Be it bad women or bad living, bad choices or the bottle, life was always conspiring to slam a wedge between a bluesman and getting his due. Sometimes he'd toil his life away with a Resonator on his knee, eking it out from one nowhere gig to the next, only to wind up forgotten within hours of being planted. Sometimes the blues left him standing on the pavement, watching helplessly as his moment rolled right on passed him. The blues could be a voice of deliverance, but blues living could kill a man stone dead.
Let's talk about Baby Face Leroy Foster.
Foster turns up in Chicago, probably in 1945, one of a quarter million African Americans who would swell into the city between 1940 & 1950, looking for better jobs or a better life. An overwhelming number of these migrants would be from Mississippi, at a rate of 3:1 to its nearest rival, Tennessee. From that tide came virtually everyone who would play a role in the post-war Chicago blues.
Leroy wasn't from Mississippi, but he may as well have been. Born in Mobile, Alabama in 1923, he spent his entire childhood in the flyspeck hamlet of Coffeeville, just north of Grenada, MS. He probably picked up the guitar there, while hanging out with his cousins, Johnnie Jones and Little Willie Foster. He had added drums to his repertoire by the time he was in Chicago, but where he began on those remains a mystery. Maybe St. Louis. Maybe Memphis. He'd fallen in with Little Walter Jacobs in St. Louis and they would make the journey to Chicago together, joined by Johnnie Jones.
It was not a gentle passage.
"They had it pretty rugged getting in," Homesick James Williamson remembers. "Johnny did tell me one time, he said that him and Baby Face Leroy...had rode the train for so far, y'know, they didn't have any money. He say they had to stop, had to work the cornfields or something, y'know, pulling corn, loading trucks, something like that."
Johnny Shines was more light-hearted in his recollections. "They said they walked from St. Louis to Chicago and...Little Walter's feet were swolled up like two loaves of bread!"
Chicago was already a blues town long before the war. The city the southern migrants found themselves in was the domain of Tampa Red, of Memphis Minnie, and Big Bill Broonzy, every last one of them southern born themselves and all, apparently, encouraging to the new arrivals. Baby Face Leroy wasted little time in making his in-roads. He spends Sundays on Maxwell Street, often with Little Walter, and almost certainly making connections there as well. Before the year is out, he shows up on the Chicago label, backing Lee Brown on
My Little Girl Blues (b/w
Bobbie Town Boogie) and is getting regular work in the clubs and house rent parties, playing alongside Brown, Sunnyland Slim, and Sonny Boy Williamson.
By the end of '46, Foster is playing these clubs with Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers. Baby Face hooked up with Muddy through acquaintances some months before, following Muddy's first recording session. Muddy would record twice in '46 and neither session even began to reflect what he, Jimmy and Leroy were doing in the clubs, and it was in the clubs that they were making their presence known. Working as a trio, Leroy would sometimes play guitar, sometimes drum, leaving Rogers to alternate between his guitar and (mostly)harmonica. Just a few short months later, in 1947, they would add one more to their number and started becoming the sound Chicago blues would be heading for.
"I heard this harmonica one Sunday morning--woke me up!" Jimmy Rogers remembered. "I put my clothes on and went down in the crowd on Maxwell Street." ...Where he found Little Walter blowing that vicious harp.
They had met briefly before in Arkansas, when Walter was still a boy, though at 17, he was scarcely more than that then. At 22, Rogers didn't have much of a lead on him. Walter was playing with a bassist, guitarist, and drummer that morning, but it was Walter's sound, that fat, kinetic wail, that was the only real stand-out. Rogers took Walter to Muddy that day.
Having traveled north together, Walter and Baby Face Leroy were hardly strangers, but this was no mere reunion. By folding Little Walter into the trio, the roles became more fixed. Jimmy kept to the guitar, astutely giving his harp duties to Walter. Leroy, whose guitar skills were little better than marginal anyway, filled the drum slot. Out in front was Muddy Waters and that trademark, low-down slide. They would all share vocal duties and the spotlight. In this line-up, more often functioning as each other's sidemen, Foster would have been crucial--and it played right to his strengths.
"His man talents," Mike Rowe wrote in
Chicago Breakdown, "were drinking, singing, and clowning and he was very popular." Foster's extant sides attest to this "show-off showmanship," and his natural exuberance and mischief shine through on even his deeper numbers. This cat loved to play. He had a voice that slips right under your skin, that "got to people." It was warm, familiar, and slicker than greased owlshit.
If even a fraction of the hype around this period is to be believed, they were a lethal combination. "There were four of us," Muddy said, "and that's when we began hitting heavy."
For all practical purposes, they were the house band at the legendary Zanzibar nightclub (Muddy would call this joint home until '54), but they are mostly remembered from this period as being informally known as "the Headhunters."
(from Robert Gordon's wonderful Muddy Waters bio,
Can't Be Satisfied...)
"'We used to go around calling ourselves the Headhunters,' said Muddy. 'We'd go from club to club looking for bands that are playing and cut their heads. "Here come them boys," they'd say.'
'We used to do it for kicks,'said Jimmy Rogers, 'to keep from sitting around at home. As soon as we'd get to a place, somebody would want us to play. We wold go to the car and maybe get an amp...and set up and jam a few numbers. We could take the gig if we wanted it, but it wasn't paying nothing, so we just drink and have some fun. That would mean a bigger crowd for us on the places that we were playing on weekends, because we'd announce where we were...And other bands, they would be glad for us to come around, because they were trying to get into the beat we had...'"
It was in these clubs and broom closet taverns, and most especially among the newer arrivals, that the blues was going through one of its most vibrant transformations. And it was more than electricity. Much like the folks who were packing the clubs, the music was becoming urbanized without trying to be urbane. It was propellant. Bluesmen had been playing in ensemble arrangements all along, but this was a whole other animal, an electric blues band and through the closing years of that decade, if folks were seeing it in the clubs, they weren't hearing it on the radio.
Nothing turns a record producer's knees to pisswater more quickly than the suggestion of change. If you had a formula that worked, and records that were selling, you wouldn't be anxious to tamper with the recipe--even when Business 101 tells you all along that if you wished to remain in business you supplied your market's demands and changed with them. In this instance, the brothers Chess at Aristocrat were very resistant to messing around with their formula, at the very moment it was being good to them.
Aristocrat was banking on Muddy Waters and, from
Gypsy Woman in '47 on through the end of the decade, the tunes they were having Muddy record sounded more like electrified Delta than much of what he was playing live.
His fellow three Headhunters were nowhere in evidence. Most of Muddy's records through this period have him accompanied by Ernest "Big" Crawford on bass. In April, '48 that two-piece "electric country" sound produced a bonafide regional hit with Aristocrat 1305,
I Can't Be Satisfied, b/w
I Feel Like Going Home. The success of that record especially could not have helped promote the "new sound" because nothing screams "don't f*ck with this recipe!" so succinctly as having a hit on your hands.
Though they would be slow to acquiesce, the Chess brothers would start listening to the advocacy of their own musicians. On the last day of November, 1948, Muddy and Crawford would be joined in the studio by Baby Face Leroy Foster on second guitar. Eight sides were cut that day and there weren't a dog in that kennel. Six, including
Streamline Woman, Standing Here Tremblin' and the instrumental
Muddy Jumps One would be Muddy's. Two,
Locked Out Boogie and
Shady Grove Blues, would be released as "Leroy Foster and Muddy Waters." Sound issues aside, they remain a treat.
It would be Leroy's only record on Aristocrat, though he would appear on another trio of Muddy's sides, also featuring Jimmy Rogers, in the summer of '49.
By focusing so heavily on a stripped-down Muddy, Aristocrat as leaving his fellow Headhunters on the sidelines. Clearly if they were looking to see themselves on record more, they would have to be looking elsewhere. Little Walter cuts a record for the minuscule Ora-Nelle label. Baby Face cuts one for J.O.B..
My Head Can't Rest No More b/w
Take a Little Walk With Me had Leroy backed by Snooky Pryor on harp and Alfred Elkins on bass.
While the Headhunters were scattered across the small Chicago labels through this time-frame, they were still holding High Mass at the Zanzibar.
At the end of '49, following his J.O.B. record, Leroy was brought on board the fledgling Parkway label. Parkway, like many of the new local labels, showed a lot of promise and seemed committed to the local talent.
In January, 1950, the same month they founded, Parkway held a recording session at a location described as either a warehouse or a studio inside a warehouse. The eight sides recorded there would prove the only reason Parkway is even remembered today. Jimmy Rogers' presence has been debated (I personally don't think he was...), but most certainly in the house were Baby Face Leroy, Muddy Waters, and Little Walter. For all practical purposes, this was the Headhunters caught in the act. Parkway would split these releases up the middle, releasing four (two records) as the Little Walter Trio and the remaining 4 as the Baby Face Leroy Trio. They were rock-solid outings, front to back. Fine as they are, it would prove the two-part
Rollin' and Tumblin' that would edge this session into blues legend.
The tune had been banging around the blues for years by the time they cut it, but for me it remains its definitive version. The vocals on Side A are kept to groans and guffaws, building to a frenetic tension that finds its pay-off with the Saturday night frolic vibe of its flip side.
Aristocrat was not impressed.
"Leonard (Chess) didn't want Muddy to use that slide on any other label," Jimmy Rogers remembered, "but here's Muddy slipped off and cut this thing and Leonard heard it, y'know. Then Muddy had to record the same number by himself on Chess."
Aristocrat 412, with just Muddy and Big Crawford was released in February, right on the heels of the Parkway release. Parkway couldn't even begin to compete with Aristocrat's distribution and had no real means with which to compete. Their original
Rollin' and Tumblin' was buried.
Somewhere between April and June, 1950, Parkway tanked altogether, leaving Foster on the pavement. It would be, coincidentally, the same month that Leonard Chess finally put Little Walter into the studio with Muddy. It wouldn't be until the end of '51 that they managed to assemble anything resembling Muddy's club band, featuring jazz drummer turned blues mainstay Elgin Edmonds on the kit. Foster was long gone by this time.
Baby Face quit Muddy's band shortly after signing with Parkway, sure his records there would make him a bandleader. One could hardly blame him. His bandmate's label wouldn't record him, then had squelched his records when he went elsewhere.
He never did manage to get it together. Tempting as it might be to thump one's chest over the Greek tragedy of it all, man crushed down by big (or at least bigger) business, I don't believe the trajectory of Leroy's life bears this out. Going into the 1950's, Foster was on par or slightly ahead of most of his contemporaries. Most of these fellow bluesmen managed to weather far worse setbacks--and few could boast as much success as had Leroy. What we are seeing is Foster on the front end of a slide from which he will not recover.
He gigs for a while at the Club Jamboree with Homesick James and Snooky Pryor but little comes of it. Baby Face's reputation as a "good-time drinker" was giving way to his rep as an unreliable one. He records for J.O.B. twice more, in '51 & '52,backed by Sunnyland Slim and Robert Lockwood. If Foster was declining as rapidly as testimony suggests, it is in little evidence on these J.O.B. sides. Fact is, brief as his stay may have been, I don't believe Baby Face Leroy Foster produced a bad record.
"Oohhh," he laments on his final side, "the blues been killing me..."
They would indeed. Everything sort of fizzles for Leroy at this point. By 1955 he is drinking full time and has drifted away from music altogether. On May 26, 1958 he is pronounced Dead On Arrival at Billings Hospital in Chicago. He was 35 and his death was attributed to a heart attack, though no record of his passing has been found in any Clark County records. He is nonetheless buried at Oak Fern Cemetery in Griffith, Indiana.
By default, the best compilation of Foster's work is the Classics label's
The Chronological 1948-1952. It is a bit of a misnomer as it does not include any of the Muddy/Aristocrat sides Leroy appeared on, nor does it include any of the scattered recordings he did behind the likes of Sunnyland Slim and Floyd Jones. The 16 tracks that are collected here, however, are a treasure chest. Included on the Classics disc are Foster's 2 Aristocrat sides, his 6 on J.O.B., and all the Parkway material. So assembled, it is an impressive display of the Chicago blues in the middle of one of its most fabled transitions. It is an invaluable review of one of the blues' truly under-appreciated artists.
Peace, Mudcatz
Baby Face Leroy Foster--The Chronological 1948-1952 Classics 5137
01 - Locked Out Boogie
02 - Shady Grove Blues
03 - My Head Can't Rest Anymore
04 - Take A Little Walk With Me
05 - Bad Actin' Woman
06 - I Just Keep Loving Her
07 - Boll Weevil
08 - Rollin' And Tumblin', Part 1
09 - Rollin' And Tumblin', Part 2
10 - Red Headed Woman
11 - Muskadine Blues (Take A Walk With Me)
12 - Moon-Shine Blues Moonshine Baby
13 - Pet Rabbit
14 - Louella
15 - Late Hours At Midnight
16 - Blues Is Killin' Me
Featuring Baby Face Leroy Foster, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Sunnyland Slim, Snooky Pryor, Robert Lockwood, Jr., Big Crawford, and Alfred Elkins.
Link
When Big Mama Thornton went to jail in the autumn of 1971, she was rolling with a tour that featured both Muddy Waters and Big Joe Turner. They cut an arc across the Pacific Northwest, playing a battery of shows at universities and state prison facilities. Footage of this tour survives and it provided the material for a pair of concert releases, one each from Muddy Waters and Big Mama Thornton. Muddy's recordings popped up in 1999, on Blind Pig's The Lost Tapes. A quarter century earlier, Big Mama inaugurated her stay with Vanguard Records with her contributions from that tour, culled from a pair of dates at the Oregon State Reformatory in Eugene and Monroe State Prison in Monroe, Washington. Released in 1975, it was titled simply Jail.
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