Louis Guida and the 1976 Blues Field Recordings
- Ninfa O. Barnard
- Jun 25
- 4 min read
In the spring of 1976, former Pine Bluff Commercial writer Louis Guida recorded blues artists all across Arkansas to produce the 1983 blues album Keep It to Yourself, Arkansas Blues Volume 1: Solo Performances. 33 years later, he utilized the 1976 recordings, producing Meet Me in the Bottom: Arkansas Blues, Volume 2 - The Bands.
In the spring of 1976, former Pine Bluff Commercial writer Louis Guida began driving across Arkansas in search of the blues with photographer Cheryl Cohen, musician William Black, and recording equipment. Though Guida had initially taken the job with the Commercial because he thought he would be able to write articles about blues in the Delta, his normal journalism duties never coincided with his love for the blues. Consequently, Guida took another route. He applied for and received the Bicentennial grant from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. With this grant in hand, Guida set off to record blues musicians wherever he could find them, whether that be juke joints, prisons, or their own homes.
In 1983, Guida was able to produce an album entitled "Keep It to Yourself, Arkansas Blues Volume 1: Solo Performances" on the Rooster Blues record label, utilizing these field recordings. Keep It to Yourself featured 22 intimate tracks, stripped down, and performed in a solo setting. These tracks include some of the first official releases of Arkansas blues giant CeDell Davis. On the album, Davis’ covers of “Let Me Play With Your Poodle,” ”How Much More?” along with his songs “Lonely Nights” and “Big G Boogie” stand out.
Keep It to Yourself also featured songs from lesser-known artists, including W.C. Clay, Willie Wright, Nelson Carson, Reola Jackson, Mack White, Willie Moore, Herbert Wilson, and Trenton Cooper. The album opens with Clay’s stripped-down take of the “King Biscuit Time Opening Theme” before he moves on to Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Keep It to Yourself” and others. Track Five is the chilling, acapella cover of Bobby Bland’s “I’ll Take Care of You” by Reola Jackson of Little Rock, recorded at the Arkansas Department of Corrections Women’s Unit at Cummins prison, where Jackson was an inmate. Guitarist Nelson Carson of Ashdown and Texarkana provides lessons in black music with the ragtime “Roaring Twenties Rag” and “Old Time March.” Wright breathes new life into the folk classic “John Henry” and thrills on his guitar with Muddy Waters’ “Standing Around Crying.” In 1984, the Library of Congress selected the album as an Outstanding Folk Recording.
In 2016, 33 years after Volume 1’s release, Guida finally secured a grant from the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in Little Rock to produce a follow-up album entitled Meet Me in the Bottom: Arkansas Blues, Volume 2 - The Bands. Volume 2 was released on the Stackhouse Recording Co. label run by Jim O’Neal, who issued the first album on his Rooster Blues record label. Volume 2 also includes recordings from the 1976 blues sessions.
Unlike Volume 1, Volume 2 features 15 tracks that are all about the bands. Volume 2 features blues groups like the Texarkana Five with Harmonica Slim on the title track and “Texarkana Hop,” Little Rock’s trio Queen Bee & the Soul Seekers, made up of sisters Essie, Mary, and Merrill Smith, singing “Shake Your Butt,” and the Cummins Prison Band’s version of King Biscuit Time radio show star Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Don’t Start Me Talkin.” Other tracks include Calvin Leavy’s take on “Consider Yourself,” recorded at the Party Lounge in North Little Rock, Sounds of Soul’s version of Willie Dixon’s “Red Rooster” and Duke Bradley’s “You Don’t Love Me,” recorded at the Jungle Hutt in Pine Bluff. Among the standouts on Volume 2 is Pine Bluff’s Duke Bradley, who performed “Same Thing They Did to Me,” ”Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven” and “You Don’t Love Me,” which were all recorded at the Jungle Hutt.
These two blues albums are unique because they break from the common assumption that Arkansas blues means only Delta blues by including tracks with Texas boogie and jazz influence. According to Guida, “That’s what makes Arkansas unique. You have not just this strong Delta tradition in east Arkansas, but you have this whole southwest tradition closer to Texas blues. The sound is very different. In Arkansas, because of its geography, you have both of those in the state. From the beginning, we wanted to look at the Texas influence.” Guida hopes Volume 2 will increase awareness of the strong, often overlooked blues tradition in Arkansas. In an interview with PressReader, Guida stated, “We hope it adds to the blues canon and that people will find it [to be] interesting and enjoyable music.”
Presently, the Butler Center houses all of Guida’s materials from his original tour of the Arkansas blues landscape, including video, notes, interviews, and 28 reel-to-reel tapes that hold more than 10 hours of music. The collection has also been digitized. Now the public can hear the depth and breadth of the work recorded by Guida and his team.
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Written by: Ninfa O. Barnard
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