Illustration by Edward Kinsella III
Albert King
Born on the same Mississippi cotton plantation as B.B. King, Albert Nelson taught himself to play on a cigar-box guitar—left-handed and upside down. After moving to Brooklyn, Ill., in 1956, he perfected his playing in bars and roadhouses on both sides of the Mississippi River. That archetypal “blues” sound? It’s his. No other blues guitarist is imitated more. He had his influences—including Lonnie Johnson—but his genius was integrating nonblues styles, like Hawaiian music, into his playing. During his time in St. Louis, he was nicknamed “The Velvet Bulldozer,” because his day job was driving one. Not for long, though: He and his Gibson Flying V, Lucy, were destined for much bigger things. In 1966, King was wooed to Memphis, Tenn., by Stax Records, releasing Born Under a Bad Sign, a record that would, along with King’s live album from a performance at The Fillmore in San Francisco, Live Wire/Blues Power, influence musicians like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Jim Morrison (King once played onstage with The Doors). During that time, King did return to St. Louis—to play a concert with the St. Louis Symphony in 1969.
Little Milton
James Milton Campbell, originally from Inverness, Miss., began his music career at age 12 as a street musician. After being discovered in 1952 by Ike Turner (who was talent-scouting for Sun Records), he moved to East St. Louis, Ill., and co-founded Bobbin Records with KATZ-AM’s Bob Lyons. Though the label was only around for five years, it was seminal, bringing Albert King and Fontella Bass—and Little Milton himself—to wider audiences. Bobbin was eventually distributed by the legendary label Chess Records, and Campbell scored his first hit in 1962 with “So Mean to Me.” In the late ’60s, he signed with Stax Records and moved to Memphis. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1988.
Robert Nighthawk
Robert Lee McCollum fled Arkansas early, spending his early years rambling the south, playing guitar with orchestras and jug bands. Though Chicago’s known as a blues town now, in the 1930s it was not; the center of blues was Memphis and St. Louis. McCollum (or McCoy, as he sometimes called himself when he was in trouble) found a thriving scene here, and he played with Henry Townsend, Big Joe Williams, Honeyboy Edwards, Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Peetie Wheatstraw. McCollum also cut dozens of songs for Bluebird Records, Victor Records, and Decca Records, sometimes under his given name, sometimes as something else, including Ramblin’ Bob, Peetie’s Boy, and Prowling Night-Hawk, which inspired his later stage name. Like many St. Louis musicians of that era, McCollum eventually moved to Chicago and could be spotted busking on Maxwell Street through the mid-1960s. Though he inspired Muddy Waters and B.B. King, he never achieved their mainstream success, in part because he recorded music under multiple names, and at least until the end of his life, McCollum never stayed in one place for long.
Lonnie Johnson
Alonzo Johnson was in Europe, playing with Will Marion Cook’s Southern Syncopated Orchestra, when the influenza epidemic hit New Orleans in 1918. He returned to find it had killed everyone in the family with the exception of his brother, James. The two moved here together in 1920, playing on the riverboats with Charlie Creath’s Jazz-O-Maniacs and Fate Marable’s band. Johnson also met his future wife here, blues singer Mary Smith (sometimes known as Signifying Mary). After winning a blues contest sponsored by Okeh Records in 1925, Johnson’s career took off, and he recorded on banjo and guitar with musicians like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Eddie Lang. In the 1930s, Johnson moved to Cleveland, then Chicago, and he continued to record with Ellington through the ’60s, though he was sometimes forced to support himself with factory jobs. He is known as a pioneer of jazz guitar and for his single-string solos, as well as for the fact that he was charting well into the 1940s.
Henry Townsend
Born in Mississippi and raised in Cairo, Ill., Henry Townsend fled his abusive father on a boxcar to St. Louis at age 9. Unlike most of the blues musicians he played with during the 1930s, he never migrated to Chicago. He stayed here, recording on guitar and piano for nearly eight decades, from his first thick 78 record in 1929 till his death at age 96 in 2006. (He even had a MySpace profile.) He was nicknamed Mule for his sturdy build and nature, and he played with some of the most legendary characters in blues, including Walter Davis and J.D. Short. He received a posthumous Grammy Award in 2008 for his playing on Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live in Dallas.
Big George Brock
Born near Clarksdale, Miss., George Brock made his early living working the cotton fields, boxing on weekends (he once beat Sonny Liston, but that’s not surprising—he also once wrestled a bear). It was after he moved to St. Louis in the 1950s that his musical career took off. He’s known as one of the finest blues harp players around (he plays a standard Hohner Golden Melody), and the 80-year-old musician has shared a stage with Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Jimmy Reed. During the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, he operated a series of nightclubs, including the Club Caravan—which is also the name of his 2006 CD release on Cat Head Records. He and his band, The Houserockers (featuring Riley Coatie, said to be one of the best unknown blues guitarists around), regularly play blues festivals all over the world—including, of course, the Big Muddy Blues Festival down on Laclede’s Landing.
The Indomitable “St. Louis Blues”
W.C. Handy spent a pretty miserable time in St. Louis; he was so broke, he slept at the edge of the Mississippi River on the cobblestones. He also met a woman who was even more lowdown than he was. Recently jilted by her lover, she lamented that her man “had a heart like a rock cast into the sea.” That scrap of poetry became the inspiration for “St. Louis Blues,” which Handy wrote at Pee Wee Saloon, a Memphis bar, in 1914. After several publishing houses offered him a short-shrift price for the song, he finally published it himself. It was the first blues tune to break through to popular success, and it’s been recorded by just about everyone, including Louis Armstrong, Guy Lombardo, Glenn Miller, Bessie Smith, Count Basie, and the Boston Pops. And in the 1930s, when it was at war with Italy, Ethiopia adopted it as a battle hymn.
Pick Five
Kevin Belford
Author of Devil at the Confluence
1. Lonnie Johnson
He was the first of a long line of St. Louis genre-creators like Chuck Berry and Jay Farrar.
2. Eva Taylor
The pioneer of a local flock of talented songbirds on the radio and records, Taylor could break your heart with sympathy or sexiness, and she had a professionalism and drive that quietly busted barriers for women and African-Americans.
3. Floyd Smith
Smith’s blues work on the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra’s 1937 recording, “Lazy Rhythm,” was the first use of electric guitar in a jazz recording.
4. Charlie Creath and Dewey Jackson
Deservedly, Creath and Jackson were on a level with the traditional giants of jazz, just not “New Orleans riverboat jazz.” In the ’20s, as now,music-industry marketing categories were stumbling blocks between art and the people.
5. Peetie Wheatstraw
His cleverly invented “devil’s son-in-law” mythology to achieve music superstardom has been employed by superstars for nearly a century.
