The Memphis Jug Band was one of the most popular and prolific blues groups of the 1920s and ’30s, employing jugs, harmonicas, kazoos, guitars, mandolins, fiddles, and other instruments to entertain a wide variety of audiences with brisk renditions of downhome blues, waltzes, hokum, minstrel songs, and pop tunes. The band revolved around founder Will Shade, who played guitar, harmonica, and “bullfiddle,” a homemade one-string bass. Shade recruited a fluid cast of singers and musicians that included Charlie Burse, Ben Ramey, Milton Roby, Will Weldon, Jab Jones, and Charlie Polk on their 1927-1934 sessions when they recorded “Stealin’, Stealin,” “K.C. Moan,” “Cocaine Habit Blues,” “Fishin’ in the Dark,” and a cache of other enduring favorites.
Their records were marketed mainly to African American blues audiences, but white patrons often employed the band for social affairs, political events, conventions, country club dances, and railroad and riverboat excursions. They also played in parks, restaurants, and the back of trucks, and did some traveling to Chicago, New Orleans, and other destinations for both black and white events. Such was their renown, even at the start, that on February 24, 1927, the Memphis Jug Band had the honor of making the first phonograph records not just in the city of Memphis, but also within the five-state area of Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, and Kentucky. The session for Victor Records, on the fourth floor of the McCall Building (where the Waterfront Plaza now stands in downtown Memphis), began with “Sun Brimmers Blues” — a title based on Will Shade’s nickname “Son Brimmer.”
Shade, born in Memphis on February 5, 1898, put various incarnations of the band together for several decades, and recorded again for Sam Charters in 1956 and for other folklorists and researchers in the 1960s. Inspired by the success of the Memphis Jug Band, several other jug bands sprang up in Memphis, but none ever matched the primacy of Shade’s group. Shade died on September 18, 1966.