b. September 12, 1884 on a Plantation near Red Banks, Marshall County, MS, d. October 15, 1979 at Methodist Hospital in Memphis, TN. As a youth, Cannon was a proficient fiddler, as well as a guitarist and pianist, but his main instrument was the banjo. Cannon, whose parents had been slaves, made his first banjo at the age of 12 from a guitar neck and a bread pan. He was taught to play in Clarksdale, Mississippi, by a musician named Bud Jackson and studied other local players, such as W.C. Handy. It was as "Banjo Joe" that Cannon appeared on the "medicine shows" every summer from 1914-29, working as a farm labourer during the winter months. While in Chicago with a medicine show he recorded for Paramount in 1927, with Blind Blake on guitar. Spurred on by the 1927 success of the Memphis Jug Band, Cannon added a coal-oil can on a neck harness to his equipment, and was signed when the Victor label came to Memphis in 1928. Cannon's Jug Stompers recorded annually from 1928-30, producing some of the finest and most bluesy jug band 78s. As fashions changed, Cannon ceased playing the streets for money in 1950, but he kept in practice, and made some recordings for folklorists in 1956 and 1961. In 1963 came an unlikely moment of fame, when the Rooftop Singers had a number 1 hit with "Walk Right In", which the Stompers had recorded in 1929. He continued to make occasional recordings for friends in the 70s, though naturally, they were of diminishing liveliness. Cannon has since been considered by music historians as one of the links between pre-blues Negro folk music and the blues. The original Stax album featured Will Shade on jug, and Milton Roby (washboard) and was rumoured to have only been pressed in a quantity of 800. It was expertly remastered and reissued on CD by Ace Records in 1999. Cannon died in 1979 and buried at Greenview Memorial Gardens in Nesbit, DeSoto County, Mississippi.
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By Jim O'Neal
Gus Cannon was the best known of all the jugband musicians and a seminal figure on the Memphis blues scene. His recollections have also provided us with much of our knowledge of the earliest days of the blues in the Mississippi Delta. Cannon led his Jug Stompers on banjo and jug in a historic series of dates for the Victor label in 1928-1930. The ensemble usually included a second banjoist or guitarist, one of whom often doubled on kazoo, and the legendary Noah Lewis on harmonica. The jug-band style enjoyed a revival during the folk boom of the '50s and '60s, resulting in an ultra-rare Gus Cannon album on Stax, of all labels, after his "Walk Right In" became the nation's best-selling record for the Rooftop Singers in 1963. Cannon's Victor output was also a favorite source of early blues material for the Grateful Dead.