Today, country music and the blues may well be seen as 2 entirely separate genres. But of course this is a totally wrong way to look at it - and the further back we go the more obvious it becomes that blue and country were music forms derived from the same source.
Two thirds of all (oldtime) country music is taken up by 2 very blues orientated genres: bluegrass and Western swing.
N.B:Excluded from my definition of country music is Countrypolitan - which can never be called a form of country music as country music is meant to be rural - so how can you have urban country?Think about it and it makes sense.Also excluded from my definition of country music is Rockabilly,the watered down 'modern' version of bluegrass,Western swing and country boogie minus the essential instruments.
The other third of oldtime country music was taken up by honky tonk - whose blues qualities differed from artist to artist. Example: Moon Mullican (the subject of this site) was one of the founders of honky tonk and was as stated very much a blues singer; Webb Pierce on the other hand was a honky tonk singer with minimal blues qualities.
Bill Monroe’s bluegrass - which is dealt with in detail on another section of this website - was 100% blues derived. Monroe often stated his admiration for all forms of blues - from Jimmie Rodgers to Leadbelly to Mississippi John Hurt. For further reading, see the Bill Monroe section of the website.
The 2nd form of country music mentioned here is Western swing. Western swing was derived once more from blues, jazz and other related genres. Its principle vocal exponents included Moon Mullican and Tommy Duncan. See the Western swing page for more details also.
On this site, we are going to review the talents of one amazing artist: Aubrey ‘Moon’ Mullican - who remains the most unsung hero of country and white blues music and also arguably the greatest of all white artists.
From day one, Mullican was infatuated by the blues. He heard Bessie Smith, Jimmie Rodgers, Blind Lemon Jefferson, W.C. Handy, Georgia White and many others belt out their blues while he was growing up.
In the 1930s, Mullican developed a love for and was one of the first to notice such artists as Big Joe Turner. In the mid to late 1930s, Moon commenced his recording career. During his earliest years as a recording artist, Moon mainly played as a member of groups fronted by others - but very often as the vocalist. During his years with such bands as Cliff Bruner’s Texas Wanderers, Moon Mullican and his Texas Wanderers, Cliff Bruner and his boys, The Modern Mountaineers and the Sunshine boys, Mullican waxed a lot of outstanding vocal performances in a whole variety of genres. He was outstanding on all of these - but his forte was the blues and his blues based treatment of all material enhanced every one of his performances.
During his years with the bands mentioned above, Mullican was the featured vocalist on a large number of blues songs which he excelled on. These included many versions of his signature song, "Pipeliner blues", plus other original blues like "Sundown blues", "Truck driver’s blues", "I’m tired of you" and "Kangaroo blues". Moon also revived songs from his youth like "Old Joe Turner blues" and more recent blues standards like "New falling rain blues". Also recorded by Moon during his early years as a vocalist were such blues ballads as "Lay me down beside my darling" and "Singing the low down blues down low" while "That’s what I like about the South", "Sister Kate", "When you’re smiling" and "I’ll keep on loving you" demonstrate Mullican’s blues based reading of swing and jazz.
After World War 2, Moon went out on his own as the undisputed leader of his own band (The Showboys). While Moon’s 1930s work showed his mastery of jazz based blues, his 1940s work showed he was equally adept at rurally flavoured blues. During his time at King Records, Mullican recorded many the great blues - many of which even became standards among black blues singers. Such songs as "Trifling woman blues", "Lonesome hearted blues" and "Wait a minute" all cemented Mullican’s reputation as a great blues singer forever. "Trifling woman blues" was a song that was popular among black bluesmen like Wynonie Harris in the 1940s and 1950s.
R&B was fast becoming the new sound of the 1940s and 1950s. Jump blues was one of the most popular blues sounds of the time. Could a white man do this was the question? Most certainly yes, is the answer - once again, Moon Mullican. Long before Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Bill Haley even were considering becoming singers, Moon had virtually covered everything the former artists would eventually popularise. Hear Moon do "Grandpa stole my baby", "Rocket to the moon", "I done it", "Rheumatism boogie" and others at the dawn of the so called ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ era and you’ll see that it is of paramount importance to say that Moon was the first white artist to do true R&B.
As rock ‘n’ roll edged more towards pop, it alienated Moon. But, Moon kept on doing his blues - which is indeed what many people regard as the true ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ as the best music of Jerry Lee, Elvis and others was basically blues ("Hello hello baby", "Big legged woman", "Money honey", et al). Moon’s performances of "Early morning blues" and "My baby’s gone" are 2 of the greatest and most unsung recordings ever made in the 1950s.
Moon’s influence is very important - long before Ray Charles and Jerry Lee Lewis, Moon Mullican was the world’s first and arguably greatest multi-purpose singer-pianist. Artists like Charles, Lewis, Charlie Rich, Mickey Gilley, Merrill Moore and Chuck Miller can all be seen as offshoots of Mullican and without Moon, their style wouldn’t have been as forceful.
Many people say that ‘had Moon been born 20 years later, he may well have been another Jerry Lee Lewis’. Sure, if Moon was born that bit later, he probably would have more hits. But would he be allowed record as much blues and release them as singles? Probably not. Afterall, Jerry Lee’s first love was always blues but you can count on 1 hand the number of real blues released officially under Lewis’ name. Most of Lewis’ blues were released on ‘Unreleased masters’ collections, bootlegs and box sets, later. So, the opposite to the sentence that started off this paragraph can be implied also: ‘If Jerry Lee Lewis was born 20 years earlier he may well have been another Moon Mullican’.
Moon may never have seen the phenomenal success of other later artists like Jerry Lee or Elvis - but Moon had many distinct advantages over such artists in that Moon always was able to do things his way and wasn’t coerced into a pop based career that threatened his blues abilities like that experienced by Presley and Lewis.
Aside: It is true to say that in the 1950s, Moon was produced to compete with the fledging rock 'n' roll market at the time.While his work suffered very slightly in comparison to that of others such as Jerry Lee or Elvis,Moon would never become a fully fledged rock 'n' roller and as hindsight proved,he was right.Moon tried his hand at it and moved on. In the 1930s and 1940s and (surprisingly) in the 1960s, Moon was allowed to be himself and in the 1930s and 1940s he himself was the one who called the shots on what he wanted to record.
There always has to be a distinction made between blatant interference of an artists' repertoire by producers (examples: Sam Phillips with Jerry Lee's album and single releases; Colonel Tom Parker and what Elvis was told to record) and career guidence.In the 1950s,Owen Bradley with Mullican guided Moon through a series of recordings that Moon might have broken through on.When he didn't,Moon soon returned to his roots and had a hit with "Ragged but I'm right" in 1961.Moon never ever had to spend years of his life covering weak and overfamiliar Chuck Berry songs like Jerry Lee or starring and singing in low merit films like Elvis did.By and large,Moon had it his way in direct comparison and had total control over his career most of the time.Incidently,Moon recorded much more true blues than his protoge Jerry Lee Lewis ever did.
To sum up: Moon was always a bluesman and was always allowed to be a bluesman.
Patrick Wall,
17th January, 2000.
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