The Legends of the Rocking Dutchman - episode 61

78s Only

This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.

And the cracks in the grooves today are complementary - I took a stack of 78's and pressed the 78 button of my turntable to please you with some authentic shellac sound. Great 78s and let me start with a wonderful flipside. The A was a classic - Hound Dog - but this is as wonderful. From a Peacock 78 from 1952 here is Big Mama Thornton with Nightmare.

01 - Big Mama Thornton - Nightmare
02 - Kitty Stevenson - Blues By Myself

Last time I did the story of Kitty Stevenson. She was a blues singer who recorded with the orchestra of Todd Rhodes for the small Chicago based Vitacoustic label, in December of 1947 just before the musicians union's recording ban started. Vitacoustic went bankrupt and the masters stayed at the recording studio where they were cut. This song was the only one released from that session on the Old Swing Master label, as number 10.

Next Johnny Ace and we may know him primarily from his ballads, but he did a great uptempo song on the flip of Pledging My Love, that is, on the first pressing of it. Later pressings had the song Anymore on the flip, while Pledging my love was overdubbed with background vocals. This was released in 1955 on the Duke label, so that was after his death on Chistmas day of 1954, when he shot himself through the head with his pistol, according to bass player Curtis Tillman who witnessed the incident, under the impression that it was not loaded or, as on Big Mama Thornton's statement, bragging that he knew which chamber was loaded and which not.

Listen to his No Money.

03 - Johnny Ace - No Money
04 - Doles Dickens - Don't Move A Vip Until I Say Vop

(jingle)

05 - Odelle Turner - Alarm Clock Boogie
06 - Sheiks - Baby Don't You Cry

Well you can say that this is pretty rare and obscure stuff. Off the Ef-N-De label from 1954 or '55 you heard the Sheiks with Baby Don't You Cry. I had to spell out a French blogspot site to find out more about this label - it seems to have been the only release of the label that was founded by Frank Guida in Norfolk, VA. In the sixties he started several record labels that lived longer - Legrand, S.P.Q.R, Lemonde and Romulus. As for the group - there have been several vocal groups around with that name and it's pretty hard to tell them from each other.

Before that you heard another obscurity - the Alarm Bell Boogie by Odelle Turner on Atlantic from 1952. Research on her didn't get much more than that she apparently was from Richmond, VA. Then before the jingle you got Doles Dickens and his band with Don't Move A Vip till I Say Vop on the Continental label.

Next up - two instrumentals and the first one is from Joe Liggins and his Honeydrippers. After his smash success of his 1945 double-sider The Honeydripper he remained a favourite with the juke box operators, but the big hits stayed away. This is from 1948 from a 78 of the Exclusive label. Listen to Worried.

07 - Joe Liggins- Worried
08 - Todd Rhodes - Sportree's Jump

Todd Rhodes and the Sportree's Jump and that was a pretty used King ten-incher from 1948. It's often said that Rhodes had a career in two halves, one in the jazz and swing of the twenties and thirties and one in the rock 'n roll defining rhythm & blues of the late forties and fifties and this of course is from that second half - as is his discovery of Lavern Baker and - earlier - his Blues for the Red Boy, the signature instrumental for Alan Freed's Moondog show.

Next a man whose vocal style is pretty much like Louis Jordan, Calvin Boze. He signed with Aladdin and apart from two early recordings that were included on a Complete recordings CD, this was the only label he has recorded with. He came, by the way, from a highschool that yielded a few great names in Rhythm & Blues. The high school band he played in, back in the thirties, featured Illinois and Russell Jacquet and Arnett Cobb, and later in college he played with Charles Brown.

Here is Baby You're Tops With Me.

09 - Calvin Boze - Baby, You're Tops With Me
10 - Lightnin' Hopkins - Moonrise Blues

Raw and unsophisticated blues straight from a 78 - you heard Lightnin' Hopkins with his Moonrise Blues off the Aladdin label from 1948. It was Aladdin talent scout Lola Ann Cullum who'd discovered him while he was performing in Houston's Third Ward. He grew up with the blues and at the age of eight he met Blind Lemon Jefferson on a church gathering. It was Jefferson who became Hopkins's mentor as a young blues guitarist. He got the nickname Lightnin' from an Aladdin executive when he played with pianist Wilson Smith - they were named Lightning and Thunder for that session. Later Hopkins signed with Gold Star label, a Texas country music label, and that brought him success with his T-Model Blues and Tim Moore's Farm.

More Texas blues with Smokey Hogg. He's often said to be a cousin of Lightnin' Hopkins but there's actually little evidence for that, and definitely not the same person as the guy who recorded for Spivey Records under the same name after the real Smokey Hogg had died in 1960. Off the Modern label you hear Possum Hunt and that was from the summer of 1950.

11 - Smokey Hogg - Possum Hunt
12 - Trixie Smith - He May Be Your Man

More blues but a lot older. That was Trixie Smith with a re-recording of He May Be Your Man from 1938 on Decca and that clarinet that accompanied her was Sidney Bechet. Both seemed to be at the end of their career in '38 and for Trixie that was true, but Bechet found himself a new life in France, where he was widely appreciated for his compositions and his playing until his death in 1959.

Trixie Smith had recorded He May Be Your Man before, in 1922 for the Black Swan label in what were her career heydays. Most of her best blues were recorded between '22 and '25 and after that she went into cabaret revues, musicals and movies until she rerecorded some of her old blues with Sydney Bechet and Barney Bigard.

More pre-war blues with Georgia White and her Alley Boogie. This also was recorded for Decca, in 1937.

13 - Georgia White - Alley Boogie
14 - Bill Samuels & the Cats'n Jammer Three - Candy Store Jump

From 1947 on a Mercury 78 the Cats 'n Jammer Three with the Candy Store Jump. This group of pianist Bill Samuels is of course best remembered for their smooth early doowop song I cover the waterfront that became immensely popular and helped establish the new Mercury label. The name of the group was taken from a comic strip titled the Katzenjammer Kids that was already around since the end of the 19th century. The group disbanded in 1948 during the recording ban of the American Federation of Musicians.

Next from 1946 Harold Tinsley backed up by the orchestra of Lennie Lewis with the Mean and Evil Blues. This was on the Queen label, the Rhythm & Blues subsidiary of King, that initially only did country music, or as they called it then, hillbilly. The subsidiary existed for only two years - after that the R&B artists were released on the King label, or on other subsidiaries like, from 1950, Federal - or DeLuxe, that King had bought out in '52.

Listen to Lennie Lewis' band with Harold Tinsley singing the Mean and Evil Blues.

15 - Lennie Lewis feat. Harold Tinsley - Mean and Evil Blues
16 - Tommy Dorsey - The Huckle-Buck
17 - Sax Mallard- The Mojo

From the jingle you first heard Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra with his cover of Paul Williams' Hucklebuck, a national dance craze that pretty easily crossed over to the white audience and the white bands - like Dorseys.

After that you got Sax Mallard with the Mojo and maybe the most faithful of listeners to the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman may recognize this tune as I often used it as the background of my talking. I thought this deserves a bit more exposure so I decided to play it in full for today.

Today's show was all played from 78s and even today'd background instrumentals behind my talking were - as is the Bongo Bounce of Wild Bill Moore and his sextet that I always use as the outtro of my show and that you're hearing right now. I only had to cheat on the intro tune, the Saxaphone rag, that comes from a 45.

Now shellac records have a very own sound and that was partly because of the limitation of recording technology and partly due to the characteristics of the material. Clean records had a certain rumble in it that you can only hear with modern turntables, and when they get worn and that goes pretty easily, this is replaced by a noisy hiss, a distortion of the dynamic parts and a lot of pops caused by individual dust particles in the groove, that are very hard to remove.

In contrast vinyl sounded much cleaner but the narrow groove walls were damaged easily causing loud pops that repeated 45 or 33 times per minute.

Ever since the CD was launced in 1983, people have been complaining about the cold and clean sound of it. Of course most disadvantages of vinyl were dealt with by the CD but lots of people missed the warmth of the imperfections of the vinyl sound, and that has caused a small revival of that medium. Now I don't think we'll ever see a revival of shellac records, they were inconvenient, breakable and heavy and very limited in the amount of music they could carry. But still they have that warm and highly imperfect sound that can't be beat by anything that came later.

On this show I will continue to favour shellac over vinyl and vinyl over CD re-releases to provide you with the authentic sound of the Rhythm & Blues that's in the grooves. Maybe it's nostalgia to an era that I never lived in. I just love the sound and I hope you do too. Well you can let me know and send me an e-mail to rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. Or find me on the web - do a google search for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and my site will show up first. For now it's time to quit so have a rocking day. See you next time, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!