Little Brother Montgomery

Between the late 1800s and the first decade of the 1900s, a piano style took shape in the US, steeped in melancholic irony and oblique eloquence, derived from ragtime and musically adjacent to jazz: barrelhouse piano. It consists of a flowing binary rhythm (sometimes lively, sometimes relaxed, kept going by the left hand on the instrument) and a pleasantly jagged melody sketched out by the right hand. Both are designed to lend themselves to improvised stylistic embellishments while remaining easily enjoyable for audiences. Barrelhouse piano soon crossed paths with the oldest type of blues, country blues, giving rise, in the 1910s and 20s, to barrelhouse blues.

This fertile intersection of musical genres involves: the replacement of the acoustic guitar, typical of country blues, with the piano; continuity with the structure of traditional blues; and a less somber approach to the songs on the part of the musicians. In barrelhouse blues, then, the country blues of its origins takes on a new, bouncy, spirited garb bestowed on it by barrelhouse piano.

This new mode of expression was adopted by bluesmen active mainly in Texas and Louisiana in the 1920s and 30s, who performed in venues (often called, fittingly, barrelhouses) catering to Black laborers employed in building river levees, working in sawmills or in the fields. These musicians (among whom we should mention Robert Shaw) played upright pianos set against a wall, less bulky and cheaper than full-size pianos. The drawback they had to contend with was a lower sound quality and less carrying power for the wavering notes they produced.

Little Brother Montgomery (born in Louisiana, 1906-1985) established himself as an interpreter of barrelhouse blues from the very start of his career, going on to put 27 tracks on vinyl between 1930 and 1936. Following a handful of other scattered recordings in the following decades, he was rediscovered as part of the folk and blues revival that took place in the United States between the late 1950s and early 60s. In this period, then, during the fifth decade of his life, the pianist recorded numerous songs that would later appear on various albums: among them is also "Farro Street Jive" (recorded in 1960 and released in stages starting in 1968).

This work stands as a fascinating compendium of the different shades taken on by barrelhouse blues over the decades that opened the 20th century in the American South. These stylistic references are rendered quite faithfully to how they were played thirty years earlier, when Montgomery was in his thirties and about to record his first 78 rpm singles.

Bolstered by excellent musicianship, the twelve tracks that make up the album are arranged so as to be easily accessible to contemporary tastes. In doing so, they lose some of the thrilling, uneven ferocity they originally carried, while keeping intact the melodic foundations, historical authenticity and driving rhythmic drive of his youthful performances. The instrumentation, simple and essential, follows the classic barrelhouse blues pairing of upright piano and voice, a combination that on this record favors expressiveness, invention and warmth of tone over technique.

Montgomery is particularly shrewd in his choice of material here: four revisitations of his own past compositions ("Vicksburg Blues", "Way Out West Blues", "Farro Street Jive/Farish Street Jive", "No Special Rider Blues") and eight covers drawn from various musical genres popular in the first two decades of the 20th century. "Vicksburg Blues" and "Way Out West Blues", first recorded by the musician in 1930 and 1936 respectively and revisited here with a similarly high quality impact, serve to exemplify the main features of the barrelhouse blues style. Marked by a rolling rhythm laid down on piano by the left hand, it finds its melodic alphabet in the right hand, made up of repeated notes, engagingly irreverent phrasing and wittily reflective accents. By smoothing out the intricate textures woven by ragtime and leveling its rugged melodic path, this pianistic style wraps the dense intensity contained within blues in a cloak of dynamic serenity, rendering it wistfully refined.

Likewise, the covers carefully selected by Little Brother Montgomery for this LP unfold in a sequence of welcome surprises, marked by an unassumingly elegant taste. Four of them are barrelhouse blues transpositions of female urban blues numbers released in the early 1920s ("Lonesome Mama", "I Don't Feel Welcome Here: Stingaree Blues", "Up The Country Blues", and "Dangerous Blues"). The vaudeville influences they originally carried here produce a rich, intriguing melodic charge, brought out by the pianist's honeyed, swaying chords. Among these four tracks, two instrumental and two sung, worth mentioning is "I Don't Feel Welcome Here: Stingaree Blues" (perhaps the album's high point), which preserves the graceful side of this lovely 1922 song while heightening its piercing blues aroma.

The range of covers also includes a version of "Alabama Bound" that tones down the twists of the 1909 ragtime tune, translating it into a barrelhouse blues with sardonic lyrics. Meanwhile, the instrumental "Sweet Moma, Your Daddy's Done Gone Mad" delights by drawing on the Dixieland jazz shadings that in 1920 enriched this urban blues, whose real title is "Sweet Mama (Papa's Getting Mad)". On this track, the refrain stands out, sketched with exquisite sensitivity by Montgomery's piano (for instance from 1:24 to 1:32, or from 1:54 to 2:13), which for expressiveness even surpasses the vocal used in the original.

The choice to interpret W. C. Handy's timeless 1914 "St. Louis Blues" in barrelhouse blues style results in vibrant piano passages with a lazily carefree tone, carrying the listener back to the enchanted era in which the jazz genre was taking shape.

Rounding out and diversifying the tracklist are three boogie woogie numbers, whose lively, spirited, danceable drive was born as an African-American popular dance (between the late 19th and early 20th century) within the blues genre. Boogie woogie was consequently absorbed, together with blues itself, into the language of barrelhouse blues, becoming from then on a secondary but fairly frequent and well-documented manifestation of it.

The first of the three boogie woogie numbers on this record is "Farro Street Jive/Farish Street Jive" (instrumental), dating back to 1936 and written by Montgomery himself. In it we can discern how the instinctive physicality radiating from the rhythm (the low notes on the piano's left side) accompanies a blues melodic line split into two phases: percussive at first (essentially the verse), then a brief rise and fall of notes (the refrain). Notably, the pianist alternates his right and left hand each time he traces the refrains (for example, from 0:47 to 0:55 he uses the right hand with high notes, and from 1:01 to 1:09 he uses the left hand with low notes). This device, as unconventional as it is welcome, effectively builds two refrains within the song, each with a different color.

The second boogie woogie is instead a cover of Pinetop Smith's famous 1928 piece: "Pinetop Boogie Woogie". The version featured on "Farro Street Jive" (instrumental) essentially sticks to the original, slightly slowing down the tempo and thereby enhancing its gripping, incisive rhythmic-melodic passages.

The third and final boogie woogie (this time sung) is "No Special Rider Blues", another Montgomery composition dating back to the 1920s and recorded by him in 1930. Exactly thirty years later, the track keeps intact the barrelhouse blues style typical of this artist, blending a dark, elastic cadence with the enthusiastic remarks of a vintage blues overflowing with seasoned charm.

The brief solos, carefully dispensed by the pianist throughout the record, are built on an effective immediacy, which translates concretely into a passionate yet not overly elaborate technique. In them, notes are rattled off in a relaxed, lively manner, always landing in the right place and releasing, without urgency, their ingeniously easygoing aftertaste. More broadly, the pianistic technique displayed on this LP sees, on one hand, evocatively arranged blues notes and chords, and on the other, occasional playful bursts of speed echoing ragtime, at times drawing from the listener a mischievously benevolent smile, at times catching them lost in a poetic image.

Little Brother Montgomery's voice does not travel the dark, gravelly paths favored by other bluesmen who came of age artistically in the 1920s and 30s, distinguishing itself instead through a fervent, spontaneously affable depth. In his vocal delivery one can trace the smoky imprints of age, which thicken and roughen his timbre, like memories of a hard yet intensely lived life surfacing on the vocal line. In addition, energetically expressive inflections allow the singing to capture attention with its manner elegantly suspended between quiet verve and nostalgic humor.

As already touched upon in passing, the LP is split between six instrumental tracks and six sung songs. The lyrics of the latter recount everyday scenes tinged with bitterness, allowing the blues to speak in a simple, direct way. Front and center stand rejected love and longed-for love, both defused with a certain dose of sarcasm: unavoidable themes within the cultural framework outlined by blues.

After the early 1960s, Little Brother Montgomery continued to perform and record sporadically, before leaving the music scene for good in the early 1980s.

With the album we've just discussed, this musician leaves behind a sophisticated artistic legacy in the range of genres he offered his audience, and a remarkable blend of styles that comes through in the sound of his piano. An active witness to a distant and hugely important period in the history of modern music, this blues pianist and singer proved to be both a rigorous and an imaginative interpreter of it. "Farro Street Jive" stands as his most mature and fully realized statement in this regard: a sonic snapshot that carries us into unforgettable atmospheres of the '20s and '30s, of undisputed artistic depth. This 1960 record builds an evocative bridge between early-1900s performances and today's listeners. It offers us authentic coordinates for some highly significant musical paradigms; a music in which immediacy and refinement coexist, entertaining the soul while captivating the senses.

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29/03/2026