Tampa Red

March 20, 2009 6:05 AM

Hey kids, let's go way back, and spend a little quality time with Tampa Red, shall we? Cause, you know, you can't get that stuff no more, and if you missed him, you missed a good man.
posted by flapjax at midnite (7 comments total)

Thanks for the links flapjax. When viewing the videos, I noticed another character of Americana, Robert Hicks aka Barbecue Bob, the most heavily recorded Atlanta bluesman of the late 1920s. Hicks was working at Tidwell's Barbecue Place in the affluent Atlanta suburb of Buckhead. Hicks would cook for, serve, and sing for the patrons. Robert Hicks proved a local sensation, and somehow attracted the notice of Columbia's Don Hornsby. Hornsby made publicity photographs of Hicks in chef's whites and devised the moniker Barbecue Bob to put on Hicks' first Columbia record, "Barbecue Blues," recorded in Atlanta in 1927.
posted by netbros at 7:03 AM on March 20, 2009

Dammit, netbros, now you've ruined the Barbecue Bob FPP I was gonna make! ;-)
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:24 AM on March 20, 2009

Oops, sorry flapjax. There's always "Chippie."
posted by netbros at 7:28 AM on March 20, 2009

Or a hokum post.
posted by pracowity at 8:16 AM on March 20, 2009

Good stuff, thanks flapjax.
posted by nola at 12:14 PM on March 20, 2009

Or a hokum post.

Hokum? I hardly know 'em!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:37 PM on March 20, 2009

Sadly, I've never heard of the fellow, so I had to read up on him a bit.

I know I'm just supposed to STFU and enjoy the tunes and I do love them, but I had to ask myself, "What the heck is up with his enunciation!?" Not only does he not sound like he's had a hard-scrabble life, as many blues folk do, he is really eloquent and and sings in a really great Standard American English!

In, It Hurts Me Too, it does sound like he's pronouncing "hurt" like "hoit". That's the only regional dialectal thing I found, and I think that's a Chicago thing where he first began his career (according to the wiki).

Please forgive my goofy observance and thanks for the great post, flapjax!
posted by snsranch at 5:16 PM on March 20, 2009