This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.
And a mix of great Rhythm & Blues again today and in shows like this, I play stuff that I haven't played on here before, like the flip sides, the other tracks on albums and music that just didn't fit in earlier shows. And for today I start with a recording of Cecil Gant that was released in 1948 in Nashville on the Bullet label. Listen to the Boogie Woogie Baby.
01 - Cecil Gant - Boogie Woogie Baby
02 - Ace Harris - I'll Show You How It's Done
On the Hub label that was Ace Harris and it was released in the summer of 1946. A talented and charismatic pianist but unfortunately somewhat forgotten. Still, he had led his own band in the late thirties, the Sunset Royal Orchestra, done the piano on the recordings of the Ink Spots and in the forties he worked with Hot Lips Page and Erskine Hawkins. You can hear him doing the ivories on many mid-forties Hawkins recordings. While at Hawkins' band he also recorded with smaller combos and this little gem was one of them.
And we'll stay for a moment with some great jump blues style. On the Abbey label, from 1949, and backed by Sam 'The Man' Taylor and his band - here is Bob Merrill - not to be confused with the fifties composer of novelty pop songs - Bob Merill with The Blues Is Here T'nite.
03 - Bob Merrill - The Blues Is Here T'nite
04 - Cleo Brown - You're My Fever
(jingle)
05 - Hot Lips Page - The Cadillac Song
06 - Pete Johnson & Albert Ammons - Barrelhouse Boogie
You got four in a row with after Bob Merrill the typical high pitched voice of Cleo Brown with a Decca recording from 1935 - you heard You're My Fever. Then a jump to 1954 with Hot Lips Page and his Cadillac song, that was released for the King label. It got a good review in Billboard Magazine of 27th of November of that year.
And then I ended with some good piano work of Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons - they pounded out their Barrelhouse Boogie in 1941 for the Victor label. The two pianists teamed up in New York at the Cafe Society, the first racially integrated venue in New York, that had opened in 1938, and that provided stage for many great names like Ruth Brown, Big Joe Turner, Dinah Washington, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and many, many others. It was advertised as "The Wrong Place for the Right People" and the owner apparently opposed any kind of racism. It was there that Billy Holiday sang her Strange Fruit, a song protesting against the lynchings that still were going on in the South. The song When it's Sleepy Time Down South was banned in this venue, and Pearl Bailey was fired for being too much of an Uncle Tom - too much playing the role of the submissive black. The place, in downtown Manhattan, was filled with a mix of intellectuals and hepcats.
Now as far as I know Cab Calloway never performed there but if you should call anyone a hepcat - he was the prototype of it. After he created a whole band around his vocals, his jive style got extremely succesful. With his success that expanded into the general audience, African American subculture got that sense of coolness that it still has. The African-American English, jive language in his songs needed an explaination for the general public and that made Calloway publish his Cab Calloway's Hepsters Dictionary: the Language of Jive - somewhat like what's now the Urban Dictionary.com. Calloway's version, well a lot of the words and phrases aren't used anymore in streetwise language, but it's still online and easy to find under it's name Cab Calloway Hepsters Dictionary.
Many of Calloway's songs dealt with drugs and the next one is one of the many sequels on his 1931 hit Minnie the Moocher, this time about the man who brought Minnie to Chinatown to kick the gong around - that means to smoke opium. Well Calloway sure lived long on Minnie the Moocher's success - this is from 1939, so eight years later. Here is the Ghost of Smokey Joe.
07 - Cab Calloway - The Ghost of Smokey Joe
08 - Freezone - Indian Squaw Blues
Harking all the way back to 1929 with this wonderful blues - the Indian Squaw Blues of a totally mysterious singer calling himself Freezone. There's only one recording left of this man, this one, as the flip of this Paramount record featured a piano solo of Raymond Barrow. Real name, date of birth and death and just any more information remain unknown of this Freezone - the only data left is the date and place of the recording, that is June 6, 1929 in Richmond, IN.
We'll stay with the pre-war blues with Lucille Bogan and her version of Groceries On The Shelf, originally a song of Charlie 'Specks' McFadden. Bogan's version with altered lyrics hit on the bad reputation the Southern Piggly Wiggly grocery store chain had back in the thirties, providing way too easy - and far too expensive - credit to poor black people. Bogan encourages her audience to what she calls help themselves - that is stealing back from the company.
Now where most of Bogan's blues crossed the line for its explicit sexual content - well this crosses another line that might well have gotten her in serious troubles if she'd performed this in public in a Southern state.
Like most of her thirties output she recorded this under the name of Bessie Jackson. Here is her Groceries on the Shelf.
09 - Lucille Bogan - Groceries on the Shelf
10 - Palooka Washboard Band - You Done Tore Your Pants With Me
The Palooka Washboard Band with You Done Tore Your Pants With Me and if you're familiar with the Harlem Hamfats you may have noted the similarity in sound with them - now that's right, it's just the same band. I don't know why they used this name where the Harlem Hamfats were so succesful. We're talking 1937 and this was recorded, of course, for the label they were the house band for, Decca.
Next from 1938 Bill 'Jazz' Gillum, a blues harmonica player who is best remembered for his version of Key To The Highway, that he did with Big Bill Broonzy on the guitar. Their re-worked 8-bar version got a standard of the blues.
From this bluesman, a recording that he did in 1938 in Chicago for the Bluebird label. Here is Sweet Sweet Woman.
11 - Jazz Gillum - Sweet Sweet Woman
12 - Trixie Smith - My Unusual Man
Trixie Smith with a re-recording of My Unusual Man that she did for Decca, in 1938, featuring Sydney Bechet on the clarinet. The top of her blues career was some sixteen years earlier in the latest years of acoustical recording when many blueswomen were recorded, after the million-selling success of Mamie Smith's Crazy Blues, the first recorded blues, for OKeh in 1920. Next to singing, Trixie Smith played in movies and on stage. She died young, at age 48, in 1943.
And for the next one I go to 1941. On the OKeh label, recorded in Chicago, here is Champion Jack Dupree with the Heavy Heart Blues.
13 - Champion Jack Dupree - Heavy Heart Blues
14 - Tampa Red - Crying Won't Help You
Tampa Red was that backed by Big Maceo Merriweather on the piano. Crying Won't Help You was recorded in 1946 for RCA Victor and well, for Tampa Red it's got pretty clean lyrics. Most of his songs were dirty blues with all kinds of humoristic and bawdy sexual innuendos called hokum - in the twenties and thirties he had teamed up with Georgia Tom as the Hokum Boys.
Hokum was some kind of low comedy and it earned a disputable reputation, already in the thirties, not just for its sexual content but first of all for stereotyping the black race. Even worse were the coon songs - at their height 'bout the turn of the century - they were outright racist songs stereotyping blacks as lazy, ignorant, indolent, sensuous and lascivious hustlers, gamblers and thieves. Now these songs were done by white singers, but they still they provided a strong basis for African-American music. Musically because most coon songs were done in a ragtimey style - ironically, 'cause ragtime originates in African American music, and in their lyrics, using the stereotypes for a growing self-consciousness of African-Americans, and an easy way to mock the social situation, the discrimination and segregation.
Also it helps when, let's call it the victim of the humor makes the jokes themselves, and stereotyping, of course, is one of the cornerstones of humour. Well Tampa Red made the hokum genre his, and he recorded some 350 sides for release on 78's, 250 of them recorded before 1942.
Next two men who both caused a lot of confusion with other artists. The duo is named Sonny and Lonnie or Sonny Boy and Lonnie. Now this Sonny Boy is neither of the two Sonny Boy Williamson's that have been around, the first in Chicago and the other in the South. This is Teddy 'Sonny Boy' Smith and to make things much worse, he teamed up with a pianist named Lonnie Johnson who is someone else than the influential guitarist and violin player with the same name. Now I get the impression that for this pianist, Lonnie Johnson is his real name where the Sonny Boy he worked with, is just a stage or nickname. It's not easy to find information on this piano playing Lonnie Johnson, 'cause everything that pops up for this name is that other, much more famous Lonnie. To complicate matters more, their first single on the Continental label was also released on Lenox under the name of Shorty Smith and his Rhythm. O yeah, there's a third man involved, a guitarist named Sam Bradley.
Well here is their Wiggle Around Me Baby, a.k.a. Quincy Avenue Boogie from 1947.
15 - Sonnie and Lonnie - Wiggle Around Me Baby
16 - Rattlesnake Cooper - Lost Woman
And Rattlesnake Cooper ends today's show with a good raw blues recorded in 1949 in Dallas and he is accompanied on piano by yet another Sonny Boy - that is Sonny Boy Davis according to the 1967 album titled Decade of the Blues on a blues label called Highway 51 - one of the many albums of the blues revival of the sixties, where they re-issued old and often unissued tracks of forties and fifties bluesmen.
Well one thing's for sure today had a pretty varied set with a wonderful blues from the twenties to the showmanship of cab Calloway of the thirties and some great jump blues from the late forties. Well of course what matters is what you thought of it so I would be pleased when you drop me a line at my e-mail address, that is rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. And I told a lot of things today and just in case you missed something, I always put that on my web site for further reading. Do a web search for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and once you're there look for show number 132 in the Episodes section.
Well my time's up for today, so it's time to cut out. Have a rocking day today and don't get the blues. See you next time here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!