The Legends of the Rocking Dutchman - episode 189

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 another set of the best of Rhythm & Blues, with some of the top artists and even more of the deepest obscurities - well pretty much as you're used from me. And to start with a man who had a long lasting career in Rhythm & Blues - Big Joe Turner. He started playing Kansas City's nightclubs in the early thirties with Pete Johnson, and by the end of the decade they'd moved to New York where they were the sensation of one of the Carnegie Hall concerts - a groundbreaking event where African-American music was presented to a racially mixed audience.

Joe Turner made his debut on record for Vocalion and later with Decca. When his star rose, he recorded with about every label he encountered during his tours through the country. As one of the very few bluesmen of his generation, he was a middle-aged man when he managed to become a teenage idol in the rock 'n roll era, mainy shouting the same blues that he always had done.

With the first blues of today, I go back to the year 1941. I played the flip last week - the Sun Rising Blues. Here is, on Decca, Joe Turner with the Blues on Central Avenue.

01 - Big Joe Turner - Blues on Central Avenue
02 - Ebony Three - Heartbroken Blues

An obscure male vocal trio - you got the Heartbroken Blues of the Ebony Three and they're being backed up by Sammy Price. With that we stayed on the Decca label - this was from 1938. The trio made two records from one session on May 25 of '38. This one, backed with the Mississippi Moan and a record with two traditional spirituals - Swing Low Sweet Chariot and Go Down Moses To The Promised Land.

For the next one I go to the bluesman Gabriel Brown, on the label billed as Gabriel Brown And His Guitar. This was recorded in 1943 and released on the Gennett label - that is, the re-incarnation of the label after record boss Joe Davis bought the name - mainly because it came with a shellac rationing. Without that, producing records during the war was impossible.

Here is I've Got To Stop Drinkin'.

03 - Gabriel Brown & his Guitar - I've Got To Stop Drinkin'
04 - Mack Sisters - Jammin' In Georgia.wma

(jingle)

05 - Boone's Jumping Jacks - Messy
06 - Babe Wallace - I'm Blowin' My Top

Four in a row - after Gabriel Brown's drinking blues came the Mack Sisters, an girl group modeled after the extremely succesful Andrew Sisters. The Macks recorded a few takes with Buddy Johnson's band in 1939. They were some of Johnson's earliest recordings. Somewhere in that year his sister Ella joined him and she remained his vocalist - she got one of the most delicate vocals in Rhythm & Blues.

You got more - the swing number after the jingle, that were Chester Boone's Jumping Jacks with Messy - a pretty obscure combo that had two releases on the Decca label. And finally the band of Skeets Tolbert named the Gentlemen of Swing, and fronting them you heard the voice of Emmett 'Babe' Wallace - you got I'm Blowin' My Top.

Wallace started as a bouncer in the famous Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, but soon made the step to singer in that same venue, and later in the Apollo, the Cotton Club and Small's Paradise. His career went beyond that - he wrote numerous songs, he played in the classic movie Stormy Weather and he performed in several musicals in London, Paris and on Broadway.

And we stay on the Decca label with Laura Rucker and this 1936 goodie titled Swing My Rhythm.

07 - Laura Rucker - Swing My Rhythm
08 - Cab Calloway - Beale Street Mama

Unmistakably Cab Calloway with the Beale Street Mama from 1932 on the ARC family of labels - Oriole, Perfect, Banner, Romeo and Melotone all had a release of this song. Some of these labels were store brands. ARC was one of the rare record companies that survived the deepest of the Great Depression, with low-priced records.

For the next one we go to 1928 with the great Victoria Spivey. She's being backed up by the Blue Five of Clarence Williams on this OKeh release. Here is the Organ Grinder Blues.

09 - Victoria Spivey With Clarence Williams Blue Five - Organ Grinder Blues
10 - Mattie Hardy with Joe Williams & His Chicago Swingers - I Declare This Will Be The End

I Declare This Will Be The End - From 1938 that was Mattie Hardy and the group credited for backing her up is Joe Williams & His Chicago Swingers. An unidentified group, but there's one peculiar thing on it, and that's the mandolin on it. Now there weren't that many mandolin players in the Chicago scene - so it might well have been Papa Charlie McCoy, before, one of the members of the Harlem Hamfats, that by the end of '38 had broken up after their trumpeter Herb Morand returned to New Orleans.

For the next one we return to the year 1928 with the classic Pinetop's Boogie Woogie of Pinetop Smith. Clarence Smith got his nickname in his childhood for climbing in trees. In 1928 he moved from Birmingham, AL to Chicago to record for Vocalion. The session of December '28 yielded this classic, that got covered by numerous artists and inspired Ray Charles for both What'd I say and Mess Around.

Pinetop lived in the same house as Albert Ammons, and Meade Lux Lewis - that poor piano in the house must have been banged all day. Both pianists acknowledge Pinetop as a great influence. Pinetop died a year later, in '29 of a gunshot in a fight in a dance hall. It's never been sure whether the bullet was meant for him.

The Pinetop Boogie Woogie was the first boogie woogie hit record. Here it is.

11 - Pinetop Smith - Pinetop's Boogie Woogie
12 - Mississippi Mud Mashers - Take My Seat And Sit Down

Take My Seat And Sit Down of the Mississippi Mud Mashers, or Mud Masher as displayed on the label of this Bluebird recording from 1935. The quintet was from New Orleans and the Mississippi Mud was from a somewhat controversial song from 1928 about the disastrous floods of the Mississippi river in the year before.

For the next one we go to a field recording that didn't make it to a record. It was released on a CD on the Document series in 2001. Here is Jesse Wadley with the Alabama Prison Blues.

13 - Jesse Wadley - Alabama Prison Blues
14 - Josh White - Trouble

A bluesman who wasn't afraid to sing about racial issues. An album of six songs - in 1941 that was a box with 78's in it - contained only blues on racial discrimination and that caused great unroar in the South. But Josh White was a close personal friend of President Roosevelt, and the president asked White to perform for him - the first African-American ever, and with songs that were highly critical on the segregation of the Deep South. Roosevelt reportedly has discussed the issue with him in private after that first perfornance. Some more followed in the years while Roosevelt was in office.

Unfortunately, in the fifties White was put on the blacklist of communist sympathizers and that pretty much hampered his further career.

For the next one I go to the Queen of the Blues - as she had crowned herself - Dinah Washington. On the Mercury label, from '49, here is her Good Daddy Blues.

15 - Dinah Washington - Good Daddy Blues (1949)
16 - Andrew Tibbs - You Can't Win
17 - Pee Wee Crayton - Old Fashioned Baby

And Pee Wee Crayton with his hammering guitar sound ends today's show - seventeen goodies that rocked your radio again. You heard the Old Fashioned Baby and he recorded that in October of '49 in Los Angeles for the Modern label. Before that, you got Andrew Tibbs with the sextet of Sax Mallard with You Can't Win, recorded in Chicago in July of 1950 and released on the Chess label.

Well I hope I got the right selection for you again, today, well let me know if you liked the show, feedback is greatly appreciated. Send it to rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com - I promise you to answer every question you have.

Now of course everything I told you today, it's on my website where you can also review today's playlist and find out what will be on for next time. Do a Google search for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and it will show up first. This was show number 189 in that long list of episodes that I did until now.

Next week I'll treat you with more hot Rhythm & Blues. Until then - don't get the blues. Have a rocking week instead, and I hope to see you next time, here, with only the best of Rhythm & Blues, on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!