Blues and the mob in Pre War Blues Forum

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Blues and the mob

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cih

Blues and the mob

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Deepest Blue

Posts: 1283

Jul 18 05 12:06 PM

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How many recordings make specific mention of 'gangland' experience? I think, given the location of so many bluesmen in Chicago there's surprisingly little. There's Peetie Wheatstraw's 'Gangster Blues', though Paul Garon makes the point that it sounds like it's been taken straight from Hollywood movies, rather than immediate experience. There's Lonnie Johnson's 'Racketeers Blues', and Champion Jack Dupree said that he worked in a club run by Al Capone's brother, and knew Capone. Then there's Louis Armstrong and Joe Glaser...
How much involvement would the 'Outfit' have had in the sorts of clubs that blues musicians played in? They would certainly have come across mob members in the 'numbers' racket. Maybe something like Cripple Clarence Lofton's 'Policy Blues' is closer to the truth�

Any more?

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barrelhouse

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Deepest Blue

Posts: 6072

Jul 18 05 12:10 PM

Wasn't the Cotton Club run by the mob for the mob? I read somewhere that Cab Calloway played there for a long time entertaining these gentlemen.

Don't you think too bad about me when I'm gone.--Allardyce/ Kocemba.

Peterhead, N.E. Scotland, between the Ugie and Ythan Deltas.

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Jack of Diamonds

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Deepest Blue

Posts: 2558

Jul 18 05 12:25 PM

Sticking my neck out, I would think that white organised crime didn't impact black folks in the south so much, and we all know about bluesmen who moonlighted as pimps, bootleggers etc. As to Chicago, that might be different, but I really can't speak from a position of knowledge.

Wasn't there some southern bluesman supposedly managed by a KKK member? the name isn't springing to mind right now though.

Ah - Jaybird Coleman, apparently.

"Lightnin' change when Lightnin' want to"

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cih

#3

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Deepest Blue

Posts: 1283

Jul 18 05 1:13 PM

Jaybird Coleman was supposedly managed by the KKK - they shared his record label - Gennet, who put out some pretty unsavoury stuff. there's some pics of record labels in 'Blacks, Whites and Blues' - can't remember the titles offhand...

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Tom Rushen

#4

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Deepest Blue

Posts: 4476

Jul 18 05 1:41 PM

If any blues artists would have songs with mob themes, it would most likely be the Chicago-based musicians during Prohibition, people like Tampa Red, Frankie Jaxon, or Lonnie Johnson.

The closest I could find was this:

You Can't Get That Stuff No More
Tampa Red recorded this with Georgia Tom in New York on Feb 4, 1932. From the CD: "The Slide Guitar (Bottles, Knives and Steel)" in the Columbia Roots 'n' Blues series

You know Bootleg Sally used to live across town
The law went there and they closed 'r down

Chorus:
Now you can't get that stuff no more
Now you can't get that stuff no more
No matter how you try, you can't buy
You can't get that stuff no more

You know that place on Dago Hill
The law took the gal and the liquor still
(Chorus)

Li'l Suzanne she used to sell her grease
She got in trouble with the chief o' police
(Chorus)

There goes Joe with a great big knife
Somebody been messin' round with his wife
Now he can't get that stuff no more
Now he can't get that stuff no more
No matter how he try, he can't buy
He can't get that stuff no more

Play it!

On State Street they used to give it away
But now you can't it if you offer to pay
(Chorus)

All of the gals used to walk the street
The law done run 'r off his beat
(Chorus)

Ah play it...
You can't get that stuff no more
You can't get that stuff no more
No matter how you try, you can't buy
You can't get that stuff no more

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Sam hopkins

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Deepest Blue

Posts: 716

Jul 18 05 6:53 PM

QUOTE (cih @ Jul 18 2005, 01:13 PM)

Jaybird Coleman was supposedly managed by the KKK - they shared his record label - Gennet, who put out some pretty unsavoury stuff. there's some pics of record labels in 'Blacks, Whites and Blues' - can't remember the titles offhand...

"supposedly managed by the KKK" is probably an apt phrase. All that is known about Coleman came from his brother Joe who was interviewed by Pat Cather in Birmingham, Alabama in 1962. In 1990 Cather self published an 8 page pamphlet entitled Tracking Down A Legend: The Jaybird Coleman Story which was basically his Music Memories feature enhanced with discursive musicological musings.

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Blind Willie Loons III

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Posts: 170

Jul 19 05 2:25 PM

Charlie Patton sings that line about 'Dago Hill' in St. Louis.

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harpe

#7

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Posts: 5

Jul 21 05 1:16 PM

Mr. Loons, I seem to have seen that picture somewhere before!

http://www.toad.net/~harpe/blues/blnwilli.html

Don't get me wrong...I don't have a problem with you using it. But I was a little surprised to see one of my own drawings!

Neil

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