Pete Welding
Pete Welding made major contributions to the documentation of the blues both as a writer and as a record producer. He informed countless readers and record buyers through his 1960s and ’70s articles and liner notes.
His Testament label in Chicago was responsible for many of important albums; among those he recorded were Otis Spann, Johnny Shines, J.B. Hutto, Eddie Taylor, Big Joe Williams, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Robert Nighthawk, and Johnny Young.
He moved to Chicago in 1962 to accept a position with Down Beat magazine he found the Windy City loaded with bluesmen. He chose to focus on the more traditional bluesmen, including many who were no longer working the clubs much, if at all.
His Down Beat interviews with Howlin’ Wolf and Son House remain crucial source material for blues historians. In the mid-1960s Welding moved to California and continued to operate Testament and worked for larger labels, including Epic, Playboy, ABC, and Capitol. During his last years Welding compiled a number of historic blues reissue packages and co-edited the 1991 book Bluesland: Portraits of Twelve Major American Blues Masters.
When Welding passed away, Jim O'Neal wrote this abbreviated obituary.
Glenn Hinson
Hinson is associate professor of folklore and anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has directed a variety of public folklore projects. He is author of Fire in My Bones: Transcendence and the Holy Spirit in African American Gospel.
He describes his research as follows.
My research field has long been African American expressive culture, with focused investigation of musical, poetic and belief systems in African American communities. Much of my public work has been conducted in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution and the Folk Arts Section of the North Carolina Arts Council.
Together with Dwight Rogers I set up a project to introduce fourth grade pupils to local, traditional music.
While working with African American gospel singers, I became intrigued with the performed links between public expression and private experience. Within the African American church, I am exploring the ways that this link has yielded a broad body of “dream songs” (or “gift songs”) that are said to come from the Holy Spirit.
Art Rosenbaum
Rosenbaum was married to Margo Newmark and had one son. With his wife, he traveled around the United States for over 50 years, recording blues music, fiddle tunes, and other forms of traditional music.
Selections of his recordings were published as The Art of Field Recording: 50 Years of Traditional American Music.
He also performed as a banjo player and was a painter of portrets of blues artists and political figures.
Timothy Duffy
Duffy has a career as documentarian, musician, producer, artist manager, philanthropist, fundraiser and blues crusader of sorts, preaching about the importance of blues music to the state, nation and world.
“Music is important to who we are as a country,” Duffy says. “The U.S. does not have a common religion or ethnicity, but we have this music. It’s our most powerful language and it was mostly created here in the South. North Carolina does not tell its music story enough.”
Duffy spreads the word through the nonprofit Music Maker Foundation. He and his wife, Denise Duffy, formed Music Maker in 1994 with the late Robert “Nyles” Jones, a medicine show blues-guitar legend who performed under the name Guitar Gabriel. Music Maker releases recordings and promotes shows and tours, and also finds other ways to support musicians financially.
Music Maker published books, including Song Keepers: A Music Maker Foundation Anthology, a lavishly illustrated package that comes with four compact discs. Bluesman Taj Mahal ranks Duffy alongside Alan Lomax, Harry Smith (“Anthology of American Music”), Sam Charters, John Work (composer/educator) and Zora Neale Hurston (filmmaker).
One of Music Maker’s projects was Hanging Tree Guitars, which began as a 2020 book depicting the work of Freeman Vines. A guitar-playing bluesman and luthier, Vines makes guitars with a decidedly outsider-art bent. With the wood of trees once used in lynchings, Vines has made more than 100 such instruments.
“He works differently from most people who make guitars,” Duffy says of Vines. “Most look for the straightest wood, but he’s looking for wood from trees with history. His guitars really catch people’s attention.
Christopher “Kip” Lornell
Lornell began blues research while still in high school; he interviewed and recorded local blues artists, resulting in articles in Living Blues and other periodicals and albums on the Flyright, Trix, and Rounder labels.
He served as a folklorist at Ferrum College’s Blue Ridge Institute documenting music from Virginia which resulted in albums.
Lornell received a Grammy for the boxed set The Anthology of American Folk Music for Smithsonian/Folkways. His books include: Melody Man, The Life and Legend of Leadbelly (with Charles Wolfe), Shreveport Sounds in Black and White (Editor), Happy In Service Of Lord: African-American Sacred Vocal Harmony, Exploring American Folk Music, Virginia’s Blues, Country, and Gospel Records, 1902-1943 among others.
Between 1969 and 1980 he amassed hundreds of photographs, thousands of selections of recordings, music and interviews in his travels through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. He formed the Trix label in 1972 as an outlet to release his recordings.
Lornell was also involved with Lowry in recording one of the last medicine shows. The show was presided over by Chief Thundercloud who was still hawking “Prairie King Liniment” from the tailgate of his station wagon at fairs and carnivals in the Southeast in the early 70’s. Learn more about Medicine Shows.
Video notes
James “Guitar Slim” Stephens was first recorded in the early 70’s by Lornell who recorded him on several occasions in 1974 and 1975. His first LP, Greensboro Rounder, was issued in 1979 by the British Flyright label and are comprised of these recordings.
Marvin Foddrell and Turner Foddrell were American Piedmont blues and folk acoustic guitarists, singer and songwriters.
Harry Smith
The Anthology of American Folk Music was issued in 1952, in three 2 LP volumes. The anthology included 84 tracks of Appalachian folk songs, fiddle music, gospel, hillbilly, blues and Cajun tunes. The collection consisted of recordings produced between 1927 and 1932, a period that Smith perceived as the final years of distinct regional musical traditions.
During the late 1920s professional musicians in rural America remained relatively insulated from the influence of the mass market and many were recorded performing vernacular music before they knew how they sounded on records.
Greil Marcus described the Anthology as the story of “the old, weird America.” It was an America of many voices, speaking of poverty, violence, oppression and unrequited love. Smith divided the collection into three volumes: Ballads, Social Music and Songs and deliberately arranged tracks to conjure a dialogue between performers.
Smith never revealed the race of the Anthology’s performers, preventing listeners from assessing the music in racial terms. The Anthology’s influence was tremendous, with Dave Van Ronk stating “It was the Bible for hundreds of us.”
He brought his record collection to Moe Asch, president of Folkways Records. Asch proposed that Smith use the material to edit a multi-volume anthology of American folk music in long playing format – then a newly developed medium. The recording engineer on the project was Péter Bartók, son of the renowned composer and folklorist.
The music on Smith's anthology, performed by such artists as Clarence Ashley, Dock Boggs, The Carter Family, Sleepy John Estes, Mississippi John Hurt, Dick Justice, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Buell Kazee, and Bascom Lamar Lunsford, greatly influenced the folk & blues revivals of the 1950s and 60s and were covered by The New Lost City Ramblers, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez, to name a few.
Chris Strachwitz
Chris is a sound and song catcher. He has devoted his life to collecting the ever changing sounds of regional or vernacular music, first on 78 rpm records and later on tape as played in homes, backyards, front porches, and beer joints. Since 1960 he has been seeking out and recording music played with joy, grit, and vigor—capturing the moments that captured his heart, regardless of language, region, or commercial trends.
By 1951 he was at Pomona College, east of Los Angeles, and heard Lightning Hopkins and other “down home” blues artists on Hunter Hancock’s “Harlem Matinee” over KFVD. After a stint in the US Army, Chris attended UC Berkeley where he fell in with the local crowd and met fellow student Sam Charters who was working on his book The Country Blues and persuaded him to really listen to his idol, Lightning.
In 1959 while teaching German at Los Gatos High School he received a postcard from Sam telling Chris that he had found Lightning Hopkins in Houston! That summer Chris went on a pilgrimage, hopped a Greyhound and with Mack McCormick caught him playing at a beer joint. Lightning was in his element, bantering with the crowd and even singing improvised lyrics about the man who “came all the way from California just to hear Po’ Lightnin’ sing.”
In 1960 Mack and Chris had originally intended to try and record Houston blues singer, Lightnin’ Hopkins, because Lightnin' moved to California, they had to look for others. People told them to look up Peg Leg, who would know where to find a good traditional blues singer. He singled out Mance Lipscomb in Navasota, East Texas as the best. They drove to Lipscomb’s house, introduced themselves, and pulled out a tape recorder. That night Lipscomb’s professional music career began.
That first recording of Mance became the first imprint on Arhoolie Records, Mance Lipscomb: Texas Sharecropper and Songster.
Since that very first record, Chris has gone on to record hundreds of albums and thousands of hours of home videos.
Jeff Harris (Big Road Blues on SundayBlues.org)
For the past years, starting in 2007, Jeff Harris has hosted Big Road Blues which airs on Jazz 90.1. The site is updated weekly with new shows and writing.
Big Road Blues airs on Sundays 5 to 7 PM (EST) on Jazz90.1 and streams live on the web. Click the Listen link at the top to find out the numerous ways to check us out.
Jeff Harris:
"Prior to Big Road Blues, I co-hosted Bad Dog Blues for roughly a decade at WITR 89.7. Over the years Bad Dog Blues became one of the most well known and respected blues shows in town. Starting July 2007 I launched Big Road Blues which airs on WGMC Jazz 90.1. The show gives me an opportunity to dig deeper into blues history, exploring topics at length and above all playing the vintage blues I’ve always loved. Big Road Blues is a weekly exploration of the forgotten history of the blues covering the first fifty years of recorded blues music. In addition to classic artists, the show shines the spotlight on those forgotten blues figures from the past; from the once popular artists who are now forgotten to those who may have only cut a handful of 78’s or 45’s before drifting off in obscurity. From week to week I tackle a specific theme such as a artist profiles, record labels, lyrical themes, blues styles, features on notable reissues and much more."