Blue Monday -- Sam Chatmon

I was watching TV one night in Memphis decades ago, and a guitar-playing singer came on the screen doing his rendition of St. Louis Blues (dum...dum...a-deedle-um-dum), and I was just floored. It was Sam Chatmon of the Mississippi Sheiks, the only member to have been captured on film/video. Get right into it here, so you'll know this post and its links are worth reading:



Well, that's the real shit, sports fans; and I do know whereof I speak.  The Sheiks were the best blues band of the acoustic era, unless you want to count the W.C. Handy Band, which was more horn-based.  Sam was the brother of Bo Carter, the most individually famous of the bunch for his solo recordings and songwriting; but Bo died in Memphis in 1964, before the blues revival could capture him on film.  So brother Sam is the best we can see of the greatness that was the Sheiks, the chamber music ensemble of the blues before Sleepy John Estes with Yank Rachel staked a claim to that title (but that's another post).  Here is a link to some of the Mississippi Sheiks historic output, including the epochal "Sitting On Top Of The World."  Meanwhile, here's another good video on Sam: