This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.
And another show full of the greatest Rhythm & Blues, all with tracks that I didn't play before here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. Well, I got so much in store so why playing them twice? And I wanna start with a somewhat forgotten blues shouter named Bob Merrill and a recording he did for the Aladdin label in 1949. Here is Blues Without Booze.
01 - Bob Merrill - Blues Without Booze
02 - Clarence Gatemouth Brown - She Winked Her Eye
A man who was just at the beginning of his career when he recorded this in 1951 for the Peacock label. Nightclub owner Don Robey had him playing in his Bronze Peacock club and decided to start a record label under the same name to record him. Brown, a good guitarist and also a great fiddler, became an ambassador for the blues from the sixties with worldwide tours including a six-week tour in the Soviet Union, by far the most extensive tour ever in former Communist Russia.
And just like Brown, also from Texas is saxophonist and singer Eddie Cleanhead Vinson and here he is with the Good Bread Alley on the King label. There's a nice story on the weblog of Canadian musician Steve Holt on him, of course from later years, where he remembers playing with Vinson's band in Montreal, and after hours eating in all-night open restaurants. Vinson had a thick mumbling way of speaking that was unintelligible and that led to quite some misunderstandings in French-speaking Canada. By then, Vinson played bebop jazz - that he'd changed to when Rhythm & Blues died.
But on this one, from 1952, Vinson shouts a good blues. Here's the Good Bread Alley.
03 - Eddie 'Cleanhead' Vinson - Good Bread Alley
04 - Monte Easter - Going Back to Kansas City
(jingle)
05 - Betty Jean Washington - Betty Jean Blues
06 - T-Bone Walker - Hard Pain Blues
You got four in a row - after Eddie Vinson, that was Monte Easter, another Texas musician and like so many of them, he went West to Los Angeles with its thriving postwar Rhythm & Blues scene. His first band included a young Greek drummer, who'd been raised in the black neighborhoods of Berkeley, CA - Johnny Otis. This Going Back To Kansas City was from 1954 on the small Elko label shortly after he decided to quit the music and he took a job at the post office - just to make a comeback in the eighties.
Then after the jingle was the obscure blues singer Betty Jean Washington and she sang the Betty Jean Blues backed up by John Sanford's band. This was released on the Peacock label. And then finally that unmistakably was T-Bone Walker and he brought you the Hard Pain Blues that he recorded for the Black & White label. He was backed up by the combo of trumpeter Al Killian, one of the forgotten greats of bebop. His early death - in 1950 he was killed by his landlord who'd taken him for someone else - I guess it's the cause he never got the same fame as Dizzy Gillespie.
Even more, this record makes clear his ability to accompany the blues - and there's no bebop in that. His combo did more of this and in no biography you see that mentioned. It was not uncommon for musicians to play in a blues band one day, and jamming the bebop or be in a high-class jazz combo the other. Al Killian was such a musician - and his softly muted trumpet contrasts greatly with T-Bone Walkers genius guitar playing.
For the next one we go to the year 1940 with Leonard Baby Doo Caston. Judging from this blues where he's being accompanied by harpist Robert Nighthawk, it's hard to imagine that just before he recorded this, he'd been member of a vocal group named the Five Breezes, with the similar soft-voiced style as the Ink Spots. Add to that, that he at some time was part of Willie Dixon's Big Three, and it's clear he was a versatile musician - and that's not an aspect of him that you see much in his biographies.
Here we have him in the first recording he did. On Decca, here is 'Baby Doo' Caston with The Death Of Walter Barnes.
07 - Leonard 'Baby Doo' Caston - The Death Of Walter Barnes
08 - Big Joe Turner - Jumpin' Down Blues
From the same label and the same year as Baby Doo Caston is this goodie of Big Joe Turner - Jumpin' Down Blues. Now the orchestration may have modernized through the years of his career, but essentially, he still sang the same blues when he was a re-born Rock 'n Roll artist in the late fifties as he was back in the late thirties and early forties, accompanied by a piano only and it's still a mystery to me how come that he, as a middle-aged man, still appealed to the new crowd of record buyers, the teenagers, with his old-fashioned blues, where all other Rhythm & Blues artists of the forties and early fifties saw their days were over when Rock 'n Roll struck the nation.
Next from 1942 on the OKeh label Big Bill Broonzy with the Hard Hearted Woman.
09 - Big Bill Broonzy - Hard Hearted Woman
10 - Big Boy Teddy Edwards - W.P.A. Blues
Big Boy Teddy Edwards with the W.P.A. Blues from 1936 on Decca. The WPA was a government institution that provided jobs for the unemployed during the Depression. Most known was the part that did construction like bridges, schools, community centers, parks and other public projects. There was also a relief and housing part of the project and that's what this blues is about.
Now African-Americans were hit hardest by the Depression and their numbers in the WPA exceeded the percentage of population - but compared to the number of unemployed, African Americans were underrepresented. The units were segregated, mostly in the South - like all of society in the thirties.
Next one is from the year of the stock market crash - 1929. On the Brunswick label, here is Lovin' Sam Theard with a nice double entendre blues - the Hot Dog Man.
11 - Lovin' Sam Theard - Hot Dog Man
12 - Cab Calloway - Yaller
From 1930 Cab Calloway with Yaller - a song that probably did well in the Cotton Club where he played. The Cotton Club was the top venue for jazz in Harlem, but while they employed black musicians, the audience was whites only. Calloway built himself the image of the ultimate hepcat and for that white audience, he created a sense of cool around the African American subculture that it never lost since. I emphasized Calloway's importance for that more often here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and I think that influence is generally very underrated.
Yaller was released on several labels of the ARC, the American Record Company, a merger of several record companies that had a large number of brands and labels, some produced exclusively for store chains such as Sears Robuck and Company - the store and mail order company we still know as Sears, and others sold more generally. ARC also leased label brand names such as Brunswick and Vocalion for a number of years. It was quite usual that recordings were issued on a number of different ARC labels.
Next up Speckled Red, a blues pianist with a reputation for dirty blues. He's most known for his song the Dirty Dozens from 1929, practicing the popular game in African American culture of the Dirty Dozens, where two people take turns throwing twelve of the most hideous insults to each other.
This one is much later, from 1938. Here is You Got To Fix It.
13 - Speckled Red - You Got To Fix It
14 - Jimmie Gordon - Lonesome Bedroom Blues
Also from 1938, this was on Decca, Jimmie Gordon with the Lonesome Bedroom Blues. The musical accompaniment, on the label was billed as his Vip Vop Band. He did nearly all of his recordings for Decca before the war, plus four sides for the King label in 1946 when his Vip Vop band was renamed to Bip Bop band with a much modernized sound. After '46, he disappeared into oblivion - it's unknown what he did, where he lived and when he died.
For the next one I dive into the late twenties again with Gene Campbell and his biography is even more obscured than Gordon's. His first two sessions for Brunswick, in 1929 and '30 were done in Dallas and that makes it likely that he was a Texas bluesman. A third session was cut in '31 in Chicago - but whether Campbell stayed in the Windy City or that he just had taken the train for the session - no-one knows.
But here he is with Mama, You Don't Mean Me No Good No How.
15 - Gene Campbell - Mama, You Don't Mean Me No Good No How
16 - Ida Cox & Her All Star Band - 'fore Day Creep
And that was the last one for today - how time flies when you're having fun. Ida Cox was that with a great re-recording of her '27 blues Fore Day Creep, done for the Vocalion label in '39. It was her first comeback after her career had come to some of a standstill in the mid-thirties - she got a second revival of her career in the early sixties where she rode on the waves of the blues revival with a succesful album titled Blues for Rampart Street.
And so today's stuff is done. You can provide feedback at rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com and should you want to know what's on the menu for next week, or you want to read back today's stories, go to my website, easiest way to get there is to search the web for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman.
Next week there will be another shot of Rhythm & BLues and until then, have a rocking time. See you next time here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!