Buddy Moss – Complete Recorded Works 1933 – 1941 Vol 1 (1933)

Buddy Moss, vocal /guitar; probably Fred McMullen, 2nd guitar on 1; Ruth Willis, speech on 1. Buddy Moss, vocal /guitar; probably Curley Weaver, 2nd guitar. Buddy Moss, vocal /guitar; probably Curley Weaver, 2nd guitar on 8, 9, 10; probably Fred McMullen, 2nd guitar on 11. Buddy Moss, vocal /guitar; Curley Weaver, 2nd guitar. Buddy Moss, vocal /guitar; Curley Weaver, guitar; Blind Willie McTell, speech on 19,20. Buddy Moss, vocal /guitar; Curley Weaver, guitar.

Genres: Blues, Country Blues, Georgia Blues, Piedmont Blues, Country Blues Guitar, Bottleneck-slide Guitar, Ragtime Guitar,

Abridged from this album’s original booklet notes. Eugene “Buddy” Moss was one month short of his seventeenth birthday when Robert “Barbecue Bob” Hicks took him along for a recording session with Columbia records at the Campbell Hotel in Atlanta as harmonica player with the Georgia Cotton Pickers (DOCD- 5048). Moss had only moved to Atlanta from Augusta a few years before and this brief introduction to recording, at such an impressionable age, was no doubt instrumental in sealing his future as a full-time blues musician. Born in 1914, the Moss family moved to Augusta in 1918 but from there the young Buddy Moss struck out on his own, heading for Atlanta where he arrived during 1928. He had taught himself harmonica as a child, “Nobody was my influence. I just kept hearing people, so I listen and I listen, and listen and it finally come to me”. It was probably his adeptness on the instrument that got him noticed by Curley Weaver and Barbecue Bob and secured for him that all important recording date at the Campbell Hotel. On record nothing more was heard of Moss until January 1933 when he travelled to New York in company with Curley Weaver, Fred McMullen and Ruth Willis for a series of recordings for ARC. In the intervening years he seemed to have taught himself the guitar and had become a proficient enough vocalist to warrant recording in his own right. The sessions were held over a four day period and split between the four artists — the better known and more experienced Weaver getting the lion’s share of the work (DOCD-5110 / 5111). Buddy Moss cut only eleven titles during those four days and, unlike those of his three companions, all saw release. In later years Moss stated that his initial guitar influence was Barbecue Bob but if the style of these 1933 recordings is any indication it would appear that it came more from Blind Blake than Bob, as can be clearly discerned on the traditional Piedmont number, Red River, while Blake’s vocal mannerisms are also apparent, most noticeably on Prowling Woman. Interestingly, Daddy Don’t Care, is highly reminiscent of Blind Boy Fuller‘s style, in particular Fuller’s 1939 recording, You’ve Got Something There. Since Fuller’s recording debut was two years after Buddy Moss‘s, maybe Moss provided Blind Boy Fuller with his model. During one of the 1933 sessions, that of 19th January, The Georgia Browns were born. The Browns were an aggregation similar in concept to that of the Georgia Cotton Pickers with Moss reverting to harmonica and, of the six titles cut, two featured Buddy Moss on lead vocal (DOCD-5111). The following months saw the fruits of Moss’s sessions being released on numerous ARC’s budget labels simultaneously — Banner, Oriole, Perfect, Romeo and Melotone. These, reputedly, sold better than the records of Weaver, McMullen or Willis. Perhaps it was for this reason that in September Buddy Moss returned to the New York studio, though this time in company with Weaver and Blind Willie McTell. Between 14th and 21st September Buddy Moss recorded a further thirteen titles as well as partaking in the sessions of both McTell and Weaver. The exact combinations in which each played behind one another is hard to fathom. Moss’s recollection was that when one sang the other two accompanied but aural evidence would tend to suggest that for his own recordings Moss was accompanied by his and Weaver’s guitars only.

DOCD-5123