Show Notes:

Today’s show is something of a sequel to two shows we aired a couple of months ago: Decca 7000 Favorites Pt. 1 & 2. The background for these shows was taken from the book Vocalion 1000 & Brunswick 7000 Race Series By Helge Thygesen and Russell Shor. The Vocalion label started in late 1917 as Aeolian-Vocalion, a division of the Aeolian company which manufactured player pianos, organs and, later, phonographs. In 1919 they changed their name to Vocalion. Vocalion began recording race material in 1923, recording female singers such as Viola McCoy, Rosa Henderson and Hazel Myers who recorded for many other labels at the same time. Vocalion did not use a specific series for its race (or country) issues. Including them in its general 14000 series. In November 1924, the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Co. acquired Vocalion and merged the two operations.

The Vocalion 1000 race series started in May 1926. Based out of Chicago, it was headed by Jack Kapp who probably had assistance from Melrose Music Publishing and pianist/composer Richard M. Jones. At the beginning the label recorded quite a number of jazz artists including Sonny Clay’s Plantation Orchestra, King Oliver, Russell’s Hot Six, and Jelly Roll Morton. The race series was successful from the start, with hits by King Oliver, Duke Ellington and Fess Williams. In 1928 Vocalion made a turn towards a different style of blues, moving from the usual female stage singers who drifted from label to label to the rural blues and more urban blues, rural gospel singers and small combo South Side jazz. The impetus for the change was J. Mayo Williams, who Kapp brought in to manage the race catalog after he took control of operations for the main Brunswick operation. Williams had built the successful Paramount race catalog and wasted no time in transforming the Vocalion catalog, recording artists such as Furry Lewis, Henry Thomas and popular duos like Leroy Carr & scrapper Blackwell and Tampa Red & George Tom among many others. The changes brought quick success with several best-selling race hits by artists like Rev. Nix, Leroy Carr, Tampa Red & Georgia Tom and Pinetop Smith. The records were often advertised in the Chicago Defender. Brunswick-Balke-Collender sold its record division to Warner Brother Pictures in 1930 and Mayo Williams left soon after. The series ended in 1933.

In the first decade or so of the 20s the blues industry was dominated by female singers and Vocalion recorded some fine singers such as Rosa Henderson, Virginia Liston, Edmonia Henderson, Julia Davis among others. Rosa Henderson is a favorite of mine and was quite popular in her day, cutting some one hundred sides. She began her career about 1913 in her uncle’s carnival show. She played tent and plantation shows all over the South. During this period she married Slim Henderson, a great comedian and showman. She made her final recordings in 1931. Also many of her accompanists were of no mean status, including the complete Fletcher Henderson band, and such names as Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Green, Louis Metcalf, James P. Johnson, and countless others. Proof of her popularity with the record buying public was made clear by the number of titles released, and the only reason her recording career was cut short was the death of her husband. In 1963 Len Kunstadt tracked down Henderson and wrote a feature on her in Record Research magazine.

In the early 1920s, Viola McCoy moved to New York City, where she worked in cabarets. She toured the Theater Owners Bookers Association vaudeville circuit, and made numerous recordings between 1923–1929 for various labels including Gennett, Vocalion, and Columbia Records. Edmonia Henderson was active as a recording artist in the mid-1920’s, recording over two-dozen songs (some unissued) between 1924 and 1926. A couple of her records were advertised in the Chicago Defender.

Heard behind many of these singers is King Oliver. Oliver’s pungent, bluesy cornet playing can be heard on records by many blues singers. Oliver’s His own recordings including his landmark 1923 recordings with his Creole Jazz Band featuring his protege Louis Armstrong, clarinetist Johnny Dodds, trombonist Honore Dutrey, pianist Lil Harden, and drummer Baby Dodds. Oliver continued to make recordings through 1931 although he seemed to fade from the spotlight not long after his initial recordings. From May to December, 1928, Oliver did some 22 sessions with his old friend, Clarence Williams, who had played with him around Louisiana and who had managed clubs like the Big 25 and Pete Lala’s. Williams had become a music publisher, entrepreneur and early A&R man around New York. Seeing Oliver down on his luck, Williams used him as a backup player for several blues singers. Prior to 1928 Oliver had accompanied artists such as Butterbeans & Susie, Sippie Wallace, Teddy Peters, Irene Scruggs, Georgia Taylor, Texas Alexander, Victoria Spivey, Elizabeth Johnson.

Blind Lemon Jefferson was the first male artist to succeed commercially and his success influenced previously reluctant record companies to actively seek out and record male country blues players in the hope of finding a similar talent. Vocalion built a stable of of artists in this vein including Sam Butler AKA Bo Weavil Jackson, Henry Thomas, Jim Jackson, Furry Lewis and later with more urban blues singers like Tampa Red & Georgia Tom and Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell.

Bo Weavil Jackson was a shadowy figure whose name may have been Sam Butler or James Butler or was it James Jackson?. He was a street singer from Birmingham, AL who was discovered by local talent scout Harry Charles. Jackson cut six sides for Paramount circa August 1926 and six sides for Vocalion in September 1926 where he recorded as Sam Butler. His material was a mix of blues and gospel and he was one of the first slide players to record.

Henry Thomas’ magnificent two-part 78 debut, “John Henry” b/w “Cottonfield Blues” was cut on July 1, 1927. Vocalion seemed to have had faith in this new artist issuing separate ads for both sides. In 1928 Thomas issued six sides with Vocalion placing four ads in the Chicago Defender. Henry Thomas, nicknamed “Ragtime Texas”, was born in 1874 in Big Sandy, Texas by most accounts, a town which lies roughly between Dallas and Shreveport. As Tony Russell wrote: “Flailing his guitar, in now forgotten country dance rhythms, whistling delicate melodies on his panpies, gruffly chanting rag songs and blues, Thomas is a figure of almost legend.”  The portrait Thomas presents on his twenty-three recordings cut for Vocalion between 1927 to 1929 provides, Russell notes, “a wholly absorbing picture of black-country music before it was submerged beneath the tidal wave of the blues.”

Born in Hernando, Mississippi in 1890, Jim Jackson took an interest in music early on, learning the rudiments of guitar from his father. By the age of 15, he was already steadily employed in local medicine shows and by his 20’s was working the country frolic and juke joint circuit, usually in the company of Gus Cannon and Robert Wilkins. After joining up with the Silas Green Minstrel Show, he settled in Memphis, working clubs with Furry Lewis, Gus Cannon, and Will Shade. The 1920s found him regularly working with his Memphis cronies, finally recording his best-known tune, “Kansas City Blues” and a batch of other classics by the end of the decade. He also appeared in one of the early talkies, Hallelujah!, in 1929.

Furry Lewis started performing on Beale Street in the late teens, where he began his career. Lewis’s recording career began in April 1927, with a trip to Chicago to record for the Vocalion label, which resulted in five songs. In October of 1927 Lewis was back in Chicago to cut six more songs. Lewis gave up music as a profession during the mid-’30s, when the Depression reduced the market for country blues. At the end of the 1950’s blues scholar Sam Charters discovered Lewis and persuaded him to resume his music career. Gradually, as the 1960s and the ensuing blues boom wore on, Lewis emerged as one of the favorite rediscovered stars of the 1930s, playing festivals, appearing on talk shows, and recording.

Between 1928 and 1935 the Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell cut a remarkably consistent body of work of hundreds of sides notable for the impeccable guitar/piano interplay, Carr’s profoundly expressive, melancholy vocals and some terrific songs. Carr became one of the biggest blues stars of his day, composing and recording almost 200 sides during his short lifetime. Blackwell cut just over two-dozen sides under his own name between 1928 and 1935. He backed several other artists on record including Georgia Tom, Bumble Bee Slim, Black Bottom McPhail and Josh White among several others.

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. n the 1920’s, having already perfected his slide technique, he moved to Chicago, Illinois, and began his career as a musician. His big break was being hired to accompany Ma Rainey and he began recording in 1928. In 1928 Whittaker, through the intercession of J. Mayo “Ink” Williams, teamed up with pianist Thomas Dorsey a. k. a. Georgia Tom and recorded the Paramount label hit “Tight Like That.” The success of “Tight Like That” prompted several other record other versions for Paramount, and initiated the blues genre known as hokum Early recordings were mostly collaborations with Thomas A. Dorsey, known at the time as Georgia Tom. Tampa Red and Georgia Tom recorded almost 60 sides, sometimes as “The Hokum Boys” or, with Frankie Jaxon, as “Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band”.

Scrapper Blackwell actually made his solo recording debut three day prior to his debut with Leroy Carr, on June June 16, 1928, cutting “Kokomo Blues b/w Penal Farm Blues.” “Kokomo Blues”, was transformed into “Old Kokomo Blues” by Kokomo Arnold and later reworked as “Sweet Home Chicago” by Robert Johnson. Blackwell cut more sides for Vocalion including two 78’s under his own name in 1928, the second pairing was “Trouble Blues – Pt. 1 b/w Trouble Blues – Pt. 2.” Several sessions from 1928 went unissued. In 1929 he cut “Mr. Scrapper’s Blues b/w Down And Out Blues” as well as playing with singer Bertha “Chippie” Hill.

Vocalion also dipped its toes in gospel, recordings notable artists such as Blind Joe Taggart, Rev. Edward W. Clayborn and Reverend D.C. Rice. Taggart made his first recordings in 1926, for the Vocalion label as Blind Joe Taggart. More sessions followed in 1927, 1928 and 1929. Taggart’s last commercial recordings were issued in 1934. He remarried in Chicago in 1943, and made a acetate for the Presto label in 1948 which has been reissued by John Tefteller. Practically nothing is known about Rev. Edward Clayborn who was the earliest guitar evangelist on record. He cut over two dozen numbers for Vocalion between 1926 and 1929, scoring a major hit in 1926 with “Your Enemies Cannot Harm You (But Watch Your Close Friends).” In March 1928 Rice made his first recordings for the Vocalion label in Chicago, and over the period until July 1930 he recorded a total of 28 sides.

There was plenty of piano blues on the label as well including many great records by Cow Cow Davenport, Pinetop Smith, Montana Taylor and Lee Green among others. Green was closely associated with Roosevelt Sykes and Little Brother Montgomery. He cut over forty sides between 1929 and 1937. Cow Cow and Smith have been featured often on the show and you can find background by doing a search.