Hollandale Blues

In the ‘20s and ‘30s, guitarist and singer Sam Chatmon played alongside his two older brothers—fiddler Lonnie Chatmon and guitar phenomenon Bo “Carter” Chatmon—in The Mississippi Sheiks. The Sheiks were one of the most popular outfits operating in the Mississippi delta during that period, and their impressive musical repertoire encompassed elements of blues, jazz, country, string bands, minstrel show music, and sentimental balladry. Sam Chatmon appeared on few of the Sheiks' original recordings, but he toured and performed extensively with the group. When he was rediscovered during the folk and blues revival of the mid-‘60s, his instrumental powers were still considerable, and his experiences playing with the Sheiks made him an invaluable fount of knowledge. The recordings on Hollandale Blues were recorded at Chatmon’s home in Hollandale, Miss., in 1976. Though Chatmon was nearly 80, he sounds in fine form here. His performances of standards like “St. Louis Blues” and Bo Carter’s “Old Devil” have a casual, uninhibited joy that makes them stand out from the general run of rediscovery-era blues recordings.