Earlier than musicians had unlawful downloads to complain about, the pioneering blues artists confronted much more daunting issues. Think about recording a million-selling single and solely getting paid $100 for it, whereas your contract forbids you from recording for anyone else. That in a nutshell is why a handful of blues greats did a lot recording below assumed names. When it was more durable to get a good shake out of your label, it was a minimum of simpler to get round your contract with a sequence of blues nicknames.
King of nicknames
John Lee Hooker needs to be the king of that tactic, throughout a decades-long profession celebrated within the 5CD field set King Of The Boogie. He was probably the most prolific artists in blues historical past, which might be the one factor that bought him paid in his early heyday. It wasn’t uncommon then for bluesmen to get a flat charge, so if the file wound up promoting one million – as Hooker did with “Boogie Chillen” in 1949 and “I’m In The Mood” two years later – it wasn’t the artist who profited. The slight upside was that there have been no big-time authorized departments to return after him when he used pseudonyms as clear as John Lee Booker and John Lee Cooker, two of the various that he adopted after that success.
Typically he merely took one other bluesman’s title; a pair singles on King have been issued as by Johnny Williams. Recording for a minimum of a half-dozen labels, he was additionally Poor John, Texas Slim, Boogie Man, Little Pork Chops, and Lord is aware of who else. In an period the place each main artist’s catalog has been tracked down and repackaged, no one’s been capable of definitively log the lots of of sides that Hooker recorded earlier than (and probably after) he signed a 1955 contract with Vee Jay. We do know that the aliases recorded a few of his landmark sides. The peerlessly primal “Mad Man Blues” and the spooky “Graveyard Blues” have been each “John Lee Booker” singles, respectively, for Chess and Gone.
Fooling the labels
Junior Wells’ 1965 Hoodoo Man Blues is a landmark for just a few causes. As one of many first Chicago blues albums, it was an inspiration for rockers to return and the beginning of an illustrious partnership. It additionally sports activities one of many sillier blues nicknames on file, with Buddy Man – then signed to Chess whereas Wells was on Delmark – showing as Pleasant Chap. Their labels could have been fooled however no one else was, and the album, that includes simply Wells, Man, and a rhythm part, has seminal moments within the title monitor, with Man riffing via a Leslie whereas Wells wails on harmonica, and “Hey Lawdy Mama,” which was coated quickly after by Cream. A Man disciple himself, Eric Clapton was additionally no stranger to pseudonyms, showing on his strangest-ever album – TDF’s Retail Remedy, a techno sidetrack with the producer/programmer Simon Climie – below the title “x-sample.”
Contractual causes
Not everyone used pseudonyms for contractual causes. Some did it for sure types of recordings. The pioneering Texas guitarist Blind Lemon Jefferson coated each the sacred and the profane, the latter fairly memorably on his trademark tune “Black Snake Moan.” But the primary two songs he recorded in late 1925 have been each gospel songs, and for these he took on the alternate persona Deacon LJ Bates (a lot as Hank Williams later did, recording spoken religious items as Luke The Drifter). One other of Jefferson’s requirements, the Dylan-covered “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean,” was additionally achieved below the Bates title.
The early bluesman and civil-rights activist Josh White took his pseudonym for a similar motive. His secular materials could possibly be as raunchy (Allman Brothers followers will know “Jelly Jelly”) as his sacred songs have been religious, so on his 20s recordings he was Joshua White, The Singing Christian, and for the previous, he took the title Pinewood Tom. By the mid-50s, when talking out towards social injustice bought him blacklisted, he was proudly utilizing his personal title full time.
Some bluesmen’s names – Muddy Waters, BB King, Howlin’ Wolf, Lightnin’ Hopkins – are so revered by now that they barely qualify as pseudonyms. These have been the names the artists took firstly of their recording careers and those that handed into legend. However a minimum of one blues grasp wanted time to make his thoughts up. Texas guitarist T-Bone Walker launched quite a few sides as Oak Cliff T-Bone, which simply occurred to be the title he carried out below when he signed to Columbia in 1929. Oak Cliff was his handle on the time, and the oft-emulated “T-Bone” got here from his actual center title, Thibeaud. He’d apparently moved from Oak Cliff earlier than chopping the traditional “Stormy Monday” below his better-known alias in 1947.
Sonny Boy Williamson
In every of those instances, it’s been one artist taking two or extra names. In a single celebrated case, it was simply the alternative. Sonny Boy Williamson I (John Lee Curtis Williamson) was initially a Chicago pioneer of the blues harp, however a pretender born Aleck Ford stole his identification and tried to go himself off as the unique. The unusual twist right here is that each Sonny Boys left an equally substantial legacy. Sonny Boy I left a everlasting mark on Chicago blues and wrote the oft-covered “Good Morning, School Girl,” whereas Sonny Boy Williamson II helped create blues-rock; he was the one who recorded stay with the younger Yardbirds and The Animals.
Misplaced to historical past
Then there have been the artists whose full tales are misplaced to historical past. By all accounts, Kansas Joe McCoy was a guitar heavyweight, born within the Mississippi Delta, and a distinguished session man after coming to Chicago. The guitarist credited on quite a few early blues and jug band periods – with colourful blues nicknames like Hillbilly Plowboy, Mud Dauber Joe, Hamfoot Ham, The Georgia Pine Boy, and Hallelujah Joe – are all him. And so they have been largely achieved for one label, Decca, the place he was a part of the home band, so the title adjustments could have solely been a matter of caprice.
Most of his legacy, nonetheless, hinges on the work he did with then-wife Memphis Minnie beginning in 1930, notably their unique model of “When The Levee Breaks.” After their divorce, McCoy shaped The Harlem Hamfats, who serenaded the hipsters with a tune referred to as “The Weed-Smoker’s Dream.” MCoy then rewrote this in a extra industrial type as “Why Don’t You Do Right,” which grew to become Peggy Lee’s first hit with the Benny Goodman Orchestra.
Lastly, we solely want we knew extra about Catherine “Kitty” Brown, whose 1924 monitor “I Wanna Jazz Some More” is a blues tune a few lust for jazz (on-line histories mistakenly declare that “jazz” right here was a sexual euphemism, however she’s clearly singing, “Your music I sure adore, I wanna jazz some more”). Whoever she was, she recorded below just a few blues nicknames, one among which was Bessie Williams, a moniker claimed by a minimum of one different blueswoman. And she or he left only some tracks behind, with out sufficient backstory to clarify all of the names. Typically you simply have to be glad for what you’ve bought.
Hearken to John Lee Hooker Dwell at Montreux right here.
