Radio Big Pink
8 years ago
Gus Cannon, the leader of Cannon’ Jug Stompers, was a great musician and character, a central figure of the Jug Band scene in Memphis, a man who got his musical education at the beginning of the 20th century, around Clarksdale, Mississippi, home of many great Delta Blues musicians and on the road with Medicine shows. One of the rare black performer recorded on 78rpm records who played the 5-string banjo, which he taught himself to play on an instrument he made out of a frying pan and a raccoon skin, he also had a jug mounted on a rack that allowed him to blow bass figures while strumming and picking the banjo.
Radio Big Pink
8 years ago
So, did I find Menglewood? Well, to be honest, I’m not sure. The little community that’s called Menglewood is sort of far (25 miles) from where the saw-mill was supposed to be in Ashport, especially for the 1920s. I guess I’ll just leave this one open until I get a chance to get back to Tennessee.
Radio Big Pink
8 years ago
We saw a woman in her yard planting flowers, so we stopped and ask her. Turns out, Menglewood is an old name for this very small community. The side road by her house used to be called Menglewood Road, but it had been changed to a route number. Menglewood itself had been merged with another nearby community and there were no signs left that refer to it as Menglewood. The locals still use the name, but it’s slowly fading away. I was really hoping for a sign to take a picture of, but none was to be found. You may ask why would you stop by Minglewood when you’re in Memphis if it was a saw-mill or a box factory? One explanation I’ve seen is that the song refers to a “good time” place near Minglewood where the workers went to drink and gamble.
Radio Big Pink
8 years ago
While in Memphis I found a copy of a long, out of print, book called Memphis Blues that contains a lot of information about the music of Memphis in the 1920s and 1930s. It included a chapter on Cannon’s Jug Stompers and another on Noah Lewis. Here are a couple of quotes from that book about Minglewood. John ‘Red’ Williams (Memphis pianist):”The song Minglewood Blues was popular around Ripley. There was a piano player there who played that song. I can play it too. I learned it from him. Minglewood is a box factory.” Eddie Green:”I helped Noah to make up Minglewood Blues. At the time we both worked on the Minglewood.” So one afternoon my wife and I set out to find the Menglewood I had seen on the map. We drove north of Memphis for about an hour. We passed the location were the town was on the map without seeing any signs, so we turned back and asked some of the locals at a gas station. Turns out we had driven right through it! What we found was about 8 to 10 houses bunched together along side a rural road.
Radio Big Pink
8 years ago
An Interesting Story by someone looking for the Myth! Or is it? I knew the song was written by Noah Lewis and that he was from Henning,TN, just north of Memphis. I started with a map of western Tennesse and noticed a small town about an hour north of Memphis called Menglewood. Given the proximity to Memphis and the closeness of the name I thought this would be a good place to start.
Radio Big Pink
8 years ago
Noah Lewis, the harmonica player in the band is said to have “compose” the song, the tune itself being a very common one used in many other Blues like “Rollin’and Tumblin” for example. The answer to where exactly is this “Minglewood” is a bit uncertain. I have read somewhere that it was a lumber camp near the Mississippi where musicians (including Noah lewis and Gus cannon) gathered on weekends to have a good time, and judging from the lyrics of the “New Minglewood Blues” that Noah Lewis recorded with his own jug band (“If you’re ever in Memphis, better stop by Minglewood”), it was a place in the city or close to it.
Radio Big Pink
8 years ago
“Minglewood Blues” was the first piece Cannon’s Jug Stompers recorded in 1928.
