Podcast appearances and mentions of Harlem Nocturne

Episode 134 From Organ to Synthesizer: The Evolution of the Yamaha Electone Playlist   Time Track Time Start Introduction –Thom Holmes 06:56 00:00 Electone E-1, home style cabinet, transistorized oscillators, analog, two manuals, pedalboard, two built-in speakers.     1.Hidemi Saito, Tadashi Yoshida, “Kiriko No Tango” from Enchanting Mood (Electone Sound) (1963 Nivico). Composed by Tadashi Yoshida; Electone organ, Hidemi Saito. Used the Electone E-1 The highest-end Electone model at that time, with a starting price of ¥647.000 in 1962. 03:32 07:14 2.Hidemi Saito, Tadashi Yoshida, “Furare Jyozu Ni Hore Jyozu” from Enchanting Mood (Electone Sound) (1963 Nivico). Composed by, Tadashi Yoshida; Electone organ, Hidemi Saito. Used the Electone E-1 The highest-end Electone model at that time, with a starting price of ¥647.000 in 1962. 02:54 10:42 Electone B-6, home style cabinet, transistorized oscillators, analog, two manuals (44 notes each), pedalboard, two built-in speakers.     3.Koichi Oki, “September In The Rain” from  Swingin' Electone! (1967 Takt). Arranged by, Electone organ, Koichi Oki; Bass, Masanaga Harada; Drums, George Otsuka, Akira Ishikawa; Guitar, Masaaki Fujita; Tenor Saxophone, Yasushi Ashida. The Electone model is not specified but it had two manuals and is likely a model A-3. 03:22 13:38 Electone EX-42, space age cabinet, like the GX-1, integrated circuits, Pulse Analog Synth (PASS) technology, three manuals, portamento strip, pedalboard.     4.Shiro Michi, “Hey Jude” from Let's Learn Electone/Shiro Michi Electone Course Vol. 5/ "All About The Rhythm" (1970 CBS/Sony). Drums, Takeshi Inomata; Electone, Yuri Tashiro; Percussion – Tokyo Cuban Boys Percussion Group. Used the EX-42, Yamaha's first commercially available stage model Electone, and the commercial successor to the EX-21. It is likely that less than 200 of these were built. 03:29 16:56 5.Shiro Michi, “Summertime” from Let's Learn Electone/Shiro Michi Electone Course Vol. 6 Jazz Standards and New Hits (1971 CBS/Sony).1970 — EX-42. Yamaha's first commercially available stage model Electone, and the commercial successor to the EX-21. It was the first Electone to use integrated circuits, although it was still based on analogue technology. Famous Electone players such as Shigeo Sekito used this instrument to make the "Special Sound Series.” Used the EX-42, Yamaha's first commercially available stage model Electone, and the commercial successor to the EX-21. It is likely that less than 200 of these were built. 02:17 20:20 6.Koichi Oki, “Light My Fire” from Yamaha Superstar! (1972 Universal Summit). Oki was known as the “world's leading Yamaha Electone player” in the liner notes. Uses the Yamaha Electone EX-42. 02:59 22:32 7.Koichi Oki, “Spring” and “Summer” (side 1) from Exciting Keyboards - Four Seasons (1973 CBS/Sony). Arranged by, ARP Synthesizer, Electone [Electone  Koichi Oki;Drums, Akira Ishikawa; Guitar, Ken Yajima. Music by Vivaldi, Koichi Oki. This release was dated 1978 but the recordings were made in 1973. Oki was a musician working for Yamaha in the early seventies, providing demonstrations of their Electone organ. The model used here was an EX-42, Yamaha's first commercially available stage model Electone, and the commercial successor to the EX-21. It was the first Electone to use integrated circuits, although it was still based on analogue technology. 21:34 25:30 8.Yuri Tashiro, “Summertime” from Beautiful Electone (1973 Polydor). Japanese jazz organist, pianist, and Electone artist from the 1970s. She also made some albums with the Hammond and its influence on her jazz playing is illustrated here in these Electone tracks. The side musicians are uncredited. 04:00 47:16 9.Yuri Tashiro, “Jazz Samba” from Beautiful Electone (1973 Polydor). Japanese jazz organist, pianist, and Electone artist from the 1970s. She also made some albums with the Hammond and its influence on her jazz playing is illustrated here in these Electone tracks. The side musicians are uncredited. 04:35 52:28 10.   Archie Ulm, “Popcorn” from At The Yamaha EX-42 (1976 Private release). Ulm was another American lounge player equipped with the “electronic marvel” of the Yamaha EX-42. The classic Gershon Kingsley Moog tune played on the Electone EX-42. Percussion by Paul Hergert. 03:55 55:48 11.   Archie Ulm, “Harlem Nocturne” from At The Yamaha EX-42 (1976 Private release). Ulm was another American lounge player equipped with the “electronic marvel” of the Yamaha EX-42. Percussion by Paul Hergert. 05:20 59:42 Electone E-70, home style cabinet, integrated circuits, Pulse Analog Synth (PASS) technology, two manuals, pedalboard, built-in speakers. Same circuit board as used in the Yamaha CS-80 synthesizer.     12.   Denny Hinman, “How Deep is Your Love?” from Denny Plays The Yamaha Electone E-70 (1980 Yamaha). Ued the E-70 One of the first home-based organs to feature Yamaha's PASS (Pulse Analog Synthesis System) in a console cabinet. The E-70's architecture resembled the famous CS-80 synthesizer, though it lacked analog VCOs. Its original price tag was ¥1,800,000. 02:46 01:04:58 Electone D-80, home style cabinet, integrated circuits, Pulse Analog Synth (PASS) technology, three manuals, pedalboard, built-in speakers.     13.   Bob Hacker, “Rocky Top” "One Man Opry" Bob Hacker Plays The Yamaha Electone D-80 (1980 Yamaha). Used the three-manual Yamaha Electone D-80. 04:01 01:07:46 Electone FX-1, space age cabinet, like the GX-1, integrated circuits, program cartridges, three manuals, pedalboard.     14.   Claude Dupras, “Pulstar” from Interface Yamaha FX-1 (1983 Yamaha). Arranged for the Yamaha Electone FX-1 by Claude Dupras. An interesting rendition of a Vangelis song. 03:22 01:11:44 15.   Claude Dupras, “The Spring” from Interface Yamaha FX-1 (1983 Yamaha). Arranged for the Yamaha Electone FX-1 by Claude Dupras. A little bit of Vivaldi. 03:32 01:15:06 Electone 7000, home style cabinet, integrated circuits, Pulse Analog Synth (PASS) technology, two manuals, pedalboard, two speakers.     16.   Jim Levesque, “Moonlight Sonata/Night and Day” from Record Breaking Performances Featuring The Yamaha Electone 7000. (1981 Yamaha). The Electone 7000 (aka E-75 in Europe/Japan) was a synthesizer-based electric organ produced by Yamaha in 1981. It featured two keyboards and a foot pedal board with a total of 28 voices of polyphony. 03:49 01:18:36 17.   Tracy Hammer, “Top Banana” from Record Breaking Performances Featuring The Yamaha Electone 7000. (1981 Yamaha). Used the Electone 7000 (aka E-75 in Europe/Japan), a synthesizer-based electric organ produced by Yamaha in 1981. It featured two keyboards and a foot pedal board with a total of 28 voices of polyphony. 01:43 01:22:22 18.   Debbie Culbertson, “Ice Castles” from  Record Breaking Performances Featuring The Yamaha Electone 7000. (1981 Yamaha). The Electone 7000 (aka E-75 in Europe/Japan) is a synthesizer-based electric organ produced by Yamaha in 1981. It featured two keyboards and a foot pedal board with a total of 28 voices of polyphony. 04:09 01:23:58 Electone EL-90, home style cabinet, integrated circuits, disc recording of programming, two manuals, pedalboard, two built-in speakers. Introduced new synthesizers, filtering, and expression technologies that made instrument voices on the Electone closer to digital samples.     19.   Unknown Artist, “Prime Time,” Yamaha Electone EL-90 the Demonstrations (1991 Yamaha). A cassette demonstration tape showcasing the Electone EL-90 in various musical settings. 03:50 01:28:04   Opening background music: Hidemi Saito, Tadashi Yoshida, side 1 from Enchanting Mood (Electone Sound) (1963 Nivico). Composed by Tadashi Yoshida; Electone organ, Hidemi Saito. Used the Electone E-1. Introduction to the podcast voiced by Anne Benkovitz. Additional opening, closing, and other incidental music by Thom Holmes. My Books/eBooks: Electronic and Experimental Music, sixth edition, Routledge 2020. Also, Sound Art: Concepts and Practices, first edition, Routledge 2022. See my companion blog that I write for the Bob Moog Foundation. For a transcript, please see my blog, Noise and Notations. Original music by Thom Holmes can be found on iTunes and Bandcamp. Electone Museum online. Electone Technology The Organ Forum  

Después del semi descanso navideño Los Tres Tenores vuelven a sus puestos para seguir dando la nota…y bien dada. ADIVINA PELÍCULA. Mari Trini. AMORES. SAN TORAL. Illinois Jacquet – HARLEM NOCTURNE. The Cavendish Orchestra. QUINTA de BEETHOVEN. Andante. CELEBRACIONES. Micki. EL CHICO DE LA ARMÓNICA. Sonny Rollins – NO MOE. EFEMÉRIDES. Patricia Janeckova. ÉRASE UNA […] The post Los Tres Tenores 11/01/2023 first appeared on Ripollet Ràdio.

Johan Leijonhufvud Trio – Harlem Nocturne (LEIONJIUVED) Heartcore Records | Sept 10, 2021 1. The Song My Lady Sings (Charles Lloyd) 4:40 2. The Marten (Johan Leijonhufvud) 3:19 3. There’s a Boat That’s Leavin’ Soon for New York (George Gershwin) 4:16 4. Harlem Nocturne (Earle Hagen) 4:22 5. Strange Brew (Eric Clapton, Gail Collins, Felix Pappalardi) 3:37 6. Welcome (Johan Leijonhufvud) 6:23 7. Shoulders (Cedar Walton) 3:42 8. Three Views of a Secret (Jaco Pastorius) 5:16 9. A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing (Billy Strayhorn) 4:32 10. Canção Do Sal (Milton Nascimento) 4:36 Johan Leijonhufvud – guitar Johnny Åman – acoustic bass Niclas Campagnol – drums Produced by Kurt Rosenwinkel Recorded at Lowswing Studio, Berlin 2020 Recording engineer Guy Sternberg Recording Assistant Benedikt Vogt Mixed by Charis Karantzas, Berlin 2021 Mastered by Douglas Henderson at Micro-Moose-Berlin 2021 Production coordination and Artwork by Michaela Bóková, Heartcore Records 2021 Released on Heartcore Records, Berlin 2021 (HCR12) Follow Johan Leijonhufvud on: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johan.leijonhufvud.mmm Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jleijonhufvud/ WEB: https://www.johanleijonhufvud.com/ Heartcore Records: https://heartcore-records.com/artists/johan-leijonhufvud-trio /////////////////////////////////// CORTINA FINAL Eurolines Eurolines Johan Leijonhufvud Sittel Records | Enero 1, 2011 ////////////////////////////////////////

Hans en Joost zetten de A2 neer voor ESTEC, de technologische afdeling van de Europese Ruimtevaart Organisatie. Waar ze onmiddellijk worden weggestuurd. -GPS-coördinaten 52.2149, 4.421341 -Earle Hagen, Harlem Nocturne for Basson, Double Bass, Hammond Organ and Drums -Richard Wagner, Ouverture van Lohengrin, op Uri Caine Ensemble, Wagner e Venezia, 1997

Our Vanessa Coffman has grown up in a very musical family. Her mom, Julianne, is a singer and today teaches music in the Cabell County schools. Her dad, Gary, also an educator, played sax in Marshall University jazz bands back in the ‘90s. So it's not surprising that both her young siblings also play assorted instruments and sing. Veezy's memories of childhood are filled with the sounds of her dad playing some of our greatest jazz standards of all times — “‘Round Midnight,” “Take Five,” “Georgia on My Mind” — and when at about 7 she wanted to be a sax player like her dad, it was Gary who taught her those first notes. The two of them still regularly jam together; some of our favorite new pictures in the Flood album are of the Coffmans playing duets, at home and even on the beach last summer. Well, today is Gary Coffman's birthday, so here's a little surprise from his Flood family: His favorite saxophonist playing his favorite tune. From a recent Flood gathering, this is Earle Hagen's classic “Harlem Nocturne.” Aw, tell it, Veezy!

Sintonía: "35-30" - Paul Williams "The Honeydripper" - Joe Liggins; "Strange Things Happenning Every Day" - Sister Rosetta Tharpe; "That´s The Stuff You Gotta Watch" - Ella Johnson with Buddy Johnson; "Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop" - Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra; "Harlem Nocturne" - Johnny Otis Band; "Postman´s Blues" - Dinah Washington; "R.M. Blues" - Roy Milton; "I Know Who Threw The Whiskey In The Well" - Bull Moose Jackson; "My Gal´s A Jockey" - Joe Turner; "Be-Baba-Leba" - Helen Humes with The Bill Doggett Octet; "Ole Maid Boogie" - Eddie Vinson; "He´s A Real Gone Guy" - Nellie Lutcher; "I Love You, Yes I Do" - Bull Moose Jackson; "New Orleans Blues" - Johnny Moore´s Three Blazers; "Call It Stormy Monday" - T-Bone Walker; "King Size Papa" - Julia Lee & Her Boyfriends; "Tomorrow Night" - Lonnie Johnson. Escuchar audio

Welcome to the second episode of season two of Holly Jolly X'masu! This month, I’ll be honoring Black History Month by discussing Sam “The Man” Taylor’s 1968 album, In Christmas. Producing a podcast about Japanese Christmas music doesn’t leave me with many options for Black History Month, but this is an exceptional one. In 1976, President Gerald Ford urged Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history." Sam Taylor certainly fits that bill. He helped mold Rock and Roll’s early sound yet is virtually unknown outside of the industry. From what I can tell, he had a wonderful career, despite the dearth of public acknowledgement in America. While he achieved fame and acclaim in Japan, I wanted to do what I could to shed some light on him in his homeland. He was an accomplished saxophonist whose remarkable talent found him constantly in demand, and allowed him the opportunity to play with some of the biggest names in American music. What I’ve heard of his non-Christmas music is exceptional. His “Harlen Nocturne” is considered the definitive rendition by some fans, and his mist-themed albums are an aural delight. In Christmas is, obviously, his album I’m most familiar with. It’s one of my favorite instrumental Christmas albums, regardless of genre, and knowing a little more about Sam “The Man,” his history, and his ties to some of my favorite songs and entertainers, makes me appreciate it even more. I wanted to provide a sampling of some of the covers I’ve found of In Christmas, starting with my personal copy, as well as the various singles and EP’s taken from the album. I should note, this is not a comprehensive collection. I’ve seen Some of the LP covers re-used for both EP’s and singles, and the CD cover was also used for either an EP or LP release. There’s at least one single or LP that has Sam up on stage. The bottom line is that it was a popular enough album for repeated releases in a variety of formats. I also wanted to provide links to some of his best-known recordings, including “Harlem Nocturne” and “Sh-boom”: “Harlem Nocturne” – Sam “The Man” Taylor “Sh-Boom” – The Chords “Shake, Rattle and Roll” – Big Joe Turner “Money Honey” – Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters As always, thanks for listening. Next month I’ll be celebrating Women’s History Month by discussing Peggy Hayama’s 1964 album, Peggy’s Christmas – Winter Wonderland. It’s a great album by a wonderful singer whose career spanned several decades. You don’t want to miss it. Any feedback on this episode would be appreciated. If you’d like to recommend a song or album for a future episode, drop me a line and let me know. Remember, I've added a button to my Ko-fi page. If you'd like to support me one cup of coffee at a time, a donation is only $3. Any donations received will be put towards purchasing new Japanese Christmas music to review for future episodes. You can also find me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And if you get a chance, leave me a review on iTunes. Thanks!

"Un bar de carretera, en algún lugar, camino de ninguna parte. Dos de los más peligrosos criminales de América han tomado rehenes...." podria ser el comienzo de la sinopsis de una película y de hecho lo es. "From Dusk Till Dawn" (Del Crepúsculo al Amanecer) traducido al español por "Abierto hasta el amanecer" en una edición de placeres etílicos y vampíricos. "¡Hay una pandilla de vampiros esperando a chuparnos la jodida sangre!", nada más cierto, advierte George Clooney. "Satánico Pandemónium", Salma Hayek, la más peligrosa, una exótica bailarina serpentaria, invita a beber el alcohol que fluye por su pierna a Tarantino. Mezclas atrevidas, combinados perfectos en este Babel "after hours"."Wild Thing" de los Troggs o "Harlem Nocturne" de Sam Taylor en su BSO y siempre la Fania o Herb Alpert. Una sola noche separa de la libertad pero puede ser una noche infernal. Escuchar audio

Another tribute to the Big Apple. Performers include: Artie Shaw, The Mills Brothers, Ada Jones, Ray Nobel, Andy Kirk and Harry Richman. Songs include: Give My Regards to Broadway, Nesting Time in Flatbush, She's a Latin From Manhattan, 52nd Street and Harlem Nocturne.

Mit diesem Übungspaket lernst du garantiert innerhalb eines Monats Harlem Nocturne und das Intervall die kleine Terz!

A great discussion with Knoel Scott, a multi instrumentalist and band leader who has played with with the Sun Ra Arkestra since 1979.  Recorded backstage at the Opus 1 Festival in Maryland.  We also hear his original composition, "Harlem Nocturne," featuring Marshall Allen.   Knoel will be back in town for this exciting show at the Town Hall on March 4th 2020 SUN RA ARKESTRA AND WILLIAM PARKER'S INSIDE SONGS OF CURTIS MAYFIELD      

Dio quanto amo New York ed i suoi ricordi. God How much I love New York and its memories

Episode fifty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Honky Tonk" by Bill Doggett, and uses his career to provide a brief summary of the earlier episodes of the podcast as we're now moving forward into the next stage of the story. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Sixteen Tons" by Tennessee Ernie Ford. ----more---- Resources  As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are many best-of collections of Doggett's work available. This one seems to have the best sound quality and is a decent overview of his work. Information for this one comes from all over the place, including Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe by Gayle F Wald, Honkers & Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues by Arnold Shaw, and Inkspots.ca    Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Welcome to the fiftieth episode of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. We're now ten percent of the way through our story, and also most of the way through 1956. I'm told that when history podcasts hit a big round number, it's customary for them to do a jumping-on episode, perhaps a "story so far" which covers everything that's been discussed up to that point, but in brief, so that new listeners can get up to speed. That's sort of what I'm about to do here. This week, we're going to look at a hit song from 1956, but by someone whose career interacted with almost everyone in the first twenty or so episodes of the podcast. We're going to look again at some of that old music, not as isolated records by different artists, but as stages in the career of a single individual. We're going to look at someone who was a jobbing musician, who'd take any job that was on offer, but who by virtue of just being a hard-working competent jobbing player and arranger managed to have an astonishing influence on the development of music. While rock and roll was primarily a vocal music, it wasn't a completely clean break with the past, and for most of the decades from the 1920s through to the early 50s, if you wanted music for dancing you would want instrumental groups. The big bands did employ vocalists, of course, but you can tell who the focus was on from looking at the names of the bands -- the Benny Goodman Orchestra, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, the Count Basie orchestra -- all of the leaders of the big bands were instrumentalists. They played clarinet or trombone or piano, they didn't sing. It was only with the musicians union strikes of the 1940s, which we've talked about before, that more through necessity than anything else the music industry moved from being dominated by instrumental music to being dominated by singers. But well into the 1960s we'll still be seeing rock and roll hits that were purely instrumental. Indeed, we probably wouldn't have rock and roll guitar bands at all without instrumental groups like the Ventures in the US or the Shadows in the UK who had hits with pure instrumental records. And one of the greatest of the early rock and roll instrumentals was by someone who didn't actually consider himself a rock and roll musician. It's a record that influenced everyone from James Brown to the Beach Boys, and it's called "Honky Tonk": [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, "Honky Tonk"] There is surprisingly little information out there about Bill Doggett, for someone who had such an impact on the fields of rock and roll, blues, jazz, and soul. There are no books about his life, and the only website devoted to him is one designed by his nephew, which... has all the flaws one might expect from a website put together about someone's uncle. Doggett was born in 1916 in Philadelphia, and he moved to New York in his late teens and formed his own band, for which he was the piano player. But in 1938, Lucky Millinder was looking for a new band -- the way Millinder worked was that he bought out, and took over the leadership, of existing bands, which then became "the Lucky Millinder Orchestra". This incarnation of the Lucky Millinder Orchestra, the one that was put together by Doggett before Millinder took the band over, is the one that got a residency at the Savoy after Chick Webb's band stopped playing there, and like Webb's band this group was managed by Moe Gale. Doggett stayed on with Millinder as his pianist, and while with the group he appeared with Millinder in the 1938 all-black film Paradise in Harlem, playing on this song: [Excerpt: Lucky Millinder, "I've Got To Put You Down"] Doggett was, from what I can tell, the de facto musical director for Millinder's band in this period -- Millinder was a frontman and occasional singer, but he couldn't play an instrument and was reliant on the musicians in his band to work the arrangements out for him. Doggett was in the band when Moe Gale suggested that Sister Rosetta Tharpe would work well paired up with Millinder's main singer, Trevor Bacon, in the same way that Louis Jordan and Ella Fitzgerald had worked well together in the Chick Webb band. Doggett was the pianist during the whole of Tharpe's time with the Millinder band, and he co-composed, with Millinder, the song that later gave its title to a biography of Tharpe, "Shout! Sister, Shout!": [Excerpt: Rosetta Tharpe, "Shout! Sister, Shout!"] If you listen to any of Tharpe's big band recordings from her time with Millinder, it's Doggett on the piano, and I strongly suspect it was Doggett who came up with the arrangements. Listen for example to his playing on "Lonesome Road", another song that the MIllinder band performed on film: [Excerpt: Rosetta Tharpe, "Lonesome Road"] The Millinder band were pivotal in the move from swing music to R&B, and Doggett was an important part in that move. While he'd left the band before they took on later singers like Wynonie Harris and Ruth Brown, he had helped set the band up to be the kind of band that those singers would feel comfortable in. Doggett was also in the band when they had their biggest hit, a song called "When the Lights Go on Again (All Over the World)": [Excerpt: Lucky Millinder, "When the Lights Go on Again (All Over the World)"] That's most notable now for being one of the first recordings of a young trumpeter who was just starting out, by the name of Dizzy Gillespie. Gillespie was quickly sacked by Millinder, who had a habit of getting rid of musicians before they reached their full potential. I've not been able to find out why Doggett left Millinder -- whether he was one of those musicians who was sacked, or whether he just wanted to move on to other things -- but whatever the reason, it can't have been anything that put a stain on his reputation, because Doggett remained with Millinder's manager, Moe Gale. We've mentioned Gale before several times, but he was the manager of almost every important black act based in New York in the late thirties and early forties, as well as running the Savoy Club, which we talked about in several of the earliest episodes of the podcast. Gale managed Millinder and Rosetta Tharpe, and also managed the Ink Spots, Ella Fitzgerald, Chick Webb, and Louis Jordan, and so whenever one of his acts needed a musician, he would tend to find them from his existing pool of talent. And so this is how, straight after leaving Lucky Millinder's band, Doggett found himself working for another Gale act, the Ink Spots. He joined them as their pianist and arranger, and stayed with them for several years: [Excerpt: The Ink Spots, "I'll Get By"] The Ink Spots, if you don't remember, were a vocal quartet who became the most popular black act of the forties, and who stuck to a unique formula based around Bill Kenny's high tenor and Hoppy Jones' low spoken bass. They had hit after hit during the forties with songs that all sound remarkably similar, and in the mid forties those songs were arranged by Bill Doggett. He was with the group for two years -- starting with the classic line-up of the group, and staying with them through Charlie Fuqua being drafted and Deek Watson being fired. While he was a sideman rather than a full member of the group, he was important enough to them that he now gets counted in lists of proper members put together by historians of the band. He ended up leaving them less than two weeks before Hoppy Jones died, and during that time he played on fourteen of their hit singles, almost all of them sticking to the same formula they'd used previously, the "top and bottom": [Excerpt: The Ink Spots, "Ev'ry Night About This Time"] The different acts managed by Moe Gale all sat in with each other when needed, so for example Trevor Bacon, the male vocalist with Millinder's band, temporarily joined the Ink Spots when Deke Watson got sick for a few weeks. And so during the times when the Ink Spots weren't touring, Doggett would also perform with Ella Fitzgerald, who was also managed by Gale. [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, "Time Alone Will Tell"] And indeed, during the end of Doggett's time with the Ink Spots, Fitzgerald recorded a number of hit singles with the group, which of course featured Doggett on the piano. That included this one, which later went on to be the basis of "Train Kept A-Rollin'", which we looked at a few episodes back: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald and the Ink Spots, "Cow Cow Boogie"] Doggett moved over full time to become Ella's arranger and pianist at some point during the couple of weeks between Deek Watson leaving the Ink Spots and Hoppy Jones dying, in early October 1944, and stayed with her for a couple of years, before moving on to Illinois Jacquet's band, taking the same role again, in the band that introduced the honking tenor saxophone into R&B, and thus into rock and roll: [Excerpt: Illinois Jacquet, "Doggin' With Doggett"] He also played on one of the most important records in forties R&B -- Johnny Otis' "Harlem Nocturne", the first hit for the man who would go on to produce most of the great R&B artists of the fifties: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, "Harlem Nocturne"] And he also led his own band for a while, the Bill Doggett Octet. They were the ones who recorded "Be-Baba-Leba" with Helen Humes on vocals -- the song that probably inspired Gene Vincent to write a very similarly named song a few years later: [Excerpt: Helen Humes, "Be-Baba-Leba"] He then moved on to Louis Jordan's band full time, and this is where his career really starts. Jordan was another act in Moe Gale's stable, and indeed just like the Ink Spots he'd had hits duetting with Ella Fitzgerald, who he'd first worked with back in the 1930s in Chick Webb's band. He was also, as you may remember from earlier episodes, the leader of the most popular R&B group in the late forties and early fifties -- the one that inspired everyone from Chuck Berry to Bill Haley. And as with his tenure with the Ink Spots, Doggett was in Jordan's band during its period of peak commercial success. The timeline for who Doggett played with when, as you can probably tell, is all over the place, because he seemed to be playing with two or three acts at any given time. And so officially, if you look at the timelines, so far as they exist, you see that it's generally claimed that Bill Doggett joined Louis Jordan in 1949. But I've seen interviews with members of Jordan's organisation that suggest he joined much earlier, but he would alternate with Jordan's other piano player, Wild Bill Davis. The way they worked, according to Berle Adams, who was involved in Jordan's management, was that Davis would spend a week on the road as Jordan's piano player, while Doggett would spend the same week writing arrangements for the group, and then they would swap over, and Doggett would go out on the road while Davis would write arrangements. Either way, after a while, Doggett became the sole pianist for the group, as Davis struck out on his own, and Doggett once again basically became the musical director for one of the biggest bands in the R&B business. Doggett is often credited as the person who rewrote "Saturday Night Fish Fry" into one of Jordan's biggest hits from its inauspicious original version, though Jordan is credited on the record: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, "Saturday Night Fish Fry"] During his time with Jordan, Doggett continued playing on records for Ella Fitzgerald, Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots, and other artists, but he was paying close attention to Wild Bill Davis, who he had replaced in Jordan's group. Davis had discovered the possibilities in a new musical instrument, the Hammond organ, and had formed a trio consisting of himself, a guitarist, and a drummer to exploit these possibilities in jazz music: [Excerpt: Wild Bill Davis, "Things Ain't What They Used To Be"] Doggett was also fascinated by this instrument, especially when hearing it up close, as when Davis rejoined Jordan's band to record "Tamburitza Boogie", which had Doggett on piano and Davis on the Hammond organ: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, "Tamburitza Boogie"] When Doggett left Jordan's band, he decided to form an organ trio just like Davis'. The only problem was that it was just like Davis'. His group had the same instrumentation, and Doggett and Davis had very similar playing styles. Still, Henry Glover got him a contract with King Records, and he started recording Hammond organ blues tracks in the Davis style: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett Trio, "Big Dog"] Davis and Doggett between them gave the Hammond organ its prominence in the world of jazz, R&B, and soul music. The Hammond organ has an odd image, as most people associate it with the cheesiest sort of light entertainment -- certainly for anyone in Britain of the generation older than mine, for example, the name it conjures up is Reggie Dixon, possibly the least funky man ever. But in that part of music which is the intersection of jazz and R&B -- the part of music inhabited by Jimmy Smith, Booker T Jones, Ray Charles, Georgie Fame, Billy Preston and others -- the Hammond organ has become an essential instrument, used so differently that one might almost compare it to the violin, where the instrument is referred to as a fiddle when it's played on folk or country songs. And that comes from Davis and Doggett and their almost simultaneous invention of a new style of keyboards for the new style of music that was coming up in the late forties and early fifties. But after a year or two of playing in an organ trio, Doggett decided that he didn't want to keep making records that sounded so much like the ones Wild Bill Davis was making -- he didn't want to be seen as a copy. And so to vary the style, he decided to take on a honking saxophone player to be the group's lead instrumentalist, while Doggett would concentrate on providing a rhythmic pad. This lineup of his group would go on to make the record that would make Doggett's name. "Honky Tonk, Parts 1 and 2" came about almost by accident. As Doggett told the story, his biggest hit started out at a dance in Lima, Ohio on a Sunday night. The group were playing their normal set and people were dancing as normal, but then in between songs Billy Butler, Doggett's guitarist, just started noodling an instrumental line on his bass strings: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, "Honky Tonk" intro] This hadn't been planned -- he was just noodling around, as all guitarists will do when given five seconds silence. But the audience started dancing to it, and if you're in a bar band and the audience is dancing, you keep doing what you're doing. As Butler was just playing a simple twelve-bar blues pattern, the rest of the group fell in with the riff he was playing, and he started soloing over them: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, "Honky Tonk" guitar soloing] After three choruses of this, Butler nodded to Clifford Scott, the group's saxophone player, to take over, and Scott started playing a honking saxophone version of what Butler had been playing: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, "Honky Tonk", sax] After Scott played through it a few times, he looked over to Doggett to see if Doggett wanted to take a solo too. Doggett shook his head. The song had already been going about five minutes and what Butler and Scott had been playing was enough. The group quickly brought the song to a close using a standard blues outro: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, "Honky Tonk", outro] And that would have been the end of that. It's the kind of thing that bar bands have jammed a million times, the sort of thing that if you're a musician you think nothing of. They laughed at the end of the song, happy that they'd pulled off something that spontaneous and the audience had been OK with it, and carried on with the rest of their planned set. But then, a couple of songs later, someone in the audience came up and asked them if they could play that hot new song they'd been playing before again, not realising it had just been a spur-of-the-moment jam. OK, you give the audience what they want, the band members could remember more or less what they'd been playing, so they played it again. And the crowd went wild. And they played it again. And the crowd went wild again. By the end of the night they'd played that new song, the one they'd improvised based on Billy Butler's guitar noodling, ten times. Doggett immediately phoned Syd Nathan at King Records, his label, and told him that they had a hit on their hands and needed to get it out straight away. But there was one problem -- the song was over five minutes long, and a shellac 78RPM disc, which was still the most popular format for R&B music, could only hold three minutes per side. It would have to be a double-sided record. Nathan hated putting out records where the song continued onto the other side, because the jukebox operators who were his main customers didn't like them. But he eventually agreed, and Doggett and his band got together in the studio and recorded their new instrumental in a single take. It was released as "Honky Tonk Part One" and part two, and they pressed up five thousand copies in the first week. Those sold out straight away, so the next week they pressed up twelve thousand five hundred copies. Those also sold straight away, and so for the next few weeks they started pressing up a hundred thousand copies a week. The song went to number one on the R&B charts, and became the biggest selling R&B song of 1956, spending thirteen weeks in total at number one -- dropping down the charts and then back up again. It also reached number two on the pop charts, an astonishing feat for an R&B instrumental. It became a staple for cover bands, and it was recorded by the obvious instrumental acts like the Ventures and Duane Eddy -- and indeed Duane Eddy's whole style seems to have come from "Honky Tonk" -- but by other people you might not expect, like Buddy Holly: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, "Honky Tonk"] The Beach Boys: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Honky Tonk"] And even James Brown: [Excerpt: James Brown, Honky Tonk"]  Doggett never had another hit quite as big as "Honky Tonk", though his next few records, based on the "Honky Tonk" pattern, also made the top five on the R&B chart: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, "Slow Walk"] He had ten more R&B top thirty hits over the course of the 1950s. But Doggett was being promoted as a rock and roll act, and playing bills with other rock and roll stars, and he didn't really feel comfortable in the rock and roll world. When "Honky Tonk" came out, he was forty years old -- by far the oldest of the people who had rock and roll hits in the mid fifties -- and he was a jazz organ player, not a Little Richard type. He was also stuck repeating a formula -- over the decade after "Honky Tonk" parts one and two he recorded tracks like "Honky Tonk (vocal version)", "Hippy Dippy", "Blip Blop", "Yocky Dock", and "Honky Tonk Bossa Nova". His career as a charting artist more or less stopped after 1960, when he made the mistake of asking Syd Nathan if he could have a higher royalty rate, given the millions of dollars his recordings had brought in to King Records, and King dropped him. But it didn't stop his career as a working musician. In 1962 he teamed up again with Ella Fitzgerald, who wanted to go back to making music with a bit more rhythm than her recent albums of ballads. The resulting album, "Rhythm is my Business", featured Doggett's arrangements and Hammond organ very prominently: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, "Hallelujah I Love Him So"] He also teamed up in 1969 with James Brown, who around that time was trying to pay back his dues to others who'd been artists on King Records when Brown had started with them in the fifties. As well as recording his album "Thinking About Little Willie John and Other Nice Things", Brown had also been producing records for Hank Ballard, and now it was Bill Doggett's turn. For Doggett, Brown produced and wrote "Honky Tonk Popcorn": [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, "Honky Tonk Popcorn"] Doggett spent most of the rest of his life touring the oldies circuit, a respected organist who would play hundreds of shows a year, until his death in 1996 aged eighty. He played "Honky Tonk" at every show, saying "I just wouldn't be Bill Doggett if I didn't play 'Honky Tonk'. That's what the people pay to hear, so that's what they get."

Episode fifty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Honky Tonk” by Bill Doggett, and uses his career to provide a brief summary of the earlier episodes of the podcast as we’re now moving forward into the next stage of the story. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford. —-more—- Resources  As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are many best-of collections of Doggett’s work available. This one seems to have the best sound quality and is a decent overview of his work. Information for this one comes from all over the place, including Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe by Gayle F Wald, Honkers & Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues by Arnold Shaw, and Inkspots.ca    Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Welcome to the fiftieth episode of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. We’re now ten percent of the way through our story, and also most of the way through 1956. I’m told that when history podcasts hit a big round number, it’s customary for them to do a jumping-on episode, perhaps a “story so far” which covers everything that’s been discussed up to that point, but in brief, so that new listeners can get up to speed. That’s sort of what I’m about to do here. This week, we’re going to look at a hit song from 1956, but by someone whose career interacted with almost everyone in the first twenty or so episodes of the podcast. We’re going to look again at some of that old music, not as isolated records by different artists, but as stages in the career of a single individual. We’re going to look at someone who was a jobbing musician, who’d take any job that was on offer, but who by virtue of just being a hard-working competent jobbing player and arranger managed to have an astonishing influence on the development of music. While rock and roll was primarily a vocal music, it wasn’t a completely clean break with the past, and for most of the decades from the 1920s through to the early 50s, if you wanted music for dancing you would want instrumental groups. The big bands did employ vocalists, of course, but you can tell who the focus was on from looking at the names of the bands — the Benny Goodman Orchestra, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, the Count Basie orchestra — all of the leaders of the big bands were instrumentalists. They played clarinet or trombone or piano, they didn’t sing. It was only with the musicians union strikes of the 1940s, which we’ve talked about before, that more through necessity than anything else the music industry moved from being dominated by instrumental music to being dominated by singers. But well into the 1960s we’ll still be seeing rock and roll hits that were purely instrumental. Indeed, we probably wouldn’t have rock and roll guitar bands at all without instrumental groups like the Ventures in the US or the Shadows in the UK who had hits with pure instrumental records. And one of the greatest of the early rock and roll instrumentals was by someone who didn’t actually consider himself a rock and roll musician. It’s a record that influenced everyone from James Brown to the Beach Boys, and it’s called “Honky Tonk”: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk”] There is surprisingly little information out there about Bill Doggett, for someone who had such an impact on the fields of rock and roll, blues, jazz, and soul. There are no books about his life, and the only website devoted to him is one designed by his nephew, which… has all the flaws one might expect from a website put together about someone’s uncle. Doggett was born in 1916 in Philadelphia, and he moved to New York in his late teens and formed his own band, for which he was the piano player. But in 1938, Lucky Millinder was looking for a new band — the way Millinder worked was that he bought out, and took over the leadership, of existing bands, which then became “the Lucky Millinder Orchestra”. This incarnation of the Lucky Millinder Orchestra, the one that was put together by Doggett before Millinder took the band over, is the one that got a residency at the Savoy after Chick Webb’s band stopped playing there, and like Webb’s band this group was managed by Moe Gale. Doggett stayed on with Millinder as his pianist, and while with the group he appeared with Millinder in the 1938 all-black film Paradise in Harlem, playing on this song: [Excerpt: Lucky Millinder, “I’ve Got To Put You Down”] Doggett was, from what I can tell, the de facto musical director for Millinder’s band in this period — Millinder was a frontman and occasional singer, but he couldn’t play an instrument and was reliant on the musicians in his band to work the arrangements out for him. Doggett was in the band when Moe Gale suggested that Sister Rosetta Tharpe would work well paired up with Millinder’s main singer, Trevor Bacon, in the same way that Louis Jordan and Ella Fitzgerald had worked well together in the Chick Webb band. Doggett was the pianist during the whole of Tharpe’s time with the Millinder band, and he co-composed, with Millinder, the song that later gave its title to a biography of Tharpe, “Shout! Sister, Shout!”: [Excerpt: Rosetta Tharpe, “Shout! Sister, Shout!”] If you listen to any of Tharpe’s big band recordings from her time with Millinder, it’s Doggett on the piano, and I strongly suspect it was Doggett who came up with the arrangements. Listen for example to his playing on “Lonesome Road”, another song that the MIllinder band performed on film: [Excerpt: Rosetta Tharpe, “Lonesome Road”] The Millinder band were pivotal in the move from swing music to R&B, and Doggett was an important part in that move. While he’d left the band before they took on later singers like Wynonie Harris and Ruth Brown, he had helped set the band up to be the kind of band that those singers would feel comfortable in. Doggett was also in the band when they had their biggest hit, a song called “When the Lights Go on Again (All Over the World)”: [Excerpt: Lucky Millinder, “When the Lights Go on Again (All Over the World)”] That’s most notable now for being one of the first recordings of a young trumpeter who was just starting out, by the name of Dizzy Gillespie. Gillespie was quickly sacked by Millinder, who had a habit of getting rid of musicians before they reached their full potential. I’ve not been able to find out why Doggett left Millinder — whether he was one of those musicians who was sacked, or whether he just wanted to move on to other things — but whatever the reason, it can’t have been anything that put a stain on his reputation, because Doggett remained with Millinder’s manager, Moe Gale. We’ve mentioned Gale before several times, but he was the manager of almost every important black act based in New York in the late thirties and early forties, as well as running the Savoy Club, which we talked about in several of the earliest episodes of the podcast. Gale managed Millinder and Rosetta Tharpe, and also managed the Ink Spots, Ella Fitzgerald, Chick Webb, and Louis Jordan, and so whenever one of his acts needed a musician, he would tend to find them from his existing pool of talent. And so this is how, straight after leaving Lucky Millinder’s band, Doggett found himself working for another Gale act, the Ink Spots. He joined them as their pianist and arranger, and stayed with them for several years: [Excerpt: The Ink Spots, “I’ll Get By”] The Ink Spots, if you don’t remember, were a vocal quartet who became the most popular black act of the forties, and who stuck to a unique formula based around Bill Kenny’s high tenor and Hoppy Jones’ low spoken bass. They had hit after hit during the forties with songs that all sound remarkably similar, and in the mid forties those songs were arranged by Bill Doggett. He was with the group for two years — starting with the classic line-up of the group, and staying with them through Charlie Fuqua being drafted and Deek Watson being fired. While he was a sideman rather than a full member of the group, he was important enough to them that he now gets counted in lists of proper members put together by historians of the band. He ended up leaving them less than two weeks before Hoppy Jones died, and during that time he played on fourteen of their hit singles, almost all of them sticking to the same formula they’d used previously, the “top and bottom”: [Excerpt: The Ink Spots, “Ev’ry Night About This Time”] The different acts managed by Moe Gale all sat in with each other when needed, so for example Trevor Bacon, the male vocalist with Millinder’s band, temporarily joined the Ink Spots when Deke Watson got sick for a few weeks. And so during the times when the Ink Spots weren’t touring, Doggett would also perform with Ella Fitzgerald, who was also managed by Gale. [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, “Time Alone Will Tell”] And indeed, during the end of Doggett’s time with the Ink Spots, Fitzgerald recorded a number of hit singles with the group, which of course featured Doggett on the piano. That included this one, which later went on to be the basis of “Train Kept A-Rollin'”, which we looked at a few episodes back: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald and the Ink Spots, “Cow Cow Boogie”] Doggett moved over full time to become Ella’s arranger and pianist at some point during the couple of weeks between Deek Watson leaving the Ink Spots and Hoppy Jones dying, in early October 1944, and stayed with her for a couple of years, before moving on to Illinois Jacquet’s band, taking the same role again, in the band that introduced the honking tenor saxophone into R&B, and thus into rock and roll: [Excerpt: Illinois Jacquet, “Doggin’ With Doggett”] He also played on one of the most important records in forties R&B — Johnny Otis’ “Harlem Nocturne”, the first hit for the man who would go on to produce most of the great R&B artists of the fifties: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, “Harlem Nocturne”] And he also led his own band for a while, the Bill Doggett Octet. They were the ones who recorded “Be-Baba-Leba” with Helen Humes on vocals — the song that probably inspired Gene Vincent to write a very similarly named song a few years later: [Excerpt: Helen Humes, “Be-Baba-Leba”] He then moved on to Louis Jordan’s band full time, and this is where his career really starts. Jordan was another act in Moe Gale’s stable, and indeed just like the Ink Spots he’d had hits duetting with Ella Fitzgerald, who he’d first worked with back in the 1930s in Chick Webb’s band. He was also, as you may remember from earlier episodes, the leader of the most popular R&B group in the late forties and early fifties — the one that inspired everyone from Chuck Berry to Bill Haley. And as with his tenure with the Ink Spots, Doggett was in Jordan’s band during its period of peak commercial success. The timeline for who Doggett played with when, as you can probably tell, is all over the place, because he seemed to be playing with two or three acts at any given time. And so officially, if you look at the timelines, so far as they exist, you see that it’s generally claimed that Bill Doggett joined Louis Jordan in 1949. But I’ve seen interviews with members of Jordan’s organisation that suggest he joined much earlier, but he would alternate with Jordan’s other piano player, Wild Bill Davis. The way they worked, according to Berle Adams, who was involved in Jordan’s management, was that Davis would spend a week on the road as Jordan’s piano player, while Doggett would spend the same week writing arrangements for the group, and then they would swap over, and Doggett would go out on the road while Davis would write arrangements. Either way, after a while, Doggett became the sole pianist for the group, as Davis struck out on his own, and Doggett once again basically became the musical director for one of the biggest bands in the R&B business. Doggett is often credited as the person who rewrote “Saturday Night Fish Fry” into one of Jordan’s biggest hits from its inauspicious original version, though Jordan is credited on the record: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, “Saturday Night Fish Fry”] During his time with Jordan, Doggett continued playing on records for Ella Fitzgerald, Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots, and other artists, but he was paying close attention to Wild Bill Davis, who he had replaced in Jordan’s group. Davis had discovered the possibilities in a new musical instrument, the Hammond organ, and had formed a trio consisting of himself, a guitarist, and a drummer to exploit these possibilities in jazz music: [Excerpt: Wild Bill Davis, “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be”] Doggett was also fascinated by this instrument, especially when hearing it up close, as when Davis rejoined Jordan’s band to record “Tamburitza Boogie”, which had Doggett on piano and Davis on the Hammond organ: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, “Tamburitza Boogie”] When Doggett left Jordan’s band, he decided to form an organ trio just like Davis’. The only problem was that it was just like Davis’. His group had the same instrumentation, and Doggett and Davis had very similar playing styles. Still, Henry Glover got him a contract with King Records, and he started recording Hammond organ blues tracks in the Davis style: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett Trio, “Big Dog”] Davis and Doggett between them gave the Hammond organ its prominence in the world of jazz, R&B, and soul music. The Hammond organ has an odd image, as most people associate it with the cheesiest sort of light entertainment — certainly for anyone in Britain of the generation older than mine, for example, the name it conjures up is Reggie Dixon, possibly the least funky man ever. But in that part of music which is the intersection of jazz and R&B — the part of music inhabited by Jimmy Smith, Booker T Jones, Ray Charles, Georgie Fame, Billy Preston and others — the Hammond organ has become an essential instrument, used so differently that one might almost compare it to the violin, where the instrument is referred to as a fiddle when it’s played on folk or country songs. And that comes from Davis and Doggett and their almost simultaneous invention of a new style of keyboards for the new style of music that was coming up in the late forties and early fifties. But after a year or two of playing in an organ trio, Doggett decided that he didn’t want to keep making records that sounded so much like the ones Wild Bill Davis was making — he didn’t want to be seen as a copy. And so to vary the style, he decided to take on a honking saxophone player to be the group’s lead instrumentalist, while Doggett would concentrate on providing a rhythmic pad. This lineup of his group would go on to make the record that would make Doggett’s name. “Honky Tonk, Parts 1 and 2” came about almost by accident. As Doggett told the story, his biggest hit started out at a dance in Lima, Ohio on a Sunday night. The group were playing their normal set and people were dancing as normal, but then in between songs Billy Butler, Doggett’s guitarist, just started noodling an instrumental line on his bass strings: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk” intro] This hadn’t been planned — he was just noodling around, as all guitarists will do when given five seconds silence. But the audience started dancing to it, and if you’re in a bar band and the audience is dancing, you keep doing what you’re doing. As Butler was just playing a simple twelve-bar blues pattern, the rest of the group fell in with the riff he was playing, and he started soloing over them: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk” guitar soloing] After three choruses of this, Butler nodded to Clifford Scott, the group’s saxophone player, to take over, and Scott started playing a honking saxophone version of what Butler had been playing: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk”, sax] After Scott played through it a few times, he looked over to Doggett to see if Doggett wanted to take a solo too. Doggett shook his head. The song had already been going about five minutes and what Butler and Scott had been playing was enough. The group quickly brought the song to a close using a standard blues outro: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk”, outro] And that would have been the end of that. It’s the kind of thing that bar bands have jammed a million times, the sort of thing that if you’re a musician you think nothing of. They laughed at the end of the song, happy that they’d pulled off something that spontaneous and the audience had been OK with it, and carried on with the rest of their planned set. But then, a couple of songs later, someone in the audience came up and asked them if they could play that hot new song they’d been playing before again, not realising it had just been a spur-of-the-moment jam. OK, you give the audience what they want, the band members could remember more or less what they’d been playing, so they played it again. And the crowd went wild. And they played it again. And the crowd went wild again. By the end of the night they’d played that new song, the one they’d improvised based on Billy Butler’s guitar noodling, ten times. Doggett immediately phoned Syd Nathan at King Records, his label, and told him that they had a hit on their hands and needed to get it out straight away. But there was one problem — the song was over five minutes long, and a shellac 78RPM disc, which was still the most popular format for R&B music, could only hold three minutes per side. It would have to be a double-sided record. Nathan hated putting out records where the song continued onto the other side, because the jukebox operators who were his main customers didn’t like them. But he eventually agreed, and Doggett and his band got together in the studio and recorded their new instrumental in a single take. It was released as “Honky Tonk Part One” and part two, and they pressed up five thousand copies in the first week. Those sold out straight away, so the next week they pressed up twelve thousand five hundred copies. Those also sold straight away, and so for the next few weeks they started pressing up a hundred thousand copies a week. The song went to number one on the R&B charts, and became the biggest selling R&B song of 1956, spending thirteen weeks in total at number one — dropping down the charts and then back up again. It also reached number two on the pop charts, an astonishing feat for an R&B instrumental. It became a staple for cover bands, and it was recorded by the obvious instrumental acts like the Ventures and Duane Eddy — and indeed Duane Eddy’s whole style seems to have come from “Honky Tonk” — but by other people you might not expect, like Buddy Holly: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Honky Tonk”] The Beach Boys: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “Honky Tonk”] And even James Brown: [Excerpt: James Brown, Honky Tonk”]  Doggett never had another hit quite as big as “Honky Tonk”, though his next few records, based on the “Honky Tonk” pattern, also made the top five on the R&B chart: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Slow Walk”] He had ten more R&B top thirty hits over the course of the 1950s. But Doggett was being promoted as a rock and roll act, and playing bills with other rock and roll stars, and he didn’t really feel comfortable in the rock and roll world. When “Honky Tonk” came out, he was forty years old — by far the oldest of the people who had rock and roll hits in the mid fifties — and he was a jazz organ player, not a Little Richard type. He was also stuck repeating a formula — over the decade after “Honky Tonk” parts one and two he recorded tracks like “Honky Tonk (vocal version)”, “Hippy Dippy”, “Blip Blop”, “Yocky Dock”, and “Honky Tonk Bossa Nova”. His career as a charting artist more or less stopped after 1960, when he made the mistake of asking Syd Nathan if he could have a higher royalty rate, given the millions of dollars his recordings had brought in to King Records, and King dropped him. But it didn’t stop his career as a working musician. In 1962 he teamed up again with Ella Fitzgerald, who wanted to go back to making music with a bit more rhythm than her recent albums of ballads. The resulting album, “Rhythm is my Business”, featured Doggett’s arrangements and Hammond organ very prominently: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, “Hallelujah I Love Him So”] He also teamed up in 1969 with James Brown, who around that time was trying to pay back his dues to others who’d been artists on King Records when Brown had started with them in the fifties. As well as recording his album “Thinking About Little Willie John and Other Nice Things”, Brown had also been producing records for Hank Ballard, and now it was Bill Doggett’s turn. For Doggett, Brown produced and wrote “Honky Tonk Popcorn”: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk Popcorn”] Doggett spent most of the rest of his life touring the oldies circuit, a respected organist who would play hundreds of shows a year, until his death in 1996 aged eighty. He played “Honky Tonk” at every show, saying “I just wouldn’t be Bill Doggett if I didn’t play ‘Honky Tonk’. That’s what the people pay to hear, so that’s what they get.”

Episode fifty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Honky Tonk” by Bill Doggett, and uses his career to provide a brief summary of the earlier episodes of the podcast as we’re now moving forward into the next stage of the story. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford. —-more—- Resources  As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are many best-of collections of Doggett’s work available. This one seems to have the best sound quality and is a decent overview of his work. Information for this one comes from all over the place, including Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe by Gayle F Wald, Honkers & Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues by Arnold Shaw, and Inkspots.ca    Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Welcome to the fiftieth episode of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. We’re now ten percent of the way through our story, and also most of the way through 1956. I’m told that when history podcasts hit a big round number, it’s customary for them to do a jumping-on episode, perhaps a “story so far” which covers everything that’s been discussed up to that point, but in brief, so that new listeners can get up to speed. That’s sort of what I’m about to do here. This week, we’re going to look at a hit song from 1956, but by someone whose career interacted with almost everyone in the first twenty or so episodes of the podcast. We’re going to look again at some of that old music, not as isolated records by different artists, but as stages in the career of a single individual. We’re going to look at someone who was a jobbing musician, who’d take any job that was on offer, but who by virtue of just being a hard-working competent jobbing player and arranger managed to have an astonishing influence on the development of music. While rock and roll was primarily a vocal music, it wasn’t a completely clean break with the past, and for most of the decades from the 1920s through to the early 50s, if you wanted music for dancing you would want instrumental groups. The big bands did employ vocalists, of course, but you can tell who the focus was on from looking at the names of the bands — the Benny Goodman Orchestra, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, the Count Basie orchestra — all of the leaders of the big bands were instrumentalists. They played clarinet or trombone or piano, they didn’t sing. It was only with the musicians union strikes of the 1940s, which we’ve talked about before, that more through necessity than anything else the music industry moved from being dominated by instrumental music to being dominated by singers. But well into the 1960s we’ll still be seeing rock and roll hits that were purely instrumental. Indeed, we probably wouldn’t have rock and roll guitar bands at all without instrumental groups like the Ventures in the US or the Shadows in the UK who had hits with pure instrumental records. And one of the greatest of the early rock and roll instrumentals was by someone who didn’t actually consider himself a rock and roll musician. It’s a record that influenced everyone from James Brown to the Beach Boys, and it’s called “Honky Tonk”: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk”] There is surprisingly little information out there about Bill Doggett, for someone who had such an impact on the fields of rock and roll, blues, jazz, and soul. There are no books about his life, and the only website devoted to him is one designed by his nephew, which… has all the flaws one might expect from a website put together about someone’s uncle. Doggett was born in 1916 in Philadelphia, and he moved to New York in his late teens and formed his own band, for which he was the piano player. But in 1938, Lucky Millinder was looking for a new band — the way Millinder worked was that he bought out, and took over the leadership, of existing bands, which then became “the Lucky Millinder Orchestra”. This incarnation of the Lucky Millinder Orchestra, the one that was put together by Doggett before Millinder took the band over, is the one that got a residency at the Savoy after Chick Webb’s band stopped playing there, and like Webb’s band this group was managed by Moe Gale. Doggett stayed on with Millinder as his pianist, and while with the group he appeared with Millinder in the 1938 all-black film Paradise in Harlem, playing on this song: [Excerpt: Lucky Millinder, “I’ve Got To Put You Down”] Doggett was, from what I can tell, the de facto musical director for Millinder’s band in this period — Millinder was a frontman and occasional singer, but he couldn’t play an instrument and was reliant on the musicians in his band to work the arrangements out for him. Doggett was in the band when Moe Gale suggested that Sister Rosetta Tharpe would work well paired up with Millinder’s main singer, Trevor Bacon, in the same way that Louis Jordan and Ella Fitzgerald had worked well together in the Chick Webb band. Doggett was the pianist during the whole of Tharpe’s time with the Millinder band, and he co-composed, with Millinder, the song that later gave its title to a biography of Tharpe, “Shout! Sister, Shout!”: [Excerpt: Rosetta Tharpe, “Shout! Sister, Shout!”] If you listen to any of Tharpe’s big band recordings from her time with Millinder, it’s Doggett on the piano, and I strongly suspect it was Doggett who came up with the arrangements. Listen for example to his playing on “Lonesome Road”, another song that the MIllinder band performed on film: [Excerpt: Rosetta Tharpe, “Lonesome Road”] The Millinder band were pivotal in the move from swing music to R&B, and Doggett was an important part in that move. While he’d left the band before they took on later singers like Wynonie Harris and Ruth Brown, he had helped set the band up to be the kind of band that those singers would feel comfortable in. Doggett was also in the band when they had their biggest hit, a song called “When the Lights Go on Again (All Over the World)”: [Excerpt: Lucky Millinder, “When the Lights Go on Again (All Over the World)”] That’s most notable now for being one of the first recordings of a young trumpeter who was just starting out, by the name of Dizzy Gillespie. Gillespie was quickly sacked by Millinder, who had a habit of getting rid of musicians before they reached their full potential. I’ve not been able to find out why Doggett left Millinder — whether he was one of those musicians who was sacked, or whether he just wanted to move on to other things — but whatever the reason, it can’t have been anything that put a stain on his reputation, because Doggett remained with Millinder’s manager, Moe Gale. We’ve mentioned Gale before several times, but he was the manager of almost every important black act based in New York in the late thirties and early forties, as well as running the Savoy Club, which we talked about in several of the earliest episodes of the podcast. Gale managed Millinder and Rosetta Tharpe, and also managed the Ink Spots, Ella Fitzgerald, Chick Webb, and Louis Jordan, and so whenever one of his acts needed a musician, he would tend to find them from his existing pool of talent. And so this is how, straight after leaving Lucky Millinder’s band, Doggett found himself working for another Gale act, the Ink Spots. He joined them as their pianist and arranger, and stayed with them for several years: [Excerpt: The Ink Spots, “I’ll Get By”] The Ink Spots, if you don’t remember, were a vocal quartet who became the most popular black act of the forties, and who stuck to a unique formula based around Bill Kenny’s high tenor and Hoppy Jones’ low spoken bass. They had hit after hit during the forties with songs that all sound remarkably similar, and in the mid forties those songs were arranged by Bill Doggett. He was with the group for two years — starting with the classic line-up of the group, and staying with them through Charlie Fuqua being drafted and Deek Watson being fired. While he was a sideman rather than a full member of the group, he was important enough to them that he now gets counted in lists of proper members put together by historians of the band. He ended up leaving them less than two weeks before Hoppy Jones died, and during that time he played on fourteen of their hit singles, almost all of them sticking to the same formula they’d used previously, the “top and bottom”: [Excerpt: The Ink Spots, “Ev’ry Night About This Time”] The different acts managed by Moe Gale all sat in with each other when needed, so for example Trevor Bacon, the male vocalist with Millinder’s band, temporarily joined the Ink Spots when Deke Watson got sick for a few weeks. And so during the times when the Ink Spots weren’t touring, Doggett would also perform with Ella Fitzgerald, who was also managed by Gale. [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, “Time Alone Will Tell”] And indeed, during the end of Doggett’s time with the Ink Spots, Fitzgerald recorded a number of hit singles with the group, which of course featured Doggett on the piano. That included this one, which later went on to be the basis of “Train Kept A-Rollin'”, which we looked at a few episodes back: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald and the Ink Spots, “Cow Cow Boogie”] Doggett moved over full time to become Ella’s arranger and pianist at some point during the couple of weeks between Deek Watson leaving the Ink Spots and Hoppy Jones dying, in early October 1944, and stayed with her for a couple of years, before moving on to Illinois Jacquet’s band, taking the same role again, in the band that introduced the honking tenor saxophone into R&B, and thus into rock and roll: [Excerpt: Illinois Jacquet, “Doggin’ With Doggett”] He also played on one of the most important records in forties R&B — Johnny Otis’ “Harlem Nocturne”, the first hit for the man who would go on to produce most of the great R&B artists of the fifties: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, “Harlem Nocturne”] And he also led his own band for a while, the Bill Doggett Octet. They were the ones who recorded “Be-Baba-Leba” with Helen Humes on vocals — the song that probably inspired Gene Vincent to write a very similarly named song a few years later: [Excerpt: Helen Humes, “Be-Baba-Leba”] He then moved on to Louis Jordan’s band full time, and this is where his career really starts. Jordan was another act in Moe Gale’s stable, and indeed just like the Ink Spots he’d had hits duetting with Ella Fitzgerald, who he’d first worked with back in the 1930s in Chick Webb’s band. He was also, as you may remember from earlier episodes, the leader of the most popular R&B group in the late forties and early fifties — the one that inspired everyone from Chuck Berry to Bill Haley. And as with his tenure with the Ink Spots, Doggett was in Jordan’s band during its period of peak commercial success. The timeline for who Doggett played with when, as you can probably tell, is all over the place, because he seemed to be playing with two or three acts at any given time. And so officially, if you look at the timelines, so far as they exist, you see that it’s generally claimed that Bill Doggett joined Louis Jordan in 1949. But I’ve seen interviews with members of Jordan’s organisation that suggest he joined much earlier, but he would alternate with Jordan’s other piano player, Wild Bill Davis. The way they worked, according to Berle Adams, who was involved in Jordan’s management, was that Davis would spend a week on the road as Jordan’s piano player, while Doggett would spend the same week writing arrangements for the group, and then they would swap over, and Doggett would go out on the road while Davis would write arrangements. Either way, after a while, Doggett became the sole pianist for the group, as Davis struck out on his own, and Doggett once again basically became the musical director for one of the biggest bands in the R&B business. Doggett is often credited as the person who rewrote “Saturday Night Fish Fry” into one of Jordan’s biggest hits from its inauspicious original version, though Jordan is credited on the record: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, “Saturday Night Fish Fry”] During his time with Jordan, Doggett continued playing on records for Ella Fitzgerald, Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots, and other artists, but he was paying close attention to Wild Bill Davis, who he had replaced in Jordan’s group. Davis had discovered the possibilities in a new musical instrument, the Hammond organ, and had formed a trio consisting of himself, a guitarist, and a drummer to exploit these possibilities in jazz music: [Excerpt: Wild Bill Davis, “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be”] Doggett was also fascinated by this instrument, especially when hearing it up close, as when Davis rejoined Jordan’s band to record “Tamburitza Boogie”, which had Doggett on piano and Davis on the Hammond organ: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, “Tamburitza Boogie”] When Doggett left Jordan’s band, he decided to form an organ trio just like Davis’. The only problem was that it was just like Davis’. His group had the same instrumentation, and Doggett and Davis had very similar playing styles. Still, Henry Glover got him a contract with King Records, and he started recording Hammond organ blues tracks in the Davis style: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett Trio, “Big Dog”] Davis and Doggett between them gave the Hammond organ its prominence in the world of jazz, R&B, and soul music. The Hammond organ has an odd image, as most people associate it with the cheesiest sort of light entertainment — certainly for anyone in Britain of the generation older than mine, for example, the name it conjures up is Reggie Dixon, possibly the least funky man ever. But in that part of music which is the intersection of jazz and R&B — the part of music inhabited by Jimmy Smith, Booker T Jones, Ray Charles, Georgie Fame, Billy Preston and others — the Hammond organ has become an essential instrument, used so differently that one might almost compare it to the violin, where the instrument is referred to as a fiddle when it’s played on folk or country songs. And that comes from Davis and Doggett and their almost simultaneous invention of a new style of keyboards for the new style of music that was coming up in the late forties and early fifties. But after a year or two of playing in an organ trio, Doggett decided that he didn’t want to keep making records that sounded so much like the ones Wild Bill Davis was making — he didn’t want to be seen as a copy. And so to vary the style, he decided to take on a honking saxophone player to be the group’s lead instrumentalist, while Doggett would concentrate on providing a rhythmic pad. This lineup of his group would go on to make the record that would make Doggett’s name. “Honky Tonk, Parts 1 and 2” came about almost by accident. As Doggett told the story, his biggest hit started out at a dance in Lima, Ohio on a Sunday night. The group were playing their normal set and people were dancing as normal, but then in between songs Billy Butler, Doggett’s guitarist, just started noodling an instrumental line on his bass strings: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk” intro] This hadn’t been planned — he was just noodling around, as all guitarists will do when given five seconds silence. But the audience started dancing to it, and if you’re in a bar band and the audience is dancing, you keep doing what you’re doing. As Butler was just playing a simple twelve-bar blues pattern, the rest of the group fell in with the riff he was playing, and he started soloing over them: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk” guitar soloing] After three choruses of this, Butler nodded to Clifford Scott, the group’s saxophone player, to take over, and Scott started playing a honking saxophone version of what Butler had been playing: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk”, sax] After Scott played through it a few times, he looked over to Doggett to see if Doggett wanted to take a solo too. Doggett shook his head. The song had already been going about five minutes and what Butler and Scott had been playing was enough. The group quickly brought the song to a close using a standard blues outro: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk”, outro] And that would have been the end of that. It’s the kind of thing that bar bands have jammed a million times, the sort of thing that if you’re a musician you think nothing of. They laughed at the end of the song, happy that they’d pulled off something that spontaneous and the audience had been OK with it, and carried on with the rest of their planned set. But then, a couple of songs later, someone in the audience came up and asked them if they could play that hot new song they’d been playing before again, not realising it had just been a spur-of-the-moment jam. OK, you give the audience what they want, the band members could remember more or less what they’d been playing, so they played it again. And the crowd went wild. And they played it again. And the crowd went wild again. By the end of the night they’d played that new song, the one they’d improvised based on Billy Butler’s guitar noodling, ten times. Doggett immediately phoned Syd Nathan at King Records, his label, and told him that they had a hit on their hands and needed to get it out straight away. But there was one problem — the song was over five minutes long, and a shellac 78RPM disc, which was still the most popular format for R&B music, could only hold three minutes per side. It would have to be a double-sided record. Nathan hated putting out records where the song continued onto the other side, because the jukebox operators who were his main customers didn’t like them. But he eventually agreed, and Doggett and his band got together in the studio and recorded their new instrumental in a single take. It was released as “Honky Tonk Part One” and part two, and they pressed up five thousand copies in the first week. Those sold out straight away, so the next week they pressed up twelve thousand five hundred copies. Those also sold straight away, and so for the next few weeks they started pressing up a hundred thousand copies a week. The song went to number one on the R&B charts, and became the biggest selling R&B song of 1956, spending thirteen weeks in total at number one — dropping down the charts and then back up again. It also reached number two on the pop charts, an astonishing feat for an R&B instrumental. It became a staple for cover bands, and it was recorded by the obvious instrumental acts like the Ventures and Duane Eddy — and indeed Duane Eddy’s whole style seems to have come from “Honky Tonk” — but by other people you might not expect, like Buddy Holly: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Honky Tonk”] The Beach Boys: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “Honky Tonk”] And even James Brown: [Excerpt: James Brown, Honky Tonk”]  Doggett never had another hit quite as big as “Honky Tonk”, though his next few records, based on the “Honky Tonk” pattern, also made the top five on the R&B chart: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Slow Walk”] He had ten more R&B top thirty hits over the course of the 1950s. But Doggett was being promoted as a rock and roll act, and playing bills with other rock and roll stars, and he didn’t really feel comfortable in the rock and roll world. When “Honky Tonk” came out, he was forty years old — by far the oldest of the people who had rock and roll hits in the mid fifties — and he was a jazz organ player, not a Little Richard type. He was also stuck repeating a formula — over the decade after “Honky Tonk” parts one and two he recorded tracks like “Honky Tonk (vocal version)”, “Hippy Dippy”, “Blip Blop”, “Yocky Dock”, and “Honky Tonk Bossa Nova”. His career as a charting artist more or less stopped after 1960, when he made the mistake of asking Syd Nathan if he could have a higher royalty rate, given the millions of dollars his recordings had brought in to King Records, and King dropped him. But it didn’t stop his career as a working musician. In 1962 he teamed up again with Ella Fitzgerald, who wanted to go back to making music with a bit more rhythm than her recent albums of ballads. The resulting album, “Rhythm is my Business”, featured Doggett’s arrangements and Hammond organ very prominently: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, “Hallelujah I Love Him So”] He also teamed up in 1969 with James Brown, who around that time was trying to pay back his dues to others who’d been artists on King Records when Brown had started with them in the fifties. As well as recording his album “Thinking About Little Willie John and Other Nice Things”, Brown had also been producing records for Hank Ballard, and now it was Bill Doggett’s turn. For Doggett, Brown produced and wrote “Honky Tonk Popcorn”: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk Popcorn”] Doggett spent most of the rest of his life touring the oldies circuit, a respected organist who would play hundreds of shows a year, until his death in 1996 aged eighty. He played “Honky Tonk” at every show, saying “I just wouldn’t be Bill Doggett if I didn’t play ‘Honky Tonk’. That’s what the people pay to hear, so that’s what they get.”

Kort na Dr. John vertrok een ander icoon uit New Orleans naar Rock 'n Roll Heaven. Dave Bartholomew werd 100 jaar en schreef tijdens zijn omvangrijke carriere meer dan 4000 liedjes.Hij was niet alleen arrangeur,bandleider en co-auteur van talloze Fats Domino-hits,maar ook rapper avant-la-lettre in het fantastische nummer The Monkey uit 1957.Verder lijkt het titelnummer We Get By van de nieuwe CD van Mavis Staples verdacht veel op Crazy Love van Van Morrison en heeft Candy Dulfer voor haar song Europa wel héél goed geluisterd naar Harlem Nocturne van The Viscounts. (On)gelukkig toeval of plat plagiaat?Check It Out!

Featuring Louis Jordan, Chubby Checker, The Crystals, Quincy Jones, Bobby Darin, Les Paul, Glen Campbell... We get started with Louis Jordan who had been playing Rock & Roll long before it was called that; next check out the cool version of "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" by Chubby Checker. Our twin spin includes Bill Haley & His Comets "Thirteen Women" (And Only One Man) and it's b-side "Rock Around The Clock" - yes it was really a b-side! A real treat with the very last song by the Illinois Jacquet and the jazzy original "Harlem Nocturne" before the Viscounts covered it.

Welcome to episode ten of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Today we’re looking at “Double Crossin’ Blues” by Johnny Otis, Little Esther, and the Robins. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.  —-more—- Resources Like last week, this episode talks about a musician losing the use of some fingers. If you want to help others like Johnny Otis, you might want to check out a charity called the One-Handed Musical Instrument Trust, which invents and provides instruments for one-handed musicians. As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are a lot of cheap compilations of Johnny Otis’ material — this one seems to be the best value for money, and contains two other songs I already have podcasts written about, and two more that I’m almost certainly going to cover. This CD covers Little Esther’s first couple of years, including all her recordings for Savoy along with some of those from Federal. And this double-CD set contains almost everything the Robins recorded, though for some unknown reason it doesn’t contain their three most well-known songs. Much of the biographical information about Johnny Otis comes from Midnight at the Barrelhouse: The Johnny Otis Story by George Lipsitz. Both Otis and Ralph Bass are interviewed in Honkers & Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues by Arnold Shaw, one of the most important books on early 50s rhythm and blues. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript We talked last week about playing an instrument with missing or damaged fingers. Today, we’re going to talk about how a great musician losing the use of a couple of fingers led directly to several of the biggest careers in rhythm and blues.   When we think of the blues now, we mostly think of guitar-based music – people like Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters – rather than piano-based musicians and the more vaudeville style of what’s called “classic blues”, people like Ma Rainey or Bessie Smith. And that tends to give a rather ahistorical perspective on the development of rock and roll.   Rock and roll when it started — the music of the mid fifties — is not really a guitar-based music. It’s dominated by the piano and the saxophone, and that domination it takes from jump band rhythm and blues. We’ve already heard how blues shouters in jump bands were massively influential for the style, but of course the blues, along with the jump bands, fed into what was just becoming known as “rhythm and blues”, and that in turn fed into rock and roll.   There were two real links in the chain between the blues and rock and roll. And we’ll definitely talk about the Chess label soon. But to the extent that there was any influence at all from what we now think of as the blues, it was mostly down to one man, Johnny Otis. It’s probably safe to say that if Johnny Otis had never lived, the whole of 1950s music would be totally different.   We’re going to be talking about Johnny Otis *a hell of a lot* in this podcast, because to put it as simply as possible, Johnny Otis was responsible for basically every good record that came from the West Coast of the US between about 1947 and 1956. I have three more Johnny Otis-related records lined up between now and the middle of February, and no doubt there’ll be several more after that.   Johnny Otis had his first hit in 1945, with “Harlem Nocturne”, which featured his friend Bill Doggett on piano:   [excerpt of “Harlem Nocturne”]   After “Harlem Nocturne” became a hit, and partly through the connection with Doggett, he got the opportunity to tour backing the Ink Spots, which exposed him to a wider audience. He was on his way to being a big star.   At that time, he was a drummer and vibraphone player. And he was one of the great drummers of the period — he played, for example, on Ilinois Jacquet’s version of “Flying Home”, and on “Jamming With Lester” by Lester Young.   He was leading a big band, and had been trying to sound like Count Basie, as you can hear if you listen to the records he made at that time, but that soon changed when the jump bands came in. Instead, Otis slimmed down his band to a much smaller one and started playing this new R&B music, but he still wanted to give the people a show. And so he started the Johnny Otis Show, and rather than devote the show to his own performances, he would tour with a variety of singers and groups, who’d all play with his band as well as perform in different combinations. These singers and groups would be backed by the Johnny Otis band, but would be able to put out their own records and put on their own shows. He was going to use his fame to boost others — while also giving himself more stars for his show, which meant more people coming to the shows.   One thing that’s very important to note here is that Otis was a white man who chose to live and work only with black people. We’ll be talking more about his relationship with race as we go forward, but Johnny Otis was *not* the typical white man in the music industry — in that he actually respected his black colleagues as friends and equals, rather than just exploiting them financially.   He also lived in the Watts area of LA, the black area, and did all sorts of things in the community, from having his own radio show (which was listened to by a lot of the white kids in the LA area as well as its intended black audience — both Frank Zappa and Brian Wilson talked about listening to Johnny Otis’ show as children) to running a pigeon-breeding club for the local children. One of the kids who went along to learn how to breed pigeons with Johnny Otis was Arthur Lee, who later went on to be the leader of the band Love.   He was always a bit of an entrepreneur, and someone who was doing twenty different things at the same time. For example, he kept chickens in coops outside his house in Watts, running The Progressive Poultry company with a friend of his, Mario Delagarde, who was a bass player who worked with Johnny “Guitar” Watson and who died fighting in Cuba with Castro against Batista. Apparently, the chickens they sold were too popular, as Otis lost the use of a couple of fingers on his right hand in a chainsaw accident while trying to build more chicken coops — though as he said later, he was still able to play piano and vibraphone with only eight fingers. After a doctor botched an operation on his hand, though, he couldn’t play drums easily.   But it was because of his damaged hand that he eventually discovered Little Esther. Otis prided himself on his ability at discovering artists, and in this case it was more or less by accident. One night he couldn’t sleep from the pain in his hand, and he was scared of taking painkillers and becoming addicted, so he went for a walk.   He walked past a club, and saw that Big Jay McNeely was playing. McNeely – who died in September this year – was one of the great saxophone honkers and skronkers of rhythm and blues, and was a friend of Otis who’d played on several records with him. Otis went inside, and before the show started there was a talent show. These talent shows were often major parts of the show in black entertainment at this time, and were sometimes *hugely* impressive – Otis would later talk about one show he saw in Detroit, where he discovered Hank Ballard, Little Willie John, and Jackie Wilson all in the same night, and none of them were even the winner.   On this night, one girl was impressive, but didn’t win, and went and cried in the back of the theatre. Johnny Otis went over to comfort her, and offered her a job with his band.   That girl was only fourteen when she became a professional blues singer after Otis discovered her (he had a knack for discovering teenage girls with exceptional vocal abilities — we’ll be looking at another one in a few weeks). She was born Esther Mae Washington, but later took the surname of her stepfather and became Esther Mae Jones. A few years from the time we’re talking about, she took the name of a petrol station company and became Esther Phillips.   At first, Otis had trouble getting her a record deal, because of the similarity of her sound to that of Dinah Washington, who was Esther’s biggest inspiration, and was the biggest female R&B star of the period. Anyone listening to her was instantly struck by the similarity, and so she was dismissed as a soundalike.   But Otis had a little more success with a vocal group he knew called the Robins.   We haven’t talked much about doo-wop yet, but we’re at the point where it starts to be a major factor. Doo-wop is a genre that mostly came from the East Coast of the US. Like many of the genres we’ve discussed so far, it was a primarily black genre, but it would soon also be taken up by Italian-American singers living in the same areas as black people — this was a time when Italian-Americans weren’t considered fully “white” according to the racial standards then prevalent in the US. (As an example, in the early 1960s, the great jazz bass player Charles Mingus was asked why, if he was so angry at white people, he played with Charlie Mariano. Mingus looked surprised and said “Charlie’s not white, he’s Italian!”)   But at this point doo-wop was very much on the fringes of the music business. It was music that was made by people who were too poor to even afford instruments, standing around on street corners and singing with each other. Usually the lead singer would try to sound like Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots, though increasingly as the genre matured the lead vocalists would take on more and more aspects of gospel singing as well. The backing vocalists — usually three or four of them — would do the same kind of thing as the Mills Brothers had, and imitate instrumental parts.   And in the tradition of the Ink Spots’ “top and bottom”, these bands would also feature a very prominent bass vocal — though the bass singer wouldn’t speak the words like Hoppy Jones, but would instead sing wordless nonsense syllables. This is where the name “doo wop”, which was only applied later, comes from — from the singer singing things like this:   [excerpt “Count Every Star”, by the Ravens]   That’s the Ravens, one of the first and most successful of the new vocal groups that came along. We’re not doing a whole episode on them, but they caused a huge explosion of black vocal groups in the late forties and early fifties — and you can tell how influential they were just by looking at the names of many of these bands, which included the Orioles, the Penguins, the Flamingos and more.   And The Robins were another of these “bird groups”. They started out as a vocal group called the A-Sharp Trio, who entered a talent contest at a nightclub owned by Johnny Otis and came second (the performer who came first, the guitarist Pete Lewis, Otis got into his band straight away). Otis gave the A-Sharp Trio a regular gig at his club, and soon decided to pair them with another singer who sang there solo, turning them into a quartet. They were originally called the Four Bluebirds, and under that name they recorded a single with Otis — “My Baby Done Told Me”:   [Excerpt: the Four Bluebirds “My Baby Done Told Me”]   However, they didn’t like the name, and soon settled on the Robins.   The Robins recorded with Otis on various labels. Their first single, “Around About Midnight”, was a remake of Roy Brown’s earlier “Long About Midnight”, and it’s really rather good. Take a listen:   [“Around About Midnight”]   A quick note there — that’s noted as their first single on some discographies I’ve seen. Others, however, say that these original tracks weren’t released until a few months after they were recorded. It’s definitely from their first session under the name The Robins though.   That was recorded on the Aladdin label, a record label that also had recordings by Ilinois Jacquet, Louis Jordan, Wynonie Harris, and many, many more early R&B people who we’ve touched upon in this podcast and will touch upon again I’m sure. But soon after this Otis and the Robins — and Esther Mae Washington — would all go on to another label, Savoy.   Ralph Bass, the A&R man who signed Johnny Otis to Savoy, is another of those white back-room people who devoted their life to black music who keep showing up at this stage of the story, and he’s another one we’ll be seeing a lot of for the next few episodes. Born Ralph Basso, he’d been an amateur musician and had also worked for Shell. When he was working for Shell, one of his jobs had been to organise corporate events, and because of the war there was a lack of musicians to play them, and he’d taken to playing records through an amplifier, becoming one of the very first live DJs.   He’d always had a love of music — he used to sneak into the Savoy Ballroom to watch Chick Webb as a teenager — and when he was playing these records, he realised that many of them sounded awful. He was convinced he could make records that sounded better than the ones he was playing, and so he decided to write to every record company he could find, offering his services. Only one record company answered — Black and White Records in Los Angeles. They weren’t certain that they could use him, but they’d give him an interview in a few weeks if he flew to LA.   Bass flew to LA two weeks before his interview, and started preparing. He asked the musicians unions for a list of who they thought their most talented local musicians were, and went to see them all live, and chat to some of them. Then, when he went into the actual interview and was asked who he would record, he had an answer — he was going to record Sammy Franklin and his Atomics doing “The Honeydripper”.   But he still didn’t actually know anything at all about how to make a record. He had a solution to that too. He booked the band and the studio, then got to the studio early and told the engineers that he didn’t have a clue about how to record sound, but that his boss would be expecting him to, and to just go along with everything he said when the boss got there, and that the engineers would really be in charge. The boss of Black and White Records did get there, shortly afterward, and Bass spent the next half hour tweaking settings on the board, changing mic placements, and a thousand other tiny technical differences. The boss decided he knew what he was doing and left him to it. The engineers then put everything back the way it was originally. The record came out, and it didn’t do wonderfully (for reasons we’ll discuss next week) but it was enough to get Bass firmly in place in Black and White Records.   Over the next few years, he produced dozens of classics of jazz and blues, including “Stormy Monday” by T-Bone Walker and “Open the Door, Richard” by Jack McVea:   [excerpt: “Open the Door, Richard”]   That record was based on an old routine by the black comedian Dusty Fletcher, and it was Bass who suggested that the old routine be set to music by McVea, who had previously been a saxophone player with Lionel Hampton’s band. It became a massive hit, and was covered by Count Basie and Louis Jordan, among others — six different versions of the song made the R&B top ten more or less simultaneously in the first few months of 1947.   But the problem with “Open the Door, Richard” was that it was actually too successful — the record label just assumed that any of its records would sell that well. And when they didn’t, Bass had to find another label to work with.   Bass had proved his ability enough that he ended up working for Savoy. For most of its time, Savoy was a jazz label, but while Ralph Bass was in charge of A&R it was, instead, an R&B label, and one that put out some of the greatest R&B of its time. He had an eye for talent and a real love for good rhythm and blues music.   And so when Ralph Bass saw the Johnny Otis revue performing live, he decided that Savoy needed to sign *all of them* — Otis and his band, Esther, the Robins, everyone. He got in touch with Herman Lubinsky, who was the owner of Savoy Records, and got Lubinsky to come down to see Otis’ band. During intermission, Lubinsky met up with Otis, and got him to sign a record contact — the contract only specified a one percent royalty, but Lubinsky promised he’d triple the royalty rate after Otis’ first hit with Savoy. Like many of Lubinsky’s promises, this proved to be false.   When the Otis band, Esther, and the Robins went into the studio together, Esther was so intimidated by the studio that she started giggling, and while they did manage to cut a few songs, they didn’t get as much done as they wanted to in the session. But at almost literally the last minute — twenty minutes before the end of the session, Otis came up with a song that was, like “Open the Door Richard”, based around a comedy routine from a well-known black comedy act. In this case, a double act called Apus and Estrellita — Esther and Bobby Nunn of the Robins engaged in some good-spirited comedy back and forth, copied from their routines.   [excerpt “Double Crossin’ Blues”]   Those lines “How come you ain’t in the forest?” “I’m a lady”, “they got lady bears out there!” take on a bit of a different colour when you realise that “lady bear” was, at the time, slang for an ugly, sexually aggressive woman.   Herman Lubinsky, the head of Savoy Records, was not impressed with the record or with Esther Phillips, and according to Bass “I sent the record to Lubinsky and asked for five dollars to pay for the kid’s expenses — lunch and all that, coming to Hollywood from Watts. He shouted ‘Whaddaya mean five bucks? For what?’ He wouldn’t give me the five bucks”.   Lubinsky put the recording aside until a DJ in Newark asked him if he could look through the new recordings he had to see if there was anything that might be a hit. The DJ loved the record, and even ran a competition on his radio station to pick the song’s name, which is where the title “Double Crossing Blues” comes from. Although as Bass said “Everybody who was involved with the record got double-crossed. The songwriter, Johnny and I, the Robins, everybody connected with it.”   Lubinsky was suddenly so sure that the record was going to be a success that he phoned Bass at five in the morning, Bass’ time, waking him up, and getting Bass to go and wake Johnny Otis up so they could both go and track down Esther and her mother, and get them to sign a contract immediately. It was around this point that Esther’s stage name was decided upon — Lubinsky said to Otis “you need a stage name for that girl,” to which Otis replied “which girl? Little Esther?” and Lubinsky said “that’s perfect!” And so for the next few years, Esther Washington, who would later be Esther Phillips, was Little Esther, and that was the name under which she became a phenomenon.   The record went to number one on the R&B charts, and was the biggest thing in the genre in years. In July 1950, Billboard published its annual listing of best-selling R&B acts. Johnny Otis came first, Little Esther second, and the Robins came fourth   But the record’s success caused friction between Otis and the Robins, who he later described as the people “who hummed behind Little Esther”. They decided that they were the big stars, not Little Esther, and that they were going to go on tour on their own. Otis had to find another male singer to sing the parts that Bobby Nunn had sung, and so he found his new singer Mel Walker, who would be the main lead vocalist on Otis’ future records, and would duet with Little Esther on more than a few of them. The Robins offered Otis a job as musical director for twenty dollars a night, but Otis refused.   The Robins would go on to have many, many successes themselves, some of which we’ll talk about later, but Otis, Mel Walker, and Little Esther went on to have a string of hits in various combinations as well — “Mistrustin’ Blues”, “Deceivin’ Blues”, “Dreamin’ Blues”, “Wedding Boogie”, “Rockin’ Blues”… Otis also had a 1951 hit with “All Nite Long”, which would later be referenced in records by both Frank Zappa and Talking Heads:   [excerpt “All Nite Long”: Johnny Otis]   We’ll be seeing much more of Johnny Otis, and of the Robins, as the story goes on, but this is the only time we’ll be talking about Little Esther. In her first year, she had an amazing seven records make the R&B top ten, three of them (including “Double Crossin’ Blues”) going to number one. She was regarded as one of the finest R&B vocalists of her generation, and had a promising future.   She decided, after a year on Savoy with Johnny Otis, to go solo and to move with Ralph Bass to Federal Records, a new label Bass had joined after falling out with Herman Lubinsky. According to Bass, Lubinsky often blackmailed his employees, in order to get leverage over them. But he was unable to find any dirty secrets about Bass — not that Bass didn’t have them (and not necessarily that he did, either — I don’t know) — but that he didn’t mix his business and personal lives. He didn’t hang out with the musicians he worked with or with his colleagues, and so there was no vector for Lubinsky to get any kind of leverage over him.   So Lubinsky sent Bass to a party for a distributor at the last minute, which ran until three or four AM, and then when Bass’ wife phoned up to ask where he was, Lubinsky claimed not to know, causing Bass and his wife to have a row.   Bass instantly realised that Lubinsky was trying to mess with his marriage in order to get some leverage over him, and decided he was simply not going to go back to work the next day. Instead, he went to King Records, who set up a subsidiary, Federal, for Bass to run. Bass took Little Esther with him, but Johnny Otis and the Robins were both still on Savoy.   Over the next few years, Bass would produce a lot of records which would change the course of rhythm and blues and rock and roll music, but sadly his further collaborations with Little Esther simply weren’t as successful as the work they’d done together with Johnny Otis. She stopped having hits, and started doing heroin.   She moved back in with her family in Houston, and played odd gigs around the area, including one with Otis, Big Mama Thornton, and Johnny Ace, which we’ll talk about in a future episode but which must have traumatised her further. Eventually her career got a second wind, and she had a few minor hits in the 1960s and 70s under her new name Esther Phillips.   Most impressive of these was “Home is Where the Hatred is”, a song by Gil Scott-Heron that she recorded in 1972:   [excerpt “Home is Where the Hatred is”: Esther Phillips]   That song clearly meant a lot to her, given her own history with drugs, and the album it came from, From A Whisper to a Scream, was nominated for a Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance (Female). Aretha Franklin won the award, as she did every year from 1968 through 1975 inclusive — and to be fair, that’s one of the few examples of the Grammies actually recognising talent when they saw it, because if it’s possible to give Aretha Franklin an award between 1968 and 1975, you give Aretha Franklin that award. But this time, Aretha said publicly that she didn’t deserve the award, and gave it to Phillips. Sadly, Esther Phillips never won the award in her own right — she was nominated four times, but all during that period of Aretha dominance.   She continued having minor hits into the 1980s, but she never recaptured that brief period when she was the biggest female star in R&B, back in 1950. She died in 1984, aged only 48. Johnny Otis, who by that time was ordained as a minister, performed her funeral.

Welcome to episode ten of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Today we're looking at "Double Crossin' Blues" by Johnny Otis, Little Esther, and the Robins. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.  ----more---- Resources Like last week, this episode talks about a musician losing the use of some fingers. If you want to help others like Johnny Otis, you might want to check out a charity called the One-Handed Musical Instrument Trust, which invents and provides instruments for one-handed musicians. As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are a lot of cheap compilations of Johnny Otis' material -- this one seems to be the best value for money, and contains two other songs I already have podcasts written about, and two more that I'm almost certainly going to cover. This CD covers Little Esther's first couple of years, including all her recordings for Savoy along with some of those from Federal. And this double-CD set contains almost everything the Robins recorded, though for some unknown reason it doesn't contain their three most well-known songs. Much of the biographical information about Johnny Otis comes from Midnight at the Barrelhouse: The Johnny Otis Story by George Lipsitz. Both Otis and Ralph Bass are interviewed in Honkers & Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues by Arnold Shaw, one of the most important books on early 50s rhythm and blues. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript We talked last week about playing an instrument with missing or damaged fingers. Today, we're going to talk about how a great musician losing the use of a couple of fingers led directly to several of the biggest careers in rhythm and blues.   When we think of the blues now, we mostly think of guitar-based music – people like Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters – rather than piano-based musicians and the more vaudeville style of what's called “classic blues”, people like Ma Rainey or Bessie Smith. And that tends to give a rather ahistorical perspective on the development of rock and roll.   Rock and roll when it started -- the music of the mid fifties -- is not really a guitar-based music. It's dominated by the piano and the saxophone, and that domination it takes from jump band rhythm and blues. We've already heard how blues shouters in jump bands were massively influential for the style, but of course the blues, along with the jump bands, fed into what was just becoming known as "rhythm and blues", and that in turn fed into rock and roll.   There were two real links in the chain between the blues and rock and roll. And we'll definitely talk about the Chess label soon. But to the extent that there was any influence at all from what we now think of as the blues, it was mostly down to one man, Johnny Otis. It's probably safe to say that if Johnny Otis had never lived, the whole of 1950s music would be totally different.   We're going to be talking about Johnny Otis *a hell of a lot* in this podcast, because to put it as simply as possible, Johnny Otis was responsible for basically every good record that came from the West Coast of the US between about 1947 and 1956. I have three more Johnny Otis-related records lined up between now and the middle of February, and no doubt there'll be several more after that.   Johnny Otis had his first hit in 1945, with "Harlem Nocturne", which featured his friend Bill Doggett on piano:   [excerpt of "Harlem Nocturne"]   After “Harlem Nocturne” became a hit, and partly through the connection with Doggett, he got the opportunity to tour backing the Ink Spots, which exposed him to a wider audience. He was on his way to being a big star.   At that time, he was a drummer and vibraphone player. And he was one of the great drummers of the period -- he played, for example, on Ilinois Jacquet's version of "Flying Home", and on "Jamming With Lester" by Lester Young.   He was leading a big band, and had been trying to sound like Count Basie, as you can hear if you listen to the records he made at that time, but that soon changed when the jump bands came in. Instead, Otis slimmed down his band to a much smaller one and started playing this new R&B music, but he still wanted to give the people a show. And so he started the Johnny Otis Show, and rather than devote the show to his own performances, he would tour with a variety of singers and groups, who'd all play with his band as well as perform in different combinations. These singers and groups would be backed by the Johnny Otis band, but would be able to put out their own records and put on their own shows. He was going to use his fame to boost others -- while also giving himself more stars for his show, which meant more people coming to the shows.   One thing that's very important to note here is that Otis was a white man who chose to live and work only with black people. We'll be talking more about his relationship with race as we go forward, but Johnny Otis was *not* the typical white man in the music industry -- in that he actually respected his black colleagues as friends and equals, rather than just exploiting them financially.   He also lived in the Watts area of LA, the black area, and did all sorts of things in the community, from having his own radio show (which was listened to by a lot of the white kids in the LA area as well as its intended black audience -- both Frank Zappa and Brian Wilson talked about listening to Johnny Otis' show as children) to running a pigeon-breeding club for the local children. One of the kids who went along to learn how to breed pigeons with Johnny Otis was Arthur Lee, who later went on to be the leader of the band Love.   He was always a bit of an entrepreneur, and someone who was doing twenty different things at the same time. For example, he kept chickens in coops outside his house in Watts, running The Progressive Poultry company with a friend of his, Mario Delagarde, who was a bass player who worked with Johnny “Guitar” Watson and who died fighting in Cuba with Castro against Batista. Apparently, the chickens they sold were too popular, as Otis lost the use of a couple of fingers on his right hand in a chainsaw accident while trying to build more chicken coops -- though as he said later, he was still able to play piano and vibraphone with only eight fingers. After a doctor botched an operation on his hand, though, he couldn't play drums easily.   But it was because of his damaged hand that he eventually discovered Little Esther. Otis prided himself on his ability at discovering artists, and in this case it was more or less by accident. One night he couldn't sleep from the pain in his hand, and he was scared of taking painkillers and becoming addicted, so he went for a walk.   He walked past a club, and saw that Big Jay McNeely was playing. McNeely – who died in September this year – was one of the great saxophone honkers and skronkers of rhythm and blues, and was a friend of Otis who'd played on several records with him. Otis went inside, and before the show started there was a talent show. These talent shows were often major parts of the show in black entertainment at this time, and were sometimes *hugely* impressive – Otis would later talk about one show he saw in Detroit, where he discovered Hank Ballard, Little Willie John, and Jackie Wilson all in the same night, and none of them were even the winner.   On this night, one girl was impressive, but didn't win, and went and cried in the back of the theatre. Johnny Otis went over to comfort her, and offered her a job with his band.   That girl was only fourteen when she became a professional blues singer after Otis discovered her (he had a knack for discovering teenage girls with exceptional vocal abilities -- we'll be looking at another one in a few weeks). She was born Esther Mae Washington, but later took the surname of her stepfather and became Esther Mae Jones. A few years from the time we're talking about, she took the name of a petrol station company and became Esther Phillips.   At first, Otis had trouble getting her a record deal, because of the similarity of her sound to that of Dinah Washington, who was Esther's biggest inspiration, and was the biggest female R&B star of the period. Anyone listening to her was instantly struck by the similarity, and so she was dismissed as a soundalike.   But Otis had a little more success with a vocal group he knew called the Robins.   We haven't talked much about doo-wop yet, but we're at the point where it starts to be a major factor. Doo-wop is a genre that mostly came from the East Coast of the US. Like many of the genres we've discussed so far, it was a primarily black genre, but it would soon also be taken up by Italian-American singers living in the same areas as black people -- this was a time when Italian-Americans weren't considered fully "white" according to the racial standards then prevalent in the US. (As an example, in the early 1960s, the great jazz bass player Charles Mingus was asked why, if he was so angry at white people, he played with Charlie Mariano. Mingus looked surprised and said "Charlie's not white, he's Italian!")   But at this point doo-wop was very much on the fringes of the music business. It was music that was made by people who were too poor to even afford instruments, standing around on street corners and singing with each other. Usually the lead singer would try to sound like Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots, though increasingly as the genre matured the lead vocalists would take on more and more aspects of gospel singing as well. The backing vocalists -- usually three or four of them -- would do the same kind of thing as the Mills Brothers had, and imitate instrumental parts.   And in the tradition of the Ink Spots' "top and bottom", these bands would also feature a very prominent bass vocal -- though the bass singer wouldn't speak the words like Hoppy Jones, but would instead sing wordless nonsense syllables. This is where the name "doo wop", which was only applied later, comes from -- from the singer singing things like this:   [excerpt "Count Every Star", by the Ravens]   That's the Ravens, one of the first and most successful of the new vocal groups that came along. We're not doing a whole episode on them, but they caused a huge explosion of black vocal groups in the late forties and early fifties -- and you can tell how influential they were just by looking at the names of many of these bands, which included the Orioles, the Penguins, the Flamingos and more.   And The Robins were another of these "bird groups". They started out as a vocal group called the A-Sharp Trio, who entered a talent contest at a nightclub owned by Johnny Otis and came second (the performer who came first, the guitarist Pete Lewis, Otis got into his band straight away). Otis gave the A-Sharp Trio a regular gig at his club, and soon decided to pair them with another singer who sang there solo, turning them into a quartet. They were originally called the Four Bluebirds, and under that name they recorded a single with Otis -- "My Baby Done Told Me":   [Excerpt: the Four Bluebirds "My Baby Done Told Me"]   However, they didn't like the name, and soon settled on the Robins.   The Robins recorded with Otis on various labels. Their first single, "Around About Midnight", was a remake of Roy Brown's earlier "Long About Midnight", and it's really rather good. Take a listen:   ["Around About Midnight"]   A quick note there -- that's noted as their first single on some discographies I've seen. Others, however, say that these original tracks weren't released until a few months after they were recorded. It's definitely from their first session under the name The Robins though.   That was recorded on the Aladdin label, a record label that also had recordings by Ilinois Jacquet, Louis Jordan, Wynonie Harris, and many, many more early R&B people who we've touched upon in this podcast and will touch upon again I'm sure. But soon after this Otis and the Robins -- and Esther Mae Washington -- would all go on to another label, Savoy.   Ralph Bass, the A&R man who signed Johnny Otis to Savoy, is another of those white back-room people who devoted their life to black music who keep showing up at this stage of the story, and he's another one we'll be seeing a lot of for the next few episodes. Born Ralph Basso, he'd been an amateur musician and had also worked for Shell. When he was working for Shell, one of his jobs had been to organise corporate events, and because of the war there was a lack of musicians to play them, and he'd taken to playing records through an amplifier, becoming one of the very first live DJs.   He'd always had a love of music -- he used to sneak into the Savoy Ballroom to watch Chick Webb as a teenager -- and when he was playing these records, he realised that many of them sounded awful. He was convinced he could make records that sounded better than the ones he was playing, and so he decided to write to every record company he could find, offering his services. Only one record company answered -- Black and White Records in Los Angeles. They weren't certain that they could use him, but they'd give him an interview in a few weeks if he flew to LA.   Bass flew to LA two weeks before his interview, and started preparing. He asked the musicians unions for a list of who they thought their most talented local musicians were, and went to see them all live, and chat to some of them. Then, when he went into the actual interview and was asked who he would record, he had an answer -- he was going to record Sammy Franklin and his Atomics doing "The Honeydripper".   But he still didn't actually know anything at all about how to make a record. He had a solution to that too. He booked the band and the studio, then got to the studio early and told the engineers that he didn't have a clue about how to record sound, but that his boss would be expecting him to, and to just go along with everything he said when the boss got there, and that the engineers would really be in charge. The boss of Black and White Records did get there, shortly afterward, and Bass spent the next half hour tweaking settings on the board, changing mic placements, and a thousand other tiny technical differences. The boss decided he knew what he was doing and left him to it. The engineers then put everything back the way it was originally. The record came out, and it didn't do wonderfully (for reasons we'll discuss next week) but it was enough to get Bass firmly in place in Black and White Records.   Over the next few years, he produced dozens of classics of jazz and blues, including "Stormy Monday" by T-Bone Walker and "Open the Door, Richard" by Jack McVea:   [excerpt: "Open the Door, Richard"]   That record was based on an old routine by the black comedian Dusty Fletcher, and it was Bass who suggested that the old routine be set to music by McVea, who had previously been a saxophone player with Lionel Hampton's band. It became a massive hit, and was covered by Count Basie and Louis Jordan, among others -- six different versions of the song made the R&B top ten more or less simultaneously in the first few months of 1947.   But the problem with "Open the Door, Richard" was that it was actually too successful -- the record label just assumed that any of its records would sell that well. And when they didn't, Bass had to find another label to work with.   Bass had proved his ability enough that he ended up working for Savoy. For most of its time, Savoy was a jazz label, but while Ralph Bass was in charge of A&R it was, instead, an R&B label, and one that put out some of the greatest R&B of its time. He had an eye for talent and a real love for good rhythm and blues music.   And so when Ralph Bass saw the Johnny Otis revue performing live, he decided that Savoy needed to sign *all of them* -- Otis and his band, Esther, the Robins, everyone. He got in touch with Herman Lubinsky, who was the owner of Savoy Records, and got Lubinsky to come down to see Otis' band. During intermission, Lubinsky met up with Otis, and got him to sign a record contact -- the contract only specified a one percent royalty, but Lubinsky promised he'd triple the royalty rate after Otis' first hit with Savoy. Like many of Lubinsky's promises, this proved to be false.   When the Otis band, Esther, and the Robins went into the studio together, Esther was so intimidated by the studio that she started giggling, and while they did manage to cut a few songs, they didn't get as much done as they wanted to in the session. But at almost literally the last minute -- twenty minutes before the end of the session, Otis came up with a song that was, like "Open the Door Richard", based around a comedy routine from a well-known black comedy act. In this case, a double act called Apus and Estrellita -- Esther and Bobby Nunn of the Robins engaged in some good-spirited comedy back and forth, copied from their routines.   [excerpt "Double Crossin' Blues"]   Those lines "How come you ain't in the forest?" "I'm a lady", "they got lady bears out there!" take on a bit of a different colour when you realise that "lady bear" was, at the time, slang for an ugly, sexually aggressive woman.   Herman Lubinsky, the head of Savoy Records, was not impressed with the record or with Esther Phillips, and according to Bass "I sent the record to Lubinsky and asked for five dollars to pay for the kid's expenses -- lunch and all that, coming to Hollywood from Watts. He shouted 'Whaddaya mean five bucks? For what?' He wouldn't give me the five bucks".   Lubinsky put the recording aside until a DJ in Newark asked him if he could look through the new recordings he had to see if there was anything that might be a hit. The DJ loved the record, and even ran a competition on his radio station to pick the song's name, which is where the title "Double Crossing Blues" comes from. Although as Bass said "Everybody who was involved with the record got double-crossed. The songwriter, Johnny and I, the Robins, everybody connected with it."   Lubinsky was suddenly so sure that the record was going to be a success that he phoned Bass at five in the morning, Bass' time, waking him up, and getting Bass to go and wake Johnny Otis up so they could both go and track down Esther and her mother, and get them to sign a contract immediately. It was around this point that Esther's stage name was decided upon -- Lubinsky said to Otis "you need a stage name for that girl," to which Otis replied "which girl? Little Esther?" and Lubinsky said "that's perfect!" And so for the next few years, Esther Washington, who would later be Esther Phillips, was Little Esther, and that was the name under which she became a phenomenon.   The record went to number one on the R&B charts, and was the biggest thing in the genre in years. In July 1950, Billboard published its annual listing of best-selling R&B acts. Johnny Otis came first, Little Esther second, and the Robins came fourth   But the record's success caused friction between Otis and the Robins, who he later described as the people "who hummed behind Little Esther". They decided that they were the big stars, not Little Esther, and that they were going to go on tour on their own. Otis had to find another male singer to sing the parts that Bobby Nunn had sung, and so he found his new singer Mel Walker, who would be the main lead vocalist on Otis' future records, and would duet with Little Esther on more than a few of them. The Robins offered Otis a job as musical director for twenty dollars a night, but Otis refused.   The Robins would go on to have many, many successes themselves, some of which we'll talk about later, but Otis, Mel Walker, and Little Esther went on to have a string of hits in various combinations as well -- "Mistrustin' Blues", "Deceivin' Blues", "Dreamin' Blues", "Wedding Boogie", "Rockin' Blues"... Otis also had a 1951 hit with "All Nite Long", which would later be referenced in records by both Frank Zappa and Talking Heads:   [excerpt "All Nite Long": Johnny Otis]   We'll be seeing much more of Johnny Otis, and of the Robins, as the story goes on, but this is the only time we'll be talking about Little Esther. In her first year, she had an amazing seven records make the R&B top ten, three of them (including "Double Crossin' Blues") going to number one. She was regarded as one of the finest R&B vocalists of her generation, and had a promising future.   She decided, after a year on Savoy with Johnny Otis, to go solo and to move with Ralph Bass to Federal Records, a new label Bass had joined after falling out with Herman Lubinsky. According to Bass, Lubinsky often blackmailed his employees, in order to get leverage over them. But he was unable to find any dirty secrets about Bass -- not that Bass didn't have them (and not necessarily that he did, either -- I don't know) -- but that he didn't mix his business and personal lives. He didn't hang out with the musicians he worked with or with his colleagues, and so there was no vector for Lubinsky to get any kind of leverage over him.   So Lubinsky sent Bass to a party for a distributor at the last minute, which ran until three or four AM, and then when Bass' wife phoned up to ask where he was, Lubinsky claimed not to know, causing Bass and his wife to have a row.   Bass instantly realised that Lubinsky was trying to mess with his marriage in order to get some leverage over him, and decided he was simply not going to go back to work the next day. Instead, he went to King Records, who set up a subsidiary, Federal, for Bass to run. Bass took Little Esther with him, but Johnny Otis and the Robins were both still on Savoy.   Over the next few years, Bass would produce a lot of records which would change the course of rhythm and blues and rock and roll music, but sadly his further collaborations with Little Esther simply weren't as successful as the work they'd done together with Johnny Otis. She stopped having hits, and started doing heroin.   She moved back in with her family in Houston, and played odd gigs around the area, including one with Otis, Big Mama Thornton, and Johnny Ace, which we'll talk about in a future episode but which must have traumatised her further. Eventually her career got a second wind, and she had a few minor hits in the 1960s and 70s under her new name Esther Phillips.   Most impressive of these was "Home is Where the Hatred is", a song by Gil Scott-Heron that she recorded in 1972:   [excerpt "Home is Where the Hatred is": Esther Phillips]   That song clearly meant a lot to her, given her own history with drugs, and the album it came from, From A Whisper to a Scream, was nominated for a Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance (Female). Aretha Franklin won the award, as she did every year from 1968 through 1975 inclusive -- and to be fair, that's one of the few examples of the Grammies actually recognising talent when they saw it, because if it's possible to give Aretha Franklin an award between 1968 and 1975, you give Aretha Franklin that award. But this time, Aretha said publicly that she didn't deserve the award, and gave it to Phillips. Sadly, Esther Phillips never won the award in her own right -- she was nominated four times, but all during that period of Aretha dominance.   She continued having minor hits into the 1980s, but she never recaptured that brief period when she was the biggest female star in R&B, back in 1950. She died in 1984, aged only 48. Johnny Otis, who by that time was ordained as a minister, performed her funeral.

In this episode, I briefly explore 20 classic television series from the 1950s through the 1980s with memorable theme music composed and/or co-composed by prolific theme tune writer Earle Hagen. Here are the series included in this episode: MAKE ROOM FOR DADDY/THE DANNY THOMAS SHOW (1953-1964) [1956-1964 opening main titles: an arrangement of "Londonderry Air," a.k.a. "Danny Boy"] [1956-1964 syndicated reruns opening and closing main titles: an arrangement of "Londonderry Air," a.k.a. "Danny Boy"] with Herbert W. Spencer for MSI Spencer-Hagen WHERE'S RAYMOND/THE RAY BOLGER SHOW (1953-1955) [1953-1955 opening and closing main titles] with Herbert W. Spencer for MSI Spencer-Hagen IT'S ALWAYS JAN (1955-1956) [1955-1956 opening and closing main titles] with Herbert W. Spencer for MSI Spencer-Hagen MY SISTER EILEEN (1960-1961) [1960-1961 opening and closing main titles] with Herbert W. Spencer for MSI Spencer-Hagen THE BARBARA STANWYCK SHOW (1960-1961) [1960-1961 opening and closing main titles] with Herbert W. Spencer for MSI Spencer-Hagen -Commercial Break- THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW (1960-1968) [1960-1965 opening and closing main titles: "The Fishin' Hole"] [1965-1968 opening and closing main titles: "The Fishin' Hole"] THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW (1961-1966) [1961 (episodes 1-14) opening and closing main titles] [1962 (episodes 15-30) opening and closing main titles] [1962-1963; 1964-1965 opening main titles] [1963-1964; 1965-1966 opening main titles] GOMER PYLE - USMC (1964-1969) [1964-1969 opening and closing main titles] I SPY (1965-1968) [1965-1968 opening and closing main titles] THAT GIRL (1966-1971) [1966-1967 opening and closing main titles] [1967-1970 opening and closing main titles] [1970-1971 opening and closing main titles] -Commercial Break- RANGO (1967) [1967 opening and closing main titles] THE GUNS OF WILL SONNETT (1967-1969) [1967-1969 opening and closing main titles] THE DANNY THOMAS HOUR (1967-1968) [SORRY, NO THEME AVAILABLE] MAYBERRY, R.F.D. (1968-1971) [1969-1971 opening and closing main titles] THE MOD SQUAD (1968-1973) [1968-1973 opening and closing main titles] -Commercial Break- MAKE ROOM FOR GRANDDADDY (1970-1971) [1970-1971 opening and closing main titles: an arrangement of "Londonderry Air," a.k.a. "Danny Boy"] THE NEW PERRY MASON (1973-1974) [1973-1974 opening main titles] BIG EDDIE (1975) [1975 closing main titles] YOUNG DAN'L BOONE (1977) [1977 opening main titles (excerpt only)] MICKEY SPILLANE'S MIKE HAMMER/THE NEW MIKE HAMMER/MIKE HAMMER, PRIVATE EYE (1984-1987; 1997-1998) [1984-1986 opening main titles: "Harlem Nocturne" (composed in 1939)] [1986-1987 opening main titles: "Harlem Nocturne" (composed in 1939)] [1997-1998 opening main titles: "Harlem Nocturne" (composed in 1939)] I've included vintage promos and commercials for many of the series featured in this themeography episode. And you'll also have fun listening to some ads that my podcasting friends provided to me to promote their own great podcasts; be sure to check them out. Many, many thanks to Zerbinator for his continued support. His encouragement and expertise are very much appreciated by me. You can find all of his fun-to-listen-to podcasts here, including my favorite, "Please Stand By." And I'd also like especially to thank him for providing the opening and closing theme music for Tube Tunes; all of his fantastic music can be found here. And, again, thanks are in order for him for providing TUBE TUNES with the "We'll Be Right Back" drops heard during the podcast. Thanks, Burford. I would also like to again thank Rob "Flack" O'Hara and Sean Johnson for adding TUBE TUNES to The Throwback Network. It's a great place to find just about any retro-themed podcast you can think of. Please check out the network here. I also need to thank the Free Music Archive for the following musical artists and songs that were used in this episode under the Creative Commons L...

Records left off of previous podcasts.  Music inclues: I'm a Happy Go Lucky Cowboy, K.C. Moan, Schubert's Impromptu #2, We've Got a Parrot At Our House, Whoop Em Up, Cindy and Harlem Nocturne.  Performers include: Ray Noble, Eilene Joyce, Collins & Harlin, Smokey Dawson, Ben Webster and Uncle Dave Macon.

1. Godfather Theme 2. Love featuring Jill Scott 3. Jock It In 4. 2001 (That’ll Work) 5. Playing Your Game Baby 6. Hoochie Coochie Man 7. All For You 8. Stormy Monday 9. The Party Roll 10. Day-O 11. Harlem Nocturne 12. Funky Funky 13. Chuck Baby 14. Midnight Sun [Read More]

Track list: 01 - 5.6.7.8's "Harlem Nocturne" from The 5.6.7.8's 02 - 5.6.7.8's "Oriental Rock" from The 5.6.7.8's 03 - Silence Kills The Revolution "Fake Peace" from Monroe Vs Stones 04 - Totalfat "Tonight" from All The Dreamer, Light The Dream 04 - Totalfat "Tonight" from All The Dreamer, Light The Dream 05 - Lemon's Chair "Himmel" from [I Hate? I Hope?] 06 - Kawabata Makoto "Pink Lady Lemonade Coda" from Private Tapes 3- AMTPD-013 07 - Coffins "The Frozen Styx" from Buried Death 08 - Gallhammer "World to be Ashes" from Ill Innocence 09 - Lemon's Chair "Swallowtail" from [I Hate? I Hope?] Notes: This by far is one of my favorite episodes!! I recorded this one on the fly during my vacation in the US. I recorded with two of my best friends while we were raging. It was so much fun to make! Enjoy!! -Tyler Abstract

Harlem Nocturne is from Dan Blunck and Mike Bisio’s album Concerted, recorded during their 2000 Jack Straw Artist Residency.

Harlem Nocturne is from Dan Blunck and Mike Bisio's album Concerted, recorded during their 2000 Jack Straw Artist Residency.

Harlem Nocturne is from Dan Blunck and Mike Bisio's album Concerted, recorded during their 2000 Jack Straw Artist Residency.

The multi-talented Andre De Shields describes the development of his new one-man show, "Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory: From Douglass to Deliverance", and why it may be a work-in-progress for several years to come. He also talks about growing up in a family of 11 children in Baltimore and why he was unexpectedly the one to make a career in entertainment; his undergraduate years at the University of Wisconsin, including an infamous production he described as "the nude Peter Pan," directed by Stuart Gordon (who would later create the Organic Theatre in Chicago and direct the film "Re-Animator"); why he had to sleep in a public park in order to secure his first professional role in a show he'd never seen -- "Hair"; why he can lay claim to being the man who made Bette Midler's back-up singers, The Harlettes, dance; how the process of elimination ended up yielding him the title role in "The Wiz"; why it was Jackie Onassis who revealed to him and his castmates in "Ain't Misbehavin'" that they were in a hit; whether he'd tackle the multiple roles of director, choreographer, bookwriter, songwriter and star of "Harlem Nocturne" if he had to do it all over again; his thoughts on African-American actors taking on traditionally Caucasian roles, having had the opportunity to play Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman" and "Our Town"'s Stage Manager; why he feels that the musical "Play On!" was misunderstood; and the incredible liberation of his big number in "The Full Monty". Original air date - February 1, 2010.

The multi-talented Andre De Shields describes the development of his new one-man show, "Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory: From Douglass to Deliverance", and why it may be a work-in-progress for several years to come. He also talks about growing up in a family of 11 children in Baltimore and why he was unexpectedly the one to make a career in entertainment; his undergraduate years at the University of Wisconsin, including an infamous production he described as "the nude Peter Pan," directed by Stuart Gordon (who would later create the Organic Theatre in Chicago and direct the film "Re-Animator"); why he had to sleep in a public park in order to secure his first professional role in a show he'd never seen -- "Hair"; why he can lay claim to being the man who made Bette Midler's back-up singers, The Harlettes, dance; how the process of elimination ended up yielding him the title role in "The Wiz"; why it was Jackie Onassis who revealed to him and his castmates in "Ain't Misbehavin'" that they were in a hit; whether he'd tackle the multiple roles of director, choreographer, bookwriter, songwriter and star of "Harlem Nocturne" if he had to do it all over again; his thoughts on African-American actors taking on traditionally Caucasian roles, having had the opportunity to play Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman" and "Our Town"'s Stage Manager; why he feels that the musical "Play On!" was misunderstood; and the incredible liberation of his big number in "The Full Monty". Original air date - February 1, 2010.