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 ladies singing of heartbreak and no good men, their man taken away from home by Uncle Sam or about their ability to steal men from other women. Women's blues definitely are a kind apart and I packed some of the best of them in today's show. And for our first song we're going back to the war, when Ella Johnson sings about the day her man comes home from war. Her brother Buddy leads the band.
01 - Buddy Johnson feat. Ella Johnson - When my man comes home
02 - Helen Humes - Flippity Flop Flop
No man no job now where can I go? Helen Humes with one of her moodiest blues that contrast so much with the title Flippety Flop Flop. The recording is from 1948 on Mercury.
From Etta Jones you'll get the overwork blues. Jazz people know her from her sixties and later recordings, but for me her forties blues just hit me, and already her first recordings featured great names in the band that accompanied her - Barney Bigard and Georgie Auld. The overwork blues were recorded on RCA Victor and released in 1947.
03 - Etta Jones - Overwork Blues
04 - Alberta Hunter - Yelping Blues
And we made a dive into the thirties with Alberta Hunter and her yelping blues. This woman was born back in 1895 and really has a remarkable biography. She lived in poverty in Memphis in a fatherless family until her mother remarried in 1905, but Alberta wasn't happy with her mom's new choice and ran off from home to Chicago when she was just eleven years old to become a singer, but instead she ended up at a boardinghouse where she got to work, later to be rejoined by her mother.
Well, finally she got her singing job and had to climb up the ladder from the lowest joints to a five-year job at the prestigious Dreamland ballroom in 1917 for a good $35 a week. It's that year that she also toured Europe for the first time to find out that there, black singers were treated with respect - unlike in America.
She wrote songs and recorded for several labels in the twenties and got into a conflict with the influential producer J. Mayo Wiliams who sold the rights for her Downhearted Blues where he never owned them, and made that a big hit for Bessie Smith. She played in musicals, toured in England and sang for the soldiers in the war.
In 1954 her mother died, and at the age of 58 she started a new career in nursing, enrolling in a nursing school on a falsified high school diploma and, let's call it a little lie on her age. Work that she did until 1977, so into her 80s, when the nursing home sent her off for retirement. So as an old lady she restarted her music career because she was bored and had nothing to do and she stayed active in music until her death at the age of 89.
There's a youtube clip her as an elderly lady singing the wonderful double entendre blues My Man is a Handyman en clearly enjoys all the dirty talk she's singing. I think everyone deserves a great-grandmother like her.
We stay in the thirties with Trixie Smith with her wonderful Trixie Blues - originally from 1925 but in the late thirties she re-recorded a lot of her twenties songs for Decca, all with a gorgeous orchestration, and this is one of them.
05 - Trixie Smith - Trixie Blues
06 - Rosetta Howard & the Harlem Hamfats - Rosetta Blues
Rosetta Howard - we know little of her life other than her musical career and her music that survived and made it to three CDs that spans all her recordings, at least that we know of. This - the Rosetta Blues - was done for Decca and backed up by the Harlem Hamfats as one of the brilliant outcomes of a few recording sessions in 1937 and 38. And I love that line in it - I ain't got no future, but lord, lord what a past.
There's a striking resemblance between the two songs that I just played. Not only for the title - Trixie's blues, Rosetta's blues - but both consist of loosely consistent lyrics that seem like a bunch of commonplaces that you find in many other blues. I know a lot more songs with content like that, but they are partying song much closer to the rock & roll era where the lyrics are of minor importance to the danceability, well you can't say that for these two.
Both of them are pretty down-to-earth subjects that are typical for thirties blues, and you can say that for the following song, Dan the backdoor man by Georgia White. The backdoor man is the guy who sneaks in as the other boyfriend of the woman while her husband has gone to work. Dan, originally Dan Tucker, as a name for the ladykiller who sleeps around had been around since the 19th century minstrel shows and he stayed popular in the blues. Listen to Georgia White.
07 - Georgia White - Dan The Back Door Man
08 - Monette Moore & the Sam Price Trio - Another Woman's Man
On Decca from 1947 Another Woman's man - that was Monette Moore. The lack of men - and women sharing them - was popular in the blues the first years after the war. Many had died for Uncle Sam and that theme is also in the Married Man Blues of Helen Humes, from 1946 released on the small Black & White label.
09 - Helen Humes - Married Man Blues
10 - Lil Green - Blow Top Blues
Lil Green with the Blow Top Blues. There are quite a few versions out there of this song, other notable versions are by Dinah Washington and Etta Jones whom we heard earlier this episode of the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman.
I want to go on with Mabel Scott whom we know best for her postwar Los Angeles recordings. She'd been around in New York and went to England in 1936 but the war forced her to return and she settled in Los Angeles for her most famous years. This one, the Mabel Blues, is somewhat later, recorded in Chicago for Parrot records in 1953. Mabel Scott.
11 - Mabel Scott - Mabel Blues
12 - Albinia Jones - Salty Papa Blues
From 1945 the Salty Papa Blues. You heard Albinia Jones backed up by the Don Byas Swing Seven and that came straight from a 78 of the National label.
Next up, Annisteen Allen, she was one of the many vocalists that were featured on Lucky Millinder's orchestra. She signed in 1953 with Federal records to sing with Millinder. Listen to Slide mr. trombone - a song that Millinder had recorded before, on Decca, ten years earlier.
13 - Lucky Millinder feat. Annisteen Allen - Slide mr. trombone
14 - Dolly Cooper - Down So Long
(rocking dutchman jingle)
15 - Little Esther - Looking For A Man
16 - Swinging Sax Kari feat. Gloria Irving - Henry
Gloria Irving accompanied by the orchestra of the pretty obscure and colourful Sax Kari singing Henry. On Saxton Kari Toombs I did a story a few weeks ago, he really is one of a kind but today, the ladies are in the spotlights. Now on Gloria Irving unfortunately there's pretty little to find. According to Jet Magazine she quit university to become a singer in order to earn enough money to continue her study. After her work with Kari she recorded a mambo-like song, I need a man, for the Cobra label in 1957.
Before that you got Little Esther backed up by the Dominoes from 1951. Looking for a man to satisfy my soul and that was released on the Federal label. Esther Philips had left by then the man who had discovered her, Johnny Otis, and who'd brought her to the spotlights and into the top of the chart, to record for the federal label. An unfortunate move as it turned out, because Federal failed to bring her the success that Otis did, and Esther Phillips got seriously addicted to drugs that put a halt on her career until the sixties.
And then I have to account for the song that came before the jingle, that was Dolly Cooper, a talented singer that was around in the mid-fifties for just a few years, and she never got a real breakthrough. Some fine blues and rocking tunes have survived, and if J.C. Marion hadn't documented a little on the short career of this lady on a forgotten Earthlink page, it would have been really hard to find any. From her you heard Down So Long.
So there's still time for one more. You'll get Dinah Washington with Baby Get Lost from 1949 on the Mercury label.
17 - Dinah Washington - Baby Get Lost
And the great lady of the blues, Dinah Washington closes today's show that was packed with some great women's blues. I hope you liked them and that you agree that they indeed are a kind apart. Let me know what you thought of them, and send me an e-mail to rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. You can also find today's playlist and read back the stories that I told you today on my web site. Just do a google search for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and my site will show up first in the reseults. For now, time is up so byebye and I hope to see you back, next time on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman.