“Future Blues” - Willie Brown (1930)
Sorry for the lack of updates during the last couple of days but I was out of town.
Today’s posting is one of only two known commercial recordings of the famous Willie Brown recorded for the Paramount label in 1930. Unfortunately the name Willie Brown may be more familiar to most of you as being the name of the older character in the horrible Ralph Macchio movie “Crossroads”.
The real Willie Brown was a musician that, although he rarely performed as a “front man”, backed up with some of the finest blues musicians ever including Son House, Robert Johnson, and (my favorite) Charlie Patton.
Willie Brown was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi on August 6, 1900. Not much of Brown’s early biography is known although David Evans has reconstructed the early biography of Willie Brown living in Drew, Mississippi until 1929. He was married by 1911 to a proficient guitarist named Josie Mills. He is recalled as singing and playing guitar with Charlie Patton and others in the neighbourhood of Drew. Informants with conflicting memories led Gayle Dean Wardlow and Steve Calt to conclude that this was a different Willie Brown. Evans rejects this, believing that the singing and guitar style of the 1931 recordings is clearly in the tradition of other performers from Drew such as Charlie Patton, Tommy Johnson, Kid Bailey, Howling Wolf and artists recorded non-commercially.
Brown’s later biography is clear. Willie Brown the Paramount artist lived in Robinsonville, Mississippi from 1929 and moved to Lake Cormorant, Mississippi by 1935. He performed occasionally with Charlie Patton, and continually with Son House until his death. After this, House ceased performing until his “rediscovery” in 1964.
Brown died in Tunica, Mississippi on December 30, 1952 at the age of 52.
“Future Blues” was recorded on May 28th, 1930 in Grafton, Wisconsin for the “Paramount” label.
