This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.
And thank you so much, so much for being with me again, and I promise you I won't disappoint you and get you what you'll always get, that is, the best of Rhythm & Blues, great stuff from the good old days before Rock 'n Roll shook the nation, when life was hard and the music was great.
But first I'm gonna get you a lot of noise, I say, a whole lotta noise. The king of the honking saxophone was Big Jay McNeely and he got the audience completely go nuts with his antics on stage. Play it loud until it blows the fuses - here is the Barrelhouse Stomp.
01 - Big Jay McNeely - Barrelhouse Stomp
02 - Wynonie Harris - Destination Love
From 1956 Destination Love of Wynonie Harris on the Atco label, and that came shortly after his succesful time with the King label that brought us the hits we know him so well for. After his time with Chess his success faded away - he was not able to ride on the waves of Rock 'n Roll like his idol Big Joe Turner. During his time with King, he could afford himself a New York mansion, a Cadillac and a chauffeur, but in the early sixties he moved back to Los Angeles, where his career had begun in the clubs of Central Avenue, playing for low-paying gigs. Harris died in '69 of throat cancer.
Next on the Swingtime label an early recording of Ray Charles. By then he recorded as the Maxin Trio - a name that was wrongly spelled by the record executives, it was the McSon trio, Mc from the guitarist's name McGhee, and Son as in Ray Charles' last name Robinson.
The trio was modeled after Nat King Cole's, and there were many of these combos. Ray Charles always said that in these days he just wanted to sound like Nat King Cole, but his troublesome blues in fact sound much more like Charles Brown - another genius who'd started out as a Cole soundalike. From the mid-forties these trios were much in demand in smaller venues.
On the Swingtime label here is his How Long, How Long Blues.
03 - Ray Charles - How Long, How Long Blues
04 - Gladys Hill - Please Don't Touch My Bowl
(jingle)
05 - Roy Milton & His Solid Senders - Red Light
06 - Ravens - My Baby's Gone
From 1950 on the Columbia label the Ravens with My Baby's Gone with that wonderful bass voice of Jimmy Ricks. And many bass voices in vocal groups have tried to imitate his style, so much that you can say Jimmy Ricks set a standard. The Ravens also set another standard - that is, for birds names for vocal groups.
The recordings they done for Columbia and OKeh were less succesful as the hits they had on the National label in the late forties. In '52 their last charting hit was for Mercury, Rock Me All Night Long. But they were very popular for gigs, and they easily got 2000 dollars for a night singing for a packed audience.
Now you got more - before the Ravens that was Red Light of Roy Milton and his Solid Senders and that was on his own Miltone label, and the one before the jingle, that was the band of Al Grey fronted by Gladys Hill with Please Don't Touch My Bowl on the Peacock label.
Next on the King label Marion Abernathy - the Blues Woman as she was dubbed in her years with the Specialty label where her most succesful song was a re-recording of Voo-It Voo-it. She done it before for the Melodisc label but copies soon were hard to get after the premises of that label burnt down to the ground.
Here she is backed by Paul Bascomb's band with a recording from '47, the Junior Blues.
07 - Marion Abernathy - Junior Blues
08 - Helen Humes - Be Bop Bounce
From '46 Helen Humes backed by the band of Buck Clayton wit the Be-Bop Bounce, on the Black & White label. Buck Clayton already had an interesting career after him - in 1934 the trumpeter went to China with his band the Harlem Gentlemen, to play the Canidrome ballroom in Shanghai's French concession and there he worked together with Li Jinhui, the influential Chinese composer and musician who shaped modern Chinese music. Clayton, that way, has been tremendously important for China's musical history.
Clayton left just before the Japanese invaded the country in 1937 - to join Count Basie's band. He joined several big bands and in the forties he started out on his own with the sextet that you just heard with Helen Humes.
Next on the Regis label the band of Gene Phipps - his only recording. Here is - from a somewhat worn-out 78 i'm afraid - the G&R Blues.
09 - Gene Phipps - G&R Blues
10 - Lil Johnson - I'll Take You To The Cleaners
Lil Johnson with I'll Take You To The Cleaners on the Vocalion label from 1936. She's one of those blues musicians that nothing is known of, beyond her recording career. Most of her songs have pretty suggestive sexual oriented lyrics.
Next from 1942 Washboard Sam, and by then he was immensely popular in Chicago. He recorded some 160 sides in a few years for the Vocalion and Bluebird labels, and many of them sold well and he stayed active until '49 when he joined the police force of the Windy City. The sixties blues revival meant a short comeback for him, but he died in 1966.
Here he is with River Hip Mama on Bluebird - one of the last releases of the label.
11 - Washboard Sam - River Hip Mama
12 - Mabel Robinson - Somebody's Getting My Love
One of the only six songs of Mabel Robinson, this 1941 Decca release titled Somebody's Getting My Love and she is backed by the Four Blackamoors - an as obscure group that included a - pretty rare - fiddler. None of the members have ever been identified.
Well I do know the next ones - it's Pete Johnson on the piano and Big Joe Turner singing. Recorded in '44 for Decca here is I Got A Gal For Every Day In The Week.
13 - Big Joe Turner - I Got A Gal For Every Day In The Week
14 - Cow Cow Davenport - I'm Gonna Tell You In Front So You Won't Feel Hurt Behind
From back in 1929 that was Cow Cow Davenport with I'm Gonna Tell You In Front So You Won't Feel Hurt Behind - recorded for the Vocalion label. Charles Davenport as his real name was, got his nickname for his hit, the Cow Cow Blues. He doesn't hit the boogie woogie on this one, but he for sure could pound the 88s in that style.
Next one of my all-time favorite combos of the thirties - the Washboard Rhythm Kings and this one has banjoist Steve Washington singing. Now he used to sing in a way that was pretty unusual for his time, with an expressive and emotional voice that's closer to gospel and soul than to the styles of the thirties. Also - Washington led a session for Vocalion that consisted of four great white jazz musicians - including a young Benny Goodman, and as a leader of the Sunset Serenaders he wrote the arrangement of Marie that got Tommy Dorsey a major hit.
Instead of a forgotten side note in the history of jazz and popular music, he might well have been recognized now as one of the greats, if he hadn't died in 1936 of pneumonia. The revival of interest for this loose thirties studio group the Washboard Rhythm Kings comes after the release of the Complete recorded works and with them, the notion of the lost talent of Steve Washington.
Hear him in this 1932 ditty on Vocalion. Music from the deepest of the Depression years - Oh, You Sweet Thing.
15 - Washboard Rhythm Kings - Oh! You Sweet Thing
16 - Richard Jones & His Jazz Wizards - I'm Gonna Run You Down
I'm gonna run you down and it's evident - the inspiration for this one was I'll Be Glad When You're Dead better known as You Rascal You. You got Richard Jones and his Jazz Wizards and this was recorded in '35 for Decca - where Jones had a management job. In the twenties he'd done similar work for OKeh as a supervisor for the Race recordings and among the artists he produced was Louis Armstrong's Hot Five.
And there's time for one more - so I'll get you the cornet and trumpet maestro himself with with what's definitely become a classic. The opening notes have become iconic in jazz and so is the vocal duet Armstrong does with clarinettist Jimmy Strong and the piano solo of Earl 'Fatha' Hines.
The composition is King Oliver's but his version - recorded only weeks before this one - isn't by far as rich as Armstrong's.
From '28 on OKeh, here is the West End Blues.
17 - Louis Armstrong - West End Blues
And that strange click at the end is the hand cymbal played by Zutty Singleton as the end of this wonderful classic, the West End Blues. Here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman I always want to play a legendary track, together with the obvious and the obscure - well more often the obscure than the obvious, as there are so many more of them. Through the years you've had thousands and thousands of songs on this progam, and I hope you like them - of course you can always let me know and send e-mail to rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com.
And all of today's story, you can find it on the website of this show, and easiest way to get there is to search the web for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and it will show up first. This is show number 230 - you're gonna need that number to find it back in that long list of shows that I done already.
Time's up for now so have a rocking day, and I hope to see you again, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!