Frank Hutchison

Frank Hutchison in the late 1920s

Frank Hutchison (born March 20, 1897 in Raleigh County , West Virginia , † November 9, 1945 in Dayton , Ohio ) was an American old-time musician . Hutchison, who was heavily influenced by the blues , is considered an innovative and influential musician on the slide guitar.

Life

Childhood and youth

Hutchison was born in Raleigh County in 1897, but his family moved to Logan County shortly thereafter . As a child he learned to play the harmonica and later the guitar . The black miners Henry Vaughan and Bill Hunt later influenced Hutchins immensely - Hunt in particular taught Hutchison many blues songs, including Worried Blues and The Train That Carried the Girl from Town (which Hutchison later recorded on record). As a young man, he began working in the Logan County mines, where he may have had an accident at work, as contemporaries later testified in interviews that Hutchison was limping.

Career

On the side, he appeared in the Logan County cinemas and at dance evenings, which already gave him local notoriety. In the fall of 1926, Hutchison traveled to New York City , where he recorded his first two tracks Worried Blues / Train That Carried the Girl from Town for Okeh Records on September 28th . Sales of the record were good, so OKeh organized another session for Hutchison in February 1927, on which he recorded nine more pieces. Among them were traditional pieces like The Wild Horse or guitar rags like the West Virginia Rag . The latter was re-recorded by Hutchison with a text he had composed himself at the same session under the title Coney Isle . Cowboy Copas renamed the piece Alabam in 1960 and it was a huge hit.

With his records, Hutchison rose to become one of Okeh's most successful old-time musicians. Many of his pieces contained many elements of the blues, not least through Hutchison's slide style on the guitar. He put the instrument on his legs like a Hawaiian guitar and played the notes with a metal stick, as his girlfriend at the time Jennie Wilson remembered. Hutchison is thus the first white musician to make recordings in this style.

By 1929, Hutchison recorded other records for OKeh, including the Logan County Blues , a guitar piece named after Hutchison's home, Lonesome Valley and new recordings of Worried Blues and The Train That Carried the Girl from Town, as well as some pieces with the fiddler Sherman Lawson . Hutchison recorded his last session in July 1929. His last recording was the KC Blues , an instrumental version of the traditional John Henry .

The Great Depression destroyed Hutchison's record career. After his last recordings on the OKeh Medicine Show with several other old-time musicians who were signed to OKeh, he never made any further recordings. In 1934, Hutchison and his family moved to Chesapeake, Ohio, and then moved back to Lake, West Virginia, where he owned a small shop and worked as a postal clerk. In 1942, his shop burned down and Hutchison fell ill with alcohol. After the fire, he moved with his family to Ohio, where he died of liver cancer in 1945.

Discography

year	title	#	Remarks
OKeh Records
1926	Worried Blues / Train That Carried the Girl from Town	45064
	The West Virginia Rag / Coney Isle	45083
	Long Way to Tipperary / C&O Excursion	45089
	The Wild Horse / Old Rachel	45093
	Stackalee / Stackalee	45106	B-side is a later recording with harmonica
1927	Worried Blues / The Train That Carried the Girl from Town	45114
	Logan County Blues / The Last Scene of the Titanic	45121
	All Night Long / Lightning Express	45144
	Back in My Home Town / The Miner's Blues	45258
	Wild Hogs in the Red Bush / Hutchison's Rag	45274
	The Burglar Man / Alabama Gal, Ain't You Comin 'Out Tonight?	45313
	Johnny and Jane - Part 1 / Johnny and Jane - Part 2	45361
	The Chevrolet Six / Cannon Ball Blues	56378
	The Boston Burglar / Railroad Bill	45425
1929	Hell Bound Train / KC Blues	45452
	Cumberland Gap / The Deal	45570
Unpublished titles
1927	The Gospel Ship Old Rachel Lonesome Valley Over the waves	OKeh
1928	Cluck Old Hen Old Corn Liquor Sally Gooden Boston Burglar (old version)	OKeh
1929	Down in Lone Green Valley	OKeh

literature

• Kurt Wolff, Orla Duane: Country Music: The Rough Guide (2000), p. 26; Rough Guides, ISBN 1858285348
• Tony Russell: Country Music Originals: The Legends and the Lost (2007), pp. 60-63; Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195325095
• Tony Russell: Country Music Records: A Discography, 1921-1942 (2004), pp. 449-450; Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195139895

Web links

• Songs for free download