DISCOGRAPHY (12CD)
Barbee toured in the 1930s throughout the American South, singing and
playing slide guitar. He teamed up with Big Joe Williams and, later,
with Sunnyland Slim in Memphis, Tennessee. Travelling down to
Mississippi, he met Sonny Boy Williamson and played with him off and
on for several years.[4] He released two sides for Vocalion Records in
1939 ("Six Weeks Old Blues" and "God Knows I Can't Help It"). The
record sold well enough to cause Vocalion to call on Barbee again, but
by that time he had left his last known whereabouts in Arkansas.
Barbee explained that this sudden move was due to his evading the law
for shooting and killing his girlfriend's lover. He later found out
that he had only injured the man, but by the time this was discovered,
Barbee was no longer making a career playing music.
Barbee did not show up again in the music industry until the early
1960s, when a revival of interest in the blues was at its height.
Willie Dixon searched for Barbee and found him working as an ice-cream
server in Chicago, Illinois. In 1964, Barbee joined the American Folk
Blues Festival on a European tour with other blues players, including
Lightnin' Hopkins and Howlin' Wolf.
Barbee returned to the United States after getting diagnosed with a
severe form of cancer, and used the money from the tour to purchase
his first automobile. Ten days after buying the car, he accidentally
ran over and killed a man. He was taken to a Chicago jail and died
there of a heart attack a few days later, on November 3, 1964, 11 days
before his 59th birthday. He is interred in the Restvale Cemetery, in
Alsip, Illinois.
The third annual White Lake Blues Festival, held at the Howmet
Playhouse Theater in Whitehall, Michigan, on May 11, 2010, was
organized by executive producer Steve Salter, of the nonprofit
organization Killer Blues, to raise monies to honor Barbee's unmarked
grave with a headstone. The event was a success, and a stone was
placed in June 2010.
(Wikipedia)