Godfather Of Delta Blues
H.C. Speir
An Interview with Gayle Dean Wardlow
by Pat Howse and Jimmy Phillips
Reprinted with permission from the Peavey Monitor, 1995
Blues Scholar Gayle Dean Wardlow "discovered" H.C. Speir in 1964, while a student at Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi. At the time, Speir was selling real estate, but from 1925 to 1935, during the golden age of blues recording, he was a central figure in the rise of country blues. During this period, the Mississippi "talent broker" supplied major record companies such as Victor, Columbia, Brunswick, and OKeh and minors such as Paramount, Vocalion, and Gennett with a veritable breeder reactor of Delta and other regional bluesmen: Charlie Patton, Skip James, Tommy Johnson, Ishmon Bracey, Bo Carter, the Mississippi Shieks, William Harris, Blind Joe Reynolds, Blind Roosevelt Graves, Washboard Walter, Geeshie Wiley, Elvie Thomas, Isaiah Nettles, and Robert Wilkins, among others. In addition, Speir was indirectly responsible for the recording careers of Son House, Willie Brown, and Robert Johnson.
Initially, Speir approached talent scouting as a means to promote his music-store business, which he had established in 1925 at 225 North Farish Street, in the black business district of Jackson. In lieu of royalties, he preferred standard fees and expenses from the record companies for his discoveries and recording activities. He frequently attended sessions at his own expense, sometimes supervising the recording process. From 1929-32, Paramount was the principal heir to Speir's findings, accepting his recommendations at his word, without demonstration acetate discs. To accomodate Victor and other prospective companies, he installed an audition recording machine upstairs in his store in 1926, which he also made available to the public at five dollars per recording. In 1944, convinced that the record business was dead, he moved to North Jackson and opened a used-furniture store.
Pat Howse interviewed Gayle Dean Wardlow in February regarding his association with Speir from 1964 until his death in 1972. What follows is an illuminating look at the blues subculture of 1920s and '30s Mississippi, juxtaposed with a white man's intuitive grasp of the significance of the music and his indefatigable efforts to preserve it.
