Jug band music reached it's height in popularity in the 1920's and 1930's. The jug bands flourished in cities like Louisville and Memphis but some of the earliest bands played in traveling medicine shows.
The jug bands often played homemade instruments. The jugs were whiskey jugs that produced a sound similar to a tuba. Stovepipes were occasionally used instead of jugs.
Some of the string playing musicians had instruments made by luthiers but many took old guitar, mandolin and banjo necks and fastened them to bodies made from cigar boxes and dried gourds. Basses were made from broomsticks with an inverted washtub or garbage can for a resonator. Kazoos were sometimes combs and a piece of tissue paper. Percussion instruments were often household items like washboards and spoons. Other instruments that were used in jug bands were fiddles and harmonicas.
The Jug Bands in Louisville
Some of the earliest urban jug bands were formed shortly after the turn of the century in Louisville, Kentucky. Their style was a mixture of jazz, ragtime, blues and country music. Some of the Louisville bands later used horns along with the traditional jug band instruments.
In the mid-twenties some of the earliest jug band recordings were made by the Dixieland Jug Blowers. The band was led by jug blower Earl MacDonald and Clifton Hayes, a fiddle player. MacDonald and Hayes were involved with other jug bands in Louisville including Clifton Hayes' Louisville Stompers, Clifton Hayes' Old Southern Jug Band and Earl MacDonald's Original Louisville Jug Band.
Other Louisville based jug bands were the Kentucky Jug Band, Whistler and His Jug Band, the Cy Anderson Jug Band and the Phillips' Louisville Jug Band.
Beale Street in Memphis
Beale Street in Memphis was the African American cultural, music and entertainment center of the city. There were shops, taverns and clubs on Beale Street. Sometimes bands played indoors but there were also many performances on sidewalks and street corners.
There was also a dark side to Beale Street. The crime rate in Memphis was high and gamblers, prostitutes and drug dealers frequented this area of town.
Will Shade and The Memphis Jug Band
When a Memphis blues musician named Will Shade heard the Dixieland Jug Blowers' recordings it inspired him to form his Memphis Jug Band. Shade played guitar, washtub bass and harmonica. The original band also included Tee Wee Blackman on guitar, vocalist Ben Ramey and a jug blower known as Lionhouse.
Over the the next several years many of the faces changed in the band but Will Shade remained. Other notable blues musicians who played for the Memphis Jug Band were guitarists Charlie Burse, Casey Bill Weldon, Memphis Minnie and Furry Lewis. Big Walter Horton, the renowned blues harmonica player, also was a member of the band.
Shade's band was often booked to play in bars and at dances and private parties. At one point the band became large enough to split into two groups and play multiple gigs at the same time using the Memphis Jug Band name.
The band recorded dozens of songs from 1928 through 1935. Most of their original material was composed by Shade but many of their tracks were traditional blues and folk songs. Some of their better known recordings included "Kansas City Moan", "Kansas City Blues", "I'm Lookin' for the Bully of the Town" and "Stealin', Stealin' ".
Gus Cannon and Cannon's Jug Stompers
Gus Cannon played his homemade banjo at sawmills and railroad camps in Mississippi during his teenage years. He arrived in Memphis in 1907 and soon joined his first jug band. He also played with guitarist Jim Jackson, who later composed "Kansas City Blues", and later formed a band with harmonica player Noah Lewis and guitarist Ashley Thompson. For several years also he played in medicine shows, was a sharecropper and worked at several odd jobs.
In 1927 Gus recorded songs under the name "Banjo Joe" with Arthur "Blind" Blake on guitar. He formed his own band, Cannon's Jug Stompers, which included old friends Noah Lewis and Ashley Thompson. Thompson was soon replaced by Elijah Avery, who was later replace by Hosea Woods. Their music had more of a bluesy sound than that of the Memphis Jug Band, whose songs were more lively and uptempo.
Cannon's Jug Stompers recorded several songs from 1928 through 1930 including "Walk Right In", "Big Railroad Blues", "Minglewood Blues" and "Viola Lee Blues".
Noah Lewis later played with guitarist Sleepy John Estes and mandolin player Yank Rachell. Some of the songs they recorded were "Divin' Duck Blues" and "Milk Cow Blues", which were composed by Estes. They also recorded "New Minglewood Blues" which was a revised version of the Jug Stompers' "Minglewood Blues".
Other Jug Bands
Other jug bands in Memphis were Jack Kelly and His South Memphis Jug Band and Jed Davenport and His Beale Street Jug Band.
Cincinnati was the home of the the Cincinnati Jug Band and King David's Jug Band. The latter band featured guitarist David Crockett and stovepipe blower Samuel "Stovepipe Number 1" Jones. Both bands recorded several songs in the 1920's.
One of the most successful early jug bands was the Birmingham Jug Band. Big Joe Williams, who is better known as one of the premier Delta blues slide guitarists, was a member of the band in the early twenties.
Jug Band Legacy
The jug band popularity faded in the late 1930's until the folk music revival of the fifties and sixties. Skiffle bands, which used many of the same instruments used in jug bands, became popular in Ireland and Great Britain. Many future rock and pop stars played in skiffle bands including John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Roger Daltrey, Ron Wood, Van Morrison, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour and Ritchie Blackmore.
In the U.S. the rooftop singers recorded Gus Cannon's "Walk Right In" which became the number one song on the Billboard Charts for two weeks in 1963.
Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Ron "Pigpen" McKernon of the Grateful Dead were members of Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions and in 1964 they recorded Will Shade's "Overseas Stomp". They later recorded three of Cannon's Jug Stompers songs with the Grateful Dead - "Viola Lee Blues", "New Minglewood Blues" and "Big Railroad Blues".
Will Shade's "Stealin', Stealin'" was recorded by several artists including the Yardbirds and Janis Joplin.
Shade and Cannon made brief comebacks in the early sixties and recorded some songs together. Will Shade died in 1966 and Gus Cannon died in 1979 at the age of ninety six.
Sources
- Will Shade Biography by Eugene Chadbourne
- Gus Cannon Biography
- Barrelhouse Blues: Location Recording and the Early Traditions of the Blues by Paul Oliver
- Roots of the Grateful Dead - Cannon's Jug Stompers
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