This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.
And again some of the greatest Rhythm & Blues in today's mix of Legends with a set of tunes that I got myself recently and that I haven't played on here before. But I have to start with a promise I did you in the last show, and that was to play Rock Around The Clock - not the rock 'n roll hit of Bill Haley, but another song that Hal Singer recorded for the Mercury label in 1950. The song was written by Lovin' Sam Theard - the songwriter who also wrote Louis Armstrong's big hit I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You - but that was twenty years before.
This Rock Around The Clock is great party music that perfectly fit in the Rhythm & Blues of the moment where every record should be about rocking and rolling. Here is Hal Singer.
01 - Hal Singer - Rock Around The Clock
02 - Sippie Wallace & Albert Ammons - Bedroom Blues
And that was another one related to last week's show. In that show I told you about Sippie Wallace and she had recorded extensively in the twenties until she moved from Chicago to Detroit. With no recording industry in the Motor City she didn't get on record for one exception, a session with that she did with Albert Ammons for the Mercury label in 1945. These recordings are hard to get by except for this Bedroom Blues that I just played, and its flip Buzz me, that's on maybe a dozen re-release albums.
And for the next one we go to 1940 to a recording session that on the label was credited to Six Man and a Girl. The girl is pianist Mary-Lou Williams and she was the regular feature of Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy. Now the six men all come from Andy Kirk's outfit. This was for the time an extremely modern composition of Mary Lou Williams and it goes way beyond the swing music that the Clouds usually did - this is just top notch jazz that predates the earliest bebop. Here is, released on the Varsity label in 1940, Zonky.
03 - Six Men & A Girl - Zonky
04 - Bob Merrill - Let 'Em Roll
(jingle)
05 - J.D. Edwards - West Coast Blues
06 - Elmore Nixon - I Went To See A Gypsy
That was Elmore Nixon on the Sittin' In With label where he tells about his encounter with a fortune teller in I Went To See A Gypsy and that must have been around 1950. Then before that you got the somewhat obscure J.D. Edwards shouting his West Coast Blues for the Mercury label. And then I have to account for the one before the jingle, that was Cootie Williams and his band fronted by blues shouter Bob Merrill and Let 'Em Roll and that was on the Mercury label from 1949.
Next Saunders King and while preparing this show I stumbled upon an interview with him where he tells about the early days of the electrical guitar. Charlie Christian played with Benny Goodman's band and he became King's idol, of course first of all for his sound but also because he played in an racially integrated band. But in the interview he also recalls other pioneers on the electrical guitar, like Alvino Rey, Eddie Durham and Floyd Smith who played with Andy Kirk.
His first session in 1942 in an upstairs room of a music store in San Francisco yielded his greatest hit - the S.K. Blues, still I think his best ever. King did all kinds of material but I most like his blues that have a similar feeling as his S.K. Blues. Like the next one, that he did in 1949 for Aladdin. Here is his Misery Blues.
07 - Saunders King - Misery Blues
08 - Jimmy Liggins - Hep Cat Boogie
The Hepcat Boogie of Jimmy Liggins, the younger brother of Joe Liggins, and unfortunately a lot less succesful. I read several interviews and biographies on him and I just get the impression that one main ingredient to be succesful in these days was a whole lotta luck - that Jimmy Liggins just didn't have.
This Hepcat Boogie went unreleased by the time - he recorded it for the Specialty label that he did most of his sessions for.
Next a nice song of T-Bone Walker complaining he can never silently sneak into the house late at night - she always hears and it leads to an all-night fight. Here is She's the No Sleepin'est Woman.
09 - T-Bone Walker - She's the No Sleepin'est Woman
10 - Lonnie Johnson - He's a Jelly Roll Baker
The Jelly Roll Baker of Lonnie Johnson from 1955 on the Groove label, so he recorded this at the age of 56 in a time when his musical career was somewhat in a down. He'd had major Rhythm & Blues hits in the late forties like his Tomorrow Night, and numerous pre-war recordings for OKeh, Decca and Bluebird and for this label he had recorded this song before.
And if you wonder that obsession of blues men with jelly rolls, well they're not singing about the pastry. The word had a sexual meaning in slang of the first half of the last century, being either the female parts or sex in general.
Next Jimmie Gordon, a bluesman active in the thirties and forties in Chicago. He's one of the many bluesmen of his generation of whom we know hardly anything about his life but rumours and legends. One of them is that he was releated to Peetie Wheatstraw, for a marketing gimmick Decca had used on a record that paired a song of Wheatstraw with one of Gordon - and where Wheatstraw went by the moniker of "the devil's son in law" they passed the singer on the flip as "Wheatstraw's brother" - so related to the devil as well. Not true, as are theories about his origins in St. Louis, and after he quit the music scene in the late forties, he got off the radar and stories that he died in Nevada seem to have been a mix up with a musician with the same name.
In the forties his band was named the Bip Bop Band and here he is with My Woman's A Pearl Diver.
11 - Jimmie Gordon - My Woman's A Pearl Diver
12 - Ivory Joe Hunter - Bad Luck Blues
The Bad Luck Blues of Ivory Joe Hunter from 1945 and that was released on the Pacific label that was owned by Hunter. Around 1947 or '48, it has released records of just a handful artists. Still Hunter made a lot of hits on several record labels, including the Pretty Mama Blues on his own inprint in 1948.
Next from 1950 the Texas bluesman James Tisdom. This I Feel So Good was on the pretty obscure Hollywood-based Universal Fox label that seems to have nothing to do with the 20th Century Fox film company. Here is I Feel So Good.
13 - James Tisdom - I Feel so Good
14 - Chris Powell - Country Girl Blues
The Country Girl Blues of drummer Chris Powell and his Blue Flames, a mainly forgotten act from Philadelphia. This Country Girl Blues was released on Columbia but after that he switched to OKeh where he played with the legendary trumpeter Clifford Brown. Brown had just recovered from his car accident in 1950 and he was on his way to become one of the great trumpeters of jazz. Now he was definitely overqualified to play in Chris Powell's jump band - the band leader was so little of a drummer that in the recording studio he was often replaced by a session man. Powell's outfit didn't make a lasting impact, I'm afraid, where Clifford Brown did, even though he got killed in a second car accident in 1956, just after four years of making fame as one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of the fifties.
For the next one I take a dive into the early thirties with Blind Willie Walker - one of the many bluesmen who had turned to music to find a living with their handicap. He was born with syphillis, and that'll probably have been the cause of his blindness and he died of it at the age of 37 in 1933.
His only session was in 1930 for Columbia in Atlanta and he recorded four songs, one of them in two takes, but only the Dupree Blues and the South Carolina Rag have ever been released. Here is his Dupree Blues.
15 - Willie Walker - Dupree Blues
16 - Little Brother Montgomery - Crescent City Blues
17 - June Richmond - 47th Street Jive
And these three end today's mix of tunes of today, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. After Willie Walker's Dupree Blues you got from 1936 the Crescent City Blues of Little Brother Montgomery that he recorded for the Bluebird label. And I ended in style with the jumping and swinging 47th Street Jive featuring June Richmond and she was backed up by Roy Milton and his Solid Senders on the soundie that I took this from. There are tons of soundies on YouTube and they're great fun to watch, and this band of Roy Milton, man, those were some sharp cats and both Camille Howard doing the 88's and June Richmond try to steal the show.
Now this ain't television so I'm afraid I can't show you on here, but I do hope you turned up the volume for this last one and that you enjoyed it as much as I did. And of course you can let me know and send me an e-mail - to rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. And today's story and playlist is documented on my web site should you have missed something of what I told you. Search the web for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and it'll show up first. Once in, look for show number 135 in the episodes section.
For now I'm done so have a rocking day. See you next time, here, on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!