TAMPA RED

'Tampa Red' (January 8, 1904^[1] - March 19, 1981), born 'Hudson Woodbridge' and later known as 'Hudson Whittaker', was an influential American musician.
Tampa Red is best known as an accomplished and influential blues guitarist, having an impact on Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Mose Allison and many others with his songwriting and polished bottleneck style. In a career spanning over 30 years he also recorded pop, R&B and hokum records.

Contents

Life

References

Life

He was born Hudson Woodbridge in Smithville, Georgia. As a child he moved to Tampa, Florida, where he was raised by his aunt and adopted her surname, Whittaker.
In the 1920s he moved to Chicago, Illinois where he began his career as a musician, adopting the name "Tampa Red" from his childhood home and red hair. His big break was being hired to accompany Ma Rainey and he began recording in 1928 with "It's Tight Like That", in a bawdy and whimsical style that became known as ''hokum''. Early recordings were mostly collaborations with Thomas A. Dorsey, known at the time as Georgia Tom. Tampa Red and Georgia Tom recorded almost 90 sides, sometimes as "The Hokum Boys" or, with Frankie Jaxon, as "Tampa Red's Hokum Jug Band".
In 1928, Tampa Red became the first black musician to play a National steel bodied Resonator Guitar, the loudest and showiest guitar available before amplification, acquiring one in the first year they were available. This allowed him to develop his trademark bottleneck style, playing single string runs, not block chords, which was a precursor to later blues and rock guitar soloing^[2]. The National guitar he used was a gold-plated tricone, which was found in Illinois in the 1990s and later sold to the "Experience Music Project" in Seattle. Tampa Red was known as "The Man With The Gold Guitar", and, into the 1930s, he was billed as ''The Guitar Wizard'' .
His partnership with Dorsey ended in 1932, but he remained much in demand as a session musician, working with John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, Memphis Minnie, and many others. In 1934 he signed for Victor Records. He formed the Chicago Five, a group of session musicians who created what became known as the Bluebird sound, a precursor of the music of later small R&B and rock and roll bands. He was a close friend and associate of Big Bill Broonzy and Big Maceo Merriweather. He enjoyed commercial success and reasonable prosperity, and his home became a centre for the blues community, informally providing rehearsal space, bookings, and lodgings for the flow of musicians who arrived from the Mississippi Delta as the commercial potential of blues music grew and agricultural employment in the south diminished.
By the 1940s he was playing electric guitar, and his 1949 recording "When Things Go Wrong with You (It Hurts Me Too)" was covered by Elmore James. He became an alcoholic after his wife's death in 1953^[3]. He was "rediscovered" in the late 1950s, like many other surviving early recorded blues artists, such as Son House and Skip James as part of the blues revival. His final, undistinguished, recordings were in 1960. He died destitute in Chicago aged 77.

References

1. Some sources quote a different date of birth, ranging from "Christmas day, probably 1900" to "January 8, 1904"
2. http://nfo.net/usa/t1.html
3. Nigel Williamson, ''Rough Guide to the Blues'',2007


★ ''Tampa Red: The Essential'' CD booklet

★ AllMusic biography

★ Entry in the New Georgia Encyclopedia

★ Big Bands Database Plus "Tampa Red's Hokum Jug Band"

★ National Reso-phonic Guitar History Part 3

★ E-notes biography