The blues recording artist Blind Blake defies categorization. Although he is usually called a ragtime bluesman, that description does little to define the diversity of his music. The fact is, no other blues recording artist of his time sounded quite like him. His jazzy, highly syncopated guitar, his phrasing and speed on the fret board, the sly ironic songs he composed were not only a unique synthesis of styles, but technically beyond the reach of all his contemporaries, much as they remain to this day. Many have tried but few have succeeded in capturing Blake’s feel. He sets the bar for all finger pickers to aspire to.

Blake is also unique in that he is the most mysterious of all blues artists. Where he came from, where and when he died, almost all the facts of his life are largely unknown or a source of great speculation. It is as if he appeared one day in the Paramount recording studios, a mysterious master who produced one excellent recording after another for six years, 1926 – 32, and then disappeared back into the void from which he came, leaving behind a stack of superb records bearing his unique musical signature. Tunes such as Police Dog Blues, Diddy Wa Diddy, Southern Rag, That’ll Never Happen No More, Too Tight are all masterpieces of blues performance. If I could wave a magic wand and meet just one blues musician from the past, it would have to be Blake. I’d just empty my pockets for him and ask him to teach me everything he knows. Ry Cooder, one the very few guitarists working today who can confidently play Blake’s music has this to say about him:

“Blind Blake is a great player, a great musical figure. In the years where he was on top, he was fabulous. Blind Blake just had a good touch. He played quietly, and he didn’t hit the guitar too hard. He had a nice feeling for syncopation. He’s from down there in the Geechie country, and all those people have a real nice roll to what they do. He was a hell of a good player, and he had a lick that was great.”

Indeed, Blake had a bag of great licks and I have often wondered where they came from.

With most music innovators, we can easily recognize the genesis of their music, their influences. When we listen to Robert Johnson or B.B. King, for example we can hear those who came before them in their playing. But with Blake, there is no one we can point to and say he borrowed this or that technique, or musical ideas.

This question of where Blake comes from musically interests me far more than those concerning the basic facts of his life. We can only assume that he was either playing or greatly influenced by jazz, but when Blake made his first recordings, 1926 there were no jazz guitar soloists on record he might have listened to. The great Eddie Lang, progenitor of jazz guitar soloing, didn’t begin recording his seminal solo pieces until after Blake, himself, was already recording – and Lang’s avant garde single string type solos share little with Blake’s syncopated “two handed” playing, so there doesn’t seem to be a connection there. This would also be the case with the blues/jazz master Lonnie Johnson who didn’t record his famous guitar solos with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington until the late 1920s. If Blake was influenced by another guitarist, chances are this musician did not record commercially. Or, perhaps Blake also played piano? Paramount Records advertised his “piano sounding” guitar. But even that wouldn’t necessarily explain how he became himself, so to speak, and not a guitarist trying to imitate a piano. For although his fingerpicking style approximates the left hand of a ragtime or jazz pianist’s, Blake understands that the guitar is not a piano and doesn’t ask his instrument to be anything other than itself. Whatever the case, he created a sound all his own, a sound so advanced for his time no one else could emulate it.

We only have one photo of Blake, but it’s a good one. He is seated with his guitar, his legs crossed, and he is smiling. He looks exactly as we would imagine him: feeling good, looking sharp, relaxed, ready to party and dazzle us with his syncopated brilliance.

Blake’s world was a long way from the plantation, from the miserable post – slavery slavery of share cropping. Like his contemporary Blind Willie McTell, his blindness did not prevent him from traveling as far as New York, Detroit and Chicago. He kept his suits pressed, made a living and lived with personal dignity. And like McTell, his music encompassed all kinds of styles – everyone from Robert Johnson to Alberta Hunter survived by playing requests of all kinds of music from folk to pop to lowdown, gutter blues. Blues musicians listened to the radio like everyone else.

For a number of years Blake recorded for the Paramount label in Chicago and made that city his home. This we know for a fact. There he was part of an active blues scene that included many important artists. The great Chicago blues pianist Little Brother Montgomery in later years reminisced about these gatherings:

     “We called them rehearsals. Usually we had them on Mondays when everyone was free. We’d all get together over at Blake’s place. Be a few piano players there—me, Spand (Charlie Spand), sometimes, Roosevelt Sykes. Guitar players like Blake and maybe Tampa Red or Big Bill Broonzy. We’d drink moonshine and trade songs. Everyone was just like family. Blake kept good time and knew all the changes in all the popular songs back then. He would play it all and he was good in a band, too, but he mostly played blues and ragtime tunes. Blake loved the blues most. He always wanted us to play blues.”

What a fabulous scene that must have been!

Blake’s recordings sold well. He produced eighty sides, all but a few his own compositions, all distinctive and memorable. His instrumental numbers such as West Coast Blues and Southern Rag are high powered, supercharged experiences compared to all others. He leaves everyone else in the dust with a “see you cats later,” smile. But even his slower, lowdown numbers are marked with licks and phrases that suggest great finesse.

I can remember the very first time I heard Blake. Wow, I thought. That’s what I want to do. For many years it was not possible to find the recordings of most blues artists who recorded in the 1920’s and ‘30’s. Then in the 1960’s reissues of these early recordings began to appear. When Columbia released Robert Johnson King of the Delta Blues came out it was a mind blowing experience for blues fans. Blakes recordings shortly followed on the Biograph label. I still have mine. I wore out those records trying to figure out what he was doing. There was no internet back then, no videos, books, lessons or music teachers to learn from. You had to really want it badly to learn this music. Talk about ear training!

Also, when these reissues first appeared there was no information about Blake. No one knew anything about him. Now forty years later much research has been done, blues scholarship has come a long way. It is thought that he was born in Florida between 1890 and 1895 and died in Wisconsin in 1934 of pneumonia. The dates of his recordings can be found below with links to his music on the internet.

You might ask how Blake has influenced later blues artists. Learning from the music of the past is fun but only a step on the path to becoming yourself. If B.B. King had been successful copying the playing of his guitar hero Lonnie Johnson we would not have the artist he became. Blake left his mark on the “folk blues” players who were popular in the 1960’s and 70’s. Performers like Ry Cooder, Leon Redbone, John Hammond, Paul Geremia, Jorma Kaukonan and Taj Mahal all interpreted Blake. But it was in England, I imagine, with the Skiffle Music scene that Blake, Blind Boy Fuller, Bo Carter and others from the ragtime/jug band tradition had the largest influence upon that crop of hungry young players like Clapton, Lennon, Richards and Van Morrison. They all passed through Blake (and his peers) to get where they were going.

There are performers who “own” certain genres, whose music rarely sounds as good when performed by anyone else. Artists like Frank Sinatra, the Stones, Dylan, Robert Johnson, I’d say, are such artists. Blake is in that category too. His gift to us is joyful and accomplished, unique and enduring. Have a listen and see what you think.

Here are several selections of Blake’s music that illustrate his masterful playing in different styles from a slow blues to an up tempo instrumental. Of course, you can find all his recording on the Internet. The last song is a cover I did of his Bad Feeling Blues. I always try to do some Blake songs in performance to keep his memory alive. Enjoy!

Author: Jeff Shucard