| ARTIST | SONG | ALBUM |
|---|---|---|
| Jimmy "Baby Face" Lewis | Gettin' Old | Jimmy "Babyface" Lewis 1947-1955 |
| Jimmy "Baby Face" Lewis | Grandma And Grandpa | Jimmy "Babyface" Lewis 1947-1955 |
| Earl King | Those Lonely, Lonely Nights | Earl King 1953-1955 |
| Earl King | It Must Have Been Love | Earl King 1953-1955 |
| Earl King | Is Everything Alright | Earl's Pearls: The Very Best Of Earl King |
| Johnny 'Guitar' Watson | Motor Head Baby | Johnny Guitar Watson 1952-1955 |
| Johnny 'Guitar' Watson | What's Goin' On | Johnny Guitar Watson 1952-1955 |
| Johnny 'Guitar' Watson | Space Guitar | Johnny Guitar Watson 1952-1955 |
| Guitar Slim | The Things That I Used To | Guitar Slim 1951-1954 |
| Guitar Slim | The Story Of My Life | Guitar Slim 1951-1954 |
| Guitar Slim | Well I Done Got Over It | Guitar Slim 1951-1954 |
| Jimmy "Baby Face" Lewis | Dusty Road | Jimmy "Babyface" Lewis 1947-1955 |
| Jimmy "Baby Face" Lewis | I'm Wise To You Baby | Jimmy "Babyface" Lewis 1947-1955 |
| Jimmy "Baby Face" Lewis | Let's Get Together And Make Some Love | Jimmy "Babyface" Lewis 1947-1955 |
| Earl King | Let The Good Times Roll | Earl's Pearls: The Very Best Of Earl King |
| Earl King | Come on, Pts. 1 & 2 | Earl's Pearls: The Very Best Of Earl King |
| Earl King | Trick Bag | Earl's Pearls: The Very Best Of Earl King |
| Johnny 'Guitar' Watson | I Love to Love You | Johnny Guitar Watson 1952-1955 |
| Johnny 'Guitar' Watson | Hot Little Mama | Johnny Guitar Watson 1952-1955 |
| Johnny 'Guitar' Watson | Too Tired | Johnny Guitar Watson 1952-1955 |
| Guitar Slim | Trouble Don't Last | Guitar Slim 1951-1954 |
| Guitar Slim | Sufferin' Mind | Guitar Slim 1951-1954 |
| Guitar Slim | Twenty-Five Lies | Guitar Slim 1951-1954 |
| Johnny 'Guitar' Watson w/ Cordella de Milo | Lonely Girl | Hot Just Like TNT |
| Johnny 'Guitar' Watson w/ Cordella de Milo | Ain't Gonna Hush | Hot Just Like TNT |
| Guitar Slim | Think It Over | Sufferin' Mind |
| Guitar Slim | Down Through The Years | Atco Sessions |
| Guitar Slim | My Time Is Expensive | Atco Sessions |
| Johnny 'Guitar' Watson | One Room Country Shack | Keen Records Sessions |
| Johnny 'Guitar' Watson | Three Hours Past Midnight | Keen Records Sessions |
| Johnny 'Guitar' Watson | Gangster of Love | Hot Just Like TNT |
| Johnny 'Guitar' Watson | The Eagle Is Back | Untouchable! - The Classic 1959-1966 Recordings |
| Johnny 'Guitar' Watson | Looking Back | Untouchable!: The Classic 1959-1966 Recordings |
| Johnny 'Guitar' Watson | Johnny Guitar | Untouchable!: The Classic 1959-1966 Recordings |
| Jimmy "Baby Face" Lewis | Every Sunday Before Monday | Jimmy "Babyface" Lewis 1947-1955 |
| Earl King | My Love Is Strong | Earl King 1953-1955 |
| Johnny 'Guitar' Watson | You Can't Take It With You | Johnny Guitar Watson 1952-1955 |
| Doug Curry | Guitar Slim | Spoken Poem |
Show Notes:
Despite doing this show for almost 18 years, there are still some key artists that we haven’t spotlighted in-depth and a case in point is today’s program. Today’s show is the first of a two-part survey of a quartet of fine guitarists who cut some great records between 1947 and 1965. Eddie Jones AKA Guitar Slim got his start in the New Orleans clubs and made his debut for Imperial in 1951. Subsequent recordings came out on J-B in 1952 and in 153 landed at Specialty cutting his finest sides including his massive hit “The Things That I Used To Do.” Between 1956-1958 he cut sides for Atco before passing at the age of 32. Earl King was born in New Orleans and idolized Guitar Slim. In 1954, Slim was injured in an automobile accident and King was deputized to continue a tour with Slim’s band, representing himself as Slim. He made his debut in 1953 for Savoy, moving to Specialty, Ace and Imperial. Johnny Watson made his debut for Federal in 1952, billed as Young John Watson until 1954, playing guitar and piano on record. Recordings followed on RPM, Keen, King and other labels. Jimmy “Baby Face” Lewis is the least known of the bunch, a superb singer/guitarist who waxed just over two-dozen sides between 1947-1955 for labels Aladdin, Savoy, Manor, Atlantic and Victor.
As writer/researcher Opal Nation writes: “Jimmy ‘Baby Face’ Lewis is possibly the most sorely overlooked R & B singer/ guitarist of any sizable significance about whose personal details we know very little. …Lewis could do it all- shout the blues, pick a savage guitar and croon a ballad as smoothly as Larry Darnell.” He made his first recordings with the Floyd Campbell Orchestra cutting four sides for Aladdin in March 1947. In 1948 he waxed sides for Manor backed by Tab Smith’s Orchestra ad two sides for Savoy. Between 1949 and 1951 he cut around a dozen sides for Atlantic. Subsequent sides were for Victor in 1952, Cat in 1954 with two final records for Atlantic in 1955. After his final session, Lewis faded from view until March 1963 when the British tabloid, the ‘Daily Express,’ reported that he had been arrested by police, two of whom were disguised as harmonica-blowing hulu dancers at his Manhattan apartment for peddling drugs. Hunting dogs found $200,000 worth of narcotics, the report added.
Earl Silas Johnson IV was born on Feb. 7, 1934 and passed there in 2003. He wouldn’t become Earl King until 1954. With his mother, he started going to church at an early age. In his youth he sang gospel music, but he took the advice of a friend to switch to blues to make a better living. King started to play the guitar at the age of 15. Soon he started entering talent contests at local clubs, including the Dew Drop Inn. It was through Huey Smith that King met his greatest influence, Eddie “Guitar Slim” Jones. “Imagine you never saw James Brown but you had heard him on record,” explained King. “You might say, ‘This is alright,’ but to understand where he was coming from, why he was meaningful, you had to see James. The same was true with Slim. People used to call him the Reverend Limber Legs Slim, because his legs looked like they didn’t have no bones in them. They had rafters in the ceilings of them old clubs, and Slim would be hanging from the rafters upside down and playing his guitar. You can go into a store now and buy any color of shoes you want to buy. But you couldn’t do that back then, so Slim would get him a bottle of paint and spray paint them shoes and set them out in the sun and let them dry. Then he would dye his hair the same color. Then he would wear a suit to match the color of his shoes and his hair. He was the one who started using that long, 300-foot guitar cord so he could roam around the club. Slim is the only one who could walk into the women’s dressing room playing his guitar and the women would laugh about it. Anyone else would be dead. I’ve seen Slim have men standing at the bandstand crying. Even the regulars who see him every day would think nothing of driving out to Beaumont, Texas, to see Guitar Slim. He was a character.” King started imitating Slim, and his presence had a big impact on his musical direction. In 1954, Slim was injured in an automobile accident (right around the time he had the number 1 R&B hit “The Things That I Used To Do”), and King was deputized to continue a tour with Slim’s band, representing himself as Slim. After succeeding in this role, King became a regular at the Dew Drop Inn.
His first recording was made in 1953. As Earl Johnson, he released a 78-rpm record, “Have You Gone Crazy”/”Begging at Your Mercy”, for Savoy Records. The following year, the talent scout Johnny Vincent introduced King to Specialty Records, for which he recorded some sides, including “Mother’s Love”, which was locally popular. In 1955, King signed with Vincent’s label, Ace. His first single for that label, “Those Lonely, Lonely Nights”, was a hit, reaching number 7 on the Billboard R&B chart. He continued to record for Ace for the next five years. During that time, he also he started writing songs for other artists.
In 1960, Dave Bartholomew invited King to record for Imperial Records. It was at this label he recorded his signature songs “Come On” and “Trick Bag”. King recorded for Imperial until 1963. He went without a recording contract for the rest of the 1960s. In 1972, he was joined by Allen Toussaint and the Meters to record the album Street Parade and cut a record for Sonet. In the early 1980s, King met Hammond Scott, the co-owner of Black Top Records, and recorded three albums for the label. King died on April 17, 2003, from diabetes-related complications, just a week before the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
Johnny Watson was born in Houston in 1935. n. As a teen, he played with fellow Texas future greats Albert Collins and Johnny Copeland. But he left Houston for Los Angeles when he was only 15 years old. Back then, Watson’s main instrument was piano; that’s what he played with Chuck Higgins’ band when the saxist cut “Motorhead Baby” for Combo in 1952 (Watson also handled vocal duties). He was listed as Young John Watson when he signed with Federal in 1953. His first sides for the King subsidiary found him still playing piano. He began playing guitar on record in 1954, cutting the astonishing instrumental “Space Guitar” that year. Watson moved over to the Bihari Brothers’ RPM label in 1955 and waxed some tough blues of their time frame (usually under saxist Maxwell Davis’ supervision). There he cut sides like “Hot Little Mama,” “Too Tired,” “Oh Baby”, “Someone Cares for Me” and the epic “Three Hours Past Midnight.” He scored his first hit in 1955 for RPM with a cover of Earl King’s “Those Lonely Lonely Nights.”
Though he cut a demo version of the tune while at RPM, Watson’s first released version of “Gangster of Love” emerged in 1957 on Keen. Singles for Class (“One Kiss”), Goth, Arvee (the rocking introduction “Johnny Guitar”), and Escort preceded a hookup with Johnny Otis at King during the early ’60s. He recut “Gangster” for King, reaching a few more listeners this time, and dented the R&B charts again in 1962 with his impassioned ballad “Cuttin’ In.” Watson landed at Chess just long enough to cut a jazz album in 1964 that placed him back behind the 88s. Along with longtime pal Larry Williams, Watson rocked England in 1965 and cut several singles and an LP for OKeh.
In the 70s he had funk hits with “I Don’t Want to Be a Lone Ranger”, “A Real Mother for Ya” in 1977 and an updated “Gangster of Love” the next year. In he midst of a comeback campaign, Watson passed away while touring Japan in 1996.
Eddie Jones was born in Greenwood, Mississippi in 1926. His mother died when he was five, and he was raised by his grandmother. In his teen years, he worked in cotton fields and spent his free time at juke joints, where he started sitting in as a singer or dancer. After returning from military service during World War II, he started playing in clubs around New Orleans. He was particularly influenced by T-Bone Walker and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. About 1950 he adopted the stage name Guitar Slim and became known for his wild stage act. He wore bright-colored suits and dyed his hair to match them. He had an assistant who followed him around the audience with up to 350 feet of cord between his guitar and his amplifier, and occasionally rode on his assistant’s shoulders or even took his guitar outside the club, bringing traffic to a stop.
His first recording session was in 1951. He had a minor rhythm and blues hit in 1952 with “Feelin’ Sad”, which Ray Charles covered. His biggest success was “The Things That I Used to Do” (1954), produced by the young Ray Charles and released by Art Rupe’s Specialty Records. The song spent weeks at number one on the Billboard R&B chart and sold over a million copies, soon becoming a blues standard. He recorded for several labels, including Imperial, Bullet, Specialty, and Atco. Slim died of pneumonia in New York City, at the age of 32. He is buried in a small cemetery in Thibodaux, Louisiana, where his manager, Hosea Hill, resided.
