Biography
Alabama bluesman Robert McCoy never achieved widespread recognition within the genre. The little-known singer and barrelhouse pianist made only occasional recordings, leaving many devotees unaware of his work entirely. Still, he stood out as a worthwhile and engaging performer in the vein of Leroy Carr. Born in Aliceville, Alabama, in 1910, McCoy relocated to Birmingham as an infant and remained there for the rest of his life. His parents had worked as tenant farmers, and his two older brothers, Johnny and Willie McCoy, both pursued barrelhouse piano, spurring his own interest in the style. During the 1920s he absorbed the approach of the prominent Leroy Carr. By the end of that decade he was performing regularly at dances and in African-American jook joints throughout the Birmingham area. His debut sessions as a leader took place in the 1930s, when he also collaborated with Jaybird Coleman, Guitar Slim, and James Sherell, better known as Peanut the Kidnapper. Steady income proved elusive, however, so McCoy supported his household through various non-musical jobs, among them construction labor, while continuing to sing and play piano privately during the 1940s and 1950s. Only in the early 1960s did the Birmingham resident resume professional recording.
In 1961 Patrick Cather, an aspiring young blues producer also based in Birmingham, discovered McCoy. Although Cather was still a teenager—forty years McCoy’s junior—he was determined to launch a label and produce blues material, and local saxophonist Frank Adams recommended McCoy as a suitable collaborator. Birmingham remained rigidly segregated at the time, with groups such as the Ku Klux Klan prepared to use violence against integration and the civil-rights movement. Cather, who is white and gay, rejected both racism and Jim Crow statutes—the South’s counterpart to South Africa’s former apartheid system—and soon formed a close friendship with McCoy, an African American. Cather produced McCoy’s debut long-player, Barrellhouse Blues, for his own Vulcan Records imprint in 1962; roughly four hundred copies were pressed. The next year he oversaw the follow-up, Blues and Boogie Classics, also on Vulcan; that scarce release sold only about one hundred copies. On both albums McCoy, who wrote several of his own songs, accompanied himself on acoustic piano. After Blues and Boogie Classics he issued no further LPs, though he did cut some informal duets with drummer Clarence Curry in the mid-1960s, none of which appeared commercially until 2002. McCoy hoped to record again with Cather, yet the producer struggled with personal difficulties throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Severe depression led Cather to drugs and alcohol; after a 1978 hospitalization for substance abuse and subsequent recovery, he learned that McCoy had died that February.
McCoy, who was in his late sixties at the time of his death, received a posthumous induction into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1983. Cather was inducted in 1991, partly in recognition of his efforts to document McCoy’s music. Although the singer-pianist was not primarily a jazz artist, his barrelhouse piano style incorporated jazz elements. In 2002 Chicago’s independent Delmark label reissued the 1962–1963 Vulcan sessions as the CD Bye Bye Baby. Delmark president Bob Koester commissioned Cather to write the liner notes and added seven bonus tracks, including rough 1958 recordings and the previously unreleased mid-1960s duets with Curry.
In 1961 Patrick Cather, an aspiring young blues producer also based in Birmingham, discovered McCoy. Although Cather was still a teenager—forty years McCoy’s junior—he was determined to launch a label and produce blues material, and local saxophonist Frank Adams recommended McCoy as a suitable collaborator. Birmingham remained rigidly segregated at the time, with groups such as the Ku Klux Klan prepared to use violence against integration and the civil-rights movement. Cather, who is white and gay, rejected both racism and Jim Crow statutes—the South’s counterpart to South Africa’s former apartheid system—and soon formed a close friendship with McCoy, an African American. Cather produced McCoy’s debut long-player, Barrellhouse Blues, for his own Vulcan Records imprint in 1962; roughly four hundred copies were pressed. The next year he oversaw the follow-up, Blues and Boogie Classics, also on Vulcan; that scarce release sold only about one hundred copies. On both albums McCoy, who wrote several of his own songs, accompanied himself on acoustic piano. After Blues and Boogie Classics he issued no further LPs, though he did cut some informal duets with drummer Clarence Curry in the mid-1960s, none of which appeared commercially until 2002. McCoy hoped to record again with Cather, yet the producer struggled with personal difficulties throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Severe depression led Cather to drugs and alcohol; after a 1978 hospitalization for substance abuse and subsequent recovery, he learned that McCoy had died that February.
McCoy, who was in his late sixties at the time of his death, received a posthumous induction into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1983. Cather was inducted in 1991, partly in recognition of his efforts to document McCoy’s music. Although the singer-pianist was not primarily a jazz artist, his barrelhouse piano style incorporated jazz elements. In 2002 Chicago’s independent Delmark label reissued the 1962–1963 Vulcan sessions as the CD Bye Bye Baby. Delmark president Bob Koester commissioned Cather to write the liner notes and added seven bonus tracks, including rough 1958 recordings and the previously unreleased mid-1960s duets with Curry.
Albums