Born on June 19, 1898, in Halley, Arkansas, Dewey Corley was part of the same Beale Street jug band scene that spawned Will Shade, Gus Cannon, Furry Lewis, and others. A jack-of-all-trades when it came to jug band sounds, Corley played washtub bass, jug, and kazoo, on which he was considered an expert. He spent time in Will Shade’s Memphis Jug Band, as well as Jack Kelly’s South Memphis Jug Band, before founding his own Beale Street Jug Band, who were a fixture in Memphis through the 1960s. In his later years he became a talent scout for the blues revival label Adelphi, scouting out figures like Hacksaw Harney and Willie Morris. Corley passed away in his adopted city of Memphis on April 15, 1974.George Mitchell: “Dewey was a crotchety old fucker, very irritable. We brought Johnny up from Como to play with Dewey, and in the middle of the song, Johnny Woods let loose a whoop of enthusiasm, and at the end of the song, Dewey yelled at him: “You just frustratin’ things.” But he liked to be recorded, and we got him on three different occasions with three different accompanists: the harp player Johnny Woods, the guitarist Earl Bell, and Walter Miller, who was a buddy of Abe McNeil’s up in Memphis.