Garfield Akers

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Cottonfield Blues , 1929 (A-side)

Garfield Akers (* 1902 (?) In Brights or Bates , Mississippi; † between 1953 and 1959, probably in Memphis , Tennessee ) was an American blues singer and guitarist. Occasionally he also acted under the name Garfield Partee. The dates of his life are not certain, the knowledge of his biography is based almost entirely on reports from a few contemporary witnesses.

Life

youth

Akers came from Brights to Hernando, Mississippi, a small town near Memphis, Tennessee, as a young teenager, at which time he was already playing guitar. In Hernando he met Frank Stokes , who is now widely regarded as the "father of the Memphis Blues", together with him he appeared in the mid to late 1910s as a songster (a form of the traveling musician), comedian and dancer in Doc Watts his Spoan's Linament Medicine Show , which toured the southern United States. In the mid-1920s he married Missie (birth name unknown), their marriage remained childless.

Also in the 20s he met the guitarist Joe Callicott , with whom he played well into the 40s and who was his second guitarist. Both played the guitar brand Stella , which was popular among blues guitarists at the time, and performed on weekends in the region around Hernando, where they became known locally. However, Akers and Callicott were not professional musicians, music was a sideline for them, Akers lived as a sharecropper (a form of debt bondage ). They rarely played outside the Hernando area; They avoided the Mississippi Delta, the real heartland of the Mississippi Blues, because it was too dangerous for them and their local popularity in Hernando ensured better income with less effort.

Recordings

Callicott can also be heard on Akers' first release for Vocalion Records , the two-part Cottonfield Blues , which they recorded in September 1929 at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis during a joint recording session with other artists such as Memphis Minnie , Tampa Red and Kid Bailey . Akers received forty dollars and Callicott five. The Cottonfield Blues was Akers' trademark, which he had practiced continuously, alone as with Callicott, since around 1926/27. The recording clearly illustrates how well the Akers / Callicott team worked together. Although Akers had prepared additional material for recording, the duo at the Peabody Hotel did not make any further recordings, as producer J. Mayo Williams was eager to record the other musicians invited to the recording session, so Aker's recording quickly ended.

Akers recorded another record of a similar character to his debut in February 1930, the Jumpin And Shoutin 'Blues / Dough Roller Blues , the latter being a noticeable variation on Hambone Willie Newbern 's Roll and Tumble . Because of the close playing of the two, it is not possible to say for sure whether Callicott was present as the second guitarist. He is not mentioned, but claimed this himself in an interview, was at the recording session and recorded his only contemporary publication as a soloist there. Akers is named as the author of Callicott's Traveling Mama Blues .

Memphis

In the 1940s Akers and Callicott stopped their musical work together and Akers moved to Memphis, where he lived next to Robert Wilkins and worked in a flour mill. He may have been married to Emma Horton, the mother of Big Walter Horton . With him, Nate Armstrong , Little Buddy Doyle, and Robert Lockwood Jr. , he would often play on Beale Street on weekends and appear in juke joints around Memphis . Armstrong also reports that Akers was playing an electric guitar at the time. There are contradicting statements about the date of his death, mostly the year 1959 is mentioned, the "The Mississippi Writers and Musicians Project" states 1958. However, research into a death certificate between 1955 and 1964 failed. Nate Armstrong reported that he died as early as 1953 or 1954 after about six months of illness, but this has not been confirmed either.

Only a few years after his death, the compilation “Really! The Country Blues 1927-1933 ”, on which for the first time since 1929 pieces by Akers with the two parts of the“ Cottonfield Blues ”were published again.

plant

Akers' well-known work includes four pieces recorded by himself as well as another piece recorded by Joe Calicott. All pieces are played fast and pounding for the time and clearly anticipate rhythm and blues like rock 'n' roll . Akers had a high-pitched voice, his howling, tremulous singing style he had modeled on Ed Newsome . Robert Wilkins reported that the unmistakable and for the time very unusual rhythm was not necessarily invented by Akers himself, but was played between 1915 and 1920 by two brothers named Byrd in the area of ​​Hernando. In the mid-1920s, Akers must have adapted the rhythm, but how exactly he came up with it is not clear. Similar rhythms dive in the Blues later again, taken with the 1935, but in 1940 only published Look Who's Coming Down The Road by Joe McCoy and Robert Wilkins' Get Away Blues .

The two-part Cottonfield Blues is a blues piece for two guitars and vocals in a very traditional blues scheme from today's perspective. While the rhythm guitar plays in eighths, without any special accentuation or a ternary shuffle, which seems rather boring, the lead guitar's motif , which is only four notes long and always starts on the second or fifth eighth note and is directed downwards, creates a counter-rhythm, so that the really difficult times are postponed. This leads to irritation when listening, since the changes in harmony do not seem to match the changes in time, especially since the singing also relates rhythmically to the “correct” meter. This and the very bluesy vocal line, which blurs the intonation of the blue notes and thus moves away harmoniously from the guitars, creates an effect that aims to leave the singing, i.e. the singer or narrator, alone, whereby the Dramaturgy of the text content (a man was abandoned by his lover) is increased.

reception

Akers' style influenced blues musicians such as John Lee Hooker and Robert Wilkins in his day . Due to his extremely narrow body of work, Akers is little known outside of enthusiastic circles today. The Cottonfield Blues in particular has been re-released countless times on vinyl and CD and is now considered a classic of the genre. Bob Dylan biographer Michael Gray praised the piece as "the birth of rock 'n' roll ... from 1929!", Don Kent emphasized that " only a handful of guitar duets of the entire Blues the incredible drive , the complicated rhythms and the wild intensity [of the play] is to come "(" only a handful of guitar duets in all blues match the incredible drive, intricate rhythms and ferocious intensity ") and called him "one of the greatest vocalists in blues history." Gayle Dean Wardlow called the album "one of the classic pre-war plates" ( "one of the classic prewar records" ) with an "incredible rhythm behind Garfield wailing" ( "amazing rhythm behind Garfield's moanin '." ). The musicologist Ted Gioia described his style as “Chord fragments bounce off the fingerboard like projectiles, serving as parts of a harmonic shrapnel that underlines Aker's cutting vocal attack; a long lamentation that contrasts pleasantly with the rapid fire-like pulsation of his guitar "( " Here chord fragments ricochet like bullets off the fretboard, serving as bits of harmonic shrapnel underscoring Akers piercing vocal attack, a long lingering wail that contrasts pleasingly with the rapidfire pulsations of his guitar. " ).

Discography

All pieces have been republished numerous times on compilations since their original publication, these are not listed here.

  • Cotton Field Blues Part 1 / Cotton Field Blues Part 2 , (1929), (Vocalion Records 1442)
  • Jumpin And Shoutin 'Blues / Dough Roller Blues , (1930), (Vocalion Records 1481)

literature

  • Gayle Dean Wardlow: Garfield Akers - From the Hernando Cottonfields… In: Living Blues , No. 50, 1981, pp. 26-27, ISSN  0024-5232 ; slightly expanded republication in Gayle Dean Wardlow: Chasin 'that devil music , 1998, ISBN 0-87930-552-5 , pp. 118-125
  • Jim O'Neal: Garfield Akers - ... to Beale Street and the juke joints . In: Living Blues , No. 50, 1981, pp. 27-28, ISSN  0024-5232
  • Robert Palmer: Deep Blues . 1995, ISBN 0-14-006223-8 , pp. 243-244
  • Robert Santelli: The Big Book Of Blues - A Biographical Encyclopedia . 1993, ISBN 0-14-015939-8 , p. 5

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Neil Slaven: Blues in Memphis . In: Masters of Memphis Blues , CD-Booklet B, JSP Records, 2004
  2. ↑ a b Jim O'Neal: Garfield Akers -… to Beale Street and the Juke Joints , p. 28
  3. ^ A b Gayle Dean Wardlow: Garfield Akers - From the Hernando Cottonfields ... , p. 27
  4. ↑ Garfield Akers . AllMusic; Retrieved August 19, 2014
  5. ^ Gayle Dean Wardlow: Garfield Akers - From the Hernando Cottonfields ... , p. 26
  6. ↑ Carl-Ludwig Reichert: Blues - history and stories . dtv, 2001, ISBN 3-423-24259-0 , p. 79
  7. ^ Mississippi Musicians . ( Memento from August 11, 2006 on the Internet Archive ) The Mississippi Writers and Musicians Project
  8. ↑ Online discography. ( Memento of November 6, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Origin Jazz Library
  9. ↑ a b Gayle Dean Wardlow: Chasin 'that devil music. 1998, ISBN 0-87930-552-5 , p. 119
  10. ^ Robert Santelli: The Big Book Of Blues. P. 5
  11. ↑ Michael Gray: Song & Dance Man III - The Art of Bob Dylan. ISBN 0-8264-6382-7
  12. ↑ Don Kent. In: The Best There Ever Was . CD booklet, Yazoo Records, YA 3002, 2003
  13. ^ Ted Gioia: Delta Blues. 2008, ISBN 978-0-393-06258-8 , pp. 127-132
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on March 22, 2007 .
personal data
SURNAME Akers, Garfield
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Partee, Garfield (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American blues musician
DATE OF BIRTH around 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Brights or Bates , Mississippi
DATE OF DEATH between 1953 and 1959
Place of death unsure: Memphis , Tennessee