In 1915, Estes' father, a sharecropper who also played some guitar, moved the family to Brownsville, Tennessee. Not long after, Estes lost the sight of his right eye when a friend threw a rock at him during a baseball game. At the age of 19, while working as a field hand, he began to perform professionally. The venues were mostly local parties and picnics, with the accompaniment of Hammie Nixon, a harmonica player, and James "Yank" Rachell, a guitarist and mandolin player. He would continue to work, on and off, with both musicians for more than fifty years. Estes made his debut as a recording artist in Memphis, Tennessee in 1929, at a session organized by Ralph Peer for Victor Records. His partnership with Nixon was first documented on songs such as "Drop Down Mama" and "Someday Baby Blues" in 1935; later sides replaced the harmonica player with the guitarists Son Bonds or Charlie Pickett. He later recorded for the Decca and Bluebird labels, with his last pre-war recording session taking place in 1941. He made a brief return to recording at Sun Studio in Memphis in 1952, recording "Runnin' Around" and "Rats in My Kitchen", but otherwise was largely out of the public eye for two decades.
Estes was a fine singer, with a distinctive "crying" vocal style. He frequently teamed with more capable musicians, like "Yank" Rachell, Hammie Nixon, and the piano player Jab Jones. Estes sounded so much like an old man, even on his early records, that blues revivalists reportedly delayed looking for him because they assumed he would have to be long dead, and because fellow musician Big Bill Broonzy had written that Estes had died. By the time he was tracked down, by Bob Koester and Samuel Charters in 1962, he had become completely blind and was living in poverty. He resumed touring and recording, reunited with Nixon and toured Europe several times and Japan, with a clutch of albums released on the Delmark Records label. Though his later records are generally considered less interesting than his pre-war output. Nevertheless, Estes, Nixon and Rachell also made a successful appearance at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival.
Bob Dylan mentions Estes in the sleevenotes to Bringing It All Back Home (1965).
Many of Estes' original songs were based on events in his own life or on people he knew from his home town of Brownsville, Tennessee, such as the local lawyer ("Lawyer Clark Blues"), local auto mechanic ("Vassie Williams' Blues"), or an amorously inclined teenage girl ("Little Laura Blues"). "Lawyer Clark Blues" referenced the lawyer, and later judge and senator, Hugh L. Clarke. Clarke and his family lived in Brownsville, and according to the song let Estes 'off the hook' for an offense.
He also dispensed advice on agricultural matters ("Working Man Blues") and chronicled his own attempt to reach a recording studio for a session by hopping a freight train ("Special Agent (Railroad Police Blues)"). His lyrics combined keen observation with an ability to turn an effective phrase.
Some accounts attribute his nickname "Sleepy" to a blood pressure disorder and/or narcolepsy. Others, such as blues historian Bob Koester, claim he simply had a "tendency to withdraw from his surroundings into drowsiness whenever life was too cruel or too boring to warrant full attention".
Death
Grave of Sleepy John Estes (2008)
Estes suffered a stroke while being in preparations for a European tour, he died on June 5, 1977, in his home of 17 years in Brownsville, Haywood County, Tennessee. Estes is buried at Elam Baptist Church Cemetery in Durhamville, Lauderdale County, Tennessee.
His gravemarker reads:
Sleepy John Estes
".. ain't goin' to worry Poor John's mind anymore"
In Memory
John Adam Estes
Jan. 25, 1899
June 5, 1977
Blues Pioneer
Guitarist - Songwriter - Poet
Sleepy John Estes' epitaph ".. ain't goin' to worry Poor John's mind anymore" was derived from his music. "I Ain't Gonna Be Worried No More" was recorded in 1935, and in his song "Drop Down Mama", also recorded in 1935, Sleepy John refers to himself as "Poor John". Estes' grave at Elam Baptist Church Cemetery in Durhamville is located off a country road and at the far end of the cemetery. His grave is adjacent to a small grove of trees, secluded but not hidden.
In 1991, Estes was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
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Bessie Smith
Born on April 15, 1894, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Bessie Smith was one of ten children. Both of her parents had died by her eighth birthday, and she was raised by her older sister Viola and encouraged to sing and dance by her oldest brother Clarence. He soon joined the Moses Stokes traveling show, leaving Smith and their brother Andrew to sing for pennies on Chattanooga street corners.
Clarence later arranged an audition for Smith with the Moses Stokes Company and she was hired as a dancer in 1912. She became friends with an older Moses Stokes veteran, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, who was called the Mother of the Blues and likely exercised some influence over the young singer. Smith had her own voice, however, and owed her success to no one. Her heavy, throaty vocals were balanced by a delightful sense of timing. Her live shows were a blend of comedy and drama in song. Smith was popular in Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore, but she was beloved in the South. In 1923, her vaudeville touring led her to Memphis, where she played packed houses at the Palace Theater on Beale Street.
On February 16, 1923, Smith recorded "Gulf Coast Blues" and "Down Hearted Blues," accompanied by Clarence Williams on piano. Although recorded by Memphis singer Alberta Hunter a year before, Smith's "Down Hearted Blues" sold more than 780,000 copies in six months. Her sales made her a blues star on par with Mamie Smith (no relation), a vaudeville singer who had ignited the race records market with her 1920 recording "Crazy Blues."
Although Smith recorded extensively for Columbia - nearly 160 songs between 1923 and her last session in 1933 - her live performances were equally successful. During the 1920s she commanded fees of $2,000 a week and played sold-out theaters across the South, North, and Midwest. Her stage success influenced women blues singers like Memphis Minnie, but male blues singers like Leadbelly, who only heard her on record, emulated her too. She recorded with the best jazz sidemen, including pianists Fletcher Henderson and James P. Johnson, clarinetists Benny Goodman and Buster Bailey, guitarist Eddie Lang, saxophonists Coleman Hawkins and Don Redman, and cornetist Louis Armstrong. In May 1925, she made the first electronically recorded record, "Cake Walking Babies," by singing into the newly invented microphone.
During the Depression of the 1930s, Smith's drawing power in the large cities of the North and Midwest began to wane, but she remained popular in small towns and throughout the South. Furry Lewis proudly recalled playing with Smith in Chicago during the 1930s. She even made an early movie when W.C. Handy asked her to play the lead in a short film called "St. Louis Blues" loosely based on his song. On Sept. 26, 1937, after finishing a performance in Memphis, Smith and her manager were driving south on Highway 61, north of the Crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi, when their car struck an oncoming truck. The crash nearly severed Smith's right arm. She was taken to G.T. Thomas Hospital (now the Riverside Hotel) in Clarksdale where she died the following morning.
Leadbelly
Born January 15, 1888, on the Jeter Plantation near Mooringsport, Louisiana, Ledbetter became interested in music when he was five years old. His uncle Terrell gave him his first instrument, an accordion. Young Ledbetter was a strong child, who could pick prodigious quantities of cotton, an ability that would assume legendary status while he was incarcerated as an adult. He took up the guitar in 1903, which together with his singing and dancing soon had him playing parties in Mooringsport. The next year Ledbetter, known as a "musicianer" for his instrumental prowess, began to prowl St. Paul's Bottom, a notorious red light district in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Ledbetter was exposed to a variety of music on Fannin Street, a row of saloons, brothels, and dance halls in the Bottoms. Between 1906 and 1908 he drifted through Louisiana, hearing Jelly Roll Morton at a Rampart Street dive in New Orleans, before arriving in Dallas, Texas. In 1908, Huddie suffered a serious illness and returned to his parents' home in Louisiana. Two years later he was back in Dallas and had acquired a twelve-string guitar. In 1912, Ledbetter adopted the working name Leadbelly and took up with Blind Lemon Jefferson, a blind singer/guitarist who would become the most commercially successful bluesman of his time. The partnership lasted perhaps five years, exposing Leadbelly to a variety of blues that he would incorporate into his work. His twelve-string cut through the crowd noise at dances and provided the perfect counterpart to his high, clear vocals.
Leadbelly began to have serious troubles with the law beginning in 1915, and by the following year he was an escaped criminal living under the alias of Walter Boyd. Leadbelly shot and killed Will Stafford in December 1917, while on the run from the law. He was quickly arrested, convicted, and sentenced to Shaw State Prison in Huntsville, Texas. Leadbelly spent the majority of the next seven years in the Texas penal system, becoming a legend for his labor ability and his singing. While in prison, he sang a ballad for Governor Pat Neff in January 1924, begging for a pardon that was granted a year later in one of Neff's last official acts. Soon after his release, Leadbelly first heard blues records by Bessie Smith, his friend Blind Lemon, and Big Bill Broonzy. He soon incorporated these songs into his repertoire, recasting them as his own. Leadbelly lived in Shreveport and Houston from 1925 to 1930 but, unlike Blind Lemon Jefferson, the Memphis Jug Band, and Jim Jackson, who all had hit records during this period, he did not make commercial recordings.
Leadbelly was arrested for attempted homicide in 1930 and was sent to the notorious Angola Prison, the state penitentiary of Louisiana. Huddie played his guitar on Sundays and in his spare time while imprisoned, gaining popularity with prisoners, guards, and Warden L. A. Jones. When folklorist John Lomax arrived at Angola with his son Alan in July 1933 to record "Negro work songs" for the Library of Congress, Warden Jones recommended Leadbelly. The Lomaxes were so impressed with Leadbelly's ability that they returned a year later to record him again, several months before his release for "good time." After his release, Leadbelly accompanied the Lomaxes to other prisons around the South, helping with the recording equipment and demonstrating to the prisoners with impromptu concerts the type of songs they were interested in recording. The prisons included state work farms in Pine Bluff, Tucker, and Gould, Arkansas, where Leadbelly first heard "Rock Island Line."
Leadbelly became a sensation singing for linguistic societies, clubs, and colleges. He made his first commercial recordings for the ARC label in January 1935 and recorded the majority of his work in New York City over the next fourteen years. Leadbelly became a symbol of the burgeoning "folk movement" during the late 1930s and 1940s, recording and entertaining until his death.
Leadbelly died on December 6, 1949, in New York City and is buried in the Shiloh Baptist Church graveyard near Mooringsport.
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Find more music like this on The Independent Artist Network It Is Better To Be Alone Than In The Wrong Company Tell me who your best friends are, and I will tell you who you are. If you run with wolves, you will learn how to howl. But, if you associate with eagles, you will learn how to soar to great heights. A mirror reflects a man's face, but what he is really like is shown by the kind of friends he chooses. The simple but true fact of life is that you become like those with whom you closely associate for the good and the bad. The less you associate with some people, the more your life will improve. Any time you tolerate mediocrity in others, it increases your mediocrity. An important attribute in successful people is their impatience with negative thinking and negative acting people. As you grow, your associates will change. Some of your friends will not want you to go on. They will want you to stay where they are. Friends that don't help you climb will want you to crawl. Your friends will stretch your vision or choke your dream. Those that don't increase you will eventually decrease you. Consider This: * Never receive counsel from unproductive people. * Never discuss your problems with someone incapable of contributing to the solution, because those who never succeed themselves are always first to tell you how. * Not everyone has a right to speak into your life. * You are certain to get the worst of the bargain when you exchange ideas with the wrong person. * Don't follow anyone who's not going anywhere. * With some people you spend an evening: with others you invest it. * Be careful where you stop to inquire for directions along the road of life. * Wise is the person who fortifies his life with the right friendships.
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