Mississippi Sheiks
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Mississippi Sheiks were a popular guitar and fiddle group of the 1930s. They were notable mostly for playing country blues but were adept at many styles of United States popular music of the time, and their records were bought by both black and white audiences. Country blues is often seen as being the domain of individual musicians, a stereotype propagated by the way such enigmatic delta blues performers as Robert Johnson and Charley Patton have entered the popular consciousness. Of the smaller number of groups playing at the time, the Mississippi Sheiks are among the better known and most influential.
Contents |
[edit] Formation
The Mississippi Sheiks consisted mainly of the Chatmon family, who came from Bolton, Mississippi and were well known throughout the Mississippi Delta; the father of the family had been a "musicianer" during times of black slavery, and his children carried on a keen musical spirit. Their most famous (although by no means permanent) member was Armenter Chatmon - better known as Bo Carter - who managed a successful solo career as well as playing with the Sheiks, which may have contributed to their success. The band named themselves after Rudolph Valentino's film The Sheik (1921).
When the band first recorded in 1930, the line-up consisted of Carter with Lonnie and Sam Chatmon, and Walter Vinson. Charlie McCoy (not to be confused with Charlie McCoy, a later American musician) played later, when Bo Carter and Sam Chatmon ceased playing full time. It was Lonnie Chatmon and Vinson who formed the real centre of the group.
[edit] Music
Bo Carter's solo work is notable for being extremely sexually suggestive in songs such as 'My Pencil Won't Write No More' and this is carried on to an extent with the group; however, like Carter himself the Mississippi Sheiks rarely used double entendres. They primarily earned their income by playing at dances; Paul Oliver described them as having "sweeter, lilting melodies" (71) in comparison to the furious intensity of individual blues players like Robert Johnson and Skip James. They toured throughout the South of the USA, but also reached as far north as Chicago and New York.
Their first and biggest success was 'Sitting On Top Of The World' (1930), later to be recorded by Howlin' Wolf and performers as diverse as Harry Belafonte, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead. Throughout their five active years, the Mississippi Sheiks recorded over seventy songs for the Okeh, Paramount and Bluebird labels.
When the band dissolved in 1935 the Chatmon brothers gave up music and returned to being farmers, the most common occupation of black people in rural Mississippi. Sam Chatmon made more recordings in the 1960s and Walter Vinson contributed three selections (using the Mississippi Sheiks band name) to Riverside's 1961 series, Chicago: The Living Legends. Bo Carter died in 1964, destitute.
In 1978 the influential Irish blues rock musician Rory Gallagher recorded a tribute song 'The Mississippi Sheiks' for his Photo Finish album. In the song, Gallagher sings about having "seen" the Mississippi Sheiks as if he had been "travelling in a time machine" and invites a girl to join him to see them again.
[edit] References
- Oliver, Paul. Blues Off The Record. Kent: The Baton Press 1984
- Wyman, Bill with Richard Havers. Bill Wyman's Blues Odyssey ed. Peter Doggett and Jake Woodward. London: Dorling Kindersley 2001. pp. 211-2 ISBN 0-7894-8046-8
