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 to my program, my faithful listeners, for another hour of Rhythm & Blues, early blues and jazz from days long gone by - when times were hard and the music was great. The rocking fifties, the roaring twenties and everything in between come by and today's playlist will span over thirty years of the best of African-American music - the music that proved to be so important for all of our modern popular music.
And I start with a recording of a man who by then was a veteran of the music scene. Pianist Sam Price had been recording for some twenty years, he was hired as the session pianist with Decca in 1938 and in these years he done his best sides were with his Texas Bluesicians - but twenty years later he was still alive and kicking with his band. Here is from 1956 on the Savoy label, the Rib Joint.
01 - Sam Price - Rib Joint
02 - Lynn Hope - Move It
From '52 on the Aladdin label saxophonist Lynn Hope with Move it. Hope was known for always wearing a turban of fez on stage and that was not as a gimmick - he was a converted Muslim, took the name of Al Hajji Abdullah Rascheed Ahmed and in the early fifties he seems to have had quite a following. At least, his devotion to Islam never took him from playing honking Rhythm & Blues.
Next on from 1954 another sax player, J.T. 'Nature Boy' Brown. Brown was part of the post-war Chicago scene and in the early fifties had a few sessions for the United label - but the presence of saxophonist Freddy Underwood got him and the label in big trouble with the 208 Local of the almighty American Federation of Musicians - Underwood was no union member and that meant the end of Brown's work in the Windy City for several years. He went on the road with Elmore James and cut the next side with the Meteor label in Hollywood. Her is the Sax-Ony Boogie.
03 - J.T. Brown - Sax-ony Boogie
04 - Roy Milton - My Sweetheart
(jingle)
05 - King Porter - Bumps Boogie
06 - Buster Bennett - It Can Never Happen
And that was a whole lotta jumping Rhythm & Blues again - after J.T. Brown's instrumental, you got from 1950 Roy Milton and his Solid Senders with My Sweetheart, that was released on the Specialty label. Milton was one of the many drummers that led a band, and his Solid Senders were around from 1933, already featuring Camille Howard on the piano. His 1945 hit R.M. Blues on the Juke Box label, the forerunner of Specialty, it was the push that label owner Art Rupe needed to get started in the business. Rupe soon renamed his label to Specialty, and Milton stayed with him for ten years - though in '45 and '46 he also had his own record label Miltone.
Then after the jingle came Bumps Boogie billed to some King Porter on the Imperial label. This was the West Coast based trumpeter Vernon 'Jake' Porter and on this recording, Gene Phillips, Gene Porter and Bumps Myers are to be heard. This Bumps Boogie is, of course, named after the saxophonist of the band. The name of King Porter of course harks back to the famous jazz classic the King Porter Stomp composed by Jelly Roll Morton decades before, according to Morton even in the early 1900s.
Then, finally you got a Columbia recording of Buster Bennett from 1946 titled It Can Never Happen. Bennet got in the Chicago scene in 1938 as a soprano and alto saxophonist and soon he got recording dates with the blues artists that were managed by Lester Melrose, for the Vocalion and Bluebird labels, and so he worked with Monkey Joe, Bill Broonzy, Merline Johnson - a.k.a. the Yas Yas Girl - and Washboard Sam.
Columbia hired him as an attempt to provide an answer to the huge popularity of Louis Jordan - but apart from playing the alto sax and leading a combo, the two had very little in common. Eventually, he switched to the tenor sax, as the heavier sound of the larger horn got more and more in fashion in Rhythm & Blues.
For the next one, a goodie of Joe Liggins on the Exclusive label from 1949. Here is Loosiana.
07 - Joe Liggins - Loosiana
08 - Lonnie Johnson - Keep What You Got
A postwar recording of Lonnie Johnson on the Disc label - you heard Keep what You Got. Johnson made his fame in the twenties and thirties as a blues and jazz guitarist, performing with Victoria Spivey, Bessie Smith and Texas Alexander, and as a sideman with Louis Armstong's Hot Five and the band of Duke Ellington. In 1939 he started playing the electrical guitar and after the war he did a good shot in Rhythm & Blues with the monster hit Tomorrow Night. That was for the King label, the sides for the Disc label were before that.
Next from 1945 on the Joe Davis label Champion Jack Dupree. This is the flip of She Makes Good Jelly, the Rum Cola Blues.
09 - Champion Jack Dupree - Rum Cola Blues
10 - Elsie Williams - You Got Something There
You Got Something There - that was the obscure singer Elsie Williams on the Decca label from 1937. Her name does pop up on a recording of Swing Song from a 1907 operetta Veronique - but I do wonder if that's the same singer.
Next the thirties jive group the Three Keys of George 'Bon Bon' Tunnell. Before, he sang and played the piano in his group Bon Bon and his Buddies but the group didn't survive the deepest of the Great Depression. Later, he was the first Black featured singer in the all-white big band of Jan Savitt. Here he is with his three Keys on the Vocalion label, with the thirties classic Someone Stole Gabriel's Horn.
11 - Three Keys - Someone Stole Gabriel's Horn
12 - Cab Calloway - Eadie Was A Lady
Recorded in 1932 for the ARC labels that was Cab Calloway with Eadie Was A Lady - and it made it to releases on virtually all of the ARC labels - Melotone, Perfect, Banner, Romeo, Oriole and Vocalion. This was at the height of his popularity in the Cotton Club, the prestigious jazz venue in Harlem with its strictly segregated policy - whites only at the front door, blacks only at the artist's entrance.
His records - with their maximum of three minutes and a bit, on most of them his singing takes up all of the recording, but on stage he let the soloists of his band excel in much longer arrangements of his songs than we know now. Calloway himself played no instrument in his band, he was the singer only and he did that with an enthousiasm and flair that made him the main attraction of the Cotton Club next to Duke Ellington. Calloway's role on stage was the type of the African-American hepcat and with that, he popularized African-American sub-culture among his stricly white audience - he created a touch of cool that it never lost since.
Next that other cat of the Cotton Club with a recording from October of 1928 - Duke Ellington with Move Over.
13 - Duke Ellington - Move Over
14 - Victoria Spivey - Dirty T.B. Blues
From '29 on the Victor label, the Dirty T.B. Blues of Victoria Spivey - a haunting song of heartbreak after everyone left her since she contracted tuberculosis. Together with the dramatic trumpeting of Henry Red Allen, this is a blues that gets me the chills on my spine every time I hear it.
It's hard to imagine nowadays, but poverty and inadequate treatment, made the TB a number one killer disease these days, and during the Great Depression it struck hard among African-Americans. In this blues, even worse than the death sentence that the disease was, is being left by all of the singer's friends and family to die in an anonymous sanatorium that the Lord railroaded her to.
For the next one, the story of a man who got in jail for killing a man after drinking too much whiskey - or canned heat as it's called on here. It was recorded in Atlanta in 1928 for the Okeh label. Here is the Canned Heat Blues of Sloppy Henry.
15 - Sloppy Henry - Canned Heat Blues
16 - Billy & Mary Mack with Clarence Williams - You Don't Want Much
17 - Nina Reeves - Indiana Avenue Blues
And we end deep in the roaring twenties, with the Indiana Avenue Blues of Nina Reeves, recorded in July of 1923 in the Gennett studio and released on a tiny subsidiary label named Indianapolis. This blues has the typical feature that many blues of the acoustical era had - a four-line intro verse that tells some story about what's in the twelve-bar blues that's treated like the refrain of the song. Much sheet music from the mid-1910's and the early twenties had that format. From 1925 more and more the blues recordings left out that intro and got that twelve-bar format that we know so well.
Before Neena Reeves, that was a 1926 recording of Clarence Williams in a trio setting, fronted by Billy and Mary Mack with You Don't Want Much.
And that pretty much was it for today, listeners. I hope you enjoyed my selection, most of it comes from albums I got myself through the years, often they came with one track that I needed for this show. Well if you liked it, or not, or if you have anything to comment, ask, or say about this show, please feel free to e-mail, the address is rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. And all of today's story is to be found on the website of this program, that you can find with a web search for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman - once you got in, this was show number 256 in that long list of episodes that I produced up to now. There's also a convenient search function, powered by Google, where you can search the site.
For now I'm done, and there will be more of me next week. See you again, for more Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!