This transcript of the radio show is an approximation of what I said in the show. The real spoken parts may differ slightly.
And a new hour of great Rhythm & Blues with fresh findings I did while I made previous shows, you know, most music I have to track down come with complete albums. A whole lotta music so let's just start with the first one - and that's an instrumental of one of the queens of the bawdy songs. Cleo Brown was a great pianist too - and here she proves it. Issued in '35 on Decca in the popular series, Here is the Pelican Stomp.
01 - Cleo Brown - Pelican Stomp
02 - Nora Lee King - Because I Love My Daddy So
Because I Love My Daddy So, also released on Decca and this goodie comes from 1942. You heard Nora Lee King with Skeets Tolbert and his Gentlemen of Swing. Most of her recordings have been for Decca with either Sammy Price or Skeets Tolbert.
Next the a blues of Luella Miller - perhaps one of the most obscure female blues singers ever. Apart from her recordings for Vocalion, no-one ever managed to get anything of information on her and we'll have to do with the collection of scratchy old 78's that were dusted off for a CD of the Document label with her not-so-complete recorded works - and the compilers of that CD apparently had troubles finding a photograph of her. Don't know if the eerie graphic that's on the CD anywhere resembles the singer - it could as well have been taken from a medieval drawing.
On the violin is Lonnie Johnson - that's for sure. Here is Luella Miller with a 1928 recording for Vocalion - the Carrier Pigeon Blues.
03 - Luella Miller - Carrier Pigeon Blues
04 - Charlie McFadden - Friendless Man
(jingle)
05 - Ramblin' Thomas - Lock and Key Blues
06 - Roosevelt Scott - Panama Special
A whole lotta blues - that was the Panama Special of Roosevelt Scott on the Vocalion label from 1940. Scott apparently been listening a lot to Peetie Wheatstraw, copying that typical ooh-well-well between his lines. The sighs as a part of the music, that's something he must have made up himself. Scott is one of those more obscure blues singers and well, he does a good job but he never got more than two sessions with Vocalion. All of his output is on a CD of the Document series, that he shares with Monkey Joe.
You got more - before Roosevelt Scott that was Ramblin' Thomas with a 1928 recording on the Paramount label - you heard the Lock and Key Blues. He was the elder brother of Jesse 'Babyface' Thomas but unlike his brother he never rode the waves of the blues revival of the seventies.
And then I have to account for what you got before the jingle - well that was Charlie 'Specs' McFadden with the Friendless Man from 1933 on the Bluebird label. McPhadden is best remembered for his Groceries On The Shelf, a bawdy blues on the wares he got to offer to the ladies. He must have been quite a gambler, being arrested for that ten times during his recording career - alongside three other occasions that he got to see the county jail from the inside. Apart from that he's as obscure as thick fog, and nobody knows his whereabouts after his last recording session in 1937. He may have stayed in St. Louis where he was based the years before but he left no trace to the blues researchers. Looks like he left no photographs either as the Document CD that was made on him got a picture of a liquor shack on it.
And more blues with L.C. Green and I played a song of him two weeks ago where he had taken the melody from Sonny Boy Williamson's Good Morning School Girl. This song titled Little School Girl sounds pretty much similar. Green was much inspired by Williamson, and not a bad singer but he never had the luck to get a good songwriter giving him some material - this somewhat lacks originality.
Recorded in Detroit and released on the Dot label, here is L.C. Green.
07 - L.C. Green - Little School Girl
08 - Robert Johnson - Me and the Devil Blues
It's been some time that I busted the myth of Robert Johnson's encounter with the devil on a Missisippi crossroads, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. Legend has it, that he sold his soul to get his skills on the guitar. What really happened is this story. In 1929 he had finished school and married Virginia Travis, a sixteen-year-old girl who died shortly after in childbirth. After that, Johnson devoted his life to the blues and he became a wandering musician.
He played the harmonica but he was new to the guitar. At some point he left the area and went to Hazelhurst, MS, the town where he was born - possibly to search for his father - and there he met bluesman Ike Zinnerman or Zimmerman and he taught Johnson to play the guitar. Zimmerman had the odd habit to practice at a graveyard - and one of the versions of the myth, apart from the crossroads, is that it was on a graveyard where he met that large black man that the devil was supposed to be.
When he came back, his friends heard his fiery guitar playing style and wondered how he suddenly had mastered the instrument. It's probably been Johnson himself who has fed the myth - also with blues like the one I just played, and that was titled Me and the devil.
The crossroads of US 49 and US 61, near Clarksdale, MS, it's marked with a big sign with three blue guitars, well, that's just one of them places that that unlikely encounter with the devil should have taken place, together with claims of virtually every town nearby - but the sign does well for tourists following the Mississippi Blues Trail. They take a picture and jump back in their airconditioned rental cars.
Robert Johnson was a far more versatile musician that we know him of now, 'cause most of his recordings have been in Delta Blues style. He could do jazz, pop, country and urban blues as well and one of his first recordings, They're Red Hot, that is a ragtimey urban style song that's not even close to the Delta blues, and for sure he could have done more of them.
But it's Delta blues that the producers wanted from him, and he never lived long enough to get a long-lasting career where he could show his versatility. He died under supspicious circumstances - he probably was poisoned. That was in 1938 and he was just 27 years old. He was probably buried in a poor man's grave, that is, just somewhere in the fields, but still, three cemetaries claim they have his body on their grounds, complete with memorial stones.
Tome for some music again. On the Bluebird label from 1941 here is Doctor Clayton with the '41 Blues.
09 - Doctor Clayton - '41 Blues
10 - Three Peppers - Pepperism
Pepperism - an instrumental of the jive group the Three Peppers recorded for Decca. They may have been forgotten now, but during the war this group - that mostly did vocal numbers - was real hot in Philadelphia and on the West Coast.
At some point they would be in a Hollywood movie production but the trip was delayed because there was genuine concern, just weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, that the Japanese had planned an invasion of California. They went later, in December of that year, to stay a year, in shows that also included famous tap dancer Bojangles Robinson.
On either coast, they played the roof off the joint according to the local newspapers during the war, and they were making top money in double appearances - two gigs a night in different clubs. They appeared in movies, soundies and did recordings until they broke up at the height of their career in 1945 - to be revived in '49 for another six years.
The popularity of this group is pretty much forgotten - for some reason they stayed in the shadows of the Ink Spots and the Mills Brothers. Just a few records remain and a page on Marv Goldberg's site where he tells all about this group.
For the next one we go back to 1932 with Bennie Moten's band. Here is on the Bluebird label, Moten's Swing.
11 - Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra - Moten Swing
12 - Memphis Minnie - What A Night
What A Night - a 1953 recording of Memphis Minnie but it got released only nearly thirty years later on a British album featuring her. By the fifties, her health declined and the interest for her style of blues got less - but I think this fits pretty well to the then-current style of Chicago blues. She moved back to Memphis in '57, together with her husband Lil Son Joe and retired from professional music.
Next up on the Philadelphia-based 20th Century label Dossie Terry with She's Alright. Now this was recorded in 1946 for J. Mayo Williams' labels, but together with a lot of other masters, traded off the the Philly label, where it at least got better distribution than with Mayo Williams' labels.
Here is Dossie Terry.
13 - Dossie Terry - She's Alright
14 - Booker T. Washington - Death Of Bessie Smith
What an impressive lament on the Death of Bessie Smith by a bluesman who took the name of Booker T. Washington - named after the important and influential African-American political leader in the late 1800s and the first decades of the 20th century. There have been several musicians around using the name, and two of them don't even come close to being likely this singer - that is a Kansas City trumpeter and Booker T Washington White, better known as Bukka White.
There was a third man, a drummer, he was based in Chicago and his name pops up in the afterwar scene of the Windy City, but he was active in the thirties in the bands of Lil Hardin Armstrong and Albert Wynn. I can't tell you if he was our man in this 1939 recording, done in Chicago for the Bluebird label. I do know who was the pianist - that was Walter Davis.
You know listeners - sometime it may seem that I know just everything about the Rhythm & Blues - and of course after four years doing this program I done so much research that yes, I learnt a lot. But still, every day I do new discoveries and this wonderful song I ran across on YouTube. And sometimes, when I really can't find out essential questions like 'who was this Booker T Washington', I just don't include it in my show. But in this case, I thought it too good to leave out.
And for the next one we go to the year 1947 with the band of Len McCall. Percy Rodgers does the singing. On the 20th Century label this is the Philadelphia Boogie.
15 - Len McCall - Philadelphia Boogie
16 - Little Esther and Mel Walker with Johnny Otis - Deceivin' blues
And Little Esther and Mel Walker end today's show of the Legends Of The Rocking Dutchman, and of course that was the band of Johnny Otis backing them in this 1950 recording for the Savoy label. For both singers, this was their best moment of fame, while they still were very young. Ester Phillips made it again in a come-back but for both it was the drugs that killed them, and they both started using them pretty young.
Well time's up for today and there was a lot I told you today. Now maybe you missed something essential that you would like to know, well, don't worry, all that I told you today, you can read it back on the website of this program. Do a Google search for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and my show will be on top of the search results. Today's show was number 203 in that long list of shows that I done already.
And if you liked the show, well let me know 'cause I love to hear from my listeners. You can provide your feedback at rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com - I promise to write you back.
For now I'm done - there will be more great Rhythm & Blues next week. Hope to see you back, here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!