Gus Cannon (12 September 1883 — 15 October 1979) was an American blues musician who helped to popularize jug bands (such as his own Cannon’s Jug Stompers) in the 1920s and 1930s.
There’s doubt about his birth year; his tombstone gives the date as 1874.
Although their last recordings were made in 1930, Cannon’s Jug Stompers were one of Beale Street’s most popular jug bands through the 1930s. A few songs Cannon recorded with Cannon’s Jug Stompers are “Minglewood Blues”, “Pig Ankle Strut”, “Wolf River Blues”, “Viola Lee Blues”, “White House Station” and “Walk Right In”, later made into a pop hit by The Rooftop Singers. By the end of the 1930s, Cannon had effectively retired, although he occasionally performed as a solo musician.
Cannon began recording, as “Banjo Joe”, for Paramount Records in 1927. At that session he was backed up by Blind Blake. After the success of the Memphis Jug Band’s first records, he quickly assembled a jug band featuring Noah Lewis and Ashley Thompson (later replaced by Elijah Avery). Cannon’s Jug Stompers first recorded at the Memphis Auditorium for the Victor label in January 1928. Hosea Woods joined the Jug Stompers in the late 1920s, playing guitar, banjo and kazoo, and also providing some vocals.
Born on a plantation at Red Banks, Cannon moved to Clarksdale, Mississippi, then the home of W.C. Handy, at the age of 12. Cannon’s musical skills came without training; he taught himself to play using a banjo that he made from a frying pan and raccoon skin. He ran away from home at the age of fifteen and began his career entertaining at sawmills and levee and railroad camps in the Mississippi Delta around the turn of the century.
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