Gus Cannon
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Gus Cannon (b. Red Banks, Mississippi, September 12, 1883 - d. Memphis, October 15, 1979) was an African American blues musician who helped to popularize jug bands (such as his own Cannon's Jug Stompers) in the 1920s and 1930s.
Born on a plantation, Cannon moved to Clarksdale, then the home of W.C. Handy, at the age of 12. Cannon's musical skills came without training; he taught himself to play using an improvised instrument made from a frying pan and raccoon skin. He ran away from home at the age of fifteen and began his career entertaining at sawmills and levee and railroad camps in the Mississippi Delta around the turn of the century. He began playing in Memphis around 1908 with Noah Lewis and Jim Jackson, then started working in medicine shows in 1914. He supported his family through a variety of jobs, including sharecropping, ditch digging, and yard work, but supplemented his income with music.
Cannon began recording, as "Banjo Joe", for Paramount Records in 1927. After the success of the Memphis Jug Band's first records, he quickly assembled a jug band also featuring Lewis and Ashley Thompson, who was soon replaced by Elijah Avery. Cannon's Jug Stompers first recorded at the Memphis Auditorium for the Victor label in January 1928. Cannon also recorded with Hosea Wood and Blind Blake.
Although their last recordings were made in 1930, Cannon's Jug Stompers were one of Beale Street's most popular jug bands through the 1930s. A few songs he recorded with the Cannon's Jug Stompers are Minglewood Blues, Pig Ankle Strut, Viola Lee Blues, White House Station, and Walk Right In, later made into a pop hit by the Rooftop Singers. By the end of the 1930s, Cannon had effectively retired, although he occasionally performed as a solo musician.
He returned in 1956 to make a few recordings for Folkways Records. In the "blues revival" of the 1960s, he made some college and coffeehouse appearances with Furry Lewis and Bukka White. He also recorded an album for Stax Records in 1963 - following the chart success of "Walk Right In" - with his fellow Memphis musician, Will Shade, the former leader of the Memphis Jug Band.
