Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

Today’s spotlight is on the Blue Moon label, a Spanish label that for the last five years or so has been reissuing some amazing recordings of jump blues and R&B from the mid-40’s to the mid-50’s. Blue Moon can been seen as a sort sister label to Document records; where Document issues the complete recorded work in chronological order of every blues artist from the pre-war era, Blue Moon has been reissuing the chronological recordings of some great jump blues pioneers from the immediate post-war era. Much of this music has been unavailable on CD and spotlights a fascinating era when jump blues was merging into R&B and eventually morphing into rock and roll. The  label has done an invaluable service by issuing the chronological recordings of neglected pioneers like Sonny Thompson, Cecil Gant, Tiny Grimes, Goree Carter, Paul Williams, Jack McVea and many others. The music on today’s program is a mix of jump blues and R&B. Jump Blues refers to an uptempo, jazz-tinged style of blues that first came to prominence in the mid- to late ’40s. Usually featuring a vocalist in front of a large, horn-driven orchestra or medium sized combo with multiple horns, the style usually features a driving rhythm, shouted vocals, and honking tenor saxophone solos. Billboard magazine first used the term “Rhythm and Blues” as the title for its black music charts in 1949, replacing “race music.” R&B evolved out of jump blues in the late ’40s, laying the groundwork for rock & roll. R&B kept the tempo and the drive of jump blues, but its instrumentation was sparer and the emphasis was on the song, not improvisation. It was blues chord changes played with an insistent backbeat.

I can’t possibly write about every artist in the Blue Moon catalog but I thought I’d give some background on a few including Cecil Gant, Sonny Thompson, Tiny Grimes, Jack McVea plus several of the blues vocalists like Sonny Parker, Crown Prince Waterford, Cousin Joe and others. Also I’ll give some background on the Kansas City and L.A. blues scenes of the 1940′s where much of today’s music emanated from.

While the big bands declined nationally, a number of small groups thrived in Kansas City. Myra Taylor, Walter Page and other musicians cast off from the decline of the big bands returned to Kansas City. Taylor’s early recording can be found on Blue Moon’s Kansas City Jumps Vol. 3. Julia Lee, the Jimmy Keith band, the Four Tons of Rhythm, the Jesse Price band, Dwight “Gatemouth” Moore, Geechie Smith, Tommy Douglas’s band, Oliver Todd’s Hottentots and a number of other small ensembles found steady work in the clubs at 18th and Vine, downtown and those “out in the county” that thrived in the post-war period. Geeshie Smith is featured on the CD Swingin’ Small Combos Kansas City Style Vol.2. Vernon “Geechie” Smith was a trumpeter/vocalist from the Tulsa, Oklahoma. He played early on with Ernie Fields Orchestra. He was a KC stalwart, spent many years in Kansas City and played in countless KC styled bands. He moved to L.A. where he joined Joe Lutcher’s band. After recording under his own name for the Bihari Brother’ Modern subsidiary Colonial in 1950 and for the obscure Kicks label in 1954, he drifted into obscurity. An influential drummer who was best known for supporting major performers, Jesse Price appeared in many settings through the years. His recordings are featured on the CD  Swingin’ Small Combos Kansas City Style – Vol.1:  The Complete Jesse Price 1946-1957. After moving to Kansas City in 1934, Price became an important fixture, playing with George E. Lee, Thamon Hayes, Count Basie’s orchestra (1936) prior to Jo Jones, touring with Ida Cox and later working with Harlan Leonard (1939-41). Price moved to Los Angeles in 1941, playing with Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong (1943), Stan Kenton (1944), Basie (1944), Benny Carter, Slim Gaillard (1949) and (in Kansas City) Jay McShann, among many others. He was less active in the 1960s and ’70s but led a band at the Monterey Jazz Festival as late as 1971. Price recorded 23 selections as a leader from 1946-48 (mostly for Capitol). During the 1950′s Jay McShann, Ben Webster, Jimmy Witherspoon, Lucky Enois and other nationally established musicians returned to Kansas City and revitalized the local scene.

Los Angeles, in the 1940′s, became a huge center for rhythm and blues recording. T-Bone Walker had settled in Los Angeles. On any given night in the late 1940′s you could drive south on Los Angeles’ Central Avenue and hear the music of such jazz and jump titans as Buddy Collette, Charles Mingus, Wynonie Harris, Big Jay McNeely, Joe Liggins and Johnny Otis. These sounds would waft from such venues as the Lincoln Theater, the Club Alabam, the Down Beat, and Jack’s Basket Room (which featured fried chicken and biscuits by the basket). When you got all the way out to Watts, you could check out Little Harlem and The Barrelhouse. The first breakout rhythm and blues single, “I Wonder,” was recorded by Private Cecil Gant in a simple basement studio and released in 1944 on Gilt Edge Records, a short-lived L.A. indie. When “I Wonder” went to the top of Billboard’s race charts, a number of labels sprang up to capitalize on the smooth, cool, Leroy Carr-derived L.A. blues style Gant had popularized. As Mike Rowe wrote: “Unlike New York and Chicago there had been no blues or any kind of recording industry pre-war …The music as well as the industry was starting from scratch. …It was very often of Do-It yourself triumphing over the most adverse conditions.” The Black population swelled in the 1940’s, due to large manpower needs to work in the U.S. defense industry during World War II. These new arrivals needed entertainment, of course, and the local jazz and blues club scene heated up quickly. There was a host of labels recording blues and R&B in Los Angeles in the 1940s including Specialty, Imperial, Aladdin, and the umbrella of labels run by the Bihari brothers RPM/Modern/Kent/Flair/Crown were the most notable. Bob Geddins was a key player who operated numerous small labels like Down Town, Big Town, Irma, and others. May of these sides were leased to larger outfits like Chess, Specialty, Modern and others.

Cecil Gant, who went by the moniker the G.I. Sing-Sation, was an army private who allegedly got his first break while performing for a war bond rally in 1944. He scored a massive hit the same year with “I Wonder” the first release on the new Gilt-Edge label. The record’s huge success prompted others to form record companies devoted to black music. Gant was a first rate ballad singer in the vein of Nat King Cole and Charles Brown but he was also a superb bluesman who could lay down some storming boogie-woogie. Gant recorded prolifically for the L.A. labels Gilt-Edge and 4 Star and in Nashville, which was probably his hometown, for Bullet, Dot and Decca, meanwhile playing in nightclubs throughout the country. Between 1944 and 1951 he waxed over 150 sides before his untimely death in 1951 at the age of 38. The Blue Moon label has provided an invaluable service by issuing all of Gant’s recordings across seven CD’s.

Bandleader and pianist Sonny Thompson was among the most prolific R&B instrumentalists of the late ’40s and early ’50s. Thompson began recording for Sultan in 1946, then did several sessions for Miracle, King, Federal, and Deluxe, while also backing vocalist Lula Reed from 1951 to 1961. Thompson scored two number one R&B hits for Miracle in 1948: “Long Gone,” Pts. 1 & 2, and “Late Freight.” He landed another Top Ten and two more Top 20 singles for Miracle in 1949, and then had three Top Ten hits for King in 1952. The biggest was “I’ll Drown In My Tears,” sung by his wife Lula Reed, which reached number five. My Tears,” which reached number five. Reed was a fine singer who passed away last summer with barley a mention in the media. In the 1960’s Thompson arranged and played on the classic Freddie King sides for King. Thompson’s recordings have been collected across five CD’s spanning from 1946-1955.

Blue Moon has issued all of Jack McVea’s recordings between 19944-1952 over four CD’s. McVea played baritone saxophone in the Lionel Hampton Orchestra in 1942. He led one of the West Coast’s earliest R&B combos and backed up important artists such as T-Bone Walker and Wynonie Harris. McVea’s own “Open The Door, Richard!” created one of the biggest crazes ever to come out of black music in the pre-Rock’n'Roll era. He blew tenor sax alongside Illinois Jacquet at the first ‘Jazz At The Philharmonic’ in 1944, and he jammed and recorded with Slim Gaillard and Charlie Parker.

Another important series is Blue Moon’s reissue of  all of Tiny Grimes recordings between 1944-1954 on five CD’s. Tiny Grimes was one of the earliest jazz electric guitarists to be influenced by Charlie Christian, and he developed his own swinging style. In 1938, he started playing electric guitar, and two years later he was playing in the Cats and the Fiddle. During 1943-1944, Grimes was part of a classic Art Tatum Trio, which also included Slam Stewart. In September 1944, he led his first record date, using Charlie Parker. He also recorded for Blue Note in 1946, and then put together an R&B-oriented group, “the Rockin’ Highlanders,” that featured the tenor of Red Prysock during 1948-1952. Although maintaining a fairly low profile, Tiny Grimes was active up until his death in 1989.

Today’s program also spotlights several fine blues vocalists including Sonny Parker, Cousin Joe, Eddie Mack, Arbee Stidham, Crown Prince Waterford and Betty Hall Jones.  Sonny Parker began singing and dancing as a protégé of Butterbeans and Susie. He joined Lionel Hampton’s band in 1949 and was touring France in 1955 when he suffered an onstage stroke. He never recovered and passed in 1957 at the age of 32. Between 1948 and 1954 he cut some three dozen sides.

Blue Moon has issued all of Cousin Joe’s recordings on three CD’s spanning 1945-55. Joe was 12 when his family moved New Orleans. Joe took up guitar and ukulele, and made a living playing on the Riverboats in the 30′s. By 1941, he’d moved to St. Louis to play in Sidney Bechet’s band, before heading to New York three years later. This was Joe’s most fruitful recording period cutting sides for a myriad of labels including King, Gotham, Philo, Savoy and Decca.

Eddie Mack was part of the Brooklyn blues scene in the late 40′s and early 50′s but his subsequent career is a mystery. He fronted various groups by Cootie Williams & His Orchestra (he replaced Eddie Vinson), Lucky Millinder & His Orchestra and others. He cut some two-dozen sides between 1947-1952.

The Arkansas-born, Chicago-based singer-guitarist Arbee Stidham hit the top of Billboard’s “race” chart in 1948 with his recording of “My Heart Belongs to You” and recorded prolifically over the next two decades for a variety of labels. He retired from music in 1974.

Charles “Crown Prince” Waterford was from Jonesboro, Arkansas. He sang with Leslie Sheffield’s Rhythmaires and Andy Kirk’s Twelve Clouds of Joy before beginning his career as “The Crown Prince of the Blues” in Chicago in the 1940s. Waterford shouted the blues in the then very popular manner and continued his recording career for labels like Hy-Tone, Aladdin and Capitol. In 1949, he joined the King stable. In the 1950′s he recorded for small companies and later dedicated his life to the Church and became known as Reverend Charles Waterford.

Blues vocalist, stand-up pianist and occasionally organist, Betty Hall Jones worked with Bus Moten’s band and Addie Williams in Kansas City. Returning to California, she performed as a single artist before joining drummer/vocalist Roy Milton’s band in L.A. in 1937. She almost certainly recorded on piano behind Alton Redd for the Black & White label in 1945, and accompanied Luke Jones on the Atlas recording sessions, and possibly with Red Mack for the same label in 1946 and 1947. In the same year she recorded with King Porter for Imperial label (the tremendous “That Early Morning Boogie” that we just heard) and under her own name for Atomic, Capitol and under Luke Jones’ name for Modern. She recalled cutting unissued titles behind Ray Charles for Capitol. In the 1950′s she recorded for Dootone and Combo.