Biography
Singing guitarist Kid Bailey earned his place in blues history through partnerships with Charley Patton and the loose network of Delta players who exchanged melodies, riffs, and lyrics across the late 1920s and early 1930s. That circle embraced Willie Brown, whose impact on Patton was considerable, along with Tommy Johnson, Ishman Bracey, and Son House. Bailey’s own style also echoed Furry Lewis, Ed Bell, Garfield Akers, and Bukka White. He shared Patton’s origins in Sunflower County in northwest Mississippi and is reported to have been born near Doddsville, which lies south of Drew and farther south of Clarksdale; his given name has never been established.
The scale of his contribution remains undiminished by the fact that he issued only a single 78 rpm disc, coupling “Rowdy Blues” with “Mississippi Bottom Blues.” The session occurred on 25 September 1929 at Memphis’s Peabody Hotel before an unidentified second guitarist, and the coupling appeared on Brunswick 7114. Despite its title, “Rowdy Blues” unfolds as a tender, reflective love song. Son House later insisted the performance belonged to Willie Brown and Charley Patton, most likely recalling Brown’s grittier “M & O Blues” and “Future Blues,” both of which parallel Bailey’s “Rowdy Blues,” as does Patton’s “Pony Blues.”
Bailey and Brown remained separate artists whose recordings continue to reveal distinct voices. “Mississippi Bottom Blues” draws directly from Freddie Spruell’s 1928 “Low Down Mississippi Bottom Man” while sharing traits with Tommy Johnson’s “Big Fat Mama” and Patton’s “Devil Sent the Rain.” Bailey kept performing across the Mississippi Delta into the 1950s yet never returned to the studio. In the estimation of blues historian Samuel Charters, he and many fellow Delta musicians created work that was “too intensely personal to appeal to any kind of large audience.”
The scale of his contribution remains undiminished by the fact that he issued only a single 78 rpm disc, coupling “Rowdy Blues” with “Mississippi Bottom Blues.” The session occurred on 25 September 1929 at Memphis’s Peabody Hotel before an unidentified second guitarist, and the coupling appeared on Brunswick 7114. Despite its title, “Rowdy Blues” unfolds as a tender, reflective love song. Son House later insisted the performance belonged to Willie Brown and Charley Patton, most likely recalling Brown’s grittier “M & O Blues” and “Future Blues,” both of which parallel Bailey’s “Rowdy Blues,” as does Patton’s “Pony Blues.”
Bailey and Brown remained separate artists whose recordings continue to reveal distinct voices. “Mississippi Bottom Blues” draws directly from Freddie Spruell’s 1928 “Low Down Mississippi Bottom Man” while sharing traits with Tommy Johnson’s “Big Fat Mama” and Patton’s “Devil Sent the Rain.” Bailey kept performing across the Mississippi Delta into the 1950s yet never returned to the studio. In the estimation of blues historian Samuel Charters, he and many fellow Delta musicians created work that was “too intensely personal to appeal to any kind of large audience.”