Memphis Jug Band

Widely acknowledged as a cornerstone ensemble among jug bands active in the 1920s and the opening years of the 1930s, this influential collective included Will Shade, Will Weldon, Hattie Hart, Charlie Polk, Walter Horton, and additional players across shifting lineups. Guitarist and harpist Will Shade assembled the Memphis Jug Band in Memphis’s Beale Street district during the middle of the decade. Several years after the ensemble came together, Shade secured a recording agreement with Victor Records in 1927. Across the ensuing seven years, Shade and the Memphis Jug Band cut nearly sixty tracks for the company. In that period an array of musicians moved through the ranks, among them Big Walter Horton, Furry Lewis, and Casey Bill Weldon. Regardless of the frequent personnel changes, Shade maintained artistic leadership of the outfit. The Memphis Jug Band specialized in an unrestrained blend of blues, ragtime, vaudeville, folk, and jazz, all infused with buoyant humor. That buoyant approach sustained both the band’s live appeal and its record sales through the early 1930s. Although commercial interest waned markedly by the middle of the decade, Will Shade kept guiding reconstituted versions of the group until his passing in 1966.