These are the blues that touch my soul and that makes them so very special. I consider them the elite of my music collection - my own Very Special Old Blues.
The blues have many faces, and some are just wonderful simple songs to listen to. Like the next one and that's from all the way back in 1927 on the legendary Black Patti label. Here is Blind Richard Yates with I'm Gonna Moan My Blues Away.
01 - Blind Richard Yates - I'm Gonna Moan My Blues Away
02 - Mozelle Alderson - Mozelle Blues
I chose this Mozelle Blues of Mozelle Alderson for my show on the Very Special Old Blues for the eerie atmosphere that pianist Judson Brown gave it. The accompaniment is so untypical for the blues and actually, so unlike any modern Western music that I wonder how he made them up. But despite the weirdness it somehow touches something in me and I this blues - and a few more of her on the Black Patti and Gennett labels - I play them pretty often.
And that for sure counts for the next one - a classic masterpiece. It's from 1928 on the Okeh label. Here are Victoria Spivey and Lonnie Johnson with their epic double-sider New Black Snake Blues.
03 - Victoria Spivey & Lonnie Johnson - New Black Snake Blues
04 - Freezone - Indian Squaw Blues
(jingle)
05 - Mabel Robinson - You Don't Know My Mind
06 - Sidney Bechet - Sidney's Blues
The clarinet of Sidney Bechet was that and you got Sidney's Blues from 1940 on the Bluebird label. It's one of these blues that I can play over and over again and well that counts for all of the blues that I play today here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman in my compilation of Very Special Old Blues.
You got more, I played four in a row. Before Sidney Bechet that blues with violin, that was Mabel Robinson backed by a group named the Four Blackamoors and you heard You Don't Know My Mind and well the opening verse of this one, where her man gave his other woman money from what he won at the races, and she got nothing, well that is the blues. Robinson left us four sides that she cut with Decca, from around 1941, four good sides of mature female blues, and that's it.
And then I have to account for what was before the jingle - that was the mysterious bluesman calling himself Freezone with the Indian Squaw Blues from 1929 on the Paramount label. Who this man was is lost to history and if he hasn't been working under another name then this is the only recording he ever done. The flip of it was someone else, a raging boogie woogie done by Raymond Barrow named the Walking Blues.
The next one is from 1938, a recording of Trixie Smith. By then her heydays with the Black Swan and Paramount labels in the early twenties were largely forgotten and Smith hadn't recorded for thirteen years. Now most often artists don't do their best songs at the twilight of their career. But Trixie Smith got an accompaniment of great musicians - Sammy Price on the piano, trumpeter Charlie Shavers and Sidney Bechet on the clarinet, to do some re-recordings of her old hits, that had been done in the era of acoustical recordings. Smith had recorded her Trixie blues before, for Okeh, Paramount and Black Swan but this '38 Decca recording is just great. Here is the Trixie Blues.
07 - Trixie Smith - Trixie Blues
08 - Savannah Churchill & Her All-Star Seven - Tell Me Your Blues
Jimmy Lytell and his All-Star Seven on the Beacon label with a 1942 recording featuring a young Savannah Churchill - that was Tell Me Your Blues. We know her of her pop songs and the many songs she did with her backing vocal groups the Sentimentalists and the Striders - but her debut session brought us some of the best blues. By 1945 her star had been rising and on the re-release on the related Joe Davis label, the label didn't credit Jimmy Lytell with vocal refrain of Savannah Churchill, but as Savannah Churchill and her All-star Seven - as if she led the band.
By then her musical direction had been set, and that was not the blues. For her probably the most succesful decision, and let's not forget she'd gone out singing out of necessity, to be able to support her family when her husband died in 1941. Now I hope you don't mind, but I like the blues she done in her very first session with Jimmy Lytell the best.
And I stay in the early forties with the next favorite of mine. This is a sentimental blues on a famous train line, from Louisville, KY to Nashville, TN, commonly known as the L&N. The minor key on it - and I love minor key blues - brings this beyond the average train blues. On the Decca label, here is Jimmie Gordon with the L&N Blues.
09 - Jimmie Gordon - L & N Blues
10 - Joe Turner & Pete Johnson - Roll 'Em Pete
Some of the best blues of Big Joe Turner are from before the war when it was only the piano of his mate Pete Johnson accompanying him. Most of these early recordings have been widely forgotten - but not this one. This raging boogie-woogie came at the very beginning of the boogie woogie craze, but it's the unusual backbeat that makes it sound at least ten years later than the 1938 that it was done.
Many claim this Roll 'em Pete as the first Rock 'n Roll record - a false claim I think cause Rock & Roll was a fad, a craze and not one record that got no follow-up by other artists. And also Rock 'n Roll was the adaptation of the then-current Rhythm & Blues sound for a new audience of white teenagers. This was definitely aimed at the African American market, a Race record as it was called then, and it remained a pretty obscure one too, until its rediscovery where it got crowned as the important precursor of Rock and Roll that it never was.
But it's a sublime blues - and that's why it made it to the list of Very Special Old Blues.
Next the wonderful, vulnerable and lovable voice of a young Ella Johnson in this 1940 Decca recording. Here she is with her brother Buddy with Please Mr. Johnson.
11 - Buddy Johnson - Please Mr. Johnson
12 - Eddie 'Cleanhead' Vinson w. Cootie Williams Orchestra - When My Baby Left Me
What an orchestra - this is by far the most beautifully orchestrated blues that I ever heard - and when Cootie Williams growls and wah-wahs his trumpet in the last refrain that gets me the chills on my spine. The blues shouter, that was Eddie 'Cleanhead' Vinson and this goodie titled When My Baby Left Me was from 1945 released on the Capitol label.
Cootie Williams learned his trumpeting techniques from Tricky Sam Nanton, the trombonist in the band of Duke Ellington where he was hired to replace Bubber Miley. Well you can hear that he's not just a wonderful trumpeter - he led a top notch band too.
Next is from 1942 - on the San Francisco based Rhythm label. A major hit and a classic now, here is Saunders King with the S.K. Blues.
13 - Saunders King - S.K. Blues
14 - John Lee Hooker - Boogie Chillen
15 - Lightnin' Hopkins - Katie Mae
Katie Mae of Lightnin' Hopkins and Boogie Chillen of John Lee Hooker end today's show that had my selection of Very Special Old Blues. There's very, very little time left I'm afraid, so I just got time to tell you about my web site where you can find back all about this show and provide feedback - just search the web for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and it will show up first - and you're gonna need the number of this show, that is 225.
I'll be back next week so I hope we'll meet again, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!