ABC of the Blues CD6 (2010)

CD 6 - Champion Jack Dupree & Cousin Joe

06-01 Champion Jack Dupree – Strollin’
06-02 Champion Jack Dupree – T.B. Blues
06-03 Champion Jack Dupree – Can’t Kick the Habit
06-04 Champion Jack Dupree – Evil Woman
06-05 Champion Jack Dupree – Nasty Boogie		play
06-06 Champion Jack Dupree – Junker’s Blues
06-07 Champion Jack Dupree – Bad Blood
06-08 Champion Jack Dupree – Goin’ Down Slow
06-09 Champion Jack Dupree – Frankie & Johnny
06-10 Champion Jack Dupree – Stack-O-Lee
06-11 Cousin Joe – Fly Hen Blues
06-12 Cousin Joe – Little Eva
06-13 Cousin Joe – Lightning Struck the Poorhouse
06-14 Cousin Joe – Baby You Don’t Know at All		play
06-15 Cousin Joe – The Barefoot Baby
06-16 Cousin Joe – Box Car Shorty and Peter Blue
06-17 Cousin Joe – Beggin’ Woman
06-18 Cousin Joe – Sadie Brown
06-19 Cousin Joe – Evolution Blues
06-20 Cousin Joe – Box Car Shorty’s Confession

William Thomas Dupree, best known as Champion Jack Dupree, was an American blues pianist. His birth date is disputed, given as July 4, July 10, and July 23, in the years 1908, 1909, or 1910. He died on January 21, 1992. Champion Jack Dupree was the embodiment of the New Orleans blues and boogie woogie pianist, a barrelhouse "professor".

Dupree's playing was almost all straight blues and boogie-woogie. He was not a sophisticated musician or singer, but he had a wry and clever way with words: "Mama, move your false teeth, papa wanna scratch your gums." He sometimes sang as if he had a cleft palate and even recorded under the name Harelip Jack Dupree. This was an artistic conceit, as Dupree had excellent, clear articulation, particularly for a blues singer. Dupree would occasionally indulge in a vocalese style of sung word play, similar to Slim Gaillard's "Vout", as in his "Mr. Dupree Blues" included on The Complete Blue Horizon Sessions album.

On his best known album, Blues from the Gutter for Atlantic, in 1959 he was accompanied on guitar by Larry Dale, whose playing on that record inspired Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones. Dupree was also noted as a raconteur and transformed many of his stories into songs. "Big Leg Emma's" takes its place in the roots of rap music as the rhymed tale of a police raid on a barrelhouse. In later years he recorded with John Mayall, Mick Taylor and Eric Clapton.

New Orleans bluesman Pleasant Joseph made his biggest impact working under the name "Cousin Joe," but his discography also contains material cut under a variety of aliases, among them "Smilin' Joe," "Brother Joshua," "Joseph Pleasant" and even, on occasion, his birth name.

Born December 20, 1907 in Wallace, Louisiana, Joseph made a name for himself on the Crescent City nightclub circuit of the mid-1930s before relocating to New York City in 1942; there he recorded a series of 78s informed equally by blues and jazz traditions, complete with witty, bawdy lyrical touches. He returned to New Orleans in 1947, recording material for the Deluxe and Imperial labels before signing a five-year pact with Decca; however, he entered the studio only rarely in the years to follow, focusing instead on learning the piano and rebuilding his reputation as a French Quarter club performer. After a long hiatus, Joseph recorded and released an impromptu 1971 session under the title Bad Luck Blues, followed in 1973 by Cousin Joe from New Orleans; his activities were again curtailed in the years to follow, although in 1987 he published an autobiography, Cousin Joe: Blues from New Orleans. He died October 2, 1989. --- Jason Ankeny, Rovi

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