Biography

radio contact: Kevin Johnson, promo@delmark.com

Click Here for more Delmark Releases!

Sleepy John Estes
Newport Blues
Delmark DE-639

Never before released July 28, 1964 session! Sleepy John Estes’ Newport Folk Festival appearance was so successful that it woke him up. A recording date was immediately set and you're invited to the party. The tapes are presented in the exact order they were recorded including talk between takes. This is the first new album issued on Delmark since 1969 by the Brownsville, Tennessee blues poet.

1. Intro (0:05)
2. Special Agent (3:53)
3. Wadie Green Blues(2:21)
4. Airplane Blues(2:58)
5. Up & Down (2:20)
6. Need More Blues (4:32)
7. Newport Blues (3:10)
8. BK Blues (4:36)
9. 80 Highway (4:20)
10. Mary Come On Home (3:10)
11. NYC Breakdown (4:59)
12. City Hall Blues (4:34)
13. Worried Mind Blues (4:31)
14. I Wanta Tear It All The Time (3:29)
15. Government Money (4:33)
16. Poor Mother’s Child (5:01)
17. New Doorbell Blues (3:56)

Sleepy John Estes, vocals, guitar
Yank Rachell, mandolin, guitar, piano and on 17 vocal
Hammie Nixon, harmonica, jug and on 11, 13 and 16 vocal

2, 4, 6, 10 & 15 by John Adam Estes, Songs of Universal Inc., BMI

Album Production & Supervision: Robert G. Koester
Recorded at Cue Recordings Inc., New York City
Cover photo: Steve Tomashefsky
Inside photo:
Design: Al Brandtner

Other Delmark Albums of Interest:
Sleepy John Estes, The Legend of...(603) with Nixon, Knocky Parker
Broke And Hungry (608) with Rachell, Nixon, Mike Bloomfield
In Europe (611) with Nixon
Brownsville Blues (613)
Electric Sleep (619) with Carey Bell, Jimmy Dawkins, Earl Hooker
Sunnyland Slim
This Is The Blues Harmonica (746), with Junior Wells, Little Walter,
Carey Bell, Hammie Nixon, Big Walter Horton...
Big Joe Williams, Piney Woods Blues (602) with J. D. Short
Blues On Highway 49 (604) with Ransom Knowling
Stavin’ Chain Blues (609) with J.D. Short
Nine String Guitar Blues (627) with Ransom Knowling
Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, Look On Yonder's Wall (614)
Meets The Master Blues Bassists (621) with Willie Dixon
Jesse Thomas, Blues Is A Feeling (749) with John Primer

4121 N. Rockwell
Chicago, IL 60618
C P 2002 Delmark Records
www.delmark.com

1964 was a very good year for Sleepy John Estes. Although, there were no American blues magazines when his first Delmark album had been released in 1962, The Legend of Sleepy John Estes (Delmark 603) had caused considerable stir in folk (Barry Hansen later aka Dr. Demento in Little Sandy Review), jazz (**** Down Beat, Nat Hentoff in The Reporter, best blues album of the year in Jazz magazine), and other circles such as John Litweiller's review in Kulchur*. It even got a Special Merit Pick in Billboard. A second album, Broke And Hungry (Delmark 608) added old sidekick Yank Rachell and young Mike Bloomfield to the duo of Estes and harmonicist Hammie Nixon. A booking to Europe with Horst Lippman and Fritz Rau's daring and pioneering American Folk Blues Festival month-long tour of Europe was set for October (where John would record a third album Sleepy John Estes In Europe (Delmark 611).
Also in 1964, the Newport Folk Festival decided to take advantage of the wealth of blues talent that had just been rediscovered by inviting most of the known folk bluesmen. The Alan Lomax troop, Elizabeth Cotton, and the Muddy Waters band stayed at a hotel and a house was rented with army cots set up for other artists. Fred and Annie MacDowell, Sleepy John, Hammie Nixon, Yank Rachell, Rev. Robert Wilkins, and others, including the recently discovered Skip James, filled out the house's bedrooms, dining room, and attic. It took John and the other Brownsvillians awhile to recognize Rev. Wilkins whom they knew as "Tee", his nickname from blues days in the 20's. Jesse Fuller slept in his car in the backyard with his shotgun on his shoulder. There were jams every night that really should have been recorded and a door charge was divided among the artists. Backstage and at the Blues House was the scene of an informal convention of bluesniks: writers, label owners, and a meeting to merge the Takoma and Piedmont labels. Saturday night the Estes trio worked a gig Hammie had promoted at a black sailor's waterfront bar. It was the first of several Newport Folk/Jazz Festival appearances by Sleepy John. Such successful appearances before large crowds woke up Sleepy John, so a recording date was booked at Cue Studios in New York on the way home. John's mood was so buoyant we were dealing with a different personality. His vocal power was comparable to the parties we attended at Peter Pete's place on the South Side whenever John was in Chicago.
You're invited to the party! The tapes are in exact recording order including talk between takes. Only one alternate take and one breakdown have been omitted. You'll hear an occasional wrong note, confusion as to who's solo it is, etc. You'll hear Hammie switch from harmonica to jug and also contribute a few vocals. Yank divides his time between mandolin and guitar until we eventually discovered he also played piano, taking a vocal on the last track. They're all at the top of their game! The waterfront and New York dates convinced us to let John do a modern-style album, Electric Sleep (Delmark 619) with Sunnyland Slim, Carey Bell, Earl Hooker, Odie Payne,Jr. and Jimmy Dawkins, (who had accompanied John wondrously at a gig with John at the Quiet Night).

JOHN ADAM ESTES was born January 25, 1899 in Brownsville, Tennessee, not far from Memphis where he made his first recordings for Victor in 1929 at the Peabody Hotel with Yank Rachell and pianist Jab Jones. As a boy John had lost the sight of one eye in a baseball game. He farmed when he wasn't hoboing and even toured with the famous Rabbit Foot Minstrels and other shows. His later records for Decca and Bluebird feature fellow Brownsvillian Hammie and other neighboring guitarists Son Bonds, Charlie Pickett, and Robert Lee McCoy (Robert Nighthawk) and Ripley pianist Lee Brown. Later recordings for Sun and Maxwell Street Radio didn't see the light of day until after he was rediscovered by doc filmmaker David Blumenthal (and Georgia blues specialist George Mitchell) in 1962 leading to his records for Delmark. (Big Joe Williams had told us John was still alive in Brownsville but we felt this to be impossible because of Big Bill Broonzy's statement that John was very old when Big Bill worked as a kid on a track-laying gang. (Maybe Bill did such work, but John never did.) In the '60s and '70s John toured extensively playing coffeehouses, folk bars, festivals, colleges and clubs. The Brownsville blues poet even had a hit record in Japan where he toured in '74 and '76 before his death on June 5, 1977. Around Brownsville, John was known as John Adam. John said that he "saw the world out of my left ear." He was a talented writer, often depicting people and places of his hometown, as in Brownsville Blues (Delmark 613).
HAMMIE NIXON (b. Nov. 17,'08) also lived in Brownsville most of his life. On a trip to Chicago J. Mayo Williams heard Hammie playing with Son Bonds in a front yard on the South Side, recorded the pair for Decca's Champion label. Mayo sent Hammie back to Brownsville to bring John to Chicago to record. They spent the travel money and John lost his other eye from dust in the gravel car on which they hobo'd to the record date. I'll never forget the night Hammie sat in with Muddy Waters' band at the old Club Alex, and kept missing cues from Otis Spann to conclude the tune. In '76 he did an album on the Albatross label. Hammie made the Japanese trips with Estes in '74 and '76. He died August 17, 1984 in Brownsville. *John Litweiller referred to Hammie as "the Sonny Rollins of the mouth-harp."
JAMES 'YANK' RACHELL (b. March 16,'10) was busking with Estes near Beale Street, then they were spotted by talent scout/publisher Ralph Peer who produced the Victor sessions. 1934 found him in New York recording for Vocallion and various dimestore labels. He moved to St. Louis in time to make several trips to Aurora and Chicago to record for Bluebird between '38 and '41. Yank worked at a munitions plant during the war before returning to Brownsville where he cooked at the Pig Pen Barbecue, finally moving to Indianapolis where he became a central figure in the blues scene. He did two albums for Delmark: Mandolin Blues (Delmark 606) with Sleepy John, Hammie, Big Joe Williams and Mike Bloomfield. I broke a vow not to do any recording for a year (so we could expand Jazz Record Mart, Delmark's rich sister) because Yank worked so well with Pete Crawford, Floyd Jones and Odie Payne,Jr. that we had to record Yank Rachell Chicago Style (Delmark 649). He also recorded for Yazoo's Blue Goose label and appeared in a doc film with his friends Martin, Bogan and Armstrong. His most recent records are on the Random Chance label and his biography, Blues Mandolin Man by Richard Congress was published by the University of Mississippi Press. I'll always remember Yank with that pipe in his mouth, always the solid guy of the group. Yank passed April 9, 1997.
--Bob Koester