The Legends of the Rocking Dutchman - episode 166

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.

And again a nice mix of the best of Rhythm & Blues, old-style jazz and blues. African-American music before Rock 'n Roll hit the nation - that's what your favorite program, the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman, is all about. Well that is, I really hope you enjoy my presence on the airwaves, well I try as hard as I can to please you with the best music.

And so I want to start my journey with happy good-time music from the early Depression years. 1934 we're talking and here is a group of Chicago musicians that were put together in the studio and they did that for various record labels and under different names - such as the Chicago Rhythm Kings, the Washboard Rhythm Kings, the Alabama Washboard Stompers or the Georgia Washboard Stompers. This one was billed as the latter on the Decca label. Here is Who Stole The Lock of the Hen House Door.

01 - Georgia Washboard Stompers - Who Stole The Lock
02 - Victoria Spivey - I'll Never Fall In Love Again

A great blueswoman with a name that sounds like a posh British lady - Victoria Spivey. A child prodigy from a musical family, she sang on parties from the age of seven, and when she was twelve years old, she went to play the piano for the silent movies in a Dallas theatre and still in her teens she played and sang in whorehouses and gambling dens. Her blues are about sex, drugs and the hard life of African-Americans in the twenties and during the Depression - like so many of her contempararies.

Already from the early thirties she played in movies and in stage shows and she did so through the forties. From '51 to '61 she took a long break, but the blues and folk revival brought her back into the spotlights, now for a completely new audience of white hippies and she did so well into the early seventies, for her own-founded Spivey record label.

And we stay in the thirties with this 1933 goodie of Clarence Williams. Released on the Vocalion label here is The Right Key But The Wrong Keyhole.

03 - Clarence Williams - The Right Key But The Wrong Keyhole
04 - St. Louis Jimmy - I Ain't Done Nothing Wrong

(jingle)

05 - Smokey Hogg - My Last Blues
06 - Henry Townsend - Poor Man Blues

Blues, blues and more blues, you got three of them, after Clarence Williams that was St. Louis Jimmy Oden and he recorded this in 1947 for the Bullet label and yes, that came straight from a somewhat worn-out 78. Well here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman you should not be afraid for a bit of shellac his, cracks and pops - it's just how these records have survived the seventy years they're old.

After the jingle, that was My Last Blues of Smokey Hogg and that was on the West Coast based Exclusive label of Leon Rene. This Texas bluesman found his luck in Los Angeles after a few locally recorded sides for the Dallas based Bluebonnet record label found their way to the Modern label of the Bihari Brothers. Now Hogg saw the inside of a few different Los Angeles studios as he did his recordings for several labels there.

And then for the last one we made a dive back into the late twenties, with the poor man blues of Henry Townsend that he did for the Columbia in 1929. Now few musicians have had such a long career as Townsend, starting in the early twenties, recording for the first time in '29 and he remained active in the blues until his death in 2006 at the age of 96. This Poor Man Blues was the very first record of that long, long career.

And that brings us to another great classic bluesman - Robert Johnson. Legend has it, that he sold his soul to the devil on a Missisippi crossroads, to have his guitar tuned so that he would forever master it and be the best blues musician. And indeed, within a year and a half of absence from the Mississippi Delta, Johnson had miraculously grown from a novice on the guitar into a master. The story has many versions, like a legend should, and one of them is that it wasn't on a crossroads but in a graveyard where he met a large black man. Family of Alabama-born guitarist Ike Zimmerman recalled that he had the habit to practice his playing on a graveyard at night, near his hometown Hazelhurst, MS, and also that Zimmerman and Johnson knew each other and that they played the blues together between the tombstones. It's probably there that Johnson learned to play the guitar. Where that large black man came from is another part of the legend, as Ike Zimmerman, according to his daugher and his grandson, had a short stature. Zimmerman, by the way, has never been recorded.

Anyhow, several fellow bluesmen recall being blown away by Johnson's guitar playing when he returned, and at some point Johnson himself fed the myth about having sold his soul to the devil so it may well have been a gimmick he picked up while his friends had been fooling around with him for his new skills.

But if you have to believe that legend, then one could learn from it that it doesn't pay off flirting with the forces of evil. Johnson died in 1938 at age 27 under suspicious circumstances. Again this is surrounded with a lot of theories, myths and legends. Most accounts state that he was poisoned, but by whom and why has a lot of different accounts, and then there's the conclusion of the County Registrar who took the word of a plantation owner for granted, on whose property Johnson was found dead, and he believed the man had died of syfillis.

And then, to make mystery complete, there are three places where he's supposed to have been buried, all of them having a memorial stone, one donated by Columbia records, one by an Atlanta rock group named - really - the Tombstones, and one provided by Sony Music. But it may well be that he lies in none of these places, but in an unmarked spot somewhere in the fields very near where he died on that plantation in Greenwood, MS.

Well these are the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and these legends, listeners, they don't refer to me, but to the bluesmen and women that I have on this program. And for sure this Robert Johnson is one of them. And here he is, the man who's supposed to have sold his soul to the devil, with a Vocalion recording from '36 titled They're Red Hot.

07 - Robert Johnson - They're Red Hot
08 - Lonnie Johnson - Mr. Johnson's Swing

The great Lonnie Johnson - not related to Robert Johnson - and that was Mr. Johnson's Swing recorded for Decca in 1938. Johnson had settled in St. Louis in 1921 after he found out that following a tour of the revue he'd joined that brought him to England, his whole family had died of the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, except for his brother James. From '25 to '32 he's been married to blueswoman Mary Johnson - her maiden name is unknown. And while he's regarded one of the more influential bluesmen of his time, in several stages of his life the music did not provide sufficient income for him so he had to rely on other work such as in a steel mill and as a janitor.

Next the great guitarist Clarence Gatemouth Brown - and with him we make a jump to 1950. On the Peacock label here is I Live My Life.

09 - Clarence Gatemouth Brown - I Live My Life
10 - Buster Bennett - Hard Luck Blues

The Hard Luck Blues of Buster Bennett, recorded in June of 1947 for the Columbia label. He's best known for the saxophone, but he also played piano and bass. In his years for Columbia he was signed to be the label's answer to the soaring popularity of Louis Jordan, but he never got somewhere near being a soundalike of Jordan - nor his popularity. While under contract with Columbia, he also recorded for the tiny Rhumboogie label and in sessions with Tom Archia and Red Saunders - all in Chicago.

But after 1947 Bennett stopped recording and he soon got forgotten and in the mid-fifties he returned to Texas with a declining health.

Next another bluesman from the Windy City - Crown Prince Waterford. He stepped in for Walter Brown at Jay McShann's band for a few months and there he was billed as the Crown Prince of the Blues. The name stuck for the rest of his life. In the sixties he lost touch with the changing tastes of the public and devoted his life to church as a minister. But at the age of 85 he was alive and jumping on a blues festival in Jacksonville, FL and he recorded a last album.

Here he is with the Weeping Willow Blues that he did in 1947 for the Capitol label.

11 - Crown Prince Waterford - Weeping Willow Blues
12 - Louis Jordan - After School Swing Session

Who else can that be but Louis Jordan with the After School Swing Session recorded in 1940 for Decca. Well that battle of the saxophones in it, sounds way ahead of its time, just judging from that, I'd rather have placed in in the late forties.

Next a woman whom we know from her raging boogie woogie songs that she did while in the postwar Los Angeles scene - and then we're talking about Mabel Scott. Her career started on the other coast, in New York as a gospel singer and from '32 with the band of Cab Calloway in Harlem's Cotton Club. She moved with pianist Bob Mosley to England where she did her debut recording for the Parlophone label. The war brought her back to America where she settled in Los Angeles and recorded with several labels. For a few years she was married to pianist and blues singer Charles Brown.

From her you'll get the Googie Woogie that she recorded for the Exclusive label in 1949.

13 - Mabel Scott - Googie Woogie
14 - T-bone Walker - T-Bone Boogie

The T-Bone Boogie of T-Bone Walker, the influential electrical guitarist whose pioneering on the amped guitar inspired many other bluesmen. He was one of those many bluesmen who changed Texas for the West Coast, though 'round '45 he stayed some time in Chicago as the sensation of the Rhumboogie club - and the house record label. But it's the recordings he done for the Black & White label and for Imperial that impress most.

Next one of the great but forgotten trumpeters of Rhythm & Blues and jazz, Emmett Berry. He's mainly forgotten as most of his work was with the great bands, such as Fletcher and Horace Henderson's, Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson, Lucky Millinder, Lionel Hampton and Count Basie. For a short while he led a combo named the Emmett Berry Five that recorded for the National label. You can hear him excel in this The Things You Done For Me Baby.

15 - Emmett Berry - The Things You Done For Me Baby.
16 - Cab Calloway - Basin Street Blues

And the Basin Street Blues of Cab Calloway end this episode of the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. With this one we returned where we started, in the Great Depression, and by that time Calloway played the Cotton Club in Harlem and these records were issued on the ARC family of labels such as Perfect and Oriole. The Basin Street Blues was a popular classic of the time, but of course Cab Calloway always made it in his very own style.

Today's show had the story of Robert Johnson in it, and what may have really happened when he supposedly sold his soul to the devil. It's these stories that keep the blues juicy and interesting, and I hope you liked the story and today's music and of course you can let me know and mail me at rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. And the whole story is to be found on my web site, and best way to get there is searching the web for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. Once in this is show number 166 in that long list of episodes that I did until now.

For now time's up but there will be another show in a week, so tune in again on this station, for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!