In 1932 Victor Records introduced Pinetop and Lindberg, a piano-vocal duo from St. Louis who, with a session of arresting quality, made sufficient impact in the Depression years to be recalled the following year to the Chicago studios, with Pinetop especially in demand as an accompanist. From the company files we learned that pianist Aaron Sparks and his singer brother, Marion, hid behind the intriguing soubriquet, but that was the sum total of information available. It wasn’t until 1975, in an interview with their uncle Aaron, that we were able to accord them due recognition for their exceptional, if short, recording career.
—Mike Rowe
Well, Them Two Sparks Brothers They Been Here and Gone: Aaron Cleveland Sparks Interview
Mike Rowe and Charlie O’Brien
Blues Unlimited #144 (Spring 1983)
Pinetop and Lindberg are dead. Whatever the confusions or contradictions in their history—and there are many—at least their passing is certain. “They was all kinfolks. They had two sisters and two brothers—ya know all them folks is dead? All of them—mother, father, they two sisters—whole bunch of them all died and I don’t know why, ’cause Marion and Aaron both of ’em ought to be living.” Eighty-seven-year-old Aaron Cleveland Sparks pauses thoughtfully in the hot St. Louis afternoon remembering his nephews, pianist Aaron “Pinetop” Sparks and singer Marion “Lindberg” Sparks, and all the rest of the family he has outlived. There is a sturdy independence about Uncle Aaron born of a lifetime’s hard work and the kind of pride that comes with extreme old age unbowed by his obvious poor circumstances. The street cries of the children and dogs fill the room of the shabby house on Maffitt Avenue as he recalls Pinetop and Lindberg and their somewhat confusing story.
Aaron and Marion were twins born on May 22nd, 1910, to Ruth and Sullie Gant in Tupelo, Mississippi.1 There was already an older son, Rufus, and probably two sisters, Jimmie Lee and Mahalia.2 Soon after the twins were born, Ruth married Carl Sparks, Uncle Aaron’s brother, and the boys took the surname of Sparks.
“Piano player Aaron, he learned how to play piano before he could holler and shout,” was Uncle Aaron’s proud claim. “It was a colored fellow teaching him. He had a joint, ya know, selling bootleg whiskey back in the corner. He just had a crowd there all the time and he just learned to play. His name Arthur Johnson and he been dead so long nobody down there would know him, ’cause he was a old man when he was teaching that boy.”
When Carl, Ruth, and the twins moved to St. Louis, probably around 1920, Aaron was to receive some formal musical schooling.
He just learned how to play the blues. After he came in, why, he went to school and they learned him the notes. He just kept getting better and better and got to playing for illegal joints, ya know.
This was about when Henry Townsend ran into him, and he would often accompany Pinetop.
Pinetop was doing a lot of house party playing and, uh, ’cause this was a trend then. We would go from house party to house party—give what you call it, rent party—and make some money to pay the rent. We’d go from place to place like that. I mean, it’d be announced at this party before it was over that there would be such and such a place to get their rent paid and Pinetop would play for those kind of parties where they had a piano and I kinda went around him quite a bit.
Milton Sparks. St. Louis, 1934.
We’d have jam sessions, ya know. All the musicians was kinda known at that time. We’d have jam sessions. Maybe I’d be playing at some place, and if it was a house party or something there was a limitation on how long we could keep the neighbors up, ya know. So maybe one or two o’clock we’d have to give those people a chance next door to go to sleep, so we would quit, and possibly Pinetop be playing at some other place where they had it in a basement and wasn’t no limit at all—all night and all day. So we’d go by there, ya know, and we’d get together and play not as hired groups, but just jamming, as we called it. Mainly house parties or sometimes it would be called some kind of little club. It wasn’t officially a club, it would be someplace where it was fairly large enough for people to gather and they would organize and call it a club, ya know. Like the old Charley Houston’s house on Lucas. Charley used to have a pretty good size place down there. It was a pretty noted club down there—he had entertainment all the time. I used to play there. I was hired there quite a few times with Sykes. Roosevelt used to play there, Pinetop would play there occasionally. He would use quite a few musicianers.
The house parties were rough, with the music and dancing only secondary to the main attractions of drinking and gambling, and inevitably the participants found themselves on the wrong side of the law. Violation of the Bone Dry Law was an obvious occupational hazard, and Marion was first arrested on July 23, 1928, and Pinetop, November 10, 1928. Marion had further arrests for gambling—November 17 for fighting and December 19, the same year. From this sudden spate of arrests in quick succession it seems likely that 1928 marked the beginning of their musical activities or their appearance in the “life.”
When Marion was arrested again on November 16, 1929, he gave his name as Milton Sparks. Whether he decided to change his name in view of his growing police record is conjectural, but from then on, while his family would still call him Marion, Milton was the name by which he was known among his bluesmen peers. Henry Townsend recalls:
Now, at that time Milton wasn’t, he wasn’t singing. He’d be around, but he wasn’t trying to do any vocalist [sic] at all and, uh, ’cause Pinetop was the star when it come to singing. And so just out of nowhere Milton decided he was going to sing, and he’d start.
The name “Lindberg” hadn’t cropped up before, either. It would not have been uncommon in St. Louis, anyway, after Charles Lindbergh’s epic 1927 flight, but Henry suggests it was probably due to Milton’s prowess in dancing the Lindberg or Lindy Hop, which itself was named after the famous aviator.
It come along someplace during the time there was a dance—and he was good, a pretty good dancer. And he was probably good at that particular dance. Ya know, it was a kind of swing dance, ya know. I guess it fitted the pattern of the playing and he was very good at that. So I guess they just started to call him Lindy or he started to call himself Lindy or Lindberg or something like that. That’s the only thing I could see, because he wasn’t called that at first. When I first knew him nobody called him Lindberg, but later years they started to call him Lindberg. He was known as Milton then. Everybody called him by his name.
Of course it might have been made up by the white talent scout who first got the brothers on record. If Aaron was already called Pinetop (as is almost certain), then a nom de disque for Milton was obviously called for. [According to Townsend,] Aaron got the name Pinetop because: “He was very good at the number that Smith made. Yeah, he was very good with that number, and as most guys do he just started to call himself Pinetop himself, ya know. So that’s how he got that name.”
Joe Dean corroborates Townsend’s explanation:
I got that [“Boogie Woogie”] from Pinetop—he and I battled it out there one night. He wanted to see who was the best! And I came right behind him and everybody just clapped their hands, “Go ahead, Joe—you got him.” We had this little shindig there on Del-Morgan Street where we used to come all the time, we would meet there together. And then we’d share it back and forth, and finally he’d start playing the “boogie-woogie” and by the time he got through his number then, “Alright, Joe Dean, I want to hear you.” And then, say, “Hey, we can’t tell these guys apart, who’s the best.” It was fun—it really (was) fun. And serious, too—in a manner each one of us took our music seriously.
It was as Pinetop and Lindberg,3 then, that their first session was cut in February 1932 when they recorded four sides for Victor in Atlanta, where the company had stopped off to record Blind Willie McTell on the way back from Dallas after recording other St. Louis artists Walter Davis and Stump Johnson with Roosevelt Sykes.
Their first recordings were impressive, as Aaron provided a varied accompaniment to Marion’s declamatory vocals. “4 x 11 = 44” was a wonderful boogie with an insistent single-note bass and characteristically “hollow” treble and a great rippling solo passage. Lyrically, the songs all dealt with leaving or changing one’s ways, and “East Chicago Blues,” with its haunting melody, and the sprightly “Louisiana Bound” were both “leaving” blues. “I Believe I’ll Make a Change” is fascinating for being possibly the first version of the later “Dust My Broom” variant. Their opening verse—“I believe I believe I’ll make a change [x 2] / Goin’ cut off my gas stove and I’m going back to my range”—would join the great stock of traditional blues lyrics. The song is also interesting for Marion’s introduction of his wife, Janie, whom he was to identify much more explicitly later on: “I believe I believe I’ll go back home [x 2] / Well, this life I’m living won’t let Jane be here long.” Pinewood Tom (Josh White) copied the song two years later changing the order of the verses and omitting one, but with only minor variations to the lyrics, and this seems to have been the version that Leroy Carr recorded only days later. Washboard Sam, in 1939, appears to have been the first to copyright it, though.
By the time of their first recordings, Aaron was already an accomplished pianist and he must have been recognized as a valuable accompanist, too, for at their next session, with five pianists participating (Walter Davis, Jesse Bell, Stump Johnson,4 and Roosevelt Sykes—as Willie Kelly—were the others), Pinetop’s ten accompaniments out of nineteen outnumbered even Sykes’s. This was a mammoth affair involving no less than thirteen St. Louis artists and thirtyfive titles in Chicago, on August 2, 1933, for Bluebird, Victor’s cheap label, and Aaron accompanied five artists as well as cutting three sides with Milton as the Sparks Brothers. There was a lot of new talent at this session, including five women singers of no great distinction, and it’s tempting to imagine the men had brought along their girlfriends. Whatever, Aaron accompanied Elizabeth Washington, Dorotha Trowbridge, and Tecumseh McDowell, an eighteen-yearold girl from Arkansas and the only one known on the “scene.” She’d been arrested the previous year after a fight with her boyfriend, and the following year she was picked up in a swoop on a gambling house at 2248-A Washington with four other women and twenty-eight men.5 The women singers seemed to be influenced by Alice Moore and sounded not dissimilar, apart from the harsh-voiced Dorotha Trowbridge, whose nasal tones were even more pronounced. Mostly, Pinetop used a simple chorded bass with attractive right-hand work in accompanying them and on the Sparks Brothers’ own sides, but his accompaniment to Charlie McFadden’s “Friendless Man,” with its simple, but majestic, bass and right-hand triplets, was one of his best. On their own sides as well as Aaron’s beautiful piano Milton contributed some local color as in “Down on the Levee”: “Down on the levee down by Boot’s place [x 2] / Buy me half-pint of liquor find me a roosting place.” Stump Johnson, in Conversation with the Blues, talked about the notorious levee joints and Boot’s in particular:
And just all around St. Louis down to Boot’s on the levee I’d be. And Boot’s was one of the most popular places in the city of St. Louis, because all the riverboats would come in there and dock and all the ’ristocratic people would come down there for slummin’ and enjoyment. They were very, very tough places, though, and they were shootin’ dice and drinkin’ whiskey and enjoyin’ themselves and it could get kinda rough.
Despite this, other towns were faster, and “Chicago’s Too Much for Me” was a not unusual sentiment for artists visiting the city and their first experience of the “fast track.” Their other song from the session, “61 Highway,” was another that would pass into the common currency of the blues. Sykes had recorded a “Highway 61 Blues” (Champion 16586) the previous year, but this was different in lyric and melody, and it was the Sparks Brothers who coined the now very familiar verse: “61 Highway, longest highway that I know [x 2] / It runs from New York City down into the Gulf of Mexico.”
1932 or 1933 were hardly the most propitious years to start a recording career, but it’s clear that the records were influential on other artists, and recording, anyway, added to the brothers’ local reputation. Five feet eleven, 151 pounds, and dark skinned, they were difficult to tell apart, which may have presented problems for the St. Louis Police Department, where they were becoming equally well known. As Uncle Aaron says:
Pinetop, he was a tall dark fellow—both of them was. They was twins. They looked just alike, couldn’t hardly tell one from another. You couldn’t hardly tell—you meet one over there, then come around here and meet one here, you wouldn’t know whether it was him or not. You call him the same thing.
Their personalities were different, though, as Uncle Aaron says again, laughing, of Pinetop, “Oh, yes, he was a nice boy. He was a better boy than Marion was—’cause Marion’d fight in a minute and Pinetop wouldn’t.”
This is supported by Marion’s approximately fifty arrests for peace disturbance, affray, suspect larceny, gambling, and other minor offenses. He’d also acquired, along the way, a further alias of “Marion Smith.” For destruction of property in 1930 he served ninety days in the workhouse, and when picked up with a friend at 23rd and Carr on suspicion in July 1934, they were described: “Both men are well-known police characters and associates of thieves and have been arrested numerous times as suspects.” The next month, though, Milton was in Chicago recording for Decca as “Flyin’ Lindburg.” This was another huge session of mainly St. Louis artists, which had occupied most of the preceding week and weekend. On Friday, August 24, Marion recorded with Peetie Wheatstraw on piano, possibly Bill Lowry on violin, and an unknown clarinetist and guitarist. Interestingly, at this session there were sides by “Tee McDonald” (probably Tecumseh McDowell), “Dorothy Baker” (probably Dorotha Trowbridge), and “Dolly Martin” (probably Tecumseh McDowell, again). The pseudonyms may have been necessary if a Bluebird contract was still in force (although it was a few weeks over a year previously they’d recorded for Bluebird) or they may have hoped to record again for them. In the event, though, for Bluebird’s next session of St. Louis talent in July 1935, only Walter Davis and the Sparks Brothers were recalled from the 1933 session. This was to be their last recording date.
Uncle Aaron Sparks. St. Louis, 1977. (Photo Mike Rowe)
It was also the first time Pinetop sang unaccompanied by Milton. Henry Townsend, who was at the session as an accompanist, explains:
Yeah, Pinetop sang. Milton was supposed to be the singer of the two when the session was drawed up. Pinetop didn’t go there to sing at all. He went to play for his brother, Milton. And when we got there, why, just going through measures like musicians carry on, he hummed off a tune or two. So everybody thought he should go ahead and do a number. So he went ahead and did a number. It turned out that his number was the better number after all.
In fact, all of Pinetop’s numbers were better than Milton’s,6 and, moreover, with his warm, mellow voice compared to Milton’s very nasal tones, he was the more attractive singer of the two. “Tell Her about Me,” with its superb melody and wistful vocal, and “Got the Blues about My Baby,” a heavier mid-tempo boogie, were his best sides, but incredibly the session produced yet another blues standard. He sang “Every Day I Have the Blues” in a high falsetto, and it’s a shock to hear this moving performance for the first time as the song was originally conceived. Milton’s songs, two accompanied by Walter Davis and two by Aaron, were more ordinary, but “Grinder Blues” contains an extraordinarily frank tribute to Janie again:
Don’t you know I got a little grinder.
She lives in St. Louis, her number is 2721 Stoddard Street.
That little woman grind me to death, boy.
I’m telling you the truth. I don’t love nobody but that little woman
her name is Janie (Dubois?)
Hey, man, I feel a verse coming down
Blues I ain’t gonna sing these Blues no more [x 2]
I got my mind on Janie, mean I swear I got to go.
While the Ina of “Ina Blues” was probably fictitious, Janie certainly was flesh and blood, for at his 1934 arrest Milton gave Janie as his wife and address of 2721 Stoddard. It was obviously an enduring relationship, too, as the St. Louis city directories list Milton and his wife, Janie, as late as 1947–1948.
In contrast, [according to Aaron Cleveland Sparks], “Aaron didn’t have no wife. He just had women. He’d go and stay with this one till she quit him. He’d go and get him another, soon after she quit him—that’s the way he lived.”
Pinetop fit the traditional romantic stereotype of the blues man—hard drinker, no job, and no steady woman, often in trouble with the law. Aaron lived his life in the joints playing piano and outside of them, he hardly seemed to exist. The joints are shadowy enough, but some of them are remembered. As Joe Dean says:
I had places on Delmar, on Franklin, on Morgan Street, so to speak, but it was farther up than Jefferson. It was on Leffingwell and Morgan, and ofttimes Pinetop would come into this place where I would be playing, ya know. We moved around quite a bit from place to place and house to house, and every now and then we’d run into each other unexpectedly, like. Like I said before, someone would hire Pinetop to play for that night and I didn’t have no place to play, so I would visit this place and there Pinetop would be there and we would share, back and forth, ya know. Give him a rest and I would play. Although he got paid, I’d give him a rest and he’d rest me. And a lot of times I’d be playing at a certain place, he’d come in, it’d be the same thing. We’d help each other out that way.
Uncle Aaron, of course, often saw Pinetop play:
Yeah, they had over here on Delmar and, uh, I think it’s the 20—right below Jefferson there, they had a joint there. Oh, a great big place, as big as eight rooms and they had dancing and piano playing and sold whiskies in the back and everything. That was way back, you know, when Prohibition was. Dirty Inn, that’s what they called it—go down and ask about the Dirty Inn, down by Jefferson and Delmar and everybody around there, all them wineheads will tell you. They done tore it down now and put up a big filling station.
But Uncle Aaron remembered Pinetop playing more out of the city:
He go out there to Bloomington.7 He played at that place up there—he mostly went every week to someplace to play, but he never played much here, only the Hole in the Wall over on Delmar. That’s what it was called, Hole in the Wall, ’cause you went down in the basement. Just below Jefferson. He played out at this place they call Blue Heaven out here in Kinloch. He played there lots. Lindberg never did play nothing, but he sang all the time. He was a good songster. But Pinetop picked up playing piano. And Jimmie Lee sung. Mahalia never did sing.
Henry Townsend remembered Jimmie Lee:
They also had a sister. I don’t think she ever done any recording, but she was far beyond in my opinion—she was far beyond Milton or Pinetop for vocalist, and they called her Jimmie Lee. Oh, she had the town sewed up when it come to vocalist. Yeah, she was a great singer, but I don’t remember any time if she did any recording.8
Their last recording session, July 28, 1935, is also the last glimpse we catch of Pinetop. During his brief recording career he lived at 3139 and 3141 Franklin, and on an arrest in 1932 and two in 1934 he gave his occupation as “musician.” Apart from this, the only definite information is that he died long before Milton, but despite intensive searching no death certificate has been found. Aaron never appeared in the city directories, and even the police records are confusing. From the frequency of arrests—eighteen from November 10, 1928, to his last arrest on August 30, 1934—it seems that Pinetop either turned over a new leaf (as Milton certainly did in later years) or, more probably, died soon after, possibly in his late twenties.9 There is a hint of an early death in both Uncle Aaron’s recollections (a suspicion of poisoning) and Henry Townsend’s. Thus, Uncle Aaron said:
We all thought he got poisoned, yeah. Because he died just like that—could have had heart trouble, but he was laughing and talking and they hadn’t been drinking but two or three … They just ’grudged Pinetop of his gift, yeah. Ya know, sometimes people hate you because you wear nice clothes. They’ll kill you for it, too. They’ll do it. That’s just what happened to Pinetop. Pinetop had such a gift the folks walk up and give him ten dollars and he maybe wouldn’t know him. He’d had heard him play and perform at these places and that’s why he walk up and give him ten dollars. He wouldn’t know who he was. But, see, folks, peoples ’grudge you that. They wants that and they ain’t done nothing for it. They’ll kill you, too.
But Townsend believed that Pinetop just burned himself out in the joints:
’Cause he pushed too hard at it. That’s the same problem Pinetop had when he hit his little streak of fame. Why the people—he just a good-hearted guy—“Come on fella, come on.” He just followed through night and day, night and day. So after a while, sleep was too far out—he couldn’t get it, too far behind, and that was the cause of his death.
After the last session in Chicago, Milton was arrested again the next month, but his subsequent arrest was his most serious brush with the law yet. Possibly he was a bit unlucky. On Sunday, August 23, 1936, Lindberg, dressed up in brown pants and a white shirt with black spots, went to a social function at William Taylor’s dance hall at 930 22nd Street. Unfortunately, it’s not known what musical entertainment was provided that night, but at eleven o’clock he went into the kitchen and ordered a dime sandwich from Mack Lane, who was in charge of the food. At that point, Edward Randolph, who was president of the club that was organizing the social, came in and Lindberg handed over the dime to him. Lane then asked Randolph for a ticket for the sandwich, but Randolph denied that it had been paid for! Not surprisingly, an argument then started up between Randolph and Lindberg, who, by now, was sitting at a chair eating while Randolph leaned over him repeating, “You never gave me a dime.” There was a scuffle and, according to Taylor, Randolph jumped on Lindberg with an open pocketknife and cut him in the chest and leg. Taylor stepped in to separate them, Lindberg ran upstairs, and Randolph left the hall. Half an hour later, Edward Randolph, still armed, returned with his brother Herschel and went to the yard at the rear of the dance hall. Lindberg also came back, still bleeding from the chest wound, and sat at a bench at the side of the hall. Edward Randolph then walked around the counter to Robert Williams, who had been taking tickets at the door until one o’clock, and gave him some tickets from soda sales. As they were checking the tickets, Lindberg got up off the bench, came over, took out his pocketknife, opened it, and stabbed Randolph, who tried to defend himself by lashing out with his feet. Lindberg fled by the side door into Cole Street while Randolph, seriously wounded in the stomach and chest, was helped by his brother out the front door into 22nd Street. Herschel took him to the city hospital in his Ford motor coach and Randolph died an hour later.
Next afternoon at 4 p.m., Lindberg was arrested at 10th and Carr and, suffering from an incised wound of the right leg and stab wound in the left side of his chest, was admitted to the same hospital in a serious condition.
A grand jury indicted Lindberg on September 21 on a charge of manslaughter, and the case was heard on April 16, 1937. After pleading guilty, he was sentenced to six months in the city workhouse. Considering that in 1930 Milton had spent three months in the workhouse for destruction of property, the light sentence is either an indication of how little concerned the authorities were with black-versus-black assault, or the strong provocation that Lindberg had undoubtedly suffered in this case and the time he’d spent in custody already.
Afterward, Milton still continued to get into trouble with the law, but his arrests were becoming less frequent. Janie was still living up to 1948, but after that nothing is known of her. The twins’ mother, Ruth, probably died about 1941 and their stepfather, Carl, who was a junk dealer and had married again, died about 1957. Milton in 1951 was living at 711 Jefferson, which was the Calumet Hotel, where Walter Davis was working at the time as a desk clerk. By now Milton had quieted down, and his last arrest, in 1955, for permitting an unauthorized person to drive, was little more than an echo of his wild past. He married [a woman named] Mary about then and was a reformed character. He even got a job, too—as a construction worker. Uncle Aaron recalls for us:
Pinetop never did have no job. Marion, he didn’t start to work none until he married this woman he married, ya know? Then he went to work. He never worked before that. He went back to church and was singing in the choir. (laughs) He’d quit singing blues.
Milton never got into trouble again and lived quietly until his death.10 He was working as a porter at Heckman School in St. Louis when on May 25, 1963, three days after his fifty-third birthday, Milton drove to work as usual and suffered a fatal heart attack. Uncle Aaron has the last word:
Started to working and fell and died right there. But naturally, what I think was the matter with Marion, I think when he was out there singing and going on. I think he drinked too much.
We took our leave of Uncle Aaron with further leads to follow up, but the trail had gone very cold. A couple of brief phone conversations with Milton’s, perhaps understandably, hostile widow, Mary, and a fruitless meeting with Uncle Aaron’s wife, shed no further light on a rowdy history whose main characters had long died and those left had little interest in or didn’t want to be reminded of. And fifty years on, who can blame them?
1. The year 1910 is in some doubt, Marion having given his birth date as May 22, 1908, and 1909 on other occasions. Aaron’s date of birth is not shown, but from his age given on various arrests the year could be 1905, 1906, or 1907! The year 1910 is given on Marion’s death certificate.
In 1934 Marion gave “Sullie Sparks” as his father, address unknown, and “Ruth Sparks” as his mother, address 1217 N. 17th Street. There is no suggestion that his stepfather, Carl, was not living with his mother at the time, and Carl was not known by any other name. It seems probable that Marion was referring to his real father and that Sullie was his name, but he was, of course, Sullie Gant.
Aaron usually gave Tennessee as his state of birth and on other occasions he gave Illinois (East St. Louis). Marion gave Mississippi and specifically, Tupelo, Mississippi, but usually East St. Louis, Illinois, as his birthplace. However, Uncle Aaron’s statement that they were born in Tupelo, confirmed by Marion’s death certificate, is almost certainly correct.
2. In 1934 Marion listed no sisters and only Rufus Sparks of Percy, Mississippi, as relatives. Rufus was Rufus Gant, but it’s hard to know whether the sisters were Gants or Sparkses. Rufus, who attended Marion’s funeral in 1963, was then living in Cleveland, Ohio.
3. By the time of the first session Marion had been using the name Milton for at least three years. It’s interesting that for the company files he reverted to his real name, Marion.
4. Blues & Gospel Records and the Victor Master Book are incorrect in listing Stump Johnson as accompanist to Elizabeth Washington’s “Riot Call Blues” (Bb 5229). The label states, “Aaron Sparks piano,” and this is supported by aural evidence. As far as we know, her Victor issue has not yet been discovered.
5. Among the twenty-eight men arrested were two brothers, Charles Mike and Robert Mike. They could possibly have been the two artists Red and Black Mike whom Big Bill Broonzy describes finding in East St. Louis for Lester Melrose in 1937. But according to Blues & Gospel Records, St. Louis Red Mike’s real name was John Mac Bailey.
6. Bluebird must have had reservations about their salability anyway, as all of Milton’s and a couple of Pinetop’s sides were paired for release with, usually, more popular artists; for example, Walter Davis, Memphis Minnie, Tampa Red, Bumble Bee Slim, and Bo Carter. If so, then Bluebird’s fears were well founded, for by about March 1937 their only records still in catalogue were 6125 (rev. Walter Davis), 6202 (rev. Memphis Minnie), 6521 (rev. Bumble Bee Slim), and 6529 (rev. Bo Carter), which were obviously issued later anyway, and 5193. This last record might have sold well, but more probably sold so badly that the first pressing was still left in stock and hence was left in the catalogue.
7. Bloomington, Illinois, is where Uncle Aaron assured us we would find a close associate of Pinetop’s, a very tall piano player who ran with Pinetop all the time. In the first interview he named him as Arthur Henderson, but he could not recall the name in the second interview.
8. Uncle Aaron, who contradicted himself on some points and was confused on others (not surprisingly, given his advanced age) claimed that Pinetop accompanied Jimmie Lee on record. This seems most unlikely, but there are untraced matrices from the 1933 session, and it does seem strange that Jimmie Lee was not among the “new” women singers who recorded then.
Jimmie Lee’s married name was Miller and, according to Mary Sparks, she was last known to be in Fairbanks, Alaska! But in Uncle Aaron’s opening paragraph he seems to suggest that she is dead. There was also a cousin Ernestine who ran with Jimmie Lee and the twins.
9. Aaron’s police file actually shows twenty arrests, eighteen from 1928 to 1934, with a gap until 1950, and another gap to the last arrest, in 1954. The address given on the last arrest is actually Uncle Aaron’s, and the age, 55, although incorrect, is nearer Uncle Aaron’s than Pinetop’s. It hasn’t been possible to check the address of the 1950 arrest, but the age, given as 52, fits in again with Uncle Aaron’s. Further, Mary Sparks, who married Milton sometime between 1949 and 1955, but probably much nearer the latter date, never met Pinetop, who had been dead long before she married Milton. It’s likely, then, that these two late arrests refer to Uncle Aaron (who remembered one arrest for a minor offense) and should be discounted. Aaron’s pattern of arrests then becomes significant. With no more arrests after 1934, Aaron had either reformed, retired, changed his name, left town, or died. From Uncle Aaron’s and Henry Townsend’s accounts it seems likely that Pinetop died soon after his last recording session.
10. A note in Blues & Gospel Records—“A man named Lindberg Sparks still lives in St. Louis, MO, and claims to be Flyin’ Lindbergh [sic]”—shows that somebody talked to Milton, probably in the late ’50s. Why his claim to be “Flyin’ Lindburg” was not taken seriously or why this great opportunity was missed is not clear. We would be very interested to find out who it was who spoke to him.