his large fists” when he showed up at their door with a process server. Bradford sued them for assault and battery, and lost in court. “From then on,” he wrote, “I didn’t bother Mamie anymore.” Covering another copyright case, The New York Clipper reported in January 1923 that Bradford had instigated others to perjure themselves on his behalf, and that the songwriter had served four months in the Essex County Penitentiary.

Mamie Smith continued to fare much better than her former partner. An ad for “Sax-o-Phony Blues” in the October 15, 1921, issue of The Talking Machine World stated that “September 24th marked the opening date of Mamie Smith’s concert tour for the coming season. Her personal appearances in all the large towns will be a tremendous boom to her records. Her first engagement will be in the New England territory. She will tour as far South as Florida. Sax-O-Phoney Blues looks like the feature hit in her song review. This means big business for every OKeh jobber who has sufficient stock on hand to meet ready requests. Mamie Smith is working Sax-O-Phoney Blues hard.”

In Mamie Smith’s prime, her stage appearances netted her up to $1,500 a week. Bedecked in diamonds, plumes, and a shimmering gown, she could get a standing ovation just by strutting across the stage. Bubber Miley, Coleman Hawkins, and many other promising young players passed through her band. She released nine more vaudeville-style blues and pop 78s in 1922, including “Wabash Blues,” “Mamie Smith Blues,” and “Mean Daddy Blues,” featuring Coleman Hawkins on tenor sax. By 1923, though, her record sales were being eclipsed by those of other singers, notably Bessie Smith, Alberta Hunter, Clara Smith, Ida Cox, and, by year’s end, the South’s favorite blues singer, the great Ma Rainey. After recording four 78s in July and August 1923, Mamie Smith was dropped from the OKeh label. She made three 78s for the small Ajax label in 1924, and two more for Victor in 1926. Mamie Smith’s glory days were over. All totaled, she earned an estimated career royalty of $100,000.

For a while, Mamie continued to be a draw in theaters. Thomas C. Fleming, a writer for the Sun-Reporter, San Francisco’s African-American weekly, described seeing her onstage for http://www.sfmuseum.org/ : “In 1924, a musical revue that starred Mamie Smith, the great blues singer, had a long run in San Francisco. After closing, it toured some cities in the Sacramento Valley, including Chico, where it appeared at the Majestic for two nights. I attended both nights, fascinated with a show of that size playing in the hick towns. Chico had a tiny black population, so most of the audience was white. The cast, which was all black, included Smith, an orchestra of about eight pieces – saxophone, clarinet, piano, drums, trumpet, trombone, banjo -- a chorus line of maybe six girls, all good-looking, and a number of comedians. One I recall with pleasure was Frisco Nick, who staged a hilarious dance while he sang ‘Three O’Clock in the Morning,’ a great waltz hit, with a broom as his partner. Except for Smith, the entire cast was from the San Francisco Bay Area. Mamie Smith was about on a level with Bessie Smith. She played the black circuit theaters in the Middle West and the East Coast. The black circuit didn’t exist on the West Coast, because they didn’t have separate theaters for blacks and whites, although in some places, such as Portland, Oregon, blacks could sit only in the balcony.”

Mamie was still drawing crowds four years later, when in January 1928 the Lincoln Theatre in Harlem ran an ad for “Harlem’s Own Record Star, Mamie Smith and Her Gang,” with the subtitle “You’ve Seen the Rest, Now See the Best. ’Nuf Sed.” That September, Mamie opened at the Lafayette Theatre in the musical comedy Sugar Cane.

In March 1929 OKeh Records recalled Miss Smith to the studio. She was in grand form belting out pistol-hot, risqué blues, but OKeh shelved all five recordings. In its March 23, 1929, issue, the Chicago Defender carried a two-line note reporting “Mamie Smith will soon make her debut in talking pictures in The Blues Singer.” No film of this title was released, but later that year Columbia released Jail House Blues, a silent film short with accompanying musical discs. Oddly dressed in a huge Tam-o-shanter, plaid skirt, and tight sweater with a feather boa collar, Mamie can be seen singing “Jail House Blues” on www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb4tyPjxHdE .

Mamie Smith’s recording career ended a decade after it began with four OKeh tracks in February 1931. All of these were songs were released, with “Jenny’s Ball” becoming the most popular. Miss Smith reportedly retired from music after their release. I’ve been unable to find any account of her goings-on during the 1930s.

Eight years later, Mamie Smith attempted a comeback – in films. She sang an expressive, slowed-down version of “Harlem Blues” with Lucky Millinder and His Orchestra in the 1939 black gangster musical Paradise in Harlem (www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AN3pxrRzMM&feature=related). Her co-stars included Edna Mae Harris and the Juanita Hall Singers. The film’s press book called it “The ‘Gone with the Wind’ of Colored Pictures,’” with “The Greatest Colored Cast Ever Assembled in One Picture.” In addition to singing, Mamie had a featured role playing – who else? – Miss Mamie.

The following year Miss Smith played a small part in the Aetna Film’s all-black Mystery in Swing. She appeared in two films in 1941, both produced for International Roadshows Release by Jack Goldberg, who’d staged road shows for Mamie in the 1920s and was reportedly her husband when these films were made. Sunday Sinners was described in its press book as “A Dramatic Thunderbolt – A Conflict of Riff Raff and Righteousness,” and Mamie received top billing over Edna Mae Harris, Alec Lovejoy, Norman Astwood, and “A Brown Skin Chorus of Beauties.” Her other film, Murder on Lenox Avenue, was touted as “A Modern Story of Harlem Life” with “Donald Heywood’s Most Singable and Danceable Score.” Astwood, Lovejoy, and Harris rejoined Miss Smith in the cast. (Murder on Lenox Avenue can be legally downloaded at www.archive.org/details/murder_on_lenox_ave1941 .) Her final celluloid role was in the 1942 soundie “Because I Love You” with Lucky Millinder. From here, Mamie Smith’s trail disappears.

She reportedly died penniless on August 16, 1946, and was buried in an unmarked community grave. Seventeen years later, musicians in Iserlohn, West Germany, organized a hot jazz benefit to buy her a tombstone inscribed “Mamie Smith 1983-1946 First Lady of the Blues.” They shipped the stone to New York, where Victoria Spivey, herself a classic blueswoman, and Len Kunstadt, publisher of Record Research magazine, arranged to have Mamie Smith re-interred in the Frederick Douglass Memorial Park in Richmond, New York. They celebrated the event with January 27, 1964, gala honoring Mamie at New York’s Celebrity Club. Among the attendees were several of Mamie’s peers from the early 1920s, including Lucille Hegamin, Alberta Hunter, Gertrude Saunders, Lillyn Brown, Rosa Henderson, and organizer Victoria Spivey. In 1994, “Crazy Blues” by Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds was honored with the Grammy Hall of Fame Award.

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Thanks to Bill Ferris and the University of Mississippi’s Blues Archive and to Tim Gracyk for their assistance with research and graphics. Tim’s website, www.gracyk.com, is an excellent source for learning the basics of buying and selling 78s.