Jaybird Coleman

Biography Coleman was born to a family of sharecroppers in Gainesville, Alabama, United States. While he and his three brothers endured hard physical labor, he was exposed to musical influences from his fellow sharecroppers in singing and discovering traditional folk songs. As a result, his superior officers would call him Jaybird, a nickname associated with him for the rest of his life. During this time Coleman first performed for large crowds as he entertained his fellow soldiers. After his military discharge, he briefly returned to Gainesville, working for a few months as a farm labourer, before relocating with his younger brother, Joe, to Bessemer, Alabama, and becoming a full-time musician.

In 1922, Coleman teamed up with the singer and guitarist Big Joe Williams in tours across Alabama. He then traveled for two years with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, a popular tent show, making appearances throughout the South. Returning to Bessemer, Coleman married a popular local singer, and the couple supported themselves by performing as a duo. The Colemans were regular churchgoers and were renowned in the black community for their renditions of gospel songs. As a blues musician, Coleman was popular with black and white audiences alike. Occasionally he would play a harmonica as he strolled through the streets, drawing a crowd that followed him.

In 1926, Coleman began recording for Gennett Records, Silvertone Records, and Black Patti Records as a solo performer and as a member of the Bessemer Blues Pickers. His records were met with commercial success, but he asserted he was never compensated for his work. Despite his treatment by white-owned record companies, he allowed a charter of the Ku Klux Klan to manage his touring schedule and expand his audience to major southern cities. In the 1930s, Coleman was loosely associated with the Birmingham Jug Band, a group he helped form, and recorded with them in sessions for OKeh Records and Columbia Records. In 1930, he recorded "Coffee Grinder Blues" for Columbia, which, in a dispute with the label over payment, he blocked from wider release. It is his rarest record. By the end of the 1940s, he disappeared from the music scene.

He died of cancer on January 28, 1950, in Tuskegee, Alabama.

Compilation Jaybird Coleman & the Birmingham Jug Band, Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order: 1927–1930 (Document, 1992)