Mildred Bailey |
W C Handy |
Mississippi John Hurt |
Blue Lu Barker |
Sleepy John Estes |
Robert Nighthawk |
J. B. Hutto |
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Back to the Roots of the Blues ... Backtracking
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Latest release 4th July 2025 - Thank you for visiting with us, we cordially invite you to review and download the current production below. 'Backtracking' is a result of our research a journey of discovery that never ends, our love of the Blues and respect for the artists that left us this legacy of music.
All this simply because the music, the history and the culture of the blues never ends. We're honoured and privileged to share the music within the genre of the Blues back in time a hundred years and beyond, a genre so vast and so diverse.
Backtracking is streamed online and is broadcast worldwide. It's free to join the 'Backtracking' time machine - Get the authentic blues on your radio station ..... |
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Featured artist of the week ..... David Honeyboy Edwards
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David "Honeyboy" Edwards (June 28, 1915 – August 29, 2011) was a Delta blues guitarist and singer from Mississippi. David was born in Shaw, Mississippi. He learned to play music from his father, a guitarist and violinist. At the age of 14, he left home to travel with the bluesman Big Joe Williams, beginning life as an itinerant musician, which he maintained through the 1930s and 1940s. He performed with the famed blues musician Robert Johnson, with whom he developed a close friendship. David also knew and played with other leading bluesmen in the Mississippi Delta, including Charley Patton, Tommy Johnson, and Johnny Shines. He described the itinerant bluesman's life as:
 On Saturday, somebody like me or Robert Johnson would go into one of these little towns, play for nickels and dimes. And sometimes, you know, you could be playing and have such a big crowd that it would block the whole street. Then the police would come around, and then I'd go to another town. Most of the time, the police would let you play. Then sometimes the man who owned a country store would give us something like a couple of dollars to play on a Saturday afternoon. We could hitchhike, transfer from truck to truck, or if we couldn't catch one of them, we'd go to the train yard, 'cause the railroad was all through that part of the country then...we might hop a freight, go to St. Louis or Chicago. Or we might hear about where a job was paying off – a highway crew, a railroad job, a levee camp there along the river, or some place in the country where a lot of people were workin' on a farm. You could go there and play and everybody would hand you some money. I didn't have a special place then. Anywhere was home. Where I do good, I stay. When it gets bad and dull, I'm gone
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Thomas Andrew 'Georgia Tom' Dorsey first gained recognition as a blues pianist in the 1920s and later became known as The father of gospel blues music owing to his development, publishing, and promoting of gospel blues music. His 'Gospel' music was often literally that, but with a flavour of something a little more risqué mixed in. Bearing in mind that risqué then is considered now as anything but, simply 'tame'.
Thomas A. Dorsey was born in 1899 he learned religion from his itinerant black Baptist preacher father and piano from his organ music teacher mother. He came under the influence of local blues pianists when the family moved to Atlanta in 1910. He began his musical career known as Georgia Tom (initially 'Barrelhouse Tom'), playing barrelhouse piano in one of Al Capone’s Chicago speakeasies and leading Ma Rainey’s Jazz band.
Discouraged by his own efforts to publish and sell his songs through the old method of peddled song sheets and dissatisfied with the treatment given to composers of race music, Thomas became the first independent publisher of black Gospel music with the establishment of the Dorsey House of Music in Chicago in 1932. Although he published his own music and others, he included in his establishment, singer Sallie Martin. He wrote the songs and secured the rights to other songs. Sallie then travelled the US performing and selling music sheets to black churches. It is Dorsey’s distinctive style of writing that the majority of church choirs still use today. Indeed, Thomas was the Father of Gospel Blues. |
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Every day we have the blues ..... Review / Download page
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| Featured -
Bogan's Birmingham Busters |
| It always saddens me that I can't play most this lady's recordings on 'Backtracking', simply because most are obscene, however- Lucille Bogan’s recording career came to an end in 1935 and she eventually returned to Birmingham where she reverted to her real name and performed in and managed the group Bogan’s Birmingham Busters, sadly, she didn't appear on any of the group’s records.
Bogan's Birmingham Busters was a jazz / blues ensemble which was active in the late 1930s.They recorded a few singles in Birmingham for the Vocalion label in 1937 before relocating to Los Angeles in 1941.
The group was founded by Nazareth Bogan Jr, son of the blues pioneer Lucille Bogan. The original line up included Bob Jones Johnny Bell and Johnny Grimes on vocals, Lee Golden on alto sax, Martin Barnett on trumpet, Robert McCoy on piano and Clarence Curly on washboard. |
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Myths and Legends of the blues ..... Marion Harris.
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HOW TO GET THE BLUES TO A WIDER, WHITE AUDIENCE - As the’ Blues’ developed the problem was many white musicians and singers did not understand the blues. The minstrel shows of the time made fun of African Americans, presenting them as caricatures, which meant that singers who tried to sing as if they were Black were seen as offensive and unacceptable to African American composers, today we would call them offensively racist.
Sheet music had similar problems, as the minstrel show caricature. Sheet music by Black composers was unlikely to be marketed to or purchased by European Americans. So how was the African American songwriters music going to reach that wider, white audience?
There were a few ‘White’ singers who were sought out by African American songwriters because they were able to sing ‘their’ blues. Marion Harris, was on of the earliest pioneer singer. We know little about her, she was attractive, popular, and possibly because of her delta and later Chicago roots could sing the ‘Black’ blues and jazz convincingly. Consequently, she became the first ‘White artist to sing and record African American blues sometime around 1918. |
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