This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.
Yeah, Thank you, thank you and it's so good to see you all again on this rocking day, and as always I'll bring you some of the best of Rhythm & Blues - with today some real obscurities again. Well not the first one, this blueswoman for sure is one of the greats. With Victoria Spivey, today's journey starts in 1936 on the Vocalion label. Here she is with the Detroit Moan.
01 - Victoria Spivey - Detroit Moan.mp3
02 - Roosevelt Scott - Dark Road Blues.mp3
And this is also on the Vocalion label, from 1940. Roosevelt Scott was brought to the Vocalion label by Monkey Joe and he does some good blues - but for some reason he never got more than two sessions that both were backed on piano by his friend Monkey Joe. Scott continued to perform in Chicago during the forties and then fell off the radar - apart from an interview he done in the seventies.
You got his Dark Road Blues, recorded in January of 1940.
For the next one a musician that I featured in my last show on the Regal label - recorded around 1950, but this was recorded ten years before for Decca, with pianist Gerry "The Wig" Wiggins. Doctor Sausage and his Five Pork Chops were a comedy and jive group playing New York venues including a revue at the Hudson Theatre. His Decca sides went nowhere commercially and he didn't get to see the studio from inside for another ten years.
Here are Doctor Sausage and his Five Pork Chops with Wham.
03 - Doctor Sausage & his Five Pork Chops - Wham.mp3
04 - Mr. Google Eyes & Billy Ford - Rough And Rocky Road.mp3
(jingle)
05 - Estelle Edson - Be Baba Le Ba.mp3
06 - Marie Adams - I'm Gonna Play The Honky Tonks.mp3
The band of Bill Harvey fronted by Marie Adams with I'm Gonna Play The Honky Tonks and that was up to then, the most succesful release of the Peacock label - it reached number 3 in the Billboard hit list. Marie Adams toured with Johnny Ace, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, B.B. King, Jimmy Forrest, and Lloyd Price until in '53 she moved to Los Angeles to sing in the band of Johnny Otis. It was there where she really made fame, with her Three Tons of Joy, not only in America but also on the British pop charts.
You got more - before that was Be Baba Le Ba, a cover of the hit of Helen Humes, done by Estelle Edson backed by Oscar Pettiford's All-Stars on the Black & White label. Oscar Pettiford played the double bass and he was one of the musicians playing with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and Kenny Clarke at Milton's Playhouse - the place where bebop was invented. But he also worked in the bands of Duke Ellington and Woody Herman. Pettiford also played the cello - reportedly the first time as a joke in the band of Woody Herman, but later when he had broken his arm, the instrument came out handy to replace the bass that was too large to play with his arm in a sling.
Well I got one more to account for - a '49 recording that came before the jingle of Mr. Google Eyes - a young New Orleans blues singer whose real name was Joseph Augustus. He got his stage name in his teens, working as a delivery boy for a restaurant, he would stare at all the women that came to eat there.
At the age of fifteen he made his first record, that was in '46 for the Coleman label and later he signed with Columbia. This Rough And Rocky Road was on their OKeh subsidiary. Unfortunately, many owners of African-American record stores did boycott the Columbia label and his step to a major record company didn't turn out succesful.
For the next one, we go back to 1940 with an early recording of Memphis Slim on the Bluebird label. Here he is with I See My Great Mistake.
07 - Memphis Slim - I See My Great Mistake.mp3
08 - Tab Smith feat. Heather Lancaster - Sweet Old Me.mp3
On the Queen label Heather Lancaster backed by Tab Smith with Sweet Old me. This was recorded for J. Mayo Williams but he traded a lot of his masters to the Cincinatti-based label that we now know as King - and that guaranteed the artists a much better distribution. The records that Mayo Williams brought out himself, on labels named Harlem, Chicago, Southern and Ebony, they went nowhere and nowadays they are extremely rare and hard to find. The Queen label was the Race music subsidiary of King, that initially only did hillbilly - nowadays called country music. In '47 the label was consoldiated into King.
Tab Smith recorded quite a few takes with Mayo Willisms, but his fame came in the fifties when he signed with the United label. His smooth saxophone work did well with the somewhat cheesy pop songs that he did with United, and fortunately he done some good Rhythm & Blues as well.
For the next one a Los Angeles blues shouter named Duke Henderson. I Am The Blues was recorded for the United Artist label with the band of King Perry.
09 - Duke Henderson - I Am The Blues.mp3
10 - Betty Hall Jones & King Porter - That Early Morning Boogie.mp3
On the Imperial label Betty Hall Jones with the band of King Porter and that was That Early Morning Boogie, recorded in December of '47 and released in early '49. She was a pianist and singer and in these years she has played in many combos, all of them she stayed just a few months.
Now there's just a few little mysteries around this session. It's sure that Betty wrote this song, and she is on the piano with the band. But according to the archives of Imperial, the session was held in Detroit, and it sounds like she's on this song only. One of the songs on that session was Charlie the Boogie Man, and the band is singing to some Charlie as the piano man. Also, in the mid-forties, Betty Hall Jones had small children to take care of and she rarely gigged out of town - that is Los Angeles. So maybe this ditty may have been from another session than the Detroit cuts - if that part of Imperial's information is right.
And then finally - no-one seems to know who King Porter was. There have been two trumpeters named Porter in L.A. - Vernon "Jake" Porter or James Porter - neither of them regularly using the nickname King.
Betty Hall Jones remained active in music way into the nineties - but Alzheimer started to trouble her performances. She died in 2009 at the age of 98.
There's a strong connection with Nellie Lutcher - not only in style, but the two were friends and they worked together quite a few times. It was Nellie Lutcher who brought Betty to the Capitol label where she had a few of her best hits, including The Joint's Too Hip For Me - on her disliking of bebop and modern jazz.
On the Capitol label, from 1947, here is Nellie Lutcher with The One I Love Belongs To Somebody Else.
11 - Nellie Lutcher - The One I Love Belongs To Somebody Else.mp3
12 - Babs Gonzales - Get Out That Bed.mp3
From 1953 on the Savoy label Get Out That Bed of Babs Gonzales. His real name was Lee Brown but as a kid he was called Babs - together with his brothers. The name of Gonzales came when he had to get a room in a hotel where they wouldn't rent for Black people and so he tried to pass himself off as a Mexican named Ricardo Gonzales.
Babs was great in doing scat vocals and he embraced the new bebop style with his own group Three Bips and a Bop - with the first recording of his legendary Oop-Pop-A-Da on the Blue Note label.
For the next one I go back to 1941 with a recording of Nora Lee King for Decca. The backing band is credited as 'Kansas City' Jimmy Smith and his Sepians - a bunch of Decca session artists including pianist Sammy Price and this Jimmy Smith plays both the sax and the clarinet on this one. A special feature is that the trumpeter of the band, Kenneth Roane, doubles on the ocarina - and should you wonder what that is, it's a kinda flute made of ceramics.
Here is Boy! It's Solid Groovy.
13 - Nora Lee King - Boy! It's Solid Groovy.mp3
14 - Bobby Prince - In this misery.mp3
From 1953 on the Chance label Is This Misery of Bobby Prince with the band of Al Smith. I found this on a four-record series on the Japanes P-vine series with re-issues of Chance material. Bobby Prince's real name was Charles Gonzales and it must have been somewhere in this session that the stage name has been made up - before he performed under his own name. As Gonzales he'd sung in the band of Hot Lips Page and he'd done a session with J. Mayo Williams - the recordings ended up on the Gotham label of Philadelphia.
Next a vocal group that unlike most of them, they were not made up of teenagers, these were four men in their late thirties and forties. They showed off that they could well compete in the world of fifties doowop groups. This was the first issue on the Groove label - a subsidiary of RCA devoted to Rhythm & Blues. Here is Speed King.
15 - Du Droppers - Speed King.mp3
16 - Calvin Boze - Satisfied.mp3
Calvin Boze with a 1949 recording on the small Score label. Boze would later record with Aladdin and have his hit with Safronia B - he had well listened to Louis Jordan and tried to lay down the same goodtime style. His success dried up after '52 and next to the music he found work as a teacher and social worker until his early death in 1970.
There's time for one more so here is one of my favorite singers - Ella Johnson with a 1956 recording for Mercury backed by her brother Buddy and his band. Here is So Good.
17 - Buddy Johnson Orch. feat. Ella Johnson - So Good.mp3
And Buddy and Ella Johnson end today's show of the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and it's been a varied set again - I hope you liked it. Well of course you can always let me know and send e-mail to rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. Feedback is greatly appreciated.
Then all stories that I told you today, they're on my web site, and easiest way to get there is to search the web for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman - it will pop up first in the list. Today's show is 213 - you'll need that number to find it, or use the search box on the home page.
Next week I'll get you another shot of Rhythm & Blues. So I hope to see you then, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!