KM Williams Glory, Glory, Hallelujah (Lay My Burden Down) Cognac 2011

J. W. Warren

J. W. Warren Musicmake profile

J.W. Warren was born in 1921 in Enterprise, AL. In a family of eleven children, he was the only one to take up music, starting at the age of fifteen or sixteen. He entered the military as a young adult and served for 14 years. After serving in the military, he started farming and begain to play barbeques at house parties in southeast Alabama.
"I came up the hard way. I never had a break whatsoever. In other words, I never had a break in my life. I was born in the wrong part of the world and then again I didn't go any place else. My daddy gave me a good raising and I know how to treat people, how to be respectful to folks. I like that. But I had too much trouble in my life. I didn't do anything with the talent I had because I didn't have much education. When you got a back break like I had you doubt yourself, you know it's rough man!"
In his young days he dated Big Mamma Thornton when they were scuffling around together in Alabama juke joints. When Tim Duffy met him he told him that he had given up his music. Duffy convinced him to record and was amazed by his original story songs and his guitar style in which he employed his old jack-knife for a slide. J.W. Warren died of a heart attack at his home in Ariton, AL, on the afternoon of August 5, 2003. Posthumously recorded by Fat possum Records "Life Ain't Worth Living"

Garfield Akers

Garfield Akers (b. 1901 or 1902, Brights or Bates, Mississippi, d. between 1953 and 1959, probably in Memphis, Tennessee) was a blues singer and guitarist. He sometimes performed under the pseudonym "Garfield Partee."The throbbing guitar sound of Garfield Akers was a primary influence on subsequent generations of Mississippi bluesmen, with the likes of John Lee Hooker and Robert Wilkins citing him as an influence!
Born around 1902 in Bates, Mississippi, Akers remains a shadowy figure; after honing his skills at local dances and house parties, he relocated to the Hernando area, where he worked by day as a sharecropper. After moving on to Memphis, in 1929 he made his first Vocalion label recordings at the Peabody, accompanied by guitarist Joe Callicott; between this first date and a 1930 session for Brunswick, four Akers performances still exist - his two-part signature "Cottonfield Blues," "Jumpin' and Shoutin' Blues," and "Dough Roller Blues," one of the first variations on Hambone Willie Newbern's seminal "Roll and Tumble."
His most well-known song is his debut, the Cottonfield Blues, which Don Kent praised with the words "only a handful of guitar duets in all blues match the incredible drive, intricate rhythms and ferocious intensity" and called Akers "one of the greatest vocalists in blues history". Michael Gray appreciated it as "the birth of rock ’n’ roll … from 1929!"
Akers' extant recordings consist of four sides, which are nonetheless historically significant. His most well-known song was his debut, "Cottonfield Blues", a duet with friend and longtime collaborator Joe Callicott on second guitar, based on a song performed by Texas Bluesman Henry Thomas a few years prior.
Akers lived in Hernando, Mississippi most of his life, working as a sharecropper and performing during off-hours at local house parties and dances. He toured with Frank Stokes on the Doc Watts Medicine Show. Akers was reportedly active on the south Memphis circuit throughout the 1930s. Akers and Callicott played together for more than twenty years, parting in the mid-1940's. Akers briefly resurfaced in the early 1950s, shortly before his death at a historically undetermined date. No photographs of Akers are known to exist.Nothing is known about Akers after the pair split as a performing duo although it is believed that he died around the end of the 1950's or the beginning of the 1960's, possibly in Memphis.

Kenny Brown

Kenny Brown is a blues slide guitarist from Nesbit, Mississippi.Born in Selma, Alabama, in 1953, his family moved to Nesbit, Mississippi, when he was less than a year old. Kenny developed an interest in playing guitar at the age of ten and began teaching himself the basics. Two years later, the bluesman Joe Callicott moved in next door, and Kenny’s fate was sealed. This unlikely pair would spend hours together, whether in the morning before Kenny had to be at school or in the evening as soon as Kenny came home.
On some nights, Kenny would hear the music coming from Othar Turner's place down the way. Growing up in this part of Mississippi, Kenny was surrounded by musicians: Junior Kimbrough, Fred McDowell, and R. L. Burnside. Their influence wasn’t wasted on this young white boy, and Kenny made sure to prove himself to them all.
Kenny became skilled in the North Mississippi Hill Country blues style popularized by his mentor R. L. Burnside,he began his career by apprenticing with Mississippi Joe Callicott, Johnny Woods, and Mississippi Fred McDowell.He has also cited Muddy Waters,Jessie Mae Hemphill,Junior Kimbrough,Johnny Winter,and Johnny Shines as influences.In 1971 Brown began performing with R. L. Burnside.By the age of eighteen he was playing with Burnside’s band; over the next thirty or so years together, they would tour all over the world. Burnside often referred to Kenny as his “adopted son”and affectionately called him "white boy on guitar" and "my white son." Both Brown and Burnside have noted the singularity of Brown's being a white musician playing in the previously predominantly African American genre of North Mississippi Hill Country blues.Brown's guitar work was featured in the 2006 film Black Snake Moan, where he provided backing for star Samuel L. Jackson's vocals. He can also be seen in the film's climax as a guitarist in a blues band, playing alongside Burnside's grandson Cedric.
He has also performed with rock bands Widespread Panic and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. He has recorded one album for the Fat Possum Records label (Stingray), and his most recent double-album "Can't Stay Long" was released in June 2011 on Devil Down Records .

Rev Utah Smith The Two Wings Preacher

Rev. Utah Smith (1906 - 1965) first was a "traveling evangelist" out of the Churches Of God In Christ before he settled in New Orleans. There he founded the Two Wings Temple and the song "Two Wings" became his "theme song". Smith oftentimes used two wings while singing this song. Even before he came to New Orleans he played an electric guitar. He toured the South and was famous for this particular song. Smith recorded "Two Wings" first in 1944, but the 1953 recording is the more famous one. Sister Rosetta Tharpe stated Smith being one of the great "old" guitar players in gospel music. Smith's "Two Wings" might be a good example of simple southern community singing.Almost nothing else has been known about the life of sanctified electric guitar preacher Elder Utah Smith .“I vividly remember the first time I heard Reverend Utah Smith in 1965 on a 78 rpm record on the Two Wing Temple label. God, what a sound! Screaming vocals by Rev. Smith, heated responses by a chorus of young women, and manic, distorted electric guitar with the volume knob turned all the way up. Since that time I have longed to know more about this mysterious evangelist and pioneer of the electric guitar but have learned very little.It turns out that Smith was a major player in the growth of America's largest predominantly black Pentecostal denomination.”
– Dr. David Evans, The University of Memphis

Belton Sutherland

Belton Sutherland, an unknown Mississippi bluesman--a master musician who appeared duringan Alan Lomax's session with another singer and was asked to "try" an improvised blues on Clyde Maxwell's porch.Boy! Did he try it! Kind of a cross between Skip James and Robert Johnson!

Mississippi Joe Callicott

Joe Callicott, better known as Mississippi Joe Callicott (October 10, 1900 – 1969[latter date is unconfirmed]), was an American blues singer and guitarist.Although his early recording career resulted in only two songs issued in 1930, Nesbit native Joe Callicott (1899-1969) is often regarded as one of Mississippi’s finest early bluesmen. His guitar work was also featured with local bluesman Garfield Akers on Cottonfield Blues, a classic 1929 single that illustrated how blues developed from field hollers.
Callicott, whose music was notable for his delicate guitar style and rich vocals, spent most of his life here in Nesbit. He began playing blues as a young boy and performed for many years together with fellow guitarist Garfield Akers (c. 1900-1959). They played mostly around the area at informal gatherings and performed in a distinctive local style similar to that of Memphis blues pioneer Frank Stokes and Hernando’s Jim Jackson. In 1929 Jackson arranged for the pair to record for the Brunswick-Balke-Collender corporation of Chicago, which had set up a temporary recording unit at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis. Callicott’s recording of “Mississippi Boll Weevil Blues” from that session was unissued, but he played on Akers’ two-part single “Cottonfield Blues,” which was issued on the Vocalion label. The following year they again recorded in Memphis. Vocalion issued “Dough Roller Blues” and “Jumpin’ and Shoutin’ Blues” by Akers, while Brunswick released Callicott’s "Fare Thee Well Blues" and "Traveling Mama Blues" (using the spelling Calicott on the label and Callicutt in company files). Although Callicott gave up performing in the 1940s, Akers was active on the down-home Memphis blues scene of the early ‘50s. Akers, however, never recorded again.
Callicott was born in Nesbit, Mississippi. His "Love Me Baby Blues" has been covered by various artists, e.g. (under the title of "France Chance") by Ry Cooder. Arhoolie Records recorded Callicott commercially in the mid-1960's. Some of his 1967 recordings (recorded by the music historian, George Mitchell) were re-released in 2003, on the Fat Possum record label. His best known recordings are "Great Long Ways From Home" and "Hoist Your Window and Let Your Curtain Down.
He served as a mentor to the guitarist Kenny Brown when Brown was ten years old.
Joe Callicott is buried in the Mount Olive Baptist Church Cemetery in Nesbit, Mississippi. On 29 April 1995 a memorial headstone was placed on his grave arranged by the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund with the help of Kenny Brown and financed by Chris Strachwitz, Arhoolie Records and John Fogerty. Callicott's original marker was a simple paving stone which read simply "Joe". This was subsequently donated by his family to the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi. At the ceremony Arhoolie Records presented Callicott's wife Doll with a check for his past royalties.