William Shade Jr. (February 5, 1898 – September 18, 1966), known as Will Shade, was a

Memphis blues The Memphis blues is a style of blues music created from the 1910s to the 1930s by musicians in the Memphis area, such as Frank Stokes, Sleepy John Estes, Furry Lewis and Memphis Minnie. The style was popular in vaudeville and medicine shows a ...

musician, best known for his leadership of the

Memphis Jug Band The Memphis Jug Band was an American band (music), musical group active from the mid-1920s to the late-1950s. The band featured harmonica, kazoo, fiddle and mandolin or banjolin, backed by guitar, piano, washboard (musical instrument), washboard, w ...

. He was commonly called Son Brimmer, a nickname from his grandmother Annie Brimmer (''son'' is short for ''grandson''). The name apparently stuck when other members of the band noticed that the ''sun'' bothered him and he used the ''brim'' of a hat to ''shade'' his eyes.

Early life

Shade was born in February 1898 in

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...

, to William Shade and Mary ( Brimmer). Mary was fourteen years old when he was born. After her husband's death from a gunshot wound in 1903, she married a member of the Banks family, but by 1920 she was a widow once again. Shade had two half brothers, Henry Banks and Robert Banks. He credited his mother with teaching him how to play the harmonica, his first instrument.

Biography

Shade first heard jug band music in 1925, recorded by the

Dixieland Jug Blowers The Dixieland Jug Blowers were a popular American musical group of the 1920s. The group was a jug band, incorporating the usual jug, banjo, guitar and fiddle, but it was also considered as a jazz band due to its use of alto saxophone, trombone, pian ...

, from

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...

. He was excited by what he heard and felt that bringing this style of music to his hometown of Memphis could be promising. He persuaded a few local musicians, though still reluctant, to join him in creating one of the first jug bands in Memphis. The original Memphis Jug Band consisted of Shade and three others: Lionhouse, whom Shade converted from a whiskey bottle blower to a jug blower; Tee Wee Blackman on guitar; and Ben Ramey on kazoo. Shade played the guitar, the "bullfiddle" (

washtub bass The washtub bass, or gutbucket, is a stringed instrument used in American folk music that uses a metal washtub as a resonator. Although it is possible for a washtub bass to have four or more strings and tuning pegs, traditional washtub basses hav ...

), and the harmonica, the instrument on which he was most influential. His pure

country blues Country blues (also folk blues, rural blues, backwoods blues, or downhome blues) is one of the earliest forms of blues music. The mainly solo vocal with acoustic fingerstyle guitar accompaniment developed in the rural Southern United States in t ...

harmonica style served as the foundation for later renowned harmonicists like

Big Walter Horton Walter Horton (April 6, 1921 – December 8, 1981), known as Big Walter (Horton) or Walter 'Shakey' Horton, was an American blues harmonica player. A quiet, unassuming, shy man, he is remembered as one of the premier harmonica players in the hi ...

Sonny Boy Williamson I John Lee Curtis "Sonny Boy" Williamson (March 30, 1914 – June 1, 1948) was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter. He is often regarded as the pioneer of the blues harp as a solo instrument. He played on hundreds of rec ...

and

Sonny Boy Williamson II Alex or Aleck Miller (originally Ford, possibly December 5, 1912 – May 24, 1965), known later in his career as Sonny Boy Williamson, was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter. He was an early and influential blues harp st ...

;

Charlie Musselwhite Charles Douglas Musselwhite (born January 31, 1944) is an American electric blues harmonica player and bandleader, one of the white bluesmen who came to prominence, along with Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, and Elvin Bishop, as a pivotal f ...

credits him as a mentor. He composed many of the band's songs and sang lead vocal on a handful of their recordings. His distinctive guitar style has also been identified as that of the uncredited accompanist who backed the Sanctified Church gospel singer

Bessie Johnson Bessilyn Johnson (January 14, 1871 – April 22, 1943), known also as "Bessie" or "Mabel", was the wife of the Chicago millionaire Albert Johnson, a man who was variously the partner, friend and dupe of the famed American Old West figure De ...

on record. The Memphis Jug Band had a fluid membership during the nearly 40 years that it was active, recording under a number of names and in various styles ranging from blues and

rag Rag, rags, RAG or The Rag may refer to: Common uses * Rag, a piece of old cloth * Rags, tattered clothes * Rag (newspaper), a publication engaging in tabloid journalism * Rag paper, or cotton paper Arts and entertainment Film * ''Rags'' (1915 ...

s to

gospel Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words an ...

. All the while, Shade was the backbone of the group, as he was the one responsible for finding new members to keep the band going. The group performed a mixture of traditional and original material. Shade tried, whenever possible, to copyright his music under his name. Besides being the band's musical leader, he was also in charge of their business affairs, planning concerts and distributing income. At the band's peak, Shade worked on a weekly retainer with

Victor Records The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American recording company and phonograph manufacturer that operated independently from 1901 until 1929, when it was acquired by the Radio Corporation of America and subsequently operated as a subsidi ...

and was able to buy a house with his wife, the singer Jennie Mae Clayton, and $3000 worth of stock in Victor. He lost both the stock and the house shortly after the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

began in 1929. The band's visibility declined in the mid-1930s as a result of the overall decline in commercial recordings, a shift in musical taste toward more urbane swing music, and violence occurring in Memphis. Blues revivalists found Shade and his old partners still playing together into the early 1960s and released several field recordings under the name of the Memphis Jug Band. The band during this period usually included Shade's long-time friend Charlie Burse, whom he had hired in 1928 as a vocalist and tenor guitarist, and sometimes included his old rival

Gus Cannon Gustavus "Gus" Cannon (September 12, 1883 or 1884 – October 15, 1979) was an American blues musician who helped to popularize jug bands (such as his own Cannon's Jug Stompers) in the 1920s and 1930s. There is uncertainty about his birth year; ...

. Shade also performed as an accompanist on Cannon's "comeback" album, ''Walk Right In'', recorded by

Stax Records Stax Records is an American record company, originally based in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded in 1957 as Satellite Records, the label changed its name to Stax Records in 1961. It also shared its operations with sister label Volt Records. Stax was ...

in 1963. Shade died of

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severity ...

, at John Gaston Hospital, in Memphis, in 1966, aged 68, and was buried in Shelby County Cemetery. The fact that this is a public cemetery and full of unmarked graves, reveals Shade's poverty in his later years. In 2008 a group of musicians based at the

Old Town School of Folk Music The Old Town School of Folk Music is a Chicago teaching and performing institution that launched the careers of many notable folk music artists. Founded by Folk musicians Frank Hamilton and Win Stracke, and Dawn Greening, the School opened in the ...

held a fundraiser and purchased a headstone for his grave. The same group sponsored a "brass note" on the Beale Street walk of fame, dedicated on August 1, 2009. Shade's band was the first jug band to receive this honor.

Discography

The Memphis Jug Band recorded nearly 100 sides between 1927 and 1934, making it the most recorded of the pre-war jug bands. In the first four of these years, it recorded at least 60 songs for

. Over time, the band's style moved to a

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

ier beat, as evidenced by its final recordings, in 1934. Famous singles by the band include "Lindberg Hop", "On the Road Again", "Newport News Blues", "K.C. Moan", and " Stealin' Stealin'".

References

External links

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AnswersWill Shade tribute
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shade, Will 1898 births 1966 deaths Musicians from Memphis, Tennessee American blues singers American multi-instrumentalists American blues guitarists American male guitarists American blues harmonica players Gennett Records artists Deaths from pneumonia in Tennessee 20th-century American guitarists Guitarists from Tennessee African-American guitarists 20th-century African-American male singers

Early life

Biography

Discography

See also

References

External links