[78-L] Article on John Tefteller and his Paramount collection in Antique Week

[Steve Ramm]

It's in the archives so I thought best to copy it.

 

Enjoy! The published article had photos. This doesn't.

 

Steve

 





One man’s quest to save lost Blues records



Way down in Lula, hard livin’ has done hit 
Way down in Lula, hard livin’ has done hit 
Lord, your drought come an’ caught us, an’ parched up all the tree 

Aw, she stays over in Lula, bid that ol’ town goodbye 
Stays in Lula, bidding you the town goodbye 
’Fore I would come to know the day, oh, the Lula well was gone dry 
Dry Well Blues, by Charley Patton (recorded 1929-1934) 
In the song, bluesman Charley Patton was telling a story, accompanied by his slide guitar, about the Delta town of Lula, Miss. 
There’s much in these stories that has long compelled (and driven) blues collector and scholar John Tefteller. The music is honest; it’s raw, and seminal. It growls with hunger; and then, suddenly and unexpectedly, it will turn and laugh raucously in defiance. 
Patton defined the life of the early bluesman. He played and drank at all-night country dances, fish fries and juke joints. He reportedly had a total of eight wives. He had seen the inside of county jails. He traveled extensively, never staying in one place for too long. 
Tefteller, too, is a bluesman traveling from town to town. However, there much of the similarity ends. Tefteller is a white guy, from Oregon, with a house, wife, kids and a mortgage. He travels the countryside in search of a long lost history and culture. Much of it began with Charley Patton, back within the fertile Mississippi Delta during the 1920s and 1930s. 
Patton, during his short and hard life of some 37 years, had the course, earthy voice that defined the Delta’s hard times and hand-to-mouth living. He played the guitar loud and rough, often thumping the side of the instrument in a forceful mesmerizing – almost demonic – drive. 
The shades between the Delta blues and gospel often overlap, shifting and sliding. During the 1920s, bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson recorded more than 40 records for blues label Paramount Records. But, he also made several gospel recordings under the pseudonym Deacon L. J. Bates. 
The transition was not difficult. Gospel and blues music have many of the same roots, emanating from the “call and response” or “field hollers” on the Delta cotton plantations. This music gave rhythm to the pain and drudgery of field work. 
With the blues, Patton, Jefferson – and their Delta successors Son House, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter and John Lee Hooker – wrote and played about their lives. They pulled no punches in their lyrics about sex, drinking, railroads, jail, drugs, murder, poverty, hard labor and love lost. 
Often spurned by history, the music was a darker underside of our American heritage: Jim Crow laws, gut-wrenching poverty, and coping with such natural disasters as the boll weevil and drought. 
As is often the case, succeeding generations tended to ignore – to bury – the blues. 
“It was just seen as old useless stuff,” Tefteller said. “A lot of it was just dumped into the trash, no one wanted anything to do with it. The African American community has long embraced jazz, but the blues has been a different story. I think they’ve been a little embarrassed – it was all about poverty, the Depression and oppression … it was seen as not respectful, there was nothing cultivated about it.” 
But, there is little room for denial in that the Delta blues was the building stone upon which rock and roll was created. Those architects of rock and roll – Elvis, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, John Mayall, Eric Clapton and others – built the house of rock and roll on the foundations of the Delta blues. That has long been an established fact among Europeans, according to Tefteller; but, a slow fact for the American culture to grasp. 
“It’s unfortunate, embarrassing that the English, French, German and, even the Japanese, have more interest in that aspect of American culture,” he says. “It’s a very distressing that we have let this piece of culture slip through our hands. But, that’s been the result of a racist nature of generations of Americans.” 
As a result, real vintage, “gut-bucket” blues material is hard to find. And valuable. 
Tefteller is, by trade, a record dealer. From his business, “The World’s Rarest Records,” he deals in more than 300,000 records, comprising 50s and 60s rock and roll, girly bands, surfer music, rare Beatles, and rhythm and blues. 
But, he’s also a collector. He has 3,000 albums – many of which are one of a kind – strictly blues from the 1920s-1930s. These are “untouchable,” Tefteller says, not for sale … maybe for trade, but never for sale. 
For his part, Tefteller, has played a key role in bringing the blues back to the public. 
Several years ago, Tefteller uncovered a huge cache of material from the largest producer of “race records,” the Paramount label in tiny Grafton, Wis. The label marketed their records to African Americans, most notably in the pages of the Chicago Defender, the weekly African American newspaper, and sent promotional material to select record stores and distributors. At the time, he bought the artwork from a pair of journalists who, “thinking there was value” in the material saved from a rubbish heap behind the plant. 
The material was left after the Depression killed off Paramount’s advertising budget, so many of the images were never sent out. Essentially it was “new old stock.” 
Years later, suspecting that more existed, Tefteller bought the entire Paramount marketing inventory. From that acquisition came many “important finds.” 
For years, the only existing photo of Patton was a tiny head shot, showing a portion of his bow tie and a tip of a shoulder. Sifting through the files, Telfteller discovered a full-length advertising poster of Patton, holding his guitar, staring dead-on into the camera. 
“That picture is now the iconic photo of Patton,” says Tefteller, who has published the photo in his annual calendar of blues events, and accompanying CD. 
“I invested over $100,000 for Paramount,” Tefteller says. “I made the purchase in three different segments. I mortgaged my home for that warehouse … my wife wasn’t too happy about it at the time … but it is the single most important finding in blues history … I told her, we’d make the money back, that was six years ago, and we’re almost there.” 
Eric C. Rodenberg 



2/20/2009
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