Sam Collins

by Jim ONealOne of the earliest generation of blues performers, Collins developed his style in South Mississippi (as opposed to the Delta). His recording debut single (The Jail House Blues, 1927) predated those of legendary Mississippians such as Charley Patton and Tommy Johnson and was advertised as Crying Sam Collins and his Git-Fiddle. Collins did not become a major name in blues — in fact his later records appeared under several different pseudonyms, most notably the name Jim Foster — but his rural bottleneck guitar pieces were among the first to be compiled on LP when the country-blues reissue era was just beginning. Sam Charters wrote in The Bluesmen: Although Collins was not one of the stylistic innovators within the Mississippi blues idiom, he was enough part of it that, in blues like Signifying Blues and Slow Mama Slow, he had some of the intensity of the Mississippi music at its most creative level.