Honey Babe Let the Deal Go Down

Mississippi Sheiks, The

album cover

String-Band Country Blues

If there were such a thing as a music dynasty in the deep South of the 1920s, the Chatmon (or, sometimes, Chatman) family from the hill country near Jackson, Mississippi, would be it. Patriarch Henderson Chatmon, a fiddle player, was responsible for an estimated two dozen children; his son Sam once told an interviewer that at times the family band included "about nine of us full brothers and seven half-brothers, from Charley Patton on back." (The early blues pioneer Patton's family history is the subject of much speculation.)

The Chatmons recorded in various combinations and under different names (the Mississippi Mud Steppers, the Mississippi Blacksnakes), and in some cases worked solo (brother Bo Carter was the most prolific, with over a hundred sides, many of them risqué, to his credit). The most famous of the groups was known as the Mississippi Sheiks. Their repertoire included square dances, folk songs, and country blues, usually played on guitar and fiddle, with vocals—the so-called "string band" configuration. The group was already established when it first recorded in February of 1930, for the race label Okeh Records. At that first session, captured by a mobile unit in Shreveport, Louisiana, the Sheiks recorded two tunes that would become famous, "Sitting on Top of the World" and "Stop and Listen Blues No. 2."

Over the next two years, the group—usually Carter and Lonnie Chatmon on violins, with Walter Vinson on guitar and vocals—created a series of sweetly played and sometimes hauntingly sung singles, many of them collected here. These are key documents of country blues, and arguably the most important string band records of all time. Though less intense than the work of solo guitarists like Patton, Robert Johnson, and Skip James, they're arrestingly passionate, full of spite, and wise about the world in a way that presages the guitar-based Delta blues that followed. This anthology captures most of the group's important work, and includes several sides the Sheiks cut with popular blues singer Texas Alexander (including the beautifully played "Seen Better Days"). A big bonus is this edition's careful audio restoration, which renders once blurry instrumental touches with startling clarity.

Genre: Blues
Released: 2004, Columbia/Legacy
Key Tracks: "Sitting on Top of the World," "Stop and Listen Blues No. 2," "Seen Better Days."
Catalog Choice: Stop and Listen
Next Stop: Charley Patton: Founder of the Delta Blues
After That: Skip James: The Complete Early Recordings
Book Pages: 506–507