Six Cylinder Smith

Blues singer Josh White claims to have worked for more than five dozen different blind blues singers as a lead boy, although according to White not all of them were really blind. Blind Joe Taggart, for example, actually just had cataracts with resulting vision well above and beyond the range of what is considered legally blind. Taggart's name inevitably comes up in any discussion of Six Cylinder Smith, a blues performer from the Texas/Louisiana/Arkansas area. Six Cylinder Smith's opinion on the women of Pennsylvania, expressed without reservation in the song "Pennsylvania Woman Blues," is considered important enough to turn up on several different blues compilations released by record companies such as Yazoo and the howling Austrian blues label Wolf. Wherever Six Cylinder Smith goes, Blind Joe Taggart is sure to follow, which is not mentioned as further proof of the latter man's ability to see, but because many blues scholars think Taggart and Smith were the same guy. On the other hand, there is also evidence that they were not. White spoke at great length about his experiences with Taggart but more about how mean he was and not about other identities he might have had. When a bluesman assumed another name, the reason was not some kind of schizophrenia but usually an effort to do extra recording outside of a contract that had already been signed under one name. In the case of Taggart, he may have recorded secular blues numbers under the name of Smith, because in his former performing identity he was known as a gospel blues singer in the style of Blind Willie Johnson. To record a number such as "Pennsylvania Woman Blues" would definitely have been out of character for a so-called blues preacher. White has established that Taggart recorded numbers such as this under the...