The Two Poor Boys: Joe Evans & Arthur McClain 1927 – 1931, Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order / Document CD-5044

Description

Document CD-5044.

Joe Evans, vocal, kazoo, guitar; Arthur McClain, kazoo, guitar.
(Also mandolin and guitar by either Evans or McClain)

Informative booklet notes by Chris Smith.
Detailed discography.

01 – Little son of a gun (look what you done done)
02 – Two white horses in a line
03 – John Henry blues (take 1)
04 – John Henry blues (take 3)
05 – New Huntsville jail (take 1)
06 – New Huntsville jail (take 2)
07 – Take a look at that baby
08 – Mill man blues
09 – Oh you son of a gun
10 – Georgia rose
11 – Early some morning blues
12 – Cream and sugar blues
13 – Old hen cackle
14 – Sitting on top of the world
15 – My baby got a yo-yo
16 – So sorry dear
17 – Sourwood Mountain
18 – Down in Black Bottom (take 1)
19 – Down in Black Bottom (take 2)
20 – Shook it this morning blues

Joe Evans and Arthur McClain are reported to have come from Fairmount, in eastern Tennessee, a region where blacks were outnumbered twelve to one by whites, and this goes some way towards explaining the evident hillbilly influences on their music. Otherwise, all we know about “The Two Poor Boys” is in the grooves of their 78s.

Of six masters cut in Birmingham, Alabama in 1927, only Little Son Of A Gun (Look What You Done) was issued, with Birmingham vocal group the Dunham Jazz Singers harmonizing a blues on the reverse. Little Son Of A Gun is a typical piece of ‘20s pop music, done as a lively two guitar, two kazoo novelty.
Evans & McClain played blues, of course: Two White Horses In A Line is from Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Sitting On Top Of The World is the Mississippi Sheiks’ hit from the year before, done with violin in a manner imitative of the original version.  The mandolin heard on Two White Horses is played with an impressively even touch on John Henry Blues, a song which traversed the colour line.
Mill Man Blues and My Baby Got A Yo-Yo raise some intriguing questions, for the former song is verbally almost identical with a 1928 recording by Billy Bird, which itself has a guitar accompaniment virtually the same as that on My Baby Got A Yo-Yo. Evans & McClain’s other issued blues were piano-guitar duets like Mill Man Blues, the playing entirely consistent with contemporary black idiom. Black Bottom was the ghetto in Nashville, Tennessee, but these performances seem influenced by the styles of both Birmingham and St. Louis.
Blues was only a part of it, though: they parodied Darby & Tarlton’s hillbilly hit, “Birmingham Jail”; turned a 1927 pop song, “Who Cares What Somebody Said” into Take A Look At That Baby, with guitar, mandolin and two kazoos (but no violin, the standard discography notwithstanding); revived a sentimental coon song in Georgia Rose; and made immaculate transfers to mandolin and guitar of the white fiddle pieces Old Hen Cackle and Sourwood Mountain.
The effortless eclecticism of Joe Evans & Arthur McClain continues to challenge our notions of what “black music” was in those days