Wesley Wallace

It is thought that he may have originally hailed from Arkansas and, around the time of his short recording career, that he lived in Alton, Illinois, approximately 18 miles north of St. Louis.

"[2] In around November 1929 in the same Grafton-based studio, Wallace probably supplied piano backing to Robert Peeples on a couple of tracks; "Dying Baby Blues" and "Mama's Boy", also issued on Paramount.

It made Wallace's piano playing unusual, if not quite unique, but as an accompanist this structural and harmonic peculiarity caused Peeples difficulty, as in "Dying Baby Blues", when the expected V chord did not occur.

Wallace's spoken comments over the top of his playing included his imitation of a train whistle blowing and the engine 'running hot'.

[1] Wallace played an abnormally consistent unaccentuated bass line in 6/4 time, with his right hand interspersed by speech and noise effects in recreating the sounds of a train journey.

[5] The song contains vivid descriptions of "riding the blinds", a dangerous practice where a hobo would hide between the cars of a moving train.

The album's liner notes stated that Wallace was "an highly individual and eccentric pianist" and that "Fanny Lee Blues" was "common to the St. Louis style" and "played with disregard to bar lengths".

[4] In November 1929, Sylvester Palmer, another St. Louis boogie-woogie pianist, waxed four sides in Chicago, Illinois for the rival Columbia Records.

[4] Both of Wallace's solo tracks were issued as part of the quadruple CD compilation album, The Paramount Masters (JSP Records, 2004).