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Sleepy John Estes – In Europe
Delmark DD 611


The legendary Tennessee blues poet Sleepy John Estes toured Europe in 1964. These are studio recordings in Copenhagen and London featuring Hammie Nixon on harmonica and jug. As Sleepy John bathed in curtain calls, signed autographs for the first time in his life, and began to feel at home in the immense auditoriums of major European cities, he realized that the audiences of thousands of European jazz and blues fans really knew what his blues were talking about and Sleepy John Estes woke up and performed at the height of his considerable powers. "In Europe" shows that by the end of the tour he was playing and singing better than at any time since his dramatic rediscovery in 1962. Contains an unissued “Blues For JFK”.


1. Needmore Blues
2. Who's Been Tellin’ You
3. Airplane Blues
4. Vernita
5. Denmark Blues
6. I’m A Tearing Little Daddy
7. I Stayed Away Too Long
8. Drop Down Mama
9. The Woman I Love
10. You Oughtn’t Do That
11. Easin’ Back To Tennessee
*12. I’m A Tearing Little Daddy (alternate)
*13. Blues For JFK

1966 LP, 1999 CD

*previously unissued

All songs by John Adam Estes

Sleepy John Estes, vocals and guitar
Hammie Nixon, harmonica and jug

1,3,5,11,13 recorded in Copenhagen on October 9, 1964
2,4,6,7,8,9,10,12 recorded in London on October 24, 1964


"I'm goin' back home, going home
I stayed away too long."
This was the coupling line of a blues in evolution during Sleepy John Estes' tour of Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival in 1964. It began as a blues of homesickness sung by a man new to the experience of air travel, strange languages, a new currency almost every day, and customs unfamiliar to a lifelong resident of Brownsville, Tennessee. By the end of the tour, the same blues was a tribute to the generous and sincere appreciation on the part of the European audiences, and John's desire to return soon.
John Adam Estes had been nicknamed Sleepy John because of a tendency to withdraw from his surroundings into drowsiness whenever life was too cruel or too boring to warrant full attention. (I have noticed other singers, most notably Speckled Red, with the same condition.) But as John bathed in curtain calls, as he signed autographs for the first time in his life, as he began to feel at home in the immense auditoriums of major European cities, he realized that the audiences of thousands of German, Swedish, Danish, Swiss, French and English jazz and blues fans really knew what his blues were talking about. Sleepy John Estes woke up and performed at the height of his considerable powers. By the end of the tour he was playing and singing better than at any time since his dramatic rediscovery in 1962.
Every year promoters Horst Lippman and Fritz Rau presented an exciting array of blues talent. In past years Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Big Joe Williams. Memphis Slim, Lonnie Johnson and Sonny Boy Williamson were among those featured. The 1964 program was one of the best. It included Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin' Wolf, John Henry Barbee, Sugarpie DeSanto, Sunnyland Slim, Willie Dixon and Lightnin' Hopkins. The four-week tour involved a lengthy videotaping session at the Hollywood-like studios of Sudwestfunk in Baden-Baden and broadcasting and TV coverage of concerts presented in famous halls such as the Berlin Sportspalast. Stockholm's Konserthuset (where the Nobel prizes are awarded), the Salle Pleyel in Paris, etc.
No one fortunate enough to go along on that tour will ever forget it. Sonny Boy was his usual irrepressible, dominating, effervescent, argumentative and thoroughly-wonderful self. He never seemed to sleep, never stopped drinking, yet was never really drunk, and played constantly. He played in the plane, at the hotels and thru the PA system on the buses. He joined the gypsy violinist-piano duo in a Yugoslavian restaurant in Baden-Baden. He dominated the dapper Mr. Sam Hopkins. Good natured grousing about language problems, the currencies and ribbing of the European way of life were part of the picture. They enjoyed being regarded as wealthy Americans -- an unfamiliar role back in the States.
After the tour Sonny Boy went back to Helena, Arkansas where nobody believed that he had twice toured the great cities of Europe. After further touring he died within a few months in obscurity, unrecognized even by the folk music power-structure. I am reminded of a verse Sonny Boy burned into our consciousness:
"I'm gonna settle down in London,
And try to make Europe my home.
Cause the people in the United States
They don't know what's going on."
John Henry Barbee also died on his return, never having appeared before more than a few dozen white Americans. Sunnyland Slim went back to scuffling on Chicago's South Side and Howlin' Wolf waited years before the folkies would pay his price to depart Sylvio's on Chicago's West Side.
So Sleepy John Estes of Brownsville, Tennessee returned to his home, from whence he was sent on several wild goose chases by an irresponsible New York booker until early 1966 when Dick Waterman took an interest in his professional life. John's inability to play flashy guitar or to sing with a smooth, easily-understood voice prevented him from getting as much work as some of his imitators. John returned to Europe for the 1966 Festival tour.
--Bob Koester (1964, amended 1999)

Album Production and Supervision/Robert G. Koester
In Co-operation with/Dansk Grammophonpladerforlag
Invaluable Assistance/Paul Oliver & Nat Joseph Recording/Metronome Records (Copenhagen) (1,3,5,11,13)
Olympic Sound Studios (London) (2,4,6,7,8,9,10,12)
Cover Photography/Greg Roberts
Design/Kate Hoddinott

ALL MUSIC REVIEW by Stephen Cook

Having only sporadically left his rural hamlet of Brownsville, TN, for recording trips in Chicago and Memphis, blues guitarist and singer Sleepy John Estes must have found it a bit of a shock to make the 1964 American Folk-Blues Festival tour of Europe. Like most contemporary country-blues musicians from the South, Estes did ramble, playing country suppers and plantation parties as a solo act or with a minstrel show, but his exposure to the urban and transatlantic world was still minimal to nonexistent. As evidenced by both reportage and this document of his 1964 trip to Denmark, France, Sweden, Germany, and England, though, Estes mostly enjoyed his first trip abroad, having fun with his international hosts while still living up to his nickname by mysteriously nodding off on several occasions. Traveling with other blues luminaries such as Howlin' Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson, Estes teamed up with longtime harmonica partner Hammie Nixon (who also plays the jug on a few tunes here) to cut a batch of numbers at studios in Copenhagen and London. The two cover classic Estes material like "Needmore Blues" and "Drop Down Mama" (most of the material here was originally recorded for Decca during the '30s), as well as newer cuts like "Denmark Blues." In fact, throughout the album, Estes updates many of the old songs with references to cities visited and friends made along the tour route. And while Estes' sinuously grainy voice and furtive guitar strumming perfectly reflect the kaleidoscopic nature of the trip, Hammie Nixon's high-lonesome harmonica makes light of the homesickness the two musicians reportedly felt. A great disc that's best heard after first checking out Estes' classic Decca sides.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/in-europe-mw0000252112

Other Delmark Albums of Interest:
Sleepy John Estes, The Legend of... (603) with Hammie Nixon, Knocky
Parker
Broke And Hungry (608) with Yank Rachell, Hammie Nixon and Mike Bloomfield
Brownsville Blues (613)
Electric Sleep (619) with Jimmy Dawkins, Carey Bell, Sunnyland
Slim
Yank Rachell, Mandolin Blues (606) with Sleepy John Estes, Hammie
Nixon, Big Joe Williams, Mike Bloomfield
Chicago Style (649) with Floyd Jones, Odie Payne
Big Joe Williams, Piney Woods Blues (602) with J. D Short
Blues On Highway 49 (604) with Ranson 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,
Ransom Knowling
Speckled Red, The Dirty Dozens (601)
Curtis Jones, Lonesome Bedroom Blues (605)

Call or write for a free catalog of jazz and blues:
Delmark Records 1-800-684-3480
4121 N. Rockwell
Chicago, IL 60618
C P 1999 Delmark Records


"Sleepy" John Estes
(c. 1900-1977)

Written by Brian Dempsey

John Adam “Sleepy John” Estes, was born in Ripley, Tennessee, around 1900. A highly skilled blues musician, Estes played a pivotal role in reestablishing rural blues within the American music canon during the folk blues revival of the 1960s. His well-crafted songs, bolstered by a personalized lyricism that combined local flavor with individual feeling, left an indelible mark on fans and musicians. Prominent scholars in the 1960s referred to Estes as a true original and a primary influence on subsequent blues musicians throughout the South.

Estes first learned to play guitar from his sharecropper father at age twelve. Soon thereafter, while working in the cotton fields with his family, he crafted his own cigar-box guitar and began to hone his skills at local house parties and fish fries. Around 1915, the Estes family moved to Brownsville, Tennessee, which served as Sleepy John’s base residence periodically for the rest of his life. Brownsville was also home to “Hambone” Willie Newbern, an important early influence, as well as Yank Rachell and Hammie Nixon–musicians with whom Estes partnered at local venues and on professional recordings. In the late 1920s, Estes and Nixon moved to Memphis and played in a jug band called the Three J’s with Rachell on mandolin and Jab Jones on the jug. The group competed well with the popular Memphis jug bands of the day and worked the dynamic Beale Street scene, adding significantly to a distinctive Memphis blues cultural style. They also frequently traveled to Kentucky to play house parties and street corners when opportunities ebbed in the Memphis area.

In response to increased sales featuring rural southern acoustic blues musicians, record companies sent scouts to the South to find local and regional talent during the 1920s. In 1929, Victor Records sent talent scout Ralph Peer to Memphis, resulting in the first professional recording session of Sleepy John Estes. These and subsequent sessions produced songs such as “Diving Duck Blues” and the influential “Milkcow Blues.” By pairing Estes’s guitar and vocal skills with mandolin, piano, and harmonica, the recordings represented an important synthesis of various southern musical traditions. They also established Sleepy John’s reputation as an emotive singer-songwriter and helped to solidify his place among the later 1960s blues “rediscoveries” such as Skip James, Son House, and Brownie McGhee.

In the 1930s, Estes and Nixon worked their craft primarily in Chicago, recording sides for RCA Victor and Decca and playing local house parties and other venues. The urban environment of Chicago provided many professional opportunities and allowed Estes to further develop his distinctive writing and vocal style. Songs like “Floating Bridge” and “Lawyer Clark Blues” were finely wrought accounts of his personal life. “Working Man Blues” and “Hobo Jungle Blues” offered social commentary and biting criticism of the often tragic circumstances facing African Americans during the Depression.

As the 1930s drew to a close, Sleepy John and Hammie Nixon continued their musical partnership, recording for the Champion and Decca labels, traveling throughout the United States, and performing with the popular Rabbit Foot Minstrel Show. Songs cut during this period included “Drop Down Mama” and the well-known “Some Day Baby Blues.” In the early 1940s, Estes returned to Brownsville, Tennessee, working as a sharecropper and eventually losing his eyesight completely. Sporadic recording efforts did not lead to commercial success, leaving Estes impoverished until his later rediscovery. Due to the raw vocal maturity captured on his 1929 sessions, many subsequent fans and musicians assumed that Estes was an old man when he initially recorded. This led to a common belief that he was already deceased as the folk blues revival dawned in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

In 1962, a documentary filmmaker named David Blumenthal found Estes in Brownsville, living with his family in a sharecropper shack and attempting to subsist on disability checks from the state. Blumenthal later told Bob Koester, owner of Delmark Records, that Sleepy John was indeed alive in Tennessee. Koester then arranged a Chicago recording session and initiated promotion efforts to reintroduce Estes to the music world. The resulting Legend of Sleepy John Estes (Delmark, 1962) featured Sleepy John and his old partner, Hammie Nixon, adding significantly to the growing body of folk blues popularly reintroduced in the sixties. This led to appearances at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, radio performances, and European tours with the American Folk Blues Festival. Consequently, Sleepy John played a vital role in reestablishing the commercial presence and influence of acoustic rural blues music in the United States and Europe.

As he prepared for another European tour in June 1977, Sleepy John Estes succumbed to a stroke at his home in Brownsville. This house now sits in the parking lot of Brownsville’s West Tennessee Delta Heritage Center and is displayed as an exhibit. John Adam “Sleepy John” Estes rests in the Durhamville Baptist Church Cemetery in Durhamville, Tennessee. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1991.

https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/sleepy-john-estes

John Adam Estes[1] (January 25, 1899[2] or 1900[3] – June 5, 1977),[4] known as Sleepy John Estes, was an American blues guitarist, songwriter and vocalist. His music influenced such artists as the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin.

Life and career
Estes was born in Ripley, Tennessee,[1] either in 1899 (the date on his gravestone) or 1900 (the date on his World War I draft card).[3] In 1915, his father, a sharecropper who played guitar, moved the family to Brownsville, Tennessee. Not long after, Estes lost the sight in his right eye when a friend threw a rock at him.[4] At the age of 19, while working as a field hand, he began to perform professionally, mostly at parties and picnics, with the accompaniment of Hammie Nixon, a harmonica player, and James "Yank" Rachell, a guitarist and mandolin player. Estes continued to work on and off with both musicians for more than fifty years.[1] He also performed in medicine shows with Willie Newbern.[3]

At the suggestion of Jim Jackson,[3] Estes made his debut as a recording artist in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1929, at a session organized by Ralph Peer for Victor Records.[4] He recorded the tracks "Drop Down Mama" and "Someday Baby Blues" with Nixon in 1935. He later worked with Son Bonds and Charlie Pickett.[5] He went on to record for Decca Records and Bluebird Records, with his last prewar recording session taking place in 1941.[4] He made a brief return to recording at Sun Studio in Memphis in 1952, recording "Runnin' Around" and "Rats in My Kitchen", but otherwise was out of the public eye in the 1940s and 1950s.

Estes sang with a distinctive "crying" vocal style. He frequently teamed with more capable musicians, such as Yank Rachell, Hammie Nixon, and the piano player Jab Jones. Estes sounded so much like an old man, even on his early records, that blues revivalists reportedly delayed looking for him because they assumed he would have to be long dead (and because the musician Big Bill Broonzy had written that he was dead). By the time he was tracked down by the blues historians Bob Koester and Samuel Charters in 1962, he was completely blind and living in poverty. Along with his wife, Ann, who took many of the iconic photos of Estes found in blues books and album covers, Sam Charters filmed Estes performing, sitting in front of his shack near Brownsville. Blind and frail, he became the heart and soul of the Charters' movie, "The Blues," that was not released widely until 2020, in a Document Records package titled "Searching for Secret Heroes." He resumed touring with Nixon and recording for Delmark Records.[5] Estes, Nixon and Rachell appeared at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964.[6]

Many of Estes's original songs were based on events in his life or people he knew in his hometown, Brownsville, such as the local lawyer ("Lawyer Clark Blues"), the local auto mechanic ("Vassie Williams' Blues"), or an amorously inclined teenage girl ("Little Laura Blues").[5] In "Lawyer Clark Blues", about the lawyer and later judge and senator Hugh L. Clarke, whose family lived in Brownsville, Estes sang that Clark let him "off the hook" for an offense. He also dispensed advice on agricultural matters ("Working Man Blues")[7] and chronicled his own attempt to reach a recording studio for a session by hopping a freight train ("Special Agent [Railroad Police Blues]"). His lyrics combined keen observation with an ability to turn an effective phrase.[8][9]

Some accounts attribute the nickname Sleepy to a blood pressure disorder or narcolepsy. Bob Koester, the founder of Delmark Records, said that Estes simply had a "tendency to withdraw from his surroundings into drowsiness whenever life was too cruel or too boring to warrant full attention".[8][10] Estes himself explained that the nickname was born of his exhausting life as both musician and farmer. "'Every night I was going somewhere. I'd work all day, play all night and get back home about sunrise. I'd get the mule and get right on going. I went to sleep once in the shed. I used to go to sleep so much when we were playing, they called me Sleepy. But I never missed a note.'"[11]

Death

Estes's grave in Durhamville, Tennessee, 2008
Estes had a stroke while preparing for a European tour and died on June 5, 1977, at his home of 17 years in Brownsville, Haywood County, Tennessee.[4][12][13] He is buried at Elam Baptist Church Cemetery in Durhamville, Lauderdale County, Tennessee.[13]

His grave marker reads:[2]

Sleepy John Estes
"..ain't goin' to worry Poor John's mind anymore"
In Memory
John Adam Estes
Jan. 25, 1899
June 5, 1977
Blues Pioneer
Guitarist – Songwriter – Poet

The epitaph "..ain't goin' to worry Poor John's mind anymore"[2] is derived from his song "Someday Baby Blues." "I Ain't Gonna Be Worried No More" was recorded in 1935,[14] and in his song "Drop Down Mama", also recorded in 1935, Estes referred to himself as "Poor John". His grave is located off a country road and at the far end of the cemetery, adjacent to a small grove of trees, secluded but not hidden.

In 1991, Estes was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.[12]

Legacy
Led Zeppelin's lead singer, Robert Plant, named Estes as one of his earliest influences.[15] Bob Dylan mentioned Estes in the sleeve notes for his album Bringing It All Back Home (1965).[16] In an interview in 1970 published in Lennon Remembers, John Lennon recalled of the Beatles' early days that "We were all listening to Sleepy John Estes and all that in art school, like everybody else."[17]

Estes's former two-room home is on display in Brownsville, Tennessee, USA alongside Tina Turner's Flagg Grove School and museum.[18]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepy_John_Estes