Skip James and a 1920s Stella Jumbo 12-string.
Photos by Vanguard (left) and Elderly Instruments (center/right).
Skip James is said to have played a Stella Jumbo 12-string guitar that was strung with six strings during his legendary 1931 recordings for Paramount. A guitar with "(...) a wall of sound that will knock the filling out of molars, the jumbo Stella 12-string is an iconic vintage guitar for a number of reasons: they were played by Leadbelly, Blind Willie McTell and other bluesmen; they produce a sound that is unparalleled; just holding and playing one produces major-mojo chills. Oscar Schmidt produced the jumbo 12's in a variety of combinations." (source: vintageguitars.com) Oscar Schmidt guitars are still in production today and the current website has a rundown of the company's history: "The Oscar Schmidt Company was founded in 1871 and incorporated in 1911. By the early 1900s, the company had five factories in Europe and a factory on Ferry Street in Jersey City. They made all kinds of stringed instruments, guitars, banjos, mandolins, ukuleles, zithers, and Autoharps®.
The company prospered through the early 1920s. Oscar Schmidt instruments were sold in many rural parts of the country where no music stores existed. Salesmen distributed the products far and wide, making them available in general, small town furniture and dry goods stores. Country guitar pickers and blues musicians living in areas of the South and in Appalachia, far from the city, frequently played Oscar Schmidt instruments because they were both inexpensive and available locally. But equally important, they were often chosen solely on merits of their superior tone and volume."
Son House with what appears to be a
National Duolian. Photo by Dick Waterman.
Over the years Paramount artist Son House used a variety of metal body National Reso-Phonic guitars, mainly the Duolian (first built in 1930) and the Style O (also first built in 1930). After his rediscovery in the 1960s Nationals were his main guitars. On his 1930s Paramount recordings he played a different type of guitar, a wooden body Stella, a brand of guitar that was favoured by many bluesmen of that era, because they were reliable, but also affordable guitars.
The National Duolian (under the brand name "Dueco") and the National Style O are still being produced by National Guitars. Faithful to the historic models, the Duolian has a frosted finish, while the Style O has a sandblasted Hawaiian scene on its body.
Here's what Wikipedia has to say about resophonic guitars:
"A resonator guitar or resophonic guitar is an acoustic guitar whose sound is produced by one or more spun metal cones (resonators) instead of the wooden sound board (guitar top/face). Resonator guitars were originally designed to be louder than conventional acoustic guitars which were overwhelmed by horns and percussion instruments in dance orchestras. They became prized for their distinctive sound, however, and found life with several musical styles (most notably bluegrass and also blues) well after electric amplification solved the issue of inadequate guitar sound levels.
Resonator guitars are of two styles:
Square necked guitars designed to be played in steel guitar style. Round necked guitars, which may be played in either the conventional classical guitar style or in the lap steel guitar style.
There are three main resonator designs:
The "tricone" ("tri" in reference to the three metal cones/resonators) design of the first National resonator guitars.
The single cone "biscuit" design of other National instruments.
The single inverted-cone design of the Dobro.
Many variations of all of these styles and designs have been produced under many brands. The body of a resonator guitar may be made of wood, metal, or occasionally other materials. Typically there are two main sound holes, positioned on either side of the fingerboard extension. In the case of single cone models, the sound holes are either both circular or both f-shaped, and symmetrical. The older "tricone" design has irregularly shaped sound holes. Cutaway body styles may truncate or omit the lower f-hole."
Son House's preferred models of Nationals were round necked, single cone guitars with bodies made of metal.
Singer and guitarist Geeshie (or Geechie) Wiley came from the south, probably Mississippi and with fellow musician Elvie Thomas recorded a total of six songs for Paramount. Every single one of them a masterpiece of the rural blues. She emerges out of the grooves of her Paramount discs as a very assured singer, guitarist and songwriter. Her arrangements and musicianship are unusual and highly original. Yet she never shows off her musical alibities but delivers her songs in a very controlled, almost laid-back style, projecting a tough personality full of hidden menace. A true master. Archaic, modern, timeles. If it had not been for the efforts of Paramount Records we may never have heard of her.
This is what Don Kent had to say about her and Elvie Thomas in the liner notes for "Mississippi Masters: Early American Blues Classics 1927-35" (CD released by Yazoo in 1994): "Although Geeshie Wiley may well have been the rural South's greatest female blues singer and musician, almost nothing is known of her.
Ishmon Bracey, who met her in Jackson in the late '20s, said she was from Natchez, Mississippi. She may have come to town with a medicine show, with which she played during her sojourn, and reportedly took up with Charlie McCoy. Other than a report of Robert Wilkins seeing her in eastern Mississippi around 1930, her name elicited no further response among her contemporaries.
If Geeshie Wiley did not exist, she could not be invented: her scope and creativity dwarfs most blues artists. She seems to represent the moment when black secular music was coalescing into blues. Her repertoire included early raggy songs like Pick Poor Robin Clean and Come On Over To My House, but delivered with more punch; songs such as Last Kind Words that probably predate World War I but handled as befitting a blues sensibility; and state of the art country blues with imaginative arrangements. Her guitar technique is unusual: her use of an A-minor chord in Last Kind Words is rare for a rural blues artist and her adoption of a riff in A normally associated with Texas artists shows a shrewd appreciation for exciting sounds.
Moreover, despite her sensual voice, the persona she presents is as tough as Charley Patton: money before romance and she sweetly says, while extolling her sexual charms, that she's calmy capable of killing you. Wiley apparently came up to record with Elvie Thomas, another guitarist said to be from Palmers Crossing, Mississippi, near Hattiesburg. Her guitar duet with Wiley on Pick Poor Robin Clean shows her to be a less forceful musician but her hauntingly beautiful vocal on Motherless Child Blues reveals a powerful poignancy among the most sublime in American music. Equalling the vocal with exquisite force and imagination is the guitar arrangement in the key of E, probably played by Geeshie Wiley. This shows traces of a northern Mississippi influence, but the B7th section is without parallel in rural blues. A very similar arrangement is used on Skinny Legs Blues. The lyrics are from Boar Hog Blues, but the melody used by Geeshie Wiley bears only a token resemblance to that song. Wiley's masterpiece, Last Kind Words, played in the key of E, is one of the most imaginatively constructed guitar arrangments of its era and possible one of the most archaic. Although the lyrics date it to the late World War I era, its eight-bar verse structure appears to be older. The opening A minor chord that leads directly into the same A riff employed by Texas artists is unique, and the thumb rolls in the B7th part echo Charley Patton's Green River Blues."
Geeshie Wiley/Elvie Thomas discography:
Paramount 12951 Geeshie Wiley
Last Kind Words / Skinny Leg Blues
Paramount 12977 Elvie Thomas (probably with Geeshie Wiley on guitar)
Motherless Child Blues / Over To My House
Paramount 13074 Geeshie Wiley & Elvie Thomas
Eagles On A Half / Pick Poor Robin Clean
All available on the rare Revenant release "American Primitive Vol. 2" (released in 2005).
We do not know anything about Homer Quincy Smith. All we have is his name and the music on the only 78 disc he recorded for Paramount. Catalogue No. 12432 – Go Down Moses / I Want Jesus To Talk With Me. Dean Blackwood of Revenant Records played this record at a music conference at Princeton University in November 2002. Greil Marcus was there and described the scene on salon.com: "Blackwood played a 1926 Paramount release by Homer Quincy Smith and mouths dropped open in shock. 'I want Jesus to walk with me' – a man sings in a slow, measured cadence, making it plain he understands how much he's asking for. The performance begins with the tinny sound of a calliope, which as Smith's voice goes down to the bottom of a mine turns into a huge pipe organ. At the end, Smith lets his voice rise, until it seems a thing in itself, on its way to Jesus, leaving the singer behind. Another participant had prepared a response to Blackwood's presentation, but as an instance of the great game of 'Follow that, motherfucker!' I never saw anything like it."
When Little Richard recorded "I Want Jesus To Walk With Me" for his first gospel albums in 1960 ("Pray Along With Little Richard Vol. 1 & 2") he used the arrangement from this rare Homer Quincy Smith Paramount disc, which he probably knew from his childhood in Macon, Georgia and his time spend worshipping at the New Hope Baptist Church.
Both of Smith's Paramount sides are available on the rare Revenant release "American Primitive Vol. 2" (released in 2005).
Includes all three of Blind Willie Davis' Paramount discs.
Nothing is known about the biography of Blind Willie Davis. He appeared from out of nowhere, recorded six songs for Paramount in 1928 and 1930 and disappeared again. Yet the gospel blues music that speaks to us from the grooves of his old Paramount discs still inspires wonder.
"Davis' bottleneck guitar arrangements are quite unique. His thumb picking style is considered extremely unorthodox, actually seeming to be something like a backward version of what other Mississippi Delta players do. Davis also seemed to think and move faster than some of his contemporaries, meaning his combination of strumming and picking patterns is dense and packed with detail." Eugene Chadbourne/Rovi
Blind Willie Davis discography:
Paramount 12658 – When The Saints Go Marching In / Rock Of Ages Paramount 12726 – Key To The Kingdom / Your Enemy Cannot Harm You Paramount 12979 – Trust In God And Do Right / I Believe I'll Go Back Home
(all released on "Gospel Classics 1927–1931" on Document)
The Mississippi Sheiks were an important country blues band who influenced many of their contemporaries like Charley Patton and Robert Johnson. Their songs were popular with black and white audiences and reached far beyond the blues field. They recorded extensively for several labels. Document Records released their "Complete Recorded Works" (including all of their Paramount sides) on 4 CDs. The core members of the group were Lonnie Chatmon and Walter Vinson. Over the years the line-up also included Bo Carter (real name Armenter Chatmon), Sam Chatmon and Charlie McCoy. All but Lonnie Chatmon also released recordings under their own names. The Mississippi Mud Steppers and the Mississippi Blacksnakes were offshoot projects. Walter Vinson and Sam Chatmon recorded and performed until the early 1970s and early 1980s respectively. In 1972 they even reunited as The New Mississippi Sheiks.
