Boat Curtain Styles

. . . have a hard time. .

.

“   Blind Willie Johnson, vocal and slide guitar. Recorded in Dallas, 1927. The complete title of this old hymn is “Dark Was the Night and Cold Was the Ground on Which Our Lord Was Laid.” As it was sung in this part of Texas, this was a slow, solemn, responsive psalm, in which the preacher intoned the first phrase, very slowly, and the congregation responded with the same measured solemnity. What Johnson did in the studio was to create this mood by playing the melody through the slide on the guitar strings, and following its phrases with a wordless, half-hummed meditation on the meaning of the song. On Saturday afternoons in Marlin with farm families in town to do some shopping, Blind Willie Johnson might be found singing his gospel songs on one street corner while Blind Lemon Jefferson sang the blues on another. Johnson’s recording career began in 1927 when he went into a studio for Columbia Records in Dallas. Columbia’s 140000 Race series was one of the best selling “race” labelswith such singers as Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Clara Smith, Lonnie Johnson, Barbecue Bob, and Peg Leg Howell.

  Blind Willie Johnson, vocal and guitar. Willie B. Harris, vocal. Recorded in Atlanta, 1930. .

Throughout the Depression and the 1940s, Johnson lived in Beaumont, Texas, a member of the Mt. Olive Baptist Church. He earned a meager living singing on the streets and performing for church benefits.

Source: The Complete Blind Willie Johnson (Columbia Legacy, 1993)

Texas Blues:

  Blind Lemon Jefferson, vocal and guitar. Recorded in Chicago, 1928. was born in Wortham, Texas, about sixty miles south of Dallas in 1893. Little is known of him until 1926 when “Got the Blues”/Long Lonesome Blues,” his second blues release was the first best-selling blues record by a black male singer. He became one of the stars of the Paramount label, the leading producer of “race” records. He died in 1929 in Chicago.

  Blind Lemon Jefferson, vocal and guitar. Recorded in Chicago, 1928. Jefferson impressed white musicians no less than black and was remembered with respect by in Kentucy and in Virginia. His “Match Box Blues” has been repeatedly recorded by white and black artists. Source: Anthology of American Folk Music (Smithsonian Folkways).

  Lightning Hopkins, vocal and guitar. . Recorded in Houston, 1967. was born in 1912 near Centerville, Texas, midway between Dallas and Houston. His older brothers and sister played guitar, and he also hung out with Blind Lemon Jefferson. As a young man he tried farmwork, but realizing what it was like, concentrated on music as his ticket out of wage-slavery. By 1946 he had enough of a reputation in the clubs along Houston’s Dowling Street to win an audition with Aladdin Records in Los Angeles. In the following years he recorded for many labels. When rock ‘n’ roll came in, Lightnin’ went out, until blues historian Sam Charters tracked him down in Houston in 1959 and recorded an acoustic set which became one of the key documents of the blues revival. By the end of the 1960s, he had thirty-five new albums to his name and had travelled widely in the US and Europe. He died inHouston, his home for most of his adult life, in 1982.

Lightning Hopkins, vocal and guitar. Recorded in Houston, 1967. Lightning Hopkins: Texas Blues (Arhoolie Records CD302, 1989).