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, on a cold winter's day in early 1942, I'll be showing you what great records I found in a department store of Sears Roebuck and Co. What could I possibly find there? you'd ask, well, they got a record department and I know they have quite a few good blues records on their own label, Conqueror. So I took a few hours thumbing through the racks that seemed to be an allsorts of popular music. I seen a lot of pop and hillbilly stuff, the Carter family, Dick Jurgens, Dick Reinhart, Gene Autry, but also some great blues findings and all for 39 cents each. So let's put the first one on the phonograph - a great 78 of Memphis Minnie. Here is the Pig Meat On The Line.
01 - Memphis Minnie - Pig Meat On The Line
02 - Blind Boy Fuller - Bus Rider Blues
The Bus Rider Blues of Blind Boy Fuller. Today I do a special on the Conqueror record label, and that is a completely different story than what I usually have to tell when I present you the history of some indie record company or the releases of a bigger label in some year.
The thing is, Conqueror was a record label - but not a record company. It was a store brand, the records of the Sears Roebuck department stores, the chain of stores that we still know as Sears. In the first half of the 20th century Sears Roebuck had made it their policy to sell store brand goods for low prices. This record label was part of that policy. They didn't have an A&R man, no artists on contract, they just had disks pressed from masters of major record companies.
Already around the turn of the century Sears Roebuck had sold cylinder records from Columbia under their own name, and from 1905 discs under the names of Harvard, Oxford, Silvertone, Supertone and Challenge. The Conqueror label was introduced in 1928 and made it until early of 1942 and by the end of its existence, material was used from CBS and its subsidiaries, such as OKeh, Vocalion and Columbia, and that explains for the significant amount of blues in their catalog.
More on this later, for now let's return to the music. Here is Big Bill Broonzy with his Merry Go Round Blues.
03 - Big Bill Broonzy - Merry-Go-Round Blues
04 - Yas Yas Girl (Merline Johnson) - Got The Blues For My Baby
(jingle)
05 - Roosevelt Sykes - Keep Your Hands Off Her
06 - Brownie McGhee - Key To My Door
All from the catalog of the Conqueror record label, you heard Brownie McGhee with the Key To My Door, Roosevelt Sykes with Keep Your Hands Off Her and before the jingle the obscure Merline Johnson, billed as the Yas Yas Girl with Got The Blues For My Baby and her fame had never spread out farther than Chicago where she suddenly was hot around 1940 - well, apart from the occasional Conqueror disk then, that was sold nationwide in the stores of Sears Roebuck. This had also been released on Columbia, and a lot of the releases of Conqueror had been on other labels too, but definitely not all of them; sometimes unreleased takes were used.
Next from the Conqueror catalog bluesman Curtis Jones with the Moonlight Lover Blues
07 - Curtis Jones - Moonlight Lover Blues
08 - Memphis Minnie - Ma Rainey
A tribute to the great Ma Rainey done by Memphis Minnie and that was first on OKeh and re-released for the Conqueror label. OKeh was a full subsidiary of CBS that Sears Roebuck used as their supplier for their store brand Conqueror label that I feature today here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman.
By 1940 Memphis Minnie was working in Chicago and on the Conqueror label you find a lot of Chicago-recorded blues. Now the main office of Sears Roebuck was located in the Windy City as well - it still is - but I already told you the label had no artists on the roster, no A&R man, it just bought from CBS and its subsidiaries. Now I think that it's still no coincidence that the label mainly had Chicago artists - I suppose the supply for Sears Roebuck has been pressed in a local pressing plant using local masters which is, simply for transport reasons, far more economic than bringing in masters or pressed disks from remote cities.
The next one is also a Chicago recording, originally for OKeh. Here is Brownie McGhee with a Million Lonesome Women
09 - Brownie McGhee - Million Lonesome Women
10 - Big Bill Broonzy - I Wonder What's Wrong With Me
Big Bill Broonzy again, on the label billed as just 'Big Bill', with I Wonder What's Wrong With Me.
Now in the intro of this show I had transferred myself to early 1942, to a Sears Roebuck store where I did some findings in the racks of 78s. Having a totally mixed catalog means that you could as easily find Rhythm & Blues and hillbilly and pop in the Sears stores. I often heard white people telling they went record hunting in black neighborhoods, a story a 85 year-old friend of mine, who plays early jazz at WSLR of Sarasota, told me. And who didn't would remain pretty oblivious of African-American music. But at least, as a white man, at Sears you could get a chance of encountering some great blues.
And it were pretty hard blues, not the kind of stuff that was anyway adapted to the greater audience, that was among the Conqueror records. Like the next one - Peetie Wheatstraw with his Hi-De-Ho Woman Blues.
11 - Peetie Wheatstraw - Hi-De-Ho Woman Blues
12 - Brownie McGhee - Step It Up And Go No. 2
Brownie McGhee again with Step It Up And Go and that had been released by OKeh before it went on Conqueror. And I'm going on with another song of Merline Johnson, billed as the Yas Yas Girl and the Milk Man Blues, that had been released on Columbia before.
13 - Yas Yas Girl (Merline Johnson) - Milk Man Blues
14 - Blind Boy Fuller - You Got To Have Your Dollar
Well this is not the kinda stuff you'd expect to find in a Sears store - Blind Boy Fuller with You Got To Have Your Dollar - by 1942 this was not general audience music. It wasn't until the rise of interest for folk music in the sixties that these acoustical blues got in fashion by a broader public. And so I wonder what made the choice of whoever at Sears Roebuck was in charge of the catalog of the records.
Now a lot of the catalog was more fashionable music - it also featured the common popular choice of pop swing music that probably sold easily and also quite some hillbilly. But I'm amazed by the amount of good but very inaccessible blues on here - three records of Roosevelt Sykes, six of Memphis Minnnie, eight on Brownie McGhee and even fifteen of Big Bill Broonzy in about a year and a half.
Well for now let's just enjoy what was in the grooves and play another of Roosevelt Sykes. Listen to his Payday Blues.
15 - Roosevelt Sykes - Pay Day Blues
16 - Big Bill Broonzy - Midnight Steppers
(jingle)
17 - Blind Boy Fuller - Bye Bye Baby Blues
18 - Memphis Minnie - Down By the Riverside
And four-in-a-row that ends today's show of the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman where I dug out some findings in the catalog of a record label where you wouldn't expect blues like these - the Sears Roebuck store brand Conqueror records. You got Memphis Minnie with Down By the Riverside and before that, Blind Boy Fuller with his Bye Bye Baby Blues and then before the jingle the Midnight Steppers of Big Bill Broonzy.
Not so much on the artists today as you're used from me, today the record label was the central spotlight of my show and I must confess, listeners, that I had some doubts doing this subject because there was nothing to tell on the label itself, no story of a pops-and-mom business or the work of an important or intersting producer or A&R man. Well I can say that I still had enough words to spend on this typical phenomenon of American record history.
And the funny thing is, that the very first record that I bought, as a ten year old kid back in 1971, also was a store brand record of a department store chain in my little country. I still have it - it features a Dutch rock band that was hot in these days and even made it to a number one pop hit in America.
I hope you liked my little history lesson of today perhaps you share my amazement that this specialized African American music, still a segretated and a niche market in these days, made it to a general store brand label together with the tops of the pops of the early forties. Well you can comment or let me know what you thought of it, and send me an e-mail to rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. Of course you can find today's story and playlist on my website, and also you can take a peek on what's on for next time. Search the web for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and it will show up first in the search results.
As for now, time's up so don't get the blues, just have a rocking day. See you next time, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!