Missing Friday nights at the Southgate Club listening to the great bands playing at St Harmonica's? Well, we can't do anything about the lockdown, but we can do our best to recreate St Harmonica's in the comfort of your own home. So pour yourself a glass of beer, move the furniture aside to make yourself a dance floor, click on the first of the music videos below and start a text conversation with some of the people you usually meet up with at the club.Booker White - Poor Boy Long Way from Home
Our starting point is one of the most compelling performances on film – just a man, a guitar and a metal rod, but Booker White conjures up an awesome noise.
(Papa) Harvey Hull & Long 'Cleve' Reed - Gang of Brown Skin Women
Aka The Down Home Boys, recorded in 1927 and released on the obscure Black Patti label. Blues scholars regard this as the last gasp of a pre-blues style of music.
Grayson & Whitter - Little Maggie with a Dram Glass in Her Hand
The white rural equivalent to the blues was old-timey music, which drew on old English ballads, the blues, fiddle tunes and even Victorian parlour songs. Grayson & Whitter provide one of the best examples.
Frank Hutchison - The Last Scene Of The Titanic - 1927
At the bluesier end of the old time spectrum was Frank Hutchinson, who spent a lot of the late 1920s and early 1930s entertaining striking miners in the coalfields of Virginia, practically a war zone at the time. His talking blues about the Titanic does at least adhere to the basics of the story.
Cleoma Falcon -J'ai passé devant ta porte (1928?)
Now we move down to Louisiana, where this Cajun song rivals any blues for sadness and provides evidence for the view that the best music is made within 50 feet of an alligator.
Yvonne Leblanc with Nathan Abshire - Mama Rosin
Like the blues, though, Cajun music could get people moving on the dance floor, as this rhumba from accordionist Nathan Abshire’s band demonstrates.
James Waynes - Junco Partner
We stay in Louisiana with the first (1951) outing for what became a classic blues song about the perils of hard living, Junco Partner. This has the sinuous rhythms associated with New Orleans R’n’B.
Cookie & The Cupcakes - I Keep Crying
The R’n’B music of South Louisiana was known as swamp pop. Among the best exponents of the style were Cookie and the Cupcakes. The genre included many ballads of heartache and loss, but this song is more likely to have people heading for the dancefloor than reaching for their handkerchiefs.
Margaret Lewis - You Said You Loved Me
Now we get a song from one of swamp pop’s biggest influences, Fats Domino, done in the style of another key figure, Jimmy Reed, live from the Louisiana Hayride.
Toots & The Maytals - Treatin' Me Bad
Across the Gulf of Mexico from Louisiana is Jamaica (you can’t see it from Louisiana because Cuba’s in the way), where American R’n’B provided the catalyst for its own style of music, ska. Here we have a soulful, churchy outing from the Maytals, slightly at odds with the lively backing.
Lightin' Hopkins - Jake Head Boogie
Finally, back across the Gulf to another man with a guitar, this time an electric one. Lightnin' Hopkins sings a song, the message of which is still as relevant as it was on the day he recorded it – if you do have to drink hard liquor, it’s best to avoid the stuff made from shoe polish.
