This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.
And today's journey through the history of African-American music brings us to the roaring twenties, with an independent record label that brought gospel, blues and jazz - the QRS label. I'll tell you more about this short-lived record label later, but first some music. Among the very first releases of the 7000 series of the label was for the obscure blues singer Ki Ki Johnson. Here he is accompanying himself on the banjo with Lady Your Clock Ain't Right.
01 - Ki Ki Johnson - Lady Your Clock Ain't Right
02 - Anna Bell - Hopeless Blues
That was the band of Clarence Williams backing a singer with the name of Anna Bell, with the Hopeless Blues. Clarence Williams is featured prominently on the 7000 series of QRS, he was the musical director for QRS in 1928 and his band was somewhat the house band backing several blues singers. The 7000 Race series was in fact a second incarnation of the label - the first series were re-issues from the Emerson and Gennett labels. There has been a third series with popular dance music in the early thirties, pressed on inferior shellac.
The parent company has made fame as a producer of piano rolls, and the company still exists, still producing these piano rolls but they're also active in music software.
The 7000 series that I feature today, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman, they were recorded and manufactured in close cooperation with Gennett records and several of the titles also got released on the Paramount label. Recordings were done in the Gennett Studio on Long Island. The series were supervised by Art Satherley. He was born in England and moved to Wisconsin in 1913. He'd been A&R man for Paramount since 1923 and in the thirties, he continued to do so for the ARC labels and later Columbia. More even than the blues, he's seen as an important producer for country music and that got him a place in the country music hall of fame.
For the next one from the catalog of QRS I go to an oddity that I normally would not play on this program. The story of this ensemble - the Old South Quartette - starts with Polk Miller, a Virginia pharmacist born in 1844 and he'd learned to play the banjo from the slaves on his fathers plantation. As a pharmacist he started a line of animal care products that as a brand name, Sergeant's Pet Care Products, still exists today.
In 1892, he made a career switch to music, and he started a musical group consisting of himself and four black singers. In the first decade of the 20th century they toured all of the country and in 1909 they also recorded for Thomas Edison's label of cylinder recordings. The shows depicted rural African-American life in slavery time, with all of the racist prejudice of the time - but they revived old Black folk songs and sprituals, not only for white audiences but also in African-American churches. Miller himself is known having performed many Black spirituals, sometimes he billed himself as The Old Virginia Plantation Negro and no, he was not blackfaced, as was usual for the time when white performers impersonated African-Americans, when he performed as such.
Now - Miller had been a son of a slavery plantation owner, a confederate soldier and he's known as a slavery apologist. But in the meanwhile, in his scrapbook, Miller wrote of the problems and racial discrimination he faced while touring the nation, both in Northern states as in the South. It was at age 48 that he made his pretty radical career switch - so I wonder if something had happened in his life that made him not only change his view on African-Americans, but also giving him a notion to spread the culture of them in his shows. We'll never know what drove him - but I thought this story too interesting not to share with you, listeners.
Now in 1928 members of the Old South Quartette - and through time there must have been twenty - apparently they still were active or they must have reunited in the studio for re-recordings of a few of their old songs. Here is on QRS 7029 the remake of their song Watermelon Party - on the label misspelled as the Watermillion Party.
03 - Old South Quartette - Watermillion Party
04 - State Street Ramblers - Endurance Stomp
(jingle)
05 - Katherine Henderson - Have You Ever Felt That Way
06 - Earl Hines - Panther Rag
And that was a whole lot of music - you got four in a row. After the Old South Quartette, that were the State Street Ramblers with the Endurance Stomp. The State Street Ramblers was the name of a loose group of studio musicians, around pianist Jimmy Blythe. The recordings were released on several labels using different names for the group - on QRS as the South Street Ramblers.
Then after the jingle, that was Katherine Henderson backed by the band of Clarence Williams with Have You Ever Felt That Way. On this, Williams kept it in the family - Henderson was a niece to his wife Eva Taylor. All of her recordings for QRS were done in Long Island in 1928, and one also made it to a Paramount issue. A year before, she'd recorded for Brunswick, also with her uncle Clarence, songs from her appearance in a not-so-succesful musical that Williams produced. After her last two recordings in 1930, she kept on performing, until she married in '44, well in her thirties, went back to her hometown in St. Louis and got three children.
And then finally that piano instrumental, that was the Pather Rag of Earl 'Fatha' Hines, for the time unprecedented piano solos. Hines is generally seen as one of the most influential piano players in his time, many say he very much shaped jazz. He himself called it trumpet style, and to his close friend Louis Armstrong he told that he wasn't fit to play the trumpet so he played on the piano what he would have played on the horn. His style was much influenced by working around the limitations of an unamplified jazz band, where the horns naturally make much more noise than an upright piano.
Now his most succesful years in the twenties and thirties, he played a Bechstein Grand piano in the Grand Terrace in Chicago, a venue owned by Chicago's infamous gangster Al Capone, and from there, his band was on national radio every day - influencing other great pianists such as Nat King Cole and Jay McShann.
And from one of the greatest of jazz we jump to a classic whorehouse tune done by a St. Louis bluesman - James Stump Johnson. A popular party song, "Shake your shoulders, shake 'em fast, if you can't shake your shoulders, shake your yas-yas-yas" - well, that explains all. The Duck's Yas Yas Yas has been covered numerous times since. Here is on QRS 7049, James Stump Johnson.
07 - Stump Johnson - The Duck's Yas Yas Yas
08 - Chicken Wilson & Skeeter Hinton - Myrtle Avenue Stomp
There's hardly anything to find on this blues duo, George 'Chicken' Wilson and Jimmy 'Skeeter' Hinton, but the few recordings they done for the QRS label. Wilson plays the guitar, and the bellboard - the percussion on this Myrtle Avenue Stomp - it's done by Hinton. On other recordings they done, the harmonica of Hinton and the kazoo of Wilson is to be heard.
The next one is one of the many names that the band of Clarence Williams went by. What exact the reason is, that he doesn't appear under his own name on this one, is probably lost to history. QRS did issue some records with the name of Williams on it, but here his combo goes by the name of the Barrelhouse Five. As Williams himself worked for the label, it must have been on his own request. Well, here he is with the Scuffling Blues.
09 - Clarence Williams as Barrelhouse Five - Scufflin' Blues
10 - QRS Boys - Wiggle Yo Toes
Wiggle Yo Toes credited to the QRS Boys, a studio trio consisting of saxophonist Robert Cloud, fiddler Benny Nawahi and led by pianist Walter Pichon. Now Fats Pinchon was a New Orleans pianist, and started professional music at age fourteen. During the early twenties he worked in New York and studied in Boston, but by the middle of the decade he returned to his hometown. He lead several combos, including, in the thirties, what was seen as the best big band of the Crescent City - unfortunately they never recorded.
Next songwriter pianist J. C. Johnson - not to be confused with James P. Johnson - and we're talking number 7062 of the catalog of the QRS label, that I spotlight here, on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. This Jay Johnson was born in Chicago and he moved to New York in the early twenties, where he worked with Ethel Waters. Later, at the end of the decade, he was one of the musicians in Blind Willie Dunn & His Gin Bottle Four - a name to disguise that it was led by the Italian-American guitarist Salvatore Massaro, on stage better known as Eddie Lang.
In the thirties Johnson wrote the highly unsuccesful broadway musical Change Your Luck starring Alberta Hunter, and also a score of songs for Bessie Smith, Fats Waller, the Boswell Sisters and the band of Chick Webb.
Here he leads a combo credited on the label as his Five Hot Sparks. Enjoy the Red Hot Hottentot.
11 - J.C. Johnson & His Five Hot Sparks - Red Hot Hottentot
12 - Coot Grant & Socks Wilson - Uncle Joe
Coot Grant and Wesley Kid Wilson were that with Uncle Joe - and as husband and wife they performed for decades in vaudeville theatres doing blues and comedy and they were active as songwriters. They recorded with many greats - Fletcher Henderson, Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong and Mezz Mezzrow. They also starred in the 1933 movie The Emperor Jones.
Next under the name of Sluefoot Joe Alabama-born country blues singer Ed Bell, accompanied by Cliff Gibson on the guitar. Bell also recorded for Paramount, and for the Columbia label as Barefoot Bill. Bell later became a preacher, and got involved in the civil rights movement of the sixties. Some say he was murdered for this, or died due to voodoo or black magic.
Here he is with She's a Fool Gal.
13 - Ed Bell - She's a Fool Gal
14 - Slim Barton & Eddie Mapp - It's Tight Like That
Harmonica bluesman Eddie Mapp and Slim Barton with It's Tight Like That and they were part of the small circle of Atlanta bluesmen, Curley Weaver, Barbecue Bob and Charlie Hicks. From his early teens, Mapp busked the streets of his hometown until he was found stabbed to death on the street in 1931, just twenty years young.
Next on QRS 7083 blues guitarist and singer Clifford Gibson. Gibson is seen as one of the first urban blues singers without country influences. He was part of the St. Louis scene and there he played his blues on the streets. Later in 1960 he got rediscovered and recorded two singles as Grandpappy Gibson, and found work as a musician on St. Louis Gaslight Square, the entertainment district.
Here he is with the Sunshine Moan.
15 - Clifford Gibson - Sunshine Moan
And the Sunshine Moan of Cliff Gibson - taken from some ninety-year old shellac - it ends today's show where I spotlighted the QRS label. There's much more to play from this label, so I suppose I will do another special on this label after some time.
And I want to add a few more words to the story I did on Polk Miller. His admiration for old-time African-American music, that he could sing as if he'd been a plantation slave himself, is quite a contrast with the way he spoke about the good old plantation time. He describes African-Americans with words that would be extremely offensive now. Still in his shows, Miller educated his audience about 19th century black music that would otherwise never have been preserved. I promise you listeners, I'm going to hunt after recordings from these 1909 and 1910 Edison cylinders to get you more of what's the oldest recorded history of African American music.
And I hope you enjoy my history lessons, my dear listeners, and of course you can provide feedback - it's greatly appreciated. Send e-mail to rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. And today's story is to be found on the website of this program, that you can find with a simple web search for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. You will find my show top of the search results. Once in, this was show number 255 but in the list of episodes, you can of course also look for the QRS label.
Time's up for today folks. Hope to see you again next week, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!