Sleepy John Estes Brownsville Blues

Sleepy John Estes is one of the true poets of the blues, and Delmark has just issued Brownsville Blues. Included here are the first recordings he made after he was rediscovered in the early sixties, along with several later recordings with Hammie Nixon, Yank Rachell and others. Most of these recordings are solo, and while Estes' was never one of the great blues guitarists, his limited accompaniments are more than adequate to bolster his crying vocals.

Another unusual aspect of these recordings is that many of the songs are about the people and places of John's hometown, and while there are new versions of his classics Drop Down Mama, The Girl I Love (also known as Brownsville Blues, and related melodically to Roll and Tumble Blues), and Lawyer Clark, there are songs about Al Rawls, one of the leading black businessmen of Brownsville, songs about local women, Martha Hardin, and Vassie Williams, and about Pat Mann and his son, Pat Jr (Young Lawyer). Other songs are about the more mundane aspects of life and poverty, City Hall Blues, Government Money, andl Rats in My Kitchen.

These are not John Estes' greatest recordings (I believe the Yazoo compilation of his pre-World War II records is the best single collectionof his music), but with the inclusion of six previously unissued recordings, this is a valuable addition, and complements the other Delmark recordings of Estes.


I have made some minor changes to the review that originally appeared in 1992 in issue 177 of Jazz & Blues Report. Here is John Estes and Yank Rachell in 1966.