This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.
And for today I spotlight the wartime labels of a man who had a longtime career in the music business - Joe Davis. These years were extremely hard for the music industry - there was the strike of the American Federation of Musicians that lasted from August '42 all to the end of '43 - or even a year later for some labels. And then there was a short of shellac because of the war.
Still Joe Davis founded two labels - named Beacon and Joe Davis - and he dusted off the old Gennett imprint that had ceased operations in the mid-thirties. Today I'll be playing some of his records. And for me that starts with an obscure teenage boogie woogie wizzkid - Deryck Sampson. Listen to his self composed Boogie Express on Beacon 7015.
01 - Deryck Sampson - Boogie Express
02 - The Red Caps Trio - Get off That Kick
Get Off That Kick - that was on Beacon 7220 the Red Caps Trio, a vocal jive group formed similar to Nat King Cole's. They were actually a part of a six-piece vocal group named the Five Caps - really - or the Six Toppers. The reason why they used two names, the Toppers on stage and the Red Caps on record, was to fool the American Federation of Musicians. They'd been recording in 1943 while the union had imposed a strike on recording. But it was somewhat of a complication that the records did pretty good in juke boxes and they started to make fame as a recording group. They finally got discovered and they were fined by the union, and in the meanwhile they also got troubles with Joe Davis for recording with the Savoy label - as the Toppers. They stayed with Davis anyhow until 1946.
Today I feature the wartime labels of New York music producer Joe Davis. One of them bears his name, but he started with the Beacon label. Many recordings on Beacon later made it to a re-release on Joe Davis - and some labels are just named Davis - and on the third label he owned - the revived Gennett. Gennett had been around from the twenties and it had hadn't released records from the mid-thirties. Joe Davis bought the name, because Gennett had received a shellac rationing from the US government, that he could use for his own labels but he chose also to revive the old Gennett name, including that classic logo.
Next one of my favorites on the labels of Joe Davis, Savannah Churchill with the combo of clarinettist Jimmy Lytell. Two records got released on the Beacon label first and they got a re-release on the Joe Davis and Gennett imprints. The way Churchill is credited is typical for one of the changes that the strike of the AFM union caused - that is the recognition of the vocalist over the band. On the Beacon label, the records are credited to Jimmy Lytell and his all-star seven - with vocal refrain by Savannah Churchill. On the re-release it suddenly becomes Savannah Churchill and *her* all-star seven - as if she'd led the band.
Savannah Churchill got famous with the songs that were backed up by a vocal group named the Sentimentalists, and that sounded much more pop-oriented. The recordings with Lytell are wonderful blues in a style typical for the late pre-war period. These are her very first recordings. Listen to the Two-Faced Man.
03 - Savannah Churchill & Her All-Star Seven - Two Faced Man
04 - Gabriel Brown - Boogie Woogie Guitar
(jingle)
05 - Walter Thomas and his Jump Cats - Broke But Happy
06 - Coleman Hawkins - On The Bean
On The Bean - you heard the saxophone of Coleman Hawkins and Thelonious Monk on the piano. For Monk these were his first recordings. Hawkins incorporated Monk in his combo after an unsuccesful attempt to form a big band, and the quintet that also had Oscar Pettiford, Miles Davis, and Max Roach in it, they were pioneering on the bebop style of jazz.
You got more - before Hawkins, that was Walter 'Foots' Thomas, also a saxophonist, by now at the end of his career, and his band the Jump Cats with Broke But Happy. There's quite a difference with the last record I played, bebop versus this easy to listen swing jazz. Well Hawkins and Thomas only differ four years in age but Thomas stayed in the old style, where Hawkins got himself into that new bebop.
Then I have to account for what was before the jingle, that was the Boogie Woogie Guitar of guitarist Gabriel Brown, a Florida born bluesman, brought to New York by writer and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston who'd discovered him and who'd sent Alan Lomax to record him, back in the mid-thirties, for the Library of Congress collection of folk music. Gabriel Brown stayed with Joe Davis for all of his recordings until his last session in 1952.
Next a recording that Champion Jack Dupree did for Joe Davis. Here is the Fisherman's Blues.
07 - Champion Jack Dupree - Fisherman's Blues
08 - Billie Hayes - Blackout Blues
One of the little discomforts of the war - the blackouts, turning off the electricity and the darkness that's hard to bear without a man. You got the Blackout Blues of Billie Hayes and she's backed up by Deryck Sampson - the obscure young pianist that I started today's set with. She was being promoted as the new Bessie Smith - and the comparison is right in that she did her blues in a style that harked back to the twenties and thirties and that would soon grow out of fashion.
And speaking of this brilliant boogie woogie pianist - here's one more of him issued on the Beacon label. Listen to the unusual dissonances in this Kansas City Boogie Woogie.
09 - Deryck Sampson - Kansas City Boogie Woogie
10 - Red Caps Trio - Monkey and the Baboon
And one more of the Red Caps Trio - the Monkey and the Baboon. Like so many of the vocal groups of the forties and fifties, they get extensive coverage on the site of Marv Goldberg, one of the most knowledgable people around when it comes to vocal groups. His site uncamarvy.com contains a wealth of information on this and many other groups.
Today I feature the wartime labels of Joe Davis, and from my selection you may get the impression that this was a Rhythm & Blues label - but that's not true. In fact, Davis released all kinds of music on his label, and a nice overview of what he had recorded is to be found in Billboard Magazine of March 22 of 1947, where he had a page-size advertisement putting all of his masters for sale - as one unit - as he had decided to specialize in Caribbean music. Now the masters never got sold and of his Caribbean adventure nothing has been heard since, but on the list you find a mishmash of musical styles - pop, sermons and gospel, polka, piano and organ solos, French and Italian, Irish folk, blues and jazz - including some serious bebop and a bunch of recordings of Django Reinhart and his Hot Club of France Quintet.
But here you get Rhythm & Blues, on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman, and for that we go back to Champion Jack Dupree. Here is his Wet Deck Mama on Joe Davis 5108.
11 - Champion Jack Dupree - Wet Deck Mama
12 - Erskine Butterfield - The Saturday Nite Twist
On Joe Davis 8191 pianist Erskine Butterfield - another innovative pianist but one who got much more attention as Deryck Sampson whom I played before today. Butterfield had recorded for Decca extensively from '40 to '42 and later switched to Joe Davis' labels. While drafted in the army he also did some V-discs, records made especially for the troops overseas. The AFM had made an exception in their recording strike for this morale-booster program.
Next a recording of Coleman Hawkins together with Walter Thomas. On Joe Davis 8127 Here is Out To Lunch.
13 - Coleman Hawkins - Out To Lunch
14 - Five Red Caps - Boogie Woogie Ball
The Five Red Caps - and this time all six of them - with a song that has the songwriting credits for Joe Davis - the Boogie Woogie Ball, recorded in September of 1943. It made number 10 on the Harlem Hit Parade of 1944 and was released on Joe Davis' Gennett label.
And the next one will be another one of Gabriel Brown. When you hear these traditional piedmont blues you wouldn't think that he'd been working in a light opera and at the Federal Arts Theatre with Orson Welles. The effect of the Piedmont style is a ragtimey sound that was quite popular up to the end of the war. Here is on Gennett 5003, You Ain't No Good of Gabriel Brown.
15 - Gabriel Brown - You Ain't No Good
16 - Billie Hayes - You Ain't Had No Blues
You Ain't Had No Blues - a cover of the classic of Lil Armstrong. You heard Billie Hayes, not to be confused with the actress with the same name. By the mid-forties these blues were considered very old-fasioned, while in fact, maybe just five years before they would have sold well but fashion had changed pretty fast during the war and from then on, they would remain to do so.
Well on here, listeners, you won't know the difference. After all by now all of this music has gone highly out of fashion and only a handful of people - and that includes you, as you're listening to it - just few people show interest in the music that is the root of all of our popular music today. Unfortunately people seem to stick to the music of their teenage years and the generation that still remembers this music from their highschool times, well, that generation is rapidly dying out.
Guess I must be an exception, adopting the music that could have been the teenage music of my father, be it, that here in Europe, there was a war going on and this music, aimed exclusively at African-Americans, just didn't cross the Atlantic. But then, I keep on playing this music for your enjoyment and education. I hope you like it. Well of course you can let me know and send an e-mail to rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com.
Today's show had a lot of shellac hiss in it. despite the modest amount of copies that were pressed of these Joe Davis records, a remarkable number of them have survived. Joe Davis' labels are considered important for being some of the very few that witnessed musical changes during the recording strike of the AFM. Especially the birth of bebop has hardly been documented on record, and there are a few real gems in the Joe Davis catalog. Also Joe Davis seems to be the only one who ever recorded that obscure, but genius boogie woogie pianist Deryck Sampson.
All of today's story is te be found on my web site that you can find with a simple web search for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. Once in, this is show 183 in that long list of episodes. Of course you can also find out what's on the menu for next week.
Time's up for now, so have a rocking day and I hope to see you next time, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!