This is the latest from The Bluesmobile’s C.C. Rider, who spends her life venerating the founding fathers of the blues. She’s walked the crooked highways of this singing country to resurrect the voices of the past. With the dirt of the Delta on her hands, she sleeps in the shadow of the giants on whose shoulders popular music now stands.
Washboard Sam
(July 15, 1910 – November 6, 1966)
Born in 1910, the man known as Washboard Sam was the most popular Washboard player of the 30s. His career took off when he moved from Memphis to Chicago, where he often played with Memphis Slim, Tampa Red, and his alleged half-brother Big Bill Broonzy. Sam started making records of his own in ’35, as much on the merit of his songwriting as his bad-ass washboard technique.
Sam was a master of the hokum blues—a genre comprised entirely of thinly veiled songs about dirty bedroom behavior. And boy was he creative. He’s known for such classics as “Who Pumped the Wind in My Donut,” as well as “Don’t you Tear my Clothes.” But it’s his rendition of “Diggin’ My Potatoes” that’s gone down in history. With the legendary Memphis Slim on the keys, here’s Washboard Slim and “Diggin’ My Potatoes.”
