The Legends of the Rocking Dutchman - episode 220

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.

So much applause, thank you, you're being too good for me. Well here I am again with some of the best of Rhythm & Blues on another show of the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and I'm glad to have you again on the other side of the radio - the listening side. I'm gonna bring some great stuff again for the hour, and I wanna start where I left you last week, when I did a show on the Decca label. From that label, I played only one side of the record - and so the flips, they often go in mixed tunes shows like today's.

So the first one of today will be the Gentlemen of Swing of Skeets Tolbert. Here they are, from 1945 on the Decca label, with Hit That Jive Jack.

01 - Skeets Tolbert & His Gentlemen Of Swing - Hit That Jive, Jack
02 - Washboard Rhythm Kings - Angeline

Sweet Angeline - a popular tune from the early thirties in this '32 recording of the Washboard Rhythm Kings - a loose combination of studio musicians recording for several labels, this one was for Vocalion. And what strikes me in this and some more tunes of this band is the singer - Steve Washington. Now this may be a simple Tin Pan Alley love song that's got little to do with the blues - when Steve Washington sings it, it suddenly becomes soul. With his expressive and soulful delivery I think he was thirty years ahead of his time - the fashionable singing style of these days was something completely different. If you wanted to sound cool, you had to sing like you had eaten sand paper - not like the emotions overwhealm you. There's little documented of what he done before he had his professional career. We'll probably never know, but I take it, that he learned to sing in church, maybe fronted a gospel ensemble, cause his delivery has all elements of the gospel in it - just like sixties soul.

Now Steve Washington must have had more great potential. In 1933 he led a session for Vocalion as Steve Washington and his Orchestra. Now it was unheard of, that a young black man led a combo of white musicians - but these names. Joe Venuti on the violin. Banjoist Dick McDonough. Trumpeter Sterling Bose. And on clarinet Benny Goodman. You hear it right listeners - the Benny Goodman. It were four sentimental pop ditties but Washington - and he seems to only have been the singer in this session - he was able to make 'em sound like something.

Steve Washington later led the Sunset Royal Serenaders and done a rendition of Irvin Berlin's composition Marie - in an arrangement of Washington - and it's exactly that arrangement that was used by Tommy Dorsey who turned it into a huge hit.

I wonder what would have become of him if he had lived through the forties and fifties, and whether everyone would have known his name as one of the greatest vocalists of jazz and Rhythm & Blues - we'll never know. Washington died in 1936 of pneumonia. And just after the release of the complete recorded works of the Washboard Rhythm Kings, at least some awareness is growing that because of that untimely death, in the middle of the great depression, he was forgotten and never got recognized as one of the greats of jazz.

And from this forgotten great to a few greats that do live on in the collective memories - not only of jazz connaiseurs. Here you'll get, in Clarence Williams' Blue five, both Sindy Bechet and Louis Armstrong in a fierce battle for who's the best soloist. Count to that, the strong voice of Clarence Williams' wife Eva Taylor, and here is a more than ninety years old piece of firework, all about the popular dance contests in the roaring twenties, the cake walks, where the main prize was - a nicely decorated cake.

Here are, from January of 1925, the Cake Walking Babies From Home.

03 - Clarence Williams and the Blue Five - Cake Walking Babies From Home
04 - Duke Ellington - Doin The Voom Voom

(jingle)

05 - Thomas Morris - Who Dis Here Stranger
06 - Henry Red Allen - Take Me Back To My Boots And Saddle

Take me back to my Boots and Saddle of trumpeter Henry 'Red' Allen from 1935, one of a number of succesful popular swing recordings he done for the Vocalion label. Red Allen had adapted Louis Armstrong's style of trumpeting and while together with Armstrong in the band of Luis Russell he was seen as one of the main attractions of the band with live performances. Just in the recordings it's Armstrong who plays the first trumpet.

You got more - before that the Hot Babies of Thomas Morris with Who Dis Heah Stranger and that was on the Victor label from 1926. Thomas Morris style was typical for the twenties before Louis Armstrong got famous. from 1923 to '27 he recorded with his own bands the Past Jazz Masters and the Hot Babies but in the thirties he was mainly forgotten, working as a porter at New York's Grand Central station, and later he got involved in a strict religious sect where he renamed himself to Brother Pierre.

Then I have to account for what was before the jingle - that was the 1929 Brunswick recording of Duke Ellington's Doin' The Voom Voom with of course the antics on the trumpet of Bubber Miley. Ellington recorded the Voom Voom several times for different labels - there's a Vocalion recording from the same year, and versions on several other labels during the thirties, that got Cootie Williams on the trumpet.

And for the next one we go to the year 1941 with bluesman Doctor Clayton. For the Bluebird label he recorded this Doctor Clayton Blues.

07 - Doctor Clayton - Doctor Clayton Blues
08 - Roosevelt Sykes - Blues N' Boogie

The Blues 'n Boogie of Roosevelt Sykes on the Regal label and with that we get to 1950 in one of the last years of Sykes recording in Chicago. After his time with Regal, he done some recordings with the United label, but by '54 he took off for New Orleans, when the eletric blues were taking over the Chicago scene. His style may have been regarded outdated in the Windy City, in New Orleans he was welcomed in the many clubs and music venues in town.

Next on the Columbia label from 1947 Big Joe Williams. It's somewhat of a leftover of the show I did recently on this label, where I told you that after two years, Columbia still hadn't managed to get more than handful of Rhythm & Blues acts under contract, and this Joe Williams is one of them. Here is I'm A Highway Man.

09 - Big Joe Williams - I'm A Highway Man
10 - Memphis Minnie - Fish Man Blues

And also this Fishman Blues of Memphis Minnie is a postwar recording for Columbia, it was taken in 1946. By then she was a veteran of the blues and interest for her style began to get less - despite her powerful guitar work. In the late fifties she returned to Memphis where she was on radio to promote new blues artists. After her two strokes in 1960 and '61 she had to be taken care of in a nursing home where she died in 1973.

Next a nice ditty of the band of Nashville-based saxophonist Sherman Williams. Here he is with Hello.

11 - Sherman Williams - Hello
12 - Lem Johnson - Esskay Blues

On the obscure Cincinnati label and recorded in 1944 the Esskay Blues of Lem Johnson. This is a cover of the S.K. Blues of Saunders King, only spelled differently. I found only four records of this Cincinnati label, of Joe Williams, Inez Washington, one for Roosevelt Sykes, and this one.

Lem Johnson had been the tenor saxophonist in the band of Louis Jordan back in the late thirties - and in the Gentlemen of Swing of Skeets Tolbert where he also was the featured singer.

Next drummer and singer Alton Redd on the label billed as Big Red Alton. From '49 recorded for Capitol here is But She's Not for Me.

13 - Alton Redd - But She's Not for Me
14 - Gene Parrish - Gone Awhile Blues

The Gone Awhile Blues of Gene Parrish - one of the earliest releases of the Hollywood-based RPM label. There's not much to find on this bluesman - he seems to have done one session for the label and one for RCA. My apologies for the sound quality, don't know what happened to that record that it sounds so distorted.

The next one will be Robert Nighthawk - by then a mainstay in the Chicago scene. He was born Robert Lee McCollum in Helena, AK, the town that we know from the famous King Buiscuit Time radio program that brought live performances of local bluesmen. Now by the time that program was, he was up in St. Louis and later Chicago. While in St. Louis. in 1937, he cut his Prowling Nighthawk blues under the name of Robert Lee McCoy, and when he found out back in his old hometown that the record was better remembered than himself as a bluesman, he chose the Nighthawk as his stage name.

He was a good bluesman but a silent, taciturn character, reserved and for that he's often been compared to Robert Johnson. He didn't do that many recordings - and after his years with the United label, from 1951 to '53, he went back south.

This is on the United label, from the summer of 1951. Here he is with Feel So Bad.

15 - Robert Nighthawk - Feel So Bad
16 - Wild Bill Moore - Balancing with Bill
17 - Paul Gayten - Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

Straight from New Orleans, 1951 that was Paul Gayten on the Regal label with Yeah Yeah Yeah, and before that Balancing With Bill of Wild Bill Moore and these two end this show of the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman.

There is very little time left so I have only time for where you can leave your feedback, for instance on that remarkable story on Steve Washington, well the address is rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. Your comments are greatly appreciated and for sure I'll write back to you. Then all of today's stories, you can find them back on the website of this program, and easiest way to get there is to search Google for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and it will pop up first. You've been listening to show number 220 that you'll find, numbered, in the episode list.

Next week there will be more jumping Rhythm & Bles and until then, just don't get the blues. See you next time, here on this station, with more Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!