Fred Eaglesmith Band (Fred, Kori, Luke & Matty) joined by former members Dan Walsh, Washboard Hand & Willie P. Bennett at the WPB benefit in Peterborough on July 27, 2007. I shot this with my handheld digital camera so it's a little shaky...but historical footage.

Plantation owners jump-in some newcomers in this super-8 music video for the Mutilated Mannequins.

Comments With Dr. James Haney Presents*Legacy of the Sharecropping System, with LBerry, Part 3

A warning for you!

Comments With Dr. James Haney Presents*Legacy of the Sharecropping System, with LBerry, Part 1

Comments With Dr. James Haney Presents*Legacy of the Sharecropping System, with LBerry, Part 2

Sales and Sharecropping Hadiths

A film that me and my friends made for our history class about share cropping. I appologies if some of the talking is bad since we improvised the whole thing and I also appologies if at some parts its louder than other.

Harris, Smith and Workman. Rob Smith sings "Sharecropping", by Fred Eaglesmith, at Harry McLean's, more... Merrickville, Ontario. January 27, 2007 For more Harris, Smith and Workman videos: http://www.livevideo.com/sunbleachedskulls

I'm going to try to get a video a week up from pops. I'll have him reply to the comments from the last video in the next one. Here's Sharecropping on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharecropping

Actor/Storyteller Bruce C. Winters listens to voices within. The voices within tells the history of many African Americans who had to endure the suffering of sharecropping in the deep south.

Born near Clarksdale, Mississippi on August 22, 1917 to a sharecropping family, John Lee Hooker's earliest musical influence came from his stepfather, Will Moore. By the early 1940's Hooker had moved north to Detroit by way of Memphis and Cincinnati. Hooker found work as a janitor in the auto factories, and at night, like many other transplants from the rural Delta, he entertained friends and neighbors by playing at "house parties". He was "discovered" by record storeowner Elmer Barbee who took him to Bernard Besman, who was a producer, record distributor and owner of Sensation Records, Besman leased some of his early Hooker recordings to Modern Records. Among Hooker's first recordings in 1948, "Boogie Chillen" became a number one jukebox hit for Modern and his first million seller. This was soon followed by an even bigger hit with "I'm In The Mood" and other classic recordings including "Crawling Kingsnake" and "Hobo Blues." Another surge in his career took place with the release of more than 100 songs on Vee Jay Records during the 1950's and 1960's. When the young bohemian audiences of the 1960's "discovered" Hooker along with other blues originators, he and various he and others made a brief return to folk blues. Young British artist such as the Animals, John Mayall, and the Yardbirds introduced Hooker's sound to the new and eager audiences whose admiration and influence helped build Hooker to superstar status in the mid - 60's England. By 1970 he had moved to California and worked on several projects with rock musicians, notably Van Morrison and Canned Heat. Canned Heat modeled their sound after Hooker's boggie and collaborated with him on several albums and tours. During the late 1970's and much of the 1980's, Hooker toured the U.S. and Europe steadily but grew disenchanted with recording, through his appearance in the Blues Brothers movie resulted in a heightened profile. Then, in 1989, The Healer was released to critical acclaim and sales in excess of a million copies. Today the "The King Of The Boggie" is enjoying the most successful period of his extensive career. In the past ten years Hooker's influence has contributed to a booming interest in the blues and, notably, its acceptance by the music industry as a commercially viable entity. Hooker's career has been a series a highlights and special events since the release of The Healer. In addition to recording his on albums Mr. Lucky, Boom Boom, Chill Out, and Don't Look Back for Pointblank / Virgin, he contributed to recordings by B.B. King, Branford Marsalis, Van Morrison, and Big Head Todd and the Monsters and portrayed the title role in Pete Townshend's 1989 epic, The Iron Man. His influence on younger generations has been documented on television with features on Showtime and a special edition of the BBC's 'Late Show' as well as appearances on "The Tonight Show" and "Late Night With David Letterman" among many others. John Lee was invited to perform The Rolling Stones and guest Eric Clapton for their national television broadcast during The Stones' 1989 Steel Wheels tour. In 1990, many musical greats paid tribute to John Lee Hooker with a performance at Madison Square Garden. Joining him on some or all of these special occasions were artists such as Bonnie Raitt, Ry Cooder, Joe Cocker, Huey Newton, Carlos Santana, Robert Clay, Mick Fleetwood, Al Cooper, Johnny Winter, John Hammond, and the late Albert Collins and Willie Dixon. Hooker's 1991 induction into the Rock n' Roll Hall Of Fame was fitting for the man who has influenced countless fans and musicians who have in turn influenced many more. Honors continue, with recent inductions into Los Angeles' Rock Walk, The Bammies Walk Of Fame in San Francisco, and, in 1997, a star in the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. John Lee's style has always been unique, even among other performers of the real deep blues, few of whom remain with us today. While retaining that foundation he has simultaneously broken new ground musically and commercially. At the age of 80, John Lee Hooker received his third and fourth Grammy Awards, for Best Traditional Blues Recording (Don't Look Back) and for Best Pop Collaboration for the song "Don't Look Back" which Hooker recorded with his long time friend Van Morrison. This Friendship and others are celebrated on Hooker's newest Pointblank / Virgin album, The Best Of Friends. The album also celebrates a return, exactly 50 years later, to Hooker's first hit, Boogie Chillen and serves as a perfect bookend for Hooker's first fifty years in the business

Stereo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ecbW3IdgyM&fmt=18 BCB Band sings Battle Of New Orleans by Johnny Horton. Although he is better-remembered for his historical songs, Johnny Horton was one of the best and most popular honky tonk singers of the late '50s. Horton managed to infuse honky tonk with an urgent rockabilly underpinning. His career may have been cut short by a fatal car crash in 1960, but his music reverberated throughout the next three decades. Horton was born in Los Angeles in 1925, the son of sharecropping parents. During his childhood, his family continually moved between California and Texas, in an attempt to find work. His mother taught him how to play guitar at the age of 11. Horton graduated from high school in 1944 and attended a Methodist seminary with the intent of joining a ministry. After a short while, he left the seminary and began traveling across the country, eventually moving to Alaska in 1949 to become a fisherman. While he was in Alaska, he began writing songs in earnest. The following year, Horton moved back to east Texas, where he entered a talent contest hosted by Jim Reeves, who was then an unknown vocalist. He won the contest, which encouraged him to pursue a career as a performer. Horton started out by playing talent contests throughout Texas, which is where he gained the attention of Fabor Robison, a music manager that was notorious for his incompetence and his scams. In early 1951, Robison became Horton's manager and managed to secure him a recording contract with Corman Records. However, shortly after his signing, the label folded. Robison then founded his own label, Abbott Records, with the specific intent of recording Horton. None of these records had any chart success. During 1951, Horton began performing on various Los Angeles TV shows and hosted a radio show in Pasadena, where he performed under the name "the Singing Fisherman." By early 1952, Robison had moved Horton to Mercury Records. At the end of 1951, Horton relocated from California to Shreveport, LA, where he became a regular on the Louisiana Hayride. However, Lousiana was filled with pitfalls -- his first wife left him shortly after the move, and Robison severed all ties with Horton when he became Reeves' manager. During 1952, Hank Williams rejoined the cast of the Hayride and became a kind of mentor for Horton. After Williams died on New Year's Eve of 1952, Horton became close with his widow, Billie Jean; the couple married in September of 1953. Although he had a regular job on the Hayride, Horton's recording career was going nowhere -- none of his Mercury records were selling, and rock & roll was beginning to overtake country's share of the market place. Horton's fortunes changed in the latter half of 1955, when he hired Webb Pierce's manager Tillman Franks as his own manager and quit Mercury Records. Franks had Pierce help him secure a contract for Horton with Columbia Records by the end of 1955. The change in record labels breathed life into Horton's career. At his first Columbia session, he cut "Honky Tonk Man," his first single for the label and one that would eventually become a honky tonk classic. By the spring of 1956, the song had reached the country Top Ten and Horton was well on his way to becoming a star. "Honky Tonk Man" was edgy enough to have Horton grouped in on the more country-oriented side of rockabilly. Wearing a large cowboy hat to hide his receding hairline, he became a popular concert attraction and racked up three more hit singles -- "I'm a One-Woman Man" (number seven), "I'm Coming Home" (number 11), "The Woman I Need" (number nine) -- in the next year. However, the hits dried up just as quickly as they arrived; for the latter half of 1957 and 1958, he didn't hit the charts at all. Horton responded by cutting some rockabilly, which was beginning to fall out of favor by the time his singles were released.

Charlie Feathers was many things to many fans of rock and country music. To some, he was a superb country stylist who could take almost any piece of material and stamp it with the full force of his personality. To others, he was one of rockabilly's great pioneers, there at the dawn of Sun Records. And Feathers' stubborn insistence on combining elements of country, raw blues, and bluegrass to make his own version of the rockabilly experience showed him to be one of the genre's most original and enduring artists. Feathers was born near Slayden, MS, with music all around the sharecropping community he grew up in. After day jobs in Illinois and Texas, Feathers moved to Memphis in 1950, working for a box manufacturer until a bout with spinal meningitis left him hospitalized. Listening to the radio there on a daily basis, he emerged from his stay determined to become a professional singer. By 1954, Feathers was working his way into the confines of Sam Phillips' Memphis Recording Service, with an eye toward getting something released on Sun Records. He filled in whenever and wherever he could, helping with arrangement ideas, even playing spoons on a Miller Sisters session. Demoing songs for steel guitarist Stan Kesler found him getting half credit on the Elvis Sun side "I Forgot to Remember to Forget." Phillips decided to start a local non-union label called Flip to test out new artists, and after pairing Feathers with country session songwriter-musicians Bill Cantrell and Quinton Claunch, released Charlie's first single on that label, the classic "Peepin' Eyes" coupled with "I've Been Deceived." The record kicked enough noise locally to get Feathers transferred to Sun for a second single, but the artist had bigger visions. Although Phillips saw him as "a superb country stylist," Feathers wanted to rock and cut many Sun demo sessions in that style. When Phillips turned a deaf ear to it all, Feathers' impatience led him to Memphis rival Meteor Records, where he waxed the two-sided rockabilly classic "Tongue-Tied Jill" and "Get With It." This single garnered enough Memphis airplay to cement him a deal with King Records, and it is here that the Charlie Feathers as rockabilly legend story begins in earnest. The dozen or so sides he cut as singles for King are the greatest '50s rockabilly tracks to escape the hegemony of the Sun studios, with "One Hand Loose," "Bottle to the Baby," "Everybody's Lovin' My Baby," and "I Can't Hardly Stand It" all becoming classics of the genre. Their territorial success got Feathers on numerous package tours and multiple appearances on Dallas' Big D Jamboree. When the King contract ran out, Feathers continued to record one-off singles of very high musical quality, for a variety of Memphis labels, while stubbornly playing his music for whatever local audience cared to listen. When the rockabilly revival started up in Europe in the early '70s, Feathers became the first living artist up for deification by collectors. His old 45s suddenly became worth hundreds of dollars, and every interviewer wanted to know why he never really made it big and what his true involvement with Sun consisted of. Feathers embroidered the story with a skewed view of rock & roll history with each retelling, to be sure, but once he picked up his guitar and sang to reinforce his point, the truth came out in his music. Never mind why he didn't make it back in the '50s; he could still deliver the goods now. With health problems plaguing him from his diabetes and a surgically removed lung, Feathers continued on his own irascible course, recording his first album for a major label in 1991 (Elektra's American Masters series) and continuing to perform and record for his wide European fan base. Truly an American music original, Feathers died August 29, 1998, of complications following a stroke; he was 66. ~ Cub Koda, All Music Guide

http://www.sharkle.com/video/105067/ Strange how this video has been seen over 170,000 times at the site listed, but has barely made a dent at YouTube. Hiding In Plain Sight Stream 3 of 4 Although this is also a film all to itself, It is essentually part of a larger work. This slideshow style film shows how BIG BUSINESS has corrupted our lives and turned the United States worforce from a country of skill workers and into a country of wage-slaves. Points of interest: The 13th Ammendment, The Long Depression, Child Labor Laws, The Great Depression, Share Cropping, Unions, President Ronald Reagan's Work Reform Policies, The Illegal Immigration Protests, France's Labor Protests, Minimum Wage, Government & Corporate Corruption. UPDATE video now has been seen 40218 times at http://sharkle.com/video/105067 Finally Yes to all the A Stoner's Dream Fans. The music track is an instrumental demo of the track Damn All Who Enter.

Milestones in Tina Turner's ancestry: Between 1790 and 1860, 1 million slaves are forced to move from the upper South to the deep South to create the cotton kingdom. Among them is Lucy Kimbro, Tina Turner's great, great, great grandmother, who is born in North Carolina and forced to move to Tennessee. 1805 Tina Turner's great, great, great grandmother Lucy Kimbro is born into slavery in North Carolina. In the same year, the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison is born in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Garrison will advance abolition through publishing anti-slavery articles in his newspaper, "The Liberator," and forming the Anti-Slavery Society in 1832. Between 1870 and 1888, Logan Currie, Tina Turner's great, great grandfather, marries over 50 African American couples. 1866 Tina Turner's great, great grandfather Logan Currie signs a labor contract in Madison County, Tennessee, with Jesse Currie, the man that owned him during slavery. In exchange for land and the resources to cultivate it, Logan promises to grow grain and cotton. Such arrangements came to be known as sharecropping. 1889 Benjamin B. Flag, the older brother of Tina Turner's maternal great grandfather, George Flag, sells one acre of his land for a school, Flag Grove School House, in Haywood County, Tennessee. 1939 Tina Turner is born Anna Mae Bullock in Haywood, Tennessee.

New York City's Circus Amok looks at the history of American racist credit housing scandals. Circus Amok parodies the Wizard of Oz's Dorothy as she journeys thru the predatory lending crisis to try to save her home and start a revolution.

Just outside of downtown Clarksdale is the Commissary, situated on the old Hopson plantation. The Hopson plantation was established in 1852 and at its height was one of the largest farms in the delta region. With World War II in full swing the demand for labor in the northern factories stripped the south of its workforce. Luckily, the Hopson plantation had already been experimenting with alternative farming methods for the past decade. In 1944, International Harvester introduced the first cotton picker on the Hopson farm. This made Hopson the first farm in the world to grow and harvest cotton completely by mechanical methods. In the old days every plantation would have a commissary where share cropper families would purchase on credit everything they needed to live on the farm... Unfortunately, creative accounting practices on the part of the commissary plagued the share cropping system and at the end of every season the families tied to the plantation always seemed to be in the red. Today, the Hopson Commissary is one of the best places in the delta to see live music...They usually get some of the best acts that roll into town. Legendary blues pianist Pinetop Perkins, who use to live on the Hopson farm when he was a kid, still comes home every year to play at the Commissary. But for Floyd, Hopson was unfamiliar and considering he had not been back to Mississippi in 60 years there was some apprehension about playing on an old plantation. But in the end, Hopson was his favorite place to play...oh and make sure you sample the catfish they serve up.

Willie King DVD Documentary "Down in the Woods". Available at: www.visibleworldfilms.com www.willie-king.com    "Down in the Woods" is a DVD about the life and music of Alabama bluesman Willie King. The film takes viewers on a journey into the world of Willie King, a backwood, juke-joint musician who lives and breathes the blues every moment of his life. The DVD is a fascinating collage of Willie King's life and many activities, illuminated with searing live performances and encounters with his family, friends, fellow musicians like T-Model Ford and music experts such as Peter Guralnick. It enables the viewer to experience what it is like to be a bluesman living in the Alabama Black Belt, "down in the woods." Born on a cotton plantation in Prairie Point, Mississippi in 1943 the son of poor sharecroppers, Willie was drawn to the blues at an early age. He made his first guitar out of bailing wire when he was seven and has been playing ever since. Cotton picker, moon shiner, juke joint owner, civil rights activist and social worker, Willie has done them all and now is one of the most popular blues musicians around. He plays big stages and festivals but always returns to his beloved Old Memphis, a small and mostly African-American community in rural Alabama where he lives in an old trailer and preaches the blues at house parties and in ramshackle juke joints. Willie spends much of his time supporting his local community and teaching young people the traditional culture and survival skills passed on to him from his people's share cropping and slave ancestors. Willie King is one of the true innovators of the blues in the tradition of Howlin' Wolf and John Lee Hooker. His music is powerful, an exciting, danceable mix of rural blues, soul and boogie, all in his own distinctive style. King's lyrics are often political, fighting racism and a voice for poor blacks in the South. He preaches a message of peace, togetherness and social justice for all people around the world. The DVD contains a 64 minute documentary and 40 minutes of live music. Available at: www.visibleworldfilms.com www.willie-king.com

TWILA's A.J. Sabine takes you on an inside look at LSU's Rural Life Museum and provides interesting insight into the sharecropping movement.

Instructional Film: The Plantation System, from Slavery to Tenement Farming Sharecropping

Stereo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63WuRYmhA4U&fmt=18 BCB Band sings "Honky Tonk Man" by Johnny Horton. Although he is better-remembered for his historical songs, Johnny Horton was one of the best and most popular honky tonk singers of the late '50s. Horton managed to infuse honky tonk with an urgent rockabilly underpinning. His career may have been cut short by a fatal car crash in 1960, but his music reverberated throughout the next three decades. Horton was born in Los Angeles in 1925, the son of sharecropping parents. During his childhood, his family continually moved between California and Texas, in an attempt to find work. His mother taught him how to play guitar at the age of 11. Horton graduated from high school in 1944 and attended a Methodist seminary with the intent of joining a ministry. After a short while, he left the seminary and began traveling across the country, eventually moving to Alaska in 1949 to become a fisherman. While he was in Alaska, he began writing songs in earnest. The following year, Horton moved back to east Texas, where he entered a talent contest hosted by Jim Reeves, who was then an unknown vocalist. He won the contest, which encouraged him to pursue a career as a performer. Horton started out by playing talent contests throughout Texas, which is where he gained the attention of Fabor Robison, a music manager that was notorious for his incompetence and his scams. In early 1951, Robison became Horton's manager and managed to secure him a recording contract with Corman Records. However, shortly after his signing, the label folded. Robison then founded his own label, Abbott Records, with the specific intent of recording Horton. None of these records had any chart success. During 1951, Horton began performing on various Los Angeles TV shows and hosted a radio show in Pasadena, where he performed under the name "the Singing Fisherman." By early 1952, Robison had moved Horton to Mercury Records. At the end of 1951, Horton relocated from California to Shreveport, LA, where he became a regular on the Louisiana Hayride. However, Lousiana was filled with pitfalls -- his first wife left him shortly after the move, and Robison severed all ties with Horton when he became Reeves' manager. During 1952, Hank Williams rejoined the cast of the Hayride and became a kind of mentor for Horton. After Williams died on New Year's Eve of 1952, Horton became close with his widow, Billie Jean; the couple married in September of 1953. Although he had a regular job on the Hayride, Horton's recording career was going nowhere -- none of his Mercury records were selling, and rock & roll was beginning to overtake country's share of the market place. Horton's fortunes changed in the latter half of 1955, when he hired Webb Pierce's manager Tillman Franks as his own manager and quit Mercury Records. Franks had Pierce help him secure a contract for Horton with Columbia Records by the end of 1955. The change in record labels breathed life into Horton's career. At his first Columbia session, he cut "Honky Tonk Man," his first single for the label and one that would eventually become a honky tonk classic. By the spring of 1956, the song had reached the country Top Ten and Horton was well on his way to becoming a star. "Honky Tonk Man" was edgy enough to have Horton grouped in on the more country-oriented side of rockabilly. Wearing a large cowboy hat to hide his receding hairline, he became a popular concert attraction and racked up three more hit singles -- "I'm a One-Woman Man" (number seven), "I'm Coming Home" (number 11), "The Woman I Need" (number nine) -- in the next year. However, the hits dried up just as quickly as they arrived; for the latter half of 1957 and 1958, he didn't hit the charts at all. Horton responded by cutting some rockabilly, which was beginning to fall out of favor by the time his singles were released.

I searched high and low on Utube for this song and couldn't find it. So, I decided to put it on here myself....and for one reason. A song this good should be here. ======================== Charley Frank Pride was born in Sledge, Mississippi in 1938. He was one of eleven children born to his poor sharecropping parents. Charley had aspirations of becoming a major league baseball pro. But after a two year stint in the Army and an injury to his throwing arm, his career began to take a different course. His biggest hit 'Kiss An Angel Good Morning' was released in 1971 and won him the Country Music Associations 'Entertainer Of The Year Award' Charley has had a long and successful singing career. He has sold over 70 million records. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall Of Fame in October 2004. He has won countless awards and even has a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. "I don't have no skin hangups. I'm no color. I'm just Charley Pride"

Stereo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERW0gYsp-3I&fmt=18 BCB Band sings "One Woman Man by Johnny Horton. Although he is better-remembered for his historical songs, Johnny Horton was one of the best and most popular honky tonk singers of the late '50s. Horton managed to infuse honky tonk with an urgent rockabilly underpinning. His career may have been cut short by a fatal car crash in 1960, but his music reverberated throughout the next three decades. Horton was born in Los Angeles in 1925, the son of sharecropping parents. During his childhood, his family continually moved between California and Texas, in an attempt to find work. His mother taught him how to play guitar at the age of 11. Horton graduated from high school in 1944 and attended a Methodist seminary with the intent of joining a ministry. After a short while, he left the seminary and began traveling across the country, eventually moving to Alaska in 1949 to become a fisherman. While he was in Alaska, he began writing songs in earnest. The following year, Horton moved back to east Texas, where he entered a talent contest hosted by Jim Reeves, who was then an unknown vocalist. He won the contest, which encouraged him to pursue a career as a performer. Horton started out by playing talent contests throughout Texas, which is where he gained the attention of Fabor Robison, a music manager that was notorious for his incompetence and his scams. In early 1951, Robison became Horton's manager and managed to secure him a recording contract with Corman Records. However, shortly after his signing, the label folded. Robison then founded his own label, Abbott Records, with the specific intent of recording Horton. None of these records had any chart success. During 1951, Horton began performing on various Los Angeles TV shows and hosted a radio show in Pasadena, where he performed under the name "the Singing Fisherman." By early 1952, Robison had moved Horton to Mercury Records. At the end of 1951, Horton relocated from California to Shreveport, LA, where he became a regular on the Louisiana Hayride. However, Lousiana was filled with pitfalls -- his first wife left him shortly after the move, and Robison severed all ties with Horton when he became Reeves' manager. During 1952, Hank Williams rejoined the cast of the Hayride and became a kind of mentor for Horton. After Williams died on New Year's Eve of 1952, Horton became close with his widow, Billie Jean; the couple married in September of 1953. Although he had a regular job on the Hayride, Horton's recording career was going nowhere -- none of his Mercury records were selling, and rock & roll was beginning to overtake country's share of the market place. Horton's fortunes changed in the latter half of 1955, when he hired Webb Pierce's manager Tillman Franks as his own manager and quit Mercury Records. Franks had Pierce help him secure a contract for Horton with Columbia Records by the end of 1955. The change in record labels breathed life into Horton's career. At his first Columbia session, he cut "Honky Tonk Man," his first single for the label and one that would eventually become a honky tonk classic. By the spring of 1956, the song had reached the country Top Ten and Horton was well on his way to becoming a star. "Honky Tonk Man" was edgy enough to have Horton grouped in on the more country-oriented side of rockabilly. Wearing a large cowboy hat to hide his receding hairline, he became a popular concert attraction and racked up three more hit singles -- "I'm a One-Woman Man" (number seven), "I'm Coming Home" (number 11), "The Woman I Need" (number nine) -- in the next year. However, the hits dried up just as quickly as they arrived; for the latter half of 1957 and 1958, he didn't hit the charts at all. Horton responded by cutting some rockabilly, which was beginning to fall out of favor by the time his singles were released.

Born January 25, 1904, in Ripley, Tennessee, Sleepy John Estes was one of a sharecropping family of ten. His father Daniel was a guitarist, and this influenced his son to play. Young Estes was blinded in his right eye from a baseball accident at the age of six, limiting further athletic endeavors. His interest in music prompted him to build crude guitars from cigar boxes, which he played at local house parties as a child. His nickname "Sleepy" stemmed from a chronic blood pressure disorder that gave him fits of narcolepsy. In 1915, Estes moved with his family to Brownsville, Tennessee, where he met mandolinist James "Yank" Rachell. Estes teamed with Rachell to play house parties, picnics, and the streets in the Brownsville area from 1919 to 1927. He also partnered with local harmonica player Hammie Nixon, hoboing Arkansas and southern Missouri with him from 1924 to 1927. At this time jug band music was wildly popular, so Estes started the Three J's Jug Band with Rachell and jug player Jab Jones. The Three J's played Memphis, where they competed for exposure in a competitive scene dominated by the Memphis Jug Band. Other rivals included Jack Kelly's South Memphis Jug Band, which played the prestigious Peabody Hotel weekly, and Robert Wilkins's troupe. Estes's band worked Beale Street, vying with Memphis denizens Furry Lewis, Gus Cannon, and Delta bluesman Son House for tips and houseparty jobs. When Memphis jobs were scarce the Three J's traveled north, playing the streets and parties in Paducah, Kentucky. Sleepy John Estes and Hammie NixonWhen the Victor recording company sent a field recording unit to Memphis in September 1929, Estes recorded several sides backed by the Three J's, with Jones playing piano instead of the jug. Other acts to record for Victor on this trip included the Memphis Jug Band, Frank Stokes, and Cannon's Jug Stompers. Victor deemed the four songs Estes recorded during these sessions worthy of release. His stature as a Memphis bluesman was assured when he was invited to record again for Victor in May 1930. This session yielded the uptempo "Milk Cow Blues," a tune Robert Johnson would later record as "Milkcow Calf Blues." In "Milk Cow Blues," Estes's clear, warbling vocals are propelled by his insistent guitar strumming. Jones pounds his piano in double time while Rachell's mandolin trills echo the vocals. Record label for Sleepy John Estes' "Special Agent (Railroad Police Blues)Pursuing their musical careers, Estes and Nixon moved to Chicago in 1931 where they played parties and the streets. Arkansas bluesman Big Bill Broonzy recalled in his memoirs that in 1933, Estes judged a guitar contest that Broonzy lost to Memphis Minnie. The Depression had racked the recording industry, and the Estes/Nixon team did not record until a July 1935 date with the Champion label. Among the sides recorded were "Drop Down Mama" and "Some Day Baby Blues," tunes that became staples for a later generation of bluesmen. Estes's plaintive vocals were ably accompanied by Nixon's mournful harp, creating a subtle shade of blues. They left Chicago in the late 1930s to travel the country playing lumber camps, parties, and street corners for four years. Sleepy John EstesThe Decca label brought Estes to New York City to record in 1937 and again in 1938. Backed by his cousin Charlie Pickett on guitar and Nixon on harmonica, Estes again waxed fine blues but his sound remained rooted in an older Memphis style. He was paired with younger guitarist Robert Nighthawk, perhaps to modernize his sound, for his last Decca session in 1940. A year later he recorded for the Bluebird label backed by kazoos and a tub bass in a swinging session with the Delta Boys, who echoed Estes's jug band sensibilities. Estes returned to sharecropping in Brownsville in 1941.In 1948, he and Nixon recorded again for the Ora Nelle label but the work went unreleased. Estes went completely blind in 1950 and elected to try his hand at recording again. A 1952 session for Sam Phillips's Sun Records was held at 706 Union Avenue, but the result did not approach his earlier work. Estes was rediscovered in 1962 during the blues revival that revived the careers of Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, and Skip James. He cut several albums for Delmark and returned to touring with Hammie Nixon before health problems confined him to Brownsville. Sleepy John Estes died June 5, 1977, and is buried at Durhamville Baptist Church in Durhamville, Tennessee. LIKE WHAT U HEARD? SUBSCRIBE IF YOU WILL FOR MORE EXCELLENT MUSIC