A
ALLIGATOR
LEATHER BLUES NECK BARHAM
LEATHER BLUES NECK BARHAM
☞ RAISING THE GHOSTS OF THE BLUES ☜
NECK BARHAM
TRAP BLUES · DEEP DELTA · ON A MODERN BEAT
AUSTIN, TEXAS
☞ THE STANDING GIG ☜ THURSDAYS AT THE DIZZY ROOSTER 6TH STREET, AUSTIN · EVERY SONG'S A REQUEST
☞ NECK BARHAM MAKES THE RECORDS · THE HEADS PLAY 'EM LOUD ☜
The hard, deep delta blues carried on a trap beat — old ghosts pulled up into a modern room. On record it's the fusion; live, the Heads plug it in and play it loud, cranked, and dirty.
☞ EVERY THURSDAY AT THE DIZZY ROOSTER · EVERY SONG'S A REQUEST · DANCING TIL THE LAW SAYS STOP · BRING YOUR OWN GHOST · THE MANAGEMENT IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT THE MUSIC RAISES ☜
THE VICTROLA
These are the ghosts Neck raises. Cut into wax, pressed in shellac, and played on a spring you had to wind — it never sounded clean, and that surface noise is half the haunting. The beat comes later.
SURFACE NOISE
78 R.P.M.
SHELLAC · GRAFTON, WIS.
No music file, no download — the hiss is generated in your browser, the way a worn 78 sounds with nothing in the groove.
Why it hisses: Paramount, who pressed most of what's on this page, was a side business of a Wisconsin chair company. They mixed their shellac cheap and pressed it thin. That sandstorm behind Charley Patton isn't age — a lot of it was there the day the record was new.
THE SIDES
What's been cut so far. His latest single, Alligator Leather Blues, is out now — spin the player for the records, then dig through the sides below.
THE LINEAGE
The ghosts, by name. Three men, one rope — the deep delta sound Neck pulls forward onto the beat. Turn a card over for the notes.
PARAMOUNT · CHICAGO
BLIND LEMON
JEFFERSON c. 1893 – 1929 COUTCHMAN, TEXAS
JEFFERSON c. 1893 – 1929 COUTCHMAN, TEXAS
THE TEXAS END OF THE ROPE
BLIND LEMON JEFFERSON
- Born
- About 1893, Coutchman, Freestone County, Texas. Blind from the start.
- Worked
- Street corners in Deep Ellum, Dallas — for a while alongside a young Huddie Ledbetter, later known as Lead Belly.
- Recorded
- Paramount, from 1926. Close to a hundred sides in four years, more than almost anyone of his generation.
- Sides
- Got the Blues · Black Snake Moan · Match Box Blues · See That My Grave Is Kept Clean
- Died
- Chicago, December 1929. The story is a heart attack in the snow; nobody agrees on the details. Buried at Wortham, Texas.
NECK'S NOTES: He is the reason a man alone with a guitar got recorded at all. Before Lemon sold, the labels wanted a woman out front and a band behind her. He proved one voice and six strings could move records, and every scout in the South went looking for the next one. Listen to the time: he stretches a bar because the line isn't finished. That isn't sloppy playing — that's a singer who never had to fit a drummer.
PARAMOUNT · GRAFTON
CHARLEY
PATTON c. 1891 – 1934 DOCKERY FARMS, MISS.
PATTON c. 1891 – 1934 DOCKERY FARMS, MISS.
THE FATHER OF THE DELTA BLUES
CHARLEY PATTON
- Born
- About 1891, near Bolton, Mississippi. The family moved to Dockery Farms while he was a boy, and Dockery became the school.
- Taught
- Willie Brown, Tommy Johnson, Son House, Chester Burnett — who became Howlin' Wolf. Robert Johnson grew up downstream of all of it.
- Recorded
- First session June 1929, Richmond, Indiana, for Paramount. Some sides went out anonymously as "The Masked Marvel" — the label made a contest of guessing him.
- Sides
- Pony Blues · Down the Dirt Road Blues · A Spoonful Blues · High Water Everywhere, cut about the 1927 flood
- Died
- 28 April 1934, Indianola, Mississippi, of a bad heart, two months after his last session. Buried at Holly Ridge.
NECK'S NOTES: The showman. Played the guitar behind his head and between his knees eighty years before anybody made a career of it, and beat on the body while he did it because he was one man doing the job of a rhythm section. That hoarse shout of his goes straight into Wolf and out the other side into rock and roll. If you only ever learn one thing off these records, learn that the guitar is a drum first.
WHITE STATION · MISS.
HOWLIN'
WOLF 1910 – 1976 CHESTER A. BURNETT
WOLF 1910 – 1976 CHESTER A. BURNETT
PATTON'S STUDENT, IN PERSON
HOWLIN' WOLF
- Born
- Chester Arthur Burnett, 10 June 1910, White Station, near West Point, Mississippi. Named after a president. Grew to six foot three.
- Learned
- Guitar from Charley Patton at Dockery around 1930 — he could still play Patton's pieces note for note decades later. Harmonica from Rice Miller, the second Sonny Boy Williamson, who was family by marriage.
- The howl
- By his own account he was trying to yodel like Jimmie Rodgers, couldn't get it, and what came out instead was the howl.
- Recorded
- Memphis, 1951, for Sam Phillips — Moanin' at Midnight and How Many More Years. Two labels fought over the tapes. Chicago from 1952, and Chess after that.
- Why he's here
- He is the living wire. A man who learned at Dockery in 1930 was still on a stage in the seventies, so the pre-war Delta never actually ended — it moved.
NECK'S NOTES: People file Wolf under Chicago and stop there. Wrong end of the story. He was twenty years old standing in front of Charley Patton, and he carried that man's repertoire north in his hands. When you hear that band stomp on one chord and refuse to move — that's Dockery, plugged in.
THE ROPE: Lemon proves the solo bluesman sells (1926) → the scouts comb the South → Patton is found and recorded (1929) → Patton teaches Burnett at Dockery → Burnett becomes Wolf and takes it to Chicago (1952) → everything you have ever heard on a radio.
THE CARD CATALOG
Pull a year. Everything on this page happened between the first blues in print and the day the record industry stopped.
WHO'S NECK
PLATE PENDING
drop a photo at
images/neck.jpg
☞ NECK BARHAM ☜
Neck Barham plays Trap Blues.
The hard, deep delta blues sound with a trap-beat undertone running under it — the old country blues and a modern low end in the same room at the same time. Not a museum piece and not a novelty: the ghosts on this page, pulled up onto a beat you feel in your chest.
“Trap Blues enhances the hard and deep delta blues sound with a trap beat undertone. My mission is to use the modern attraction of trap music to resurrect the ghosts of the blues.” — Neck Barham
The delta half is real study — ask him about a side and you get the label, the session, and who else was in the room. That's where the lineage comes from. The trap half is what carries it to whoever's standing in the room tonight.
Out of Austin, Texas. On record, that's Neck Barham. Live, it's THE HEADS — the band that plays it loud.
TRAP
BLUES DEEP
DELTA AUSTIN
TEXAS RAISING
GHOSTS
BLUES DEEP
DELTA AUSTIN
TEXAS RAISING
GHOSTS
THE HEADS
Neck out front, the Heads behind him. The records are the fusion — the stage is where it gets loud.
On record it's Trap Blues. Plug it into a room and it's THE HEADS.
Take the deep delta blues Neck carries, run it through a cranked amp and a fuzz you feel in the floor, and you get the live show: loud, dirty, and closer to the ghost than clean ever gets. Same songs, a great deal more volume.
One dirty chord, built in your browser — no file, just a hot amp and a fuzz box. The victrola's quiet; this isn't. Mind the volume.
☞ FROM THE FLOOR — NECK BARHAM & THE HEADS, LIVE ☜
PLAYED
LOUD CRANKED
& FUZZED GUITAR:
DISTORTED VOICE:
NO PEDAL
LOUD CRANKED
& FUZZED GUITAR:
DISTORTED VOICE:
NO PEDAL
THE DATES
He holds down a weekly Thursday at the Dizzy Rooster on 6th — that's the standing one. Anything else with the volume up lands here.
| DATE | TOWN | HALL | |
|---|---|---|---|
| EVERY THURSDAY |
Austin, TX | The Dizzy Rooster 6th Street · weekly residency |
SONG MENU |
Can't make it out on a Thursday? There's an after-hours Dizzy Rooster in the Frost Lounge — walk in and the band's on the stage.
BOOKING
☞ FOR HIRE
Juke joints, halls, back rooms, festivals — anywhere with a stage and a socket that can take an amp turned all the way up.
Swap this for Neck's real address — search this file for booking@.
☞ ELSEWHERE
No accounts wired up yet — put real URLs on the chips in this section and each one appears.
☞ THE MAILING LIST
Paper letters, if he had his way. Email as a compromise.
☞ THE STANDING OFFER
Bring him a 78 he hasn't heard and he will tell you what it is, who cut it, and roughly what you overpaid for it.