Lowell Fulson – Classic Cuts 1946-1953 – 4CD

A founding father of West Coast blues who would later master soul.

Lowell Fulson recorded Reconsider Baby - the archetypal modern Texas blues - but there’s more to him than that. He wrote one of B.B. King’s biggest hits - Three O’Clock Blues, and Tramp, co-written with Jimmy McCracklin, was a minor hit for him but a nationwide pop success for Otis Redding and Carla Thomas.
He was smart and warm-hearted, his style unique and identifiable in one of music’s most demanding fields.

Track Listing:

CD 1:
1. Crying Blues (Crying Won’t Make Me Stay)   2. You’re Gonna Miss Me  (When I’m Gone)   3. Miss Katy Lee Blues  4. Rambling Blues   5. Fulson Blues   6. San Francisco Blues   7. Crying Blues   8. You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone   9. Miss Katie Lee Blues   10. Rambling Blues   11. Fulson’s Blues   12. San Francisco Blues   13. Trouble Blues   14. I Want To See My Baby   15. Black Widow Spider Blues   16. Don’t Be So Evil   17. I Want To See My Baby  (Alt)   18. Don’t Be So Evil (Alt)   19. Scotty’s Blues   20. The Train Is Leaving   21. Jelly, Jelly   22. Mean Woman Blues   23. 9.30 Shuffle   24. Thinkin’ Blues   25. Fulson Boogie   26. Mean Woman Blues   27. Thinkin’ Blues   28. Tryin’ To Find My Baby   

CD 2:
1. Let’s Throw A Boogie Woogie   2. Highway 99   3. Whiskey Blues   4. Tell Me Baby  5. Fulson Boogie   6. Highway ‘99’   7. Trying To Find My Baby   8. Midnight Showers Of Rain   9. So Long, So Long   10. Wee Hours In The Morning   11. My Gal At Eight   12. The Blues Got Me Down   13. Black Cat Blues   14. Just A Poor Boy   15. Sweet Jenny Lee   16. My Baby   17. Television Blues   18. Don’t You Hear Me Calling You   19. Demon Woman   20. Tears At Sunrise   21. Jam That Boogie   22. Blues And Misery   23. My Woman Can’t Be Found   24. Three O’Clock Blues   25. Wild About You Baby   26. Prison Bound   27. My Baby Left Me

CD 3:
1. Night And Day   2. Double Trouble Blues   3. Stormin’ And Rainin’   4. Good Woman Blues   5. Western Union Blues   6. Lazy Woman Blues   7. River Blues  Pt 1   8. River Blues Pt 2   9. I Walked All Night   10. Between Midnight And Day   11. The Blues Is Killing Me   12. Did You Ever Feel Lucky   13. Ain’t Nobody’s Business   14. Jimmy’s Blues (I’ve Got A Mind To Ramble)   15. Every Day I Have The Blues   16. Rocking After Midnight   17. Rock This House (Alt)   18. Cold Hearted Mama   19. Mama Bring Your Clothes Back Home   20. Low Society Blues   21. Blue Shadows   22. Back Home Blues   23. Baby Won’t You Jump With Me   24. Come Back Baby   25. Country Boy   26. Rainy Day Blues   27. Miss Lillie Brown   28. Sinner’s Prayer   

CD 4:
1. Sinner’s Prayer   2. Blues With A Feelin’   3. Why Can’t You Cry For Me   4. Let Me Ride In Your Little Automobile   5. Lonesome Christmas Pt 1   6. Lonesome Christmas Pt 2   7. I’m A Night Owl Pt 1   8. I’m A Night Owl Pt 2   9. Fillmore Mess Around   10. Let’s Live Right   11. Guitar Shuffle   12. Mean Old Lonesome Song   13. The Day Is Slowly Passing (Alt)   14. The Highway Is My Home   15.Upstairs   16. I Love My Baby   17. I’ve Been Mistreated   18. You’re Going To Miss Me When I’m Gone (Alt)   19. I’ve Been Mistreated   20. It’s Hard To Believe   21. Ride Until The Sun Goes Down   22. Christmas Party Shuffle   23. The Blues Come Rollin’ In   24. My Daily Prayer   25. Juke Box Shuffle   26. Is Your Friend Really Your Friend   27. Let Me Love You Baby   28. Cash Box Boogie   29.Market Street Blues   30. Best Wishes  

Linernotes:

His isn’t a rags-to-riches story, even though travelling the world and entertaining millions during a fifty-year career would be a solid foundation for it to be. Like his fellow innovators T-Bone Walker and B.B. King, Lowell Fulson was an intelligent, warm-hearted individual, proud of his achievements but not immodest. Although he lacked  B.B. King’s worldwide success, his voice and guitar were just as unique and identifiable.

The story begins in Tulsa, Oklahoma in March 1921. He was born in Choctaw Indian country. His father was killed while working at an oil mill before Lowell’s fifth birthday and his mother Mamie (Wilson) raised him and his brother Martin on her own. Later, she  remarried.

The Fulsons were musical clan: “We had guitars, mandolins, violins. That was on my daddy's side. And on my mother’s side they all played a little, my uncles. I had about four or five of them, they all played something.” Most of it was ‘hoedown music’. “First blues artist I heard in person was a fellow called Martin, great big fellow, statue of a man, and he played the prettiest blues violin I ever heard in my life. He was around Stringtown, out from Atoka up in there, around Boggy Bend.”  Then there were the Hadley brothers, Clarence and Frank, guitar and mandolin players from Coalgate, some fifteen miles north-east of Atoka. “I was tap dancin’ then. I had  a couple of cousins, my uncles, they all danced. I was about eight or nine.”

Despite the cost of strings and his uncles’ attempts at dissuasion, young Lowell learned his chords and occasionally played at picnics and parties. But he played for dancing - not the songs by Blind Lemon, Peetie Wheatstraw and Texas Alexander that he preferred. He left home at eighteen and moved 50 miles to Ada, OK, where he joined Dan Wright’s eighteen-strong band. “We played for dances, mostly white people, you know. Something like country and western, ‘cause that’s all Dan Wright played, he played a banjo. He didn’t play nothing but ofay music.”

To play blues, Lowell moved to Foggy Bottom. There in the autumn of 1939 he met Texas Alexander. The older man’s recording career had ended five years previously but he was still popular in the small communities of Oklahoma and Texas and he needed an accompanist. There was a brief discussion about the rules of employment and the pair set off to Western Oklahoma. He’d married Adena back in May and now he left her, saying he’d be back after a while. “I was gone a year.”

When he did return, his wife insisted that he give up music and he went to work for Swift Packing, a job of which he quickly tired. Meanwhile, his mother had remarried as was living in Gainesville, Texas, so he and Adena moved there and he got a job washing dishes in a cafe. Soon he was head chef. He stayed until he was drafted in September 1943. After boot camp in Cambridge, Maryland, he was sent to Alameda Naval Air camp in Oakland, Cal. Weekends he’d take his guitar to town and party. On V-J Day he was en route to Guam on the USS Wayne. On Guam, he worked as a cook - and joined up with a piano player and a few white boys to play for troops and islanders, performing a mixture of dance favourites and the occasional blues.

He returned to America in November 1945, being eventually discharged on December 5th. He worked for a month in the Wade Hotel, Duncan but he was wary of the Jody man and his feet were itchy. After six months, he set off back to California, where he stayed with his stepfather and reacquainted himself with the places he’d worked as a musician. He re-established contact with Bob Geddins, a one-man record industry who’d promised him a session if he came back from the war. And that’s where the recording story starts…