King Solomon Hill
King Solomon Hill | |
---|---|
Birth name | Joe Holmes |
Born | near McComb, Mississippi, U.S. | July 18, 1897
Died | August 13, 1940 Sibley, Louisiana, U.S. | (aged 43)
Genres | Blues |
Occupation(s) | Musician |
Instrument(s) |
|
Spouse(s) | Roberta Allums (m. probably 1918)[1] |
King Solomon Hill is the name assigned to a blues singer and guitarist who recorded a handful of songs in 1932. His unique guitar and voice combined to produce a sound that has been described as haunting.[2] After much speculation and dispute, he has been identified as Joe Holmes (July 18, 1897 – August 13, 1940),[3] a self-taught guitarist from Mississippi.[4]
Identity
The Mississippi blues artist
The identification of Hill as Joe Holmes was made by the prominent blues scholar Gayle Dean Wardlow and strongly contested by another prominent blues scholar, David Evans. Wardlow eventually found four informants who had known Joe Holmes and identified his voice on the records of King Solomon Hill. One informant lived in a section of Sibley, Louisiana, known as Yellow Pine, within which is a community formerly known as King Solomon Hill, centered on a hill on which stood King Solomon Hill Baptist Church. A retired postal worker confirmed that King Solomon Hill would have been a valid postal address in 1932. The community is now known as Salt Works. No informant remembers Holmes using the name King Solomon Hill, so Wardlow concluded that Paramount Records chose to use his address as his recording name.[7]
Biography
Holmes was born near McComb, Mississippi, in 1897. In 1915 he followed his brother to northern Louisiana, where he married Roberta Allums. In 1920 he returned to McComb with his wife and their child, Essie. There he played with the most famous local blues musician, Sam Collins, known locally as "Salty Dog Sam" and on record as "Cryin' Sam Collins". When interviewed by Wardlow, Roberta recalled seeing her husband playing with Collins, whom she recognized from a publicity image for Black Patti Records. One year later, Roberta and Essie returned to Sibley, while Joe pursued his musical career, initially in McComb and then as an itinerant, returning periodically to Sibley. One town he played in was Minden, Louisiana, where he had a friend, George Young. In 1928 Blind Lemon Jefferson passed through Minden, and Holmes and Young left with him for Wichita Falls, Texas. Holmes later celebrated his brief partnership with Jefferson on his record "My Buddy Papa Lemon". At that time he befriended Willard Thomas, known as Ramblin' Thomas, who became his favorite musical partner. Holmes would often travel to Shreveport, Louisiana, to play with Thomas.[8]
Little evidence exists of his life outside of music. He was described as a heavy drinker.
Recording
In 1932, while performing in Minden, Holmes was invited to record for Paramount. Wardlow speculated that the Paramount sales manager Henry Stephany stopped at Minden en route from Birmingham, Alabama, to Dallas on the recommendation of Ben Curry (possibly the same man as Bogus Ben Covington), a friend and fellow musician who had moved from Arcadia, Louisiana, to Birmingham. In any case, somebody representing Paramount took Holmes to Birmingham, where he met up with Ben Curry and other Alabama musicians: the blues singer Marshal Owens and a gospel quartet, the Famous Blue Jay Singers of Birmingham. The musicians travelled to the Paramount recording studio in Grafton, Wisconsin, and recorded at least twenty-eight titles, six of them by Holmes and issued under the name King Solomon Hill. It has been speculated that the recording session occurred about January 1932, but Roberta Allums stated that it was in the spring.[11][12] Fourteen records were issued, three by King Solomon Hill, but Paramount was on the edge of bankruptcy, pressing and shipping only small numbers of records. Holmes took three discs with white labels back to Sibley, but his friends and family never saw any discs with a Paramount label. His friend John Wills did not believe they were "real records". Until persuaded by Wardlow, he believed that Holmes had paid to have them recorded privately.[13] Few copies survived. One of the three, Paramount 13125, with "My Buddy Papa Lemon" and "Times Has Done Got Hard", was long believed to be lost, until a copy was discovered in 2002.[14]
Legacy
As of 2022[update], there are eight known recordings by King Solomon Hill:
- "Down on My Bended Knee" (Take 1)
- "Down on My Bended Knee" (Take 2)
- "The Gone Dead Train"
- "My Buddy Blind Papa Lemon"
- "Tell Me Baby"
- "Times Has Done Got Hard"
- "Whoopee Blues" (Take 1)
- "Whoopee Blues" (Take 2)
"The Gone Dead Train" was the title of an episode in the ninth season of the television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. A portion of the song is played in the episode, and King Solomon Hill is mentioned as the artist.
The 1969 film Performance, directed by Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell and starring Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, contained a song called "The Gone Dead Train", performed by Randy Newman. It is a rewrite by Jack Nitzsche and Russ Titelman and bears only a passing resemblance to "The Gone Dead Train" as performed by King Solomon Hill. As noted by the cultural historian Greil Marcus, the "dead train" in the Newman version is a metaphor for impotence.[15] In Hill's song, the train appears to refer to an actual locomotive, which Hill referred to as a "death train."
See also
- List of Delta blues musicians
- List of nicknames of blues musicians
- Solomon, a king in the Bible
References
- ISBN 9780415926997.
- ^ Jeff Harris. "A Walk Up King Solomon Hill". Retrieved December 10, 2019.
- ^ a b "King Solomon Hill discography". Wirz.de. Retrieved November 9, 2022.
- ^ a b c "King Solomon Hill – Joe Holmes". Thebluestrail.com. Retrieved November 18, 2011.
- ISBN 9780306800146.
- ISBN 978-0825600692.
- ISBN 0-87930-552-5. p. 211. Originally published as "One Last Walk up King Solomon Hill", Blues Unlimited, no. 148 (Winter 1987).
- ^ Wardlow 1998, pp. 3–4. Originally published in 78 Quarterly, no. 1 (1967).
- ^ Ankeny, Jason. "King Solomon Hill: Biography". AllMusic. Retrieved November 9, 2022.
- ISBN 9780313344244.
- ^ Wardlow 1998. pp. 4–5, 212–213.
- ISBN 0-19-816239-1.
- ^ Wardlow 1998. pp. 212–213.
- ^ Classic Blues Artwork from 1920s. Calendar for 2004. Blues Images. 2003.
- ISBN 0-452-27836-8.