Even pre-war white men played the Blues

I’ll warrant most of you will have heard of Jimmie Rodgers, he’s revered and admired today by everyone from Willie Nelson to Bono. He was a huge star and back in the 1930s he had many imitators, including Cliff Carlisle, but Cliff was more than just an imitator; he was a brilliant slide guitar player. Many of Cliff’s recordings either had a direct link to Jimmie or were strongly derivative, like Memphis Yodel a cover of a Jimmie Rodgers 1928 record. Songs like Hobo Blues were so much like a Jimmie Rodgers train song that you would be forgiven for thinking it was a cover. Cliff, and his long time partner Wilbur Ball who played Spanish guitar and sang harmony, also covered the Darby and Tarleton hit, Columbus Stockade Blues.

In 1931 Cliff accompanied Rodgers on a yodelling Blues track, Looking For A New Mama, later that year they teamed up and toured Kentucky, Illinois and Michigan. By 1934 Cliff’s brother Bill had replaced Wilbur, they cut That Nasty Swing in 1936, 5 months before Robert Johnson’s Phonograph Blues, which is very similar in feel. That Nasty Swing is another of those songs with a thinly veiled sexual code, Cliff sings about “winding the motor” and “putting his needle in the hole”; White country and Black country Blues had more in common than just a shared 12 bars. In 1937 Cliff cut Trouble Minded Blues, it was a remake of Chippie Hill’s 1926 recording, Trouble in Mind. Cliff wound up recording over 300 sides in the 30s and 40s, and besides his records he promoted the sale of his songbooks through his radio appearances. By the 50s Cliff had retired but he did make a brief comeback in the 60s, even recording once again with Wilbur Ball. The man billed as the ‘Yodelling Hobo’ died in Kentucky in 1983, aged 79.