This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.
And I'm making it easy on myself today. Recently I laid my hands on a 1977 Japanese set of four LPs, dedicated to the Chance label. And the makers have dug deeply in the vaults putting a whole lot of unreleased material in the grooves. I'm gonna play some tracks from these four slabs of vinyl and there will be enough to tell about then, so let's start with the music. From J.B. Lenoir you will get the Mojo Boogie.
01 - J.B. Lenore - Mojo boogie
02 - J.B. Lenore - I want my baby
More J.B. Lenore with I want my baby and neither this nor the Mojo Boogie that I played before, were ever released by Chance but it's been probably for the collaboration of Chance with J.O.B. records in 1953, when this was recorded, that they were included on the four-LP compilation on Chance records that I feature today here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. J.B in his name didn't stand for anything particularly, it was just his given name. He became famous for some of his political engaged songs including the Eisenhower Blues from 1954 and several anti racism songs.
On that same disc were a few songs of Lazy Bill Lucas. 'I had a dream' was the flip of his only single for Chance, She got me walkin', but on the LP another, unreleased take was included. After that you will get My Baby's Gone that went unreleased for Chance records.
03 - Lazy Bill Lucas - I had a dream
04 - Lazy Bill Lucas - My baby's gone
(jingle)
05 - Johnny Shines - Brutal hearted woman
06 - Johnny Shines - No name blues
Again two releases for the J.O.B. label from the short while that they had a close co-operation with Chance. You heard the Brutal hearted woman and the No name blues, the first unfortunately commercially went nowhere and the second was never released until this Japanese album saw the light. Before he'd recorded for Columbia and Chess but both record labels didn't release anything of it. After his failed records for J.O.B. Johnny Shines quit the music business until 1966 and it was the blues revival that brought him the appreciation he deserved.
More unreleased material, of Tampa Red. Probably recorded for the Sabre subsidiary of Chance, here is Beat That Bop.
07 - Tampa Red - Beat that bop
08 - Tampa Red - Please Mr. Doctor
Please Mr. Doctor, that was Tampa Red billed as Jimmy Eager, because he still was under contract with RCA Victor. Please Mr. Doctor was the flip of I Should Have Loved Her More and the first release of Sabre records, number 100.
Next a song from a pretty unknown blues lady, Kitty Stevenson. This went unreleased adn actually never recorded for Chance - it had come into the catalog by some coincidence. You'll get the story right after the music. Here are That Jive and after that you'll get Train no. 1.
09 - Kitty Stevenson - That jive
10 - Kitty Stevenson - Train No.1
I found these two great songs billed as Kitty Stevens on the 1977 four-record album set on the Japanese P-vine label that I feature today in my show. It took me some time to find out the story behind it and the quest brings us to the obscurest and smallest labels of the blooming Chicago R&B era. Now according to the album info this was recorded on December 28 of 1952 in Chicago, but the compilers were wrong. Kitty Stevenson - that was her name, not Stevens - had died in the summer of '52, half a year before, in a Detroit hospital. On that date in December Art Sheridan - the owner of Chance records - had bought the masters from Al Benson, the owner of the defunct Old Swing Master label that he'd run together with Egmont Sonderling.
Now the strange thing is that Stevenson hadn't recorded it for them either. Egmont Sonderling had got the masters from another, even more obscure Chicago label, Vitacoustic. The cuts should be placed in the recording frenzy of December 1947, when all record companies made sure to get as many recorded material as possible before the second musicians union's recording ban of 1948 started. In mid-December of '47 Billboard Magazine reports that Kitty Stevenson had signed with Vitacoustic - and as I'll tell you later, the label wouldn't survive the next year.
Now this recording date makes more sense than the december '52 that the album said, just judging from the style I mean. Between '48 and '52 a radical stylistic change had caught Rhythm & Blues - the change that defined Rock 'n Roll, and most characteristic in that was the influx of gospel elements like the strong back beat and the way of singing. This sounds just too old-fashioned for the brink of 1953 - these are mid-forties jump blues.
The United Broadcasting Studios where the recordings were done, never got paid for their services and the records weren't released for Vitacoustic. And that's how the masters got in the hands of Egmont Sonderling whose United Broadcasting Studios were owed over 13 thousand dollars for all recordings done for Vitacoustic - only a small part of the label's total debt of 182,000 dollars when it went bankrupt in 1948.
The recordings of Kitty Stevenson were done with the orchestra of Todd Rhodes and finally were released, as third-hand material, on the Japanese album. Miss Stevenson never heard them on record, she was only 33 or 34 years old when she died and the story only tells that some illness, but not what, caused her untimely death. Her son, Mickey Stevenson, later became an important producer for the Motown label.
And so far for this sad story. Next up two recordings of Homesick James Williamson. To him a whole LP of that four-disc series is dedicated. Listen to his signature song, the Homesick Blues - not the version that made it to Chance number 1131, but an unissued, alternative take.
11 - Homesick James Williamson - Homesick blues
12 - Homesick James Williamson - My home in Georgia
My home in Georgia and that was released as the flip of the Homesick blues that I played before, as Chance 1131.
Now the Chance label started in 1950 founded by Art Shreridan and lived until 1954. It soon ran in trouble with the almighty Musicians Union for employing non-union members on a session with John 'Schoolboy' Porter and only after the Union's ban on the label ended in the spring of 1952 the label really got off. Most of the recordings that were included on the P-Vine albums that I feature today here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman, have been from late '52 and 53 when Chance signed a lot of bluesmen - you already heard Homesick James, Lazy Bill Lucas and Johnny Shines and you'll get some of Big Boy Spires and Sunnyland Slim. Most doowop lovers though know Chance as the label that signed the Moonglows, the Five Chances and the Flamingos. That was in 1954, the last year of the label's existance. Most artists moved over to Vee-Jay and so did Chance executives Ewart Abner and Art Shreridan - Abner as executive and Sheridan as investor.
13 - Big Boy Spires - Pine gasoline
14 - Big Boy Spires - Sometimes I wonder
Pine Gasoline and Sometimes I Wonder - you heard Arthur Big Boy Spires. From his arrival in Chicago in 1943 he was often considered a lesser bluesman, but he his Murmer Low from 1952 on Chess maybe sold poorly but it's nowadays seen as one of the great blues classics. The sides he cut for Chance were from 1953 and only the two I played made it to a Chance release, number 1137. Spires had to retire from playing guitar because he got arthritis - a disease that's eating up the joints of my bones too.
Next - Sunniland slim with When I Was Young, a recording from 1953.
15 - Sunnyland Slim - When I was young
16 - Johnny Williams - Fat mouth
17 - Bobby Prince - Better think it over
Better think it over - you heard Bobby Prince and that recording was from a session in January 1953. Backup was done by Al Smith whose band was somewhat the house band of Chance. Before that you got Fat Mouth of bluesman Johnny Williams. Now I was very happy to lay my hands on these four Japanese LPs that featured a lot of unissued material from the Chance and J.O.B. catalogs and of course that strange but sad story of the recordings of Kitty Stevenson from that obscure Vitacoustic label.
I hope you enjoyed the music and the information that came with it too, so let me know and send me an e-mail at rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. And should you want to read back what I told you today, just go to my web site, it's easy to find with a google search for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. For now my time is up so I have to say goodbye to you. Have a great and rocking day. See you next time here on your program for that old Rhythm & Blues, the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!