Robert Brown (July 31, 1927 – May 1973), who performed as Smoky Babe, was an American

acoustic blues Country blues (also folk blues, rural blues, backwoods blues, or downhome blues) is one of the earliest forms of blues music. The mainly solo vocal with acoustic fingerstyle guitar accompaniment developed in the rural Southern United States in ...

guitarist and singer, whose recording career was restricted to a couple of recording sessions in the early 1960s. He has been variously described as a

Louisiana blues Louisiana blues is a genre of blues music that developed in the period after World War II in the state of Louisiana. It is generally divided into two major subgenres, with the jazz-influenced New Orleans blues based on the musical traditions of t ...

Piedmont blues Piedmont blues (also known as East Coast, or Southeastern blues) refers primarily to a guitar style, which is characterized by a fingerpicking approach in which a regular, alternating thumb bass string rhythmic pattern supports a syncopated melod ...

and blues revival musician. His most noteworthy

recordings A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, r ...

are "Going Downtown Boogie" and "Ain't Got No Rabbit Dog".

Career

Brown was born in

Itta Bena, Mississippi Itta Bena is a city in Leflore County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 2,049 at the 2010 census. The town's name is derived from the Choctaw phrase ''iti bina'', meaning "forest camp". Itta Bena is part of the Greenwood, Mississi ...

. He was recorded by

Harry Oster Dr. Harry Oster (April 12, 1923 – January 19, 2001) was an American folklorist and musicologist. Biography Oster was the firstborn of Jacob and Sarah, Russian-Polish Jews, who emigrated to Cambridge, Massachusetts. After one year in college ...

Louisiana State University Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 near ...

in 1960 and 1961, and the results were released by the Folk Lyric,

Bluesville B.B. King's Bluesville is a Sirius XM Radio channel devoted to blues music. It plays a mix of traditional blues, modern blues, rockin' blues and soul or "finger-poppin blues. Bill Wax was the original Program Director for the channel until hi ...

and Storyville labels. Other than his recordings, little is known of his life. The circumstances of his death are unclear. Some sources report that he died in June 1975, but the researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc have stated that he probably died in May 1973 in Scotlandville,

Baton Rouge, Louisiana Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Located the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, it is the parish seat of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana's most populous parish—the equivalent of count ...

. His song, "Boogy", is included on the compilation album ''Blues Roots: Give Me the Blues'' (1979), and "Hottest Brand Goin'" and "Locomotive Blues" are included in the collection ''The Bluesville Years, Vol. 9: Down the Country Way'' (1998).

Discography

*''Smoky Babe and His Friends: Hot Blues'' (1961), Folk-Lyric,

77 Records 77 Records was a British record company and label established in 1957 by Doug Dobell, the proprietor of 'Dobell's Jazz Record Shop' at 77 Charing Cross Road, London. The label specialised in folk, blues, and jazz. Several British jazz musici ...

Arhoolie Arhoolie Records is an American small independent record label run by Chris Strachwitz and is based in El Cerrito, California, United States (it is actually located in Richmond Annex but has an El Cerrito postal address.) The label was founded b ...

*''Hottest Brand Goin (1961), Bluesville (Reissued on CD as ''The Blues of Smokey Babe'') *Smoky Babe,

Herman E. Johnson Herman E. Johnson (born August 18, 1909 – February 2, 1975) was an American country blues guitarist. He was recorded by folklorist Harry Oster in Louisiana, in 1961. Biography According to his army draft card, Johnson was born in Zachar ...

, ''Louisiana Country Blues'' (1997), Arhoolie *''Smoky Babe: Way Back in the Country Blues'' (2014), Arhoolie

References

External links

Smoky Babe recordings at archive.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Smoky Babe 1927 births 1973 deaths People from Itta Bena, Mississippi Blues musicians from Mississippi American blues guitarists American male guitarists American blues singers Blues revival musicians Louisiana blues musicians Piedmont blues musicians 20th-century American singers 20th-century American guitarists Singers from Louisiana Guitarists from Louisiana Guitarists from Mississippi 20th-century American male singers