Mar 4, 20100
Top Ten Under-Remembered People of R&B
This week, we have a special contribution from one of our favorite DJs, Pete Wilson of Nashville Jumps and Rock and Roll Rent Control fame. In this hefty list, Pete writes about R&B artists that deserve a second look. Check it out, and learn about some listen-worthy R&B artists while your at it! Clicking this entry will put you in the very knowledgeable hands of Mr. Pete Wilson.
In alphabetical order:
1. Mickey Baker: Mickey Baker is the first and so far only member of the Nashville Jumps Session Man Hall of Fame. In his day he was the first-call guitarist on R&B sessions in New York and his stinging hot solos are the highlight of a lot of records that don’t have his name on them anywhere. I constantly find myself wondering “is that Mickey?” when I hear a hot solo. There’s a recent reissue CD under his name that collects a couple of dozen recordings on which he was an uncredited player–a pretty rare thing. He didn’t just play on records marketed as R&B–when RCA wanted to give their new rockabilly discovery, Joe Clay, a massive push, they called in Baker on guitar and he took the song to a new level. Baker was also the Mickey of Mickey and Sylvia, of “Love Is Strange” fame, but that achievement seems to me far below the session playing. Strangely enough, Baker was rarely as exciting when recording under his own name. I really think he did his best work when a producer hired him to “sound like Mickey Baker.” That he wanted to explore a much wider variety of sounds when playing under his own name is laudable, I guess, but I don’t enjoy it as much. One solo instrumental album from 1959, “Wildest Guitar,” is excellent, though.
2. Richard Berry: He’s probably best known today as the man who wrote and first recorded “Louie Louie.” His version is perfectly intelligible and, frankly, a lot cooler and hipper than the lovably clumsy Kingsmen record. Berry wrote dozens of other fine songs, though, and was a very talented singer with an easily recognized voice. He sings on many great West Coast vocal group records of the 50s and early 60s–the Flairs are the best group name to look for–and had another moment of glory as guest lead singer on the Robins’ “Riot in Cell Block no. 9,” because the Robins’ usual lead couldn’t get the menacing tone required. The song was one of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller’s earliest masterworks and Berry executed perfectly. While he was a good songwriter in general, he had the particular talent of being able to swipe a hook or a sound from somebody else’s hit without really plagiarizing.
3. The Cats and the Fiddle: This was a vocal quartet of 1939 and the 40s that made startling full-throttle jive records. There were a number of similar groups and imitators–the Four Clefs were one that was especially comparable, and the early King Cole Trio sometimes sounded similar but with more restraint–but I don’t think any quite matched the Cats’ output. If you’ve heard the Ink Spots’ “Java Jive”–just about the last record in their early comedic style–imagine it sped up considerably with a lot more stringed instruments jangling all over it, but still with plenty of vocal harmony. Besides singing, the Cats played guitars, tipples (that’s a sort of ten-stringed ukulele) and a bass fiddle, and instrumental stretches on their records are as enjoyable as the vocal parts. Their personnel changed lots of times but on their earliest records, some of which I think are their best, they were Austin Powell, Jimmie Henderson, Chuck Barksdale, and Ernie Price; jazz guitarist Tiny Grimes was a later member. The early Cats recorded one of my favorite reefer numbers, “Killin’ Jive.” They recorded some good ballads, like “I’ll Miss You So,” which Henderson wrote and which became a standard, but the hot uptempo swingers and novelties are what I play.
4. Scatman Crothers: The real king of rock and roll. Scat was one of several African American performers of a mature age who recorded some great early rock and roll records in the mid- to late-50s; Teddy “Mr. Bear” McRae was another good example. It may take imagination today to see the records as rock and roll, but they were marketed that way and what’s more important, they’re very energetic and exciting. Actually Scat straddles two eras: the period in which “rock and roll” was a popular phrase in R&B but wasn’t yet a genre name, and the later period when as a genre label it was applied to a wide variety of popular music. Born in 1910, he made an album called “Rock ‘n’ Roll with Scatman” in the late 50s.
5. Billy “The Kid” Emerson: A piano player, singer, and songwriter, he made his biggest mark in history by writing “Red Hot,” which Billy Lee Riley had more success with than he did. “My gal is red hot/Your gal ain’t doodly squat”–you know the one. Both versions were recorded by Sam Phillips in Memphis. Billy’s starts out well, with a crew of mocking pals chanting back at Billy’s cheerful lead over loose, jaunty accompaniment, but it suffers from Sun’s occasional tendency to get a little sloppy with volume levels–the chanting response becomes almost inaudible. Billy wrote and recorded a number of now obscure rockers like “Satisfied,” “I Never Get Enough” and “Every Woman I Know (Crazy About an Automobile)” which sound fresh no matter how many times you listen to them. He knew how to put together a record. His best records are scattered over Sun, Vee Jay, Chess and other labels, which is one reason there’s no really good compilation on him.
6. Julia Lee: Lee sang and played piano in Kansas City bars, especially Milton’s Tap Room, for many, many years. She was a plump and pretty lady who seems to be best remembered, when she is remembered at all, for her many salacious double-entendre records. She sang these songs like the mature, experienced, good-humored woman she was–laughs were the goal, not titillation. Sometimes she’d sing ballads or torch songs, and she’s effective on those too, pretty much personifying the word “wry.” She made some records in the 20s but by far the bulk of her output was for Capitol in the 40s and 50s. Every once in a while she’d record a song she wrote herself but I imagine a Capitol A&R man usually connected her with material. She might record with several horns or just with a rhythm section but the sound of her records is pretty consistent–a sort of meat-and-potatoes piano bar blues, succeeding largely through Lee’s good-time but thoughtful delivery and whoever’s songwriting talent went into a given number. I used to make it a point to test a blues or R&B reference book by looking up Lee, and she usually wouldn’t turn up. She falls through cracks because she’s too much of a novelty singer to be blues, too pop to be R&B, too blues to be pop, not virtuosic enough to be jazz. She had plenty of good records that aren’t of the double-entendre variety–one that’s old mildly ribald, “Snatch and Grab It,” graces the opening scenes of the much later movie “Cadillac Man”–and shouldn’t be pigeonholed. At age 56 she took a nap and never woke up, which seems like an appropriately quiet end for a woman who didn’t tour or travel much.
7. Mr. Sad Head: I know little about this guy, whose real name was William A. Thurman, but it’s enough simply that someone with this name existed. Definitely my favorite “blues name” ever. Bob Dylan rhapsodized about the name on one installment of “Theme Time Radio Hour,” but I have yet to actually hear that. Mr. Head was a pretty good blues shouter and the three songs I have on CD by him, “Sad Head Blues,” “Hot Weather Blues,” and “Butcher Boy,” are all great. “Hot Weather Blues” also has one spectacular line: “It ain’t hot weather that makes me stick to you.”
8. Mabel Scott: I don’t know much about Mabel’s history, but she was a great singer. She was good technically–no virtuoso–but she stood out in delivering funny and often self-deprecating lyrics with ease and wit. Her song “Just Give Me a Man,” in which she declares willingness to put up with just about anything short of a corpse, is easy to laugh at because she was really an attractive woman and for a while had the massively popular pianist/singer Charles Brown as a husband, which was quite a catch.
9. Jesse Stone: He started making records in 1927, but probably contributed to R&B most as a songwriter, producer and arranger at Atlantic Records. In addition to writing epochal songs like “Shake, Rattle and Roll” (under the pseudonym Charles Calhoun), he developed a classic dance rhythm that sold millions of records and helped birth a new era–”Jesse Stone did more to develop the basic rock ‘n’ roll sound than anybody else,” according to Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic. Besides this essential behind-the-scenes work, Stone also made R&B records of his own, often under the Calhoun name, for Atlantic and RCA in the 40s and 50s. He was an engaging if not great singer and his songs were consistently original, catchy and witty. One of the best is “Smack Dab in the Middle,” which was later recorded by Ray Charles and others; I like Jesse’s better than Ray’s. There’s a facetious and self-effacing tone to his vocals that has just a hint of the minstrel shows he worked in as a youth. In “Who’s Zat?” he almost slips into Stepin Fetchit territory, but that’s the only time that happens that I can remember–usually there’s just a vaudeville-style will to entertain the hell out of people. Stone said that he once met Cole Porter and asked him for advice, and Porter told him to buy a rhyming dictionary. Craft is always evident in a Stone song.
10. Frantic Fay Thomas: I’ve only got three or four songs by Fay, who was one of many female singer/pianists of the 40s and 50s who had more good-time glee than sex appeal–Julia Lee, Nellie Lutcher, and Betty Hall Jones were others. She had a playful, often goofy way of singing, which was sometimes punctuated by odd cooing and gargling effects that sound different from anything I”ve ever heard. These are probably most prominent on a number called “I’m in Town,” but “The Monkey Song” is loopier in general, with startling leaps into falsetto. I like “I’m in Town” the best. I don’t think Fay got to record a whole lot. That is a shame.
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