When you think of the words "Chicago Blues" and "mandolin," the first name that probably comes to mind is Johnny Young. And while he was certainly the top mandolin man in Chicago for many years, that doesn't quite tell the whole story.
James "Yank" Rachell -- who, as a young boy, traded a pig his mother had given him to raise in exchange for a mandolin he saw his neighbor playing one day -- got his start with Sleepy John Estes in the 1920s, and by the 1930s was recording with him. Thanks to his long associations with cities like Saint Louis and Indianapolis, as well as Chicago, he sparked many recording sessions during the 1930s, and was thankfully lured out of retirement during the 1960s for the Blues Revival. He continued to record extensively after that, becoming an elder statesman of the Blues mandolin, until his death in 1997 at the age of 87.
Johnny Young made an explosive recording debut in 1947 for the tiny Ora Nelle label, run by a man named Bernard Abrams who operated a radio repair shop down on Maxwell Street. He had a crude machine that would cut discs instantaneously, and after a string of Blues musicians came by to make some sample recordings, he finally got the idea to issue a couple 78s of his own. One was by 17 year old Little Walter Jacobs, the other was by Johnny Young and his guitar playing partner, Johnny Williams. Years after Abrams folded up the Ora Nelle label, you could still apparently walk into his shop and buy a brand new copy of either one for a dollar (they're both considered to be rare collector's items today). Oh, and another piece of blues history/trivia -- Muddy Waters was another regular customer at Abrams shop, but always took the discs he made with him -- presumably to give to his latest girlfriend (as the story goes).
Young's other notable 78 was cut for the hyper-obscure Planet label the next year. It was later picked up for reissue by Al Benson, a prominent Chicago disc jockey, on his Old Swingmaster imprint. For the complete story on the Planet label, which had just three releases -- but played an important role in the history of Postwar Chicago Blues -- be sure to check out this story at the Red Saunders Research Foundation website.
Other featured mandolin players include Charlie McCoy, a journeyman session musician of the 1930s and 1940s, Carl Martin, yet another talented multi-instrumentalist, and also Willie Hatcher, whose "Garbage Man Blues" is pretty much the show-stopper of the episode. We close out the program with a sampling of the recent mandolin work of Green Bay native Billy Flynn, who is keeping the mandolin tradition alive in the Windy City, thanks to recent releases on the Easy Baby label, and a lovely collaboration with Billy Boy Arnold that came out on the Electro-Fi label last year. Pictured: Johnny Young.
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