If Geeshie Wiley (see ABON 0149) was the most talented female Early Blues singer/guitarist then Memphis Minnie was the most popular.

 Just like Geeshie, Minnie played guitar brilliantly, sang with a voice as strong and as loud as many of her male peers and, at least in the early years, was accompanied by a second guitarist. But while Geeshie recorded just six tracks in 1930 and 1931 and then disappeared, Minnie was a major commercial success, recording over one hundred 78s between 1929 and the mid 1950s.

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Richard Thompson was born in London in 1949. But his father was Scottish and, as a teenager growing up in the 50s and early 60s, Richard was not only exposed to Rock’n'Roll, and then Rock, but also to his father’s apparently extensive collection of traditional Scottish music and Jazz.

Which helps to explain why, although Richard is often described as a Rock guitarist, his songs actually don’t sound very ‘Rock’ at all when you listen closely.

His love for unusual non-Blues-based tunings has a Jazz feel to it. The drone-like hums in his guitar-playing, and even in his songs’ vocals, sound like they were ’inspired’ by years of Scottish bag-pipe indoctrination. And his distinctly non-Rock melodies and subject matter often seem to have more in common with traditional Scottish or Gaelic singing than Elvis.

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Casey Jones was an American railwayman who, in 1900, while racing his train to make up for lost time, saw another stationary train on the track ahead. He ordered his fireman, Sim Webb, to jump off the moving train but refused to do so himself. Instead he died while bravely remaining on board trying to stop his train and blowing its warning whistle as it ploughed into the rear of the one ahead.

Furry Lewis was an itinerant Medicine Show musician who, in 1917, while jumping onto a moving train in order to avoid paying the fare, got his foot caught in a coupling and lost a leg. He continued making his living as a travelling guitarist and singer until 1923 when he finally decided that touring was just too difficult and settled down in Memphis as a street sweeper.   

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