Biography
Accounts of fabricated songwriting credits designed to let publishers siphon extra royalties appear frequently in discographies, yet Lane Hardin’s situation forms merely one thread in a far knottier tangle, comparable to discovering a forgotten hairbrush inside a shuttered lakeside cottage untouched for a quarter-century. Author Bruce Bastin’s detailed biography of Joe Davis notes that the scheming publisher and A&R executive indeed registered certain compositions under the alias L. Hardin. Although Davis’s catalog extended well beyond country blues, his documented activity in the field has fueled speculation that Lane Hardin and Joe Davis were the same person—an idea the record itself refutes.
Establishing Hardin’s non-identity has proven simpler than uncovering his actual biography. Devotees of country blues cherish the handful of Lane Hardin sides and continue to chase clues within a discography too brief to notice during a quick errand yet sufficiently unbound stylistically that some listeners have labeled it hillbilly music. A central enigma remains unsolved: no one can confirm the performer’s race, a particularly charged uncertainty inside the racially segregated worlds of blues and old-time music.
The artist who cut two sides for Bluebird in the mid-1930s may have chosen a pseudonym precisely to sidestep such genre disputes. Those recordings, the best-known being “California Blues,” constitute the entirety of the Lane Hardin legacy. Archival paperwork from Davis’s companies shows he acquired one additional Hardin master from Bluebird, yet the track has never surfaced; its title, fittingly, is “I Don’t Know.” One St. Louis contemporary, Henry Townsend, has suggested the Bluebird performances were actually the work of Hi Henry Brown, a musician who held steady employment at a steel mill and later appeared on record in the 1940s under the name Leroy Simpson.
Establishing Hardin’s non-identity has proven simpler than uncovering his actual biography. Devotees of country blues cherish the handful of Lane Hardin sides and continue to chase clues within a discography too brief to notice during a quick errand yet sufficiently unbound stylistically that some listeners have labeled it hillbilly music. A central enigma remains unsolved: no one can confirm the performer’s race, a particularly charged uncertainty inside the racially segregated worlds of blues and old-time music.
The artist who cut two sides for Bluebird in the mid-1930s may have chosen a pseudonym precisely to sidestep such genre disputes. Those recordings, the best-known being “California Blues,” constitute the entirety of the Lane Hardin legacy. Archival paperwork from Davis’s companies shows he acquired one additional Hardin master from Bluebird, yet the track has never surfaced; its title, fittingly, is “I Don’t Know.” One St. Louis contemporary, Henry Townsend, has suggested the Bluebird performances were actually the work of Hi Henry Brown, a musician who held steady employment at a steel mill and later appeared on record in the 1940s under the name Leroy Simpson.