Departures of note

John Henry 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, and met Sonny Boy Williamson in Mississippi, playing with him off and on for several years. He released two sides for Vocalion Records in 1939, which sold well enough for Vocalion to request further recordings.

Barbee explained that he left his last known whereabouts in Arkansas to evade the law after shooting and killing his girlfriend's lover. He later learned he had only injured the man, and by that time he was no longer pursuing a music career.