This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.
And what a special I got for you today, of really one of the most legendary record labels ever - Black Patti. And for that I'll have to take you to all the way back to the year 1927, and I'll present you some of the best blues and jazz from somewhat of ninety years ago - man, I seldomly dig so deep into the history of African American music.
Well - let me just start with their very first issue, number 8001 and that'll bring us a group probably from Mississippi that toured as the Down Home Boys, and that consisted of Papa Harvey Hull, Long Cleve Reed and Sunny Wilson. Guitarist Sunny Wilson mostly is uncredited but definitely was part of the trio. Listen to their Hey Lawdy Mama a.k.a. the France Blues.
01 - 8001 - Papa Harvey Hull & Long Cleve Reed - Hey Lawdy Mama a.k.a. France Blues
02 - 8029 - Mozelle Alderson - Tall Man Blues
The Tall Man Blues of Mozelle Alderson and well not all records of Black Patti, that I feature today here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman, have been preserved so well. I still thought to play this blues, for miss Alderson's pretty unusual style of the blues so I hope you don't mind the eh... somewhat worn-out sound. I don't own any 78s of Black Patti, they are just way too rare and too expensive to collect. This comes from a CD of the Document label and there are several of them covering a large portion of the Black Patti catalog - but still a CD, this is the sound quality you get.
This Tall man Blues is Black Patti 8029 and no, I chose today not to go through their catalog in chronological order. So next up the last issues Black Patti, a solo performance of bluesman Jaybird Coleman who started as a musician in the army - we're talking World War I then. Only from 1927 to 1930 he made recordings like this one, and together with the Birmingham Jug Band. He's known to have played the street corners of Birmingham and other towns in Alabama throughout the thirties and forties and he died in 1950 of cancer.
Those were different times and especially in the South, in the deep of the Depression, where even when you had made records and nowadays you're in the blues encyclopedias and on wikipedia, and still you have to busk the streets for a daily meal and hopefully some kinda roof over your head for the night. I wonder if anyone told him he would be played on radio ninety years after he'd recorded his his voice and harp, how much disbelief you would get. Times really changed.
Here is Jaybird Coleman with the Boll Weevil Blues.
03 - 8055 - Jaybird Coleman - Boll Weevil Blues
04 - 8005 - Hattie Garland - You Used To Be Sugar Blues
(jingle)
05 - 8025 - Sam Collins - Jail House Blues
06 - 8030 - Long Cleeve Reed & Little Harvey Hull Down Home Boys - Original Stack O'Lee Blues
Four in a row - after Jaybird Coleman's Boll Weevil Blues you got Hattie Garland with You Used To Be Sugar. Then after the jingle from Southern Mississippi Sam Collins with his very first recording the Jail House Blues and finally again Long Cleeve Reed & Little Harvey Hull with the Original Stack O'Lee Blues.
Now that record was saved from oblivion by one of the most fanatic and frantic record collectors ever, one who even got himself a Wikipedia page for his hobby - no hobby is not the right word for the passion he has for preserving the history of twenties and thirties records. Joe Bussard his his name and I read an article about him in the Washington City Paper that describes how he laid his hand on the only known surviving copy of this record that's regarded as about the holy grail for collectors of 78 RPM records.
Somewhere deep in the countryside of Virginia, where the hills slowly graduate to the Appalachian mountains, he is on his way to a flea market, somewhere late sixties, gets lost and asks an old man for directions. It appears that he is on his way to that flea market as well, on foot, so Bussard offers him a ride, where they get to talk about the old-style country music that he has on his cassette player in the car. The man tells him that he has a few boxes of these records at home and so after the flea market they go to the ramshackle dwelling that he calls home. From under the bed he pulls the box with 78s and most are pretty common stuff, until on the bottom he finds fourteen Black Patti records. Some man gave 'em to my sister back in '27, the owner explains, but we don't care much for the blues so we never played them. And so he gets a box containing forteen Black Pattis in mint condition.
Fortunately Bussard has happily co-operated in recording the music from his collection for re-issue on 78s and I guess quite a few on today's show will have originated from his collection.
I recently saw a Black Patti on E-bay - thousands of dollars for a heavily damaged disc, a piece broken out of the side, the description said that "still some 2 minutes can be played", and another, better copy of Black Patti 7002, only known copy, that sold for near 17,000 dollars. Well of course these are figures that take all the fun out of it - unless of course you happen to encounter one in maybe a similar setting as Joe Bussard did.
Well as expensive as these records may be nowadays - it's still what's in the grooves that counts. So let's just return to the music. So here's the flip of what you'r hearing now in the background. That background tune is Al Miller with the Saturday Night Hym. So here is Kid Brown with Bo-Lita on Black Patti 8049.
07 - 8049 - Kid Brown and His Blue Band - Bo-Lita
08 - 8019 - Jimmy Wade's Orchestra - All That I Had Is Gone
All That I Had Is Gone - you heard the orchestra of Jimmy Wade, a Chicago trumpeter who had started to lead his own band from 1916 and that was on Black Patti number 8019, on the label that I feature today here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman.
Black Patti was an initiative of record producer J. Mayo Williams, who had been working for Paramount for a few years when he decided to start out on his own. He named his label after turn-of-the-century singer Sissieretta Jones, or actually after her nickname 'the black Patti', in her turn after the Italian opera singer Adelina Patti. Sissieretta Jones didn't do blues - she sang opera and popular music. She's never been recorded in her lifetime though at the end of her career the technology was there, and she was so succesful, that she has sung for four presidents and the British royal family - for an African-American in the late 19th century quite an achievement. In 1892 she made 150 dollars a week and later she started a large-scale group named the Black Patti troubadours that provided her an income of 20,000 dollars a year. After her retirement she had to care for her mother and consumed up all her money, and she died in poverty.
Well later this show I'll tell you more about the business of the Black Patti label, now for some more music. So listen to Blind Richard Yates singing about his sore feet with the Sore Bunion blues.
09 - 8021 - Blind Richard Yates - Sore Bunion Blues
10 - 8035 - Clara Smith - Clara Blues
The great Clara Smith who took a break from the label where she recorded most, Columbia, with a great blues for the Black Patti label, the Clara Blues.
Now J. Mayo Williams had started a recording business but he only had an office so he worked together with his partners Edward Barrett and Fred Gennett - the latter gave his name to the Gennett label, and Barrett worked for Paramount. The Gennett label and Black Patti exchanged masters and some Black Patti recordings also were released on Gennett. Barrett and Gennett were the financiers but Black Patti didn't prove to be as succesful as they had hoped, and so when Gennett pulled out the plug, the label folded.
Now we find some neat blues on the label but these generally weren't the cream of the crop. That explains for the lack of success and what made the records so extremely rare. But it's strange that J. Mayo Williams seemed to get about anyone to sign for the record companies he didn't own but just worked for, and he didn't get them for his own labels. Some time ago I featured his forties independent labels Harlem, Chicago, Southern and Ebony and they suffered from the same problem. It seems that Williams flourished in an organization where he was just responsible for the A&R and production work and just didn't have the talent for the other aspects of running a record business.
That said, I still and always call Mayo Williams the godfather of Rhythm & Blues for his tremendous influence on the development of pre-war African American music. He signed the greats of the blues during his time at Paramount, Vocalion and Decca, making the latter *the* most inportant label for Rhythm & Blues for the time he headed the race music department.
And as for the Black Patti label, well legends are there to be made and in this case it's the collectors that are responsible for this, for so much valuing the records that bear that typical image of a peacock on the label. There are more extremely rare records, more that we know only one surviving copy of, but some way the Black Pattis have become the most expensive of them all. You'd nearly forget that once they sold for 79 cents each.
Next up a man who did become a great in pre-war Rhythm & Blues - Frankie Halfpint Jaxon with Corrine. This is another song than his Corrina Corrina that he later recorded for Decca. This song clearly shows off Jaxon's core business for the time, that wasn't blues but vaudeville. Here is Corrine.
11 - 8048 - Frankie Halfpint Jaxon - Corinne
12 - 8004 - Mozelle Alderson - Room Rent Blues
And again that haunting style of St. Louis blueswoman Mozelle Alderson. Well for sure you can say she had a unique style, or maybe it's the pianist who put his signature on these recordings - his name was Judson Brown, and he mostly did session work, there's only one blues under his name, titled You Don't Know My Mind and that was recorded for Brunswick. As for miss Alderson, it's pretty sure that she also sang with the Hokum boys as Jane Lucas, and it may well be that she also recorded as Mae Belle Lee, Hannah May, Thelma Holmes and Kansas City Kitty.
Next the obscure blueswoman Elnora Johnson and her Red Cap Porter blues that was issued as Black Patti 8039.
13 - 8039 - Elnora Johnson - Red Cap Porter Blues
14 - 8019 - Jimmy Wade's Club Alabam Orchestra - Original Black Bottom Dance
Trumpeter Jimmy Wade and his Club Alabam Orchestra, named after the New York venue where he played in 1927. Now by then the band that bore the name of Wade actually was led by violin player Eddie South. South left somewhere in '27, and I didn't hear a violin on this one so maybe this was cut after he left the group. The recording date is pretty early in 1927 though, on April the 7th.
Many of the female blues songs I played on here are easy to find because of an extensive 14 CD series on the Document label titled Female Blues Singers 1924-1932 and that also featured the next song of Eloise Bennett, another obscurity and we can only be happy that so many of these blues have been re-released. Many of them come from the collection of Joe Bussard whom I mentioned before, the man who found fourteen Black Patti records in a box under someone's bed.
Here is Eloise Bennett with Sting Me Mr Strange Man.
15 - 8006 - Eloise Bennett - Sting Me Mr Strange Man
16 - 8041 - Margaret Thornton - Jockey Blues
And the Jockey Blues of Margaret Thornton ends today's special on the Black Patti label, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman, and the lesson I got you on this little piece of history of African American recording business. With this label J. Mayo Williams may not have achieved the success he'd thought he would get, but his pioneering work made the most legendary record label that ever existed.
Well I gave you a lot of information on it to and I hope you excuse me for talking so much this time. If you're interested you can read back what I told you today on my web site - simply search the web for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and it will show up first. There you can also review the playlist and see what's on for next week.
I feel this show is somewhat as one of my more important ones, as there are a few more where I told you more than just some information on the artists or record labels. I hope you appreciated it, and the selection of pre-depression blues that you got today. Well you can let me know and send an e-mail to rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com.
For today, time's up so have a rocking day, and don't get them blues, just enjoy 'em. See you next time, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!