About Us | Contact | Subscribe

Home: 20's Jazz

Davis Street Blues

Sugar Underwood

Sugar Underwood

Subscribe to 20's Jazz

Navigation:

Home

Back

More videos like this

This recording was produced in Savannah, Georgia on August 23rd 1927 featuring Mathew 'Sugar' Underwood piano. -It was the first of only two solo recordings releases during his career (both cut on the same day).

*"Davis Street Blues" was composed by Matthew Emanuel Underwood.

Mathew Emanuel Underwood was born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1898. During the early 1920s after a failed marriage Underwood had acquired the nickname "Sugar" and become an itinerant musician playing around the deep South in road houses and hotels. By 1925 he had joined with vocalists Charles Frazier tenor and Lester Pratt baritone to form the "Jacksonville Harmony Trio". In 1927 Victor sent an electrical mobile recording unit into the field to add content to their race series. They made their way through Tennessee and the Carolinas looking for local talent throughout the Summer. By August the crew reached Savannah, Georgia where the "Jacksonville Harmony Trio" happened to be in town performing.

On August 23rd, the day after the "Ross De Luxe Syncopators" had laid down some tracks, the "Jacksonville Harmony Trio" cut four sides with Sugar at the piano, including a very nice cut of "Them Piano Blues". The acoustics present on the trio recordings plus Underwood's solos indicate that the session took place in a fairly large dance hall.