Release Date: 1991.
Recording Time: 61 minutes.
Recording Date: 1927 - 1931.
Release Info: Compilation (DOCD-5034) Studio Recording.
Styles: Country Blues, Delta Blues, Pre-War Country Blues, Regional Blues.
Every track that Sam Collins recorded at the end of the '20s and early in the '30s is included on Document's Complete Recorded Works (1927-1931). Although the comprehensiveness of the set is a little intimidating for casual listeners -- they should stick with the better-sequenced Jailhouse Blues -- historians will find the collection invaluable. ~ Thom Owens
Abridged from this album's booklet notes.
Sam Collins, "Salty Dog Sam", was something of an enigma to record collectors in the late fifties and early sixties. The bulk of the known facts regarding Sam Collins' life are the results of field work undertaken by American collector Gayle Dean Wardlow. It was discovered that Collins was raised in McComb, Mississippi, birth-place of another, later, innovator, Bo Diddley. Despite its location in the Sunflower state, McComb was just across the line from Louisiana and it was in that state that Sam Collins was born to Sam Sr. and Sophie in August 1887. By the time he had reached maturity he was carrying his music to the barrelhouses in an area that covered both states. This stamping-ground seems to have overlapped one being worked by Joe Holmes, a son of McComb who relocated in Sibley, Louisiana, because the two men formed one of those loose partnerships that we hear of so often in blues history. Maybe they knew each other from McComb, before Holmes moved to Louisiana. Joe was only to record once; for Paramount in 1932, two years after Sam's last session - and under the name "King Solomon Hill". The result of all this cross-fertilisation is to be heard on the disc now before you. By accepted standards Sam's limited slide guitar work is often out of tune. Out of tune to our ears that is but not to Sam's because it fits perfectly with a voice employing what is often described as an "eerie" falsetto to earn its owner the nom du disque "Crying" Sam Collins.
Sam's exact relationship with John D. Fox is not clear either. He played guitar in support of this light-voiced singer during one session in 1927 from which, inexplicably, none of the numbers cut under his own name were ever released. Apart from the blues that he cobbled together from traditional verses and personalised so skilfully with own additions, he could sing spirituals and Vaudeville ditties. He even made the first recording of the folk staple Midnight Special.
Once his recording career was over Sam Collins became, once more, the shadowy figure that he had been in his youth. The bare bone of his story is that he moved north to Chicago where he died in 1949. But wherever he finally located, Sam's music was firmly lodged in the south and it is from there that his "eerie" falsetto and "strange" guitar address us across the years. ~ Keith Briggs, 1991 Document Records.
Credits: Keith Briggs - Liner Notes; Lonnie Chatmon - Composer; Sam Collins - Guitar, Primary Artist, Vocals; Tommy Dorsey - Composer; John D. Fox - Performer, Vocals; W.C. Handy - Composer; Richard M. Jones - Composer; Lead Belly - Composer; Johnny Parth - Producer; Traditional - Composer; Walter Vinson - Composer.
Tracklist:
01. The Jail House Blues - Sam Collins
02. Devil In The Lion's Den - Sam Collins
03. Yellow Dog Blues - Sam Collins
04. Loving Lady Blues - Sam Collins
05. Riverside Blues - Sam Collins
06. Dark Cloudy Blues - Sam Collins
07. Hesitation Blues - Sam Collins
08. Pork Chop Blues - Sam Collins
09. Midnight Special Blues - Sam Collins
10. I Want To Be Like Jesus In My Heart - Sam Collins
11. Lead Me All The Way - Sam Collins
12. It Won't Be Long - Sam Collins
13. Do That Thing - Sam Collins
14. The Worried Man Blues - John D. Fox
15. The Moanin' Blues - John D. Fox
16. Lonesome Road Blues - Sam Collins
17. New Salty Dog - Sam Collins
18. Slow Mama Slow - Sam Collins
19. Signifying Blues - Sam Collins
20. I'm Still Sitting On Top Of The World - Sam Collins
21. Graveyard Digger's Blues - Sam Collins
22. My Road Is Rough And Rocky (How Long, How Long?) - Sam Collins