william harris/ bullfrog blues

Little has been discovered about William Harris who cut fourteen issued sides at four sessions for Gannet in 1927 and 1928. Two sides were never issued, “No Black Woman Can Sleep In My Cowlot” and “T.B. Blues” while several have yet to be found: “Nothin’ Right Blues (Bearing In Mind)”, “Gonna Get Me A Woman That I Calls My Own”, “I’m A Roamin’ Gambler” and “I Was Born In The Country, Raised In Town.” Harris is thought to be from Glendora, Mississippi. He made his first recordings in Birmingham, Alabama, and may have worked around that city. Accounts suggest that Harris was a performer with F.S. Wolcott’s Rabbit Foot Minstrels and that he may have traveled the medicine show circuit.Theories that he traveled the medicine show circuit are lent further credence by his second recording date, which occured over a three-day period in October 1928 in Richmond, Indiana; among the tracks cut by Harris was "Kansas City Blues," previously recorded by Jim Jackson, another medicine show entertainer. Additionally, two other staples of the circuit, Frank Stokes and Papa Charlie Jackson, previously recorded "Take Me Back," updated by Harris as "Hot Time Blues." In all likelihood, these are mysteries which will never be solved -- his trail ends after this final session. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide When gayle Dean Wardlow played some of his records to some older Mississippi musicians they commented that he must have been from Mississippi. “That’s pure Delta blues there”, commented bluesman Booker Miller. Guitarist Hayes McMullen recalls witnessing him at a house party at the Wildwood Plantation in Mississippi in 1927.