For no particular reason, I thought I'd write a few lines about one of my all-time favorite bluesmen -- Tampa Red. He was a brilliant, innovative slide guitarist who was doing things with the electric guitar almost before anybody realized you could electrify a guitar. His slide guitar work would influence many bluesmen who followed him.
He was Hudson Woodbridge but known from childhood as Hudson Whittaker, and took the name Tampa Red from Tampa., Fla., where he lived, and his red hair.
Red created a unique slide guitar sound on a gold-plated National steel-bodied resonator guitar, was a fine songwriter, and would later form the Chicago Five, a band that helped pave the way for jump blues bands and even rock groups. He played in a rhythmic, swinging style that hinted at jazz and pop. After he moved to Chicago, his home became a haven for blues musicians, and his willingness to help other musicians was legendary.
Red played blues, but he also played pop and some very early R&B, but he began his career with something called hokum music -- a old music style filled with sexy double-entendres and euphemisms that was very popular and fit well into the earthy world of the blues.
His first big hit (his second recording) -- it sold almost a million copies -- was the hokum-based "It's Tight Like That," written and performed with a blues piano player called Barrelhouse Tom, then Georgia Tom -- Tom Dorsey. Dorsey, an interesting sidelight to the Tampa Red story, was, an epiphany and a few years later, Thomas A. Dorsey, the father of gospel music.
Like many bluesmen of that era, Red sort of disappeared, was "rediscovered," and enjoyed limited success. He died in 1977, broke and pretty much forgotten. Every once in a while someone covers one of his songs (there were many; he released more 78s than any other blues artist), and they give him the proper credit. He deserves at least that. One of his songs that you'll hear a lot is one of my favorites, "It Hurts Me Too," a simple but elegant blues.
Red recorded much on the Bluebird label, and one of my favorite double LPs was a reissue of many of those sides, called "Tampa Red, Guitar Wizard." I doubt that it's available any more, except on eBay, where I found one for $49.95. My own copy has long since vanished (that's the album cover above). But you can still find much good Tampa Red material on CD.
Give him a try sometime, and listen to the roots of much of the music that came after. Here's a sample of one of his earlier hokum tunes, "Can't Get That Stuff No More."
Posted
Feb 03 2009, 01:00 AM
by
Jim White