Top Songs
- Rough Guide to the Roots of the Blues · 2008
- Stack O' Lee Blues · 2012
- Stack O' Lee Blues · 2005
- Stack O' Lee Blues · 2005
- Never Let the Same Bee Sting You Twice - Blues, Ballads, Rags & Gospel In the Songster Tradition · 2005
- The Cornshucker's Frolic, Vol. 1: Downhome Music and Entertainment from the American Countryside · 2005
- Back To the Crossroads: The Roots of Robert Johnson · 2004
- Never Let the Same Bee Sting You Twice - Blues, Ballads, Rags & Gospel In the Songster Tradition · 1998
- Stack O' Lee Blues · 1930
Singles & EPs
About Hambone Willie Newbern
Little is known about blues songster Hambone Willie Newbern; a mere half-dozen sides comprise the sum of his recorded legacy, but among those six is the first-ever rendition of the immortal Delta classic "Roll and Tumble Blues." Reportedly born in 1899, he first began to make a name for himself in the Brownsville, TN area, where he played country dances and fish fries in the company of Yank Rachell; later, on the Mississippi medicine show circuit, he mentored Sleepy John Estes (from whom most of the known information about Newbern originated). While in Atlanta in 1929, Newbern cut his lone session; in addition to "Roll and Tumble," which became an oft-covered standard, he recorded songs like "She Could Toodle-Oo" and "Hambone Willie's Dreamy-Eyed Woman's Blues," which suggest an old-fashioned rag influence. By all reports an extremely ill-tempered man, Newbern's behavior eventually led him to prison, where a brutal beating is said to have brought his life to an end around 1947. ~ Jason Ankeny
- HOMETOWN
- United States
- BORN
- 1899
- GENRE
- Country Blues