The man considered to be the Sam Phillips of blues was Henry C. Speir of Jackson, Mississippi who just preceded Lomax but whose recording endeavors overlapped. They appeared to never have met, their interest in music being entirely different. Speir ran a record store but also worked as a talent scout for various labels. Speir enjoyed blues and country music and sought out such artists throughout the South. Without him, America’s roots music past would be very poor indeed. A definitive list of his discoveries is not possible because, as Speir himself puts it, “I’ve found so many singers I can’t remember all their names, and I’ve forgotten about many others.” Speir once had an address book full of the names and numbers of his clients but it was tragically lost in a fire and would have given us pretty close to a definitive list. But among Speir’s discoveries are: Charlie Patton, Skip James, Tommy Johnson, Lucille Bogan, Son House, Willie Brown, Geeshie Wiley, Blind Joe Reynolds, the Mississippi Sheiks, Garfield Akers, Bo Carter, Blind Roosevelt Graves, Uncle Dave Macon, William Harris, Charley McCoy, Slim Duckett, Pig Norwood, Elvie Thomas, Elder Curry, Mississippi Coleman Bracey, Isaiah Nettles, Robert Wilkins, Ishmon Bracey, Minnie Wallace, Henry “Son” Sims, Robert Johnson, Rube Lacy and Booker White. Jimmie Rodgers also came to Speir’s record store to record but Speir told him he wasn’t ready and to go back to Meridian and work up a few more songs and then come back. Instead, Ralph Peer, another great A&R man for Victor (and friend of Speir) signed him up and Rodgers became a huge hit in the country circuit.
Black folks had good reason not to trust whites especially in the entertainment business. In that sense, a recording artist signed to a big label was a type of sharecropper: with sharecropping you work your parcel of land and the Boss takes half of everything and then deducts your expenses and debts from your half and in the record business you write
and compile material and lay down the tracks and yet the label took back most everything in recording fees, publishing fees, engineers’ pay, studio time, etc. Bluesmen made nothing off their records. The records were good for exposure to guarantee good crowds at upcoming shows. This became a staple in the recording industry. But Speir was always a fair man to clients—black or white. Blacks trusted Speir. When any of Speir’s clients got in trouble, they usually called him for help before calling anyone else and Speir usually did help as much as he could. When Speir sent an artist to Wisconsin, Indiana or New York to record, he paid for the transportation. He always slipped the artists who came to record demos at a label’s request a few bucks for showing up knowing that they were probably in need. Blacks regarded him as a righteous man.
Speir’s setup that he kept on the second floor of his store cut test recordings onto a disc with an aluminum-based surface. For five dollars, Speir would take the artist upstairs and let him or her cut a record. If he liked it, he would pass the artist onto a label. Speir cut artists for Victor but Victor made sure the test cut went through Ralph Peer whom they trusted. Victor had its own race record division called Bluebird. Decisions had to be made which label best suited the artist in question. Bluebird tended to record lighter-veined and even comical blues numbers called hokum. Paramount recorded genuine lowdown, country blues. OKeh gravitated towards something in between.
Unfortunately, the Paramount recordings were usually bad. They were noisy with a lot of hiss drowning out the intricate guitar work and subtlety of the vocals. With time, the old records became more brittle and so many of Charley Patton’s recordings on Paramount are barely listenable today.
When Speir sent artists to Paramount, they accepted them unheard because they trusted his ear for good music. Later, Speir scouted for the American Record Company or ARC—Columbia’s race record division. Speir also scouted talent for Gennett, Vocalion, and Decca. Speir stopped recording in 1942 when a fire destroyed his store. He never made another recording. So completely did he drop out of sight after the ’42 fire that Skip James and Son House thought he had died in it and were surprised to learn in the 60s that Speir was still alive. He died in Jackson, Mississippi in 1972. He has since been elected to the Blues Hall of Fame and most deservedly so.
