PATSY MONTANA and the PRAIRIE RAMBLERS

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

This 1984 collection, part of CBS's "Columbia Historic Edition" series, compiles twelve sides cut during 1935-1940. Although its cover would make it appear to focus on Patsy Montana, the LP actually includes many of the Prairie Ramblers' solo sides, including some they cut as the Sweet Violet Boys, as well as those on which they accompany Montana.
Like all the albums released in this series, the LP features excellent presentation, sound, and liner notes, reproduced below:


Patsy Montana is justly celebrated in country music history as the first woman to have a million-seller record, 1935’s “I Want To Be A Cowboy’s Sweetheart.” But there are more reasons than that for listening to her today. She pioneered the cowgirl/buddy image in country music establishing a new female entertainment personality. She was a successful country composer during the era when commercial songwriting in that genre was in its infancy. And she recorded with The Prairie Ramblers, arguably the greatest string band of country music’s “Golden Age.”
She was from rural Arkansas. They were from rural Kentucky. Yet the music created by Patsy Montana & The Prairie Ramblers was a fusion of hillbilly instrumentation and jazzy urban rhythms, with perhaps a dash at ethnic polka and schottische styles thrown in for spice. It was hybrid music. It had bright, clear yodel bursts, immense good humor, dazzling instrumental passages and tremendous popular appeal. That is why Prairie Ramblers music still sounds fresh today.
When Montana and the Ramblers teamed up in 1933 both had recognized careers. Born Ruby Blevins, the then 21 year old inger/fiddler/yodeler songwriter had already established an image as Palsy Montana in California and over KWKH radio, in Shreveport, Louisiana. And the string band then known as The Kentucky Ramblers, had already secured a regular cast spot on the WLS National Barn Dance radio show in Chicago.
They teamed up on WLS — a not inconsiderable factor in their subsequent rise to prominence. The Chicago station was the most powerful popularizer ci country music in the world at the time. The same year that Montana joined the show, WLS went nationwide over the NBC radio network. WLS Artists Bureau pioneered road shows for its acts, thus beginning the country booking agency business. And the mighty station reached millions of Northern, urban listeners, thus bringing a regional style to national attention. At least part at WLS’ vast, overwhelming success was due to a distinctive sound d featured. There was a warm, homey, fireside, reassuring tone about it it. Its stars had dulcet honeyed styles that gave them a friendly, neighborly quality. It was at once immensely folksy and incredibly professional. Patsy Montana & The Prairie Rambters epitomtzed this sound.
Montana’s performances were feminine in the then-dominant “mother,” “sweetheart,” and “comedienne” modes for country music women but her introduction and popularization of the “cowgirl/buddy/lover” musical personality provided a new role model for female country acts. The singing cowgirl came along at a time when huge numbers of working class women had to enter the work force alongside their husbands. Patsy’s western fantasies of male female equality coincided with women s emergence from the kitchen. The exuberant singing cowgirl was a respectable way to swing.
To accommodate their new member’s western image and repertoire, the four WLS string band members who had been performing together since 1931 — Floyd “Salty” Holmes (guitar, tenor vocals), Jack Taylor (bass), CharIes “Chick” Hurt (mandola) and Shelby “Tex” Atchison (fiddle) — renamed themselves the Prairie Ramblers. Montana’s main contribution to the act was her sense at showmanship and image but this was enough to distinguish the group from being just another National Barn Dance act to being a headline attraction. The band was so hot that when Atchison moved west in 1938, Patsy Montana & The Prairie Ramblers attracted the equally fluid fiddler Alan Crockett and continued their radio record and touring popularity.
Both as separate acts and together Montana and the Ramblers had recorded for Victor, but it was not until their discovery by the American Record Company’s (later CBS’) Uncle Art Satherley in 1935 that disc stardom arrived. By then the market for records was quite low. Few new artists were being recorded; and female country acts, in particular, were not considered good prospects. Nevertheless Satherley believed in the band and its lead vocalist enough to take them to his company’s New York studio in August, 1935. He emerged with the biggest records that both Patsy and the band were ever to make. On August 15th, The Prairie Ramblers recorded their biggest hit, “Nobody s Darling But Mine,” and the following day came Montana’s self composed classic “I Want To Be A Cowboy’s Sweetheart.”
Over the next five years (the period of the act’s greatest popularity), they embellished Montana’s cowgirl/yodeler image and continued to mine the country jazz idiom as an acoustic swing band. A delightful addition to these twin toe tapping types of releases were those by “The Sweet Violet Boys.” This was a recording pseudonym adopted by The Prairie Ramblers to record slightly off-color material. Patsy wasn’t allowed in the studios for these, but often Sweet Violet Boys sessions included guest appearances by Will Thawl (clarinet), Bob Miller (piano), George Barnes (guitar), John Brown (piano) and other country-jazz aficionados. The merry results were often in a vaudevillian jug band style, with Holmes switching from guitar playing to jug blowing for the occasions. Sometimes 78s were released with The Prairie Ramblers billing on one side and The Sweet Violet Boys name on the other.
The classic Prairie Ramblers, Patsy Montana, and Sweet Violet Boys recording sessions were from 1935 to the dawn of World War II, the period from which all the selections on this reissue come. The team broke up in 1940 when Montana went to Decca Records. The band eventually added drums and electric guitar and became a jazz ensemble. Montana continues with her western songs and yodeling to this day. In 1970 she was honored with a Pioneer Award by the Academy of Country Music.
The Grand Ole Opry and Nashville have dominated country music history since World War II; and this fact has tended to overshadow the importance and overlook the impact of the music made by the WLS National Barn Dance acts. One listen to what’s in these grooves, however, ought to set the record straight.
Listen closely. This is the sound of the mountains meeting the sound of the city. It’s east meeting west. It is country music taking its first steps out of babyhood toward adulthood. And its mighty, mighty pleasing; for there’s something still thrilling about a wild and reckless jazz fiddle break, a stinging and sizzling mandolin lick, and a head-to-the-sky, wide-open-spaces yodel.

—ROBERT K. OERMANN The Tennessean, Nashville


Tracks:

1. Deep Elem Blues
2. A Rip Rip-Snortin', Two-Gun Gal
3. Monkeys Is The Cwaziest People
4. Gonna Have A Feast Here Tonight
5. Hi-Falutin' Newton
6. I Haven't Got A Pot To Cook In
7. I Want To Be A Cowboy's Sweetheart
8. With A Banjo On My Knee
9. Goodbye To Old Mexico
10. Cowboy Rhythm
11. There's A Man That Comes To Out House
12. Beaver Creek

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COPULATING RHYTHM Volume One & Volume Two

Another set of albums containing classic risqué material, this time on the Jass label, both issued in 1986. These make nice companions to the Stash label "Copulatin' Blues" LPs posted last week. Both Stash and Jass were products of Bernard Brightman, who used the label to, for the most part, reissue jazz age recordings dealing with sex and drugs. It was a surprisingly extensive catalog, which can be surveyed here. An obituary of Mr. Brightman, who passed away in 2003 at the age of 82, is here.
Unlike the "Copultin' Blues" set, the present collections have no real liner notes to speak of, but some recording data is contained on the jackets, scans of which along with labels are included in the download folders.

Volume One

Tracks:

1. Rosetta Howard-The Candy Man
2. Bessie Jackson-Tired As I Can Be
3. Ora Alexander-You've Got To Save That Thing
4. Bo Carter-Ants In My Pants
5. Chicago Black Swans-Don't Tear My Clothes
6. Lil Johnson-My Baby
7. Napoleon Fletcher-She Showed It All
8. Lil Johnson-Honey, You're So Good To Me
9. Dallas Jug Band-You've Gotta Have That Thing
10. Lil Johnson-If You Don't Give Me What I Want
11. Bo Carter-Please Warm My Weiner
12. Bea Foote-Try And Get It
13. Johnny Temple-Grinding Mill
14. Memphis Minnie-If You See My Rooster
15. Blind Boy Fuller-I Don't Want No Skinny Woman
16. Lil Johnson-Take It Easy Greasy

*download here*


Volume Two

Tracks:

1. Georgia White-Get 'Em From The Peanut Man (Hot Nuts)
2. Blind Willie And Partner-Southern Can Mama
3. The Hokum Boys-Let Me Pat That Thing
4. Ethel Waters-My Handy Man
5. The Chocolate Dandies-Six Or Seven Times
6. James Stump Johnson-The Duck's Yas-Yas-Yas
7. Miss Edith Wilson-My Handy Man Ain't Handy No More
8. Chicago Swingers-I Wonder Who's Boogiein' My Woogie Now
9. Blind Boy Fuller-What's That Smells Like Fish
10. Red Allen & Victoria Spivey-How Do They Do It That Way
11. Memphis Jug Band-Papa's Got Your Water On
12. Hattie North & Count Basie-Honey Dripper Blues
13. Bo Carter-All Around Man
14. Tampa Red & Half-Pint Jaxon-Easy Rider
15. Lonnie Johnson-Uncle Ned Don't Use Your Head
16. Bessie Smith-I'm Wild About That Thing

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BROTHER CLAUDE ELY At Home and At Church

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Another gem issued late in the King label's run is this 1969 slab by the impassioned Brother Claude Ely. Side one (At Home?) consists of  recordings that may have been new at the time of the album's release, while side two (At Church) features tracks recorded by King during a Pentecostal revival in the Letcher County, Kentucky courthouse in 1953. The live 1953 recordings were originally issued on singles and are much prized by collectors. Hopefully this rare and classic LP makes for good Sunday listening, enjoy!

A great NPR radio feature and article about Brother Claude Ely can be found here.

Tracks:

1. Sweet Jesus
2. I'm Going To That City
3. Don't Trifle With The Lord
4. Don't You Want To Go
5. Lost And Doomed
6. There Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down
7. There's A Leak In This Old Building
8. Talk About Jesus
9. Farther On
10. Little David Play On Your Harp

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COPULATIN' BLUES Volume One & Volume Two

Friday, April 10, 2015

Early this week I posted a collection of postwar risqué R&B called "Risky Blues". The two LPs presented here are contain more of the same type of ribald material, the bulk of it from the prewar era. Volume One and Volume Two were released on the Stash label in 1976 and 1984 respectively, and feature liner notes as reproduced below:


Volume One


This album is a show piece in the blues continuum, described by Leroi Jones as moving from its birth in the post-Civil War period from a highly personalized amalgam of the work-shout and the spiritual through the country blues to the sophisticated evolvement of the city blues coincident with the great migration from the rural South to the urban North after World War I.
This olio of predominantly urban blues does not represent a focus on the tragic aspects of being black in America, but rather the strong counterforce of joy, uninhibited, unrestricted, to be found in sex . . . the one area of black life over which the ruling whites had no control. Raw, earthy, unabashedly direct and more explicit than innuendoed, these are the genre called the dirty blues.
The historic development of the blues, traces in music the social history of the Black American. Its evolution demonstrated more forcefully, perhaps, than any other phenomenon how a people are molded by environmental factors that override genetic influences.
That the direct sensuality expressed in these blues could be called “dirty” is a commentary on the sad quality of the lifeless puritanism of the Anglo- Saxon Protestant ethic against which American youth are moving today, but which Blacks rejected long ago, that is with the exception of upwardly striving Black bourgeoisie who wished to become carbon copies of the white masters. In fact, among the “respectables”, as St. Clair Drake points out in Black Metropolis, the blues was not even allowed in the house because it was considered lower class.
As Leroi Jones puts it, most succinctly the blues could not exist if the African captives had not become American captives” . . . song was a cushion against the chains of that captivity.
Here are rarities for the collector, not even mentioned in such anthologies and studies as Leroi Jones “Blues People”, Eric Sackheim’s “The Blues Line” and Phyl Garland’s “Soul Music”, they express no awareness of the artistry of Coot Grant, Johnny Temple and Lil Johnson, though all of them do note Tampa Red.
You can’t talk about the blues without the dancing. These songs came Out in a period when the dancing was as earthy as the music, if not more so. Rollin’ butt, dry fuckin’, the grind, dancin’ on a dime, the bump and the mess around — all names accurately describing the movements of the dance.
These songs bring to mind Small’s Paradise, dancing waiters, twirling their trays on one finger, Virgie At Dickie Wells, the after-hours joint, snatching rolled-up dollar bills off a table with her vaginal orifice — Amy Spencer was said to be able to pick a dime up with hers as the depression shortened the loot.
Much of the material on Harlem never saw the light of day. It was considered “too raw” for conservative tastes. Fortunately, realism and honesty, “telling it like it is”, “. . . or was” has opened the doors for depiction of a music coming from a background that was the backstage, back door and backseat of the U.S.A.
On SHAVE ‘EM DRY Lucille Bogan rolls out an unbowdlerized “stomp- down” whore-house song that makes the latest erotic limerick sound like the ladies finishing school poetry.
PREACHIN’BLUES opens with an unadulterated barrel-house piano that presages the boogie-woogie. Père Bechet (Pops), in his prime, slides in on the intro with his magnificent full-bodied soprano saxaphone. One almost wishes there’d be a full chorus of intro before the singer, Wilson Meyers, comes in and makes you forget the opening. Close listening will reveal the phenomenonally light, but distinctive and avant-garde touch, of the brushwork of Kenny “Kluke” Clarke who was later to join with Yardbird Parker and Diz Gillespie in creating BeBop.
DO YOUR DUTY is one all-around gas, with Bessie Smith vocalizing in top form against an all-star background. Integration (pardon the expression) was way out in front in music . . . Jelly Roll Morton had played with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings in the Twenties and here Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden play in a mixed outfit in 1933 with the much underrated revolutionary trumpeter, Frankie Newton, lovingly haunted by the inspiration of “Pops”, the phenomenal and unique “Chu” Berry, a tenor sax tone as smooth as honey, Billy Taylor on string bass providing the background for Bessie and on this track it is clearly a labor of love.
DON’T YOU MAKE ME HIGH is worth listening to as a contrast to Maria Muldauer’s version with Benny Carter, the old pro, heading her back-up band. When it first came out in the late 30’s everybody in Harlem was singing the lyrics. Dig the little-known saxaphone of Buster Bennett and Big Bill Broonzy on guitar.
KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY MOJO brings to mind Timmy Roger’s saying, “Romance without Finance is a Nuisance” a witty short poem on the pursuit of alternative entrepreneurial modalities by folk barred from participation in mainstream society.
All the tracks deserve comment, but why not . . . dig it yourself on the rest?

Howard “Stretch“ Johnson


Howard Johnson, an Adjunct Associate Professor of Sociology at New Palz State University College, is intimately connected with the music and life of the 30’s. He, with his sister, Winnie, danced at the famous Cotton Club — described as the place where Broadway, Park Avenue, Hollywood and Harlem rubbed elbows . . . worked with Winnie and younger brother, Bobby in Leonard Sillman’s New Faces of 1936 and with Duke Ellington’s Revue in 1937.


Tracks:

1. Sidnet Bechet and his New Orleans Feetwarmers-Preachin' Blues
2. Lil Johnson-Stavin' Chain (That Rockin' Swing)
3. Bessie Smith-Do Your Duty
4. Oscars Chicago Swingers-New Rubbin' On The Darned Old Thing
5. Lil Johnson-Press My Button (Ring My Bell)
6. Johnny Temple acc. by the Harlem Hamfats-Stavin' Chain
7. Merline Johnson (The YasYas Girl)-Don't You Make Me High
8. Lil Johnson-You Stole My Cherry
9. Bessie Smith-I Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl
10. Coot Grant (Viola B. Wilson) and Kid Wesley Wilson-Get Off With Me
11. Tampa Red's Hokum Jug Band-My Daddy Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)
12. Grant & Wilson-Keep Your Hands Off My Mojo
13. Jelly Roll Morton-Winin' Boy
14. Lucille Bogan (Bessie Jackson)-Shave 'Em Dry (second version, Unissued)
15. Bessie Jackson (Lucille Bogan)-Barbeque Bess
16. Georgie White-I'll Keep Sittin' On It (If I Can't Selll It)

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Volume Two


Hayakawa, in his ground breaking essay on the nature of the blues, argues that mainstream popular songs tend to glamorize and idealize romance, while the lyrics of the blues deal with the subject on a much more realistic, down to earth level. However, in posing this polemic, Hayakawa overlooked what would have been the single biggest argument in his favor — the dirty blues, which describe the most basic aspect of human relations, intercourse itself, in a frank and open manner.
Even before the current rock era, wherein guitars serve as obvious phallic symbols and fornication is seemingly the sole subject of all lyricists, we find sexual subjects coming into popular music. The point of this album is to illustrate how sex, like drugs (see Stash ST1O1-106-117-118), was always part of the music scene. Until the ‘50s, however, one had to delve into the sounds of the various American subcultures to find these elements. But they were there all right, creeping up from the blues and into all other genres of the prerock era: dance music, personality and vocals, hillbilly and country music, and jazz.
An example of the latter, The Duck’s Yas-Yas opens this collection, much the same way it opened up the career of Duke Ellington’s fine trumpeter, Harold “Shorty” Baker. This track, like most on this album, is admittedly selected for it’s musical as much as it’s pornographic value. However, it’s metaphoric substitution of the term “Yas-Yas-Yas,” for an unmentionable part of the anatomy renders it suitable for inclusion. Again, like everything else on this album, it has never been issued on LP in this country (the one foreign LP it did turn up on being long out of print and our copy being a rare mint condition original 78).
From the metaphoric to the literal, Frankie and Johnny and Bye Bye Cherry are performed by an unknown singing cowboy who does a first rate impersonation of then rising western star Gene Autry (EDITOR'S NOTE, 2015: These recordings actually are Autry.). He performs these thoroughly filthy ballads with the heartfelt sincerity that was always Autry’s trademark, singing “bye bye” to his girlfriend’s “cherry” like a French soldier bidding “au revoir” to his “cherie.”
Next comes the first of two versions of the pornographic classic, Shave ‘Em Dry (aka I’m Gonna Shave You Dry). These provide the exact, 180 degrees opposite of the idealized love celebrated by tin pan alley tunesmiths. Usually, most performers of the erotic blues prefer to use humor and double entendres. For instance, the merchandise described in If I Can’t Sell It, I’ll Keep Sittin’ on It, Before I Give It Away (heard on Stash 117) that turns out to be a chair (ha-ha!) and the “thing” that Ukelele Ike takes out in Take Out That Thing, turns out to be an insurance policy (take out a policy — get it?). On the other hand, Lucille Bogan and Walter Roland, the performers of both versions of both versions of Shave ‘Em Dry, and Claude Hopkins, their great jazz pianist, who leads his band through It’s Too Big Papa, prefer their entendres single, and explicitly so.
Take Out That Thing also illustrates how the “party” (meaning dirty) record market used superstar talent on it’s way up (such as an unnamed cowboy heard elsewere in this collection) and down, meaning Cliff Edwards. The once major vaudeville headliner and movie star was in fact reduced to recording pornography inbetween comebacks (in one of which he supplied the voice of “Jimminy Cricket,” in Walt Disney’s Pinnochio) to pay for his divorces and drugs.
We can’t be sure which of the great philosophers was the first to use the familiar felis catus as a code-word for the female sex organ, but Benjamin Franklin, who said “All cats are grey at night,” has to be somewhere in the running. In songwriting then, a surefire way to keep your audience amused is to gravitate between referring to the animal and the orifice. George Gershwin penned a tune late in his life called “Here Pussy Pussy Pussy Pussy . . .“ (supposedly Gertrude Stein’s pet name for Alice B. Toklas) in which he clearly means the house cat. But the Light Crust Doughboy’s Pussy Pussy Pussy, is open to either interpretation as is packed with great jazz solos besides. On the other hand, Pussy, by the up and coming British bandleader, Harry Roy, utilizes a strictly sexual connotation of the term (Roy being a sort of British alloy of Ted Lewis and Cab Calloway who not only jumped around a lot in front of his band, but played clarinet and alto, sang loudly and tap-danced). Not included in this album is Duke Ellington’s classic instrumental feature for Johnny Hodges, ultimately renamed Warm Valley but with an original title that listeners should be able to infer by now.
Somebody’s Been Ridin’ My Black Gal and She Squeezed My Lemon are by the under-recorded Chicago bluesman Art(hur) McKay, and further demonstrate the use of the substitution of an ambiguous slang term for a four letter word. Art could, in fact, be referring to any number of anatomical members as his “lemon.” The phrase “riding,” means “love making,” thereby giving new significance to the ‘30s movie gangster cliche “Take him for a ride!”
Clara Smith’s It’s Tight Like That (the phrase “tight” conveying a delightfully succinct reference to either sex, drugs or money) and the Hokum Boys’ It Feels So Good are variations on the same theme, the latter actually being more of a paraphrase of the former, which was a big race-record hit as recorded by Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Noone and others. Clara Smith is often described as having the nicest voice of all the Smith girls as well as the most interesting jazz accompaniments, and It Feels So Good spotlights the great jazz and blues guitar pioneer Lonnie Johnson and the composer of the popular standard I Ain’t Got Nobody, Spencer Williams.
A Bird In The Hand (as it was renamed on a later party-label records issue) depicts musically an X-rated male-female encounter set in a doctor’s office It’s very much a period piece (no pun intended) that uses then-prevalent radio techniques to paint a mental picture of such a scene. All in all, it reminds me of a story told by the mother of a friend of mine, who remembered, growing up in the ‘30s, the village idiot, who would read “girlie” magazines (referred in those innocent times as “f. .k Books”) to himself while chanting over and over “oh boy! oh boy! oh boy . .
We end with a second version of Shave ‘Em Dry, perhaps the single most explicit tune ever put on vinyl. The main thrust of the late ‘50s rock revolt to take this brand of material, performed with considerably less excitement, and move it out of the ghetto subculture and into the dominant children’s pop music scene — where it has remained ever since.

—Will Friedwald, 1983


Tracks:

1. Eddie Johnson and his Crackerjacks-The Duck's Yas Yas
2. unknown cowboy-Frankie And Johnny (dirty parody)
3. possibly Walter Roland; Lucille Bogan, aka Bessie Jackson-I'm Gonna Shave You Dry
4. Cliff Edwards, aka ''Ukelele Ike''-Take Out That Thing
5. The Light Crust Doughboys-Pussy, Pussy, Pussy
6. Art McKay-Somebody's Been Ridin' My Black Gal
7. The Clovers-Darktown Strutter's Ball (dirty parody, The Rotten C...S..ker's Ball)
8. Claude Hopkins and his Band-It's Too Big Papa
9. The Hokum Boys, Lonnie Johnson and Spencer Williams-It Feels So Good
10. unknown cowboy-Bye Bye Cherry (dirty parody of Bye Bye Blackbird)
11. Harry Roy and his Bat Club Boys-Pussy
12. Art McKay-She Squeezed My Lemon
13. possibly Butterbeans and Susie Edwards-A Bird In The Hand (real title unknown)
14. Clara Smith-It's Tight Like That
15. Bessie Jackson-Shave 'Em Dry

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EDDIE VINSON Cherry Red Blues

Thursday, April 9, 2015

The last three LPs posted at Scratchy Attic are from the "King Blues Master Series" which appeared during 1970 and 1971, very late in the label's initial run. In 1979 Gusto revamped many titles from the original series as expanded two record sets of which this excellent collection of classic sides by Eddie ("Cleanhead") Vinson is an example.

Liner notes (by William "Hoss" Allen of WLAC Radio, Nashville) are as follows:


EDDIE “CLEANHEAD” VINSON

The simpler art forms are often the most enduring. So it is that in the broad field of American music today, the simple blues exercises an influence that can only be termed tremendous.
Record companies have met this growing awareness and King Records has accepted the challenge head-on with its Blues Masters Series. This album features Eddie Vinson, or as he was affectionately known, “Mr. Cleanhead.”
There is little divergence in Vinson’s blues style. It’s authentic, rooted in the traditions of the Southwestern part of the United States, and reflects the Kansas City style of presentation.
Eddie was born in Houston fifty years ago and began his career playing in and around that large area. After a stint with Cootie Williams, he formed his own group in 1945. All through this period, Vinson was not only developing his unique style of blues singing, but also had acquired an earmarking sound with his alto sax playing.
In 1947 he recorded his greatest hit, “KIDNEY STEW BLUES”, and was immediately booked into the Zanzibar, one of the showplaces on Broadway. In subsequent years, with the decline of the band business, Vinson was one of the first to cut his aggregation and continued to tour extensively. He always, however, augmented his group into a large band for recording dates, and this is the Eddie Vinson you hear on this album.
His blues style is special — combining the “shout” technique with his own tricks of phrasing such as you will distinguish on “MY BIG BRASS BED IS GONE.” Like all great blues singers, however, he treasures one attitude which is more important than any stylistic trick; that is, he sings from the heart. Take note of “I NEED YOU” and “PERSON TO PERSON.” There is another element. That is the song material. It is the stuff of life. It is the endlessly repeated story of love or unfaithfulness, of tragedy and pathos. Dig “ASHES ON MY PILLOW.” Vinson can “go to church” with his shouting style with equal eloquence, as he shows so clearly on “FEATHERBED MAMA” and “GOOD BREAD ALLEY.”
As to instrumentation, the arrangements are marked by soulful and inventive passages packed with color and mood with a relaxed feeling that will, in turn, relax the listener.
It’s sort of like “the hair of the dog”, try some blues when you’re blue, especially Eddie Vinson’s brand.


Volume One

Tracks:

1. Cherry Red
2. Ashes On My Pillow
3. Kidney Stew
4. Queen Bee Blues
5. Somebody Done Stole My Cherry Red
6. Lonesome Train
7. Person To Person
8. My Big Brass Bed Is Gone
9. Rainy Mornin' Blues
10. I Need You Tonight
11. Featherbed Mama
12. Good Bread Alley

*download here*

Volume Two

Tracks:

1.I'm Gonna Wind Your Clock
2.I'm Weak But Willing
3.No Good Woman Blues
4.Jump And Grunt
5.Big Mouth Gal
6.The People On My Party Line
7.Peas And Rice
8.I Trusted You (But You Double-Crossed Me)
9.Bald Headed Blues
10. If You Don't Think I'm Sinkin'

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WYNONIE HARRIS Good Rockin' Blues

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Another in the great "King Blues Master Series" and a great companion to "Risky Blues" is this 1970 collection of postwar rhythm & blues by the fantastic Wynonie Harris (biographies of Harris are available on Wikipedia here and Allmusic here). The majority of King's output aimed at the postwar "race" market was the type of R&B exemplified by Harris, and most of the LPs in this series focused on this kind of material.

The liner notes (by William "Hoss" Allen of WLAC Radio, Nashville) are as follows:


You may be strong as a lion, you may be humble as a lamb.
You may be strong as a lion, you may be humble as a lamb.
Just take your mind of f your wife and put it on Uncle Sam.
                                                 Roosevelt Sykes, November 1941

As the 1940’s began, the most significant event in the lives of all Americans, black and white, took place on December 7, 1941. The requirements of the armed forces and of the industry which supported the war effort brought about population shifts, changes in social patterns and the transplanting of musical tastes.
Blues recording very nearly came to a halt in the early forties because of the war, the shortage of shellac, a musicians strike and because the national effort, which the war required, dominated the energies of the black community.
It was during the war that the term “race” was changed to “rhythm and blues”, a phrase which is useful because it describes a category of music wide enough to cover most of the many styles originally listed as “race”.
Out of this grouping jumped Wynonie “Mr. Blues” Harris, sometimes also known as “Sugar (Peppermint) Cane” and the “Mississippi Mockingbird’”, even though he was born in Omaha, Nebraska and as far as anyone knows never was in Mississippi unless it was for a show date.
In his later years Wynonie made his home in Oakland, California, and it is believed he was around sixty-one or sixty-two years at the time of his death. He made his way up in the music world as a “buck-dancer”. And in the early thirties people who knew Wynonie referred to him as “Sugar Cane”. He picked up the “Mississippi Mockingbird” tag when he joined the Lucky Millender band, one of the great music groups of the middle and late forties. He also recorded his first national hit with Lucky, WHO THREW THE WHISKEY IN THE WELL? Then came GOOD ROCKIN’ TONIGHT, GOOD MORNING JUDGE and BLOODSHOT EYES.
These all came, after the recording ban was lifted in 1945 and with the advent of the disc-jockey as an important element in the entertainment field, records began to reach a greater segment of the public. In areas where there were heavy Negro populations, radio programs playing R and B began to appear.
Wynonie Harris and many other great blues artists sired some of the best blues of the era. Some of Wynonie’s best have already been mentioned but for the whalloping, shouting happy style of blues so reminiscent of Harris, grab an earful of GRANDMA PLAYS THE NUMBERS or ALL SHE WANTS TO DO IS ROCK. Wynonie was a “shouter” most of the way, but members of the Lucky Millender band I’ve talked with say he could handle a ballad with the best of them when he felt like
As Melvin Moore, now an executive with Brunswick Records, and who followed Wynonie on the Millender band show with his sister, Anisteen Allen, says, “Wynonie was a mess, man, all he wanted to do was rock ‘em and roll ‘em.”
So Starday-King, from its Blues Master Series, gives you a “mess” of blues featuring Wynonie Harris.


Includes jacket and label scans.

Tracks:

1. Good Rockin' Tonight
2. I Feel That Old Age Coming On
3. Bloodshot Eyes
4. Rot Gut
5. Mr. Dollar
6. Grandma Plays The Numbers
7. Good Morning Judge
8. Adam Come And Get Your Rib
9. All She Wants To Do Is Rock
10. Quiet Whiskey
11. Lovin' Machine
12. Tremblin'

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PAUL HOWARD & RALPH WILLIS Faded Picture Blues

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

While yesterday's post featured "Risky Blues", an LP on the "King Blues Master Series" comprised mostly of postwar rhythm & blues, today attention is turned to a collection from the same series featuring two fairly obscure Piedmont singer/guitarists. Both artists performed and recorded under many pseudonyms. Edward P. Hughes recorded for King as Paul Howard and was also known as Carolina Slim, Country Paul, Jammin' Jim, and Lazy Slim Jim. Ralph Willis also appears record as Alabama Slim, Washboard Pete, and Sleepy Joe. Wikipedia biographies of Hughes and Willis are here and here.
The original King edition of this album was first released in 1970 but, as with "Risky Blues", the present copy is a Gusto edition dated 1976. For some inexplicable reason, the latter jacket omits the liner notes; fortunately I was able to find a scan of the original King back slick and have included it in the download folder. The notes from that scan (by William "Hoss" Allen of WLAC Radio, Nashville) are as follows:


There are several things immediately evident on listening to the recorded efforts of Paul Howard and Ralph Willis. First, the similarity of the beat, “a flat slap” effect peculiar to the Carolinas or in “geechee” country. Secondly, in the inflection of the lyrics. This is odd because Paul Howard died in his early twenties and Ralph Willis did not record these sides until he was in his late forties.
They were both however, from “geechee” or “gulla” country. This is a rather isolated strip extending from Savannah Georgia to the Carolinas The area was settled, according to the only research available, probably by Angolese slaves or those brought from the Angola province of West Africa. Angola became “gulla” to the black man, a pigeon language of French, and English with African intonations. Both “gulla” and “geechee” are popular slang terms in the aforementioned area. “Geechee” is probably the best known and while it is undoubtedly derived from “gulla”, nobody seems to know why or when. Paul Howard and Ralph Willis, however, were both steeped in the tradition of Spanish moss, dirt yards, and rickety shacks.
Their blues themes don’t differ too much from the Delta Blues, except in the rhythm patterns which never vary. There are numerous changes in the “goonbay” beats of the Bahamas and the “calypso” of the West Indies but the “geechee” seems to lay down a rhythm pattern and never wanders from it.
Both of the artists traveled extensively up and down the Atlantic Coast but as far as is known their paths never crossed. It is interesting to see how their approach and treatment of certain tunes are so much alike. Take for instance Paul Howard’s “SIDEWALK BOOGIE” and Ralph Willis’s “GONNA HOP ON DOWN THE LINE”. Paul Howard is continually upset with the fact that his “baby is gone” or that “he has to die”. These are the dominant simplicities in “ONE MORE TIME”, “AIN’T IT SAD”, and “YOUR PICTURE DONE FADED”. On the other hand, Ralph Willis does wander lyrically to his vocal demise about how his woman “throws away his money” in “WHY DID YOU DO IT” and infidelity in “DOORBELL BLUES”.
Musicians, especially black, have long been known for their sense of fair play and were never reluctant to “borrow” from some other artist’s rendition. So it’s especially interesting to hear how these two interpret predominantly public domain tunes. In other words, the relationship of the black listener to the music that he regards as “his” has always been a very deep and personal one no matter who the artist how the interpretation might have traveled from the original.
Call it what you like, back-door, cotton-field, or down-home blues. If you are a real ‘bed-rock’ blues fan, I guarantee that Paul Howard and Ralph Willis will give you an extensive journey and convincing experience into what the blues really are.


Tracks:

1. Paul Howard-Your Picture Done Faded
2. Paul Howard-Sidewalk Boogie
3. Paul Howard-Black Cat Trail
4. Paul Howard-Mother Dear Blues
5. Ralph Willis-Gonna Hop On Down The Line
6. Ralph Willis-Do Right
7. Paul Howard-Since I Seen Your Smiling Face
8. Paul Howard-I'll Never Walk In Your Door
9. Paul Howard-One More Time
10. Paul Howard-Ain't It Sad
11. Ralph Willis-Door Bell Blues
12. Ralph Willis-Why'd You Do It

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RISKY BLUES

Monday, April 6, 2015

I'd like to wish all the followers of Scratchy Attic a Happy Easter, and share this (somewhat unholy) LP of "Risky (aka risqué) Blues". Having posted some of the King label's great country titles of late, here attention is turned to the other side of King's classic catalog. Part of the "King Blues Master Series" of albums released during the time after Syd Nathan's death in 1967 when the company was absorbed into a merger which created Starday-King Records, "Risky Blues" appeared in 1971, although the copy transferred here is a post-Gusto pressing and bares the date 1976.

The liner notes (by William "Hoss" Allen of WLAC Radio, Nashville) are as follows:


RISKY BLUES

"Sixty Minute Man", "Annie Had A Baby", "Don't Stop Dan", "Keep On Churnin' "! Are those song titles familiar? Probably not; but they kept another generation "twisting and turning", "laughing and clapping", plus running to their nearest record shop. The reason? Simple.... Raw, Congoritualistic rhythms and suggestive lyrics (at least for that time).
They just aren't heard on the air anymore, they weren't then very much. People primarily heard them on Juke Boxes, at a friend’s house or from a small group of stations around the country who allowed their D. J.'s to play what they wanted to play and what they thought their listeners wanted to hear. Station management either turned a deaf ear or didn't care because guys like Gene Nobles in Nashville, Zenas Sears and "Alley Pal" Patrick in Atlanta, Bob Umbark in Birmingham, "Jack the Cat" and "Poppa-Stoppa" (the original) in New Orleans, Al Benson and Sam Evans in Chicago, Jack Walker and Al Cooper in New York were tremendously popular, sold-out commercially and the fore-runners of a great new movement that saw "race" music evolve into the more acceptable "rhythm and blues" idiom.
These early groups who became the influence behind the equally early rock groups like Bill Haley and The Comets, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, and eventually the Beatles were versatile in their appeal to their particular musical form as the amplified guitar sounds and pulsating electric bass tone They had within the urgency and insistence of this pulsating hybrid of movement with lyrics to match, something "tart and ironic", authoritative and double-edged sensuality! As some one has written, "To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be PRESENT in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread."
Well, I can promise you there's no effort involved in listening to this album....other than trying to stay completely still or glued to one spot. And yet some of the cuts are so listenable that you'll play them over and over again before the full impact gets to you. "Silent George" by Lucky Millinder for example. "Mountain Oysters" by Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis is a classic as is "Big Ten Inch Record" by Bull Moose Jackson.
Risque, you bet your sweet button; double entendre, to be sure; entertaining.
Right on, Brother, Right on!


Includes jacket and label scans.

Tracks:

1. Bull "Moose" Jackson-Big 10 Inch Record
2. The Swallows-It Ain't The Meat
3. The Midnighters-Annie Had A Baby
4. Wynonie Harris-Wasn't That Good
5. The Checkers-Don't Stop Dan
6. Wynonie Harris-Lovin' Machine
7. Lucky Millinder-Silent George
8. The Dominoes-60 Minute Man
9. Robert Henry-Somethin's Gone Wrong With My (Lovin' Machine)
10 Jesse Powell & Fluffy Hunter-The Walkin' Blues
11 Wynonie Harris-Keep On Churnin'
12 Bull "Moose" Jackson-I Want A Bowlegged Woman
13 Todd Rhodes-Rocket 69
14 Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis-Mountain Oysters

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