This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.
And welcome back again to my program full of the best of rhythm & blues from the roaring twenties to the rocking fifties, when times were hard and the music was great.
And I wanna start with a piece of history of maybe the pioneer of bebop - Charlie Christian. His exceptional talent had brought him to the band of Benny Goodman, but maybe more important were his jam sessions at Minton's Playhouse, where bebop was born. It were amateur recordings done by a student that have preserved these early experiments that were the birth of modern jazz.
In these days, the line between jazz, blues and rhythm and blues were thin, or better, there were no lines. This was Race music, the then-ususal name for African American music, and Rhythm & Blues as a term didn't exist until '48. Now until late in the forties, musicians could play in an avant-garde bebop band one day and honk their saxophone to backup a vocal group right the other day. We've made the distinction between serious jazz and popular rhythm & blues much later. And just listen how enjoyable this is. Here is Swing To Bop - Charlie Christian.
01 - 42 - Charlie Christian - Swing to Bop (Charlies Choice)
And things could get late in Minton's Playhouse, a club on the first floor of a Harlem hotel, and that was founded in '38 by saxophonist Henry Minton and it had a unique music policy: it only did jam sessions. Now they proved to be the key ingredient for bebop, appealing to the musicians' creativity rather than elaborate arrangements and tight performances.
And we'll stay in the New York scene for a moment with the Three Blind Mices of Slam Stewart, recorded for the Newark based Manor label in 1945.
02 - 45 - Slam Stewart - Three Blind Mices
03 - 49 - Ruth Brown - Rocking Blues
(jingle)
04 - 53 - Jimmy Witherspoon - Back Door Blues
05 - 47 - Jimmy Mccracklin - Southside Mood
Four in a row - after Slam Stewart you got a young Ruth Brown on the Atlantic label with this '49 recording the Rocking Blues. Then came the jingle and then the Back Door Blues of blues shouter Jimmy Witherspoon from 1953 on the Federal label and finally the Southside Mood of Jimmy McCracklin, that's been on three obscure labels - the Trilon label in Oakland where McCracklin came from, and then the Chicago based labels Marvel and the Old Swing Master, and that latter mainly did issues of either defunct or partnered record labels.
Next a late recording of Rosetta Howard. She used to be one of Decca's great pre-war stars and a lot of her recordings have been done with the Harlem Hamfats - Decca's house band in the late thirties. In '47 she made some recordings for the Columbia label - in these years it had a race series on their flagship label, a pretty unsuccesful series, until they revived the old OKeh imprint.
Here she is with Too Many Drivers.
06 - 47 - Rosetta Howard - Too Many Drivers
07 - 47 - Johnny Otis - Good Boogdi Googie
From December of '46 the Good Boogdi Goodie of Johnny Otis with George Washington singing. Washington played the trombone in the band of Johnny Otis. Before, he'd been in several bands including Mills Blue Rhythm Band, Fletcher Henderson's, and with Louis Armstrong and there his trombone solo is on several recordings, including Yes Suh, Red Cap and So Little Time.
This Good Boogdie Googie never made it to a release at the time, but it's on serveral re-issue compilation disks.
The next one is a real swing classic - the Sorghum Switch. Now it may be best known done by Jimmy Dorsey - but here's the original, first recording of Doc Wheeler and his Sunset Orchestra. From '42 on the Bluebird label, the Sorghum Switch.
08 - 41 - Doc Wheeler's Sunset Orchestra - Sorghum Switch
09 - 40 - Big Bill Broonzy - Hit the Right Lick
From 1940 on the Bluebird label that was Hit The Right Lick of Big Bill Broonzy - on the label credited just as Big Bill. Now he's proven to be one of the greats of Chicago's blues scene, but his origins and early career are pretty vague and full of contradictions and myths. He'd been playing his home-made fiddle on numerous occastions, but by 1915 - some sources say - as a seventeen year-old boy he married, and started working as a sharecropper. Legend has it that he was offered a new violin and fifty dollars if he'd play for four days at a local venue, and his wife already had spent the money, so that brought him back into the music - also a drought in 1916 and being drafted in the war to fight in Europe, it ended his short farming career.
In 1920 he moved to Chicago and switched from fiddle to guitar and with the help of Papa Charlie Jackson, Broonzy got his first recording in '27 with Paramount. His success years came when producer Lester Melrose brought him to the ARC studios and later he set him up with the Bluebird label.
Next the band of Richard M. Jones, named the Jazz Wizards and pianist Jones already had a long career after him when he recorded the next one in '35. Born in 1892 and raised in New Orleans he played the piano in the Storyville brothels at age sixteen and later he led a band that included King Oliver. Jones moved to Chicago in 1918 and next to playing the piano he got involved in management work, for music publisher Clarence Williams and later for OKeh and Decca as a supervisor for the Race music department.
This was taken for the Decca label in 1935. Here is Richard M. Jones and his Jazz Wizards with Muggin' The Blues.
10 - 35 - Richard M. Jones - Muggin' The Blues
11 - 27 - Bessie Smith - A Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight
Bessie Smith was that with her 1927 recording for Columbia - There'll Be A Hot Time In Old Town Tonight, by then already a pretty old ragtime song, it was written in 1896, probably based on an older song, and it's still popular today with the fans of the Chicago Fire Soccer Club.
Now this is somewhat out of the ordinary of the blues that I play usually. As I said it's much older than that but it's not just old-style ragtime - it resembles the music played at African-American revival meetings, religious services either to get people to connect to the church or to conduct services in places where there was no church. And Bessie Smith's strong voice and the orchestration make it a wonderful and convincing piece of music to play.
For the next two we dive even deeper into the roaring twenties. On the Banner label from 1925, here is Nettie Porter or Potter, her name is often confused, with the Blind Man Blues.
12 - 24 - Nettie Porter - Blind Man Blues (Take 1)
13 - 22 - Trixie Smith - Freight Train Blues
From 1922 on the Black Swan label the Freight Train Blues - and Black Swan was the first and most important African-American owned record label in the acoustic era. The early twenties were the top of Smith's career, but in the late thirties she re-done a lot of her twenties songs for Decca with a great orchestration.
Well that was the oldest blues for today - for the next one we go back to the thirties with the vocal group the Five Jinks and you can hear how they were inspired by the Mills Brothers. Recordings were made in three adjacent rooms in the Charlotte Hotel in Charlotte NC.
Here is There Goes My Headache.
14 - 37 - Five Jinks - There Goes My Headache
15 - Cootie Williams - Echoes Of Harlem
And what a way to end this show, with this masterpiece of trumpeter Cootie Williams. That were the Echoes of Harlem, recorded in '44 and released on the Majestic and Hit labels.
There was some real old stuff in today's list and also some serious jazz, completely different styles that all go under the common name of African American music and I hope there was something in it for you, or better that you liked 'em all. Well you can tell me - feedback is greatly appreciated and the address to write to is rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com.
Now I told you a lot of information today and just in case you missed someone, I put all of these stories on-line on my website for you to read. Do a web search for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and it will show up first, and once in, you'll need this show number, 237 to select it in the episodes list - or use the search button on my home page.
I'm done for today, so I hope to see you again, here on the the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!