The Legends of the Rocking Dutchman - episode 154

Legends Mix

This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.

Yeah, what an intro. Li'l Lola, thank you, you woke up everyone on the radio to listen to my set that's made of an allsorts of Rhythm & Blues that spans several decades. And today I start with a thirties band named the Washboard Rhythm Kings and they got that released on the Oriole label in back in 1933. Here is the Dog and Cat.

01 - Washboard Rhythm Kings - Dog And cat
02 - Ann Cole - Got My Mojo Working

What a jump through the history of Rhythm & Blues from that '33 goodie to this raging blues of Ann Cole from 1957 on the Baton label. I Got My Mojo Working and maybe you know it by blues legend Muddy Waters. Now Ann Cole cut it first for Baton records but had not yet released it, and on a tour Muddy Waters got to hear it and recorded his own version. By coincidence, the two were released the same week and they were listed together in the R&B charts, on #3 for Ann Cole and #7 for Muddy Waters.

And we stay in the fifties with a release of the Nashville-based Excello label. From 1954 you get Arthur Gunter with She's Mine All Mine.

03 - Arthur Gunter - She's Mine All Mine
04 - Pat Valdelar - Rock Me Baby

(jingle)

05 - Roy Brown - Farm Town Gal
06 - Madonna Martin - Madonna's Boogie

Four in a row as you're used from me in the first half of the show and today that were, after that Arthur Gunter tune, Pat Valdelar with Rock Me Baby and she cut that for Mercury in 1953. Then came the jingle and after that you got Roy Brown with an unissued recording that he did in New Orleans for the DeLuxe label - the Farm Town Gal. The recordings were done in that frenzy of late 1947 when the record labels stockpiled masters for the upcoming recording strike of 1948. The masters and acetates were long time believed to be lost in a fire in 1948 but that appeared to be untrue, as the liner notes on the CD tell - that is a CD on the Ace label titled Good Rocking Brown.

Then finally from 1950 you got Madonna Martin who by then went on the road with Louis Armstrong billed as the Sepia Sophie. From her on the west coast based Selective label, that was Madonna's Boogie.

For the next one we got to Los Angeles and the Supreme label. From 1949 you'll get Eddie Williams and his Brown Buddies, the group that had Floyd Dixon on board. For me the tune is a leftover from my show on the Supreme label some weeks ago. Here they are with the Mississippi Blues.

07 - Eddie Williams & his Brown Buddies - Mississippi Blues
08 - Marion Abernathy - Bessie's Sin

Recorded in 1949 in Cincinatti, home of the King label, that was Bessie's Sin of Marion Abernathy and, dubbed as the Blues Woman, Abernathy was a west coast based singer who was one of the discoveries of Johnny Otis and she played the LA's Central Avenue clubs that were hot and happening. She had recorded before for Los Angeles based labels such as Bel-Tone, Melodisc and Juke Box and Specialty.

Next on the Miracle label Memphis Slim and his House Rockers and from him you'll get Harlem Bound.

09 - Memphis Slim - Harlem Bound
10 - Miss Rhapsody (Viola Wells) - He May Be Your Man

Miss Rhapsody or Viola Wells and you heard He may be your man recorded in 1945 in New York for the Savoy label. She was billed The Ebony Stick of Dynamite - but her diabetes condition forced her to retire just one year later. By then, she'd been on stage for 25 years starting in the vaudeville theatres of the T.O.B.A, an association of theatre owners.

It had started with a chain of theatres owned by Sherman H. Dudley, himself a comedian around the turn of the century known as the Lone Star Comedian. Dudley's Circuit were all-black owned and operated theatres, but the T.O.B.A that arose out of it, mostly had white owners, but still employed African American artists and were aimed at a black audience. T.O.B.A theatres were not considerd top-notch venues and the acronym, meaning Theatre Owner's Booking Association, was also spelled out as Tough On Black Artists.

Next from the Sitting In With label, here is Peppermint Harris with I Wake Up Screaming.

11 - Peppermint Harris - I Wake Up Screaming
12 - Saunders King - Blues About Midnight

From 1949 Saunders King and his Blues About Midnight that he recorded for Aladdin in San Francisco. There was a good Rhythm & Blues scene in Frisco but just little recording activity. Still Saunders most known hit, the S.K. Blues, and many other earlier outings were recorded for a small local San Francisco based label, named Rhythm.

Next from 1941 Merline Johnson with the Good Old Easy Street, a recording she done for Columbia. Johnson was billed as the Yas Yas Girl, and her name popped up on Chicago's South Side scene in the late thirties and about when the war ended, she disappeared off the radar again. There's very little known about this woman apart from the information on the ninety recordings she did. Some suggest she was born Merline Baker in Missouri in 1920 - in that case Lavern Baker would be her niece.

Here she is with the Good Old Easy Street.

13 - Yas Yas Girl (Merline Johnson) - Good Old Easy Street
14 - Cab Calloway - Some Of These Days

And that was a dive back into the year 1930 with Cab Calloway's orchestra and the master himself shouting Some Of These Days. Calloway had just taken over a band named The Missourians - featuring great musicians but highly unsuccesful. That changed with the energetic and charismatic Calloway as a leader, and their long-time stint in Harlem's Cotton Club.

Cab Calloway has always credited his elder sister Blanche for being *the* major influence on him. And indeed Blanche brought him into the popular musical revue Plantation Days - and she's responsible for the hi-de-ho scat phrase that Cab so succesfully used in his songs featuring Minnie the Moocher - using it first in her Just A Crazy Song that she did with the band that she led herself. I guess the main reason Blanche never got the widespread recognition and fame of her younger brother simply was because she was a woman. She did lead a band - of only men - but with that she was a rare and poorly accepted exception in the music industry that was dominated by men. Add to that, that she was as flamboyant as her brother, and nobody's fool, and you get it - that didn't match the thirties idea of a respectful female performer.

Cab popularized another stereotype - the hepcat. With the zoot suits he performed in and the jive language he used, he gave African-American subculture a touch of cool that it never lost since. And he brought that sense of coolness to an exclusively white audience, as the Cotton Club where he performed did not allow black patrons. And I think it important that a new stereotype of African Americans was being built and I'll tell you why. In all aspects of American culture, Blacks were seen as inferior, dumb, illiterate, in other words, as the ultimate losers. Here, a new image was built. OK, still a stereotype, but one of self-consciousness and pride, one that had aspects that were admirable, even desirable - or in the words of the day, hep. Calloway exaggerated aspects of the existing African-American subculture and presented it to the outsider - the white audience. He did that in that segregated venue that the Cotton Club was, and still he broke the segregation barrier. And I'm sure, that everyone in that audience agreed with a sense of admiration - that cat, man, he is hep.

Many books have been written on the musical genius, and the showmanship of Cab Calloway - and for sure he was - but just few recognize his role in the emancipation of African Americans - a role he hadn't sought or planned, but it was implicit in the show and the image he'd built around himself.

And that'll be enough talk for the moment. For the next one we stay in the thirties with a recording on the Brunswick label from 1931. Here are the Savannah Syncopators, the band of trumpeter King Oliver, that was better known as the Dixie Syncopators. Here they are with Who's Blue.

15 - Savannah Syncopators - Who's Blue
16 - Lovin' Sam Theard - I Ain't No Ice Man
17 - Ollie Shepard - Hell Is So Low Down

And Ollie Shepard ends today's set with Hell is So Low Down - and for sure it is. A recording for Decca from 1939 was that. And before that, ten years older all the way back from 1929 Lovin' Sam Theard - also known as Lovin' Sam from Down in 'Bam on Brunswick with I Ain't No Ice man. And with that we had a set spanning from '29 all up to 1957, nearly three whole decades of exciting Rhythm & Blues - with for me as a highlight the story of Cab Calloway and the importance of his show on the position of African Americans. A remarkable story seldomly told, but the popularization of African American culture is a quintessential part of the dominating influence Black music styles have got on any kind of modern pop music.

And so I keep on telling these stories, and of course you can give your opinion on the matter - or on the show - and send me an e-mail to rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. The information itself, you can read it back on my web site. Do a web search for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman, that's the easiest way to get there, and to get to this show, click on number 154 in the episodes page. Of course you can also take a peek on what'll be on for next week.

For now I'm done and you'll have to wait for a whole week again for my shot of Rhythm & Blues from the twenties to the fifties. Don't get the blues waiting so long. There's so much of this great music to explore, on sites like Youtube or the streaming music services. I suggest you get some more of this from them. And I hope to see you next time, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman.