Few figures in blues history have been as important as Tampa Red, ‘The Guitar Wizard.’ From his recording debut in 1928 until his retirement in the 1950s, record companies released more 78rpm records by Tampa than by any other blues artist. Most of those records featured Tampa’s own compositions (under his legal name, Hudson Whittaker), including songs that would gain renewed popularity time and again when re-recorded by artists such as B.B. King, Elmore James, Little Walter, Fats Domino, Albert King, Junior Wells, Freddy King, Clarence Carter, and the slide guitarist most influenced by Tampa’s style, Robert Nighthawk. Tampa waxed the first versions of such classics as ‘It Hurts Me Too,’ ‘Crying Won’t Help You,” “Don’t Lie to Me,” “Love Her With a Feeling,” “You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone,” “Let Me Play With Your Poodle,” and “She Want to Sell My Monkey.” His influential 1934 version of “Black Angel Blues,” originally recorded by Lucille Bogan, predated Robert Nighthawk’s version by 15 years and B.B. King’s rendition, “Sweet Little Angel,” by 22. Tampa’s “Anna Lou Blues” became “Annie Lee” when recorded by Nighthawk and “Anna Lee” when Elmore James tackled it. Slide guitarists again came into prominence, but none could ever match the mellow beauty of Tampa’s bottleneck sound. (On Tampa’s early records he said he used the actual neck of a whiskey bottle he had fashioned to fit his finger. Later, when he played an amplified Gibson, he owned a metal slide as well as a solid steel bar.)
Tampa Red was born as Hudson Woodbridge in Smithville, Georgia. The year has been cited as 1900, 1903, 1904, or 1908; the headstone on his grave lists Jan. 8, 1904, the date used in his state medical records. His parents died when he was young and he assumed the surname Whittaker after he went to live with his grandmother’s family in Tampa, Florida. In the 1920s Tampa took a train to Chicago to make his name in music.
In Chicago, Tampa began playing the streets and parties. He teamed with pianist Georgia Tom in 1928 to cut “It’s Tight Like That,” one of the biggest “race” hits of the era, for J. Mayo Williams with Vocalion Records. Dorsey went on to become the dean of black gospel music. Tampa, meanwhile, continued to record all types of blues – hokum songs, party blues filled with double entendres, uptempo dance numbers, slow expressive blues, and guitar solos. He added a band, the Chicago Five, for many pop-styled Bluebird sessions. Influenced by the great Lonnie Johnson in his smooth, measured, and precise approach, Tampa was as capable of bringing playful joy, jive, and clever humor to his blues as he was deep pain and sorrow.
Much of Chicago’s before- and after-hours blues activity in the ’30s and ’40s centered around Tampa’s house, where musicians gathered to room, rehearse and party. Tampa’s popularity waned in the ’50s as his health declined while the harsher electric blues from Memphis and the Mississippi Delta overtook the Chicago scene. He lived his last 20 years quietly with a friend at a South Side apartment, and, at the end, in a nursing home. He died on March 19, 1981.
— Jim O’Neal
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