Peg Leg Sam - Medicine Show Man (Trix)

With a sobriquet straight out of the pages of a pirate novel Peg Leg Sam promises much in the way of flamboyant musical knavery. His sole entry for the Trix label makes good on the pledge. Sam’s songbook transcends the blues’ porous boundaries and overlaps with old-timey country and folk repertoires. All were learned on his peregrinations through the States and even overseas to Cuba, Jamaica and the Bahamas. Friendship with songster Pink Anderson led a lengthy career in the medicine shows. As such, the disc’s title isn’t some flippant marketing ploy. Substantial technique informs his extempore harmonica style and he accomplishes some amazing feats, but it’s all in deference to the various moods that strike him. “Peg’s Fox Chase” suggests the pinnacle of his powers. A favorite staple of harp players, Sam puts a charming spin on the tune in a virtuosic display of coarse breathing and blowing punctuated by jocular shouts, whoops and hollers that evokes the harried fox’s efforts to outwit the hounds. On “Greasy Greens” an ode to his favorite cuisine of lard-soaked collards, he crafts one clever rhyming verse after another. Guitarists Henry Johnson and Baby Tate each guest on a handful of cuts, laying down string bean licks and harmonizing vocals under Sam’s gesticulative lead. Handclaps and scuffling foot shuffles act as other instrumental agents for the colloquial house party on hand. Sam didn’t record much beyond what’s preserved here, but at an hour-plus a picture of his peculiar homespun artistry develops in vivid relief.