John Henry Barbee, A Tragic Story, A Blues Life

The blues story that always moved me most was that of the life of John Henry Barbee.

I once tried to write a novel and film script loosely based on his life. I saw him perform in 1964, and the tragic events that followed his return to the USA have always haunted me. At the time (1964), when I carried out interviews with many blues singers, mostly backstage at the Folk Blues Festivals, I wrote:

"I badly wanted to speak to John Henry Barbee, whom I had heard the week previously. He is one of the greatest blues-singers I have heard in the old country tradition, and plays a beautiful bottleneck guitar. Hammie Nixon told me the tragic news that John Henry, unknown to himself, had cancer and only had a few months left to live. So he had been sent back to the States to live out those last few months in peace. Perhaps that was what Lightnin' Hopkins had been brooding over."

In 1968 I talked to Big Joe Williams, who told me the whole sad story about John Henry Barbee, about his rediscovery, and how he had been sent back to the States when it was discovered that he had cancer, how he had bought his first car with the proceeds from the European tour, had accidentally killed someone in a car crash, had been sentenced to prison and had died of his illness in prison in November 1964.

"On stage he seemed the most unaffected of all blues singers, the purest of rural artists. His guitar work was superb —greatly admired by Lightnin' who really appreciated him — and his vocals were moving and gentle melodic blues." Paul Oliver.

On the sleeve notes to John Henry's outstanding "Portraits in Blues, Vol 9" Storyville LP, Paul Oliver writes, of the 1964 tour and the story of John Henry's life after John had recorded his first four blues, in Chicago, in 1938:

"Then he went back home: home to a tragedy in his personal life. In his absence another man...made love to his woman. John Henry returned to find them in bed together and with the rough, peremptory means of settling such affairs, he got a shotgun and shot him. Believing he had killed the man John Henry slipped away and hid in a swamp. For a long time he led a desperate life, close to starvation and he was terrified of being discovered and tried for murder. Eventually, when he felt it safe to emerge he did so, quietly and under an assumed name...Unknown to him "Mister Charlie" survived the gunshot wound having received the charge in the leg."

On the 1964 tour and subsequent events:

"Unfortunately, John  Henry was a sick man on the tour. He had a pain in his back which he thought was caused by strain when lifting a suitcase, and was often in extreme discomfort. In spite of his great pain he insisted on playing at the concerts and hoped to stay on with the show to its conclusion. In England a doctor diagnosed a dangerously malignant growth and he was flown back to the United States with little expectation to live. It was a tragic end to his briefly renewed career but John Henry was happy to have been on the tour....John Henry will never record again. On his return to the United States he bought himself a car, the first he had ever owned. A week later he was involved in an accident and a man was run over and fatally injured. John Henry was jailed and was unable to contact his friends. No one went bond for him and he died there, of cancer, on November 4th, 1964".

Here's the slightly different Wikipedia account (my italics):

"Barbee toured in the 1930s throughout the American South singing and playing slide guitar. He teamed up with Big Joe Williams, and later on, with Sunnyland Slim in Memphis, Tennessee. Travelling down to Mississippi he also came across Sonny Boy Williamson I, and played with him off and on for several years. He released two sides on the Vocalion label in 1939 ("Six Weeks Old Blues" / "God Knows I Can't Help It"). The record sold well enough to cause Vocalion to call on Barbee again, but by that time he had left his last known whereabouts in Arkansas. Barbee explained that this sudden move was due to his evading the law for shooting and killing his girlfriend's lover. He later found out that he had only injured the man, but by the time this was discovered, Barbee had moved on from making a career out of playing music.

Barbee did not show up again in the music industry until the early 1960s, whereby this time the blues revival was in full swing. Willie Dixon searched out for Barbee, and found him working as an ice cream server in Chicago, Illinois. In 1964 he joined the American Folk Blues Festival on an European tour with fellow blues players, including Lightnin' Hopkins and Howlin' Wolf.[1]

In a case of tragic circumstances, Barbee returned to the United States and used the money from the tour to purchase his first automobile. Only ten days after purchasing the car, he accidentally ran over and killed a man. He was locked up in a Chicago jail, and died there of a heart attack a few days later, November 3, 1964, 11 days before his 59th birthday".

John Henry Barbee, Tell Me Baby (YouTube)

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