Jesse "Monkey Joe" Coleman was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 country blues

Country blues

Country blues is a general term that refers to all the acoustic, mainly guitar-driven forms of the blues. It often incorporated elements of rural gospel, ragtime, hillbilly, and dixieland jazz...

 pianist and singer, who recorded sporadically from the 1930s into the 1970s.

Jesse Coleman was most likely born in Mississippi

Mississippi

Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...

, and though the year of birth is not known, he was probably born around 1906. He worked locally in Jackson, Mississippi

Jackson, Mississippi

Jackson is the capital and the most populous city of the US state of Mississippi. It is one of two county seats of Hinds County ,. The population of the city declined from 184,256 at the 2000 census to 173,514 at the 2010 census...

 in juke joint

Juke joint

Juke joint is the vernacular term for an informal establishment featuring music, dancing, gambling, and drinking, primarily operated by African American people in the southeastern United States. The term "juke" is believed to derive from the Gullah word joog, meaning rowdy or disorderly...

s in the 1930s, and recorded with Little Brother Montgomery

Little Brother Montgomery

Eurreal Wilford "Little Brother" Montgomery was an American jazz, boogie-woogie and blues pianist and singer....

 in 1935 on Bluebird Records

Bluebird Records

Bluebird Records is a sub-label of RCA Victor Records originally created in 1932 to counter the American Record Company in the "3 records for a dollar" market. Along with ARC's Perfect Records, Melotone Records and Romeo Records, and the independent US Decca label, Bluebird became one of the best...

. He began using the moniker "Monkey Joe" in that decade. Late in the 1930s he worked as a session musician

Session musician

Session musicians are instrumental and vocal performers, musicians, who are available to work with others at live performances or recording sessions. Usually such musicians are not permanent members of a musical ensemble and often do not achieve fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders...

 for Lester Melrose

Lester Melrose

Lester Melrose was one of the first American producers of blues records.-Career:He was born Lester Franklin Melrose in Sumner, Illinois, United States, the second of six children of Frank and Mollie Melrose who owned a small farm...

, and recorded under his own name with Charlie McCoy

Papa Charlie McCoy

Charles "Papa Charlie" McCoy was an African American delta blues musician and songwriter.-Career:Born in Jackson, Mississippi, McCoy was best known by the nickname 'Papa Charlie'. He became one of the major blues accompanists of his time...

, Fred Williams, Big Bill Broonzy

Big Bill Broonzy

Big Bill Broonzy was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly black audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with white audiences...

, and Buster Bennett

Buster Bennett

Buster Bennett was an American blues saxophonist and vocalist. At various times in his career, he played the soprano saxophone, the alto, and the tenor. He was known for his gutbucket style on the saxophone...

 as backing musicians. Coleman also appears to have worked under several other names, such as "Jack Newman" at Vocalion Records

Vocalion Records

Vocalion Records is a record label active for many years in the United States and in the United Kingdom.-History:Vocalion was founded in 1916 by the Aeolian Piano Company of New York City, which introduced a retail line of phonographs at the same time. The name was derived from one of their...

 and "George Jefferson" as an accompanist on recordings for Lulu Scott. He also recorded on Okeh Records

Okeh Records

Okeh Records began as an independent record label based in the United States of America in 1918. From 1926 on, it was a subsidiary of Columbia Records.-History:...

 for a time.

Little is known of Coleman's whereabouts, aside from recording credits, from before the 1960s. He worked often in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 blues clubs in the 1960s, and he became the subject of some interest due to the blues revival in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He worked again with Little Brother Montgomery in the 1970s on an album entitled Crescent City Blues. His date of death is unknown.

Document Records

Document Records

Document Records is a British record label that specializes in early American blues, bluegrass, gospel, spirituals jazz, and other rural American genres , generally made between 1900 and 1945...

released a two-volume CD set of Monkey Joe's works in 1996.