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, my dear audience, and let me get you the best again, of the four decades from the roaring twenties to the rocking fifties. Rhythm & Blues from even before it was ever called so, when times were hard and the music was great. This is, like every week, the story of African American music from the days before Rock & Roll struck the nation.
And I start in the twenties today, with Give Me That Slow Drag of Trixie Smith, the flip of her first version of My Man Rocks Me With One Steady roll. Probably recorded in 1922 and that was for the Paramount label. Here is Trixie Smith.
01 - Trixie Smith - Give Me That Slow Drag
02 - Fletcher Henderson - Everybody Loves My Baby
From 1925 the classic Everybody Loves My Baby written by Jack Palmer and Spencer Williams in the version of Fletcher Henderson and that also was on the Paramount label. This song was a big hit, and about every jazz band had it in their repertoire. It made it to a true classic that's still performed today, and I heard it being played by a street band in New Orleans when I was there a few years ago. Of course the good-natured message of pride for your partner is of all times, and it very much appeals to me.
And we stay in the year 1925 with pianist and songwriter Lem Fowler. He is the composer of the blues classic He May Be Your Man But He Comes To See Me Sometimes, and many other songs, and most of them he recorded himself. Fowler also made some piano rolls, including his He May Be Your Man. In the early thirties he disappeared off the radar. A music researcher did track him down in '62 - when there was a rise in interest for twenties music. Fowler could have gotten back in the spotlights, but he chose to disappear again, and no-one ever heard of him again.
This record, with his band the Washboard Wonders, is one of the few tracks that he didn't compose himself. It's composed in 1915 by King Phillips much in the style of W.C. Handy's very first blues composings. Well, would he ever have thought that more than a century later this would be played on radio - OK, on a specialty radio program - now I doubt. But here it is, Lem Fowler and his Washboard Wonders with the Florida Blues.
03 - Fowler's Washboard Wonders - The Florida Blues
04 - Barrel House Annie - Love Operation
(jingle)
05 - Tony Hollins - Married Woman Blues
06 - Lil Johnson - Come And Get It
Four in a row - after Lemuel Fowler's Washboard Wonders, you got Love Operation of the obscure Barrelhouse Annie, a recording from the mid-thirties, that didn't get released at the time. Some have linked this blues singer to Aletha Dickerson, the executive of Paramount from 1929 into the early thirties. Now it's pretty likely she played the piano - she done so in the same style on a few Bluebird more recordings for producer Lester Melrose. In an interview she done much later, she didn't recall anyone named Barrelhouse Annie, but that may well be the name of a blues singer whose real name, for whatever reason, never got printed on the label.
You got more - after the jingle the Married Woman Blues of Tony Hollins, a bluesman from Clarksdale, MS, and that was from a 1941 session for the OKeh label done in Chicago and that session yielded eight tracks, six of them got released. This song is about the infedelity of married women, they all have a backdoor man who comes to have fun with her when her own man is away. The singer vows he'll only marry a woman who don't know anything of this world. This blues got a few covers, some titled Backdoor Friend, by Jimmy Rogers and Wilbert Jenkins.
Then finally Come And Get It of Lil Johnson and that was on the Vocalion label from 1937. Lil Johnson recorded enough to fill three CDs on the Document label, but apart from her recording career everything about her is completely obscure. Lil Johnson's blues are all about sex in all kinds of double entendres, cause that always sold these days, all happy goodtime music.
For the next one the great Peetie Wheatstraw, one of the important blues singers of the St. Louis scene. By the mid-thirties he recorded both for Decca and Vocalion, mostly songs about the troubles of African Americans in urban settings, like most urban blues did.
Here is the Good Whiskey Blues.
07 - Peetie Wheatstraw - Good Whiskey Blues
08 - Memphis Minnie - Doctor Doctor Blues
The Doctor Doctor Blues from 1935 on the Bluebird label - that was Memphis Minnie. Her real name was Lizzie Douglas but she has always disliked that name, and as Kid Douglas she busked with her husband Joe McCoy on Beale Street in Memphis when a talent scout for the Columbia label heard them and he took 'em up to New York to record. It's at the Columbia studio that she was dubbed Memphis Minnie.
In '35 the two divorced and Minnie was one of the regular musicians around producer Lester Melrose, doing sessions for the Bluebird and Vocalion labels, and in between she also recorded for Decca - apparently without consequences and with no exclusive contracts.
Next the only record of the obscure band of Nate Leslie, done in Hollywood in 1937 for the Vocalion label. In the background you're hearing the flip of the record, Shake Yo Bones and I played that a few weeks ago. Together with what I play next, they've become favorites of me immediately.
It's swing music, but I think this self-penned goodie is outstanding in its originality, good enough to be from one of the top bands of its time, say, Count Basie or Duke Ellington. But then - this is the only record that's ever been made of this band that remains completely obscure. What they played next to these two gems, on their gigs or in whatever ballroom or venue they performed, it tickles my curiosity and fantasy, but it'll remain lost to history, and with that, the answer to the question, was this a combo that could well meet the cream of the crop of America's swing era, or are these two recordings the unlikely good lucky shots of a moderate territory band?
We'll never know and the only thing that remains are two extraordinary good and original tunes that stole my heart. Listen for yourself. Here is Shaggin' At The Shore of Nate Leslie.
09 - Nate Leslie - Shaggin' at the shore
10 - Richard M. Jones - 29th And Dearborn
Richard M. Jones, the pianist, band leader and songwriter of the blues classic Trouble In Mind and you heard from what probably will have been from his last session, 29th and Dearborn, and that was released on the Session label. He'd been recording it before, in the mid-twenties as Richard M. Jones and his Jazz Wizards for Okeh.
Apart from songwriting and leading a band, he was the recording supervisor for Okeh's Chicago studios for the Race recordings during the twenties, working with many greats, including Louis Armstrong. From the mid-thirties did the same work for Decca. In '45 he joined the newly established Mercury label as a talent scout, but later that year he died.
The next one is another pianist, and again an obscure goodie. This Raymond Barrow sure can pound a boogie-woogie out of his piano, but this is his only recording that made it to a record - the flip of this Paramount number 12803 was the as obscure bluesman calling himself Freezone with the Indian Squaw blues, also the only recording that survived of him.
Now it's likely that that both artists done more in their sessions, but none of that was in the books of Paramount, and there are no surviving masters of the label. Cause legend has it, that angry former employees threw them into the Milwaukee river but divers searching for remains never found anything - more likely they've been sold for scrap metal.
This recording of Raymond Barrow saw another release on the Broadway label, also paired with another artist. From 1929, and the recording sounds much younger, here is the Walking Blues.
11 - Raymond Barrow - Walking Blues
12 - Jack McVea - The Crows Boogie
The Crow's Boogie from 1946 was that and you heard Jack McVea on the Black & White label. McVea led the house band of the label after having served a few years with Lionel Hampton. In the forties, McVea was one of the top artists working on Central Avenue of Los Angeles - the place to be for African-Americans.
Next a recording J. Mayo Williams did for his Ebony label, of bassist and singer Duke Groner and his trio the Honey Dripper Boys, that is, that's how they're credited on the label of the record. Now it must have been released on the Ebony label but a copy never surfaced, but Mayo Williams sold the master to Ivan Ballen of 20th Century label in Philadelphia - and that's how it survived. Here is Duke Groner with the New Blow Top Blues.
13 - Duke Groner - New Blow Top Blues
14 - Charles Brown - Let's Have A Ball
Who can that be but Charles Brown - you heard Lets Have A Ball and that was on the Aladdin label from 1949. The label credit the guitarist and bassist as his Smarties, and that were Charles Norris and Eddie Williams.
Next on the Savoy label the fourth record of Billy Wright. He was from Atlanta and the regular performer in the 81 Theatre, and Paul 'Hucklebuck' Williams saw him there and he recommended him to the boss of Savoy records, Herman Lubinsky. Wright he in his turn helped his close friend Little Richard get his first contract with RCA.
Here he is with the Thinkin' Blues.
15 - Billy Wright - Thinkin' Blues
16 - Orville 'Fats' Noel - Ride, Daddy, Ride
From 1952 Ride Daddy Ride of Orville 'Fats' Noel on the DeLuxe label and with that, I have to close the hour, cause time's up again. I hope you liked today's show and well of course, you can let me know and mail me at rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. Feedback is greatly appreciated. And should you want to read back what I told you today, or you wanna find out what'll be on for next week, it's all on my website and easiest way to get there is to search Google for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. Once in, this is show 244 and you're gonna need that number to find it in that long list of episodes that I done up to now.
Next week there will be more hot Rhythm & Blues from me. Until then, don't get the blues. See you next time, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!