This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.
And for today I spotlight one of the most legendary record labels in the history of the making of Rock 'n Roll - Sun records. The little studio in Memphis owned by Sam Phillips did the historical discovery of the talents of a local truck driver, Elvis Presley and with his success lots of rockabilly artists came in. But Sun started as a Rhythm & Blues label and it's these early days that I feature today, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman.
And I start with the first single in the catalog, Sun number 174, a single that never was released but for a few demo pressings. The negative response to the single made Sam Phillips decide to withdraw it. No more survived than an incomplete flipside of "Little Walter" Horton and Jack Kelly's Blues in My Condition, that's pressed on many a compilation album on the Sun legacy. Jackie Boy and Little Walter was what they would be billed as. So here is that incomplete flip - Sellin' My Whiskey.
01 - 174 - Jackie Boy & Little Walter - Sellin' My Whiskey
02 - 175 - Johnny London - Drivin' slow
Driving Slow - an instrumental of then sixteen year old alto saxophonist Johnny London on Sun 175 and in the background you hear the flip Flat Tire.
We're talking February of 1952 then and Sam Phillips who had been doing disc jockey work from 1942, he'd opened a studio two years earlier and these first two years he did freelance recording work for a number of record labels - from the West Coast that were 4 Star, Gilt Edge, RPM and Modern, and from Chicago Chess and Checker. With that, these far-away record labels had their recording facility in the South. Now up to the fifties, there was hardly any facility for the many blues artists in the South - so Phillips' business filled a gap.
Also Phillips recorded one single of Rosco Gordon for the local Duke label and some sides for the Trumpet label of Jackson, MS. Now for sure I'll get you these records in another show in the future - and that's a promise - 'cause it's great Rhythm & Blues he recorded on there.
Sun was the second effort for his own label, he started up - in 1950 he'd done a first attempt in a joined effort with Dewey Phillips, same last name but not related. Their It's The Phillips label issued only one record, of one-man-band Joe Hill Louis and only three hundred copies were pressed.
Now Sun didn't have an overly successful startup, and records of these earlier years are pretty rare, but thanks to its later succes with Elvis, re-issue programs have been extensive. That doesn't count for Sun 176 though, listed as Walter Bradford & Big City Four. Of their Dreary Nights backed with Nuthin' But The Blues, well it's unclear whether it has ever been issued - probably not.
And so I have to go on to Sun number 177 and nearly a year later with a recording that has some mystery around it. The label bills Handy Jackson where Sam Phillips in his papers had local bluesman Gaylord Garth. In interviews, Phillips said not to recall any man named Handy Jackson, so it might well be the same man as this Gay Garth - but the name didn't ring a bell with Garth either when he was finally tracked down and interviewed in 2004.
From January 1953 this is Got My Application Baby.
03 - 177 - Handy Jackson - Got My Application Baby.mp3
04 - 178 - Joe Hill Louis - She May Be Yours.wav
(jingle)
05 - 179 - Willie Nix - Baker Shop Boogie.mp3
06 - 180 - Jimmy DeBerry & Walter Horton - Easy.wav
And that was a whole lotta blues - after that obscure Handy Jackson with Got My Application Baby, you got Joe Hill Louis with She May Be Yours - his cover of the classic blues that was mostly sung by women as He May Be Your Man. One man act Louis had been in Phillips studio before, in 1950 for that one and only release of the It's The Phillips label.
Then after the jingle you got Willie Nix, another Memphis bluesman Sam Phillips had recorded before, both for the Los Angeles based RPM label as the Checker label in Chicago. From him the Baker Shop Boogie as Sun 179 and finally you got number 180 of the catalog, an instrumental version of Ivory Joe Hunter's Almost Lost My Mind. Here it was titled Easy and the musicians were Jimmy DeBerry and Walter Horton, local bluesmen who'd been around since the early thirties - though DeBerry also spent some time in St. Louis and Jackson, TN. On the background you hear the flip titled Before Long.
And the next one brought Sun records their first hit with a young Rufus Thomas. Just the last years a new fad had struck the music business - the answer song. A succesful song was copied, given different but related lyrics and that way musicians and record companies tried to ride the wave of success and steal a little of it. Rufus Thomas made a lucky shot when he answered to Big Mama Thornton's strong and succesful Hound Dog - with his Bear Cat.
Now this not only established his name - we know Rufus Thomas of course as the influential and succesful soul and funk musician for the Stax label, also in Memphis, and as the father of Memphis' queen of soul Carla Thomas. It also brought Sam Phillips national interest for his label and distribution possibilities in other cities.
Listen to Rufus Thomas and his Bearcat.
07 - 181 - Rufus Thomas - Bearcat
08 - 184 - Big Memphis Ma Rainey - Baby No! No!
Lillie Mae Glover was that under the name of Big Memphis Ma Rainey with Baby No! No! that got a release on Sun number 184. Her father was a preacher in Columbia, TN but she wanted to sing the blues, and so at age thirteen, in 1920, she ran away from home to join Tom Simpson's Traveling Medicine Show and 'round end of the decade she'd settled in Memphis. During the thirties she was crowned The Mother of Beale Street. She has no relationship to the real Ma Rainey and on here, she even doesn't sound close to her.
09 - 185 - Jimmy DeBerry - Time Has Made A Change.wav
Once more Jimmy DeBerry with Time Has Made A Change on Sun 185 and the next release was of a doowop group that had formed behind the walls of Tennessee State Prison. Their vocal capabilities, discovered by radioman Joe Calloway brought them, under guard of course, outside prison walls for quite a few occasions. One of them was to record in Memphis at Sam Phillips' studio - but also for live performances, even several times at the mansion of Tennesse governer Frank Clement, where even President Truman and Senator Lyndon Johnson were entertained with their music.
Lead singer and songwriter Johnny Bragg, who served his time in jail for rape, made eternal fame with his composition Just walkin' in the rain that became a big pop hit for Johnnie Ray. Here, on Sun 186, is the original of the Prisonaires. Just walkin' in the rain.
10 - 186 - Prisonaires - Just walkin' in the rain.wav
11 - 187 - Little Junior's Blue Flames - Feelin' good
And that made for Sun's second hit, peaking number 5 on the R&B chart. Little Junior Parker and his Blue Flames recorded this Feeling Good early in Parker's career, at age 21. And on Sun number 188 we find Rufus Thomas again, with the Tiger Man.
12 - 188 - Rufus Thomas - Tiger Man (King Of The Jungle)
13 - 189 - Prisonaires - Softly And Tenderly
More Prisonaires with Softly And Tenderly. Now all of these inmates of the Tennessee State Prison were sentenced for long-time inprisonment for major offenses, and you may think they would sing the blues over the hard life in jail, but instead they did romantic and innocent love songs pretty much in the tradition of vocal groups - a subject very remote from their every day life and their long-term prospective.
Most stories on African Americans in Southern prisons in these years are pretty horrible. This is a real positive exception - though I think it will have helped that they'd become the favorites of the governor of Tennessee.
For the next one I jump to Sun number 192 and that's another one of Little Junior Parker. Actually, Parker didn't use his last name on his Sun recordings - they were billed as Little Junior and his Blue Flames. From him, Love My Baby.
14 - 192 - Little Junior's Blue Flames - Love my baby
15 - 193 - Doctor Ross - Chicago breakdown
Good harmonica blues on Sun #193 with the Chicago Breakdown of Isaiah 'Doctor' Ross - another one-man band, he could play the harp from a standard attached to his body, do the guitar in the meanwhile and the drums with his feet. He got his nickname for the doctor's bag that he carried his stuff in. Soon after his recordings for Sun he headed for Detroit and settled there where he worked as a janitor for General Motors next to the music.
Sun's releases sometimes got succesful and most didn't. For that the early years of this label weren't so much different from other labels. Now Sam Phillips was convinced that the problem was, bringing the African-American music to the white audience, and he thought the young kids would love the music, but there was a racial barrier between them. After all, this was the Deep South, this was Tennessee.
Apart from studio recording for records, Sam Phillips' Memphis Recording service made recordings of parties, Bar Mitzwas, and they had a unique service where for four dollars, you could have yourself recorded for two takes, and bring out one copy. One day, a young Memphis truck driver walked in to have himself recorded as a present for his mother. Now Sam Phillips was not in that day, and office manager Marion Keisker recorded him. The boy could sing a note, and so Keisker tried to persuade Phillips to invite him back into the studio.
Now it won't surprise you when I tell you this young man was called Elvis Presley. It took another eight months when Phillips got the man back in, to record a song titled Without You and what he did was useless, and so he was on anything else that he tried. Phillips didn't send him away immediately and hooked him up with two country musicians, and some time later he re-entered the studio, again to give a horrible performance on some country and western songs. During a break Elvis took his guitar, and joking around he started to sing a forties country blues titled That's Alright Mama. The guitarist and bass player, Scotty Moore and Bill Black, caught the groove and all of a sudden Phillips realized he had realized his vision - a white man who sounded like a black guy and who could bring the Rhythm & Blues to the white kids.
This of course proved to be right, and to me, it's the very definition of Rock 'n Roll. The rest, as they say, is history and Elvis became one of the greats. It's not fair to say that the birth of Rock 'n Roll was just the discovery of Elvis. Within that same time frame, there were more white artists who, pretty much independent from what had happened in Memphis, started to cover Rhythm & Blues classics for their fans, and just like Elvis, together with more traditional country songs. What I like so much about the Elvis story, is that Sam Phillips had that notion, let's call it that commercial insight, that the African American music was ready to be sold to the white community, and that a new generation of record-buying customers had come up - teenagers.
Only, it's sad to realize that it killed Rhythm & Blues as it was. The majority of the older Rhythm & Blues artists didn't appeal to this new audience with their harsh songs on black man's hardship, poverty and an adult oriented view on love and sex with disappointment and anger. Instead, the hopeful and innocent love songs that were so popular with the vocal groups became the new standard for the next decade.
Well I've been talking so long that there's just time for one song more. Let that be this groundbreaking Elvis recording. So I skip some numbers in Sun's catalog that mostly were good Rhythm & Blues and increasingly more country songs. I promise you to play the Rhythm & Blues part of the catalog in later shows here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman.
Here is Sun number 209. That's Alright Mama.
16 - 209 - Elvis Presley - That's All Right Mama
The famous and iconic debut single of the man who would be crowned as the King of Rock 'n Roll, later in his career. This That's Alright Mama was sensational for the moment, not so much for Elvis covering an old, forties blues, as there already were more white artists covering the songs of noted Rhythm & Blues artists. No - his delivery was unique and from the record, most buyers thought he was a black artist. The record wasn't a smash success - but Elvis was. His antics on stage drove the teenagers hysterical and of course caused a lot of controversy - but compared to Elvis' black examples it was all pretty decent.
Elvis soon grew too big for the tiny operation of Sam Phillips that also heavily suffered from a lawsuit over Rufus Thomas' Bearcat. Phillips had failed to credit Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller as the songwriters nor had he paid any songwriter royalties for a song that was musically indentical to their Hound Dog and the lyrics were 'bastardized' - that's how record boss Don Robey called it, he was owner of the Peacock label, that had released Big Mama Thornton. The legal troubles nearly bankrupted Phillips, and to survive he had to sell Elvis' contract to RCA. Now, that is, Phillips always said he done that to give Elvis better chances.
And with that I end this episode of the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. On here I usually play pre-Rock 'n Roll Rhythm & Blues and well just like now, I sometimes touch Rock 'n Roll, that is, still before the craze hit the nation. I guess that's allright with you and of course you can tell me so. Just e-mail me at rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. Now I told you a lot today and maybe you want to read this all back. Well you can, as it's all on my web site, and the easiest way to get there is a Google search for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. Once in, look for show number 143, this one.
For now time's up so I wish you have a rocking day. See you next time, where I'll get you more Rhythm & Blues, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!