Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

There’s a definite theme running through today’s mix show,  with a good batch of recordings spotlighting the vibrant, swinging  Los Angeles blues scene of the mid-40′s through the early 50′s. The West Coast had a thriving blues and jazz scene in the 1940’s and 50’s with most of the activity centering around the Los Angeles, Richmond, Oakland and San Francisco Bay areas. The Black population swelled in the 1940s, 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. From approximately 1920 to 1955, Central Avenue was the heart of the African-American community in Los Angeles. Like New York City’s 125th Street or Memphis’s Beale Street or Chicago’s South Side, Central Avenue was one of the world capitols of nightlife, of jazz, rhythm & blues, of black culture and society. I’ve devoted several shows to the west coast blues scene of this period but many of today’s artists I haven’t played before. Among those spotlighted are Buddy Tate, The Great Gates, Red Mack, Al “Cake” Wichard’s Sextette, Buddy Banks’ Sextette, Roy Hawkins and Johnny Fuller.

We spin double shots of two great combos: Al “Cake” Wichard’s Sextette and Buddy Banks’ Sextette. The  Wichard tracks come from the terrific recent reissue on Ace, Al “Cake” Wichard Sextette – Cake Walkin’. Al Wichard was born in Welbourne, Arkansas, on 15th August 1919, but the steps by which he arrived in Los Angeles as a drummer in 1944 remain shadowy. He managed to record with Jimmy Witherspoon and Jay McShann within weeks of his arrival, and in April 1945 was the drummer on Modern’s first session, accompanying Hadda Brooks.This CD consists entirely of sessions made under his own name. Thirteen tracks have vocals by Jimmy Witherspoon while others feature vocalist Duke Henderson and guitarist Pee Wee Crayton. All these sides were cut between 1945 and 1949. Witherspoon is in magnificent form throughout, including our selection, the bouncy “Thelma Lee.” Henderson wasn’t quite in Spoon’s league, few were, but he turns in a superb low-down performance on our cut, “Gravels In My Pillow” as he boasts:

They call me the devil’s stepchild, they say I’m just no good (2x)
They say I’m rotten from the start, wouldn’t be no other way if I could

Tenor sax blower Buddy Banks began his career in California and played with all the best West Coast Orchestras. In 1945 he formed his own sextet. The band began recording by backing singer Marion Abernathy for the Juke Box label and in its own right for the tiny Sterling label. The band went on to record for Excelsior, United, Modern and Specialty through 1949.The band employed some fine vocalists including Fluffy Hunter, Baby Davis, Marion Abernathy and Bixie Crawford. The obscure Davis belts it out “Happy Home Blues” while Hunter storms through the rocking “Fluffy’s Debut.” It’s a shame both singers recorded so little. All these tracks come from the excellent LP Happy Home Blues issued on the Official label.

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Red Mack was a west coast vocalist who also played piano, organ, trumpet, cornet and drums. He fronted bands that cut sides for Gold Seal, Atlas and Mercury at sessions recorded in 1945, 1946 and 1951. Mack is heard to fine effect on the humorous “Mr. Big Head:”

You said your wife was fine, when you lived down on the farm (2x)
Now you got the big head, and a glamor girl on your arm
Well you making more money, and that’s a fact
You won’t drive nothing baby, but those big fine Cadillacs
Well your head is big and you think you own the moon
Well I’m tellin’ you fool, your head will go down sore

Mack’s sides have been collected, along with those of his contemporary Luke Jones, on the Krazy Kat LP Luke Jones & Red Mack – West Coast R&B 1947-1952. Also on the Krazy Kat label is The Great Gates  – West Coast R’ n B 1949-1955. Edward Gates White aka “The Great Gates” enjoyed a recording career as an R&B vocalist from 1949 to 1955, before changing to recording jazz organ instrumentals. He continually shifted between various small West Coast labels such as Selective, Kappa and Miltone. Gates was a smooth big voiced singer heard today on the moody “Late After Hours” backed by a killer little combo featuring the cooking tenor of Marvin Phillips.

Tenor sax man Buddy Tate joined Count Basie’s band in 1939 and stayed with him until 1948. In 1947 Tate made a batch of recordings for the L.A. based Supreme label backed by members of Basie’s band. The session included luminaries like Bill Doggett, Chico Hamilton and Jimmy Witherspoon. Alto sax man Chas Q. Price takes the vocal on the silky, after hours number “Early Morning Blues” sporting some sensitive playing from Tate. These early recordings can be found on the marvelous LP Jumpin’ On The West Coast! on the Black Lion label.

Also on tap today are some twin spins by Arbee Stidham and pianist Barrelhouse Buck McFarland. The two Stidham tracks come from the album A Time For Blues, one of Stidham’s best recordings backed by the swinging Ernie Wilkins Orchestra. A jazz-influenced blues vocalist, Stidham also played alto sax, guitar and harmonica. His father Luddie Stidham worked in Jimme Lunceford’s orchestra, while his uncle was a leader of the Memphis Jug Band. Stidham formed the Southern Syncopators and played various clubs in his native Arkansas in the ’30s. He appeared on Little Rock radio station KARK and his band backed Bessie Smith on a Southern tour in 1930 and 1931. Stidham frequently performed in Little Rock and Memphis until he moved to Chicago in the 40′s. Stidham recorded with Lucky Millinder’s Orchestra for Victor in the 40′s. He did his own sessions for Victor, Sittin’ In, Checker, Abco, Prestige/Bluesville, Mainstream, and Folkways in the 50′s and 60′, and appeared in the film The Bluesman in 1973. Stidham also made many festival and club appearances nationwide and internationally. He did occasional blues lectures at Cleveland State University in the 70′s.

Barrelhouse Buck McFarland cut his final session for Folkways and an unissued session in 1961 that was belatedly released a few years back on Delmark. He died shortly afterward. McFarland was born in Alton, Illinois in 1903 in the same area as two other exceptional piano players, Wesley Wallace and Jabbo Williams, all three of which made names for themselves on the bustling St. Louis blues scene. McFarland got his shot in the recording studio waxing ten sides; two for Paramount in 1929, two for Decca in 1934 and four more for Decca in 1935, which were not issued.

We also feature a cut by Gladys Bentley, a truly largely than life figure. Bentley cut six sides for Okeh in 1928 and fifteen sides in 1946 and 1952 for the labels Excelsior, Top Hat, Flame and Swing Time. Bentley was a 250 pound woman dressed in men’s clothes (including a signature tuxedo and top hat), who played piano and sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day in a deep, growling voice while flirting outrageously with women in the audience. She appeared at Harry Hansberry’s “Clam House” on 133rd Street, one of New York City’s most notorious gay speakeasies, in the 1920s, and headlined in the early thirties at Harlem’s Ubangi Club, where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens. She relocated to southern California, where she was billed as “America’s Greatest Sepia Piano Player”, and the “Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs”. She died, aged 52, from pneumonia in 1960. Bentley’s act was probably impossible to capture on record but her post-war recordings have a jivey exuberance, particularly our selection, the bouncy “Lay It On The Line.” Unfortunately Bentley has been ill served on reissue collections.

Also worth mentioning are a quartet of sides from New York artists. New York had a lively blues scene in the immediate post-war era, circa 1945 through 1960. The scene was dominated by small independent labels like Fire/Fury, Apollo, DeLuxe, Herald, Joe Davis, Baton, Old Town, Atlantic and Savoy. There was also out of town labels like King who recorded Big Apple talent. Hundreds of R&B and blues records were cut during this period. Today we feature several obscure artists from the scene including Mr. Bear, Larry Dale and Cousin Leroy. These tracks come form two excellent LP compilations; Harlem Heavies on the Moonshine label and New York Wild Guitars on the P-Vine label. Down the road I plan on doing a whole show devoted to the New York blues scene from this period.

Show Notes:

Today’s show is the second installment of an ongoing series of programs built around a particular year. The bulk of the information for today’s show notes comes from the books Recording The Blues (reprinted along with two other titles in Yonder Come The Blues) by Robert M.W. Dixon and John Godrich and Blues & Gospel Records, 1890-1943 by Robert M.W. Dixon, John Godrich and Howard Rye.

The first year we spotlighted was 1927 which was the beginning of a blues boom that would last until 1930; there were just 500 blues and gospel records issued in 1927 and increase of fifty percent from 1926 a trend that would continue until the depression. The average blues or gospel record had sales in the region of 10,000. In 1928 the figure was 1,000 or so lower which was still a thriving market. Paramount, the market leader at the time, brought talent up to their northern studios. To feed the demand other record companies conducted exhaustive searches for new talent, which included making trips down south with field recording units. Between 1927-1930 Atlanta was visited seventeen times, Memphis eleven times, Dallas eight times, New Orleans seven times and so on. The record companies advertised their record in black newspapers, mainly in the Chicago Defender, which was the nation’s most influential black weekly newspaper.

During the peak years there were five major companies issuing records for the race market: Okeh, Columbia, Paramount, Brunswick-Balke-Collender (encompassing Brunswick and Vocalion (a division of Gennett). Victor was the only label  to systematically exploit the the blues talent around Memphis. Their second visit there, in January and February 1928, yielded three times as much material as their initial 1927 visit. Among those recorded were Blind Willie McTell, Jim Jackson, Memphis Jug Band, Frank Stokes, Tommy Johnson, Ishman Bracey, Furry Lewis, Cannon’s Jug Stompers among many others. In August alone the label cut some 180 sides, mostly by black artists.

Jim Jackson’s “Kansas City Blues” was the massive hit of 1927 and in 1928 that honor went to “How Long How Long Blues” by Leroy Carr and “It’ Tight like That” by Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, both records issued by Vocalion. The highly suggestive “It’ Tight like That” was cut in September of 1928 which was just a few months after Vocalion dropped their tag “Better and Cleaner Race Records.” Vocalion also cut several sides by Leroy Carr’s guitarist, Scrapper Blackwell in 1928. In 1928 Brunswick recorded Bo Carter, Fannie Mae Goosby and Hattie Burleson among others.

In 1926 Columbia and OKeh merged but the labels were run by separate management for three years after the merger and did not compete for the same artists. Since 1927 OKeh had been issuing a new record every six weeks by Lonnie Johnson and issued some two-dozen sides by him in 1927 and about half that number in 1928. After the takeover by Columbia, OKeh made no field recordings until 1928 when they visited Memphis where they recorded blues singers such as Tom Dickson and the now legendary recordings by Mississippi John Hurt. They also recorded Sloppy Henry and Uncle Bud Walker in Atlanta a few months afterwards. Lonnie Johnson went with the unit, himself recording in both Memphis and san Antonio. In San Antonio he backed Texas Alexander who OKeh had initially recorded in New York the previous August. Columbia also made field recordings in Atlanta and Dallas where they recorded blues singers such as Barbecue Bob and his brother Charley Lincoln, Pink Anderson with Simmie Dooley, Peg Leg Howell, Curley Weaver, Lillian Glinn among many others.

The only race company that made no field trips was Paramount. Despite this Paramount remained the market leader in records released and singers recorded. Paramount issued records by the many of the blues biggest stars.