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 a selection from my vinyl collection - re-issues on LPs, most from the eighties and a few earlier. They were often the first generation of reissues of forties and fifties Rhythm & Blues while many of the artists were still alive. And so the liner notes often tell different things or from a different angle than that we now find on Wikipedia or Allmusic biographies.
And I wanna start with a 1974 album titled Chicago Boogie and that has a few of the best of Chicago blues on it. From that album a late song of Johnny Temple - we know him from his recordings with the Harlem Hamfats from the late thirties. According to the sleeve notes this was recorded in 1947 like all of the songs on the album were. More on this album after the music - here is the old '98' Blues.
01 - Johnny Temple - Old '98' Blues
02 - Jimmy Rogers & Little Walter - Little Store Blues
Jimmy Rogers together with Little Walter, also on that 1974 album titled Chicago Boogie. The Little Store Blues were also recorded in 1947 for a tiny record label named Ora Nelle. The records that were released - only two of them - they were never distributed and only sold out of a record store on 831 Maxwell street in Chicago. This one though, like ten others, never made it to a 78 and it wasn't until the '74 LP that I'm playing from now that it saw daylight. Whether the title was inspired on the record store that should have released and distributed these historical recordings - the very first of Little Walter - I don't know.
Not from the liner notes but in an interview with the owner of the Barrelhouse label that issued this LP, George Paulus, I read the story of the little label that first recorded the harp of Little Walter. Two white youngsters hunting for blues records in a black neighborhood that had seen better times, in the late sixties, and an old record store that also seen better times, where they find stacks of 78s of that Ora Nelle label that they never heard of, and finally, after years of weekly visiting the shop, they gain trust of the owner and they get him to sell them the masters for re-issue purposes. The recordings had been done in 1947 in a makeshift studio in the front of the store and they got some real blues greats for the microphone - Sleepy John Estes, Johnny Temple, Jimmy Rogers and Little Walter.
Unfortunately the sleeve notes don't even mention that this album is the release of the entire legacy of the Ora Nelle label. That comes on the web page of Robert L. Campbell and the Red Saunders Research Foundation - a site that in its layout shows its origins in the nineties, but apparently it still is updated.
Well in a later show for sure I will play some more from this album. For now I go to an album that features Champion Jack Dupree with sides that he did for the Okeh label, and with that we stay in the Windy City where this was recorded. Here is from 1940 take 1 of Cabbage Greens.
03 - Champion Jack Dupree - Cabbage Greens #1
04 - Big John Greer - Woman Is A Five Letter Word
Big John Greer singing of his frustration for the opposite sex with Woman Is A Five Letter Word. The liner notes of the LP on the Danish Official label - that did a lot of great R&B re-releases - tell that this was recorded in October of 1951 for RCA Victor. Greer faded into obscurity after his recordings for the label, and later the RCA subsidiary Groove, ended. In these four years his style changed from old-fashioned race music to an attempt to flow on the waves of Rock 'n Roll - and like many Rhythm & Blues artists, he did not survive.
Next Calvin Boze with a song on Memphis' premier blues location, Beale Street. The writer of the liner notes of the Swedish album Choo Choo's Bringing My Baby Home that features Boze is a well-informed man named Dave Penny but by then he hadn't been able to find any biograpical information on Boze and even does an unlucky guess on his birth date and place - well nowadays whe have Wikipedia to look that up and this man was one of these many bluesmen that came from Texas to the West Coast and with that Penny was 1500 miles and over six years wrong with thinking Boze was from Los Angeles and born in the twenties. What he also missed in his notes is the obvious influence of Louis Jordan on Boze.
Well recorded in July 24 in Los Angeles here is Calvin Boze with Beale Street On A Saturday Night.
05 - Calvin Boze - Beale Street On A Saturday Night
06 - Chuck Willis - Let's Jump Tonight
Chuck willis with Let's Jump Tonight, a side he did for Okeh in December 1950 and I found this one on an album of the British Edsel label on Willis, titled Be Good And Be Gone, after one of the tracks that is included on this.
And I wanna continue with a track on just another album of the Danish Official label. This one spotlights saxofonist Eddie Chamblee, who was - just like Chuck Willis, born in Atlanta. The liner notes state that he was a superb player and I agree on that. Well I think you should judge for yourself. Recorded in Chicago for the Miracle label in 1948 here is the double-sider Dureop - a semi-instrumental with Chamblees sax virtuoso against a band chant.
07 - Eddie Chamblee - Dureop
08 - Eddie 'Cleanhead' Vinson - Gonna Send You Back Where I Got You From
On an sleeve of an LP of the Saxophonograph label, I found an interview where Cootie Williams describes how he first heard Eddie Vinson holler the blues while he played the saxophone for Arnett Cobb's band. Now Cobb didn't give him the chance to sing the blues except for that odd moment but Williams was impressed so he hired Vinson for his vocal qualities.
Now Vinson didn't stay long with Cootie, but he was right about the unique style of Vinson - he's got a delivery that I immediately recogize as Vinson's - just like you also immediately recoginize the trumpeting style of Cootie Williams. Well on here he'd quit Cootie and started a band for his own. The title of this was Gonna Send You Back Where I Got You From and it was recorded in St. Louis in the summer of 1947 for the Mercury label.
Not all of these 80s albums feature just one artist. Next track comes from a "various artists" album titled Greats of the Tenor Sax and this was on a British label named Commodore from 1988 - also available on CD and cassette it says. You'd nearly forgotten these musicassettes. Well anyhow listen to Lucky Thompson together with Hot Lips Page. Here Page does the singing instead of the trumpet. Listen to My Gal Is Gone.
09 - Lucky Thompson & Hot Lips Page - My Gal Is Gone
10 - Griffin Brothers - I Wanna Go Back
From 1952 the Griffin Brothers with Buddy Griffin on lead and this was titled I Wanna Go Back. The Griffin Brothers, originally from Norfolk, VA recorded for the Dot label and we know them best for backing up Margie Day on her succesful Little Red Rooster. The album that I took it from was on the legendary Ace label from London and it was titled Riffin' With The Griffin Brothers Orchestra.
Well it won't surprise you given the country that I live in, that I mainly play from European releases. Next one is from Sweden and the label is named Jukebox Lil. There's no year of issue on the album but it's packed with forties releases of Jack McVea, and named after the title of one of the instrumentals on the compilation, New Deal. From that one I play the F Minor Boogie, recorded in January of 1946 in Los Angeles. Here is Jack McVea.
11 - Jack McVea - F Minor Boogie
12 - Paul Gayten & Annie Laurie - Your Hands Ain't Clean
Your Hands Ain't Clean and that was Annie Laurie with Paul Gayten's band and that brings us to the Crescent City. The album that I found this goodie on is titled Creole Gal and it's all featuring this duo and the notes, they come from a 1975 interview with Paul Gayten for Blues Unlimited. Gayten came from a family where everyone was involved in music and he tells how he had his band already before the war playing for the local radio station, and while drafted in the army he was in charge of entertaining some 30,000 men. He hired Annie Laurie in '47 when this recording was made.
For the next one I put on an Atlantic EP number 575 and the first of two tracks on the flip is Clyde McPhatter with Let The Boogie Woogie Roll. No liner notes on an EP, just a worn-out sleeve. Here is Clyde McPhatter.
13 - Clyde McPhatter - Let The Boogie Woogie Roll
14 - T.J. Fowler - What's The Matter Now
T.J. Fowler with What's The Matter Now and the album that I have this on, on the Danish Official label, nicely illustrates how information on artists had to be built up just ten years after the recording was made with correspondence from 1959 from the writer of the liner nots, Kurt Mohr, to T.J. Fowler himself asking the most basic things like date and place of birth and some simple discographical data.
Thanks to the blues revival of the sixties, the blues magazines and music researchers have made information more widely available for the compiler of a re-issue album in the eighties. Well by now all-knowing google nearly always comes up with an answer, whether it's a wikipedia or allmusic biography or an entry in the Encyclopedia of the Blues or a little article in Billboard Magazine.
One of the things that these albums always have with quite some accuracy, is the recording date and personnel of each track. And so we see that Roy Milton's Hop, Skip And Jump is recorded on July 13 of 1948, and that was in the middle of the recording ban of the American Federation of Musicians. Some artists chose to ignore the threat of sanctions from the union and Milton was one of them. With him Bill Gaither and Cliff Noels on saxophone, Hosea Sapp on trumpet, Camille Howard on the piano, Johnny Rogers on the guitar and Dallas Barley on the bass. Now that is a line-up that you can't go wrong with - that were the Solid Senders. Listen to Hop, Skip And Jump.
15 - Roy Milton - Hop, Skip And Jump
16 - Lucky Millinder feat. Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Rock Daniel
Rock Daniel and everyone telling that gospel influences entered Rhythm & Blues in the fifties should be taught by Sister Rosetta Tharpe who did these strongly gospel-influenced songs with Lucky Millinder and his band, back in 1941. And like in the fifties, Tharpe got herself a lot of criticism with that. Her gospels sounded too much like the blues and her blues sounded too divine.
The truth is, that from ever when blues started, many bluesmen and women had a background in gospel, often in their childhood and teenage years, and the influence back and forth has always been there. As for that fifties story - it's a certain style of delivery that had become common in gospel, that crossed over to Rhythm & Blues and gave birth to the soul music and also helped establish Rock 'n Roll.
And that conclusion brings me to the end of yet another episode of the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman. And if you don't agree with what I just told you, or if you want to make other comments, here's where you can leave them - rockingdutchman@rocketmail.com. And if you want to read back what I told you or today's playlist and see what's on for next week, go to my website - easiest way is a google search for the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman and my site will be on top of the list. As for now, time's up again so have a wonderful and rocking day. See you next time here on the Legends of the Rocking Dutchman!