Booker T. Sapps

To many people, the Booker T. Sapps might bring to mind a blackjack company run as a sideline by a funky rhythm & blues organist, or perhaps the name would mean nothing at all. To a blues harmonica player, it is the name of a mysterious figure who managed to get in the crosshairs of microphones and portable tape recording equipment being utilized by roving ethnomusicologists of the '30s and '40s, with possibly more accuracy than the hunting rifles of local residents. When a harmonica player says that Sapps was a classic straight blocker, again one might think the discussion has to do with thugs ready to commit mayhem, but this is pure harmonica talk. Sapps is an early blues harmonica player whose existence suggests the possible solving of technical mysteries connected to the fine art of making tiny metal reeds warble in and out of tune. If the American blues scene is like a puzzle, like one of those 5,000 piece ones that nobody ever finishes, then Booker T. Sapps is the piece that someone finds stuck under the piano bench. He was recorded in the mid-'30s in the swampy state of Florida, accompanying singer and guitarist Roger Matthews. These field recordings were originally conducted by Alan Lomax, Zora Neale Hurston, and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle for the Library of Congress. The repertoire of the Matthews-Sapps duo was heavily laden with folk ballads and similar traditional material, as evidenced by their versions of "Frankie and Albert," "Fox and the Hounds," and "I'm a Pilgrim." Their style is a bit similar to the user-friendly coffeehouse blues of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, but is even closer to the real down-home source of this style. "Blues as played outside the recording studio" was one critic's description of the sound of this duo, and it is a good one. "The...