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 we're diving into the history of the West Coast based Bayou record label, a label that was founded in 1953 and lived for only a few months. But it was good for 18 releases and that's a nice amount to fill the hour so let's just start with release number 1 of the label - the popular Los Angeles band leader Red Callendar with The Honey Jump.
01 - Red Callender & The Sextet - The Honey Jump Pt.1
02 - Red Callendar - Soldiers Blues
More Red Callendar - now backing up Duke Upshaw and you heard the Soldiers Blues. In the forties, Callender was mostly a session man - notable sessions that included Louis Armstrong, Lester Young and Nat King Cole, but he made fame with his modern jazz output from the fifties and later as a bass man and on the tuba. From the late forties he more and more concentrated on recording - By 1956 over 5000 recordings featuring him on the bass existed.
Today's feature is the Bayou label, that existed for only a few months in 1953. The man who founded this label in the spring of that year, Franklin Kort, before had been producer with the. Now only 18 releases later Bayou was sold to Imperial when it was clear that it would not survive the summer. That's pretty short for a label but it brought us some great Rhythm & Blues and the output is available in a somewhat obscure and clumsy-looking re-release anthology titled Bayou records story, and there's a CD titled Burning Rockers 'n Blues that contains a lot of the Bayou recordings. A google search on each of these will get you hits for amazon.com, iTunes, Deezer and other places to buy this stuff either on-line or as a CD.
Next number three in the Bayou catalog and that is Mercy Dee Walton. One of these Texans who moved to California in the thirties where he gradually switched from country blues to more urban style. Here is his Please Understand.
03 - Mercy Dee Walton - Please Understand (All Over)
04 - Joe Houston - Sabre Jet
(jingle)
05 - Dave Bartholomew - Country Gal
06 - Jimmy Gil - Gather Round
You heard Jimmy Gil on number 6 of the Bayou catalog and the title of this jumping rocker was Gather Round. Before that you the influential New Orleans great Dave Bartholomew with Country Gal. And then before the jingle, well, that instrumental honker was Joe Houston and man, I wish I could scrape such hot sounds from my saxophone. Sabre Jet was re-released later on Imperial as Tough Enough and the flip Moody as the Windy City Hop.
Next L.C Williams and there's a very touching, emotional orbituary of him out on the web, taken from a 1961 issue of Jazz Monthly, on the forum of a web site titled weeniecampbell.com. It tells how Williams was a heavy drinker and the combination of that and an untreated tuberculosis led to his death in '61, at the age of 36, where according to the writers, he'd taken all effort to sing his last song for his wife two days before he died. His closest friends Lightnin' Hopkins and "Long Gone" Miles were out in the country not able to make it to the funeral. Cause that's whom he hung out with, being a regular on Houston's Third Ward - wether singing and playing the drums or just drinking. We'll remember him as what he was - a talented and moderately succesful bluesman.
Here is his I Want My Baby Back that was issued as Bayou #8.
08 - L.C. Williams - I Want My Baby Back
10 - Clarence Samuels - Low Top Inn
The Low Top Inn - great party music from Clarence Samuels very much in the contemporary style of pre-Rock 'n Roll Rhythm & Blues - definitely the stuff that defined Rock 'n Roll. And all kinds of references were made to similar songs of the previous years and that also was an important part of the R&B of these days. This was a re-release of a 78 of the Freedom label from 1950 and so is the flip - a blues of Goree Carter titled Drunk Or Sober.
10 - Goree Carter - Drunk Or Sober
11 - Jesse Allen - Take It Easy
Jesse Allen with Take It Easy and this man has tried several record labels without any of success. He had one single for Aladdin, one for Coral, both 1952, one for Bayou, that's this one, three for Imperial in '53 amd '54 and finally in '58 an odd single on the Vin label.
On Bayou number 12 we find another record of sax honker Joe Houston. Houston's style is one of straightforward loud honking, and his antics on stage gave him the nickname 'wild man on the sax' when he recorded for the Bihari brothers' Crown label - originally a R&B subsidiary, but later their cheapo brand.
Listen to his Chittlin - also known as the Chitlun's Twist.
12 - Joe Houston - Chitlun's Twist Aka Chittlin'
13 - Mercy Dee - Happy Bachelor
What a voice - that was Mercy Dee with the Happy Bachelor on Bayou #13. Mercy Dee Walton as his full name was, hit the charts in that same 1953 with One Room Country Shack on Speicalty and went touring with the band of Big Jay McNeely - whose saxophone honking is not on this record.
And speaking of the saxophone master, McNeely also appears on the discography of Bayou. Now we're talking 1953 but the phenomenon of remixing definitely is as old as the fifties. Bayou #14 consists of two recordings, the Hometown Jamboree and the Teenage Hop that have added crowd noise to get the impression of a live recording and the basis of them are two instrumentals Catastrophe and Calamity, that also are on the Bayou list, as number 18 - and they are remixes and composites of fragments of older Imperial records combined together - like the Deacon's Express, Blow Blow Blow, Night Ride and The Deacon Rides Again.
Then, to make confusion complete, information on various websites, discographies and anthology CDs are both contradicting and inconsistent, even with their own information. Now that happens more often, listeners, and normally I don't bother you with my time-consuming efforts of sorting out who's right on these. Now I don't own the original Bayou releases, unfortunately so I guess I have to do with what I think is right. So right now in the background you hear Blow Blow Blow, that was a title on Imperial, recorded in 1951 and that pieces of that are in the Hometown Jamboree that I got from the Classics CD on Big Jay McNeely, and you'll get that next.
As for the music - well it doesn't matter as long as it honks and it's danceable, and mister Franklin Kort, Bayou record boss probably hoped it would sell, which it didn't, like none of the Bayou issues really made their mark on the Rhythm & Blues market.
So here's the Hometown Jamboree.
14 - Big Jay McNeely - Hometown Jamboree
15 - Big Joe Turner - The Sun Is Shining
15 - Big Joe Turner - Blues Jumped the Rabbit
Three-in-a-row - after the Hometown Jamboree you got two songs of Big Joe Turner and that were The Sun Is Shining and Blues Jumped the Rabbit. Now the latter is another mix-up of two other songs - Jumpin' Tonight and Love My Baby and it's actually pretty easy to tell where they joined the two records - mixing technology wasn't that sophisticated back then. And like that Big Jay McNeely record, it wasn't that hard to join two songs of Turner.
Many of his blues consisted of loosely consistent lyrics that he re-used over and over again, some of them classic lyrics also used by others. The big fat mama in this one, that lives upon the hill, in other songs often weighs three hundred pounds and she features many of Turner's songs though her weight changes every now and then - in one of the two versions of his Feeling Happy she changed into a tall skinny mama of 90 pounds.
So other than blues that tell a story, these compilations of traditional verses are easy to join together. And they were Turner's specialty - they say he could sing the blues for an hour, all traditional lyrics, without repeating himself.
Well the Bayou label mostly was a re-issue label, re-issues in disguise with new titles and remixed songs. Well, they're cheap to produce, that's for sure.
Next up the two songs that filled issue number 16 of Bayou - Fats Matthews, also known as Allen "Fat Man" Matthews who was discovered by Dave Bartholomew and valued for his ability to sound like Clyde McPhatter, that gave him a position as singer in Bartholomew's band for a long time.
From him you'll get Going Down and I'm Thankful.
16 - Fats Matthews - Going Down
16 - Fats Matthews - I'm Thankful
(jingle)
17 - Joe Houston - Scramble
18 - Big Jay McNeely - Calamity
And more recycled honking ends this story on the Bayou label and also the label itself, that folded and was taken over by the Imperial label, that had leased many masters for Bayou's re-issues and remixes. You heard Joe Houston's Scramble and Big Jay McNeely's Calamity, issued als Bayou 17 and 18.
Now the records didn't really offer value for money, in terms of playing time, these remixes are unusual short for their time. Calamity even is a mere one minute 45. In the late fifties, that became more normal though 1:45 is really, really short. Well it made a track more possible in this hour of the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman.
Well my time's up so I'll tell you the usual things like that I love to get email with your feedback on this show, so please drop a line to rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com, and then there's the web site to mention, where you can review today's playlist and see what's on next week. Easiest way to find it is a google search for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and my site will pop up first.
As for now, have a great day. No, have a rocking day. I hope to see you back, next time here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!