This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.
And today's tunes have no specific things in common except that they're great Rhythm & Blues. Well that's pretty much what yuo can expect from me so let me just start with the first one - after all you came here for the music and not for my voice. That'll be a great blues of Goree Carter. Here is Seven Days.
01 - Goree Carter - Seven Days
02 - Little Willie Littlefield - Beehive Jump
The Beehive jump - recorded for the Modern label but unreleased by then. You heard Little Willie Littlefield as a teenager when he was recorded for Modern in a Houston studio. Record boss Jules Bihari had heard of his local hit Little Willie's Boogie and decided that he should fly to Texas to record this boogie woogie king. The Modern label saw revenue of this effort - both It's Midnight en Farewell were good hits.
Little Willie remained succesful for Modern and later for King's subsidiary Federal but by the end of the fifties his style got outdated and succes ended in America. He moved to Europe to flow on the wave of the blues revival and lived for many years in a small town in my little country, Holland.
Next saxophonist Paul Bascomb, and he'd been in Erskine Hawkins band for a long time. In 1946 he arrived in New York and started his own band. This Lady Ginger Snap was the flip of Leap Frog that he recorded for the small Alert label. We know him best for his groundbreaking record Rock and Roll that he recorded in 1947, among one of the earliest of a fad in Rhythm & Blues that used heavy back beats and all seemed to sing about rock and roll, creating the basis of the Rock 'n Roll craze.
But this is just one year earlier. Here is Lady Ginger Snap.
03 - Paul Bascomb - Lady Ginger Snap
04 - Caldwells - I Gotta' Move
(jingle)
05 - Cathy Ryan with Lucky Millinder - It's A Sad, Sad Feeling
06 - Etta Jones & J.C. Heard - I Sold My Heart
Three in a row - just before the jingle you got I gotta move and that was the vocal group the Caldwells recorded in 1946 for RCA Victor. Then you got Lucky Millinder's orchestra backing up Cathy Ryan and the Admirals with It's A Sad Sad Feeling and that was from 1955 on the King label. Then, finally on RCA Victor again, from 1947 Etta Jones backed op by J.C Heard and his band and the title of that was I sold my heart.
And for the next one we take a dive back into the thirties with bluesman Jabo Williams. Only 8 songs were ever recorded of this obscure bluesman. We don't know where and when he was born and died - some assume his place of birth being Pratt City, Birmingham, AL but that's only based on the lyrics of one of his songs. We don't even know whether Jabo was his first name or a nickname. What we do know that some day a record store owner in St Louis recommended him to Paramount and that he was taken to their studio in Grafton, WI in May of 1932 for one of the last sessions before the label closed down. The end of Paramount's operations made that his records never got in circulation widely. Re-releases of some of his songs in the early fifties were too late to track him down. All of his Paramount output was compiled on a CD of the Document series, that's also in my CD cabinet.
Listen to his Fat Mama Blues from 1932.
07 - Jabo Williams - Fat Mama Blues
08 - Skeets Tolbert - Big Fat Butterfly
The Big Fat Butterfly - somewhat of a jazz standard that I know in quite a few versions. This was Skeets Tolbert and his Gentlemen of Swing, the follow-up of the band of Snub Moseley who left his own band in 1937. With this band he made some recordings for Decca in the early forties, and a few soundies. He broke up the band in 1946 and started as a music teacher on a high school in Charlotte, NC, and from 1948 on the Texas Southern University.
Next bluesman Lonnie Johnson. He was born in 1899 and so he was of an older generation of musicians but he easily modernized his music throughout the thirties to the sixties. His musical career has reached great highs but also times where he had to rely on simple jobs to earn a living. I'll get you a wonderful blues from 1932 that he recorded for Columbia under the name of Jimmy Jordan. Here is the prison blues There Is No Justice.
09 - Lonnie Johnson - There Is No Justice
10 - Saunders King - Long Long Time
Saunders King was that with Long Long Time, recorded in San Francisco in 1954 for the Flair label. His career was hampered by a series of serious personal problems - his wife committed suicide in 1942, he was shot by his landlord in '46 and he served some time im prison for heroin posession. Probably without them, he may have been a much more important figure in the West Coast Rhythm & Blues scene. He quit the music scene in '61 and for just once, in 1979, he played on the album Oneness of his son-in-law Carlos Santana.
Next Sonny Thompson with a recording he did for the King label. Thompson was a very succesful Chicago pianist and band leader who had one of the biggest hits of the late forties, Long Gone, on the Miracle label. Before he had been on record with the obscure Sultan label with two sides and as backup for June Richmond for Mercury. When Miracle folded he signed with King where he made numerous recordings, both with and without his wife Lula Reed.
Listen to his Heavyweight Mama.
11 - Sonny Thompson - Heavyweight Mama
12 - Jewel King - 3x7 = 21
Backed by the band of New Orleans legend Dave Bartholomew that was Jewel King with 3x7 = 21, released on Imperial - where else when Dave Bartholomew was involved. This made it number 4 on the R&B charts in early 1950. It was her only hit, and if her husband and bandleader Jack Scott hadn't refused to let her tour after this success, maybe some more had been possible. Instead they left for San Antonio where they played in a local club and were forgotten since.
Next, recorded in December on 1947 Marion Abernathy with Wee Baby. This was recorded for King where she was signed after her time with the Hollywood Melodisc label that had burnt down and ended operations in 1946. This was from a session with the band of Hot Lips Page two days before Christmas of '47 - in that hectic month where all record labels were preparing for the upcoming recording strike of the American Federation of Musicians.
Here is Wee Baby.
13 - Marion Abernathy - Wee Baby
14 - Terry Timmons - What You Bet
What You Bet was that of Terry Timmons for the Chicago based Premium label released in the spring of 1951, from a session she shared with Cryin' Jesse with a band that hasn't been identified.
And we stay in the Windy City with Tom Archia - fronted by George Kirby. On the Aristocrat label from July of 1947, here is the Ice Man Blues.
15 - Tom Archia - Ice Man Blues
16 - Buster Bennett - I'M A Bum Again
(jingle)
17 - Beverly Wright - Don't Let The Sun Catch You Cryin'
18 - J.T. Brown - I'm Wise
And three more in a row ends this mix of tunes. Yea listeners, time's up. You got J.T. Brown with I'm Wise and that was recorded in 1953. Then before that you got Beverly Wright on the Groove subsidiary of RCA with Don't Let The Sun Catch You Cryin' and that was from '56. And then I have to account for what was before the jingle, well that was Buster Bennett with a recording from 1946, I'm A Bum Again.
It's been a very mixed set again, with music from between the early thirties up to the late fifties, and I hope you enjoyed today's selection. Well of course you can let me know and send an e-mail to rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com or find me on the web, just search Google for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and my site will show up first. On my site you can read back what I told you today, review the playlist and see what'll be on for next week.
Well that's all folks for today. Have a wonderful and rocking day and I hope to catch you again, next time here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!