Barbecue Bob – Complete Recorded Works 1927 – 1930 Vol. 1: (1927-1928)

Barbecue Bob (Robert Hicks)  Complete Recorded Works 25 March 1927 – 1 December 1930  Vol. 1: 25th March 1927 to 13th April 1928. Featuring the recordings of: Barbecue Bob (Robert Hicks), vocal / guitar. Barbecue Bob and Laughing Charley: Robert Hicks, vocal / guitar; Charlie Hicks (Lincoln), vocal / guitar

Abridged from this album’s original booklet notes. Robert Hicks was an extrovert young man of 24 when Columbia’s Dan Hornsby arranged his first recording session in March 1927 and had only moved into Atlanta from the countryside a few years before. When he recorded, Hicks was working as a chef at Tidwell’s Barbecue, and the company nicknamed him Barbecue Bob (using his real name as a pseudonym for his solitary gospel record!). He and his elder brother Charlie had learned guitar, along with their friend Curley Weaver, from Curley’s mother; all three played in a similar style, favouring the big, booming sound of the 12-string guitar, and relishing the contrast of pulsing bass riffs with the whine of a bottleneck on the treble strings. Barbecue Blues was a good seller, but it was at his second session, in New York in June 1927, that Bob firmly established himself with black record buyers,