7/31/2015

Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee - Stranger Blues

The joyous whoop that Sonny Terry naturally emitted between raucous harp blasts was as distinctive a signature sound as can possibly be imagined. Only a handful of blues harmonica players wielded as much of a lasting influence on the genre as did the sightless Terry (Buster Brown, for one, copied the whoop and all), who recorded some fine urban blues as a bandleader in addition to serving as guitarist Brownie McGhee's longtime duet partner.

Saunders Terrell's father was a folk-styled harmonica player who performed locally at dances, but blues wasn't part of his repertoire (he blew reels and jigs). Terry wasn't born blind, he lost sight in one eye when he was five, the other at age 18. That left him with extremely limited options for making any sort of feasible living, so he took to the streets armed with his trusty harmonicas. Terry soon joined forces with Piedmont pioneer Blind Boy Fuller, first recording with the guitarist in 1937 for Vocalion.

Terry's unique talents were given an extremely classy airing in 1938 when he was invited to perform at New York's Carnegie Hall at the fabled From Spirituals to Swing concert. He recorded for the Library of Congress that same year and cut his first commercial sides in 1940. Terry had met McGhee in 1939, and upon the death of Fuller, they joined forces, playing together on a 1941 McGhee date for OKeh and settling in New York as a duo in 1942. There they broke into the folk scene, working alongside Leadbelly, Josh White, and Woody Guthrie.

While Brownie McGhee was incredibly prolific in the studio during the mid-'40s, Terry was somewhat less so as a leader (perhaps most of his time was occupied by his prominent role in Finian's Rainbow on Broadway for approximately two years beginning in 1946). There were sides for Asch and Savoy in 1944 before three fine sessions for Capitol in 1947 (the first two featuring Stick McGhee rather than Brownie on guitar) and another in 1950.

Terry made some nice sides in an R&B mode for Jax, Jackson, Red Robin, RCA Victor, Groove, Harlem, Old Town, and Ember during the '50s, usually with Brownie close by on guitar. But it was the folk boom of the late '50s and early '60s that made Brownie and Sonny household names (at least among folk aficionados). They toured long and hard as a duo, cutting a horde of endearing acoustic duet LPs along the way, before scuttling their decades-long partnership amidst a fair amount of reported acrimony during the mid-'70s.

Artist Biography by Bill Dahl at All Music


7/26/2015

Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup - Katie Mae


Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, one of the most prominent blues recording artists of the 1940s, was born on his grandparents' land in Forest on August 24, 1905. After Elvis Presley recorded three Crudup songs in the 1950s, Crudup became known as “The Father of Rock 'n' Roll.” Despite the commercial success of his songs, Crudup was never fairly paid for the music he composed and recorded, and had to work as a laborer or bus driver to support his family. He died on March 28, 1974.

Crudup was one of America's top-selling blues artists long before Elvis Presley, Elton John, Rod Stewart, and other pop stars began recording his songs. But like many other performers who had little education and little familiarity with the music business or copyright law, Crudup fell victim to exploitation. Only after his death did his heirs finally succeed in securing his copyrights and long-overdue royalties.

Crudup, who grew up singing spirituals, did not start playing guitar until he was in his thirties. In 1941, while playing on the streets in Chicago, he was offered a chance to record for RCA Victor's Bluebird label. His unique sound and memorable lyrics caught on with record buyers, and he continued to record for RCA until 1954. His best known records included “Rock Me Mama,” “Mean Old 'Frisco Blues,” and three that were covered by Presley: “That's All Right,” “My Baby Left Me,” and “So Glad You're Mine.” Crudup rarely played concerts or theaters until the blues revival of the 1960s, but he was a juke joint favorite in Mississippi, where he performed with Elmore James, Sonny Boy Williamson, and locals such as George Lee, Odell Lay, and Clyde Lay. In Forest he played dance halls and cafes where both blacks and whites attended despite segregation policies of the time. He stacked lumber, picked cotton, and sold bootleg liquor, and finally started his own business transporting migrant workers between Florida and Virginia after he left Forest in the mid-1950s. He recorded in later years for the Fire and Delmark labels, but remained a working man who never depended on music to survive. His sons James, Jonas, and George formed their own band in Florida and later recorded a CD as the Crudup Brothers. A nephew, Robert Earl “Little Jr.” Crudup, also launched a performing career in Oakland, California, in the 1980s.

James “T-Model” Ford, another self-taught Forest musician, also took up guitar late in life (in his fifties). Ford, born June 20, 1924, was a laborer, logger, and truck driver before he became a bluesman in the Delta. In the 1990s his CDs on the Oxford-based Fat Possum label enabled him to start touring the country while maintaining a performing base at nightspots near his home in Greenville.

Another former Forest resident, Ruben Hughes, was honored with a resolution from the Mississippi Legislature in 2002 for his work in radio. Hughes, born Sept. 9, 1938, got his first job as a blues deejay on WMAG in Forest at the age of sixteen. He broadcast on several stations before he founded WGNL in Greenwood in 1987. Hughes recalled working with Arthur Crudup on a Forest poultry farm in the early 1950s.

content © Mississippi Blues Commission


7/24/2015

Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee - On The Road Again

The joyous whoop that Sonny Terry naturally emitted between raucous harp blasts was as distinctive a signature sound as can possibly be imagined. Only a handful of blues harmonica players wielded as much of a lasting influence on the genre as did the sightless Terry (Buster Brown, for one, copied the whoop and all), who recorded some fine urban blues as a bandleader in addition to serving as guitarist Brownie McGhee's longtime duet partner.

Saunders Terrell's father was a folk-styled harmonica player who performed locally at dances, but blues wasn't part of his repertoire (he blew reels and jigs). Terry wasn't born blind, he lost sight in one eye when he was five, the other at age 18. That left him with extremely limited options for making any sort of feasible living, so he took to the streets armed with his trusty harmonicas. Terry soon joined forces with Piedmont pioneer Blind Boy Fuller, first recording with the guitarist in 1937 for Vocalion.

Terry's unique talents were given an extremely classy airing in 1938 when he was invited to perform at New York's Carnegie Hall at the fabled From Spirituals to Swing concert. He recorded for the Library of Congress that same year and cut his first commercial sides in 1940. Terry had met McGhee in 1939, and upon the death of Fuller, they joined forces, playing together on a 1941 McGhee date for OKeh and settling in New York as a duo in 1942. There they broke into the folk scene, working alongside Leadbelly, Josh White, and Woody Guthrie.

While Brownie McGhee was incredibly prolific in the studio during the mid-'40s, Terry was somewhat less so as a leader (perhaps most of his time was occupied by his prominent role in Finian's Rainbow on Broadway for approximately two years beginning in 1946). There were sides for Asch and Savoy in 1944 before three fine sessions for Capitol in 1947 (the first two featuring Stick McGhee rather than Brownie on guitar) and another in 1950.

Terry made some nice sides in an R&B mode for Jax, Jackson, Red Robin, RCA Victor, Groove, Harlem, Old Town, and Ember during the '50s, usually with Brownie close by on guitar. But it was the folk boom of the late '50s and early '60s that made Brownie and Sonny household names (at least among folk aficionados). They toured long and hard as a duo, cutting a horde of endearing acoustic duet LPs along the way, before scuttling their decades-long partnership amidst a fair amount of reported acrimony during the mid-'70s.

Artist Biography by Bill Dahl at All Music



7/19/2015

With A Little Help From My Friends

From Queen's Golden Jubilee
3 june 2002
Phil Collins - drums
Brian May - guitar
Joe Cocker - Vocals

"With a Little Help from My Friends" is a song written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, released on the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. The song was written for and sung by the Beatles' drummer Ringo Starr as the character "Billy Shears". It was ranked No. 311 on Rolling Stone '​s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

The song is partly in the form of a conversation, in which the other three Beatles sing a question "Would you believe in a love at first sight?" and Starr answers, "Yes, I'm certain that it happens all the time."

English singer Joe Cocker's version of "With a Little Help from My Friends" was a radical re-arrangement of the original, in a slower, 6/8 meter, using different chords in the middle eight, and a lengthy instrumental introduction (featuring drums by Procol Harum's B.J. Wilson, guitar lines from Jimmy Page, and organ by Tommy Eyre). Cocker performed the song at Woodstock in 1969. and that performance was included in the documentary film, Woodstock. In 2001, Cocker's version of the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.




7/17/2015

Charley Patton - Down The Dirt Road Blues


Born in April 1891, between Edwards and Bolton in southern Mississippi, Charley Patton was the scrawny child of sharecropper parents. In 1900, his family moved 100 miles north to the Delta and the Will Dockery Plantation. There Patton fell under the spell of guitarist Henry Sloan and would follow him to gigs. By 1910, he had become proficient as a performer and songwriter, having already composed "Down The Dirt Road Blues," a slow drag called "Banty Rooster Blues," and his theme song "Pony Blues."

After the turn of the decade Patton began playing with Willie Brown, a guitarist who would later become a regular on his recordings. Patton's music began to exert considerable influence; guitarist Tommy Johnson had moved to the Dockery vicinity circa 1913 and was soon playing Delta blues including Patton's "Pony Blues." Around 1914, Patton began playing his guitar with members of the Chatmon family, working picnics and frolics. Bo, Sam, and Lonnie Chatmon and guitarist Walter Vinson later would gain fame as the Mississippi Sheiks. Bo Chatmon also recorded many titles as soloist Bo Carter. Patton continued playing and rambling around the Delta, going north to Memphis and as far west as Arkansas and Louisiana. By 1926, a young Robert Johnson had begun following Patton and Brown to gigs trying to learn from the veteran guitarists.

Patton made his first recording in June 1929, cutting fourteen songs for the Paramount label, all issued on 78s. Such was the success of his initial session that he was invited four months later to Paramount's new studio in Grafton, Wisconsin, where he recorded twenty-eight additional tunes. Patton's polyrhythmic picking, accompanied by tapping the body of the guitar, created an intricate dance melody that its author could play for thirty minutes or more. Son House, who recorded in a 1930 session that also featured Patton and Brown, recalled that Charley "clowned" for an audience by playing the guitar behind his back or between his knees. Patton included regional landmarks in his tunes - places that a local record-buying audience would be familiar with, including a Moorehead, Mississippi railroad crossing, "Where The Southern Crosses The Dog," in "Green River Blues" and Parchman Farm in "A Spoonful Blues."

Howlin' Wolf, who moved to Dockery in 1926, recalled seeing Patton on the town square in Drew, not far from Dockery Plantation. Patton's hypnotic three-note songs also deeply influenced Clarksdale's John Lee Hooker, who recorded his own version of Patton's "Pea Vine Blues." Bukka White also cited a desire "to come to be a famous man, like Charley Patton," and demonstrated a similar knack for playing dance songs for extended periods. Patton's last recording session was in New York City in February 1934, two months before his death.

Charley Patton died April 28, 1934, at 350 Heathman Street in Indianola, Mississippi. Patton's grave is located in Holly Ridge, Mississippi, and the tombstone acknowledges his pivotal role in the development of the Delta Blues.


7/13/2015

Blue Suede Shoes - World Rock Day


Let´s celebrate the World Rock Day!

"Blue Suede Shoes" is a rock and roll standard written and first recorded by Carl Perkins in 1955 and is considered one of the first rockabilly (rock and roll) records and incorporated elements of blues, country and pop music of the time. Perkins' original version of the song was on the Cashbox Best Selling Singles list for 16 weeks, and spent 2 weeks in the No. 2 position. Elvis Presley performed his version of the song three different times on national television. It was also recorded by Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran among many others.

Today we present Blue Suede Shoes amazing version performed in an awesome jam session with nothing more than Stray Cats, Eddie Van Halen, Steve Miller, B B King, Les Paul, David Gilmour, Stanley Jordan, Jon Hammer and Waylon Jennings.




7/12/2015

Big Bill Broonzy - Trouble In Mind


Despite years of research, the details of William Lee Conley Broonzy's birth date remain problematic. He may have been born on 26 June 1893 - the date of birth he often gave - or according to Bill's twin sister Laney, it may have been in 1898. Laney claimed to have documents to prove that. However, definitive research undertaken by Bob Reisman (see www.amazon.co.uk or www.amazon.com search book "I Feel So Good") has changed the picture.

Bill often regaled audiences with tales of his birth on 26 June 1893 and that of his twin sister Laney and of his father's response to being told he had twins to care for. He claimed to have served in the US Army in France from 1918 - 1919 and to have been invited by a record company to travel to the Delta following a major flood in 1927: Turns out, that a good deal of this was fiction at worst and faction at best.

Robert Reisman's impeccable research suggests a birth date for Bill of 26th June 1903 (and in Jefferson County, Arkansas, not Scott Mississippi as previously suggested). Laney was not a twin at all but four years older than Bill. (She was born in 1898).

Bill spoke and sang about experiences in the US army and of his return from France to Arkansas/Mississippi. It turns out though, that the reported army experience was Bill's factional description of an amalgam of the stories told by black soldiers returning from overseas. A trip Bill claimed to have made to Mississippi in 1927 to the flooding was similarly untrue, but was a factional account into which Bill inserted himself.

Broonzy is/was not even his real name. He was born into the world with the name Lee Conly (note spelling) Bradley; and so it goes on.

Bill's father Frank Broonzy (Bradley) and his mother, Mittie Belcher had both been born into slavery and Bill was one of seventeen children. His first instrument was a violin which he learned to play with some tuition from his uncle, his mother's brother, Jerry Belcher. Bob Reisman suggests that there is little evidence that Jerry Belcher existed.

In Arkansas, the young Bill (Lee) worked as a violinist in local churches at the same time as working as a farm hand. He also worked as a country fiddler and local parties and picnics around Scott Mississippi. Between 1912 and 1917, Bill (Lee) worked as an itinerant preacher in and around Pine Bluff. It is not known why he changed his name.

Later, he worked in clubs around Little Rock. In about 1924, Big Bill moved to Chicago Illinois, where as a fiddle player he played occasional gigs with Papa Charlie Jackson. During this time he learned to play guitar and subsequently accompanied many blues singers, both in live performance and on record. Bill made his first recordings in 1927 (just named Big Bill) and the 1930 census records him as living in Chicago and (working as a labourer in a foundry) and his name was recorded as 'Willie Lee Broonsey' aged 28. He was living with his wife Annie (25) and his son Ellis (6).

Over the years, Big Bill became an accomplished performer in his own right. Through the 1930s he was a significant mover in founding the small group blues (singer, guitar, piano, bass drums) sound that typified Chicago bues.

On 23 December, 1938, Big Bill was one of the principal solo performers in the first "From Spirituals to Swing" concert held at the Carnegie Hall in New York City. In the programme for that performance, Broonzy was identified in the programme only as "Big Bill" (he did not become known as Big Bill Broonzy until much later in his career) and as Willie Broonzy. He was described as:

"...the best-selling blues singer on Vocalion's 'race' records, which is the musical trade designation for American Negro music that is so good that only the Negro people can be expected to buy it."

The programme recorded that the Carnegie Hall concert "will be his first appearance before a white audience".

Big Bill was a stand-in for Robert Johnson, who had been murdered in Mississippi in August that year. Hammond heard about Johnson's death just a week before the concert was due to take place. According to John Sebastian (1939) Big Bill bought a new pair of shoes and travelled to New York by bus for the concert. Where he travelled from is, however, left dangling. The inference of the text is that it was from Arkansas, but as noted above, by by late 1938 Bill was established as a session man and band leader, and as a solo performer in Chicago. Within weeks of the 1938 concert Bill was recording with small groups in a studio in the windy city.

In the 1938 programme, Big Bill performed (accompanied by boogie pianist Albert Ammons) "It Was Just a Dream" which had the audience rocking with laughter at the lines,

"Dreamed I was in the White House, sittin' in the president's chair.
I dreamed he's shaking my hand, said "Bill, I'm glad you're here".
But that was just a dream. What a dream I had on my mind.
And when I woke up, not a chair could I find"

7/10/2015

Howlin Wolf -- I'll Be Back Someday


Chester Arthur Burnett, "Howlin' Wolf", born June 10, 1910, in West Point, Mississippi, Chester Arthur was one of Dock and Gertrude Burnett's six children. Burnett refined his singing at Life Board Baptist Church in Aberdeen as a lad. At the age of thirteen, he moved with his family to sharecrop on the Young and Myers Plantation near Ruleville. Burnett learned to play the guitar as a teen, influenced by guitarists Charley Patton and Willie Brown, who played on the square in nearby Drew. Burnett moved to the Dockery Plantation in 1929, both to work and to be around Patton.

Between 1928 and 1933, Burnett augmented his sharecropping income playing fish fries, dances, and the streets of Drew, Cleveland, and Ruleville, Mississippi. He adopted the stage name "Howlin' Wolf" during the 1930s, possibly from a record by Texas bluesman J. T. "Funny Paper" Smith. In 1933, Wolf moved to Twist, Arkansas, to farm, occasionally playing on the road with Robert Johnson, Texas Alexander, and brother-in-law Sonny Boy Williamson. Williamson also taught him the rudiments of harmonica, though not to Sonny Boy's own level of expertise. During the late 1930s Wolf often ventured to Memphis, playing local juke joints off Beale Street or in W. C. Handy Park for tips.

Wolf entered the U.S. Army in 1941, often entertaining troops during his hitch. After being mustered out in 1945, he returned to farming in the Delta. During the 1940s Wolf received his first radio work at KFFA, broadcasting King Biscuit Time from the Floyd Truck Lines Building in Helena, Arkansas. Joe Willie Wilkins contacted Wolf while the latter was in Moorehead and offered him work on King Biscuit Time playing harmonica when Williamson was away. In 1948, Wolf moved to West Memphis, Arkansas, where he landed a job as a DJ for radio station KWEM. Adapting to new technologies in electrical amplification, he assembled a crackerjack band featuring Willie Johnson on guitar, Bill "Destruction" Johnson on piano, and Willie Steel on drums. Sam Phillips, a white recording engineer in Memphis, heard Wolf's show and immediately arranged a recording session for the band at his 706 Union Avenue studio.

The session yielded the songs "Moanin' at Midnight" and "How Many More Years," which were leased to Chess Records and released as a single. On record, Wolf's huge, ferocious voice sounded as if it were torn from the back of his throat. His high-pressure moaning punctuated by a wolfish howl sounded like an amped-up Tommy Johnson. Wolf's harmonica playing held the melody while Willie Johnson played slashing guitar riffs and Willie Steel pounded the drums ferociously. The single soon entered Billboard's R&B Top 10, rising to number eight.

Wolf moved to Chicago in 1952 to be closer to the Chess studio but he continued to record Delta blues including "I Asked for Water" (a version of Tommy Johnson's "Cool Drink of Water Blues") and the Mississippi Sheiks' "Sitting on Top of the World." He continued to tour the South, and eventually became a successful international draw.

Howlin' Wolf died January 10, 1976, in Hines, Illinois. He is buried in Chicago.




7/05/2015

Big Bill Broonzy - When Did You Leave Heaven


Despite years of research, the details of William Lee Conley Broonzy's birth date remain problematic. He may have been born on 26 June 1893 - the date of birth he often gave - or according to Bill's twin sister Laney, it may have been in 1898. Laney claimed to have documents to prove that. However, definitive research undertaken by Bob Reisman (see www.amazon.co.uk or www.amazon.com search book "I Feel So Good") has changed the picture.

Bill often regaled audiences with tales of his birth on 26 June 1893 and that of his twin sister Laney and of his father's response to being told he had twins to care for. He claimed to have served in the US Army in France from 1918 - 1919 and to have been invited by a record company to travel to the Delta following a major flood in 1927: Turns out, that a good deal of this was fiction at worst and faction at best.

Robert Reisman's impeccable research suggests a birth date for Bill of 26th June 1903 (and in Jefferson County, Arkansas, not Scott Mississippi as previously suggested). Laney was not a twin at all but four years older than Bill. (She was born in 1898).

Bill spoke and sang about experiences in the US army and of his return from France to Arkansas/Mississippi. It turns out though, that the reported army experience was Bill's factional description of an amalgam of the stories told by black soldiers returning from overseas. A trip Bill claimed to have made to Mississippi in 1927 to the flooding was similarly untrue, but was a factional account into which Bill inserted himself.

Broonzy is/was not even his real name. He was born into the world with the name Lee Conly (note spelling) Bradley; and so it goes on.

Bill's father Frank Broonzy (Bradley) and his mother, Mittie Belcher had both been born into slavery and Bill was one of seventeen children. His first instrument was a violin which he learned to play with some tuition from his uncle, his mother's brother, Jerry Belcher. Bob Reisman suggests that there is little evidence that Jerry Belcher existed.

In Arkansas, the young Bill (Lee) worked as a violinist in local churches at the same time as working as a farm hand. He also worked as a country fiddler and local parties and picnics around Scott Mississippi. Between 1912 and 1917, Bill (Lee) worked as an itinerant preacher in and around Pine Bluff. It is not known why he changed his name.

Later, he worked in clubs around Little Rock. In about 1924, Big Bill moved to Chicago Illinois, where as a fiddle player he played occasional gigs with Papa Charlie Jackson. During this time he learned to play guitar and subsequently accompanied many blues singers, both in live performance and on record. Bill made his first recordings in 1927 (just named Big Bill) and the 1930 census records him as living in Chicago and (working as a labourer in a foundry) and his name was recorded as 'Willie Lee Broonsey' aged 28. He was living with his wife Annie (25) and his son Ellis (6).

Over the years, Big Bill became an accomplished performer in his own right. Through the 1930s he was a significant mover in founding the small group blues (singer, guitar, piano, bass drums) sound that typified Chicago bues.

On 23 December, 1938, Big Bill was one of the principal solo performers in the first "From Spirituals to Swing" concert held at the Carnegie Hall in New York City. In the programme for that performance, Broonzy was identified in the programme only as "Big Bill" (he did not become known as Big Bill Broonzy until much later in his career) and as Willie Broonzy. He was described as:

"...the best-selling blues singer on Vocalion's 'race' records, which is the musical trade designation for American Negro music that is so good that only the Negro people can be expected to buy it."

The programme recorded that the Carnegie Hall concert "will be his first appearance before a white audience".

Big Bill was a stand-in for Robert Johnson, who had been murdered in Mississippi in August that year. Hammond heard about Johnson's death just a week before the concert was due to take place. According to John Sebastian (1939) Big Bill bought a new pair of shoes and travelled to New York by bus for the concert. Where he travelled from is, however, left dangling. The inference of the text is that it was from Arkansas, but as noted above, by by late 1938 Bill was established as a session man and band leader, and as a solo performer in Chicago. Within weeks of the 1938 concert Bill was recording with small groups in a studio in the windy city.

In the 1938 programme, Big Bill performed (accompanied by boogie pianist Albert Ammons) "It Was Just a Dream" which had the audience rocking with laughter at the lines,

"Dreamed I was in the White House, sittin' in the president's chair.
I dreamed he's shaking my hand, said "Bill, I'm glad you're here".
But that was just a dream. What a dream I had on my mind.
And when I woke up, not a chair could I find"

7/03/2015

Furry Lewis - Brownsville Blues

Born March 6, 1899, in Greenwood, Mississippi, Lewis acquired the nickname "Furry" from childhood playmates. At the age of seven he and his family moved to Memphis, where young Lewis took up the guitar under the tutelage of a man whose name he recalled as "Blind Joe." Blind Joe apparently was versed in nineteenth century song and taught his protégé "Casey Jones" and "John Henry," songs based around the exploits of heroic figures. Lewis would later record these two songs for the Victor and Vocalion labels respectively. By 1908, he was playing solo for parties, in taverns, and on the street. He also was invited to play several dates with W.C. Handy's Orchestra.

Lewis hoboed around the country until 1917, when he lost a leg in a railroad accident. He returned to Memphis, playing in association with Jim Jackson, Gus Cannon (who would form Cannon's Jug Stompers for recording dates), and Will Shade. Though primarily a solo performer, Lewis worked with this combination in a variety of clubs on Beale Street including the famous Pee Wee's (now the site of a Hard Rock Café) into the 1920s. The loss of a leg did not prevent him from touring during the early 1920s with the Dr. Willie Lewis Medicine Show, where he made the acquaintance of a young Memphis Minnie. His travels exposed him to a wide variety of performers including Bessie Smith, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Texas Alexander. Like his contemporary Frank Stokes, he tired of the road and took a permanent job in 1922. His position as a street sweeper for the City of Memphis, a job he would hold until his retirement in 1966, allowed him to remain active in the Memphis music scene.

In 1927, Lewis cut his first records in Chicago for the Vocalion label. A year later he recorded for the Victor label at the Memphis Auditorium in a session that saw sides waxed by the Memphis Jug Band, Jim Jackson, Frank Stokes, and others. He again recorded for Vocalion in Memphis in 1929. The recordings from these dates exhibit a nimble, clean, and versatile picking style that provides an excellent counterpoint to his complex verses. Several of his recordings (notably "Judge Harsh Blues" and "Cannonball Blues") display Lewis's bottleneck slide playing, a style in which he was proficient but not a master. His vocal range was limited but he compensated by composing humorous verses that were by turns bawdy, sly, boasting, and pleading.

The onset of the Great Depression in 1929 brought Lewis's recording career to a halt. He continued to play Beale Street and became a frequent performer in W.C. Handy Park during the 1930s and 1940s. During the "Blues Revival" of the 1960s, Lewis was rediscovered by a younger generation of fans that appreciated his expressive lyrics, dexterous playing, and charismatic charm. He parlayed his delayed celebrity into a movie cameo (initially offered to Sleepy John Estes), a talk show appearance, and large hall shows with the rock and roll bands that were his musical progeny.

Furry Lewis died in Memphis September 14, 1981.