Texas Alexander Vol 3 1930 – 1950

In 1934, on Deceitful Blues, he mentions that he was planning to exchange his Ford for an eight-cylinder Cadillac: “I’m gonna trade this Lincoln, get me a Cadillac Eight”, helped maybe, with the payment from his recent sessions. Vocalion had doubtless decided to develop a new image for their recently acquired singer, and the first title, Blues In My Mind was unexpectedly, something of a pop song. The images were pretty conventional: “I’m crying’, with tears in my eyes” etc. It’s tempting to assume that this was foisted upon him, but internal evidence suggest it was Alger’s own attempt at song writing, especially the phrase “left me all in a strain” which was one which is peculiar to him (he used it again on Katy Crossing Blues). Fortunately, after his brief essay in an unfamiliar and unsuitable idiom he settled into the kind of blues of which he was master. The accompaniment of his Sax Black Tams was unusual for him, though the clarinettist who revealed a strong New Orleans vein in his playing, was sensitive in his accompaniments and more than able in his solos. On Polo Blues Texas got into his stride, using the kind of verses that make his blues so singular. Apart from the sexual ambivalence in the final line, the localised imagery sets his blues firmly in rural Texas: a “polo” was a “polled” animal whose horns had been removed so that it’s “strength” would go into beef and milk. A note of protest enters Normangee Blues and though the identity of Mister Batson remains unclear, the comparison of their respective clothes must have been the kind of point that appealed to the black audiences. As a driver, Texas Alexander must have been aware of the “Safety First” campaign of the mid-1930s and amusingly applied it when he sang on Worried Blues “I’m gonna get myself a black woman and play ‘safety first’ “. He may never have been a “topical” singer, but he was far from insulated from his times. One Morning Blues opened with “one morning, when God begin to break his day. . .” and continued with a mention of Johnny Ryan, the plantation owner who, like Cunningham, worked the convict lease system to which Leadbelly referred. If the gang labour songs of his first sessions in 1927 had now been dispensed with, hints of them still remained.