MEMPHIS MINNIE & KANSAS JOE — 1929-1934 Recordings In Chronological Order ★ Volume 3 • 1931-1932 | DOCD-5030 (1991) RM | FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

The third volume in Document's series picks up in early 1931, with the Depression era in full swing; although Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe were still actively recording, very little of their material was actually seeing release. Ironically, these were some of the duo's finest sides to date, with Minnie's vocals and guitar work achieving new peaks of poignancy and intensity; with "Shake Mattie" and "My Wash Woman's Gone," she introduces her bottleneck style, while on "Let's Go to Town" she and Joe face off in a fiery instrumental duel. The latter half of the collection, recorded in New York, focuses on more traditional material; their rendition of the minstrel song "Fishin' Blues" is widely assumed to be the inspiration for subsequent versions by Son House, Bumble Bee Slim and many others. Jason Ankeny

From this album’s booklet notes: At the dawn of 1931 sales of race records were in sharp decline. Companies who six months previously had pressed in the region of 2,000 copies per record had cut that almost by half. Industry figures of the time showed that race records only accounted for about one percent of total sales, a very significant drop from the previous year. It was in this climate, and the period covered by this compilation, that Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe continued to record. A measure of the seriousness of the situation as it affected them can probably be gauged by their output; barely thirty titles recorded, at least half a dozen of which never saw release. Despite all this the quality of their recordings didn’t appear to suffer and, if anything, seemed to draw from Minnie a renewed sense of personal intensity both in lyric and playing.

The poignant, Crazy Crying Blues, with its terse lyric, ‘crying’ verse endings and moaned choruses almost echoing the blues of female singers of the twenties. The superb instrumental, Let’s Go To Town, couldn’t be better named with its rhythmic imagination and subtle tempo changes, the sheer drive of the piece creating the motion of an express train — a sort of “Honky Tonk Train” with two guitars. The period also witnessed Memphis Minnie adopt the bottleneck, or slide, guitar technique which she probably learnt from her first husband, Casey Bill Weldon, as can be heard on Kansas Joe‘s Shake Mattie and My Wash Woman’s Gone, the former containing perhaps the first reference in blues to, “Shake, rattle and roll”! For reasons best known to the company they switched Memphis Minnie and Joe McCoy‘s recording location from Chicago to New York where the pair had first recorded three years earlier.

If 1931 had been short on sessions, the following year was worse with only a dozen titles recorded over a two day period during February. The material cut favoured more traditionally based themes as Jailhouse Trouble Blues, Joliet Bound (a blues by Joe concerning the notorious prison) and Fishin’ Blues, the latter a minstrel song long associated with Texas having been collected there in the early twenties by musicologist Walter Prescott Webb and first commercially recorded by songster, Henry ‘Ragtime’ Thomas. DOCD-5030
Tracklist :
1    Memphis Minnie–    I Don't Want That Junk Outa You 2:22
Guitar – Kansas Joe McCoy
Vocals, Guitar – Memphis Minnie
2    Memphis Minnie–    Crazy Cryin' Blues 3:26
Guitar – Kansas Joe McCoy
Vocals, Guitar – Memphis Minnie
3    Memphis Minnie–    Tricks Ain't Walking No More 2:48
Guitar – Kansas Joe McCoy
Vocals, Guitar – Memphis Minnie
4    Memphis Minnie–    Don't Bother It 3:08
Guitar – Kansas Joe
Vocals – Memphis Minnie
5    Memphis Minnie–    Today Today Blues 2:46
Guitar – Kansas Joe
Vocals – Memphis Minnie
6    Memphis Minnie–    Lay My Money Down (If You Run Around) 2:55
Guitar – Kansas Joe
Vocals, Guitar – Memphis Minnie
7    Memphis Minnie–    Hard Down Lie 2:40
Guitar – Kansas Joe
Vocals, Guitar – Memphis Minnie
8    Kansas Joe And Memphis Minnie–    Somebody's Got To Help You 3:08
Guitar, Vocals – Kansas Joe, Memphis Minnie
9    Kansas Joe And Memphis Minnie–    Pickin' The Blues 3:02
Guitar – Kansas Joe, Memphis Minnie
10    Kansas Joe And Memphis Minnie–    Let's Go To Town 3:07
Guitar – Kansas Joe, Memphis Minnie
11    Memphis Minnie–    Soo Cow Soo 2:37
Guitar – Joe McCoy
Vocals, Guitar – Memphis Minnie
12    Memphis Minnie–    After While Blues 2:51
Mandolin – Joe McCoy
Vocals, Guitar – Memphis Minnie
13    Memphis Minnie–    Fishin' Blues 2:55
Guitar – Joe McCoy
Vocals, Guitar – Memphis Minnie
14    Memphis Minnie–    Jailhouse Trouble Blues 3:12
Guitar – Joe McCoy
Vocals, Guitar – Memphis Minnie
15    Memphis Minnie–    Outdoor Blues 3:00
Guitar – Joe McCoy
Vocals, Guitar – Memphis Minnie
16    Memphis Minnie–    Where Is My Good Man 2:59
Guitar – Joe McCoy
Vocals, Guitar – Memphis Minnie
17    Memphis Minnie–    You Stole My Cake 2:56
Vocals, Guitar – Joe McCoy, Memphis Minnie
18    Memphis Minnie–    Kind Treatment Blues 2:46
Guitar – Joe McCoy
Vocals, Guitar – Memphis Minnie
19    Kansas Joe–    You Know You Done Me Wrong 3:07
Guitar – Memphis Minnie
Vocals, Guitar – Kansas Joe
20    Kansas Joe–    Joliet Bound 3:06
Guitar – Memphis Minnie
Vocals, Guitar – Kansas Joe
21    Kansas Joe–    Stranger's Blues 2:50
Guitar – Memphis Minnie
Vocals, Guitar – Kansas Joe
22    Memphis Minnie–    Socket Blues 2:55
Guitar – Kansas Joe
Vocals, Guitar – Memphis Minnie