Monkey Joe

The amount of real information known about Jesse "Monkey Joe" Coleman, who recorded extensively in the 1930s for Lester Melrose in Chicago and who was still playing clubs in the Windy City in the 1960s and 1970s, is astonishingly small. He was born sometime around or before 1906, probably in Mississippi, and seems to have played the juke joints in the area around Jackson in the early 1930s, as well as New Orleans, where he cut his first session for RCA-Victor's Bluebird imprint in 1935, in tandem with Little Brother Montgomery. Coleman first used the "Monkey Joe" name sometime in the 1930s. He later turned up in Chicago as part of Lester Melrose's stable of bluesmen, and had his next session there in 1938 backed by guitarist Charlie McCoy and drummer Fred Williams. He seems to have worked variously under the names Jack Newman at Vocalion and George Jefferson elsewhere, as accompanist to singer Lulu Scott. He cut further sides for Melrose, including a group of sides on which he was billed as "Monkey Joe and His Music Grinders." He also recorded for the Okeh label.

Not much is known of Monkey Joe's exact activities between the 1930s and the 1960s, only that he was a fixture at the clubs in the Chicago area in the 1960s and beyond. He is presumed to have died sometime after the early 1970s. One album, Crescent City Blues, coupling him with Little Brother Montgomery, surfaced in the early 1970s.