Sam Chatmon

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Sam Chatmon (January 10, 1897 – February 2, 1983) was a Delta blues guitarist and singer. He was a member of the Mississippi Sheiks.

Sam Chatmon - Hollandale

Sam Chatmon (c. 1899-1983), a celebrated singer and guitarist who spent most of his life in Hollandale,MS, sometimes performed with his brothers in a renowned family string band billed as the Mississippi Sheiks. He embarked on a new solo career after coming out of musical retirement in the 1960s. Many local musicians have performed here on Simmons Street, known as “the Blue Front, ”once one of the most vibrant centers of blues activity in the Delta.

Hollandale Blues history dates back at least to the 1920s, when the Mississippi Sheiks, Sam Chatmon, Bo Chatmon (aka Bo Carter), Eugene Powell, Robert Nighthawk, and Houston Stackhouse performed at local drug stores, cafes, and other businesses, in addition to jukehouse parties and dances on nearby plantations. Most of the Mississippi Sheiks, a popular string band known for their hit recording “Sitting on Top of the World” (1930), were members of the Chatmon family, several of whom moved from their native Hinds County to the Hollandale area around 1928 and worked here as cotton farmers as well as musicians. In later years Sam Chatmon moved into town and took a job as a night watchman, while his brother Bo settled in Anguilla.

After blues enthusiasts began to seek Sam out in the 1960s, he traveled to play concerts and festivals around the country, most often in the San Diego area, and recorded several albums including Hollandale Blues and The Mississippi Sheik. He grew a long beard, as his fiddle-playing father had done, and endeared himself to new audiences who were entertained by his risqué double-entendre songs. In 2009 the city of Hollandale purchased Chatmon’s house at 818 Sherman Street to move it here to “Blue Front,” an area once famed for blues, liquor, and gambling. Chatmon sang about Blue Front in his song “Hollandale Blues,” but told friends he preferred less rowdy surroundings.

Author Kathy Starr, whose grandmother operated the Fair Deal café on Blue Front, wrote in The Soul of Southern Cooking: “Blue Front was a string of little cafes where everybody gathered on the weekend. It was the only place blacks had to go, to get rid of the blues after a week’s hard work in the cotton fields. Everybody lived for Saturday night to go to Blue Front. . . . if you wanted a half-pint or a pint of whiskey or corn liquor, you could get it at Fair Deal because Grandmama and the chief of police had an ‘understanding.’ . . . The Seabirds (Seeburg juke boxes) would be jammin’ all up and down Blue Front with Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and B. B. King. Sometimes they would be there in person over at the Day and Night Café. The great blues singer Sam Chatman [sic] came to Fair Deal often. People danced, ate, drank, and partied till the break of day. Saturday night without a fight was not known.”

Among other former Hollandale area residents, Eddie “Guitar Slim” Jones went on to the greatest fame in the 1950s after moving to New Orleans. Others include bluesmen William Warren, Willie Harris, Mott Willis, J. D. Short, James Earl “Blue” Franklin, and Joseph C. Moore (“J. C. Rico”); Eugene Powell’s wife Mississippi Matilda; the Buckhanna (Buchanan) Brothers string band; and soul singer Ruby Stackhouse, better known as Ruby Andrews.

content © Mississippi Blues Commission

Following video from Alan Lomax Archive:

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Illustrated Sam Chatmon discography

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mswritersandmusicians.com/musicians/sam-chatmon.html

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Make of this what one will...

Sam Chatmon interviewed by Lou Curtiss in 1969
The Khrome Kazoo issue 13, 1970

I did my early recordings in the early twenties for a man by the name of Brock (almost certainly Polk Brockman, Okeh's distributor in Atlanta) and I played the bass, and the banjo, and some of the pieces I didn't even have my name on them. It was with my brothers and Walter Vincent and some I picked Walter he sang um.

Some of the songs I sang were...let's see, one of the "Stop & Listen's" and Walter sang one and I sang one of "Sittin' on Top of the World" and Walter sung one. And me and him sang "l'm the Loneliest Man In The Town" and that's been so long I can't hardly think of them.

I wrote "Sittin on Top of the World" with my brother Lonnie. Me and him wrote it. And then we wrote "Corrina". I wrote "Crosscut Saw" all by myself, but I didn't get to record it. I mean is, I recorded it at least, but it ain't ever come out. He ain't never released them. And all my other pieces that I haven't recorded well I've got them at home. I don't never sing them. I just keeps them so when I do go to record again I'll have them. I don't do them in the clubs so no one will steal them like that Albert King did "Crosscut Saw". I don't mind doing them at a place like Sweets Mill where aint nobody paying attention and just listening, but if you get at a place like The Heritage down here (the Heritage is San Diego's leading folk club) or the Ash Grove and sing a song to them an say this is one of my brand new pieces I ain't ever recorded well he'll get the title, take and put it out before you get the chance.

I helped raise up those King boys around Arcola. I was the agent on the place and they all worked on the same plantation where I was. B.B., and Albert, and Freddie. All Brothers. If they wasn't I didn't know cuz that's what all of them went by They all had the same mama. I couldn't tell nothin' about the daddy but they all went by King. The youngsters wasn't playin'. B.B. he was the oldest and he was the first one to start it off, and then the left hand one come along after, that was Albert and then the baby boy Freddie, he started at it. So all of them can play good now. Freddie he's the baby, B.B. he's the oldest. He's, I reckon, about 38. Ain't none of them very old.

Charlie Patton he was our half brother. He was supposed to have went by Chatman but having been an outside child he went by his mother's name. But my papa he raised him. You see I had some brothers that was older than Lonnie and them. My daddy's first wife's children. They was a lot older than any of us. Charlie Patton, he was along with them. He picked with them. My older brother Ferdinand he used to sit down all the time and then Charlie Patton and him would pick a piece when I was just gettin' to remember, 'bout "Goin' Down to the river" and "If the blues don't leave me I'll rock on away from here". I wasn't even old enough to hold up a guitar then. When I did get old enough I started cut pickin'. Then I got from that to a bass viol. Then I played bass viol and tenor banjo till my brothers died out then I went to pickin' guitar straight out. I got from watching my brothers. It's just like driving a car. You sit in a car with somebody and you see what they do and you can do the same thing with just a little practice. If you ain't got nerve enough to try you can sure make a stab. My brothers all played, sisters too. Mama and Daddy too. It's just a givin' thing in the family. My Daddy played for people in slavery time. Old "Turkey in the straw", "Hen laid the eggs", "Can't get the saddle on the old grey mule"; all them things. At times we'd be playing and want him to play a song for us and he wouldn't play and so Lonnie would make the fiddle get off two or three different times and play one of Daddy's pieces. And then Daddy would say "Boy that ain't the way to play it. You bring that violin here and let me show you how." He had whiskers down to here (his waist). And he take them whiskers and pull them to the side. Sometime he'd have to take a cord or something to tie them and hold them off the fiddle. But you talk about workin he could do it. Mama she played guitar I've got a sister now 98 years old and she can pick "Make me down a pallet on your floor' now just as good, I reckon as when she was young. And anytime she comes to our house she picks that piece for me. "Make me down a pallet on your floor~, and the piece I put out now: "If you don't want me you don't have to dog me around" was the only recording had my name on it with the Chatman Brothers, me and Lonnie. I put that out and the other side was wake me and shake me just before day". I put that out to the same tune as "Make me down a pallet on your floor'. people don't even recognise the tune as what I put out. They think it's just a new tune I got up. I'd sing it and then holler "Oh step on it" then Lonnie he'd get out on that fiddle.

Now I myself played with Lonnie Johnson, I played for Texas Alexander, he couldn't play at all but he sung, and I played with Blind Lemon, and I played with my brothers. And I never did put my name on the record they just said once in a while "accompanied by Sam". That's all they put on there. Records didn't come out with my name 'til I went to calling it my own self. Me and my brother Lonnie: The Chatman Brothers. That was in 1936 at the St Charles Hotel in New Orleans. That was for the Bluebird Company. I think they've gone out of business now. Sold out to RCA. A lot of these people I think I remember but not for sure. Like John Hurt. In the days back when I was recording there'd be hundreds of people at the recording but the only people you meet up with was the ones sittin' there right at you. Yeah so l met Blind Lemon and Lonnie Johnson, Peetie Wheatstraw, Kokomo Arnold, Robert Hill, there was one called Black. I don't know what his name was, one of his fingers was cut off. He pick anyway, Bottleneck or straight out. He played piano, played guitar, bass. He was just like my brother Bo. Anything Bo'd get, well he'd play it. Bo he just played guitar and banjo on the records though. Just banjo on a couple of the Mississippi Sheiks records. He never got to record anything on the fiddle or piano. Harry always played the piano, He was my baby brother. He played piano for everybody too. We all played for everybody. I know Harry he put one about "l got Ants in my Pants". He recorded by himself three or four times there in Jackson at the Peabody Hotel. A big new hotel there in Jackson. I think it was the Peabody. I get the hotels mixed up. The Peabody may be in Memphis. We all recorded at that big new hotel in Jackson. That was for the Okeh company.

We always recorded in different combinations of the group when the Mississippi Sheiks recorded. Lonnie would do a set with Walter, then Walter and 1, then me and Bo. Then Bo by himself, or with Walter, and once or twice all four of us. They always wanted to get as much as they could. They weren't paying too much then. Twenty dollars a number would be all you'd get, so we all wanted to do stuff by ourselves so as to get all the money. If you used two it'd be twenty apiece: If you used all four it would be but ten dollars a piece.

We didn't travel around too much except for the sessions. We played at a lot of private dances. We played at Coopers Wells at a place they called the healing water. That was in Raymond. That was the county seat of Hines County. We'd go out there every summer and play three months.

Most of our (The Sheiks) records were made either at San Antone Texas, Chicago, or Jackson, Mississippi. Some too were made at a place in Georgia. I can't recall. The ones in Chicago were made for a man named Williams. I never will forget that name because he tried to beat me out of my money. When a man tries to beat you, you don't forget him.

Only one that was ever taken from me that I wrote was that "Crosscut Saw" that Albert King did. And everybody here knew it was my recording because they knowed it before he ever knowed it. I never got to record that one. Lonnie was dead when I wrote it and Bo he was blind and living in Memphis and that's where he died in Memphis. 9 whole brothers of us and all of them dead except two of us now. I got one younger brother Larry who's two years younger than me. He plays but he never did record. He never was interested. He went into the army and went over seas. I didn't have to go, but my son did. I quit playing when he got shot and I never did play in public until I came out to California. That's when I started back.

That Chris Strachwitz recorded me in the early sixties but he wouldn't let me pick. I could pick then just as good as I can now but he wanted me to do it another way (frail) so l did them the way he was paying for me to do. He said just strum the guitar. My pieces what I put out there on the Arhoolie label you never hear me strum now. I picks them all. He records 12 songs and only put out four or five. I know he's got "Crosscut Saw", "Kitty Cat Blues", and I believe "Radio Blues" too. But he got them up there somewhere, I reckon if he ain't throwed them away. I can't recall them, name by name but I know it was 12.1 know he put out "l can't count to 12 but I know God don't like ugly", "Paint my face", "You shall be free", "Lay my burden down" and "I stand and wonder"; that last one with the bottleneck. My wife she was in the bed sick and I lost her on the 25th day of December that same year.

In 1965 Mr. Ken [Ken Swerilas] came out there to Hollandale where we lived (Strachwitz had been there in 1960). He was hunting Bo and Bo was dead so he found Bo's wife and she told him where I lived in Hollandale. He came there and asked at the drugstore and they told him 818 Sherman St. He came up to my house. Him and his whole family. Then I picked some for him and that's the reason I'm coming to California now.

I was born in Bolden, Mississippi, a little place between Jackson and Vicksburg. I moved from there in 1928 to Hollandale and I've been there ever since. Except when I went to Arcola and spent four years. That's where I met B.B. King and Albert with them. I was the agent on a plantation there.

I met Blind Lemon in the twenties at Brock's place and we went to San Antone to record for Brockman. We all became good friends. I ain't seen Lonnie Johnson, Texas Alexander, Blind Lemon, we was all good friends. Ain't seen Lonnie Johnson but twice since then.

Blind Lemon seemed a nice sort of felleh but of course he was just like the rest of them and he liked the wimmen and drink. He was good on the guitar. He didn't pick in but one note but he sure could pick in that. Blind Lemon he picked in "A". Lonnie Johnson was the same way. He always picked in "E". All of them had different notes to pick in. Bo picked in "G" and "E". that's all he ever picked in. Now I picks in any note. Don't make no difference what note. I can pick in "E flat" just as good as I can in "B flat". When I first started off playing I tried to play like Blind Lemon and Lonnie Johnson but every time I'd go out somewhere to pick people would say, "Oh he plays like Blind Lemon" or, "He plays like Lonnie Johnson". So I quit and made up a way of my own. And I sticks to mine. Maybe some folks don't like it, but I likes it so l keeps a-goin and find more that likes it than hates it,

Now Walter (Vincent) he used to be a number one blues singer before he met up with Lonnie and went to playing behind him and the violin. But after he got playing with the violin, he lost all the lick he had. Now Walter played with us, but he wasn't no relation. They called him Walter Jacob but his name was Walter Vincent. Old man Vincent was his daddy. So when I was in Chicago year before last I met up with Walter, and Walter couldn't play nothing. He still had that National Guitar but he looked at me and said, "Sam, you ain't rusty a bit." I sez, "No, but you sure is." He sez, "If I could just find me another fiddle player, I could go yet." I told him "yeah well drummin' a guitar ain't like pickin'." He's still in Chicago now. Sam Hill, the boy who used to play with him on records, he picked bottleneck. He's dead, so after he died, Walter ain't got nobody to play with now.

Now Memphis Slim was my nephew. His mother was my half sister I don't know who was his father. He's going by the name of Chatman cuz his mother was. He had him a place there in Chicago before he went overseas and I came there and stayed awhile. He was trying to get me to go back with him, and he said all my expenses wouldn't cost me nothing. That man that I put out those Arhoolie records for, he wanted me to go over there too. I got a couple of letters from different folks across there wanting me to come but I was scared to chance an aeroplane. So he sold his house here and went over there and that's the last time I seen him. I haven't heard from him since either. My boy done heard from him I know cuz they used to play together. When he first started out playing he was with Memphis t Slim playing. And then he'd play with Elmore James too, an' Sonny Boy Williams(on). Sonny Boy, he's dead now, but I knew him in New Orleans when I was there. There was two Sonny Boys but this was the one called Miller he could natural blow a harp.

That Robert Hill, he put out records for the Bluebird people. And when you get his records you can hear this guy pick for him and he can natural pick a guitar. His name is Eugene Powell and he picked with Robert Hill. He was a harp blower just like Sonny Boy. He was about as good as Sonny Boy. Me and him play for parties with harp and guitar.

In them days when you'd record, they'd take you in a place and when that light came on you'd start off and when it turned red you'd have to quit. In them days you had to play to put out a record. Nowadays it's just two verses and pick once for the 45's but when you put out a 12 inch record you had to play. I tried to get the Arhoolie man to put mine on 45's but he put them all on albums so l let him put them like he wanted them.

When we went to record. Everybody would be called for the same session. Some people would record the first day, and some the next. They'd send you a bus ticket and give you money to eat on, or maybe a train ticket. when you get there your hotel rent was already paid. You didn't have nothin' to do but go in. The next day you'd record. The first time I went it was with Seth, Lonnie, Walter, Bo my brother Harry Charlie McCoy, Memphis Minnie, Texas Alexander, Lonnie Johnson, Robert Hill and Robert, I don't know what he goes by on record, but I knowed him as Robert Harris, and Joe McCoy, that's Charlie's brother. He was there too. I couldn't remember all of them that was there the same day we went, but those were the ones I remember seeing. Of course I didn't see near everybody. The last time we all recorded, it was in Jackson, Mississippi then me and Lonnie recorded at The St. Charles Hotel [Sam always called it The Patterson] in New Orleans in 1936 and a lot were there too: Sam Hill, Memphis Minnie my brother Harry, Bo, a whole lot. My brothe; Harry he made a lot of records, but he done like I done and played for the money and didn't get his name put on. He played the piano and the violin. Bo now couldn't play the violin. So he'd get his name put on saying he was playing when actually it was Harry or Lonnie or someone else. Bo he just couldn't play. Bo didn't play nothin' but bass viol, guitar, tenor banjo, and blow clarinet. I don't think he ever played clarinet on a record. When I first started off we called it a bull fiddle and then we called it a bass viol. I always wanted to play guitar but always had to play the bass viol and that's why I played on so many other people's records. So I could play guitar.

I was raised up with Memphis Minnie. Me and her we used to play together when I was just a little one. She put out some good ones like "Bumble Bee" and "Outside Friend~ at the same time I was recording. I haven't seen her though since the last recording session in '36. She left Jackson and moved to Memphis in the late twenties I didn't even see much of her after that.

There was so many of us in the family. My Daddy had three wives and my mother had the least children of all of them. She had thirteen there were forty-some children altogether. I got a nephew a whole lot older than I am. From my mother it was all boys except four. I'm the seventh boy child. There was nine boys and four girls. and all of them gone now but the two of us. I'm here though. The good Lord have to draft me. I ain't volunteering. My Daddy lived to a hundred and five, and he died in 1934.