This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.
And today's show brings us into the stores of Sears and Roebuck again - where I'm thumbing through the records from 1938 of their music department. I did a show before on their store brand label, Conqueror - that was sold from 1928 through '42.
And the first I'm gonna play is a round number 9000 of their catalog. Here is Blind Boy Fuller with Shaggy Like A Bear.
9000 - Blind Boy Fuller - Shaggy Like A Bear
9012 - Blind Boy Fuller - Careless love
And one more of Blind Boy Fuller - the classic Careless Love. The origin of the song is unclear but it has been around from the late 19th century and it featured prominently in the repertoire of New Orleans jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden around the turn of the century.
The catalog of the Conqueror label, that I feature today here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman, consisted of popular tunes of the time, but also some jazz and blues. It's the blues of course that I pick out today. By 1938, the time that the 9000 numbers started, the manufacturing company of the label, ARC had been bought by Columbia. The titles on the Conqueror label remained merely Vocalion reissues, that used to be part of ARC and now got in the Columbia catalog. Most of the tunes that I play today have had a former life on Vocalion.
Like the next two of Memphis Minnie, that have been on Vocalion before. Here are You Caught Me Wrong Again and the Walking And Crying Blues.
9025 - Memphis Minnie - You Caught Me Wrong Again
9026 - Memphis Minnie - Walking And Crying Blues
(jingle)
9027 - Peetie Wheatstraw - Blues at My Door
9028 - Peetie Wheatstraw - King Of Spades
St. Louis bluesman Peetie Wheatstraw with two recordings he did for Vocalion before, and in 1938 were released on the Conqueror label that I feature today here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. I just told you that Columbia had aquired the ARC group of labels. Most of the ARC labels were discontinued but Conqueror remained until 1942. I suppose they did so on request of the store chain that sold the records, Sears Roebuck. That company still exists - we now know it as Sears, and it's been around for some 130 years.
In these days, their mail order catalog went all over the nation and it was a welcome source of shopping for rural America where they probably only had the general store in a town nearby. The mail order business was the roots of Sears Roebuck, and only just from the thirties large stores in urban areas were built, away from the town centers and with a big parking lot in front - the modern shopping experience.
The catalog itself, nicknamed the Consumers Bible, in rural towns where nothing happened, it was a dreambook for children and a source of entertainment for their parents. It's hard to imagine now, but the catalog at some point even included hundreds of models of install-it-yourself homes, the grandfathers of nowadays modular homes, and even school buildings, that came delivered in train box cars with ten thousands of parts and a very detailed manual.
Everything Sears Roebuck sold was in it so it'll probably have meant that all of the titles they had for their Conqueror label - the popular tunes of the day but also these blues - were in that mail order catalog and I wonder if ever a farmer from a town as small as Cloverport, KY or Wetumka, OK, just out of curiosity will have bought a record of a musician they never heard of, but that had a legendary sounding name such as Peetie Wheatstraw.
Next another bluesman who recorded for Vocalion - Curtis Jones. This Texas-born blues pianist came to Chicago in 1936 where he recorded for Vocalion, Bluebird and OKeh. He got rediscovered in the early sixties, and he moved to Europe - and also spent some time in Morocco. From him his Lonesome Bedroom Blues.
9030 - Curtis Jones - Lonesome Bedroom Blues
9031 - Curtis Jones - Blues and Trouble
And one more of Curtis Jones, Blues and Trouble.
For the next one we go to a woman whose name popped up in the Chicago scene in the mid-thirties and a decade later, she disappeared off the radar. There's virtually nothing known of this woman who sang her bawdy blues in the South Side clubs. Her real name was Merline Johnson but on stage she went by the name of the Yas Yas Girl. Here is her New Drinking My Blues Away - the word New in the title indicating that this was a re-recording.
9033 - Yas Yas Girl (Merline Johnson) - New Drinking My Blues Away
9034 - Buddy Moss - Red River Blues
A recording that had been on the Vocalion label before, in 1935 - the Atlanta bluesman Buddy Moss with the Red River Blues. Bij '38, when this was released on Conqueror, Moss was serving time in prison for shooting his wife.
Moss' records sold well even in the deepest of the Depression and he made several trips to New York for sessions with the ARC records group and with Vocalion - alone or with his Atlanta friends Curley Weaver and Blind Willie McTell and his stepbrother Barbecue Bob.
After he got on parole in 1941 with the restriction to keep out of the state of Georgia for another ten years, he recorded for OKeh with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, but the 1942-44 recording strike of the American Federation of Musicians came, and after the war Delta blues singers were no longer in demand. Moss had to rely on menial jobs until the blues revival of the sixties when he appeared on many blues festivals.
Next up Big Bill Broonzy with the Hattie Blues.
9036 - Big Bill Broonzy - Hattie Blues
9056 - Slim & Slam - The Flat Foot Floogie
And we leave the blues for a moment with this Flat Foot Floogie of Slim Gaillard together with Slam Stewart. What they play is often described as jazz novelty, but I think it fits in no category but higly original. Gaillard was a master playing with his own-invented words in a mock language that he dubbed Vout-O-Reenee and he even issued a 25-page dictionary to explain some of his words.
There's another musician who issued a dictionary for the language he used in his songs, Cab Calloway, but his was more common jive slang, to explain to the white audience that he was so popular with. Gaillard's words were not common slang - rather a parody on it.
Next up Bukka White and he recorded his Shake 'em On Down and the song Pine Bluff Arkansas that I'm going to play while on bail awaiting trial for his part in killing a man who, according to White, had ambushed him and a friend along a highway. He went from Mississippi to Chicago for the recording session on invitation of Big Bill Broonzy, just before he had to serve three years at Parchham Farm prison in Mississippi.
So from this Chicago session - here is Bukka White with Pine Bluff Arkansas.
9072 - Bukka White - Pine Bluff Arkansas
9073 - Big Bill Broonzy - New Shake 'Em on Down
Big Bill Broonzy's version of Shake 'em on down. In the mid-thirties Broonzy recorded for both Vocalion and Decca at the same time - just like Peetie Wheatstraw did, and apparently without problems. Decca's involvement with Vocalion was ten years after the discontinuation of Vocalion in 1940 when they revived the brand with cheap re-issues and issues in Britain.
Next one is a recording of Blind Boy Fuller - and with him we have the third bluesman today who got in jail at the time the Conqueror re-issue was done. Fuller was known for his short temper and he had shot and wounded his wife. By the time he got out, he was too ill to resume his career. He did two sessions but missed out on the energy he had before and he died in 1941.
Here is his Meat Shakin' Woman.
9076 - Blind Boy Fuller - Meat Shakin' Woman
9077 - Curtis Jones - Palace Blues
9088 - Cab Calloway - Mister Paganini, Swing for Minnie
Who else can that be but Cab Calloway with one of his numerous Minnie the Moocher sequels - Mister Paganini, Swing for Minnie. If anything was Calloway's trademark and signature song, it was Minnie the Moocher, the 1931 million-selling hit with the hi-de-ho scat phrases. According to a 1951 issue of Jet Magazine Minnie The Moocher really existed - a Minneapolis drifter who begged food from grocers - she sadly froze to death in a blizzard at the age of 82. But I guess she got nicknamed after Calloway's song, and unlikely was the woman who'd been smoking opium in New York's Chinatown in the thirties - that woman came from the fantasy of Cab Calloway.
Before I go out I have to account for the blues that came before Minnie - that was the Palace Blues of Curtis Jones - and of course I must tell you about my web site where you can read back what I told you today, and take a peek on what's on the menu for next week. Do a google search for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and it will show up first.
And you can provide feedback at my e-mail address rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. Next week there's another shot of Rhythm & Blues and until then, have a rocking time. See you next week, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!