This Week In The Blues: August 3 - August 9, 2025

HEY BLUES FANS - Here's the latest episode of "This Week In The Blues" for the week of August 3 - August 9, 2025.

Some of the highlights include Jump blues piano player, singer and songwriter Mercy Dee Walton, boogie-woogie, blues and jazz piano player and singer Mose Vinson, and the day that Elmore James ushered in a new era of electric slide guitar.

Keep in mind that there's so much more that happened this week in the blues. If you want to know more about these artists or other things that happened this week in the blues, be sure to visit our website or follow our Facebook page:
https://bigtrainblues.com
https://www.facebook.com/BigTrainBlues

Photo credits (if known) and past episodes are posted on our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@BigTrainBlues

Here are links to a few of the artists or songs we've referenced in this week's episode:

Mercy Dee Walton - "One Room Country Shack" - https://youtu.be/5-lFt3cZpyI?si=jneEWNUbB6MQjMm_

Elmore James - "Dust My Broom" - https://youtu.be/5jcGY7NbaQw?si=Cgc3QM8TEfMAnIHX

Join me every weekday from 12:15pm-12:45pm CT to watch a live stream on Facebook of the longest running blues radio show program. https://www.facebook.com/DeltaCulturalCenter

We’ll have a new episode next week – we’ll see you then!

ARE YOU A FAN OF BLUES HISTORY? US TOO!

If you want to know more about these artists or other things that happened this week in the blues, be sure to visit our website or follow our Facebook page:

https://bigtrainblues.com

https://www.facebook.com/BigTrainBlues

Transcript

Jump blues piano player, singer and songwriter Mercy Dee Walton was born August 3, 1915 in Waco, Texas.  He started playing piano at age 13 and learned his style from many of the ten-cent party house piano players that played out in the country on weekends. He moved to California just before the start of World War II. In 1949, Walton recorded "Lonesome Cabin Blues" for a small record label in Fresno. Shortly after that, he had a national hit on Specialty Records with "One Room Country Shack". After that success, he was able to start working as a musician full-time, and he toured with the jump blues band of Big Jay McNeely.

On August 5 in 1951 Elmore James ushered in a new era of electric slide guitar with his historic recording of 'Dust My Broom' for Trumpet Records of Jackson, Mississippi. It was the only release on the Trumpet label to ever reach Billboard's national R&B charts and it was the only record James ever recorded for Trumpet. In fact, he only recorded this one song, so Trumpet had to use another artist posing as 'Elmo James' on the flip side. The song 'Dust My Broom' can be traced back to Robert Johnson's 'I Believe I'll Dust My Broom' from 1936, and to even earlier sources.

Unsung blues legend Willie Nix was born on August 6, 1922. He was active as a blues singer and drummer in Memphis, Tennessee in the 1940s and 1950s. Nix was born in Memphis and became a part of the blues scene that grew up around Beale Street. His talent for music led to performing on local radio with Robert Lockwood Jr. He joined Willie Love, Joe Willie Wilkins and Sonny Boy Williamson II, and billed as the Four Aces, they toured the Deep South. In Memphis radio performances in the mid-1940s, Nix played with B.B. King and with Joe Hill Louis.

One of the pioneering musicians of the Delta blues Willie Brown was born on August 6 in 1900. Brown was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi and learned to play the guitar as a teenager. He performed and recorded with other notable blues musicians, including Son House and Charlie Patton, and was an influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. Brown played with Patton on "M & O Blues" and "Future Blues", recorded for Paramount Records in 1930.

Bluesman Magic Slim born August 7, 1937! Magic Slim & the Teardrops proudly upheld the tradition of what a Chicago blues band should sound like. Their emphasis on ensemble playing and a repertoire that ranged upwards of a few hundred songs gave his live performances an off-the-cuff quality: you never knew what obscurity he’d pull out of his oversized hat next. The Mississippi native was forced to give up playing the piano when he lost his little finger in a cotton gin accident. Boyhood pal Magic Sam is the one that gave the budding guitarist his magical blues name.

boogie-woogie, blues and jazz piano player and singer Mose Vinson was born August 7, 1917 in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Vinson taught himself to play the piano as a child. In his teenage years, he started playing his own style of barrelhouse boogie-woogie in juke joints in Mississippi and Tennessee. By the early 1950s, he was working as a custodian at the Taylor Boarding Home, where artists often stayed while recording next door at the Sun Records studio. Sun's founder and producer, Sam Phillips, occasionally asked Vinson to accompany musicians in the studio, including James Cotton and Jimmy DeBerry.

Texas blues guitar player Denny Edward Freeman was born August 7, 1944. Although he is primarily known as a guitar player, Freeman also played piano and electronic organ, both in concert and on various recordings. He helped give rise to Austin’s blues scene in the 1970s. He was part of a wave of musicians who arrived in Austin around the same time, including Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan, singers Angela Strehli and Lou Ann Barton and University of Texas student Clifford Antone, who eventually opened a downtown nightclub that became the community’s mecca.

One of the greatest blues singers of the post-World War II era, blues vocal maestro Jimmy Witherspoon was born Aug 8, 1920. As a child, he sang in a church choir, and made his debut recordings in 1945 and 1946. His own first recordings resulted in a number one R&B hit in 1949 with “Ain’t Nobody’s Business, Pts. 1 & 2”. The mid-’50s were a lean time, with his style of shouting blues temporarily out of fashion and his singles met with little success.  Jimmy Witherspoon at the Monterey Jazz Festival from 1959 lifted him back into the limelight.

Blues singer and songwriter Al King was born August 8, 1923 in Monroe, Louisiana. After moving to Los Angeles he recorded for the Shirley and Sahara labels in the 1950s and 1960s, and had a number 36 US Billboard R&B chart hit in 1966 with "Think Twice Before You Speak". Many of his records featured guitarist and bandleader Johnny Heartsman. He also wrote songs under his real name, Alvin Smith, as in "On My Way", the B-side of his first single covering "Reconsider Baby" in 1964.

Here’s a neat trivia tidbit. The great Muddy Waters played at the White House Staff Picnic at the request of President Jimmy Carter on August 9, 1978

Blues and boogie-woogie pianist Robert Shaw was born on August 9, 1908.  He learned a barrelhouse style of playing from musicians in the Fourth Ward, Houston. In the 1920s Shaw was part of the "Santa Fe Circuit", named after touring musicians utilizing the Santa Fe freight trains. In 1933 he hosted a radio show in Oklahoma City, which also the home base of our band, Big Train and the Loco Motives. Shaw relocated to Austin's Blackland neighborhood, owning a grocery in partnership with his wife Martha, and in 1962 he was named the black businessman of the year in Austin.

Well blues fans, we just covered some of the highlights here. If you want to know more about these artists or other things that happened this week in the blues, be sure to follow our social media pages or visit our website at Big Train Blues.com. We’ll have a new episode next week and we’ll cover inventor Leo Fender and blues guitar giant Son Seals – we’ll see you then!