This question has been floating around my mind for the past couple of weeks, and in an apparent moment of pure synchronicity, Matt Briggs left a comment on the “Tunes in the kitchen” post from a while back about jug bands. As a type of music, country blues has been largely defined by solo singer/guitarists. There are some compelling reasons for this - the early commercial successes for country blues and the musicians who defined the style and rightfully continue to do so today were almost all guitarists. This may, quite possibly, have been the result of a kind of myopia of the nascent recording industry - their assumption may very well have been that a solo singer/guitarist was more ‘old-time’ and probably tended to specifically target those musicians when looking for talent. Certainly, some of the early ad-copy accompanying Blind Lemon Jefferson’s records attest to his appeal as a “down home” artist.

Even more so, later fans cemented those definitions by zeroing in specifically on the largely fingerpicked guitar accompaniment of those musicians, to the exclusion of other textures.

What about country blues in the context of a band? You have The Baxter Bros., The Mississippi Sheiks, The Mississippi Mud Steppers, Mississippi Blacksnakes, The Blue Boys, The Down Home Boys, The Beale Street Sheiks, Sleepy John Estes and his groups… later on, you had the early Chicago ensembles (not so much a fan of those), piano/guitar duos and harmonica/guitar duos. Country blues played by groups seems to have been around… just maybe under the radar of the folks who controlled the recording industry, for the most part, and later fans who were deaf to them. We’re lucky to have what we have, but who knows how much else was out there, or how much more the Baxter Bros. or Prater & Hayes (The Blue Boys) might have recorded? Even so, it’s a shame that some of these names remain obscure to fans of country blues. Butch Cage and Willie Thomas, anyone?

There was also a craze for “Jug Bands” around the same time period. Many of these of the period were fantastic musicians and produced wonderful music: Cannon’s Jug Stompers, Jack Kelly’s South Memphis Jug Band, The Birmingham Jug Band, Whistler’s Jug Band, The Memphis Jug Band. Today, almost any country blues played by a groups gets described as “jug band music” - this is probably less of a representation of the early styles than a reflection of the tendencies of revivalists from the 60s. “Jug Band Music” has become a style of its own, complete with groups that seem to feature 18 guitarists with propeller beanies singing “Stealin’” - oh, and a jug. Maybe a slide guitar, too.

I dunno what to call what I play, but it sure ain’t “jug band music.”

I fully intended to make the next post to the blog something other than a YouTube post, but, well…. never mind. Life can take a pretty brutal toll, and music lightens the load.