JT Smith

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John T. "Funny Papa" Smith (also Funny Paper Smith , The Howling Wolf, and Cool Papa Smith ; * between 1885 and 1890 in Texas ; † around 1940) was an American blues musician ( vocals , guitar ) and songwriter who helped develop and popularize the Texas Blues in the late 1920s and 1930s.

Life

Smith, who was from east Texas, worked as a young man in the Lincoln Theater in New York City. For a time he lived in Oklahoma; in the 1920s he married and played at local dance festivals, fairs, and juke joints in Louisiana and Oklahoma, etc. a. with Thomas Shaw . As a songster, he was often on the road in the region. a. also with Texas Alexander and "Dennis Little Hat" Jones.

Juke Joint in Natchez, Louisiana

In September 1930 Smith recorded his two-part song "Howling Wolf Blues" ( Vocalion Records 1558). The song, which became his trademark, was covered by several musicians (like Lightnin 'Hopkins in 1948 ), mostly from Texas. Robert Johnson is said to have borrowed from Smith's song in " Hellhound on My Trail " (1937).

This article or section needs revision: denglish. You don't understand a word. See disk
Please help us improve it , and then remove this mark.

After a spoken introduction

Well, here I am, got the blues about little old Victoria, the Howlin 'Wolf.
Guess I'll drop a few lines.

Smith sings the first verse:

I'm that wolf that everybody been tryin 'to find out where in the world I prowl
Nobody ever gets a chance to see me, but they all hear me when I howl.

The last stanza says:

(Looks, Seems) like God don't treat me like I'm a human kind.
Seems like he wants me to be a prowler and a Howlin 'Wolf all the time.

Smith called himself Funny Papa (which was wrongly reproduced on the records as Funny Paper by the producers ) or - after the success of his 78s of the same name - Howling Wolf , about twenty years before Chester Burnett (1910-1976) became known under this name. Smith played a total of 18 records under his own name in Chicago in 1930/31, such as "Heart Bleeding Blues", "Good Coffee Blues", "Hard Luck Man Blues" and "Honey Blues" (Vocalion 1633); including two duets with Magnolia Harris ("Mama's Quittin 'and Leavin", Vocalion 1602 and Melotone M12077) and two with Desser Foster ("Tell It to the Judge Nos. 1 & 2", Melotone M12117).

The prison yard of the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville in the 1870s

Shortly after his last recordings in Chicago in 1931, Smith was caught in a gambling den in a brawl that killed a man. He was incarcerated in Huntsville State Prison, which ended his career. His last recordings were made in Fort Worth in April 1935 with Bernice Edwards (vocals, piano) and Black Boy Shine (piano), but remained unpublished during his lifetime. J. T. Smith is believed to have died around 1940.

Appreciation

According to blues researchers Alan B. Govenar and Jay F. Brakefield, Smith's life and career were typical of the blues guitarists of his day touring the Dallas area . "Although they were all more or less influenced by Blind Lemon Jefferson , they nonetheless developed their own idiosyncrasies ".

Smith's guitar playing was stylistically characterized by detailed melodic lines and repetitive bass riffs; for some critics, his game was more demanding than that of his contemporaries, mainly because of his alternating thumb-picking. However, other critics noted that Smith had a tendency to play on an out-of-tune instrument.

For Teddy Doering , JT Smith is especially significant because of his lyrics; In addition to "Seven Sisters Blues", in which he tells of a trip to New Orleans, the "Fool's Blues" (Vocalion 1674) recorded on July 10, 1931, is Smith's masterpiece, which illustrates "the disillusionment of the Afro-American population". The phrase "God takes care of old folks and fools" is quoted . At the beginning of the song he states in an apparently naive way:

You know, I'm a single-handed fool. An 'gettin' old, too.
Well, they say, God takes care of ol 'folks an' fools,
and I guess he will Here I am.

In another line he adds: And now let's see if this is true. In the following stanzas, when he tries to find out what his situation is like, he says: God, when I was born, wonder was there any mo 'mercy left. He later notices:

Look like I'm laid off and cryin 'both day an' night
Everybody talks about me an 'nobody don't treat me right.

Then he becomes bitter and comes to the conclusion that he sees “the work of the devil” in the lifestyle of a blues musician, which is characterized by “drunkenness, fornication, harmfulness”:. People, it don't seem like (ly) to me that God takes care of ol 'folks and fools.

But since I was born he must have changed the rules ..:
You know this must be the devil I'm serving, I know it can't be Jesus Christ
Because I'm asked him to save me and look like he's trying to take my life.

In the last stanza he describes his state of health:

I got TBs, ill teeth, I got third degrees and Boll's disease /
My health is gone now, left me with the sickness blues ,
People, it don't seem to me
That God takes care of old folks an fools.

Discographic notes

  • Funny Papa Smith: The Original Howling Wolf (1930-1931) (Yazoo)
  • JT "Funny Papa" Smith (The Howling Wolf): Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order (1930-1931) ( Document Records )

Lexical entry

  • Alan B. Govenar and Jay F. Brakefield, Deep Ellum and Central Track: Where the Black and White Worlds of Dallas Converged . Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1998
  • Sheldon Harris: Blues Who's Who: A Biographical Dictionary of Blues Singers . New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1979.
  • Rick Koster: Texas Music . New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.
  • Robert Santelli: Big Book of the Blues: A Biographical Encyclopedia . New York: Penguin Books, 1993.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Biographical information in Blues Trail
  2. ↑ a b c The Texas Handbook
  3. ^ Dean Tudor, Nancy Tudor: Black Music . 1979, page 78.
  4. ^ Alan Govenar: Lightnin 'Hopkins: His Life and Blues . 2010
  5. ↑ James R. Lewis: Satanism Today . 2001, page 134.
  6. ↑ In The Howling Wolf Blues No. 3 it says: I take time when I'm out prowling, and wipe out my track with my trail […] Get home and get blue and start howling, and the hellhound get on my trail. quoted from: Barry Lee Pearson, Bill McCulloch: Robert Johnson: Lost and Found . 2008, p. 83.
  7. ↑ a b http://weeniecampbell.com/yabbse/index.php?topic=2142.0
  8. ^ A b Alan B. Govenar, Jay F. Brakefield: Deep Ellum: The Other Side of Dallas . 2013, page 110.
  9. ^ Colin Larkin : The Encyclopedia of Popular Music . 2006, Volume 7, Page 553.
  10. ↑ http://www.rootsandrhythm.com/roots/BLUES%20&%20GOSPEL/blues_s3.htm
  11. ↑ a b Sw Anand Prahlad: African-American Proverbs in Context. 1996, p. 111
  12. ^ A b Hans A. Baer, ​​Merrill Singer: African American Religion: Varieties of Protest and Accommodation . 2002, p. 265.
  13. ↑ http://www.document-records.com/fulldetails.asp?ProdID=BDCD-6016
  14. ↑ http://www.document-records.com/fulldetails.asp?ProdID=BDCD-6016
personal data
SURNAME Smith, JT
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Smith, John T.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American blues musician
DATE OF BIRTH between 1880 and 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Texas
DATE OF DEATH around 1940