Little Brother Montgomery could sniff out a piano. Any place. Any time.
Any chance he had to lay skin on keys, the Louisiana-born rambler was there, rippling away on all 88 of them: juke joints, dancehalls, turpentine camps, concert auditoriums, nightclubs, logging camps, rent parties, festivals. Put into broad terms: Everything was fair game, from perilous barrelhouses—where the “bar” could be nothing more than a wooden plank supported across barrels—to the prestigious Carnegie Hall, when he was part of the famed Kid Ory Band, in 1948.
Fortunately, Montgomery’s sixth sense extended to picking up the scent of pianos tucked away inside recording studios. Many, many recording studios. As a result, a prolific trail of shellac and, later, vinyl was left behind.
So, release the bloodhounds! Because the hunt was on to track down a judicious sample of that creative arc. Enough, in fact, to bulk up Vicksburg Blues into a monumental triple-disc portrait that evolves from Montgomery’s durable debut in 1930 out to a special pair of LP treats that hit record shops in 1961. All told, 72 cuts bridge prewar with postwar. Unaccompanied moments meld with those in the company of a different vocalist or bands of assorted size and style. Instrumentals weave in and out of songs branded by a telltale vibrato pulsing so vigorously as to give listeners a massage. The roundup convenes just about every A-side and B-side that spun at 78 rpm beneath a Paramount, Melotone, Century, or Bluebird label as well as a small pile of full albums made years later, with Windin’ Ball Recordings (1954) and a subsequent Chicago Blues Session being among them.
The precocious, teenaged Eurreal Wilford Montgomery began his itinerant odyssey at the turn of the 1920s, scouring every corner of the Deep South for places to earn a little pay with his Jelly Roll Morton-inspired chops. Along the way, he gained a young fan in Vicksburg by the name of Willie Dixon, rubbed off on a greenhorn Otis Spann in Jackson, and also taught a thing or two to Skip James around those same parts of Mississippi. By 1941, he homed in on Chicago, settling there and becoming both a bandstand fixture and a session mercenary. Several of Otis Rush’s 1950s masterpieces on Cobra Records, for instance, benefited from his services; and that’s him chattering amidst Buddy Guy’s intensely agonizing “First Time I Met the Blues,” which turned out to be a souped-up version of Montgomery’s own “First Time I Met You” (included here) cut 20some years earlier. Indeed, he had clout, right up to his passing at age 79, in 1985.
Officially, though, it all starts in Grafton, Wisconsin. Because, on a September day in 1930, Montgomery had detected the presence of a particularly fateful piano housed at Paramount Records’ studio. As the 24-year-old busily put that keyboard through its paces, “Vicksburg Blues” and its zooming flipside, “No Special Rider Blues,” were getting etched into a revolving disc by a cutting stylus. Both would permanently remain his go-to signature pieces. Sure, the same identifying rhythmic stumble in “Vicksburg Blues” failed to gain the limelight as did its commercially luckier spinoff, “44 Blues,” which Howlin’ Wolf picked up from Roosevelt Sykes, who essentially picked up the design from Montgomery. Either way, Little Brother had his ticket to immortality.
That session also opened the spigot.
From there onward, recording dates began amassing. “Frisco Hi-Ball Blues” plows. “Mama, You Don’t Mean Me No Good” scampers. “Farish Street Jive” flies without wings. “Leaving Town Blues” contrastingly oozes. And while the striding left-hand bass cavorts with a galivanting right to infuse “Shreveport Farewell” with ragtime zing, gorgeous geysers of crisp, crystalized notes spring forth from “Something Keeps Worrying Me.” “Hot” jazz even blasts its way in, when “Swingin’ With Lee” and the still wilder “El Ritmo” uncork a party, sending the piano along with a roaring saxophone and trumpet into euphoric conniptions. When lyrics do crop up, life’s rottenest points always prevail. Such is blues. The notable exception is when Irene Scruggs and the equally frisky Annie Turner do the singing. Yet their respective blush-worthy exploits in “Good Grinding” and “Black Pony Blues” don’t faze Montgomery’s stately trot in the least.
1950 hadn’t yet arrived. Past that threshold is when the long-play era kicks in here. “Mule Face Blues” and “Cow Cow Blues” are solo fireballs shot out from Chicago around that time. Both will get air pianists happily huffing alongside. A couple of years later, the winds had shifted direction, blowing in deep-blue gut-punches like “That’s Why I Keep Drinking,” framed by acoustic bass and brushed drums, and “Trembling Blues” to slowly soak up all the heartache.
In the face of all the magnificence harvested up to this point, you could still easily justify this anthology simply for the welcomed chance to lay hands on Tasty Blues. Because Montgomery was in particularly fine form on that summer-of-1960 day in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. His touch could be as light as a feather to suspend portions of “How Long Brother?” in midair or robust enough to pump “Brother’s Boogie” with feisty Saturday-night sweat. Vocally, syllables shook ragged under that dense, tightly rolled vibrato of his. Plus, in addition to bassist Julian Euell, the session hid an ace up its sleeve: Lafayette Thomas, Jimmy McCracklin’s fretsman. The guitarist’s instincts with tasteful fills and solos fit perfectly. The resulting interplay makes for a session quite unlike any other Little Brother had. And Rudy Van Gelder’s microphones picked up everything, including the accompanying glow present in the room.
The setlist teems with blues. Blue blues. The kind where smiles, rainbows and ‘Have a Nice Day’ don’t stand a chance around the sung “Pleading Blues” and “Cry, Cry Baby” or the wordless “Deep Fried” and “Sneaky Pete Blues.” “Santa Fe,” swinging effortlessly, quickens the pulse. “No Special Rider” even rousingly returns to join “Vicksburg Blues” on their (near) 30th anniversary of marking Montgomery’s first historic milestone. However, the pinnacle has to be the title track. The conversation held between keys and strings makes for an exquisite mood piece, where each takes turns bellyaching, be that shedding trickles of ivory tears or groaning some of the supplest string-bends. Slow-motion lightning bolts, in a way. Because when it comes to blues, fast or loud do not necessarily substitute for rotgut feeling. Tasty Blues sounds like a million bucks, especially around about midnight.
For strict purists, Blues is the real heaven: nothing but piano. Yet despite being recorded within that same year as Tasty Blues, this one-on-one time with Montgomery shares hardly any overlap. “Early One Morning” is bound for the penitentiary, as is its cellmate, “Now About That Prisoner.” Albeit only imprisoned by its jilted heart, “Mean Old Mama” isn’t much luckier. “London Shout” arrives as one of the antidotes, elegantly kicking up dust along with its heels. Come on, how can you pass up a chance to ride “Crescent City Blues,” a vintage, double-fisted rollercoaster that was just as fun climbing up hills and then sliding back down as when the instrumental first premiered in 1936? And, yes, Vicksburg Blues shakes and rattles from both versions.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that, with Little Brother Montgomery contentedly plunked behind the business end of a piano, well over three hours of refined grief and playful energy await. A total delight.
Label: Acrobat
Release Date: 12/6/24
Label website: trapezemusic.com
Reviewed by Dennis Rozanski
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