Speaking of Ron Harwood and Sippie Wallace those who know the work of Willie '61' Blackwell (either his 8 Bluebird recordings or the three for Lomax) may be interested to know that Harwood saw both of them at a Detroit concert in the mid-60s. Here's what he had to report on the event (extracted from a longer feature inJazz Journal June 1967):

Dr. Ross could only remember the name of one other blues singer in the Flint area. It certainly was not much of a name to go on. Finding someone named '61' in a city the size of Flint was not a pleasant thought. But after a few trips to Flint (80 minutes out of Detroit) and a fair share of blind alleys, we finally located Willie '61' Blackwell living about a mile from the Buick automotive plant.

The nickname '61 was derived from a Bluebird recording that Willie made in 1942 called Highway 61 Blues. After several weeks had passed since we found Willie, Sam Stark noticed that Willie had been recorded by the Library of Congress in 1942 on Sadie Beck's plantation in Arkansas. The record was called 'Negro Blues and Hollers,' and the selection was Four O'Clock Flower Blues a song that he had also recorded for Bluebird.

The Northwest Folklore Society held a concert in which Willie appeared along with Little Sonny, Washboard Willie, Dr. Ross and Sippie Wallace. Prior to the concert, we had obtained very few complete songs by Willie. He was approaching senility and he constantly repeated the fact that he would soon be leaving for Chicago to record with 'Big Bill'. But in the concert, the applause of the audience snapped him out of his dream world and brought him round to singing all of his songs completely. We had learned that Willie, during the Twenties, had been a piano player for Rev. Connie Resmond (about whom no information can be found) and that he had quit playing piano after a serious wound in the left arm. So we had a piano on stage 'just in case' he might feel like playing it. After he had finished playing guitar and singing we ran across the stage and seated him at the piano. Then, as if the past was clouding his eves with memories, he began to play and sing as he had thirty-five years ago. Months of hard work melted into mere triviality as the piano banged out 1920s Chicago style blues. It was a moment I shall never forget. We learned that Willie was very friendly with Robert Johnson, the immortal Delta blues singer. After Willie's accident, it was Robert who taught him how to play the guitar. In 1941 Willie recorded eight sides for Bluebird. Some of them like Bald Eagle Blues, Four O'Clock Flower Blues and Highway 61 Blues are still played by Chicago musicians like Sunnyland Slim, who played Willie's Machine Gun Blues at this years Maraposa (Canada) Folk Festival.

Very interesting because Robert Lockwood Jr. on some resources I read is considered to be the only one to learn guitar by lessons directly from RJ.

Listen, I have an album on Flyright called "Walking Blues". It was all Library of Congress stuff including the three string band tunes of Son House, Willie Brown, Leroy Williams, and Fiddlin' Joe Martin; 5 of Honeyboy's tunes for Alan Lomax, a few Willie Brown numbers--anyway this leads to Willie 61 Blackwell...There is a tune on there called "Junior is a Jap Girl's Christmas for his Santa Claus" (a very surreal number) in which someone else called Willie Brown plays second guitar...It is a dynamite tune and the guitar is much like the tune "Mississippi Blues" from an earlier Library of Congress album (NOT Missippi Blues and game songs) by Willie Brown...This is not the same Willie Brown as the one who played with Son House...There were three distinctively different Willie Brown's, all of whom played different styles of guitar, but Missippi to Memphis nonetheless...Anybody know anything about any of this?
Artie the CAT

Jim O'Neal researched the background to this number and here's the results as published on his Bluesesoterica web page:

The most puzzling title of all is listed in D&G as Junian, A Jap's Girl Christmas For His Santa Claus (sic), by Willie Blackwell, recorded by Alan Lomax in Arkansas in 1942. The song has been released on a Library of Congress album (Folk Music in America, Volume 10: Songs of War & History, LBC 10) as Junior, A Jap Girl's Christmas For Her Santa Claus. On Travelin' Man CD 07, Mississippi Blues: Library of Congress Recordings 1940-1942, it's called Junior's A Jap's Girl Christmas For His Santa Claus (sic). (The sics appear in the printed titles in Dixon & Godrich and on the CD.) In his book, Lomax refers to the song as A Jap Girl For Next Christmas From Santy Claus, and names the artist only as "Willie B." The L of C album notes even state: "Blackwell's song has one of the most bizarre titles in the Archive of Folk Song -- a title confirmed, incidentally, by his own announcement on the original disc." The opening verse, as transcribed in the booklet to LBC 10, is: "Goodbye I got to leave you, I got to fight for America, you and my boy/Goodbye babe, I hate to leave you, I got to fight for you, America and my boy/Well well, you can look for a Jap girl's Christmas, oooh lord baby, for Junior's Santa Claus." By these interpretations, I suppose Blackwell, who was preparing to serve his country in World War II, must have intended to capture a geisha girl and bring her home to Junior; or maybe the Japanese girl's Christmas was to be celebrated with Junior or Santa in some other way. Bizarre indeed.

However, upon relistening to the track, I've decided that we've been missing the all-too-gruesome point of Mr. Blackwell's tale of sending baby Junior a Japanese Christmas present. I'm sure the last line is: "Well, well, you can look for a Jap's SKULL Christmas, oooh Lord, baby, for Junior's Santa Claus." (The title, then, with missing words filled in, would be something like [I'm Going To Send] Junior A Jap's Skull [For] Christmas For His [Present from] Santa Claus.) (The term "Santa Claus" has been used elsewhere in blues and gospel to mean the Christmas gift, not jolly St. Nick himself -- a relevant line here would be Rev. A.W. Nix's "Death might be your Santa Claus" from Death Might Be Your Christmas Gift, recorded in 1927.) The bone-chilling connection is made clear by Blackwell's third verse: "Yes, when Junior starts to teethin', baby, please write to me/When Junior starts to teething, oh baby, please write to me/Well, well, I'm gonna send him a Jap's tooth so that he can cut his [with ease?]." On that deathly holiday note, we'll end this query with another one: Whatever happened to Willie Blackwell? He showed up in Memphis in the early '70s and may have gone back to Flint, Michigan, where he'd lived earlier. Did he ever aqcuire such grisly war souvenirs as he promised in his song? Anyone with knowledge of Willie Blackwell, please let us know.

Sam, that was an excellent post...I'm wondering if any Memphians on here knew him, or whatever finally happened to him...I don't remember ever reading an obit in Living Blues or anything about him....

In 1990 I got a book of postcards printed by Pomegranite Artbooks (they also make a yearly blues calander I get every year) and featuring photos by Stephen LaVere...One of the cards is of Willie 61 Blackwell in Memphis, June, 1971...He's dressed in a completely unmatched suit and hat, playing a semi-hollow body electric guitar I don't recognize, drinking what looks like an orange nehi out of a bottle, wearing a "Free Angela Davis" button and it looks like he has some kind of voodoo talisman sticking out of his jacket pocket....This only futhers my interest in the guy, from what I've heard he was really an interesting guitar player, but from this photo, man, it's real hard to say what all he was about!
Artie the CAT

Way back when I recall being shown by one of the editorial members of Blues Unlimited a reel-to-reel tape containing the interview conducted by Harwood and Stark which was reported to me as being a mixture of some fact but mainly fable or fiction. I guess this is why it was never transcribed and published. Lord knows what became of that tape.

There's a photo of BlackwelI that accompanies the 1967 Jazz Journal feature of him performing at the concert in question. Mike Rowe photographed him on Beale Street in 1970 which appeared in an issue of Blues Unlimited and later reproduced on either the sleeve or the excellent booklet of that Flyright LP you referred to. I seem to have misfiled my copy so unable to check but vaguely recall an ill fitting suit, hat and a semi-hollow body electric guitar in that shot too.

Yeah Sam, I remember that photo in "Walking Blues" on Flyright, but unfortunately all I have left of that (and my entire LP and 78 collection, for that matter) is a cassette I made of it...Again, this is another one of those things that I left with my girlfriend in texas 13 or so years ago...But I remember that photo and it is a different one than the one I spoke of in the postcard book...It seems to me he was playing that same guitar I mentioned though! And a similarly mismatched suit...
Artie the CAT

Oh, I remember that the liner note booklet in that album was quite thorough (typical of Flyright's records at that time, and also records on the long defunct Nighthawk label, which used something similar to the old Bluebird logo for the record centers)...I think the photo was actually on the jacket itself, and that there was a great one of Honeyboy Edwards, too....
Artie the CAT

bought me FLY 541 to be able to add a picture of that artist to my discography.
Here it is (never found any other picture of him on the internet - looks like a chap with a sense of humour, doesn't he ?


Willie '61' Blackwell, Beale Street, Memphis 1970
photographer: Mike Rowe
source: Back cover of Flyright FLY 541