Tommy McClennan

A gravel-voiced Delta bluesman steeped in rural Mississippi traditions, Tommy McClennan belonged to the final generation of raw country blues guitarists captured by Chicago’s major record companies. Between 1939 and 1942 he cut a series of unvarnished sides for Bluebird that plunged straight into the music’s elemental core. Among the enduring titles he bequeathed were “Bottle It Up and Go,” “Cross Cut Saw Blues,” and “Deep Blue Sea Blues” (aka “Catfish Blues”), works whose influence persists in the repertoires and later versions recorded by subsequent artists. Listeners drawn to McClennan’s style are encouraged to explore the 1941-1942 Bluebird sessions of Robert Petway, an associate whose approach was comparably rooted yet carried a somewhat more melodic inflection. After those dates McClennan never entered the studio again; accounts indicate he died penniless and dependent on alcohol in Chicago, although researchers have yet to establish the precise time or details surrounding his passing.