Jazz Articles about Smoky Babe

Smoky Babe: Hottest Brand Goin'

by Derek Taylor
August 1, 2001

Blues history is littered with voices that never made it into the studio. Thanks to the industrious efforts of folklorists and fieldworkers like Alan Lomax, Chris Strachwitz, Pete Welding, Harry Oster and numerous others, many of these peripheral figures survive on tape and acetate. One such musical soul is Robert Brown, known by the sobriquet of Smoky Babe, and this disc rejuvenates one of his only records.

Though a long-time denizen of Louisiana at the time of this recording, Brown ...