This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.
And legends is what you're gonna get from me, but they will have keep their mouths shut as today's episode will feature instrumentals only. And, as you came here for the music and not for me, for now I will shut up too and start to play the instrumental that I promised you on the previous show. Here is Red Prysock with Take the 'A' train, from 1959 from a Mercury ten-inch LP.
01 - Red Prysock - Take The 'A' Train
Red Prysock - Take The 'A' Train. Now that were fourteen minutes of the most frantic music that you can imagine. My son, who is more into the dirty house style music, wondered how the heck you should dance on music with that amount of beats-per-minutes. Well, it's good to realize that in these days they really knew what dancing was.
Still it's time to slow down a little. Tiny Grimes' band with Jealousy. It was released on Atlantic and recorded in 1949 with Tiny Grimes on guitar and again Red Prysock on the saxophone.
02 - Tiny Grimes - Jealousy
03 - Piano Red - Jump Man Jump
Jump man Jump, that was Piano Red. Probably not the most well-known of the Rhythm 'n Blues artists but he was a colourful person who had a very long career that was by times fairly succesful. From the mid-thirties you could hear him playing in juke joints for the weekends and doing work as an upholsterer for fourteen years until he recorded his biggest hit Rocking with Red in 1950. From the mid-fifties he also was a discjockey for WGST in Atlanta where a young James Brown made his appearance for the first time. From the sixties he'd adopted the name of Dr. Feelgood, which is slang for a doctor who supplies heroin or other drugs. In later years he toured in Europe and played at jazz festivals until he died in 1985.
Now you may argue that this wasn't 100% instrumental as the band shouted some words through it and you may probably be right but it still feels as an instrumental rather than a song. The same counts for the next record, Slim's Jam by Slim Gaillard. To get the effect of a spontaneous jam he's talking with the other musicians.
04 - Slim Gaillard - Slim's Jam
05 - Plas Johnson - Downstairs
Plas Johnson with Downstairs, a wonderful minor chord instrumental and one that I like very much, you know, the main theme is a great play-along for me on my tenor saxophone. That is, to be honest, I had to stretch the tune considerably to be able to cope with the tempo and still I think it's a difficult tune to play. Some people said, why don't you play the sax yourself in your radio program bot those aren't my neighbours who know how I play. Really, listeners, I don't wanna do that to you. Be glad for it.
OK - nuff said about that. Let's leave the saxophone to those who are good in it. Like Bull Moose Jackson. From him, from a King 78 from 1949, his instrumental Moosey.
06 - Bullmoose Jackson - Moosey
07 - Hank Marr - Tonk Game
Hank Marr and his orchestra with the Tonk game from as late as 1961, on Federal records. When he signed to Federal in 1961, he already had made the Hammond organ his trademark. I don't know who are the guys that play the saxophone on this one but they do a great job.
Now for one of my favourite saxmen but in the next instrumental that I'm going to play he shows that he's great on the guitar as well. Here is Eddie Chamblee with the six-string boogie, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman.
08 - Eddie Chamblee - 6 String Boogie
09 - Lloyd Glenn - Nite-Flite
Lloyd Glenn on the piano with Nite-Flite on the Alladin label from 1954. Glenn came from Texas and he moved to the West Coast in the early forties. In 1949 he went to work as an A&R man for Swingtime Records but he also recorded several hits for his own including Chicka Boo that hit number one on the R&B chart in 1951. After Swingtime went broke, he switched to Alladin in 1953.
We'll stay on the West Coast and Alladin Records for a moment with Amos Milburn. Most of Milburn's records were vocals, but he was a great piano player and on the record that I'm going to play now, he does the work in the background for his band, the Alladin Chicken-Shackers. The odd name of the band was chosen after his first big hit, the Chicken Shack Boogie. Here is Bow Wow.
10 - Amos Milburn & his Alladin Chicken-Shackers - Bow Wow
11 - Joe Liggins & His Honeydrippers - Blow Mr. Jackson
Joe Liggins and his Honeydrippers with Blow Mr. Jackson. Now that is another band that was called after their greatest success. Of course I mean their monster hit The honeydripper, that came out in 1945 and stayed on top of the chart for eighteen weeks. Blow Mr. Jackson was recorded in 1946 in Los Angeles and the Mr. Jackson actually refer to two Mr. Jacksons: Little Willie Jackson on the alto and the baritone, and James Jackson on the tenor. The hits of Joe Liggins band together with the hits from the Johnny Moore's Three Blazes made the tiny Exclusive label one of the best-selling R&B labels of 1947.
We'll stay on the west coast with the saxophone with Big Jay McNeeley, whose frantic honking featured the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman quite a few times. Here is Hopping with Hunter, which is a tribute to the popular deejay Hunter Hancock who was the first and certainly the most popular on the west coast to play rhythm & blues on KFVD in Los Angeles and a number of other radio stations.
12 - Big Jay McNeeley - Hoppin' with Hunter
13 - Johnny Otis Orch. - Head Hunter
And another instrumental to honour that great deejay Hunter Hancock. That was the Johnny Otis orchestra with Head Hunter. Again this features the saxophone honking of Big Jay McNeeley and that great guitar work was Pete Lewis.
(vervallen) Now the deejay that they did their tribute to, has quite a remarkable story to tell how he became the first one to play Rhythm 'n Blues on the West Coast radio. On the website of the doo-wop society of Southern California he tells ud that somewhere in the mid-forties he was just looking for a job on the radio and he was sitting on the front steps of the building of KFVD waiting for the program director to arrive to apply for a job. He was hired on the spot to do a program aimed at the black community. Unfortunately Hancock had no idea what the tastes of the African Americans was but the program director had told him to play jazz. No wonder the program wasn't very succesful at its targeted audience until some salesman from Modern Records, one of the leading R&B labels at the time, advised him to play what then were called Race records. He'd brought some samples with him and Hancock was impressed - and so were the listeners. Within a few weeks his program was packed with Rhythm 'n Blues and it was so succesful that the show sold a lot of commercials and it was expanded from thirty minutes up to three-and-a-half hour, and it featured interviews with all leading R&B artists from the west coast, including probably the first radio interview with a very young Nat "King" Cole.
As his radio show grew more succesful, he also appeared on TV and started his own record label Swinging that took off successfully with Big Jay McNeeley and Little Sonny Warner's There is something on your mind, but he grew tired of the ever commercializing radio business with its prescribed formats and playlists. (/vervallen)
As we reach the end of this episode of the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman there's time for two more tunes. First, I want to spotlight the great T-Bone Walker. The instrumental is called T-bone Jumps Again and it was recorded in 1947 in Hollywood with Bumps Meyers on the saxophone. After that, Sonny Thompson and his quintet with Sonny's return.
14 - T-Bone Walker - T-Bone Jumps Again
15 - Sonny Thompson Quintet - Sonny's Return
And Sonny's Return marks the end of this program, where I played some of the vast amount of instrumentals that were so popular back then in the forties and fifties. I hope you liked the show and if so, or if not, please don't hesitate to drop a line at the program's mail address, rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. So for now, byebye and have a great day. No - have a rocking day. See you next time for another episode, where I'll play more great rhythm 'n blues on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman.