Blues, Stomps, & Rags #40
I could find ittle about Clarence Conaway, the enjoyable blues mandolinist who backed up blues singers Ida Cox and Clara Smith on recording sessions from 1923-1925. Ida Cox was from Georgia and died in Tennessee, while Clara Smith of South Carolina settled and recorded in New York, so Conaway could have been based either in the south or in New York, where perhaps Ida Cox also recorded. Clarence Conaway played blues ukelele as well as mandolin, and performed with the guitar player Lincoln M. Conaway, perhaps his brother, as Conaway's Rag Pickers. As we've seen with previous artists, it's not always clear who recorded on a particular record. Accompaniement on one of the tunes below has also been credited to The Pruitt Twins (see Blues, Stomps, and Rags #16). (Information from rateyourmusic.com, wikipedia, and other minimal internet sources.)
Here are Conaway's Rag Pickers backing up the popular blues singer, Ida Cox. If the links don't work, search YouTube for "Ida Cox --Mean Lovin' Man Blues".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3agryos0kY
And here they support another well-known blues singer, Clara Smith. If the links don't work, search YouTube for "Clara Smith -- I Don't Love Nobody" .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIksKw_HVZM
Robert Johnson's mother, describing blues musicians:
"I never did have no trouble with him until he got big enough to be round with bigger boys and off from home. Then he used to follow all these harp blowers, mandoleen (sic) and guitar players."
Lomax, Alan, The Land where The Blues Began, NY: Pantheon, 1993, p.14.
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