Little Brother Montgomery

Eurreal Wilford "Little Brother" Montgomery (April 18, 1906 – September 6, 1985) was an American jazz, boogie-woogie and blues pianist and singer. a sawmill town near the Mississippi border, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, where he spent much of his childhood. Both his parents were of African-American and Creek Indian ancestry. His main musical influence was Jelly Roll Morton, who used to visit the Montgomery household.

Early in his career he performed at African-American lumber and turpentine camps in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. and Chicago was where he made his first recordings. From 1931 through 1938, he led a jazz ensemble, the Southland Troubadours, in Jackson, Mississippi.

In 1941, Montgomery moved back to Chicago, In the late 1950s he was discovered by a wider white audience. His fame grew in the 1960s, and he continued to make many recordings, some of them on his own record label, FM Records, which he formed in 1969 He appeared at many blues and folk festivals during the following decade and was considered a living legend, a link to the early days of blues in New Orleans.

In 1968, Montgomery contributed to two albums by Spanky and Our Gang, Like to Get to Know You and Anything You Choose b/w Without Rhyme or Reason.

Montgomery died on September 6, 1985, in Champaign, Illinois,

The R&B musician and producer Paul Gayten was Montgomery's nephew.

Discography Year of release Album title Label 1960 Tasty Blues Bluesville 1961 Blues Folkways1962Chicago: The Living Legends: Little Brother MontgomeryRiverside 1965 Music Down Home: An Introduction to Negro Folk Music: U.S.A. Folkways 1966 Piano Blues Folkways 1968 Farro Street Live Folkways 1968 No Special Rider Here Genes/Adelphi 1972 Blues Piano Orgy Delmark 1975 Church Songs: Sung and Played on the Piano by Little Brother Montgomery Folkways 2003 Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways Smithsonian Folkways 2003 Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways, Vol. 2 Smithsonian Folkways 2008 Classic Piano Blues from Smithsonian Folkways Smithsonian Folkways 2008 Classic African American Gospel from Smithsonian Folkways Smithsonian Folkways These articles provide an overview of his life and musical career. The two-LP set Crescent City Blues (AXM2-5522), released by RCA in 1975, which includes many of his recordings for Bluebird Records in the mid-1930s, has comprehensive liner notes by Jim O'Neal, the editor of Living Blues magazine, giving an overview of Montgomery's music career. Conversation with the Blues, by Paul Oliver, first published in 1965 and reissued by Cambridge University Press in 1997, includes interviews with Montgomery.