Biography
In December 1930 the Birmingham Jug Band committed eight sides to disc, accounting for the complete recorded legacy of one of the rawest, rowdiest, and least-known jug ensembles of the period.
Although the precise membership has never been confirmed, numerous blues researchers have placed the storied harmonica specialist Jaybird Coleman at the forefront, joined by medicine-show performer Ben Curry, who worked under the stage name “Bogus Blind” Ben Covington—an epithet reflecting the fact that his blindness was not genuine. Big Joe Williams stated that he once played with the unit and supplied the following roster: Coleman, Covington, “One-Armed Dave” (Dave Miles), “Dr. Scott,” jug blower “Honeycup,” and washboard player “New Orleans Slide.”
The musicians almost certainly worked the medicine-show circuit across the Deep South, and the pieces they recorded offer a window onto the musical idioms typical of those shows.
Of all the jug bands active in the 1920s and 1930s, the Birmingham group produced one of the most recognizable sounds on record, yet its repertoire displayed less variety than that of the Memphis Jug Band or Cannon’s Jug Stompers. Probably the only full jug band south of Memphis ever to record, it cultivated a distinctly rural texture that drew as much from country string-band aesthetics as from the popular jug-band idiom. The eight tracks are marked by a commanding lead mandolin, an equally prominent harmonica, coarse and forceful vocals, and a surging pulse supplied chiefly by the relentlessly emphatic jug.
Recording in the same Atlanta studio that day was another scantily documented outfit, King David’s Jug Band; together the two groups yielded some of the most vigorous and arresting discs from the height of the jug-band era.
Although the precise membership has never been confirmed, numerous blues researchers have placed the storied harmonica specialist Jaybird Coleman at the forefront, joined by medicine-show performer Ben Curry, who worked under the stage name “Bogus Blind” Ben Covington—an epithet reflecting the fact that his blindness was not genuine. Big Joe Williams stated that he once played with the unit and supplied the following roster: Coleman, Covington, “One-Armed Dave” (Dave Miles), “Dr. Scott,” jug blower “Honeycup,” and washboard player “New Orleans Slide.”
The musicians almost certainly worked the medicine-show circuit across the Deep South, and the pieces they recorded offer a window onto the musical idioms typical of those shows.
Of all the jug bands active in the 1920s and 1930s, the Birmingham group produced one of the most recognizable sounds on record, yet its repertoire displayed less variety than that of the Memphis Jug Band or Cannon’s Jug Stompers. Probably the only full jug band south of Memphis ever to record, it cultivated a distinctly rural texture that drew as much from country string-band aesthetics as from the popular jug-band idiom. The eight tracks are marked by a commanding lead mandolin, an equally prominent harmonica, coarse and forceful vocals, and a surging pulse supplied chiefly by the relentlessly emphatic jug.
Recording in the same Atlanta studio that day was another scantily documented outfit, King David’s Jug Band; together the two groups yielded some of the most vigorous and arresting discs from the height of the jug-band era.