|
This discography is a non-commercial labor-of-love and is in no way associated with any business firm.
All I know about the resp. artist's / label's musical output is shown on this page. To purchase out-of-print records I recommend an ebay, gemm or google search. And - sorry for that - I have not the time to answer any e-mails asking me about further information, let alone duplicating out-of-print recordings I happen to own.Stefan Wirz www.wirz.de |
CHRISTOPHER BOUCHILLON 08/21/1893 - 09/1968
"The Talking Comedian of the South" |
"When Chris Bouchillon says anything he does it in such a dry, humerous sort of way that you can't help but laugh.
Chris isn't averse to a bit of playing and singing, now and then, either. When he tunes up his voice and guitar, folks come from miles around to hear the melodies of this popular South Carolina minstrel.
In addition to being one of the foremost wits and singers of the South, Chris can tinker with an auto just as effectively as with a tune. " |
 |
|
Tony Russell: Blacks Whites and Blues.- Stein and Day, New York 1970, p. 18
|
|
Chris Bouchillon LP
| # | year
of release | title | label # / notes |
|---|
| 1 | 1987 | Chris Bouchillon
The Original Talking Blues Man
- Born In Hard Luck  [MP3]
- Talking Blues
- New Talkin Blues
- Hannah
- Old Blind Heck
- Let It Alone
- My Fat Girl
- Waltz Me Around Willie
- Ambitious Father
- You Look Awful Good To Me
- The Medicine Show
- I've Been Married Three Times
- My Wife's Wedding
- Adam And Eve - Part One
- Adam And Eve - Part Two
- Oyster Stew
- Oh Miss Lizzie
- Girls Of Today | 
Old Homestead OHCS-181
(cover painting wrong way
round - Bouchillon obviously
wasn't left-handed !)Old Homestead Records OHCS-181
homepage |
liner notes
One of the most popular and enduring bits of country comedy is an odd little song-poem that begins, "If you want to get to Heaven, let me tell you how to do it." The lines, of course, are from a number usually called The Original Talking Blues or just Talking Blues, and though it has been popularized by several generations of performers from the 1920's to the present. few know much about its origins, or about the man who first popularized it. That man was a balding, bespectacled, pipe-smoking man from Greenville, South Carolina, named Christopher Allen Bouchillon, and this is the first ever reissue devoted to his remarkable work. Included are the four records that earned Bouchillon a place in country music history - "Talking Blues," and "Hannah, Won't You Open The Door" - as well as a generous sampling of some of the other 19 recordings that made him one of the most popular comedians on record in the 1920's.
Chris Bouchillon was born in the waning years of the 19th century in the
remote, hilly county of Oconee in the extreme western
tip of South Carolina. His father, John Bouchillon, was a noted
banjo player who achieved even more fame after he moved his
family to the nearby city of Greenville. There he settled them into a
house just across the street from the Mountain City Iron Foundry,
where he got work as a pattern maker. He soon got his young sons
jobs there, as well, and on weekends taught them the rudiments of
old-time string band music; soon John and three of his sons were
taking most of the prizes at local fiddling contests. One of the sons
was Charley, who played fiddle; a second was Uris, who played
guitar; a third was Chris, who sang and played the mandolin. At
one of these fiddling contests in 1925, the brothers met some of
the musicians who had been recording in nearby Atlanta, and
were encouraged to try their luck. In July they did, and cut four
sides as "The Bouchillon Trio: Charley, Chris, and Uris." Only one
selection, a dubious ditty about a saxophone player called "She
Doodle Dooed," was issued, and though it was quite popular
locally in Greenville, it apparently set no sales records nationally.
In April, 1926 the brothers returned to the Atlanta studios and recorded two songs under the name "The Greenville Trio," neither of which were ever to be issued. But to wrap up the session, they did two other numbers under Chris's name, "Talking Blues" and "Hannah." Chris did the vocalizing, Uris played guitar, and on "Hannah," Charley played the fiddle. The recording director in charge that day recalled in later years how the odd talking blues came about! "He came to see me down in Atlanta. I listened to him and thought he was pretty awful. I thought the singing was the worst thing I had heard, but I liked his voice. I liked the way he talked to me. I said: 'Can you play guitar while you're talking?' He said. 'Yes.' So I said, 'Let's do it, let's fool around with something like that.' He had a little thing called a 'blues thing' and he tried to sing it. I said, 'Don't sing it, just talk it. Tell them about the blues but don't sing it."
The record was issued in February 1927, and quickly became one of the year's biggest hits: it would eventually sell over 90,000 copies in the next three years. It defined, at least for the record industry, a new type of genre, and soon other companies were developing their own talking comedians, like Lonnie Glosson and Red Henderson. And in a month, Chris and his brothers were called back to the studios in Atlanta to cut a follow-up hit. This became "Born in Hard Luck," another piece destined to enter the standard repertoire of country comedy. ("I was born in the last month of the year, the last week in the month, the last day in the week, the last hour in the day .... etc.") This record too became a best seller, racking up sales of over 40,000 in an era when a Carter Family hit barely topped 100,000. Yet a third side, "My Pat Girl," also won a lot of popularity. On all of these - as, indeed, on all the later records - Uris Bouchillon provided the muchcopied guitar runs, while Chris handled the "vocals.'' During the next two years, Chris made regular trips to the Atlanta studios every six months, and saw his new records appear in the stores across the South.
In spite of this record success, Chris did not try to make it on stage or on records. Other performers from the Greenville area, such as gospel singers, The McCravy Brothers; instrumentalists, Homer Christopher and Rainey Van Wink; singers, Leo and Dewey Boswell, sought and maintained careers on radio or stage, but the Bouchillon Brothers were content to make an occasional guest shot on local radio, and ply their trade at fiddling contests. They continued to work at the iron foundry until the depression, then Chris and his brothers drifted into a variety of jobs. For a time they used their musical talent in working for an oil company, and even made instruments out of oil cans for advertising appearances. Chris was married twice, and his second wife, Ethel, recorded with him on several later sides. Uris, for his part, was acknowledged as the premier local guitarist, and in the late 1920's brought back the first steel guitar seen in Greenville.
In later years, Chris owned and operated a dry cleaning shop in Greenville, and dropped completely out of music, except for family gatherings. Friends say he never seemed to know just how popular his talking blues became, and that in later life he did not even own any of his older records. He moved to Florida in later life, and was living there when he died at a nursing home in West Palm Beach, in the early 1970's.
Chris's most famous piece, "Talking Blues," was like a rock thrown in a still pool - the ripples went on and on. In the late 1930's, Robert Lunn, an ex-vaudeville artist from Tennessee, popularized Chris's version of the song on WSM's "Grand Ole Opry." At about the same time, folksinger Woody Guthrie began using the piece, both in its original form and as a model for more topical pieces. In the 1950's, British skiffle singer, Lonnie Donnegan used the piece, and in the 1960's, Bob Dylan resurrected the form for numerous comic and protest numbers. Both Lunn and Guthrie are often mistakenly credited with "inventing" the form, usually by people who know nothing of Bouchillon, nor of the huge popular success of his 1926 record.
Since Bouchillon died uninterviewed by any historian, we don't know where he got the idea for the blues, or the text, or how much credence to put in the recording producer's story. Friends say Chris was a natural mimic, and could do a funny take-off on the black accents he heard around the foundry; and certainly, some of the stanzas in Chris's text can be traced in black folksong back to 1875 or so. In 1926, song hunter Ethel Park Richardson collected a text very similar to the one hear here by Chris from Dacula fiddler Gid Tanner, of the Skillet Lickers. Tanner called his version "Jest Talking," and Richardson printed it in a 1927 book called American Mountain Songs. Since she collected the song from Tanner after Chris made his recording - but before the record was issued - it is quite possible that Tanner got the piece from Chris. It's a problem too complicated to be unraveled on a liner note. Suffice it to say that Chris's 1926 text is the basis for nearly all the later "Talking Blues" forms, and a masterpiece of old-time southern humor.
Chris Bouchillon (the name is pronounced BUSH-ill-on) never quite duplicated the success of this first effort, but his repertoire is full of interesting bits of rustic humor that deserve our attention - bits that are reflected in this first retrospective of the man called "The Talking Comedian of the South."
Charles Wolfe 1986
|
Thanks to Eric S. LeBlanc for additional info: "According to the Social Security files,
CHRISTOPHER BOUCHILLON died in September 1968, West Palm Beach, FL., and was born on August 21, 1893. His wife Ethel died in January 1980, West Palm Beach (and was born on January 16, 1903)."
Anthologies / Compilations / Samplers
containing songs performed by Chris Bouchillon
| # | year
of release | title / songs performed by Chris (and Ethel) Bouchillon | label # / notes |
|---|
| 1 | 19?? | Early Country Songs Vol. 1
recorded 1927-1929
- Let It Alone
- My Fat Girl |
Vintage Recordings
cassette # 32more info
at Vintage Recordings |
| 2 | 1993 | White Country Blues
1928-36 A Lighter Shade of Blue Vol. 1
- Adam and Eve - Part II
(Mr. & Mrs. Chris Bouchillon) | 
Columbia Legacy CT 47920more info |
|
Please feel free
to complete,
to correct
or to comment
my writings
=
Link to own page !!!
|
Back to 'American Music' 
Back to starting page [www.wirz.de]
Unofficial Blue Goose
