This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.
And on today's menu are leftovers of previous shows. Now that may sound like you're getting second choice stuff but that's not the case. It's more like with food. I remember the leftover days from my childhood as a rich meal full of variety and always something to pick out what was my favorite. That's what you're getting today. Like with food - there was just more than you could eat - the leftovers of my shows are just the victims of the fact that I just have one hour for this program.
Now take for instance my show on the forties independent labels of J. Mayo Williams It's been some time that I did this show, and I had to cover all his labels: Chicago, Harlem, Southern and Ebony. I just found much more music on the Chicago label than from the other three - so there simply wasn't time to play them all.
So from that show, on Chicago 104 is here Lee Brown with My Little Girl Blues.
01 - Lee Brown - My Little Girl Blues
02 - Dan Grissom & The Flennoy Trio - Poor butterfly
Remember my show a few weeks ago where I played the jukebox in a joint on Central Avenue, somewhere in September 1945? I had selected this one as tune number 18, but there was no time for it. So here you got Dan Grissom with Poor Butterfly and that was on the obscure Melodisc label - a promising label from 1945 and '46 but the company burnt down to the ground and never got rebuilt.
Then, also pretty recently I did a show on the Black Patti label. I got you some great blues from the roaring twenties, even before there was just a notion America was on the eve of the deepest economical depression in its history. Now there was nothing roaring about these blues - I guess African Americans didn't really share in America's wealth where they did get the full hit of the depression.
But from that show is this great leftover of a blueswoman with a very own style. Here is Mozelle Alderson with the State Street Special.
03 - Mozelle Alderson - State Street Special
04 - Louis Jordan - Penthouse In the Basement
(jingle)
05 - Goree Carter - Is It True
06 - Crown Prince Waterford - Undercover Blues
You got four in a row, after Mozelle Alderson's great blues I played The Penthouse in the Basement, from one of my shows on Decca's releases in 1940 and that of course was Louis Jordan. Then from my last show on the Freedom label Goree Carter with Is It True, and then from a recent show on Aladdin's 3000 series the undercover blues of Crown Prince Waterford and the reason why this didn't make it, was because it was the flip of a record that I did play, the Washboard Blues.
When I do a set on a label, I just collect as much of its music using a listing, mostly from the site of the Online 78 rpm discographical project. Of course first from my own collection, then from the music services that I'm subscripted on. They often come with whole albums, so that leaves enough for these unthemed shows. Most cases I wind up with some 20 releases, of which I sometimes do, and sometimes don't have both sides. So when I make the set, I have to choose and that always makes for a lot of leftovers.
The next one also is from a set on a record label - the Old Swing Master. That was a Chicago-based label that was started by the owner of a recording studio to get some money on the recordings that had never been paid for, of the bankrupt Vitacoustic label. The name of the label was after a popular local DJ, Al Benson, who used the moniker of Old Swing Master like I present myself as the Rocking Dutchman. Benson had participated in the company as the promotor - on his radio shows. On that show I had played the other side of Old Swing Master number 22, the Stockyard Blues of Floyd Jones. Here's the flip - Keep What You Got.
07 - Floyd Jones - Keep What You Got
08 - Lillie Mae Kirkman - Lovin' Man Blues
The flip of Lonesome on Mircle 129, you heard Lillie Mae Kirkman and her Lovin' Man Blues from a show I did on the Miracle label - a label that itself got so many leftovers with its alarming rate of unreleased sides. In that show I told you that one of the causes of the label to fold, may well have been that so many sides went unreleased. After all, the studio costs still had to be paid. The label had tried to sell some of the masters to other labels but in vain - there just was no market for anymore.
The reason for that was, oddly enough, the 1948 strike of the American Federation of Musicians. The Union had forbidden recording of music effective Jan. 1st of 1948 and because of that, the recording industry - still remembering the devastating effect of the strike before, from 1942 to '44 - organized an unprecedented recording frenzy in the last two months of 1947. Well they had enough masters for years and the strike, though officially it lasted all through 1948, effectively it was over after the summer. So there was just a surplus of unreleased takes, more than the market could handle, for the next three years.
From that same show, and so from the same label comes the next one - that is the Biscuit Roller of St. Louis Jimmy Oden.
09 - St. Louis Jimmy Oden - Biscuit Roller
10 - Sam Collins - Riverside Blues
And the high pitched voice of Sam Collins on this wonderful blues brought us back to my show on the Black Patti label. You heard, from 1927, the Riverside Blues that was released as Black Patti 8025 and also on the Gennett label, that pressed the records of Black Patti for its initiator, J. Mayo Williams.
The label failed after a short time and Williams got himself a job at the Vocalion label until the economical crisis of the thirties ended that. Later he became the head of the race division of Decca, and when he left he tried again to start his own independent labels, and again very unsuccesful. From my show on the labels he did from 1945, this song of vocal group the Eagle-Aires that was released as number 1014 of the Ebony label in 1954.
11 - Eagle-Aires - Cloudy Weather Blues
12 - Big Joe Turner - You'll Be Sorry
From last week's show on the Freedom label, You'll be sorry of Big Joe Turner and on this Turner was accompanied by the band of Joe Houston - the band that Turner travelled with on his gigs. Turner wasn't a local of the city of Houston that the Freedom label was from, he just passed by and did a session in the studio there.
I did more shows on local labels. One was the Trumpet label, of Jackson MS, and from that, this song of blues shouter Tiny Kennedy with Don't lay this job on me,
13 - Tiny Kennedy - Don't lay this job on me
14 - Sonny Boy Williamson - West Memphis Blues
And that came from the same show on the Trumpet label - Sonny Boy Williamson with the West Memphis Blues. And that show was the touching story of Lillian McMurry, a woman who'd never heard any blues in her life until she bought a building to start a store. She found some boxes of records with names that she never had heard of, and decided to give them a spin on her phonograph and she got touched and fell in love with the pure intensity of the Rhythm & Blues. The records sold well from her new store and so she decided to go and record the bluesmen that were playing on the streets of the neighborhood where she had her new business.
This Sonny Boy Williamson, she heard of him through other bluesmen and she decided to track him down in Helena, AK where he had a weekly stint on the local radio station. He was a raw and ill-mannered man and only after a few years she found out that he wasn't the real Sonny Boy - that was a Chicago bluesman who had died recently. We now know this Alex Miller as Sonny Boy Williamson the second, but for her, this was just another unpleasant surprise next to the bad temper of this man that once turned against her.
Mrs. McMurry had a loyal heart though and kept on working with him and the other bluesmen of Jackson MS. Even after the label closed due to financial troubles, she kept on paying her artists their royalties for the re-issue of their recordings. The story of the label is the story of this woman, who fell in love with the blues and who was nearly too friendly, too gentle and too respectful to these bluesmen - in that harshly segregated Deep South where any kind of respect of black men was rare.
For the next one another leftover of one of these shows on the Decca label. Here is Bill Gaither with his New Rocky Mountain Blues - the word new indicating that this was a re-recording and it was, as there's also a version on the same label from 1937.
15 - Bill Gaither - New Rocky Mountain Blues
16 - Big Joe Williams - His Spirit Lives On
17 - Margaret Thornton - Texas Bound Blues
And the last two, again they involved the independent labels of J. Mayo Williams. As a leftover from the show on the forties labels of Williams, a blues in honour of President Roosevelt on the Chicago label. You heard Big Joe Williams with His Spirit Lives On, and after that the Texas Bound Blues of blueswoman Margaret Thornton and for that we went back to 1927 to that first effort of Mayo Williams to start his own business in the recording field with the famous Black Patti label. Both efforts were unsuccesful and in both shows I've tried to find out how come that these attemtpts failed while Williams has been one of the most important and influential producers of pre-war Rhythm & Blues, a true godfather of African American music. I just guessed that running a business requires other talents than just producing and being the A&R man.
And so, in this show on tunes that were left over from earlier shows, I got to the same subjects and I hope you don't mind that I re-tell the most important ones of them, every now and then, like information on J. Mayo Williams or the strikes of the American Federation of Musicians - important stories of important people and events that shaped Rhythm & Blues and with that, popular music ever since.
Well of course you can let me know, by e-mail, the address is rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. And today's story and playlist, well you can find them on my website to review, and the best way to get there is to search Google for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. Once there, look for show number 129 - that's the one of today.
As for now, have a rocking day and I hope to see you next time, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!