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 a musical journey to Memphis, TN with a second special on the Memphis Recording Service, the studio that later made fame as the Sun Studio that most people know as the place, where Elvis Presley started this career - and highly contributed to the Rock 'n Roll revolution.
But back in the days where Sam Phillips started his Memphis Recording Service, it was only a place where the local African-American musicians did their recordings, and they were published by record labels such as Chess of Chicago and West-coast labels Modern and RPM.
The studio of Sam Phillips was the only recording facility for African-Americans in Memphis and its wide surroundings. Many bigger and smaller record labels flourished on the West Coast, and in Chicago and New York had always had a strong recording industry, but the Deep South had lacked any recording activity so the studio filled in for a great need - talent enough in Memphis.
These early days of the studio were a jump start for local musicians who grew out to the greatest names. And Sam Phillips' studio may not have been the debut place of local deejay and guitar whizzkid B.B. King - it's here where he secured his name as one of the greats of the blues. Released on the RPM label, but recorded in that studio in Memphis, here is B.B. King with the Hard Workin' Woman.
01 - B.B. King - Hard Workin' Woman
02 - Joe Hill Louis - Gotta Go Baby
On the West Coast Modern label one-man band Joe Hill Louis with Boogie In The Park. As a fourteen year old runaway from home he found his way busking the streets of Memphis developing his one-man band and unique sound. For Sam Phillips he recorded for the Modern label and for Phillips own labels - Sun of course, but also the only release of the label named 'It's The Phillips'.
And you'll get one more of B.B. King, that is She don't move me no more.
03 - B.B. King - She don't move me no more
04 - Rosco Gordon - What you got on your mind
(jingle)
05 - Billy 'Red' Love (billed as Jackie Brenston) - Juiced
06 - Howlin' Wolf - Moanin' At Midnight
Sam Phillips always has considered this bluesman his greatest finding - Howlin' Wolf. You heard him with Moaning At Midnight that he recorded at the Memphis Recording Service for the Chess label in May of 1951. Chester Burnett was his real name, and he'd beed playing the blues from the mid-thirties after Charlie Patton taught him to play the guitar. He never got recorded until 1951, in the studio of Sam Phillips. It brought him fame on instant - and he started his own band.
Now for an illiterate bluesman with a childhood full of poverty Burnett always done well - and where other bluesmen who moved to Chicago hopped a freight train, Howling Wolf drove himself up to the Windy City in his own car, with a stack of dollars in his pockets. And also later, in Chicago, he always done well and he was able to pay his band musicians a good salary and unemployment insurance. In Chicago he married an urban middle-class woman and she helped him manage his finances. When in his forties, Burnett went back to school to get the education that he'd never got while down south in the Delta. He maintained a good life without extravaganza - and remained deeply in love with his woman until his death.
You don't often hear success stories like these - most bluesmen's biographies are full of poverty, booze, drugs or violence and I think it helped Howling Wolf very much to be a succesful musician that he managed his money responsably. And of course - his talent.
It's still remarkable that Sam Phillips, also later in life, did not choose Elvis Presley, or any other of his later rock 'n roll artists as his greatest finding, even though any of them brought Phillips far more cash than Howling Wolf ever did. Well let's say that it's Phillips' good taste - for sure Howling Wolf is one of the greats of the blues.
But you got more. Also on Chess and billed as Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats you got Juiced. But that wasn't Jackie Brenston singing - it was an obscure pianist named Billy Red Love.
How come? Well Sam Phillips was being pressed by Chess records to come with a new hit record of Jackie Brenston after his smash hit Rocket '88', but Brenston constantly was on the road. Billy Red Love was a session pianist for the Memphis Recording Service and he cut his own record Juiced in July of 1951. It was decided to pass the record for Jackie Brenston to satisfy the needs of the Chess label. But the record didn't chart.
Then there's still to account for what I played before the jingle - well you got Rosco Gordon with a recording from September of 1952 at Sam Phillips' studio. Released on the same RPM label that also brought us the early B.B. King records, that was What you got on your mind.
On the next recording more of Rosco Gordon together with another future star from Memphis - Bobby Bland. As a teenager he became involved in a group of musical friends, all aspiring for success. Not a name for a band, but the friends called themselves the Beale Streeters and then we're talking about Johnny Ace, Junior Parker, B.B. King, Rosco Gordon and, Bobby Bland.
Well you can hear he still has to get himself a sound. Here are Bobby Bland and Rosco Gordon with Love You till the Day I Die.
07 - Rosco Gordon - Love You 'til the Day I Die
08 - Howlin' Wolf - The Wolf Is At Your Door
More Howlin' Wolf with The Wolf Is At Your Door recorded on December 18 in Sam Phillips' studio and released on the Chess label.
And for the next one we go to harmonica player, drummer and guitarist Charles Isaiah Ross - better know as Doctor Ross. His nickname as a doctor was for using a doctor's bag to carry his harmonicas. Like Joe Hill Louis he performed as a one-man band but he was primarily a harpist.
From him on Chess the Doctor Ross Boogie, where he sings and plays harp - the guitar is Wiley Galatin.
09 - Doctor Ross - Dr. Ross' Boogie
10 - Billy 'Red' Love - Drop Top
Drop Top - you got Billy 'Red' Love and now he's been released on Chess under his own name. The session piano man who saw his first recording being passed as Jackie Brenston did four sessions that year but just two singles materialized - this one and the very rare Teddy Bear Baby backed with Poor man. I'm afraid I couldn't get my hands on a copy of that one.
Then one more of Howlin' Wolf. Recorded in April of 1952 - here is Mr. Highway Man.
11 - Howlin' Wolf - Mr Highway Man
12 - Willie Nix - Just One Mistake
Just One Mistake - that was Willie Nix released on the Checker label, the subsidiary of Chess. Nix stayed some time with Sam Phillips and saw a few releases on the Sun label - that never got succesful.
Now listeners, just recently I was in Memphis and I got the opportunity to visit the studio of Sam Phillips. I wasn't the only one - all day guided tours are done for hundreds of tourists who want to see the place where Elvis Presley started his career, brought in with buses from the Graceland property that, of course, attracts many, many more tourists.
Now the guided tour is done with a lot of humor and it's very much worth doing. Of course they emphasize on Elvis and the succesful rockabilly artists that came after him. But the guide does tell quite some highlights of the great bluesmen who made their fame here in that little studio on 706 Union Avenue.
And one of the things the guide explains, is that Sam Phillips primarily was interested in the blues. His studio was first of all a hang-out for the local bluesmen and that was what Phillips main interest was. And they tell you why this was so important to realize.
Cause when that young white truck driver with that weird name first walked into the studio to have himself a demo cut, he did a crooning ballad, definitely not up to the taste of Phillips. Phillips wasn't in the studio, that day that Elvis came in, it was Marion Keisker, who managed the place when he was out. And Keisker recognized his talent, but the demo didn't appeal to Phillips - not at all. So it took some time and some persuasion from Keisker to get Phillips to invite Elvis back. And Elvis blew his session by doing... indeed, crooning ballads. Just when, at the end of it, Elvis started to fool around with an old blues, Phillips found out he could indeed use the talents of this young guy. The record became an instant success on Memphis radio and as they say - the rest is history.
To the tourists, the studio calls itself the birthplace of Rock 'n Roll. Now that may be a bit overstated as a claim, but it's true to say that the notion of Sam Phillips, that he could get rich when he could sell the Rhythm & Blues sound to the white audience - that notion is the essence of Rock 'n Roll.
What if Elvis hadn't shouted out that blues for instance. In the late forties, Rhythm & Blues had done a transition to danceable party music where everyone sung about rocking and rolling. And these sounds were already being picked up by the general public. It already was a whidespread practice of major labels to have their white artists cover succesful Rhythm & Blues songs. So probably rock 'n roll would have happened anyhow, just without Sam Phillips.
But what-ifs are pretty useless. Some major history has been written in that little studio and in there, it felt like walking on holy ground. And I think all these Elvis adepts that visited the place to do the tour, they probably felt the same. For me, though, it meant as much that bluesmen like B.B. King, Ike Turner and Howling Wolf, they got their first taste of success there too.
And with that we're back to the subject of today's episode of the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman, that is the recordings of bluesmen before even the Sun label was born. And I guess after so much talk, it's time again for some music. And that will be a recording of Woodrow Adams, and of that Checker release only one copy is known to exists. Fortunately it appeard on quite a few compilation albums.
Woodrow Wilson Adams done only three records in all of his musical career - most of his time he worked as a tractor driver on a farm. This first one is unique, I think, in its raw and unpolished sound. Here is the Pretty Baby Blues.
13 - Woodrow Adams & Three Bs - Pretty Baby Blues
14 - Rufus Thomas - Decorate The Counter
Decorate the Counter, you heard Rufus Thomas, and if anyone was a steady on Beale Street, he was. He already was a veteran of the scene when he had first records being made at Sam Phillips' studio - he'd been in the Rabbit Foot Minstrel show in the late thirties and as a master of ceremonies in the local Palace Theatre, he did amateur contest shows, and there B.B. King, and later Bobby Bland and Johnny Ace showed off their talents.
The first record he cut was not in the Sun studio, but for the Star Talent label in Dallas. Thomas stated it sold five copies, four of them were bought by Thomas himself. It must be some more, and it even got a review on Billboard magazine.
With the records he cut for Phillips he achieved some success, and especially with his Bear Cat - but he found his real success as a middle-aged man and father of an equally musical daughter - the soon to be Memphis Queen of Soul Carla Thomas. At the Stax label Rufus developed his funk style and got major hits with dance novelty songs.
For the next one, one more of one-man band Joe Hill Louis. For Checker he recorded this in July of 1952 - here is Dorothy Mae.
15 - Joe Hill Louis - Dorothy Mae
16 - Big Walter Horton - Walter's Boogie
And that was Walter's Boogie of Big Walter Horton, a shy but talented harpist who already played the harmonica at the age of five. On several occasions Horton has claimed to be the harpist on recordings of the Memphis Jug Band in the late twenties, and he must have been just eight or nine years old by then, an unlikely story most likely to be made up by Horton. He did back up Little Buddy Doyle on his recordings for Okeh and Vocalion in '39. On some of the recordings he done for Sam Phillips, you can hear a young Phineas Newborn Jr. on the piano, later to become one of the great jazz pianists - not on this one though, and after his Sun sessions Horton took off for Chicago to play in the band of Muddy Waters.
For the next - one more of Rosco Gordon, shouting the blues about quite a problem in the life of a bluesman - to have too many women.
17 - Rosco Gordon - Too many women
18 - Big Tiny Kennedy - Don't lay this job on me
And Big Tiny Kennedy marks the end of today's show that was all devoted to the Memphis Recording Service, the little studio on the corner of Union and Marshall Avenue in Memphis TN. It's nowadays a tourist landmark, known as the Sun studio, though it still functions as a studio, and just the day I was there, a country band was to record there that evening.
Upstairs is the historic studio, and the downstairs area is a cafe where you can sip your drink on bar stools named after the great rockabilly artists that started their careers there - Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and of course, Elvis Presley. The greats of the blues don't have their names on the bar stools but many framed pictures are on the walls reminding people of the history of Rhythm & Blues and of Rock 'n Roll, written in that little building, the local studio and hangout of the bluesmen and hillbilly singers down in Memphis, where no recording studio had been around before.
A great place so have seen so the tour I did, together with a few dozen of other tourists, was the highlight of my stay in Memphis and I can recommend the tour to anyone interested in the history of blues and rock 'n roll.
Today's story - and I did tell a lot today - today's story is te be found on the website of my little program, the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and just searching for the name of this radio show on Google will take you straight to it. This show was number 185 in that long list of shows I done up to now. And of course, if you want to provide feedback, let me know and e-mail me at rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com.
Time's up for now - but don't worry, there will be another shot of great Rhythm & Blues next week. Until then - don't get the blues. See you next time here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!