Little Brother Montgomery - Vocal Accompaniments & Early Post-War Recordings 1930 - 1954

Best known for the astonishing "Vicksburg Blues" and "No Special Rider Blues," the barrelhousing Little Brother Montgomery was a great writer and arguably the most versatile of all blues piano men. He grew up listening to ragtime, idolized Jelly Roll Morton, and absorbed stride and boogie into his early style; while his roots remained obvious, he stayed up-to-date until his 1985 death. Eleven tracks as accompanist, four fronting a jazz band, and nine postwar solo tracks on which he sounds like two men playing at once. - John Mothland

Piano Discoveries 1928 - 1943

This compilation disc contains an astonishing array of blues and boogie-woogie piano artists that will be of interest to anyone who has an ear for this genre of music. Some of the selections are outtakes, while others are never-before-released recordings. The latter are from vinyl records that were made in the ’40s. Among the artists featured are Lee Green, Judson Brown with Charlie “Bozo” Nicherson, Leroy Carr with Scrapper Blackwell, Charles “Cow Cow” Davenport, Georgia Tom with Tampa Red, Memphis Slim, Little Brother Montgomery, Roosevelt Sykes with Walter Davis, Thomas A. Dorsy, Ivy Smith, Ezra Howelett Shelton, Cripple Clarence Lofton, Jimmy and Mama Yancey, and Alonzo Yancey. The quality of the recordings is variable, but listening to them is still worthwhile for their historical and musical value. The repertoire ranges from the well-known The Girl I’m Looking For, Beer Drinking Woman, and Church House Blues to the more obscure Mama and Jimmy Blues, Deep End Boogie, and Poor Old Bachelor Blues. Dialogue by various artists is interspersed throughout this fascinating historical document. – Rose of Sharon Witmer.

Piano Blues, the essential DOUBLE CD
This double CD is compiled of some of the most influential Piano blues artists of the pre-war era including Turner Parish, Pinetop Smith, Roosevelt Sykes, Little Brother Montgomery and many more.

Little Brother Montgomery 1930 - 1936

“Little Brother” Montgomery, vocal, piano.

With contributions by: Walter Vincson, guitar; and others…

Genres: Country blues, blues piano, Louisiana blues.

"Little Brother" — quite a name for a giant. He happened to be around much longer than expected (Eddie Boyd: "He always had a rendez-vous with death."), and some of his later recordings seem superfluous. Yet, most of the notes he pressed were to the point.

No more excuses for a man who was probably the greatest all-round piano player of his time in the Deep South. His unsurpassed mastery is documented by the mammoth Oct. 1936 session, when he cut 23 sides on one day — all his 17 solo recordings are assembled here while the five accompaniments are to be found on Document BDCD-6034. Brother was not a one-strain player like most of the blues specialists. The magnificent Crescent City Blues is a case in point, with its ragtime-like structure. He learned it from one Lumis (or Loomis) Gibson, a pianist about whom nothing else seems to be known. His masterpiece, however, was Vicksburg Blues, his version of the wide-spread theme commonly known as "the 44s". Continued...

God Don`t Like It - Document Shortcuts Vol 1 Blues Sampler
Maybe you already know something about Document, maybe (to use a music biz term) you are just “scratching the surface”. Either way, here is a clip, a snippet, an appetizer made up from tracks found within the catalogue. You don’t have to be a collector, worrying about matrix numbers or what colour socks such and such an artist was wearing during his 1953 recording of his big hit “I’m Really Happy Blues”, to appreciate the Shortcuts albums. This music was never recorded to be analysed, it was just for people to dig it, savour it, perhaps to hear it’s message, more than likely dance to it.