Big Road Blues Show 4/22/18: Going To Your Funeral In A Vee Eight Ford – Buddy Moss & Pals

ARTIST	SONG	ALBUM
Buddy Moss	Cold Country Blues	Buddy Moss Vol. 1 1933
Buddy Moss	Bye Bye Mama	The Essential
Buddy Moss	T.B.'s Killing Me	Buddy Moss Vol. 1 1933
Georgia Cotton Pickers	She's Coming Back Some Cold Rainy Day	The Voice Of The Blues
Georgia Cotton Pickers	She Looks So Good	The Great Race Record Labels Vol. 2
Buddy Moss	Hard Road Blues	The Slide Guitar Vol. 2
Buddy Moss	Jealous Hearted Man	The Essential
Buddy Moss	Can't Use You No More	The Essential
Buddy Moss	Stinging Bull Nettle	The Essential
Buddy Moss	New Lovin' Blues	Buddy Moss Vol. 2 1933-1934
Buddy Moss	Tricks Ain't Walking No More	The Essential
The Georgia Browns	Joker Man Blues	The Essential
The Georgia Browns	Decatur Street 81	The Slide Guitar Vol. 2
Georgia Cotton Pickers	Diddle-Da-Diddle	The Voice Of The Blues
Buddy Moss	Jinx Man Blues	The Essential
Buddy Moss	Oh Lordy Mama	The Essential
Buddy Moss	Dough Rolling Papa	The Essential
Buddy Moss	Someday Baby (I'll Have Mine)	Buddy Moss Vol. 2 1933-1934
Buddy Moss	Mistreated Boy	The Essential
Buddy Moss	Going To Your Funeral In A Vee Eight Ford	Buddy Moss Vol. 3 1935-1941
Ruth Willis	Man Of My Own	Bottleneck Blues Guitar Classics
Brownie McGhee	Swing, Soldier, Swing #2	The Complete Brownie McGhee
Buddy Moss	Little Angel Blues	Buddy Moss Vol. 3 1935-1941
Buddy Moss	Joy Rag	The Essential
Buddy Moss	Struggle Buggie	The Essential
Buddy Moss & Josh White	Talking About My Time	Josh White Vol. 3 1935-1941
Curley Weaver & Buddy Moss	Broke Down Engine No. 2	The Essential
The Georgia Browns	Who Stole De Lock?	Curly Weaver 1933-1935
The Georgia Browns	Next Door Man	The Essential
Buddy Moss	Unfinished Business	The Roots Of It All - Acoustic Blues The 1940's
Buddy Moss	I'm Sittin' Here Tonight	Good Time Blues
Buddy Moss	Too Dog Gone Jealous	The Essential
Buddy Moss	Amy	The Roots Of It All - Acoustic Blues The 1960's
Buddy Moss	I Got a Woman, Don't Mean Me No Good	Atlanta Blues Legend

Show Notes:

Buddy Moss 1930’s Promo Photo

 

Buddy Moss was a key player in the fertile early Atlanta blues scene but who’s name often gets overlooked, over shadowed by contemporaries like Blind Willie McTell and Barbecue Bob. Moss was a talented harmonica player in his teens, and took up guitar after he moved to Atlanta in 1928 and began associating with Barbecue Bob, Charley Lincoln, and Curley Weaver. He advanced quickly on the instrument and within a few years was one of the Southeast’s foremost blues performers. By the mid 1930’s, his output of records rivaled that of Blind Willie McTell, with whom he occasionally performed. Between 1935 and 1941 he waxed over sixty sides as well as performing in related groups such as the Georgia Cotton Pickers and the Georgia Browns as well playing on record alongside Curley Weaver, Josh White Brownie McGhee and Ruth Willis. In 1941 Moss killed his girlfriend and was sent to prison serving at least some of his time in the Green County Convict Camp. Jack Delano, a photographer for the U.S. Farm Security Administration, photographed him there in May or June 1941, playing guitar for a buck-dancing convict. With the death of Blind Boy Fuller in 1941, J.B. Long, a record company talent scout who’d worked with Fuller, helped secure Moss’ release. In October 1941, Moss attempted to resurrect his career, recording three OKeh 78’s in New York City. Five weeks after this session, Pearl Harbor was attacked and the United States entered World War II. With it came a ban on most recordings, and Moss’ session work came to a halt. He was never able to regain the momentum he’d had in the 1930’s. Moss was recorded sporadically during the 1960’s blues revival and into the 70’s but never attained the the same fame that performers like Mississippi John Hurt, Son House or Bukka White did.

Buddy was born in 1914 between Augusta and Atlanta in the town of Jewell. His father sharecropper in Hancock County and when Buddy was four years old, he moved to the Sand Hill section of Augusta. At a very young age Moss began playing the harmonica. In 1928 he moved to Atlanta with his mother, and at the age of fourteen played his harmonica with Barbecue Bob. During his “tenure” with Barbecue Bob, Buddy picked up on the guitar. As a guitarist, Buddy will admit to being strongly influenced by Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake. As Pete Lowry notes “many in the blues field considered Buddy to be ‘another Blind Boy Fuller copier’ due to stylistic similarities. This idea must now be discarded, for Fuller was only thirty-two when he died in 1941, and Buddy had never met him.” “Nobody was my influence,” Moss said to Val Wilmer. “I just kept hearing people, so I listen and I listen, and listen, and it finally come to me.”

At his recording debut in December 1930, the legendary Georgia Cotton Pickers sessions with Curley Weaver and Barbecue Bob, Moss played harmonica on all four tracks: “I’m on My Way Down Home,” “Diddle-Da-Diddle,” “She Looks So Good,” and “She’s Coming Back Some Cold Rainy Day.” By January 1933, when he traveled to New York City to record for the American Record Company, Moss had developed a strong singing voice and superb fingerstyle approach on guitar. Over a four-day period, he made a slew of excellent 78’s that were issued on ARC, Banner, Oriole, Melotone, Perfect, Romeo, and Conqueror. On January 16th, he recorded songs under his own name – the unaccompanied “Daddy Don’t Care” and “Red River Blues,” and “Bye Bye Mama,” featuring slide by Fred McMullen. The following day, Curley Weaver accompanied Moss on his songs “Cold Country Blues” and “Prowling Woman,” and Moss may have been one of the two guitarists on Ruth Willis’ “I’m Still Sloppy Drunk” and “Man of My Own.” On the final day of his January 19th, 1933 session Moss cut four more songs credited to him, with slide support from Weaver or McMullen. Oddly, two of these songs – “Hard Time Blues” and “Hard Road Blues” – came out on Vocalion credited to “Jim Miller.” When Moss was done fronting these records, he switched to harmonica for seven songs with McMullen and Weaver. Four of these selections came out credited to The Georgia Browns, another was unissued, and “Next Door Man” b/w “Joker Man Blues” was credited to “Jim Miller.”

Buddy Moss’ 78’s from the January 1933 sessions sold well, and in September he was back in New York City for a week of sessions with Curley Weaver and Blind Willie McTell. Over the course of six days, Moss recorded another dozen sides with Curley Weaver, playing without a slide, on second guitar. ARC credited these releases to “Buddy Moss and Partner.” A testament to Buddy Moss’ ability to sell records, he was the only Atlanta bluesman to record in 1934. Once again recording for ARC in New York City, he cut 18 unaccompanied tracks between July 30 and August 11th.

Buddy Moss 1941 convict camp at Greene County, Georgia. Photo by Jack Delano.

 

For his final ARC sessions, Moss returned to New York City in August 1935. Josh White, originally from South Carolina, joined him in the studio. In all, Moss recorded seven issued 78’s. He played solo on some songs, including his popular “Going to Your Funeral in a Vee Eight Ford,” while others featured Josh White’s accompaniment. Moss, in turn, played second guitar for White, who played spirituals that came out credited to “Joshua White (The Singing Christian).” In a 1972 interview with Valerie Wilmer, Moss said that his best songs “financially” were 1933’s “When I’m Dead and Gone” and 1935’s “Going to Your Funeral in a Vee Eight Ford.” Moss added, “I’d say that ’round in the ’30’s, it was grand for me, but it was tough on other peoples.”

In 1935 Buddy disappeared from the recording scene. As Pete Lowry wrote: “Buddy Moss was always a suspicious and bitter man, for whatever reasons, at the best of times and 1935 was not the best of times for him. Roger Brown (George Mitchell’s initial field-work running buddy) in the 70s located court/police documentation of what happened, while talks with Roy Dunn, Cora Mae Bryant, Frank Edwards, a.o. fleshed out the story. Moss thought that his girlfriend at the time was cheating on him…so he shot her… three times… and killed her. This resulted in incarceration in N.E. Georgia and his disappearance from the recording scene.”

With the death of Blind Boy Fuller in 1941, J.B. Long, a record company talent scout who’d worked with Fuller, helped secure Moss’ release. Pete Lowry wrote that  “J. B. Long told us the story, he found out where Buddy was in jail and proceeded to bribe the local parole board. Before he could capitalize on that, the board was disbanded for accepting bribes and so he had to do the same thing with the new parole board! Eventually, Moss was released into his custody with the understanding that he be taken out of Georgia for ten years.” He went to work for Long at the city of Elon College, North Carolina, and through Long met Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. In October 1941, Moss attempted to resurrect his career, recording three OKeh 78s in New York City. Five weeks after this session, Pearl Harbor was attacked and the United States entered World War II. With it came a ban on most recordings, and Moss’ session work came to a halt. He was never able to regain the momentum he’d had in the 1930’s. He played around Virginia and North Carolina during the 1940’s.Unfortunately Moss wasn’t in Atlanta in 1949, due to conditions of his parole, when several Atlanta artists such as Blind Willie McTell, Curley Weaver, David Wylie and Frank Edwards were recorded. Moss returned to Atlanta in the early 1950’s, where he occasionally teamed up with Curley Weaver. Mostly, though, he supported himself outside of music, working at various times as a farmer, truck driver, and elevator operator.

Front cover of Talking Blues #6 (July/Aug./Sept. 1977). Photo by Val Wilmer

 

In the spring of 1963 George Mitchell found and recorded Buddy Moss in Atlanta. The Atlanta Folk Music Society sponsored him in a series of concerts, and he recorded a session for Columbia Records, but this was not issued during his lifetime. Songs from his June 1966 concert in Washington, D.C., were issued on the Biograph LP Atlanta Blues Legend, and he appeared at the 1969 Newport Folk Festival. Over time, Moss acquired the reputation of being difficult to deal with. Evidence of this can be found in the title of an interview by Robert Springer published in Blues Unlimited in 1976: “So I Said ‘The Hell with It’: A Difficult Interview with Eugene ‘Buddy’ Moss.” Moss had other opportunities to record during this period including offers by Pete Lowry in the 70’s and Axel Künster but both fell through for one reason or another. He continued to make concert appearances through the mid 1970s. Buddy was recorded playing at the Berea College Celebration of Traditional Music, 1975-1978 and for the Atlanta Historical Society’s Ain’t Just Whistlin’ Dixie exhibit in 1977. When Valerie Wilmer asked him in the 1970’s about his old colleagues, Moss responded, “I worked with Barbecue Bob and Curley Weaver, but practically all the old guys are dead. I was more or less a loner after they died – in fact, I’ve been a loner practically all my life.” Moss remained a guarded man until his death on October 19, 1984.

All of Buddy’s recordings have been reissued, three volumes on the Document label with acceptable to poor sound but the best bet is Document’s 2-CD Essential Buddy Moss with far superior sound. There are select recordings scattered on various anthologies some with quite good remastering. Back in the vinyl days there were three fine LP’s that came out on the Travelin’ Man label which boast a good set of notes by Bruce Bastin.