Totally forgotten now, but something of a star in the 1920s – he could play a bit of guitar and piano, but really “just” a singer. And one of the best male singers of his day, sort of field holler meets Bessie Smith (if that’s not a tautology).

When you find that his accompanists include Lonnie Johnson, Eddie Lang, Eddie Heywood, King Oliver, Mississippi Sheiks, Carl Davis, Little Hat Jones, then he *must* have had something.

They all had more or less trouble keeping up or down to his rhythms (Lonnie handled it best as you may imagine, with his amazing skill; his work with TA among his best IMHO – cf. Little Hat Jones who starts frantic as usual, then hits the wall when TA starts up, fairly amusing but doesn’t hurt the music; but cf. Carl Davis who was great with TA).

My favourite track of TA is “Deep Blue Sea Blues” but there’s lots of others I would love to hear again! (eg. Frisco Train, St Louis Fair, 98 Degree, Johny Behren, Broken Yo Yo, Cross Roads, etc.).

I can’t quite remember, 3 or 4 Document CDs I once had of TA (I’ve had a few collections which I’ve got rid of in – futilely – trying to lose dese blues over the years).

He’s a special, if you like something out of the mainstream. A great and idiosyncratic singer. A short dark man with a great voice who spent some years in jail, and reportedly died from syphalitic complications. But let AMG have the last word: “A primal, stirring blues voice”. Can’t argue with that!!!
http://allmusic.com/

Well almost the last word – apparently he was a cousin of Lightin’ Hopkins, but then so was half the population of Texas…

Steve in Oz