Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

Tampa Red

A few months back I did a show called “Sideman Blues” where we shined the light on some superb session musicians who backed blues artists in the pre-war era. On today's sequel to that show we focus on some of the stars of the pre-war blues era who were also active session artists. Artists featured today include some of the era's big names such as Lonnie Johnson, Tampa Red, Roosevelt Sykes, Kokomo Arnold, Sonny Boy Williamson I and others who were also very active backing others on record. Bluesmen such as Big Bill, Tampa Red, Lonnie Johnson and Roosevelt Sykes in particular, backed dozens of artists, both well known and obscure on record. Many of these artists also acted in the role as talent scouts for the labels.

During his heyday in the 1920's and 30's, Tampa Red was billed as "The Guitar Wizard," and his stunning slide work on steel National or electric guitar shows why he earned the title. His 25 year recording career produced hundreds of sides: hokum, pop, and jive, but mostly blues (including classic compositions "Anna Lou Blues," "Black Angel Blues," "Crying Won't Help You," "It Hurts Me Too," and "Love Her with a Feeling"). Jim O'Neal neatly summed up Tampa's place in blues history when he wrote the following in 1975: "Few figures have been as important in blues history as Tampa Red; yet no bluesman of such stature has been so ignored by today's blues audience. As a composer, recording artist, musical trendsetter and one of the premier urban blues guitarists of his day, Tampa Red remained popular with black record buyers for more than 20 years and exerted considerable influence on many post-World War II blues stars who earned greater acclaim for playing Tampa's songs than Tampa himself often did."

Tampa was a very busy session guitarist mainly in the early years of his career, circa 1928-1929. Among those he backed include Big Maceo, Lucille Bogan, Bertha "Chippie" Hill, Lil Johnson, Frankie Jaxon, Victoria Spivey, Romeo Nelson, Ma Rainey, Mary Johnson and many others. Tampa's work behind underrated singer Mary Johnson has always been among my favorites. Johnson cut six sides at two sessions in 1930. The April 8, 1930 was outstanding do in large part to the shimmering slide guitar of Tampa and the excellent piano of the under recorded Judson Brown. The two work beautifully behind Johnson on the mournful "Three Months Ago Blues" with Tampa shinning on "Dawn Of Day Blues" and the magnificent "Death Cell Blues."

Lonnie Johnson was a true musical innovator who's remarkable recording career spanned from the 1920's through the 1960's. During that time his musical diversity was amazing: he played piano, guitar, violin, he recorded solo, he accompanied down home country blues singers like Texas Alexander, he played with Louis Armtrong's Hot Fives, recorded with Duke Ellington, duetted with Victoria Spivey and cut a series of instrumental duets with the white jazzman Eddie Lang that set a standard of musicianship that remains unsurpassed by blues guitarists. In Johnson's single-string style lie the basic precedents of such jazz greats as Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian, while being a prime influence on bluesman as diverse as Robert Johnson, Tampa Red and B.B. King. Thus Johnson enjoys the rare distinction of having influenced musicians in both the jazz and blues fields. Like Tampa, Johnson backed dozens of artists on record including Texas Alexander, Jimmie Gordon, Merline Johnson, Alice Moore, Victoria Spivey, Peetie Wheatstraw, Johnnie Temple and a host of others.

Big Bill Broonzy

As Bob Riesman wrote in his biography of Big Bill Broonzy: "…Bill's recording career took off in this era, and his prodigious output was nearly unmatched among blues musicians. From 1934 until 1942, when the combination of a musicians’ union ban and the diversion of shellac to the war effort halted virtually all recording for two years, Bill averaged better than thirteen double-sided 78 rpm records each year as a featured artist. In addition, he played on an average of forty-eight sides each year as a sideman. In other words, for nearly a decade, he averaged one new Big Bill record a month, and he appeared on two more as a studio guitarist. …As 'Big Bill,' he was one of the most productive and popular artists in the business, with a name that was familiar to his audiences and reinforced by his easily recognized singing style. At the same time, he became the first-call studio guitarist for dozens of recording sessions that Lester Melrose organized for several record companies, particularly Bluebird. In that capacity, he was an integral part of the distinctive sound of numerous musicians, including some of the most popular artists of the era. Two artists whose careers were interwoven with Bill’s were Washboard Sam and Jazz Gillum. Bill played guitar on a most every one of the more than 150 recordings that Sam made over a period of twenty years, as well as on many of the sides that Gillum recorded."

Broonzy's 40's work with Washboard Sam really hit a high point with Big Bill laying down some lengthy, swinging amplified guitar on featured tracks like "Life Is Just A Book", "My Feet Jumped Salty" and "River Hip Mama." Washboard Sam recorded hundreds of records between 1935 and 1949 for the bluebird label, usually with backing by guitarist Big Bill. In 1932, Sam moved to Chicago, initially he played for tips, but soon he began performing regularly with Broonzy. Within a few years, Sam was supporting Broonzy on the guitarist's Bluebird recordings. Soon, he was supporting a number of different musicians on their recording sessions, including pianist Memphis Slim, bassist Ransom Knowling, and a handful of saxophone players, who all recorded for Bluebird. In 1935, Sam began recording for both Bluebird and Vocalion Records. Throughout the rest of the '30s and the '40s, Sam was one of the most popular Chicago bluesmen, selling plenty of records and playing to packed audiences in the Chicago clubs.

Broonzy was also prominent on the recordings of Lil Green who's "Just Rockin'" we feature today. Her professional career was launched around 1940, when the manager of a Chicago club hired her on the spot after a group of her friends had arranged for a bandleader to call her up from the audience to sing.By May 1940 Green had come to the attention of Lester Melrose, who brought her into the studio to record on the Bluebird label. He assigned a trio of musicians to back her, including Big Bill, Simeon Henry on piano, and New Orleans veteran Ransom Knowling on bass. That session produced her first hit, "Romance in the Dark." As Broonzy noted in his autobiography: "I played for Lil Green for two years as her guitar player. I wrote some songs for her, like "My Mellow Man" and "Country Boy," "Give Your Mama One More Smile" and some more that I fixed up for her.

Roosevelt Sykes

In 1929 Roosevelt Sykes met Jesse Johnson, the owner of the Deluxe Record Shop in St. Louis. Sykes, who at the time performed at an East St. Louis club for one dollar a night, quickly accepted Johnson's invitation to a recording session in New York. In the early 1930s, Sykes moved to Chicago. During the Depression years, he recorded for several labels under various pseudonyms. For the Victor label, he recorded as Willie Kelly on the classic 1930 side "32-20 Blues." Two years later, he cut his popular number "Highway 61 Blues" for Champion, the subsidiary label of Gennett Records. During the 1930's, Sykes served as a back-up pianist for more than thirty singers including Mary Johnson and James "St. Louis Jimmy" Oden. Through the recruiting efforts of Mayo "Ink" Williams, Sykes signed with Decca Records in 1934. His 1936 Decca side "Driving Wheel Blues" emerged as a blues classic. Sykes settled in Chicago in 1941 and, within a short time, became a house musician for the Victor/Bluebird label. Although the label marketed him as the successor to Fats Waller, who recorded on the same label and died in 1943, Sykes found success as the creator of his own style and remained active as a session man.

Sonny Boy Williamson was already a harp virtuoso in his teens. He learned from Hammie Nixon and Noah Lewis and ran with Sleepy John Estes and Yank Rachell before settling in Chicago in 1934. Sonny Boy signed to Bluebird in 1937. Henry Townsend recalled driving Sonny Boy, Robert Nighthawk, Walter Davis and Big Joe Williams to Aurora, Illinois, in his 1930 A Model Ford for their 1937 sessions: "I transferred them to Aurora, Illinois. There was about eight or nine of us …we stacked them in the car like sardines." This led to a marathon recording session resulting in six songs by Nighthawk (as Robert Lee McCoy), six by Sonny Boy Williamson I, four by Big Joe Williams and eight sides by Walter Davis. It was Sonny Boy's songs, especially, "Good Morning Little School Girl", "Bluebird Blues" and "Sugar Mama Blues" which were the biggest hits. Sonny Boy recorded prolifically for Victor both as a leader and behind others in the vast Melrose stable (including Robert Lee McCoy and Big Joe Williams, who in turn played on some of Williamson's sides). Sonny Boy cut more than 120 sides in all for RCA from 1937 to 1947

Kokomo Arnold was born in Georgia, and began his musical career in Buffalo, New York in the early 1920's. During prohibition, Kokomo Arnold worked primarily as a bootlegger, and performing music was a only sideline to him. Nonetheless he worked out a distinctive style of bottleneck slide guitar and blues singing that set him apart from his contemporaries. In the late 1920's, Arnold settled for a short time in Mississippi, making his first recordings in May 1930 for Victor in Memphis under the name of "Gitfiddle Jim." Arnold moved to Chicago in order to be near to where the action was as a bootlegger, but the repeal of the Volstead Act put him out of business, so he turned instead to music as a full-time vocation. From his first Decca session of September 10, 1934 until he finally called it quits after his session of May 12, 1938, Kokomo Arnold made 88 sides.Arnold also did session work backing Peetie Wheatstraw, Roosvelt Sykes, Alice Moore, Mary Johnson and others.

Papa Charlie Jackson

"Papa" Charlie Jackson was a six-string banjo player who was one of the earliest and most successful of the solo blues singer/instrumentalists. Jackson settled in Chicago on the famed Maxwell Street around 1920 where he began earning a living by playing on street corners and at house parties. In 1924 he cut his first solo sides "Papa's Lawdy Blues" and "Airy Man Blues" for the Paramount label. During this period Jackson also became a sideman with many of the hot groups in and around Chicago. He also recorded with Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, Bumble Bee Slim, Big Bill Broonzy and others before his subsequent death around 1938.

Despite several busy years in the recording studio and a couple of medium-sized hits ("Somebody Changed The Lock On My Door" and "We Gonna Move (To The Outskirts of Town)"), very little is known about Casey Bill Weldon. It was assumed he was the Will Weldon who played with the Memphis Jug Band but that remains in dispute. Between 1927 and 1935 he cut just over 60 sides for Victor, Bluebird and Vocalion. He was also an active session guitarist, appearing on records by Teddy Darby, Bumble Bee Slim, Memphis Minnie, Peetie Wheatsraw and others.

Show Notes:

Today's program spotlights the music recorded by Sonny Terry & Brownies McGhee shortly after they arrived in New York. They first moved to New York City in 1942 moving in with Huddie and Martha Ledbetter. Initial recordings were for the Library of Congress and for Terry regular sessions for Moe Asch, who later set up the Folkways label. They first recorded as a duo for Savoy in 1944. They recorded more duets together in 1946 but after that that mainly pursued their own recording careers although they did record quite a bit together through the mid-50's. Today's show spans the years 1946 through 1955 and chart the duo's progress waxing downhome blues to the more popular R&B of the day. Starting around 1946 Brownie became an in-demand session guitarist, backing New York based artists like Big Chief Ellis, his brother Stick McGhee, Champion Jack Dupree, Leroy Dallas, and Bob Gaddy among others. Terry also did some session work during this period but to a lesser extent than Brownie. We spotlight all of these artists and more all aided either by Brownie or Sonny in the band and occasionally both. We also spin some of the best material they recorded as a team during this period. By the late 50's the duo had become full-time partners, developing the folk-blues style they would become so well known for and leaving the commercial R&B world behind for the white blues revival audience.

In 1946, Brownie cut a series of sessions for Alert, many of which were duets with Sonny Terry. Thereafter, each man mainly pursued his own recording career, though their paths crossed fairly often. McGhee stayed with Savoy; Terry recorded for Capitol. In late 1948, Bob Shad engaged McGhee for his Sittin' In With label, where he cut his own sessions and backed Sister Ethel Davenport, Leroy Dallas and Big Chief Ellis. In 1950 he returned to Savoy where he intermittently continued to record until 1955. Sometime around 1951/2, both he and Sonny Terry signed with the Jax and Jackson labels, owned by Bob Shad's brother Morty. It's not known whether recordings by the band they put together were recorded at the same time or over some months. As well as records by Terry and McGhee, there were singles by bassist/vocalist Bobby Harris and pianist Bob Gaddy. The same musicians were "Night Owls" for Terry, "Jook Block Busters" for McGhee and '"Alley Cats" for Gaddy. It was only a matter of time before Terry and McGhee encountered Bobby Robinson, whose Record Shop was just down 125th Street from the Apollo. "I lived at 108 126th Street," Robinson told John Broven. "Now two doors down from me, at I think 112, Brownie McGhee and his brother Stick lived and Sonny Terry. All night long in the summertime they got the windows open, you got the blues thing going all down the street. So finally l got Sonny and Brownie, we did a few things. That was my first blues things."

In 1954 Brownie cut a single for another Morty Shad label, Harlem. "Christina" used the melody of Lloyd Price's "Lawdy Miss Clawdy". Brownie was cutting music firmly in R&B territory on his final four tracks for Savoy which attempted to meld Sonny Terry's harmonica with a set of mainstream R&B songs embellished by Mickey Baker's tough guitar licks. "When Its Love", "I'd Love To Love You", "Loves A Disease" and "My Fault" were basically Brownie's last efforts in this area of music. "My Fault" was also one of his most successful recordings. Around the time Brownie cut "Christina", Sonny made "Dangerous Woman (With A 45 1n Her Hand)"and "Love You Baby" probably with the same band, including McGhee and Bob Gaddy. "Dangerous Woman" hewed closer to a conventional R&B. In August 1953, he recorded for Victor, with a band that included Mickey Baker and Bobby Donaldson on bongos. "Hooray Hooray" was a reworking of The Woman Is killing Me." " Sonny Is Drinking" slowed the tempo, giving Mickey Baker ample room for his over-amped guitar.

Big Chief Ellis was from Alabama and after the war wound up in New York. At one point he was running a bar that was a hangout for local bluesmen. No one knew Chief could play until he sat down at the bar's piano and played. One of the musicians, Brownie McGhee, was impressed enough to call Bob Shad at Continental, who recorded Chief for the label and for the Sittin' In With label he later started. Ellis backed McGhee (and his brother Sticks) several times, including Sticks' one hit, "Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee." Brownie backed Ellis on the latter's signature tune Dices Oh Dices, a song about his lifelong profession as a gambler. Ellis became a fixture of New York's small blues scene, playing every weekend with Brownie and occasionally with Sonny Terry. He also recorded with a large number of the city's R&B artists including Tarheel Slim, Leroy Dallas, Mickey Baker, and Ralph Willis.

After WW II Champion Jack Dupree settled in New York. In 1945-46 he recorded for Joe Davis. At this time he was living at Brownie McGhee's house on 126th Street. McGee backs Dupree on sessions between 1945 (Sonny Terry appears on some 1946 and 1952 sessions) and the mid-50's. Stick McGhee appears on a number of 1950's sessions as well.

Leroy Dallas was born in Mobile, Alabama in 1920 and moved to Memphis in 1924. Along his travels he played washboard behind Brownie McGhee and formed a band with James McMillan playing the streets and juke joints of Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana and Tennessee. McMillan taught Dallas guitar and the two went on to tour the southern states working with Frank Edwards who made recordings in1949 and Georgia Slim who made records in 1937. By 1943 Dallas settled in Brooklyn New York. He made his first records for Sittin’ In With in 1949 consisting of six songs. He was accompanied by Brownie McGhee who was instrumental in setting up the session. Dallas was rediscovered by blues researcher Pete Welding and made a few recordings in the 60’s.

Ralph Willis was born in Alabama in 1910 and based in North Carolina during the 1930s where he apparently played with Blind Boy Fuller and Buddy Moss. Willis recorded his debut in 1944, and continued until 1953, issuing fifty tracks via several record labels. McGhee backed him on sessions in 1949, 1950 and 1951. On his final two sessions he's backed by McGhee as well as Sonny Terry on some numbers.

Young Granville McGhee earned his nickname by pushing his polio-stricken older brother Brownie through the streets of Kingsport, TN, on a cart that he propelled with a stick. McGhee was inspired to pen "Drinkin' Wine" while in Army boot camp during World War II. McGhee's first recorded version of the tune for the Harlem label made little impression in 1947, but a rollicking 1949 remake for Atlantic (as Stick McGhee & His Buddies) proved a massive R&B hit ( Brownie played guitar and sang harmony vocal). After one more smash for Atlantic, 1951's "Tennessee Waltz Blues," McGhee moved along to Essex, King, Savoy, and Herald, where he made his last 45 in 1960 before passing the following year.

The Apollo session from which a single by Duke Bayou & His Mystic 6 derived has always been logged as another Jack Dupree pseudonym; however, although he's present, the session was logged in the Apollo files as by Alec Seward & His Washboard Band. The vocals are shared by Seward ("Rub A Little Boogie", "That's All Right With Me") and Bobby Harris ("She Can Shake", "Doomed"), with Dupree's piano, Brownie McGhee's guitar, an unknown washboard player and a drummer in attendance. Seward was born in Charles City County, Virginia and relocated to New York in 1924 where he befriended Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry. He met Louis Hayes and the duo performed variously named as the Blues Servant Boys, Guitar Slim and Jelly Belly, or The Back Porch Boys. The duo recorded sides in 1944 and another batch in 1947. During the 1940's and 1950's Seward played and recorded with Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, McGhee and Terry. Seward issued the album Creepin' Blues (1965, Bluesville) with harmonica accompaniment by Larry Johnson. Later in the decade Seward worked in concert and at folk-blues festivals.  He died at the age of 70, in New York in May 1972.

While still in North Carolina during the early 1940's, Allen Bunn (Tarheel Slim) worked with several gospel groups. He broke away with Thurman Ruth and in 1949 formed their own group, the Jubilators. During a single day in New York in 1950, they recorded for four labels under four different names, One of those labels was Apollo, who convinced them to go secular. That's basically how the Larks, one of the seminal early R&B vocal groups, came to be. He cut two sessions of his own for the firm in 1952 under the name of Allen Bunn. As Alden Bunn, he encored on Bobby Robinson's Red Robin logo the next year. He also sang with  R&B vocal groups, the Wheels and the Lovers. As Tarheel Slim he made his debut in 1958 with his wife, Little Ann, in a duet format for Robinson's Fire imprint. He cut a pair of rockabilly raveups of his own, "Wilcat Tamer" and "No. 9 Train." After a few years off the scene, Tarheel Slim made a bit of a comeback during the early 1970's, with an album for Trix, his last recording. He died in 1977.

Both as a session man and featured recording artist, pianist Bob Gaddy made his presence known on the New York blues scene during the 1950's. Gaddy was drafted in 1943, and that's when he began to take the piano seriously. He picked up a little performing experience in California clubs while stationed on the West Coast before arriving in New York in 1946. Gaddy gigged with Brownie McGhee and guitarist Larry Dale around town, McGhee often playing on Gaddy's waxings for Jackson (his 1952 debut, "Bicycle Boogie"), Jax, Dot, Harlem, and from 1955 on, Hy Weiss' Old Town label. There Gaddy stayed the longest, waxing the fine "I Love My Baby," "Paper Lady," "Rip and Run," and quite a few more into 1960.

Several artists featured today have shadowy backgrounds. Little is known of Bobbie Harris who may have been from South Carolina and cut sides for several New York labels. Harris played bass and sang. He cut just over a dozen sides between 1951-52 with Brownie McGee backing him on at least two sessions. Nothing is known of vocalist Square Walton who cut a four song session in 1953 for Victor backed by Sonny Terry. A 1954 session wasn't released. Alonzo Scales was born in NC in 1888 and cut a 1949 session backed by Champion Jack and McGhee for Abbey and a four song session in 1955 for Wing backed by McGhee, Terry and Bob Gaddy.

Show Notes:

Read Notes:  Pt. 1 / Pt. 2	Read Notes:  Pt. 1 / Pt. 2

Today's show is a companion of sorts to a pair we did a couple of years back where we spotlighted popular 30's and 40's artists like Washboard Sam, Jazz Gillum, Sonny Boy Williamson I, Bumble Bee Slim, Bill Gaither, Johnnie Temple, and Doctor Clayton, all stars on the 30's and 40's Chicago blues scene. Today we feature several more  artists from this period, both well known and little remembered; on tap today are female singers Lil Green and Merline Johnson, southern styled artists like Tommy McClennan and Arthur Crudup and the contemplative blues of St. Louis Jimmy.

In spite of the economic depression of the 1930's, blues as a business was slowly but steadily on the upswing. With a wealth of talent available, and more arriving every day to both make and buy records, a few large record companies were regularly recording in Chicago. Brunswick, RCA Victor/Bluebird, Columbia, and others set up offices and studios, and with the influence of professional A&R men and producers (most notably Lester Melrose at Bluebird), certain subcategories and signature sounds began emerging. Particularly notable was the "Bluebird sound. Sam Charters characterized the sound as the "Bluebird Beat" or more unkindly as the "Melrose Mess" by Mike Rowe in his pioneering book Chicago Blues. As Rowe notes "it was a white businessman, Lester Melrose, who was really responsible for shaping the Chicago sound of the late 30's and 40's." Melrose had said "From March 1934 to February 1951 I recorded at least 90 percent of all rhythm-and-blues talent for RCA Victor and Columbia Records…" As Rowe further explains: "But Melrose had more than a large stable of blues artists under his control. Since only a few of them had regular accompanists most of them would play on each others records and thus Melrose has a completely self-contained unit… …The final stage of this musical incest was completed when they started recording each others songs." The result was a consistent, sometime cookie cutter sound, although the best artists would consistently transcend these limitations. The "Bluebird Sound" anticipated the Chicago blues of the post-war era featuring tight, smooth small band arrangements that were filled out with piano, bass drums and often clarinet or saxophone. All of today's artists recorded for Bluebird, if only briefly, while Arthur Crudup, Lil Green and Tommy McClennan spent virtually their entire career with the label.

Lil Green is one of those artists that made a big impression on me when I first heard her. I was working at the college radio station at the time when I found a closet filled with unsorted records. Of course I had to go through every one of them and there I uncovered the album Lil Green: Romance In The Dark on the RCA label. That record got plenty of spins and I've been a fan ever since. Also in that closet was another album in that same series, Arthur Crudup: The Father Of Rock And Roll. Both albums boasted a fine selection of tunes, great photos and liner notes Liner notes by Leonard Feather on the Green and Stephen Calt on the Crudup, presented in gatefold sleeves.

Classifying singers like Lil Green are tough as Feather points out: "…she was  not strictly a  bIues Performer. A few of the  tracks  in  this album  are  based  on  the classic 12-bar formula,  but  most of the others are cast in the popular song mold. Lil Green could better be classified as an an entertainer who sang, generally for black audiences, the kind of music that was categorized during the 1940s as rhythm and blues." The following comes from I Feel So Good: The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy by Bob Reisman: " According to Lil Green, after she had been orphaned at age ten in Clarksdale, Mississippi, she had moved in 1929 to Chicago, where she dropped out of high school. R. H. Harris, the gifted lead singer of the gospel group the Soul Stirrers, reported that she had killed a man in a brawl and been sent to prison for her crime. He remembered visiting the prison so that he could hear her sing in the Sunday services. Her professional career was launched around 1940, when the manager of a Chicago club hired her on the spot after a group of her friends had arranged for a bandleader to call her up from the audience to sing.By May 1940 Green had come to the attention of Lester Melrose, who brought her into the studio to record on the Bluebird label. He assigned a trio of musicians to back her, including Bill, Simeon Henry on piano, and New Orleans veteran Ransom Knowling on bass. That session produced her first hit, "Romance in the Dark," for which writing credit was split between Lil and Bill. The song, often abbreviated to "In the Dark," went on to become a standard and over time entered the repertoire of artists such as Dinah Washington and Nina Simone. Jazz historian Leonard Feather notes that the song "was remarkable in its day for the relatively frank sexuality of its lyrics," in which the singer proudly proclaims that "In the dark I get such a thrill / when he presses his fingertips upon my lips." The song showcased Green’s voice, which Feather described as "salt-and-vinegar," to which it might be added that she was able to sound vulnerable, sexy, and brassy, all in the same three-minute song.Based on the song’s success, Melrose recorded Green several times over the next year. Soon she was the subject of articles in the entertainment section of the Chicago Defender, which indicated that she had become identified as more than a blues singer. It meant that she was getting booked into clubs that catered to black audiences looking for an evening of music that they might identify as jazz or pop music.

The other song with which Green’s name continues to be associated was Joe McCoy’s composition "Why Don’t You Do Right," which she  recorded in April 1941. After the song brought some success to Green,  mostly with black record buyers, Peggy Lee’s later recording became a national hit for the Goodman band, and, in the words of one music historian, 'essentially established Lee as a name vocalist.' While Lil Green’s prominence ultimately fell short of Lee’s, the two hits launched her into star status, and in 1941 she began a two-year period of touring the United States. Appearing with the Tiny Bradshaw Orchestra, Green performed on some of the most prestigious stages in the country, including the Apollo and the Savoy in New York City. During her return visits to Chicago, she played the Regal Theater, where stars like Louis Armstrong and Count Basie appeared when they came to town." As Broonzy noted in his autobiography: "I played for Lil Green for two years as her guitar player. I wrote some songs for her, like "My Mellow Man" and "Country Boy," "Give Your Mama One More Smile" and some more that I fixed up for her. I wasn’t really writing them songs—I just hummed the tune until Henry, the piano player, and the bass player Ransom Knowling, could find the right chords to fit the tune. I hummed to them then she would sing the words that I’d wrote down for her."

"As Bill described it, he, Henry, and Knowling accompanied Green on her first two tours, and then she gradually dropped the three musicians, eventually replacing the small combo with a big band. Bill told of going to performances she gave at the Apollo Theater in the mid-1940s and receiving a warm greeting from her each time: 'It made me feel good to know that she hadn’t forgotten the ones she had started out with.' Green even went so far, in Bill’s account, to invite the trio over for dinner in Chicago, although he noted that 'she would eat most of it herself and then tell us to help ourselves.'  In the years after World War II, Green would still record and tour, but there would be no follow-up hits on the scale of her early successes. She performed occasionally in Chicago clubs in the early 1950's, and her final recording session was in 1951. When she died in 1954, the Defender made no mention of her passing."

As Calt notes: "Between 1941 and 1956 Crudup cut some eighty-odd sides for Victor and estabiished himseif as one of the most successful black performers of the period all without the benefit of stage appearances. (At the height of his popularity he worked the tank towns of Mississippi and Chicago's south side bars). …Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, the son of a guitarist, was born in 1905 at Forest, a small Mississippi farm community set midway between Jackson and Meridian. Although he was roughly contemporary with many of the traditional blues stylists who recorded in the Twenties, he began playing guitar at the relatively advanced age of  thirty-two."

Crudup is probably best known through Elvis Presley who recorded three of Crudup's classics during his heyday: "That's All Right Mama" (Elvis' Sun debut in 1954), "So Glad You're Mine," and "My Baby Left Me." Around 1940, Crudup migrated to Chicago from Mississippi. He was playing for spare change on the streets and living in a packing crate underneath an elevated train track when RCA/Bluebird producer Lester Melrose dropped a few coins in Crudup's hat. Melrose hired Crudup to play a party that 1941 night at Tampa Red's house attended by the cream of Melrose's stable: Big Bill Broonzy, Lonnie Johnson, Lil Green. By September of 1941, he was himself an RCA artist. Crudup hit the uppermost reaches of the R&B lists during the mid-'40s with "Rock Me Mama," "Who's Been Foolin' You," "Keep Your Arms Around Me," "So Glad You're Mine," and "Ethel Mae." He cut the original "That's All Right" in 1946 backed by his usual rhythm section of bassist Ransom Knowling and drummer Judge Riley, but it wasn't a national hit at the time. Crudup cut prolifically for Victor until 1954. (He had already cut singles in 1952 for Trumpet disguised as Elmer James and for Checker as Percy Lee Crudup). In 1961, Crudup surfaced after a long layoff with an album for Bobby Robinson's Harlem-based Fire logo dominated by remakes of his Bluebird hits. Another lengthy hiatus preceded Delmark boss Bob Koester's following the tip of Big Joe Williams to track him down. He was reunited with Ransom Knowling (Willie Dixon also handled bass duties on some of his sides). Finally, Crudup began to make some decent money, playing various blues and folk festivals for appreciative crowds for a few years prior to his 1974 death.

Born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1903 James Burke Oden began singing, playing piano and writing songs in his 20's in St. Louis.  Oden moved to St. Louis circa 1917 and by the age of seventeen was working at a barber shop where many blues singers would congregate. He taught himself piano around this time and fell in with pianist Roosevelt Sykes (the two remained frequent musical partners throughout the ensuing decades). Oden's piano playing soon fell by the wayside as he was intimidated by the many talented St Louis piano players. "There was just so many good pianp players on St. Louis in those days," he told Paul Oliver. "Peetie Wheatstraw, Roosevelt Sykes, (James) 'Steady Roll' Johnson and all those guys. But I used to write blues for some of them. My blues come mostly from women and I've had quite a few to give me trouble…and that's the reason why I started out to writing blues. …(Roosevelt Sykes) told me I had a voice for singing and I just started out practicing with him and writing – I never sung no one's number but my own and I been writing songs (ever since)." Chicago eventually became his base of operations although he still traveled the circuit, which included trips back to St. Louis and excursions down to Texas on occasion.  For a short time he operated a blues club in Indianapolis with Memphis Minnie. Oden was also involved in the JOB label. JOB was businessman Joe Brown's second and more lasting venture into the record business, after Opera. When the label opened in August 1949 his partner was Oden, but as the bluesman recorded just one session early in the days of the label, it's suspected that his share was quickly bought out by Brown or someone else.

St. Louis Jimmy Oden

Oden enjoyed a fairly prolific recording career during the '30's and '40's, appearing on Champion, Bluebird (where he hit with "Goin' Down Slow" in 1941), Columbia, Bullet in 1947, Miracle, Aristocrat (there he cut "Florida Hurricane" in 1948 accompanied by pianist Sunnyland Slim and a young guitarist named Muddy Waters), Mercury, Savoy, and Apollo. Oden described the origins of his classic "Goin' Down Slow" to Paul Oliver: "(it) started from a girl in St. Louis, I see the condition she was in – pregnant, trying to lose a kid, see. And she looked like she was going down slow. I made that remark to my sister and it came in my mind and I started to write it like that." Scattered singles for Duke (with Sykes on piano) and Parrot (a 1955 remake of "Goin' Down Slow") set the stage for Oden's 1960 album debut for Prestige's Bluesville subsidiary (naturally, it included yet another reprise of "Goin' Down Slow").  After a serious road accident in 1957 he devoted himself to writing and placed material with Muddy Waters ("Soon Forgotten" and "Take the Bitter with the Sweet" ), Howlin' Wolf ("What a Woman!") and John Lee Hooker. In 1960 he made an album with Bluesville Records (Goin' Down Slow), and sang on a Candid Records session with Robert Lockwood, Jr. and Otis Spann. Oden made guest appearances as a singer on several other artist's sessions in the 60's, and, had he not withdrawn from the tour, would have made it to Europe as part of the 1968 American folk Blues Festival. He appeared as a guest at the 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival and recorded on the soundtrack for the 1970 British film Blues Like Showers Of Rain. Oden passed in 1977. Sadly few came to his funeral outside of Muddy Waters and Sunnyland who came to pay their respects. Tony Russell's assessment is an astute one:  "Oden could never be called an exciting artist, but his lyrics always had both head and heart in their making and he sang them with a craftman's pride in his own good work."

Merline Johnson was one of the most prolific female artists of the 30's, with 70 issued sides, yet little is known about her. The bulk of her recordings were made between 1937 and 1940 with a last, unissued session, in 1947. Blind John Davis said of her: "…Big Bill would have to take her home so his wife could watch her so she wouldn’t go and get drunk. But when she hit that microphone, though, boy, she was on her way." Despite the efforts of her family in Milwaukee to keep her under control, John says, "She’d get to thinkin’ about Chicago, they’d wake up the next morning and Merline'd be in Chicago. She used to call me up and just cuss and laugh. "…She didn’t like good whiskey," Davis laughs. "You could go out there in Jewtown and get moonshine and still hear it foamin’ in the glass. It was still fermenting. She was crazy about it. But she was a nice person." The aunt of R&B vocalist LaVern Baker, Johnson was usually billed as the "The Yas Yas Girl", a bawdy nickname,  although her records weren't all that suggestive.

Johnson didn't have the outsize personality of Memphis Minnie or the vocal abilities of Lil Green yet it's not hard to see why she was so obviously popular among black audiences; she possessed a strong expressive voice, which hinted at toughness and confidence and she delivered her blues in well written songs that dealt frankly with male/female relationships, sex, crime and whiskey. Neil Slaven provides an insightful portrait of her musical style: "The trenchancy of Johnson's singing underlines a hint of masculinity in her performances., more in the delivery than in the content. That impression is enhanced by her clear diction and confident projection. Although she did it sparingly,  she's perhaps the only woman to directly imitate Peetie Wheatstraw …Echoes of Big Bill Broonzy and Jazz Gillum also resound, and Gillum recorded an answer song to her "Got A man In The 'Bamma Mine." She was obviously a cherished member of the Lester Melrose stable, which explains the presence of stalwarts such as Black bob, Joshua Altheimer, Blind John Davis and Broonzy in her backing bands. She flirted with a more jazz-oriented style in the middle of her career, backed by her Rhythm Rascals and Her Jazz Boys, and did a fair imitation (though nothing more) of Billie Holiday in "Fine And Mellow." …Although never achieving  the status of required listening, the Yas Yas Girl's records are of dependable quality and entertaining."

Tommy McClennan is a contradiction; at once wholly individualistic with his powerhouse gravel-throated voice, sprinkled with frequent entertaining spoken asides propelled by an exciting, rudimentary guitar style while on the other hand derivative, with a repertoire mostly drawn from other artists. espite his limited bag of songs, his limited guitar prowess (despite the boastfully titled "I’m a Guitar King"), McClennan made it work through the sheer force of his outsized personality and his intense commitment to his material. McClennan arrived in Chicago in 1939 supposedly through the intervention of Big Bill Broonzy who told Bluebird talent scout Lester Melrose he ought to look him up. His record label, Bluebird, and the record buying public obviously saw something in McClennan as he cut forty sides (at five eight-song sessions), everyone issued at the time, between 1939 and 1942.

McClennan is remembered by bluesmen like Big Joe Williams, Big Bill Broonzy, Jimmy Rogers and most importantly Honeyboy Edwards. Our knowledge of McClennan has been expanded since then with the release of Honeyboy Edwards’ 1997 autobiography, The World Don’t Owe Me Nothing, where he put pen to ink,  recollecting at length about his old friend and partner. "Tommy had a big mouth.  …Tommy played the guitar and gambled, shot dice, played cards. … Tommy, he wasn’t really a guitar picker; he was mostly a frailer, and played a few chords in the key of C, running chords with that big loud voice. …Tommy McClennan and me played both sides of town [Greenwood, MS]. We used to serenade in the white neighborhoods. We’d walk down the street amongst all those old houses, strumming our guitars, and we’d see them curtains fly back and they’d chuck nickels and dimes out in the street for us. We’d play ‘Tight Like That’, little jump-up songs for them. Then we’d go back across the river where we come from, raise hell and drink, holler our asses off all night long, singing the ‘Cotton Patch Blues’ in them shotgun houses in our part of town."

McClennan remained in Chicago and seemed to follow the path of Tommy Johnson, a slave to alcohol who lived long after he recorded but never stepped into a studio again. Honeyboy remembers seeing McClennan singing at Turner's on 40th and Indiana during the late 40's: "He played a little bit and he sang, but he didn’t play too long ‘fore he just …Tommy just dranked so much he just, he couldn't…" Honeyboy encountered his old friend one more time: "One day in 1962 I was down around Twenty-Second street and Clark at a big junkyard. …I went with some boys to sell some scrap iron and who do I see there but Tommy McClennan! Tommy was living out there in a truck trailer made into kind of a house. " Honeyboy tried to look after him but "he studied drinking all the time. …He asked me to take him back to that [hobo] Jungle. I carried him back down there. …Later on I heard he had taken sick, that he was in the hospital. …Tommy died in that hospital in 1962. …That alcohol was what Tommy was living for, but it ate him plumb up."

Show Notes:

Today's is a sequel to a show we did a few weeks, Seaboard Stomp – East Coast Blues 1927-1941, devoted to East Coast blues from the 20's through the early 40's. Today's show takes the story through 1953. Today we emphasize the contribution to post-war blues made by singers from the Southeast and the Mid Atlantic states where many gravitated to New York. These performers tended to prefer a lighter and more melodic style than those from the Mississippi Delta who subsequently brought the blues to Chicago and Detroit. The bulk of these recordings, in fact, were recorded in New York. On today's program we spotlight well known artists like Blind Willie McTell, Brownie McGhee and Champion Jack Dupree as well as a slew of superb less remembered artists like Ralph Willis, Dan Pickett, Alec Seward and partner Louis Hayes among others. For an in-depth look at the Piedmont blues I recommend Bruce Bastin’s exhaustive study Red River Blues: The Blues Tradition in the Southeast which has been an invaluable resource for this show and its predecessor.

As on our first installment of East Coast Blues, the influence of the popular Blind Boy Fuller still looms large on many of these recordings. Fuller recorded his substantial body of work over a short, six-year span (1935-1941). Nevertheless, he was one of the most recorded artists of his time and by far the most popular and influential Piedmont blues player of all time. His influence can be heard in the music of today's featured artists such as Boy Green, Carolina Slim, Richard Trice and Julius King.

Boy Green cut one 78, "A and B Blues b/w Play My Jukebox", in 1944 for Regis. Nothing is known of Green who possessed a fine voice and was an excellent guitar picker.

Carolina Slim was a Piedmont blues guitarist from North Carolina whose style was shaped as much by Lightnin' Hopkins as it was by Blind Boy Fuller evidenced on tracks like "Shake Boogie" and "Rag Mama." He was born Edward Harris in Leasburg, North Carolina, near the Virginia border. In 1950, Harris was dubbed Carolina Slim when he recorded for Herman Lubinsky's Savoy group of labels. He moved to Newark, the home of Savoy, after his first session. He recorded for King as Country Paul in 1951-52 before returning to Savoy in 1953.

Willie Trice and his brother Richard became close friends with Blind Boy Fuller and Fuller took them up to New York where they cut six sides together (two unissued) for Decca in 1937. Richard Trice recorded after the war for Savoy in 1946 as Little Boy Fuller as well as a couple of sides in 1948 and 1952/53. Richard Trice was later recorded by Pete Lowry but those recordings remain unreleased.

As Paul Garon writes in the notes to Down Home Blues Classics: New York & The East Coast States 1943-1953: "Julius King (1915-1970) was born and died in Tennessee, but his heaviest stylistic influence was North Carolina's Blind Boy Fuller, both in vocal inflection and in guitar style. "I Want A Slice of Yo~ Pudding" features a kazoo, as well as a fondness for raggy, Fuller-style pieces, and hokum material played a significant role in King's repertoire.  "One O'Clock Boogie" seems to draw inspiration from Pinetop Slim who recorded in Atlanta in 1949, and possibly  even from John Lee who recorded in Montgomery in 1951. While  "Mississippi Boogie" features King's kazoo playing, it also echoes Barbecue Bob tonally, especially the latter's flood blues." King cut a lone four-son session for Tennessee in 1952.

Several of today's artists get twin spins including the duos of Skoodle Dum Doo & Sheffield, Alec Seward & Louis Hayes and Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, plus Gabriel Brown, Blind Willie McTell, Curley Weaver, Ralph Willis and Dan Pickett.

Gabriel Brown was discovered in Florida by folk music researchers Alan Lomax and Zora Neal Hurston in the '30's and launched his recording career with sides for the Library of Congress. He began making commercial recordings, starting in 1943, for A&R man, record label owner, and record producer Joe Davis and worked for him through 1952.

Seth Richards, possibly from Virgina, recorded a couple tracks under his real name in 1928 ("Lonely Seth Blues b/w Skoodeldum Doo"), which would be his last recordings until he recorded four songs as Skoodle Dum Doo & Sheffield in 1943 for the Regis label.

Alec Seward was born in Charles City County, Virginia and relocated to New York in 1924. Seward befriended Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, and retained his Piedmont blues styling despite changes in musical trends. He met Louis Hayes (who later became a minister in northern New Jersey) and the duo performed variously named as the Blues Servant Boys, Guitar Slim and Jelly Belly, or The Back Porch Boys. The duo recorded sides in 1944 and another batch in 1947. During the 1940's and 1950's Seward played and recorded with Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, McGhee and Terry. Seward issued the album Creepin' Blues (1965, Bluesville) with harmonica accompaniment by Larry Johnson. Later in the decade Seward worked in concert and at folk-blues festivals. He died at the age of 70, in New York in May 1972.

Brownie McGhee worked in a partnership with Sonny Terry for most of his career and also recorded with many of today's featured artists including Leroy Dallas, Champion Jack Dupree, and Big Boy Ellis. McGhee began recording as Blind Boy Fuller No. 2, immediately after Fuller's death in 1941. He sung on one side from Fuller's last session, whereas Terry had been backing Fuller on and off since 1937. McGhee's manager, J. B. Long, suggested that Brownie take Sonny Terry to Washington DC where they played together at a concert with Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson. Afterwards, they recorded for the Library of Congress. They also recorded for Moe Asch, of Folkways, backing singers as diverse as Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, and in 1944 they began to record for Savoy. Wartime shellac restrictions had loosened and many small and independent labels were recording the new sounds of R & B, as well as the postwar blues. During the period of today's program, the 40's and 50's, the duo cut fine sides, both together and aprat, for Savoy, Gotham, Sittin' In With, Folkways, Capitol and others. McGhee can also be heard today backing Big Chief Ellis on "Dices Dices", Ellis and McGhee back Leroy Dallas on "I'm Going Away" and with Terry backing Champion Jack Dupree on "Stumbling Block Blues."

For years James Founty, known professionally as Dan Pickett, was a mystery man. Field trips in the early 90’s have solved most mysteries although most of the research remains unpublished. He recorded five singles for Gotham plus four unreleased tracks in 1949. Pickett's repertoire was derived almost exclusively from 30’s recordings synthesizing those styles into a unique sound of his own.

According to David Evans: "Around the end of 1949, or more likely early in 1950, Curley Weaver recorded four songs for the Sittin’ In With label. It’s not certain whether there were one or two sessions and whether the recordings were made in Atlanta or New York. Two tracks were not released until 1952 and may actually have been recorded that year." Weaver and McTell also cut a batch of records made in Atlanta for Regal Records in May 1950. Weaver's "Some Rainy Day" is a remake of "Some Cold Rainy Day" is a remake of a 1933 duet with Ruth Willis while "Trixie" is a rag version of the popular "Tricks Ain't Walking No More." Weaver can be heard again backing McTell on the bouncy, perfectly integrated "Talkin' To You Mama" while McTell takes it alone on

I want to say something about a few of the other artists featured on today's program including Big Chief Ellis, Leroy Dallas, Marylin Scott, Guitar Shorty and Doug Quattlebaum.

Big Chief Ellis was a barrelhouse pianist from Alabama who recorded behind many great Piedmont blues artists in the '40s and '50s in addition to making his own fine, if lesser-selling, records. Brownie McGhee got Ellis on record by phoning Bob Shad at Continental, who recorded Chief for the label and for the Sittin' In With label he later started. Ellis backed McGhee (and his brother Sticks) several times, including Sticks' one hit, "Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee." Brownie backed Ellis on the latter's signature tune "Dices Oh Dices", a song about his lifelong profession as a gambler. Ellis became a fixture of New York's small blues scene, playing every weekend with Brownie and occasionally with Sonny Terry. He also recorded with/behind a large number of the city's R&B-flavored bluesmen, including Tarheel Slim, Leroy Dallas, Mickey Baker, and Ralph Willis. He cut his lone full-length album for the Trix label in the 70's.

Leroy Dallas was born in Mobile, Alabama in 1920 and moved to Memphis in 1924. Along his travels he played washboard behind Brownie McGhee and formed a band with James McMillan playing the streets and juke joints of Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana and Tennessee. McMillan taught Dallas guitar and the two went on to tour the southern states working with Frank Edwards who made recordings in1949 and Georgia Slim who made records in 1937. By 1943 Dallas settled in Brooklyn New York. He made his first records for Sittin’ In With in 1949 consisting of six songs. He was accompanied by Brownie McGhee who was instrumental in setting up the session. Dallas was rediscovered by blues researcher Pete Welding and made a few recordings in the 60’s.

Mary DeLoatch, also known as Mary DeLoach, was a Norfolk, VA-based gospel singer who used the name Marylin Scott or Marylyn Scott the Carolina Blues Girl when performing blues. When performing gospel she sounded quite a bit like Sister Rosetta Tharpe. She switched to exclusively religious material after 1950 and her final recording appears to have been made in 1967 when she was photographed playing an electric guitar while wearing evangelical robes. Bruce Bastin wrote that our track, "I Got What My Daddy Likes", "is one of the finest postwar blues from the Piedmont."

Guitar Shorty (John Henry Fortescue) cut a pair of unissued sides for Savoy in 1952, the album Carolina Slide Guitar (Flyright, 1971) and his final album for Trix, Alone In His Field, before passing in 1975.

Born in South Carolina in 1927, Doug Quattlebaum came to Philadelphia in the early 1940's. In 1953 he cut three sides for Gotham records; two of them appeared on a Gotham 78, but the third was only rediscovered years later. In 1961 Pete Welding recorded Quattlebaum again, after hearing that he was still around. He was driving a Mr. Softee ice cream truck and performing for his patrons. Scheduled for issue on a Testament album, the sides remained unissued until the 90's. A few months later Welding recording him, few months later Quattlebaum recorded for Bluesville, the results issued on the marvelous Softee Man Blues with a picture of the artist in his ice cream uniform on the front cover.

Related Articles:

-Carolina Slim: Blues Go Away From Me album notes by Pete Lowry

-Guitar Shorty An Appreciation and Memory by Valerie Wilmer (Blues Unlimited 120 (1976), p. 20-21) ][PDF]

-Doug Quattlebaum By Paul Sheatsley (Record Research No. 42, March/April 1962, p.12) [PDF]

Show notes:

With the exception of two sides by Champion Jack Dupree, today's show really starts in the post-war era when the city's first blues and R&B singers started getting on record. The New Orleans pre-war blues scene was not well documented on record outside of early performers like Richard "Rabbit" Brown, Lizzie Miles and Blu Lu Barker. As Neil Slaven writes about the city's history: "New Orleans has always been a music city. Most would have it jazz was its most significant invention, formed around the dawn of the twentieth century and passed on to the rest of America and the world thereafter. Some, perhaps with a little less fervor, point to the city's long blues traditions and the explosion of rhythm and blues in the 1950's. In fact the two are inextricably bound together, branches of the same tree, sharing sharing a common ancestry that laid down some of its roots at the turn of the nineteenth century …Such was the impact of jazz over the next decades, that blues progressed unseen in the salons of a thriving bordello district for the entertainment, but not distraction, of whores and their clients. When they weren't dispensing refinement, pianists would gather at dives like Tudlom's Tonk, where rolling the horses, which was what boogie woogie called for its repetition and prancing tempos, was the coming thing. Most of the tonks, cribs and barrel houses were located in what was called the Battlefield, and over the years, that's where you'd find Drive 'Em Down (Willie Hall) who taught Jack Dupree, Joseph 'Red' Cayou, Tuts Washington, Fats Pichon, Udell Wilson and Joe Robichaux, known as Joe Daggers." It's that heritage behind today's featured piano players.

Even in the 1940's the scene was dominated by jazz and dixieland bands like Kid Thomas, Billie and De De Pierce, George Lewis and John Handy. During the 1940's and into the 1950s a distinctly New Orleans approach to blues and R&B emerged. Usually piano-driven and backed by inventive rhythms that showed the marked influence of second-line marching and brass bands, New Orleans blues and R&B developed a rolling, joyous feel that captured the rollicking feel of the city. As author John Broven writes: "The freewheeling, happy-go-lucky music is known as the New Orleans Sound, which has its roots in the original beat of the old parade bands of the nineteenth century. Whether it's rhythm and blues, rock 'n' roll, soul or modern jazz, the parade beat is the ubiquitous common factor, the foundation, if you like." And as record producer Marshall Sehorn said: 'This is the home of the second line, that extra syncopated beat that has been in existence ever since the first black man picked upa tambourine."

There's a distinct emphasis on the piano blues, particularly in the formative years of the New Orleans blues scene of the 40's. Three figures dominated, and set the tone for, New Orleans rhythm and blues in the 1940s: Professor Longhair, Fats Domino, and Dave Bartholomew. Fats Domino will play a larger role in our second New Orleans installment but we play two sets apiece by Longhair and Bartholomew. Other pianists heard today include Champion Jack Dupree and Paul Gayten plus a slew of talented singers, most famously Roy Brown, Cousin Joe and Larry Darnell plus a batch of fine little remembered figures from the Crescent City's past.

We open the show with two sides by Champion Jack Dupree from 1940 and 1941. Dupree grew up in New Orleans' Colored Waifs' Home for Boys (Louis Armstrong also spent his formative years there). Learning his trade from barrelhouse 88s ace Willie "Drive 'em Down" Hall, Dupree left the Crescent City in 1930 for Chicago and then Detroit. By 1935, he was boxing professionally in Indianapolis, battling in an estimated 107 bouts. In 1940, Dupree made his recording debut for Chicago A&R man Lester Melrose and OKeh Records. Dupree's 1940-1941 output for the Columbia subsidiary exhibited a strong New Orleans tinge despite the Chicago surroundings; his driving "Junker's Blues" was later cleaned up as Fats Domino's 1949 debut, "The Fat Man."

Born in the Crescent City, Roy Brown grew up all over the place: Eunice, LA (where he sang in church and worked in the sugarcane fields); Houston, TX; and finally Los Angeles by age 17. His seminal 1947 DeLuxe Records waxing of "Good Rockin' Tonight" was immediately ridden to the peak of the R&B charts by shouter Wynonie Harris and subsequently covered by Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis, and many more early rock icons. Roy Brown didn't have to wait long to dominate the R&B lists himself. He scored 15 hits from mid-1948 to late 1951 for DeLuxe.

Growing up in New Orleans, Cousin Joe began singing in church before crossing over to the blues. Guitar and ukulele were his first axes. He eventually prioritized the piano instead, playing Crescent City clubs and riverboats. He moved to New York in 1942, gaining entry into the city's thriving jazz scene (where he played with Dizzy Gillespie, Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, and a host of other luminaries). He recorded for King, Gotham, Philo (in 1945), Savoy, and Decca along the way, doing well on the latter logo with "Box Car Shorty and Peter Blue" in 1947. After returning to New Orleans in 1948, he recorded for DeLuxe and cut a two-part "ABCs" for Imperial in 1954 as Smilin' Joe under Dave Bartholomew's supervision. But by then, his recording career had faded. For today's program we spin two tracks,"It's Dangerous To Be A Husband" and "Little Woman Blues",  from the only session from the period that was actually recorded in New Orleans.

Paul Gayten, a seminal figure in New Orleans rhythm & blues, led a varied career in the music business as a bandleader, producer, label owner, and one-time overseer of the West Coast operation of Chess Records. A nephew of blues-piano legend Little Brother Montgomery, Gayten once led one of the top bands of New Orleans, but he gave up the performing life in 1956 to turn his attention to production and eventually to his own California-based Pzazz label. Gayten wrote Larry Darnell's 1949 classic "For You My Love" and recorded a few Top Ten hits of his own for Regal and DeLuxe (1947-1950), some of them with vocalist Annie Laurie who shines on our selection, "Annie's Blues."

Joe "Mr. Google Eyes" August was born Joseph Augustus on September 13, 1931, and gained his formative musical experience as a member of the First Emmanuel Baptist Church choir, but found himself most deeply attracted to the blues. He eventually earned a steady gig at the local Downbeat Club, appearing opposite Roy Brown.Although Brown, Paul Gayten, and Annie Laurie were the first New Orleans R&B artists to enter the recording studio, Augustus was not far behind, making his debut for the black-owned Coleman Records with 1946's "Poppa Stoppa's Be-Bop Blues"; he was still just 15 years old at the time, and accordingly the label proclaimed him "Mr. Google Eyes — the world's youngest blues singer."His contract was then bought out by Columbia. The twenty track collection, The Very Best, is well worth tracking down.

Working in his hometown of New Orleans, Dave Bartholomew helped develop and define the sound of rhythm & blues in the late 40's and 50's. He was a bandleader, trumpet player, songwriter, producer, arranger, talent scout, businessman, and more. Although he never made the pop charts under his own name, Bartholomew was a key figure in the transition from jump blues and big-band swing to rhythm & blues and rock and roll. Bartholomew is most famous for having discovered and produced Fats Domino, with whom he produced and wrote songs for through the 50's and beyond. But he’s worked with a who’s-who of New Orleans R&B figures: Smiley Lewis, Lloyd Price, Shirley & Lee, Earl King, Roy Brown, Huey “”Piano”” Smith, Chris Kenner, Robert Parker, Frankie Ford, James Booker, Jewel King, James “”Sugar Boy”” Crawford, Tommy Ridgley and more. Bartholomew may be more well known for the famous artists he worked with but also prolifically under his own name between 1947and the early 60's, laying down and impressive body of work for a several different labels like DeLuxe, Imperial and King, almost all recorded in his hometown of New Orleans. His records featured the cream of New Orleans musicians like Earl Palmer, Ernest McClean, Edgar Blanchard, Lee Allen, Alvin “Red” Tyler, Frank Fields and others.

Professor Longhair grew up on the streets of New Orleans, tap dancing for tips on Bourbon Street with his running partners. Local 88s aces Sullivan Rock, Kid Stormy Weather, and Tuts Washington were early influences. Longhair began to take his playing seriously in 1948, earning a gig at the Caldonia Club. Longhair debuted on wax in 1949, laying down four tracks (including the first version of his signature "Mardi Gras in New Orleans," for the Dallas-based Star Talent label. Union problems forced those sides off the market, but Longhair's next date for Mercury the same year produced his first and only national R&B hit in 1950, the hilarious "Bald Head." The pianist made great records for Atlantic in 1949, Federal in 1951, Wasco in 1952, and Atlantic again in 1953 plus other scattered small label sides through the 50's.

Larry Darnell was born in Columbus, OH and achieved local fame as a gospel singer the age of 11.When he was 15 he left home to tour as a dancerwith a burlesque road show. When company funds were low, Darnell did not hesitate when offered a steady gig in New Orleans as a singer at the famous Dew Drop Inn. He stayed on for several years, and gradually developing a persona that began to attract quite a following. One night in 1949 Darnell's act was caught by Fred Mendelsohn, co-founder and A&R director for the Regal record label. Mendelsohn, later recalled: "Darnell was doing a song called 'I'll Get Along Somehow' originally popularized by Andy Kirk. He added a recitation that sent the dames screaming and hollering." Darnell was hired on the spot and whisked up to Newark where three titles were cut in early September 1949 and issued on 78-rpm records bearing the Regal label. Presented in two parts, "I'll Get Along Somehow" made it to number two on the Billboard R&B chart not long after "For You My Love" hit number one, staying up there for eight weeks.

Texas-born R&B singer Jewel King moved to New Orleans in the mid-forties. By 1948 she began to make a name for herself as she worked many local clubs like the Club Rocket, the Club Desire and the Dew Drop. In that year she had her first recording session, for DeLuxe Records, but these tracks ("Go Now" and "Passion Blues") were never issued. Her next visit to a recording studio (Cosimo's, the only studio in New Orleans) took place on November 29, 1949. This was the first session that Dave Bartholomew produced for Imperial. It was a split session with Tommy Ridgley, who recorded "Shrewsbury Blues" (Imperial 5054), his very first single. One song from the session, "3 x 7 = 21", was released in January 1950 and climbed to # 4 on the R&B charts. Fats Domino's "The Fat Man" also charted at this time and Imperial honcho Lew Chudd set up a national tour for the two acts, with King headlining. At the last minute, Jewel bailed out because her husband /bandleader (Jack Scott) refused to let her tour without his band. Bartholomew told her she was making a big mistake and left without her, with Tommy Ridgley as a replacement.

Dave Bartholomew

Chubby Newsome was originally from Detroit but found recognition in New Orleans where she was a regular performer in the late 1940s. She was discovered by Paul Gayten at the famous Dew Drop Inn. She was soon signed to the DeLuxe label where she recorded her signature tune "Hip Shakin' Mama", and also "He May Be Your Man" with Gayten's band. Newsome signed with Regal in 1949 cutting several serssions for the label in the early 50's.

The Mercury label cut some fine sessions in New Orleans between 19490 and 1953. The sessions began with William B. Allen, who owned a radio supply store at Orleans and North Robertson streets and also distributed Mercury records in New Orleans. In late 1949 Allen talked to Mercury’s main office about recording black artists in New Orleans. Among those recorded were Professor Longhair, Alma Monday, Little Joe Gaines, George Miller & His Mid-Driffs, Ray Johnson and Herbert ‘Woo Woo’ Moore among others.