The Legends of the Rocking Dutchman - episode 20

Race Music Chart

This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.

And sure some real legends are coming by, today, as we feature the number one hits on the Billboard Race music chart of the years 1945 and 46. And what a years that were. Of course, the war came to an end and America's prospects were great, having the biggest economic boom ever to come.

But also in these two years the two biggest Rhythm & Blues hits ever were made, that is, measured by the number of weeks that they hit the number one spot. It were also the two most succesful years of Louis Jordan, who accounts for seven out of the fourteen number one titles, among one the shares the title for longest running number one hit ever. But also dominating the hit list like that was unprecedented - he took the number one spot for 43 weeks of these two years.

So let's start off with the first one, that followed the success of the Ink Spots' Into each life some rain must fall. Here is Cootie Williams with Somebody's Gotta Go.

02 - Cootie Williams - Somebody's Gotta Go

And that was Cootie Williams and his orchestra who took the number one spot for just one week on February, 10.

Those who listen to this program every week, will remember that the previous shows on Billboard's Rhythm & Blues hit list were titled Harlem Hit Parade. In February, 1945, Billboard decided to rename it to the list of Race Music and it would go by that name until June, 1949, when it got it's most well-known name of Rhythm & Blues records.

In this month, two versions of the same song reached the top position of the newly named list. First Cecil Gant for two weeks and subsequently Roosevelt Sykes for seven weeks, both with a song called I wonder.

03 - Cecil Gant - I wonder
04 - Roosevelt Sykes - I Wonder

Roosevelt Sykes singing I wonder, and he'd taken over the number one for seven weeks from the man who'd written the song, Cecil Gant, and who recorded it first. Sykes top position lasted seven weeks.

On with Erskine Hawkins. Starting on April, 14, his big band topped the chart for six weeks with Tippin' in

05 - Erskine Hawkins & his Orchestra - Tippin' In
06 - Louis Jordan - Mop Mop

Louis Jordan with Mop Mop and with this song he achieved his number one position on April, 21, displacing Erskine Hawkins for only one week. The next number one would be his too, as on June, 2 he would displace Hawkins for the second time, with a song that became a standard in the Rhythm & Blues. It is the story of the love for a woman who isn't pretty, and who is stubborn and hard-headed but he's crazy about his baby, cause Caldonia is her name.

07 - Louis Jordan - Caldonia
08 - Lucky Millinder - Who Threw The Whiskey Down The Well

Wynonie Harris together with the Lucky Millinder Orchestra with Who Threw The Whiskey Down The Well lasted 8 weeks on number one of the Race music chart, which is quite a long time, but the success would be forgotten by the monster hit that would shake the nation from September, 8, 1945.

A guy named Joe Liggins had written a song somewhere in 1942 and had had no luck trying to persuade the leader of the band he was in, Sammy Franklin and his Atomics, to record it. Liggins therefore left Franklin and started his own combo. The Honeydripper, as the song was titled, soon would be the grand finale of each gig of his band, and it's a great and unique celebration of urban arrogance, about a cat whose fame is to be the coolest around.

Leon Rene of Exclusive records had heard of it, and went to Liggins who'd only wanted to perform it for him at the ususual moment in his show on stage, at the end, so he'd let the record boss wait all evening. But Leon Rene was impressed and signed Liggins for his label. Now on stage, the Honeydripper was a fifteen-minute song and because of the limitations of a 78 RPM record, it had to be trimmed down to 6 minutes to be split up over two sides of a record, the A side mainly vocal, the B-side mainly instumental. It would prove to become a monster hit that lasted 18 weeks on the top of the Race Chart. Here is Joe Liggins and his Honeydrippers with the Honeydripper.

09 - Joe Liggins & His Honeydrippers - The Honeydripper pt. 1 + 2

On September, 8, 1945, this song hit the number one spot of the Rhythm & Blues hit parade and it would keep that for the rest of that turbulent year 1945. In that same week, the war was officially declared over. The Japanese had ca'pitulated after the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and in Europe Hitler was defeated and committed suicide.

Many people ask me how comes that I like so much the music that should be placed in the teenage years of my father. I don't know, really I don't, and I tend to say that this music was as little my father's teenage years music as it was mine. In 1945, he just hadn't got the opportunity to get a notion of this exciting music, like Joe Liggins's Honeydripper. Hitler's men had confiscated all radios to avoid people to listen to news and information from the allied forces, and, as in my country, to Radio Orange, to the voice of Wilhelmina, the Queen of the Netherlands, who'd fled to England during the war.

My father lived in a town that was liberated by the British and Canadian forces in the fall of 1944, and that town would remain just a few miles from the front as the allied forces failed to cross the river Rhine during the harsh winter that followed. Of course, hanging out with the Canadian and British soldiers that stayed in town while waiting for the command to cross the river and fight the Germans again, was a favourite thing to do for the youngsters in town. And while north of the front thousands of people died from freezing cold, hunger and starvation, my parents were treated by these soldiers with chocolate and cigarettes, the latter leaving them with a smoking habit for the rest of their lives.

But they had no or hardly no access to the music from America, and they wouldn't for the forthcoming years. There was a short on everything. Food was rationed, and so were nearly all other goods, and that situation lasted into the early fifties. Europe had to be rebuilt and maybe a British or even a Dutch jazz band will have played some standards of Glenn Miller for a dance evening in these dark days after the war, but for a little bit of prosperity and a good economic growth they had to wait for the fifties to come.

The interest for the Rhythm & Blues and other, subsequent black styles like soul, would get to the mainstream Dutch audience in the end of the sixties, with the blues revival, and the early seventies, when soul music finally broke through thanks to the great efforts of just one discjockey. I remember being caught by this soul music as a kid in 1970, when I discovered a two-hour soul program on Dutch radio, tucked away on an inconvenient time on the Sunday morning, and while playing with the tuning wheel of the radio, in the evenings I found the British station Radio Caroline, that played soul all night and I was hooked despite the horrible reception quality.

Later, much later I started to find out that the older the African-American music that I dug in, was, the more it fit to my taste and that's the only explaination I have for my interest in the Rhythm & Blues - it's just great music.

10 - Louis Jordan - Buzz Me
11 - Lionel Hampton - Hey-Ba-Ba-Re-Bop

Well as you heard the cracks in the grooves are on the house today here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. Straigt from an old 78 that was Lionel Hampton and his orchestra with Hey-Ba-Ba-Re-Bop and it hit the number one spot off and on for a total of 16 weeks starting at March 16 of 1946. Before that you heard Louis Jordan with Buzz me that was the number one for nine non-consecutive weeks starting at January 12.

On March 23, we see Louis Jordan again taking the top of the list, displacing Lionel Hampton for only one week, with Don't Worry 'Bout That Mule.

12 - Louis Jordan - Don't Worry 'Bout That Mule
13 - Ink Spots - The Gypsy

The Ink Spots with the Gypsy topped the list from June, 29 for three weeks. They recorded on the Decca label, and so did Louis Jordan and Lionel Hampton. And as we only see Louis Jordan on the number one for the rest of 1946, that means that the Decca label held the number one position for all of 1946.

Like I said, the rest of 1946 would be all for Louis Jordan. On July, 10, with a caribbean-style duet with Ella Fitzgerald. It lasted for five weeks on the top of the Race Chart. Here are Louis Jordan and Ella Fitzgerald with Stone Cold Dead in the Market.

14 - Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Jordan - Stone Cold Dead In The Market (He Had It Coming)
15 - Louis Jordan - Choo Choo Ch'Boogie

Choo Choo Ch'Boogie was that other song keeping the American record for lasting the greatest amount of weeks on number one of the Rhythm & Blues hit list. 18 solid weeks on number one has never again been surpassed and the shared honour is for Louis Jordan with the Choo Choo Ch'Boogie and Joe Liggins with the Honeydripper.

I have a few reasons to value Joe Liggins' achievement higher that Louis Jordan. With Decca, Jordan had a powerful major record company behind him that had an excellent distribution network, while Liggins hit was released on the pretty small independent Exclusive label, that had lots of troubles keeping up with the demand and had to leave the east coast market to a network of bootleggers that, is some big cities, sold more illegal copies than the Exclusive record company itself. Leon Rene, the boss of Exclusive, even has tried - unsuccesfully - to make a legal arrangement with these bootleggers to get at least something of the share. Finally other artists recorded the Honeydripper and took over the sales of Joe Liggins' hit.

And Choo Choo Ch'Boogie is a pretty straightforward boogie-woogie song. In my opinion the Honeydripper stands out in its style and structure. I must say haven't heard something alike not before nor after, and for that it just sticks better with me. And when I let people listen to the Honeydripper, they all are stunned that a song that cool was around in the mid-forties.

Joe Liggins came with his Honeydripper and disappeard from the top of the chart forever, while Louis Jordan had a train running and the Choo Choo Ch'Boogie just fit in. That said, Louis Jordan deserves all the credit for his dominance of mid-forties Rhythm & Blues - it's his sheer quality that makes him king of his time.

As we reach the end of the show, and of the year 1946, still one number one song is on the list. And it's again Louis Jordan, with Ain't That Just Like a Woman, displacing himself from the number one spot on November, 23, for two weeks.

16 - Louis Jordan & The Tympany Five - Ain't That Just Like a Woman

And with Louis Jordan and his Tympany five another show on the number ones of the Rhythm & Blues has come to an end. I hope you liked the show and that you're not angry with me for doing so much talking. There were some things that I needed to say, on the end of the war, on how I became a fan of this music, and on the comparison of the two greatest Rhythm & Blues hits of all time, and that all fit together in this episode.

So let me know what *you* thought of it and drop me an e-mail at rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. Or visit me on the web, just do a Google search for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and my site will pop up first. Time's up for now, so byebye and have a great day. No, have a rocking day. See you next time on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!