Page 42 - Blues Festival Guide Magazine 2022

Tampa Red album release including RCA Victor and Bluebird recordings from the
1940s and ‘50s.
Unattached from working alongside McCoy, she
experimented with different styles and sounds, recording back
and forth on Vocalion and Bluebird. By 1941, she began to
play electric guitar and recorded her biggest hit, “Me and
My Chauffeur Blues.” For the next decade, she recorded
and played around Chicago, especially at her “home club,” Sonny Boy Williamson I 3
Chicago’s popular 708 Club, often performing with Big Bill,
Snooky Pryor and Sunnyland Slim. On New Year’s Eve 1942 Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band. Tampa Red later teamed up
at 203 Club, poet Langston Hughes saw her perform and with Georgia Tom to play rent parties, halls, juke joints and
observed, “her voice – hard and strong anyhow for a little boats in Chicago. They toured the southern theater circuit,
woman’s – is made harder and stronger by scientific sound,” frequently hitting venues like The Palace Theater in Memphis,
and described the sound of her electric guitar as, “a musical TN. In the 1930s, he started Tampa Red and the Chicago
version of electric welders plus a rolling mill.” Five, performing with friends Big Bill Broonzy, Sunnyland
Again, Broonzy and Memphis Minnie had been among the Slim and Big Maceo. From the 1940s through the 1960s, he
first to include the electric guitar in their styles and recorded played around Chicagoland in clubs and lounges.
music. Memphis Minnie influenced Big Mama Thornton, Jo During the peak of his career, Tampa Red was dubbed
Ann Kelly and Bonnie Raitt, who paid for her headstone 23 “The Guitar Wizard.” He and Big Bill were really good
years after her death by stroke in 1973. friends, as well as label mates at certain points of their career,
Tampa Red got his name from Tampa, FL, where he lived including on Vocalion and Bluebird. His songs “Don’t you Lie
as a kid with his grandmother, as well as his light-skinned To Me,” “It Hurts Me Too” and “Let Me Play With Your Poodle”
color and red hair. He played guitar, slide guitar, kazoo and are widely recognizable and covered by many artists. He was
piano, and is best known for his one-string slide style playing also a go-between for Delta artists who wanted to move up
country blues, jazzy blues and jug band styles, often including North. He housed and booked shows and gigs for them. I love
kazoo solos. that about him!
As part of the Great Migration, he moved to Chicago in He influenced Duane Allman, Elmore James, George
1925, where he frequently worked the local clubs and streets, Harrison, Mose Allison, Muddy Waters and Robert Nighthawk.
and could have easily been one of the early performers on Sonny Boy Williamson I (a.ka. John Lee Curtis
Maxwell Street. By 1928, he signed to Paramount where he Williamson) was a singer, songwriter and harmonica player.
recorded as a solo artist, but also recorded with artists such He is best known for being credited as the pioneer of the
as “Georgia Tom” Dorsey and The Famous Hokum Boys, blues harp as a solo artist, earning the title “The Father of
Ma Rainey, Memphis Minnie, Madlyn Davis and with his Modern Blues Harp.” He is also known for being a mentor to

40 Blues Festival Guide 2022