Willie Trice - Blue & Rag'd flac mp3 download

Durham, North Carolina bluesman Willie Trice and his brother Richard recorded four sides--two of them unissued--for Decca in 1937. (On these titles, Willie was miscredited as 'Welly'.) Richard recorded again in the 1940s, but Willie dropped out of sight until 1970. By the time he was rediscovered he had lost both legs to adult-onset diabetes, but musically he was still a force to be reckoned with. On "Blue & Rag'd", Willie performed Piedmont standards like 'Diddey Wah Diddey' as well as original compositions like 'Trying to Find My Baby' and the utterly charming 'Good Time Boogie'. His vocals were eerily similar to those of his friend and contemporary Blind Boy Fuller, king of the North Carolina blues, but Willie's idiosyncratic guitar style was an entirely different matter: in contrast to Fuller's note-perfect playing and unerring sense of time, Willie Trice had a looser, more informal approach. He could pick a country rag quite proficiently, but in a rough-edged way that gave his music its warm, unpretentious flavor. If you're a fan of Piedmont blues, you can't go wrong with this album. (One especially interesting track is 'Shine On', which employs a chord progression that appeared in recordings by at least three other bluesmen: Willie's Trix labelmate and South Carolina native Henry Johnson, the enigmatic George Torey--who might or might not have been from Memphis--and Papa Charlie Jackson, who was born in New Orleans but performed in minstrel and medicine shows before settling in Chicago. Each of the four artists made use of this progression and sang almost identical vocal melodies over it, but in songs with completely different lyrics and titles: Johnson's version was called 'Crow Jane' or 'Blood Red River', Torey's 'Married Woman Blues' and Jackson's 'Coffee Pot Blues'. Of these, Jackson's version is of course the oldest, having been recorded in 1925. What was the origin of this chord progression and vocal melody which recurred from one end of the country blues landscape to the other?)