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 allsorts comes from what came together with preparing recent shows - you know, you need a certain song and well a whole album comes with it - like that. Also a few 78's that I never played on here before and a few tracks that I got from a friend - certainly all kinds of stuff. And I start with a wonderful blues from 1953, recorded for the King label. On the piano you hear her husband Sonny Thompson - here is the great Lula Reed with My Poor Heart.
01 - Lula Reed - My Poor Heart
02 - Big Vernon (Joe Turner) - Around The Clock
Who else can that be than Joe Turner - be it that he recorded this as Big Vernon, so under his real first name. His piano buddy Pete Johnson does that great boogie-woogie of this double-sider Around The Clock that he recorded in November of 1947 in San Francisco for the tiny Stag label. And man this version rolls. The around the clock theme comes from Trixie Smith who recorded her My Man Rocks Me all the way back in 1922. In that blues she describes lovemaking round the clock, and it has every verse start with I looked at the clock and the clock struck one, or whatever the clock struck at the time she took a break from lovemaking to see what time it was.
The theme has been used many times since, including Wynonie Harris on Philo from 1945 and Chuck Berry's Reelin' And Rocking.
Next Clarence Gatemouth Brown - a regular musician in the Houston Peacock club when the owner started a record label with the same name. It brought this spectacular guitarist to the spotlights. From 1949 here is Mary Is Fine.
03 - Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown - Mary Is Fine
04 - Dixie-Aires - Casey Jones
(jingle)
05 - Danny Kirkland - They Were Rockin'
06 - Louis Jordan - The Chicks I Pick Are Slender and Tender
Well that were three great tracks - after Gatemouth Brown's rocking blues Mary Is Fine you got the fine vocal group the Dixie-Aires on the Exclusive label from 1948 with the story of Casey Jones. Them after the jingle you got Danny Kirkland on the JVB label with an obvious cover of Louis Jordan's Saturdaynight Fish Fry, under the title of They Were Rocking. And speaking of Jordan, the maestro himself was the last one you just heard with a recording from the summer of 1942 for Decca - The Chicks I Pick Are Slender and Tender.
And for the next one we go back to 1938 with Count Basie. I sent for you yesterday and here you come today - a long title for this great blues. Jimmy "Mr. five by five" Rushing does the vocals and he got that nickname for his size - he was as fat as he was short, five feet only. But a great blues shouter - Count Basie always regarded him as the best vocalist he ever had, and that was for thirteen years. And he wasn't the only one - four times he was chosen best male singer at both Down Beat magazine and Melody Maker, and he was one of the only eight blues legends whose face ever featured a post stamp.
Here is, on Decca, Count Basie with Jimmy Rushing.
07 - Count Basie feat. Jimmy Rushing - Sent For You Yesterday
08 - Lil Hardin Armstrong - Harlem On Saturday Night
Recorded in November of 1938 that was the great Lil Hardin Armstrong with Harlem on a Saturday Night. The former spouse of Louis Armstrong was the house pianist of Decca in these years. Though the two musicians had separated in 1931, Louis Armstrong and the music remained her two great passions. When she decided to leave the music business in the late forties, and start a career in tailoring her graduate project was a tuxedo for Louis and he wore it with pride on a New York party, but when she was asked to play the piano she knew she could never leave the music. Hardin died shortly after Louis died, in 1971, when she collapsed during a memorial concert for her former husband. Her unfinished manuscript of her life with Louis, that probably had passages that would shine a less positive light on the great trumpeter, and a bunch of letters, they disappeared from her house shortly after her death.
Next from 1947 a blues of Lonnie Johnson that just missed my recent show on the Aladdin label - there's just one hour in a show, you know, so I have to make choices, every time. So now I make up and play it instead. Here is Lonnie Johnson with How Could You.
09 - Lonnie Johnson - How Could You
10 - Yas Yas Girl (Merline Johnson) - Evil Old Nightmare
Merline Johnson also known as the Yas Yas Girl with one of her typical juke joint style blues - the Evil Old Nightmare from 1940 recorded for the OKeh label. She was probably born in Mississippi and somewhere in the thirties moved to Chicago where we find her from 1937 in local joints singing her rough and unsophisticated blues on sex, drugs or drink. She recorded some 90 songs in ten years and then she just disappears from sight as suddenly as she was found in the Windy City scene - we only know that this obscure and probably wild lady was the aunt of Lavern Baker.
She may well have met and known Johnnie Temple, another steady of the Chicago scene and from that same year 1940 comes the next Decca recording. Temple already knew the brothers Charlie and Joe McCoy before Decca producer J Mayo Williams brought them all to the label in the mid-thirties. The McCoy brothers became part of the legendary studio band the Harlem Hamfats and provided the instrumental backup for Temple. Now by 1940 the Hamfats had disbanded so you don't hear their typical sound on this one.
Listen to Fix It Up And Go.
11 - Johnnie Temple - Fix It Up And Go
12 - Lillette Thomas - Blues For My Daddy
From 1945 straight from the 78, the very first recording of the New York based Sterling label - Lillette Thomas and her boys with the Blues For My Daddy. I didn't find much on this lady but a roaring introduction in Billboard magazine of November 24 of 1945 - proudly quoted in an ad of the Sterling label one week later. Despite, she didn't make much noise and the next hit on her name in Billboard is an ad for a surplus sale of records of the Sterling and Juke Box label, two years later, where the records go for a mere 20 cents each. Well if got one and you put it on E-Bay now - it'll probably do some more.
Next Dee Williams who was the regular pianist of Johnny Otis. This was recorded under her own name as the Dee Williams sextette and they probably had a problem counting 'cause the line-up shows seven people, including Gene Montgomery on sax and Roy Porter on drums - normally members of the Howard McGhee band - a bebop band that also featured Charlie Parker and Sonny Criss. That's a phenomenon that was typical for the West Coast scene: a saxophonist could both play in and avantgarde jazz band and honk his tenor in a Rhythm & Blues combo the very next day. Personally - I think the latter's more fun to do.
Anyhow, here is Dee's Boogie.
13 - Dee Williams Sextette - Dee's Boogie
14 - Jay McShann feat. Crown Prince Waterford - Garfield Avenue Boogie
The Garfield Avenue Boogie - you heard Crown Prince Waterford who'd fronted the band of Jay McShann as a replacement for Walter Brown. He did only three sides with Brown and recorded with various record labels since, including King records of Cincinatti. After Rock 'n Roll hit the nation, he got out of fashion and finally quit the blues to dedicate himself to the church.
Next a great version of Paul Gayten's composition For You My Love that was a 1949 hit for Larry Darnell. Lionel Hampton is fronted by Sonny Parker who does a great blues shouting job, and this version was released on Decca in 1950. So here is Lionel Hampton.
15 - Lionel Hampton feat. Sonny Parker - For you my love
16 - Johnny Otis - Help Me Blues
17 - Big Maceo - Can't You Read
Big Maceo Merriweather with Can't You Read and that was his very first record, and that was on the Bluebird label. Born in Atlanta he'd moved to Detroit in 1924 and settled in Chicago in 1941 - and there were far more opportunities to record. From that same session comes the blues classic Worried Life Blues that's been recorded by many artists and that was his big hit.
Before that you got Johnny Otis and his California Rhythm & Blues Caravan with Help Me Blues on the Savoy label. And you'll probably have heard it from the background tune - yeah time's up. I hope you liked today's selection of Rhythm & Blues and if so - or if not - you can always let me know at rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. And if you watn to read back what I told you today or see what'll be on for the next week, take a peek at my website, just do a Google search for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and it will show up first in the search results.
As for now - have a rocking day. Hope to see you next time, where I'll play more of that exciting Rhythm & Blues, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!