Smoky Babe - Biography
By J Poet
Smoky Babe is the blues name of guitar player and singer Robert Brown. Little is known about Brown, who reportedly died in 1975, although there is no verifiable proof of his death. He was included on several anthologies of the blues and only recorded two albums under his own name in the early 60s, before vanishing back into obscurity. The songs he did record are legendary for their strong guitar rhythms, slashing slide guitar work and his forceful vocals.
Brown was born in 1927 in Itta Bena, a small town in the Mississippi delta country. Harry Oster, the folklorist who discovered him and recorded the songs that became his two albums, wasn’t able to get much information out of Brown, but learned that he was a grammar school drop out, lived on a plantation as a sharecropper and worked in a steel mill in Bessemer, Alabama. He lived in New Orleans where he worked days and played black clubs at night for tips. He also worked cleaning Mississippi river barges in Baton Rouge and as a mechanic at a gas station in Scotlandville, LA. Oster met him at the home of Mabel Lee, the sister of Robert Pete Wilson, and the moment he started playing on a borrowed guitar, he knew he was in the presence of greatness. Oster recorded Smoky Baby for Folk-Lyric in 1959 and two songs were issued on Country Negro Jam Sessions (1960 Folk Lyric), reissued on CD as Jam Session (1996 Arhoolie). Hot Blues (1961 Folk Lyric, 1997 Arhoolie) was credited to Smoky Babe and his Friends on the LP, but just Smoky Babe on the CD reissue. It’s raw, driving music, with an innate sense of swing complimented by Smoky’s raw, potent singing. In 1960 Oster returned to capture Hottest Brand Goin’ (1961 Bluesville/ Prestige, 2001 Fantasy Original Blues Classics) a set that ranges over Delta, Texas and Piedmont styles. Babe was an excellent composer and improviser; Oster thinks that the lyrics of many of these tunes were made up on the spot, and they capture the man’s flair for performing. Unhappily, no one ever followed up on the career of Smoky Babe. He would have found a large enthusiastic audience had he gone north and played the folk/blues circuit, but attempts to follow up on his whereabouts proved futile. Even his death in 1975 is a matter of hearsay.